The new narrative by Democrats is that Donald Trump owes the American people money for the tariffs that were paid on goods.
This is all because the Supreme Court has ruled that Trump overstepped his authority when he started dropping massive tariffs on countries as leverage in trade deals.
Trump has now officially stopped collecting all tariffs the Supreme Court ruled were illegal, but he has also levied new tariffs in the process.
The ruling by the court was a crushing blow to Trump’s economic agenda, but the damage from the ruling is not over quite yet.
This could turn into a complete and utter disaster for Trump, as the administration will surely see lawsuits to have the tariffs refunded since the court ruled the tariffs were illegal from the start.
Justice Kavanaugh noted this problem in his dissent, stating the government “may be required to refund billions of dollars to importers who paid the IEEPA tariffs, even though some importers may have already passed on costs to consumers or others.”
He also noted the problems regarding trade deals this could create for Trump, adding, “Because IEEPA tariffs have helped facilitate trade deals worth trillions of dollars—including with foreign nations from China to the United Kingdom to Japan, the Court’s decision could generate uncertainty regarding various trade agreements. That process, too, could be difficult.”
When the ruling was issued, Trump spewed the expected venom at the court, as well as complaining that this only happens to him.
He stated, “What happened today, never seems to happen with Democrats. They vote against the Republicans, and never against themselves, almost every single time, no matter how good a case we have.”
Trump then defiantly issued new global tariffs to be put in place, starting at 10%, then he quickly announced the tariffs would be raised to 15%.
The chair of the European Parliament’s Committee on International Trade, Bernd Lange, responded, “No one can make sense of it anymore — only open questions and growing uncertainty for the EU and other U.S. trading partners.”
There were questions of whether Trump would respect the court’s ruling, but the administration has announced that it will halt the collection of the previous tariffs that were put in place.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent was then asked if the $134 billion (roughly) that was taken in by tariffs would be refunded, and he responded, “Well, Dana, that’s not the big question. Let’s just level set here, what the Supreme Court did was a very narrow reading of the president’s authority under the IEEPA tariffs.”
He continued, “We have other tariff authorities which have been functioning, Section 232 tariffs, Section 301 tariffs.”
Trump is going to have to be careful how he digs himself out of this mess because Democrats are circling overhead to try to pick the carcass clean. He simply cannot afford to make this any worse than it already is.
