Belated Thoughts About Trump and Tariffs

Schadenfreude? Maybe just a little bit!

Photo by Igor Omilaev on Unsplash

The hard-working staff here at Drezner’s World has been a bit busy over the past 72 hours. There were some meetings to take, some memos to draft, some emails to send, some messages to read, some dinners to attend, some parents to visit, and some brunches to consume.

All of this is to say that it was not until Sunday that I could truly absorb the landmark 6-3 Supreme Court ruling in earning Resources Inc. v. Trump and V.O.S. Selections v. United States that Trump exceeded his authority in using the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) to raise tariffs against a welter of countries.¹

The handwriting had been on the wall ever since oral arguments that the Trump administration would likely lose this case, so the administration was almost close to prepared in response. After a vitriolic press conference, Trump invoked Section 122 of the 1974 Trade Act to implement a 10% across-the-board tariff, which he then immediately increased to the maximum of 15%. His trade representative Jameson Greer also promised Section 301 investigations of major U.S. trading partners on an “accelerated timeframe.”

A cynic might think that Trump’s actions negate the effect of the Supreme Court ruling. But that would be a legal and political misread of the situation. For example, Trump can only keep the Section 122 tariffs in place for 150 days unless Congress approves of them. And his ability to use other authorities to impose tariffs is constrained by process and procedure. As Paul Krugman explained, “alternatives to IEEPA don’t give him that much arbitrary power.”

The bigger headache for Trump is that politically, the tariffs are a dead-bang political loser of a policy. YouGov’s polling is indicative of what other survey research has been finding:

Most Americans (60%) strongly or somewhat approve of the U.S. Supreme Court striking down many tariffs imposed by President Donald Trump, a new YouGov poll conducted hours after the decision finds.

Only 23% of Americans disapprove of the Supreme Court’s decision. Almost all Democrats approve of it (88%), as do 63% of Independents. Republicans are more likely to disapprove than approve of the ruling, but a large minority (30%) of Republicans approve, compared to 47% of Republicans who disapprove.

Most Americans say Trump's tariffs have increased the prices they've personally paid, either by a lot (41%) or slightly (25%). Only 5% of Americans say prices have gone down. 16% say the tariffs have had no effect on prices they've paid.

Those are awful numbers — especially on a bread-and-butter pocketbook issue. Requiring a congressional vote on this in July will not help GOP chances. As Politico reported, “in battleground races where tariffs pinched the most, the recent memory of trade adventurism and the ongoing dissatisfaction with the current state of the economy could prove fatal for Republicans.”

A separate Politico story shows how bad an issue this is for Republicans: Democrats actually want to run on it:

Democrats are frothing at the mouth to center President Donald Trump’s tariff chaos in their affordability messaging as they charge into the midterms….

That messaging — branding the tariffs as illegal taxes that Trump must repatriate to voters (which, he said Friday, he did not intend to do) — is expected to become a core component of Democrats’ strategy as they fight to retake majorities in Congress.

“I wouldn’t be surprised if tariffs made it in 50 percent of our paid advertising,” said one Democratic strategist working on House campaigns. Another who works on Senate campaigns said they’re preparing to rev up their ads on affordability as well.

“We have a very clear line that we can draw from [voters] struggling to make ends meet, and things that Trump is doing intentionally,” said Matt Bennett, an executive with Third Way, a center-left think tank. “It is a uniquely easy story for Democrats to tell.”

It’s also not lost on the party that the states whose economies have been hit hardest by the tariffs are home to some of the most contentious Senate races that could make or break the GOP’s majority. “We’ve not only lost our markets and gotten lower prices selling corn and soybeans, particularly soybeans, but we have also, at the same time right now, we have the misfortune of having very high inputs, a lot of uncertainty,” Iowa Democratic Party Chair Rita Hart told POLITICO. “We’re talking about real hardship where people are going to be really negatively affected financially.”

Trump, of course, is not on the ballot in November, but multiple Democratic operatives told POLITICO they’re planning to skewer any Republican who has defended his tariffs. “It’s this very, very easy to understand action that the president took, and that congressional Republicans backed,” the Democratic strategist working on Senate races said. So the line for Dem candidates will be cut and dried: “This is where my opponent is not fighting for you,” they said.

It is going to be extremely enjoyable to watch Democrats make Republicans squirm on this issue. This is particularly true given that — and I cannot stress this enough — Trump’s tariffs have been a miserable policy failure.

The Supreme Court ruling was actually the second blow that Trump’s tariff policy received this month. Earlier in February a New York Fed study on the tariffs revealed that, “94 percent of the tariff incidence was borne by the U.S. in the first eight months of 2025.” Beyond the specific percentage, this finding is notable for two reasons and two reasons only. First, it caused Trump lackey Kevin Hassett to lose his damn mind. Second, it was otherwise consistent with every single other study conducted in the past year in concluding that Americans are primarily paying for the tariffs.

It’s not just that Americans are paying for the tariffs — it’s that the tariffs are failing at their intended goals of reducing the U.S. trade deficit and expanding manufacturing jobs at home. The U.S. manufacturing sector is not doing great and the tariffs sure aren’t helping. As for the trade deficit, it did look like it was narrowing a few months ago, but even then it seemed like a temporary statistical artifact. And sure enough, the New York Times’ Ana Swanson has the falsification receipts for this week:

In November and December, U.S. imports and the trade deficit rebounded significantly. The increase was driven in part by imports of expensive semiconductors, used by data centers to produce artificial intelligence, which the president has exempted from tariffs. With A.I. powering U.S. economic growth and the stock market, the president has been hesitant to clamp down on imports of these chips….

Despite all the uncertainty, one thing is clear: Mr. Trump’s tariffs have so far not done much to solve the emergency he said they were directed at in the first place.

“The tariffs did not succeed in revitalizing U.S. manufacturing,” [Brad] Setser said. “And the tariffs did not succeed in meaningfully changing the overall trade deficit.”

Have the tariffs raised revenue for the federal government? Yes, but the cost has been high:

In conclusion: Trump abused his favorite coercive foreign economic policy tool and therefore lost his ability to use it the way he wants. In his effort to resurrect it, Trump is going to keep in the news an unpopular pocketbook issue that has failed to accomplish any of its stated policy goals.

This is gonna be fun to watch.

1. Describing the vote as 6-3 is technically accurate but conceals all sorts of constitutional squabbles among the nine different justices. See Jack Goldmith’s assessment for more on the ruling itself.