{"id":303980,"date":"2026-02-22T06:12:12","date_gmt":"2026-02-22T06:12:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/303980\/"},"modified":"2026-02-22T06:12:12","modified_gmt":"2026-02-22T06:12:12","slug":"supreme-court-gives-trump-and-the-rest-of-the-gop-a-political-gift","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/303980\/","title":{"rendered":"Supreme Court gives Trump and the rest of the GOP a political gift"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n The Supreme Court on Friday dealt President Donald Trump perhaps the most significant rebuke of his second term. The justices, including two of the president\u2019s appointees, struck down Trump\u2019s signature economic policy: his global tariffs<\/a>.\n <\/p>\n

\n In the long run, the court might have saved him from himself \u2014 at least politically.\n <\/p>\n

\n Some Republicans are outright praising the decision, and you can bet more are happy behind the scenes.\n <\/p>\n

\n That\u2019s because, while the decision is clearly a major setback for Trump\u2019s agenda, it also strips him of tools that seemed to cause short-term economic damage to the country, and that were clearly doing short-term political damage to Trump\u2019s party.\n <\/p>\n

\n This is not the end of the tariffs story. Trump quickly signaled he\u2019d launch 10% global tariffs under a different authority (which he said Saturday he was upping to 15%<\/a>). He even claimed on Friday that the Supreme Court\u2019s decision had actually made his ability to levy trade penalties \u201cstronger,\u201d somehow.\n <\/p>\n

\n But that\u2019s not actually true<\/a>. Trump\u2019s tariff powers have been significantly curtailed. And while Republicans have been happy to let him try to do things on his own, even when those things were powers delegated to Congress by the Constitution, this setback could also lead to some soul-searching in the GOP about whether to continue entertaining Trump\u2019s trade gambits.\n <\/p>\n

\n Whether any of them seize on this apparent opportunity to deescalate is the big question.\n <\/p>\n

\n It was fortuitous that the Supreme Court\u2019s decision came Friday. Just 90 minutes before it landed, the Bureau of Economic Analysis announced the gross domestic product had grown at just a 1.4% annualized rate in the fourth quarter. That made 2025 the second-worst year for GDP growth since 2016.\n <\/p>\n

\n Last year was also one of the weakest jobs years<\/a> in decades. And there is, of course, the inflation that finally dropped a bit in January but remains stubborn<\/a>.\n <\/p>\n

\n In other words, the stock market aside, the economy isn\u2019t doing great.\n <\/p>\n

\n It\u2019s not clear how much the stagnancy is due to tariffs, specifically. But the uncertainty surrounding them and the extra costs they\u2019ve created have clearly put a damper on an economic picture that wasn\u2019t great to begin with.\n <\/p>\n

\n At the very least, they gave Americans a reason to blame Trump for economic hardships. Trump voluntarily took ownership of a struggling economy, using a method that economists widely predicted would cause more problems, at least in the near term.\n <\/p>\n

\n It\u2019s not difficult to see why that cost Trump and the GOP. And cost them it did.\n <\/p>\n

\"Shipping<\/p>\n

\n Since Trump announced the global tariffs back on April 2, his net economic approval rating in Nate Silver\u2019s averages has gone from plus-6 to minus-12<\/a>.\n <\/p>\n

\n And a CNN poll last month showed Americans disapproved of Trump on tariffs, 62%-37%<\/a>. Even 25% of Republican-leaning voters disapproved.\n <\/p>\n

\n In an often-confusing press conference Friday afternoon, Trump pointed to how Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh\u2019s dissent suggested Trump could simply move on to different tariff authorities.\n <\/p>\n

\n And there are some available<\/a>. Trump quickly seized on one of them, announcing the 10% global tariffs under Section 122 of the Trade Act of 1974.\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cNow I\u2019ll go the way I could have gone originally, which is even stronger than our original choice,\u201d Trump claimed.\n <\/p>\n

\n But that\u2019s not true.\n <\/p>\n

\n While there are multiple options available, there\u2019s a reason Trump chose the initial path he did. If the court permitted him to wield tariffs under emergency authority, it would have given him much greater flexibility to quickly implement huge tariffs and make changes \u2014 often to punish or cajole other countries.\n <\/p>\n

\n About the only limit was that Congress could vote to invalidate the emergencies. But vocal opposition to the tariffs didn\u2019t come close to hitting a veto-proof majority.\n <\/p>\n

\n By contrast, Section 122 limits tariffs to 15% and to a period of 150 days \u2014 after which Congress needs to extend them. Given majorities of both chambers have voted against Trump\u2019s tariffs recently, that seems unlikely.\n <\/p>\n

\n And it\u2019s not even clear Trump can use this section, given it requires some kind of international payments problem<\/a>.\n <\/p>\n

\n Other tariff authorities require more of a process before the tariffs can be implemented.\n <\/p>\n

\n Indeed, Chief Justice John Roberts in a footnote directly took issue with Kavanaugh\u2019s claim.\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cThe cited statutes contain various combinations of procedural prerequisites, required agency determinations, and limits on the duration, amount, and scope of the tariffs they authorize,\u201d Roberts said.\n <\/p>\n

\"The<\/p>\n

\n Trump has pitched tariffs as revitalizing American manufacturing and giving him great leverage to craft trade deals with other countries. But the shorter shelf life and lower ceiling under Section 122 and more extensive processes involved in the alternatives means he has to confront limitations he wouldn\u2019t have otherwise. And other countries will know he faces those restrictions, lessening his leverage.\n <\/p>\n

\n It\u2019ll be interesting to see if Trump decides it\u2019s even worth it to try to truly go big on tariffs again, given those constraints.\n <\/p>\n

\n It will also be interesting to see if this might embolden the many tariff-skeptical but quiet congressional Republicans who want to turn the page on this chapter.\n <\/p>\n

\n Many Republicans have spent the last year holding their noses (and tongues) as Trump imposed tariffs. Those tariffs, after all, ran afoul of the GOP\u2019s longstanding attempts to brand itself as the party of free markets and free trade.\n <\/p>\n

\n But the ruling is a major setback for Trump\u2019s go-it-alone approach that could imperil his other efforts. In his concurrence, Justice Neil Gorsuch seemed to plead with Congress to start handling these matters with legislation.\n <\/p>\n

\n And we\u2019re now in a midterm election year, when the potential cost of these tariffs looms large. Even before the Supreme Court\u2019s decision to strike down the first round of tariffs, we started to see some signs of waning patience<\/a> with this portion of Trump\u2019s agenda. Some of these Republicans might reason they gave Trump a chance to make it work, and now it\u2019s time to move on.\n <\/p>\n

\n Indeed, on Friday we saw relatively few Republicans criticize the court like Trump did.\n <\/p>\n

\n That doesn\u2019t mean they\u2019re going to suddenly break with Trump en masse on this subject. And Trump is a proud man who surely doesn\u2019t want to be seen as capitulating to the Supreme Court or pressure from his party.\n <\/p>\n

\n But if he does keep trying to go big on tariffs, he could be looking a (political) gift horse in the mouth.\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Supreme Court on Friday dealt President Donald Trump perhaps the most significant rebuke of his second term.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":303981,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[114,184,85,46],"class_list":["post-303980","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-economy","tag-business","tag-economy","tag-il","tag-israel"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/303980","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=303980"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/303980\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/303981"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=303980"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=303980"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=303980"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}