The tariff IED was finally detonated by the Supreme Court

Trump's reaction is to tax the American people even more because the court delivered an emphatic NO to his inflated ego.

Let’s begin with my daily reminder, which I hope you don’t mind me leading with, because it’s important:

Americans CAN stop this anytime without being arrested or punished in any way for their actions. STOP SPENDING on all but essential items and shift as much of that essential spending to local businesses. No need to stop eating out, just eat in locally run family eateries (NOT corporate chains). It’s about strategic spending decisions. It’s all about common sense, but if you need more detail, click here for my broader thinking. Given the SCOTUS ruling on tariffs, you now have even more power

There is no case to be made for saying ‘there’s nothing we can do’ It really is very simple, and I would urge you to encourage everyone you know to become part of a sustained act of strategic economic disengagement, because I guarantee just by this most simple of actions, you can unlock the gate on the road back to real American values. A sustained 3-4% drop in consumer spending will occur if Americans have the collective and sustained patriotic determination to say ‘enough is enough’.

I said at the time of oral arguments that Trump’s authority to enact tariffs as an economic leverage strategy had no legal precedent and was merely another stress-testing exercise. It was designed to test the judicial branch’s willingness to challenge what he sees as plenary authority to do what he likes when he likes, with impunity. I believe that for the court to retain even a shred of credibility, it had to rule against him. It was clear from the arguments that the Justices who had previously granted him total immunity for actions taken in discharging his ‘duties’ as president, were not prepared to follow suit on tariffs. The question is, why did it take so long?

For those interested in a breakdown of the ruling, I highly recommend reading Adam Feldman's piece on The SCOTUSblog. Adam does some excellent work providing insights into rulings and helping those less legally savvy to read between the lines. He highlighted something that also had stood out for me, which was the first sentence of Roberts’ opinion:

“We decide whether the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) authorises the President to impose tariffs.”

He was planting a flag to assert the court's authority. To summarise the opinion of Chief Justice John Roberts:

The President asserts the extraordinary power to unilaterally impose tariffs of unlimited amount, duration, and scope. In light of the breadth, history, and constitutional context of that asserted authority, he must identify clear congressional authorisation to exercise it. IEEPA’s grant of authority to “regulate . . . importation” falls short. IEEPA contains no reference to tariffs or duties. The Government points to no statute in which Congress used the word “regulate” to authorise taxation. And until now, no President has read IEEPA to confer such power. We claim no special competence in matters of economics or foreign affairs. We claim only, as we must, the limited role assigned to us by Article III of the Constitution. Fulfilling that role, we hold that IEEPA does not authorise the President to impose tariffs.

This 6-3 decision was not a close vote by the Republican-majority court. It represents a rebuke to Trump's assertion that, as president, he can do what he likes when he likes. There will be much discussion about why the court decided this was the moment to stand up to Trump, but I would argue it’s been coming for some time. Justice Roberts fears for his legacy, despite already being seen as on the wrong side of history.

With the decision handed down, we now need to address the fallout. Before we discuss Trump’s predictable infantile response, I think we should take a look at the economic numbers that were released just before the ruling. Trump had predicted a large GDP bump of more than 5%, even if the government shutdown was factored in. The reality, however, was that growth dropped well below expectations to just 1.4% annually in the fourth quarter of 2025. This was down from 4.4% in the third quarter and 3.8% from the second quarter. At the same time, inflation rose to 2.9% in December, up from 2.8% in November. This represented the largest yearly increase since March 2024. In addition, Core prices jumped 3% in December from a year ago, faster than the 2.8% increase in November.

I’m sorry for bombarding you with numbers, but they are important. They speak to the ongoing economic fairytale narrative of a regime that is desperately trying to hide the truth from the American people.

Diane Swonk, chief economist at KPMG, made a point that is very apt in this moment when she said:

“The economy looks golden on paper, but beneath the surface is lead.”

In a recent report, she reflected on what she saw as a:

“one-legged” economy boosted mostly by artificial intelligence, which is fueling business spending and has also lifted wealth for those households that own stocks and have benefited from rising share prices.

The job market is, frankly, a conundrum: the economy appears to be growing steadily, while adding no new jobs. Sadly, we have now reached a point where it’s very difficult to trust official government figures, but what we do know is that in 2025, just 200,000 jobs were created, the lowest number since the pandemic choked the economy in 2020.

Trump’s stated aim was to crush the Chinese economy, and yet he’s done the opposite; the Chinese are now running a $1.1 trillion trade surplus. Tariffs were meant to eradicate the US trade deficit. However, the numbers are in, and guess what? It was just another Trump fantasy. Despite claiming that the US trade deficit, which had run consistently since 1975, was a ‘national emergency”, he achieved nothing. As noted in reporting by David J. Lynch and Rachel Siegel from the Washington Post on February 19th, 2026:

The U.S. merchandise trade deficit hit a record $1.2 trillion last year, despite President Donald Trump’s promise to eliminate it by imposing the highest tariffs in eight decades on foreign-made products.

Yet more proof that tariffs don’t work except in the imbecilic mind of a serial tax evader convicted on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records in the first degree. A man running a transnational extortion gang from the Oval Office. A report from the Commerce Department notes:

The 2025 decrease in the goods and services deficit reflected an increase in the goods deficit of $25.5 billion, or 2.1%, to $1,240.9 billion and an increase in the services surplus of $27.6 billion, or 8.9%, to $339.5 billion.

It underscores the reality that the US has long since evolved into a service economy. It is not, and has no prospect of being, a manufacturing economy. The central goal of reducing the US trade deficit by increasing taxes on Americans through tariffs has failed miserably by any measure. In this process of achieving an absolute nothing burger, Trump has increased inflation, destroyed job growth and made the bottom 90% poorer. He has done NOTHING to address the affordability crisis, instead filling his pockets with billions of stolen taxpayer dollars.

This is not liberal hyperbole; it’s a simple statement of fact. The real truth is, America is not ‘hot’ as Trump claims over and over; it is a country where the heat is coming from embers kindled by his economic incompetence. The same incompetence that resulted in his businesses filing for bankruptcy SIX TIMES between 1991 and 2009. This is a man who could not pass vetting for a job at Footlocker, yet millions of Americans voted for him to empty billions of taxpayer dollars into his pockets. Make it make sense, because it defies logic in my mind.

The Supreme Court's ruling actually provided him with an off-ramp from his failed tariff policy. He could have walked away from a policy strategy that has hurt American families and businesses. A policy that has destroyed the US's reputation on the world stage and disrupted trade partnerships worldwide. Instead, as sure as night follows day, he has gone on the attack. People need to lift their heads out of the Epstein files for a moment to understand why there will now follow a further period of more economic pain for American families.

It goes much deeper than that, though, as credible claims suggest this whole tariff debacle has long been a vehicle for market manipulation. Time and time again, we saw what appeared to be market moves by those within the administration as Trump added and removed tariffs, sparking market volatility that presented clear opportunities for insider trading.

Following his appointment as Commerce Secretary, Howard Lutnick transferred ownership of his prominent global investment bank and financial services firm to his sons, Brandon and Kyle. It seems there is credible evidence suggesting they were allegedly providing financial products to clients, enabling them to bet on the reversal of the Trump administration's tariffs.

This was the subject of an investigation originally carried out by Wired Magazine, which reported on July 21st 2025 :

In a letter seen by WIRED, a representative from Cantor said the firm was willing to trade tariff refund rights for 20 to 30% of what companies have paid in duties. “So for a company that paid $10 million, they could expect to receive $2-$3 million in a trade,” the representative wrote. “We have the capacity to trade up to several hundred million of these presently and can likely upsize that in the future to meet potential demand.”

The report goes on to note:

Experts say the deals are a form of litigation finance, an increasingly popular category of investing in which financial firms seek to make money from potential legal settlements.

More recent reporting on February 20th by Mandy Taheri at Newsweek ran with the header:

Howard Lutnick’s Ex-Firm Rejects Claims It May Profit From Tariff Ruling

The reporting notes:

A firm spokesperson told Newsweek it has “never executed any transactions or taken risk on the legality of tariffs.” The spokesperson added, “Any report suggesting otherwise is completely false.”

The problem I have is that evidence has shown time and time again that the wealthy elite are blessed with little to no moral integrity, so you’ll excuse me if I don’t believe a word they say. The real challenge is to understand the scale of these litigation finance instruments offered by a number of firms that may have benefited from various episodes of market manipulation. It seems there may well be a cottage industry fed on insider information from within the administration.

On Tuesday, Trump will give his first State of the Union address of this second term. There’s little doubt in my mind, it will be a bedtime fairytale delivered by a convicted criminal who has presided over a war on women, the vulnerable and the ‘other’. A war that has seen communities terrorised by a state-sponsored militia, told they can act with impunity. ICE has become an unaccountable state police force that, compared with armies around the world, would rank as the tenth best-funded military on earth.

Trump will tell stories of imaginary wars he’s ended as hundreds continue to die in the same conflicts he claims to have brought an end to. He will falsely claim that jobs are up and unemployment is falling, even though it’s higher than before he took office. He will claim the affordability crisis is a hoax despite more and more Americans being forced to turn to ‘buy now, pay later’ for the basics in life. The tall tales will go on, and on, as beneath his lies, the embers of economic distress begin to set fire to the US economy.

What I would say is this: his incoherent, imbecilic rant, like that of a petulant child, was very telling. These words stood out to me:

I can destroy the trade. I can destroy the country. I'm even allowed to impose a foreign country-destroying embargo. I can embargo. I can do anything I want, but I can't charge $1 because that's not what it says, and that's not the way it even reads. I can do anything I want to do to them, but’t charge them any money.

This is a man intoxicated by the power he is convinced he holds. His response to being admonished by the highest court in the land is to personally attack justices he himself appointed, suggesting, and I quote:

“… they're very unpatriotic and disloyal to our Constitution. It's my opinion that the court has been swayed by foreign interests”, claiming they are a “disgrace to our nation”

As a result of being told no, he has made the unilateral decision to tax Americans even more because he wants to prove that he can. The one thing I can assure you is that none of the extra money the average American has had to pay due to the tariffs will be returned to them. All that will happen is that big importers will and are already suing the government for the return of illegally levied tariffs. Trump will do his usual and only return the money to those who can afford to litigate. The regime will simply introduce a ‘slow walk’ strategy to keep the money for as long as possible.

The only real positive to come from this is that he will be forced to seek Congressional approval beyond 150 days, and the whole reason he used the IEPA was to avoid defeat in Congress on his tariffs in the first place. The biggest problem he faces now is voter sentiment, and that’s why he will deploy every possible measure to select those who can vote in the midterms. That campaign is already underway. There is little doubt that the Supreme Court ruling will make it more difficult to use tariffs as foreign policy leverage, but this is by no means a fatal blow. Once again, I would point you to the opening two paragraphs of this piece on what you can do to stop this.

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