After acting totally submissive toward Donald Trump in his first year of his second term, finally the Supreme Court majority, including two Trump appointees—Neil Gorsuch and Amy Coney Barrett, along with Chief Justice John Roberts and the three Democratic women justices–have delivered a solid rebuke to Trump on the subject of protective tariffs.
This is long overdue, as the Court has developed a reputation as the most extreme right wing Court in a century, and Chief Justice Roberts presides over a majority which usually has no desire to challenge executive power of the President.
This dangerous trend, hopefully, will continue to be challenged in future cases, particularly on birthright citizenship rights, which are contained in the 14th Amendment to the Constitution, ratified after the Civil War.
Donald Trump does not care about the reality that protective tariffs are a disaster, as they were in causing the Panic of 1893 and the Great Depression of the 1930s, because Republican Presidents Benjamin Harrison (prodded on by future President William McKinley’s promotion of high tariffs) and Herbert Hoover stubbornly imposed them on the American people, destroying the economy.
With the economy not doing well, despite Trump’s delusional statements, this repudation of Trump’s tariffs should be seen as a blessing by him, as well as the American people.
But instead, Trump is railing against his own Republican Justices who have “defied” him, and one wonders how it will show up in his State of the Union Address next Tuesday.
Will he openly condemn Roberts, Gorsuch, and Barrett in his speech, or will he be diplomatic and maybe just lightly tease them?
This should be a very interesting moment of confrontation between the Supreme Court members who show up and the President of the United States!
It reminds one of past clashes of Presidents and Supreme Courts, including under Thomas Jefferson and Andrew Jackson with Chief Justice John Marshall; Abraham Lincoln with Chief Justice Roger Taney; Franklin D. Roosevelt with the majority conservative Court and Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes during the New Deal; and other controversies involving Theodore Roosevelt, Harry Truman, Richard Nixon and Barack Obama and Supreme Court decisions!
The $175 Billion raised in tariffs this past year were a financial burden on the American consumers, and should be returned to the American people with a refund per taxpayer of $1700, as suggested by Illinois Governor JD Pritzker. However, it seems that Trump has no concern of the damage done to the average American, while constantly engaged in grift for personal gain, having enriched himself in the past year, a crime against the Constitution!