"More Chaos": Trump Hammered for Plan to Double Down on Tariffs After Supreme Court Ruling

 

Donald Trump defiantly vowed to continue slapping tariffs on imported goods on Friday after the US Supreme Court overturned the so-called “Liberation Day” tariffs he implemented last year. In a press conference held hours after the Supreme Court ruled against the president’s tariff regime, Trump said that he had other tools at his disposal that allowed him to hit foreign products with taxes.

Among other things, Trump said he was going to issue a 10% global tariff using his authority under Section 122 of the Trade Act of 1974 that allows the president to levy tariffs to address “large and serious” balance-of-payments deficits with foreign nations.

However, as a Friday analysis by the libertarian Cato Institute explains, any tariffs enacted through Section 122 expire after 150 days without authorization from Congress, which in theory could put vulnerable congressional Republicans on the spot to vote for or against the president’s signature policy this summer right before the 2026 midterm elections.

The president’s decision to plow ahead with his politically unpopular tariffs drew immediate criticism from Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), who said during an interview with MS NOW that Trump was creating even more economic uncertainty. “What he’s done is just doubled down and tried to make it worse,” Klobuchar explained, “which, of course, is going to create more cost and chaos for the American people.”

Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman also predicted more chaos in the months to come from Trump’s trade policies, particularly when it comes to businesses that will now lobby to get back the money illegally seized from them by the president’s unconstitutional tariff regime.

Writing on his Substack, Krugman argued that Trump finding alternative means to levy tariffs would not “obviate the need to refund the tariffs already collected,” because “if you seized money without constitutional authority, finding other revenue sources going forward doesn’t make the original seizure legal.”

David Frum, staff writer at The Atlantic, predicted that the coming lawsuits aimed at getting refunds for the illegal tariffs would be a massive mess. “The post-tariff litigation is going to be nightmarish,” he wrote on social media. “Wrongfully taxed plaintiffs will now sue for return of their illegally taken money. Can their customers then sue for a portion of the higher prices caused by the wrongful taxes? More Trump chaos.”

However, US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent downplayed the possibility of American businesses and consumers getting refunded for the tariffs. While speaking at the Economic Club of Dallas on Friday, Bessent was asked if he expected a “food fight” for the $175 billion in tariff revenues that government has illegally collected since April. “I’ve got a feeling the American people won’t see it,” Bessent said of the tariff money.

However, some Democrats indicated that they were not simply going to let the administration getting away with money they unlawfully confiscated from US businesses and consumers. “Donald Trump illegally stole your money,” wrote Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.). “He should give it back to you. Instead Trump is scheming up new ways to force Americans to pay even more.”

Democrats on the US House Ways and Means Committee wrote that “Trump does not want to refund the money he illegally stole from you,” vowing the party “won’t stop fighting to get your money back.”

Democratic Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker wrote Trump a letter after the Supreme Court ruling demanding that the president provide every family in his state a $1,700 refund for the tariffs, which he said “wreaked havoc on farmers, enraged our allies, and sent grocery prices through the roof.”

-Brad Reed, Common Dreams