The Corrupt & Craven Supreme Court Has a Tariff Opinion This AM!
Emergency power, Republican president: Learning Resources v. Trump as a year of lawless tariffs, then a 6-3 clawback—that record does not diminish but underlines the corruption problem of the Roberts right-wing majority on today’s Supreme Court…
The most important things to hold on to, as this opinion for Learning Resources vs. Trump <https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/25pdf/24-1287_4gcj.pdf> floats into the discourse.
People are wasting their time on the dissents—Kavanaugh, Alito, Thomas.
There is only one legal doctrine in the dissents. That doctrine is this: The dissents say: “It’s OK if you are a Republican president”, and only that. There are only three mental commitments in their dissents: to (a) fascism, (b), partisan Republicanism, and (c) resentment, that their faction does not have untrammeled charge of everything. Does anyone doubt that all three of these “judges” would have smacked down a Democratic president who attempted a similar magnitude power grab by the first weekend? Nobody does. Time spent analyzing the dissents is time wasted once you have noted them as enunciations of ““it’s OK if you are a Republican president” driven by commitments to fascism, partisanship, and resentment.
The corrupt and craven middle of the Supreme Court was too corrupt and craven to do the right thing a year ago—that’s the big bottom line with respect to Roberts, Barrett, and Gorsuch—. Back then they could see that justice and equity would lead to this day, for both meant that a pro-Trump opinion simply would not write, save as a naked denial that there is such a thing as the rule-of-law. Perhaps they think now is the opportunity to strike a blow for the principle of rule-of-law that their previous actions have placed on life support. Perhaps they are, well, craven—scared in a way that they have not been in the past, and that the majorities in Bush v. Gore and in NFIB v. Sibelius were not. I cannot tell
But it is a secondary issue whether they were more craven then or are more craven now.
The corrupt and craven middle of the court gave Trump a full year to create facts on the ground. That is the primary thing to note about Roberts, Barrett, and Gorsuch. They gave Trump a full year for cementing this principle: any productive business value chain or other societal actor that incurs the wrath of a Republican American president for any reason, does so at the grave risk of its immediate destruction as a surplus-generating, and perhaps as a sustainable organization.
Tim Cook of Apple does not bend the knee to Trump at very opportunity for no reason, after all.
Roberts, Barrett, and Gorsuch—along with Kavanaugh, Alito, and Thomas—have given the plainest possible demonstration that nobody’s property rights have force in the face of any fake declaration of “emergency” by any Republican American president. Not in any time frame of less than a year. It is Cook’s knowledge that that holds for the shareholders for whom he is a fiduciary that drives his actions.
The corrupt and craven court majority’s actions have consequences: their destructive demonstration will ramify for decades, if not centuries.
Actual effects of decision? Yale Budget Lab: effective tariff rate is still ~9% pre‑substitution (highest since the 1940s), and long‑run GDP is ~0.1% smaller, versus ~0.3% hit had IEEPA been upheld. <http://budgetlab.yale.edu>.
Emergency statutes demystified: “emergency” + “unreviewable” + “tariff” is branded structurally dangerous: Roberts’s description of a President who can declare an emergency, claim courts can’t second‑guess it, and then rewrite the tariff code indefinitely is deliberately designed to sound like the usurpation it is—and that Roberts knew it was a year ago, but, as I said, he is corrupt and craven.
A possible straw in the wind: Gorsuch’s cutting back the Major Questions Doctrine as just the old clear‑statement rule rebadged—that the fake claim it was more was just a one-off to eliminate Chevron Deference, which fake claim will now be dropped. : His concurrence is a historical essay: he argues there has always been a rule that extraordinary delegated powers require clear statements, and MQD is just that tradition applied to Congress–Executive delegations.
A possible straw in the wind: Thomas’s privilege vs right move: Thomas contends that trading with foreigners is a privilege, something granted to us by our autocratic lord and master in the White House, not any sort of vested property right; conditioning that privilege on duties doesn’t trigger due‑process/legality concerns in the way domestic criminal or tax law does.