Posted by Sia on February 23, 2026, 11:47 am ADMIN
The Tariffs Will Continue Until Morale Improves
by Andrew Egger The Bulwark
On Friday, at long last, the Supreme Court struck down one of the tentpoles of Donald Trump’s economic agenda: the “Liberation Day” tariffs he’d wielded under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, which he’d taken as a license to set tariff rates at any time on any good from any country for any reason. The decision was an unalloyed triumph for the rule of law—but whether and how soon it will pay dividends for the economy remains to be seen.
In another universe, where Trump wasn’t Trump, the president could have quietly realized this apparent L was actually a blessing in disguise. The tariffs have been a pillow on the face of the economy; letting them lapse would, to say the least, be good for the economy’s health. Trump could even run a version of the talking-points playbook he ran after COVID, taking credit for the reviving economy while insisting it would have been even better if only SCOTUS had let him cook.
But alas: Trump is Trump, and deep in his belly he believes two things: Tariffs are goodgreatwonderfulbeautifulmagicalstrong, and nobody fucking tells me what to do. Working from the collapsed house of his IEEPA tariffs, Trump spent the weekend with one obvious top priority in mind: No matter what, we’re going to have more tariffs after this than we had before.
Hours after the Court’s decision, Trump announced a new global tariff rate of 10 percent, invoking a never-before-used trade authority under Section 122 of the Trade Act of 1974. On Saturday, having apparently considered the matter further, he announced the new rate would actually be 15 percent—the maximum allowed under the statute. (These tariffs, by law, can last no longer than 150 days without Congressional approval.)
And Trump’s vowed he’s not done. “The court has also approved all other Tariffs, of which there are many,” he proclaimed on Truth Social this morning, “and they can all be used in a much more powerful and obnoxious way, with legal certainty, than the Tariffs as initially used.”
Oh, you thought the old tariffs were obnoxious? You have no idea how obnoxious I can be.
Trump’s outburst is now threatening to collapse even the fragile trade deals he managed to strike last year. The European Union, for instance, reacted with outrage at the announcement of the new 15 percent tariff. Bernd Lange, who chairs the European Parliament’s trade committee, told Politico the announcement was “a clear breach of the deal we had agreed,” adding on X that they were seeing “pure tariff chaos from the U.S. administration.”
Pure chaos is right. In addition to the steep tariff rates themselves, what really crushed American businesses last year was the fact that the rates kept whipsawing around without warning. The second you’d adjusted your business plans to account for one new tariff, suddenly Trump would be rolling that one back and coldcocking you with a different one. Some of that had slowed in the second half of last year, but now we’re right back where we started: new tariffs cropping up as soon as Trump can think them up, a state of total uncertainty in our trade relationships with basically every other country, chaos, chaos, chaos. None of this helps the economy.
I don’t want to be too glum here. It’s nothing but good the court knocked down Trump’s IEEPA tariffs and the breathtakingly sweeping vision of presidential power on which they rested. Trump thrashes around like a caged animal any time he feels his unilateral authority is being constricted; that’s no reason to let him run free.
But the vanishing of these tariffs may not provide the hoped-for economic boon, either. Trump seems determined to see to that.
As I understand it, the DOW briefly rose only to settle back down once the full impact of the 15% globally applied tariffs were figured out.
I noted that Trump's first impulse after learning of the so-called supreme court's decision was defiance. Fortunately for the governors who were attending a breakfast at the White House that morning there were no ketchup bottles around as he became immediately angry.
It's astounding to me that this guy thinks that that the courts actually dared to strike down his emergency IEEPA excuse for imposing the tariffs in the first place. He probably thinks they're not grateful enough that he appointed three of them. If they were to be grateful to anyone it should be to Mitch McConnell whom we can all thank for this never-ending nightmare we are living through.
He is the mad king, remember? Of course he thinks they
on February 23, 2026, 11:47 am
