Does it really matter what a court finds, anymore? We don't exactly live in law-abiding times.
The supreme court might have declared the president to be immune for official acts, but that doesn't extend to govt officials blatantly choosing contempt of court. They have practical immunity in the current administration. A future administration might not look so kindly on such actions.
Break the law all you want, long as the old boss or his successor is happy with you, you can’t be held accountable by the new boss.
(not supporting anything about the current strategy... just pointing out that the "line in the sand" doesn't imply that any individuals would actually get in trouble)
I thought more like you in the past -- I was near-certain he'd toss the whole lot of J6 rioters under the bus.
When he didn't, I've recalibrated to: if it "owns the libs", he'll pardon them (or something actionably similar).
But there are two options here. One is that some other irrelevant and obscure law from 200 years ago is dug up and used to justify the tariffs and another long court battle begins. The other is that the ruling is simply ignored, just like many others, and half the country will cry that the courts are being ignored and justice will rain down soon, and the other half will say hell yeah, ignore those woke courts.
Every single judgement has gone this way for the past 9 years. I'm always amazed when people keep expecting different. It's like being surprised about the events in a 10 season long reality TV show. It's the same script everyday.
Thing is, I think support for these tariffs is way less than 1/2 of the country. Even parts of MAGA have been expressing doubt about the tariffs (or at least the hamfisted way they've been implemented).
That 40% seems absolutely unshakeable in their support. No matter what happens, that group will support it. And 40% is pretty close to half.
[1] https://www.progressivepolicy.org/polling-u-s-public-is-agai...
But that completely ignores the fact that literally every other nation, including the US most obviously, has excesses of dependencies on other countries, many of which we aren't friendly with today, and even more that we won't be friendly with tomorrow. Times change. An 'advanced economy' is a misnomer, if not an outright facade. Supplanting agriculture, real manufacturing, and other core aspects of your economy with e.g. advertising driven high tech discretionary industries creates an inverted dependency. People don't need iPhones or Google. They do need food, the zillion things in your home labeled 'made in China', and gas. If those 'lesser economies' chose to stop selling to the US, they'd destroy the country.
Offshoring all of these jobs also distorts the economy driving excesses of wealth inequality. Many of the jobs that used to lay between flipping burgers and writing code are the exact ones that have been hollowed out by offshoring. The fundamental problem we've created is that it's cheaper than make a widget half way around the world and ship it here than it is than it is to make it here. So how do we fix this? Tariffs are a blunt way to change this, but change it they do. The most probable outcome is that these providers will simply increase their prices which will, in turn, enable and motivate domestic competition and/or incentivize these companies to create onshore operations.
[1] - https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2025/05/polling-20...
That's called trade. There's a recorded history of it going back about 5000 years (it goes back farther when you look at artifacts spread around the world before written history existed) and every great civilization partook in it and it's the reason they became known as great empires.
Societies that went nowhere and quickly collapsed, notably, did not partake in this system.
There is self beneficial trade, and there is trade which risks imperiling your own national stability if and when relations sour. People claim this is obvious in hindsight - and even criticize governments for not acting earlier, yet make arguments akin to yours (which frame it is a practical impossibility) when speaking of acting preemptively to resolve such issues.
And if there has been any trend of the 21st century it's to emphasize that the status quo on just about anything won't persist. So one needs to do like we always should in practically any endeavor - hope for the best, prepare for the worst.
You're likely arguing against someone else you've built up in your mind and definitely about another topic. It has no relevance and the trap you're trying to set isn't effective here.
But to take the irrelevant point you're bringing up, Germany switched a substantial amount of its energy sources thanks to having an extensive trade network built up. They would've been screwed if they were dumb enough to tariff all their allies and isolate themselves. Strong trade relations make a country durable during times of conflict.
North Korea is the ideal country in the sense that it's not dependent on outside resources (and blocks most of them) and makes everything at home. They don't have to worry about the risks of trade potentially collapsing. They're free to tariff all their allies. They'll be OK if another country cuts off their gas. And the lesson we can learn from North Korea is to always do the opposite of North Korea, because the country is an absolute failure due to these policies. While its southern neighbor goes all in on trade and specializes in its own unique goods that it exports in exchange for other specialized goods from other countries.
All the while they're left entering into unprecedented levels of debt just to try to keep their economy from outright collapsing. The most likely outcome for them is long-term stagflation and decline (be it relative or absolute). Germany as we knew it in our lifetimes, well dependent on your age I suppose, is probably dead. Creating dependencies on other countries isn't smart.
The point of the tariffs is to raise the price of foreign products, enabling domestic competition and/or to encourage foreign producers to create onshore production facilities. You're not isolating anybody or anything. Some companies will try to eat the costs, others will pass it onto the consumer. In general though, trade is still 100% possible - it simply makes it possible for domestic entities to competitive more effectively.
>All the while they're left entering into unprecedented levels of debt
So is America because of the tariffs and tax cuts for the ultrarich.
Also, a lot of the tariffs were delayed or canceled. Is that a good idea?
Also, those canceled tariffs were brought back. Was that a good idea?
Those brought back tariffs were also delayed again. Was that a good idea?
America entered into unprecedented debt exclusively by unprecedented spending. Government receipts (all the money the government takes in each year) has exponentially increased and basically never decreased except during major economic crises. [1] It's just that for every $1 the government takes in, they invariably decide to spend $1.20 more.
For the US this was more tolerable than for other nations because of a variety of factors - essentially coming down to the "special" place of USD in the world economy. But for a country like Germany diving into the debt hole will likely be catastrophic, even more so as they don't have control over their own currency. Gerexit starting to trend would be amusing, but also not entirely surprising if you've been paying any attention to German politics.
As for the implementation of the tariffs - no I don't think it's been done well. Of course I can take a purely ideological stance while the government is more obligated to take a pragmatic one, balancing the short-term pain such a change will entail against public support of it.
Do we have excessive dependencies on other countries (Madagascar) for vanilla? How about for chocolate? Are tariffs supposed to stimulate our own chocolate and vanilla production? How does that work if you don't have the right climate for these things? I suppose we could grow vanilla in greenhouses, but would that really be worthwhile when we can just import it from places where it does grow?
This is, in large part, why sanctions wars are playing with fire given our current status of trade. We, with "we" being most of 'advanced' economies, export discretionary/luxury goods and import critical/core ones. Even if the discretionary goods have a far higher $ value, they really just don't matter - it's those core goods that keep the gears of a nation turning.
For example, according to the highest law in the land, the Constitution, he can't be elected again. Do you really believe that's going to prevent him from running, much less remaining in office should he win, having previously tried to overturn a legitimate election?
The real question is, when he ignores the courts, what then? Normally that would be when Congress steps in. But even if Republicans didn't have a majority, impeachment would still require support from a decent number of them. Based on their behavior to date, how likely is that?
Strict partisanship appears to be a serious failure mode for this particular form of government. As Congress has become more partisan, they've gotten less and less done, both legislatively and in terms of serving as a check on the executive branch.
And the court here is ruling that the tariffs weren't made in a way that follows the law/Constitution, so your anger is misdirected.