The US did give their input. The US voted for Trump who explicitly campaigned on this.
The people of the US got what they asked for.
The people of the US got what they asked for.
The constitution specifically states: "The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises..." [0] (Article I, Section 8)
Congress. NOT the executive branch or the President.
Tariffs are taxes, full stop.
Just because congress is abdicating it's duty and there are not even a handful of Republicans who will stand up to take back their proper power of taxation, does not make it either legal or moral to mis-allocate the power further away from the people.
And yes, while people did vote for that POTUS, and he did mention tariffs in campaigning, he was both not explicit about seizing power from congress, and had such a reputation for lying that it was literally impossible to predict what he would actually do.
No, you can not claim this misapplication of power is the will of the people.
[0] https://constitution.congress.gov/browse/article-1/section-8...
Which might be a good thing, but we've long since abandoned making congress actually use the legislative process each time these decisions are made.
In this case, Congress actually DID delegate those powers specifically for emergency use.
Arrogating power that was NOT delegated by congress by declaring ordinary condition a bogus "emergency" in order to circumvent congressional control is undermining the democracy.
If congress wants to implement broad tariffs, or enable the executive to engage in tariff and trade wars at will, it is welcome to do that.
But, congress has NOT yet done so.
Until it does, this is at best an abuse of executive power, and whether the intent of the usurpation is good or evil is irrelevant.
Congress has previously delegated tariff authority for emergencies to allow the president to do stuff like impose (temporary) sanctions in fast moving foreign policy negotiations. The mechanism by which all the current tariff stuff is getting done is by Trump having declared that trade deficits (in goods only), by virtue of existing, constitute such an emergency, despite having been observed for 80 years and being both an inevitable consequence of the US being an advanced country. Like, the whole thing rests on a total perversion of the law's intent, economics, and the English language itself.
I agree with this statement and have commented as much elsewhere, but Congress could rein in Trump's tariff-setting ability any time they wanted to, and they have very explicitly chosen not to.
I agree with the parent comment - people in the US very clearly voted for this, buyer's remorse be damned.
https://www.politico.com/news/2025/04/17/lisa-murkowski-trum...
Except that the whole US system is binary, and your vote is too - you get to vote either 1 or 0, with no more nuance than that.
So technically yes, people voted for this, but also many were forced to because it came in a bundle which was the only way they could vote for their non-negotiables such as gun rights and abortion restrictions.
Having said that, Republicans as a whole got a large number of votes, and they’re all well known to be Trump bootlickers that twice failed to convict him after impeachment, so it really shouldn’t come as a shock that he’s doing bad stuff.
There’s some point where Americans just have to take responsibility for their actions or inactions, and I think we’re well past that point.
Either of the two parties promoting voting reform would be like turkeys voting for Christmas.
I don't know if America will ever be able to transition to proportional representation because of entrenched interests. But here in New Zealand it was having a trump-like character, Robert Muldoon, in control of our economy last century that led to MMP.
Having a single deranged (and occasionally drunk) person micromanaging the economy, arbitrarily imposing tariffs and trading rules and imposing price controls and freezing wage rises made people realize that we wanted our king to be symbolic and not interfering with our freedoms.
As for whether or not the people of the US got what they asked for, in a sense, that doesn't matter. Trump might think otherwise, but he is not a king. There's a document that he has to follow. This is a constitutional democratic republic, not just a democracy. The less he follows the rules, the more severe the repercussions could be for both him personally and the country at large.
Campaigned on raising taxes? Not only would a citation be needed, I would defy you to find a single Trump voter who thinks taxes needed to be raised.
This whole “it’s what people voted for” meme isn’t always an appropriate answer, and is many times just lazy commenting IMO.
Quit lying.
I am left wondering if Trump fully understands how tariffs work. He spoke at length on multiple occasions about how other countries were going to pay for the tariffs, which runs entirely counter to what a tariff is. The only conclusion I can reasonably make from this is that Trump didn't understand tariffs either
Experts were pretty clear in telling the public that it was a tax. The only people who can say they didn't understand that would have to be people who not only didn't know what tariffs were in the first place, but who also didn't bother to listen to the many many people trying their best to explain it to them.
I'm 100% convinced that trump doesn't understand them and refused to listen to the many many people who have tried to explain it to him, which is why he had to suddenly start walking them back. Only his ego is getting in the way now.
anti intellectual sentiment runs deep in many parts of US society. Having experts out explaining things - particularly via news media outlets - has unfortunately become an ineffective tactic as a result. There are many people, across different areas of US society, that reject any expert explanations in favor of their own beliefs, or things they read that re-enforce their beliefs.
We live in an age where 'vibes' and anecdotal experiences override facts based on well gathered evidence and history.
I believe quite strongly the average Republican voter is heavily weighted toward dismissing public experts out of hand.
All this is to say, I'm surprised that didn't have much impact. It should have completely destroyed his campaign to be honest, as many of his actions should have, but this was an indisputably bad idea from any reasonable economic standpoint.
>Only his ego is getting in the way now
I largely agree with this. I will only add that I can't tell where Trump ends and his donor class setting the agenda begins.
But in the end blind American exceptionalisim and surrounding himself with yes men seems to have made him at least publicly proclaim the exporters would bear the cost. Or Trump is just a liar.
Occam's Razor suggests an answer. Chances are this is just another instance of Trump lying and people eating it up.
That was the exact scenario he iterated over and over on the campaign trail. What technically possible scenario exists for this to happen?
Guy is a billionaire twice president of the US. He's many things (imho really bad things), but not ignorant.
Suggesting he was just tippy-toeing around the language is completely whitewashing his obvious widespread lies.
I'm no Trump fan. Never voted for him. Really really disagree with his politics, but here's some things I think are observably true.
- He understands media
- He understands very well how to manipulate public sentiment and opinion
- He understands the power of celebrity
- He understands the importance of tailoring to audiences
- He's willing to say and do things others aren't. There's no line in the sand for him
You can be otherwise ignorant of a great many things (including tariffs, which he has a demonstrated lack of understanding going back decades) and still get elected based on these traits
You're going to lose this one hard, because you chose the wrong tense. One exceptional thing about this cult is their ability to rationalize anything once Dear Leader has proclaimed it. This has been a general basic mechanism of mass media centralized democracy (eg the number of "liberals" eagerly supporting censorship ~10 years ago), but the Trump cult cranks it to 11 (eg "from my cold, dead hands" -> "blue lives matter")
Kids should not have a vote, but I'd be willing to say parents should get two votes. No adult has a more visceral sense of societal consequences than someone concerned about creating the future their own child will hopefully thrive in.
There are plenty of parents who have absolutely no sense of this, and plenty of children who have a better sense of this than their parents, because they’ve had to learn the hard way.
Choosing to reproduce, or failing to use birth control, should not give you an extra vote.
So why not?
I mean, the argument against surely is not that having children is some existential horror or great evil, right? Civilization advances by our children doing better than we did, maybe materially, but morally, ethically, and hopefully in purpose.
This scrutiny isn't applied to other citizens.
2024 turnout: 64.1%
Total Votes: 155,238,302
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_United_States_presidentia...
therefore
Total eligible voters: 242,181,438
Didn't vote: 86,943,136
Votes for Trump: 77,302,580
Voting in california and not voting in california are statistically identical, so if you don't move to a swing state, you're just voting for whoever wins, right?
"You voted for DJT, you're an evil person!" "Well actually, let me explain to you how the electoral college works..."
It has certainly happened before.
Until an election is decided by rogue delegates, this is a frivolous point.
If it ever does happen, it makes the whole exercising of voting even more useless than it already is for states like CA, the vote truly means nothing as opposed to just being symbolically useless.
So, the EC absolutely matters, and it’ll matter right up until it doesn’t. At which point, who tf cares?
How does the electoral college system work in a way that encourages you to vote for someone you don't want?
You have two top candidates, by voting for a third party you are deferring to the popular vote on the top two and 'subtracting' a vote from your favorite of the top two.
Yes, I know that there are down ballot races on the same day that matter, but many don’t, for the same or similar reasons. We need elections that let everyone’s vote matter. Things like the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact, working to end gerrymandering, and open primaries would all be helpful reforms in different ways.
Effectively they are giving 1/2 votes to each of their candidates, resulting in no change in the final result.
But, if you really want to be analytic, the higher the turnout of disaffected voters, the more likely they vote for Trump.
That's why, since 2016 or so, Trump always overperforms in general elections, while Democrats overperform in special/mid-term elections where the turnout is low.
So, these liberal/democrats copium about turnouts and non-votes no longer hold true. pre-2016 "Get out to Vote" were implicit Democrat crying calls to rally votes for the Democratic party. You still see people who haven't understood the underlying shift using this as a "dog whistle" to campaign for democrats while appearing neutral
"Responsibility" to now Die, or be Killed by the blowback of their political decision, when already in a bad situation?
Seems ridiculous to me.
And therefore seems like humanity needs to step in and help neutralize the ridiculous grotesque murder festival going on there.
That appears to claim the marginalized and impotent have attractive choices to reduce their suffering. "Stop hitting yourself", -The Bully
Noone is providing adequate alternatives. "Vote for Make It All Better"... does NOT exist right now.
Humanity needs to step in, and enforce human rights in this backwards part of the world.