We now know the Trump tariff proposals and the President’s comments in the Rose Garden revealed his intentions. The tariffs have very little to do with actual trade and are primarily structured to change tax policy. The most revealing comment in the presentation was as follows:
“Then in 1913, for reasons unknown to mankind, they established the income tax so that citizens, rather than foreign countries, would start paying the money necessary to run our government. Then in 1929, it all came to a very abrupt end with the Great Depression, and it would have never happened if they had stayed with the tariff policy, it would have been a much different story.”
The quote reveals astonishing ignorance but it also highlights Trump’s aversion to the personal income tax. “(f)or reasons unknown to mankind” is ridiculous: the income tax was initiated precisely because the US reliance on tariffs was extraordinarily regressive since the poor paid most of the tariffs. When the personal income tax was introduced it exempted those who made less than $3000 a year for an individual or $4000 for a family. In 1913, that exempted 60% of the population. The income tax was designed specifically to gain revenue from the “rich”. And those exemptions are roughly comparable to those allowed today. The only real change is that the rich now have options to disguise their income (such as offshore accounts or shell companies) that were not available in 1913 so that many rich avoid paying any taxes. According to ProPublica:
“To capture the financial reality of the richest Americans, ProPublica undertook an analysis that has never been done before. We compared how much in taxes the 25 richest Americans paid each year to how much Forbes estimated their wealth grew in that same time period….
The results are stark. According to Forbes, those 25 people saw their worth rise a collective $401 billion from 2014 to 2018. They paid a total of $13.6 billion in federal income taxes in those five years, the IRS data shows. That’s a staggering sum, but it amounts to a true tax rate of only 3.4%.
“It’s a completely different picture for middle-class Americans, for example, wage earners in their early 40s who have amassed a typical amount of wealth for people their age. From 2014 to 2018, such households saw their net worth expand by about $65,000 after taxes on average, mostly due to the rise in value of their homes. But because the vast bulk of their earnings were salaries, their tax bills were almost as much, nearly $62,000, over that five-year period.”
The US now has tariff levels that are greater than the Smoot-Hawley tariffs that aggravated the Great Depression. There are two types of tariffs imposed by Trump. The first are reciprocal tariffs, which are presumably designed to compensate for non-tariff barriers such as health and safety regulations which impede the free flow of goods and services. Those tariffs are those on the poster that Trump held up at the Rose Garden ceremony. The list was remarkable in many respects (including the uninhabited Heard and and McDonald Islands, Svalbard, and Jan Mayen Islands which had no trade with the US, as well as leaving off Russia and North Korea from the list) but its most outstanding feature was the incredible assumption that such non-tariff barriers could be quantified. The Office of the US Trade Representative posted information about how these figures were derived and I challenge anyone to figure out what the process was. One can try to read the defense, but it is based on some fanciful assumptions that are quite literally picked out of the air.
But the second type of tariff, the flat 10% tariff on every imported item, is clearly designed to produce revenue. The World Bank asserts that the US imported $3.5 trillion of goods and services in 2024. That works out to a revenue flow of $350 billion, a substantial amount of money which will be amplified when the reciprocal tariffs are factored in (I lack the ability to figure out that amount given the opaque nature of its calculation). I suspect that when the Federal budget is finally passed by Congress (which may be delayed until September of this year), President Trump will use these tariff amounts to justify the inclusion of permanent tax cuts for the rich. The question is whether the American people will consider these tariffs as what they really are: a profoundly regressive tax falling hardest on the poor.
There are two additional points which should be made about these tariffs. First, the legal authority for Trump to raise these tariffs is included in the following legislation:
Section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act of 1962: This allows the president to impose tariffs if imports are deemed a threat to national security.
Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974: This enables the president to take action against unfair trade practices by other countries.
International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA): This grants the president broad authority to regulate economic transactions during a national emergency.
Note that these are emergency powers which Trump has unilaterally declared. There is no trade emergency of which I am aware–the trade patterns have been consistent over time. Nor is the US at war or facing some sort of contagious disease that requires bottlenecks at trading ports. The only national emergency of which I am aware is the singular ignorance and incompetence of the Trump Administration. The Congress should declare that the US is not in an emergency. Trump would undoubtedly veto such legislation, but it is nonetheless important for the question to be raised. It is important for the Congress to reassert its authority over tariffs and trade: Article I, Section 8 of the U.S. Constitution vests the power to lay and collect tariffs with Congress. Trump’s abuse of emergency authority makes this action imperative.
Second, the world will soon confront Trump’s deal-making. The tariffs give him incredible power when negotiating with other states and with corporations. Pema Levy outlines how tariffs are particularly prone to corruption:
With tariffs, Trump is poised to trade a strong economy for one run on loyalty and retribution. Trump, a president who rules like a mob boss while claimingvastnewpowers, is transforming the government into a tool of reward and punishment. Already, prosecutions against Trump’s friends are being dropped, while those who have crossed him find themselves the target of vindictive executive orders. Media critical of Trump are underinvestigation by a weaponized Federal Communications Commission, while universities are being bullied into shutting down free speech. Tariffs will scale this weaponization across the entire economy. Viewed in this light, Trump’s willingness to sacrifice the economy in exchange for control over it makes perfect sense.
Even those close to Trump see this trade for what it is. ‘Tariffs are a tool the president enjoys because it’s personal power,’ Rep. Ryan Zinke (R-Mont.), who served in Trump’s first-term cabinet, toldHuffPost Tuesday. ‘It’s personal―he doesn’t have to go through Congress. He can exercise personal power.’”
We will see how many exceptions Trump grants to people and corporations. Undoubtedly, he will use this power to enrich himself immensely despite the havoc and misery his polices will engender. The Economist summarizes Trump’s policies with precision and force:
“Almost everything Mr Trump said this week—on history, economics and the technicalities of trade—was utterly deluded. His reading of history is upside down. He has long glorified the high-tariff, low-income-tax era of the late-19th century. In fact, the best scholarship shows that tariffs impeded the economy back then. He has now added the bizarre claim that lifting tariffs caused the Depression of the 1930s and that the Smoot-Hawley tariffs were too late to rescue the situation. The reality is that tariffs made the Depression much worse, just as they will harm all economies today. It was the painstaking rounds of trade talks in the subsequent 80 years that lowered tariffs and helped increase prosperity.
“On economics Mr Trump’s assertions are flat-out nonsense. The president says tariffs are needed to close America’s trade deficit, which he sees as a transfer of wealth to foreigners. Yet as any of the president’s economists could have told him, this overall deficit arises because Americans choose to save less than their country invests—and, crucially, this long-running reality has not stopped its economy from outpacing the rest of the G7 for over three decades. There is no reason why his extra tariffs should eliminate the deficit. Insisting on balanced trade with every trading partner individually is bonkers—like suggesting that Texas would be richer if it insisted on balanced trade with each of the other 49 states, or asking a company to ensure that each of its suppliers is also a customer.
“And Mr Trump’s grasp of the technicalities was pathetic. He suggested that the new tariffs were based on an assessment of a country’s tariffs against America, plus currency manipulation and other supposed distortions, such as value-added tax. But it looks as if officials set the tariffs using a formula that takes America’s bilateral trade deficit as a share of goods imported from each country and halves it—which is almost as random as taxing you on the number of vowels in your name.
“This catalogue of foolishness will bring needless harm to America. Consumers will pay more and have less choice. Raising the price of parts for America’s manufacturers while relieving them of the discipline of foreign competition will make them flabby. As stockmarket futures tumbled, shares in Nike, which has factories in Vietnam (tariff: 46%) fell by 7%. Does Mr Trump really think Americans would be better off if only they sewed their own running shoes?”
President Trump has announced that tomorrow will be “Liberation Day” as he levies new tariffs on imports into the US. The road to this day has been littered with many inconsistencies and incoherent explanations, so tomorrow will afford an opportunity to assess his real intent. He claims that other countries have used tariffs to aid their own industries at the expense of US products. If these claims are valid, the US always has the option of bringing a case to the World Trade Organization to redress the wrong suffered. But Trump has studiously avoided any appeal to any international organization and instead relied upon unilateral US action.
Trump has also chosen the tactic of deliberate ambiguity in a pathetic attempt to gain an advantage against the countervailing tariffs that other states will impose on US products–an outcome that is all but inevitable. That outcome is the main reason most economists think that raising tariffs will reduce global economic growth as happened in the 1930s when the US imposed the infamous Hawley-Smoot tariffs. Alexi Guagas assesses the impact of those tariffs:
“The Hawley-Smoot Tariff Act raised tariffs on over 20,000 goods, intending to protect struggling sectors like farming and manufacturing. Instead, it sparked a global trade war, with countries around the world retaliating by imposing their own tariffs. By the mid-1930s, global trade had plummeted by more than 65%. Far from boosting the U.S. economy, the tariffs deepened the economic downturn, worsening the effects of the Great Depression. Hawley-Smoot remains a defining example of how protectionist policy, in a globally connected economy, can have far-reaching negative consequences.”
I am certain that Trump is aware of this negative outcome, so his persistent support for tariffs must have another motive. Tomorrow’s announcement will give us all an opportunity to discern Trump’s intent. Right now, there appears to be an emphasis on the revenues that tariffs will bring in, particularly if the tariffs imposed are universal: on all products from all countries. Peter Navarro has bandied about a figure of $6 trillion over ten years as a likely outcome (perhaps in a fevered dream as he languished in a prison cell for contempt of Congress). Moreover, Trump links the tariff plan to a rebirth of US manufacturing since he anticipates that companies will choose to build their factories in the US in order to avoid the tariffs. The Washington Post reports:
“One option would raise import duties on products from virtually every country, rejecting more targeted approaches that have been publicly outlined in recent days by some of Trump’s senior advisers. It cites as its legal justification the 1977 International Emergency Economic Powers Act, which grants the president broad powers to regulate international transactions, the people said.
“One person familiar with the administration’s thinking said the White House believes it would, combined with additional tariffs on sectors such as automobile and pharmaceutical imports, raise more than $6 trillion in new federal revenue and amount to the biggest tax hike in decades.”
If these possibilities are what is motivating Trump, then it is important to recognize that they have nothing to do with unfair trading practices. Rather, they reflect a desire to completely restructure the US economy and its taxation system. If the figure of $6 trillion over ten years is a prominent motive, then one has to consider that Trump is thinking about replacing the personal income tax with tariff revenues. $6 trillion over ten years would pay for Trump’s tax cut extensions that overwhelmingly favor the rich. It would fit nicely with Trump’s clear intent to eviscerate the Internal Revenue Service, a political move with tremendous power for his supporters. But just using tariff revenues would punish the poor and middle classes since it is essentially a sales tax on products.
A far more insidious motive would be to use tariffs to induce companies to build their factories in the US. That goal sounds laudable, but it is highly unlikely that tariffs alone would be a sufficient inducement to most companies. But the heavy use of tariffs would immiserate large numbers of workers, perhaps enough to compel them to accept lower wages or to end their support for unions. Significantly lower labor costs would be a powerful incentive for companies to bring their factories back to the US. That strategy would allow the rich to enjoy greater profits. The price, however, would be the impoverishment of millions of workers in the US and would likely drag down wages globally.
So, we should listen carefully to the rhetoric of “Liberation Day”. If it turns out that the tariffs are not focused on specific products or countries and are generally uniform across countries, then it is a safe bet that they have the purpose of a radical restructuring of the American economy. Making most people much poorer, and enriching the small number of people with capital enough to manage the turmoil of such a restructuring.
“I have instructed my Secretary of Commerce to add an ADDITIONAL 25% Tariff, to 50%, on all STEEL and ALUMINUM COMING INTO THE UNITED STATES FROM CANADA, ONE OF THE HIGHEST TARIFFING NATIONS ANYWHERE IN THE WORLD…The only thing that makes sense is for Canada to become our cherished Fifty First State…This would make all Tariffs, and everything else, totally disappear.”
These justifications are ridiculous. One needs to remember that it was Trump himself who negotiated the trade agreement between the US, Mexico, and Canada in July 2020, and at that time he posted this celebratory message: “BIGGEST TRADE DEAL EVER MADE, the USMCA, was signed yesterday and the Fake News Media barely mentioned it. They never thought it could be done. They have zero credibility!” Canada made no changes to its tariffs between 2020 and the recent struggle over tariffs rates. Moreover the flow of fentanyl over the US Canadian border is miniscule. According to Newsweek:
“According to U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) data, around 43 pounds of fentanyl were intercepted coming from Canada into the U.S. last year, whereas Canadian authorities intercepted about 11 pounds going the opposite way during the same period.
“The Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) reported six fentanyl seizures last month alone, all originating from the U.S. In one of the seizures, 56.1 grams of fentanyl were discovered by agents at the Windsor-Detroit Tunnel port of entry, including 20 fentanyl pills and 23 grams of a substance suspected to be fentanyl, all brought in by a pair U.S. citizens.
“Taken together, these seizures represent a tiny fraction compared to the more than 21,000 pounds seized at the U.S.-Mexico border over the course of 2024.”
All these justifications for the tariffs are spurious. But that begs the question. Trump has advisers that unquestionably have told him that American consumers will be paying higher prices for these products. Trump persists, however. Why?
Trump has announced the creation of something he calls the External Revenue Service to collect the tariff revenues. Such a new agency would require an act of Congress, so it is still a pipe dream. Right now, the tariff revenues are collected by the US Commerce Department and US Border and Customs Protection. Trump wants this revenue to offset the budget deficits that he will unquestionably aggravate with his proposed tax cuts for upper-income citizens.
The proposed tariffs will cost US families significantly more. Estimates range from $2,600 to $4000 increases per family. This is actually a tax increase on US families, and it is a tax increase not approved by Congress. Trump’s authority to raise tariffs comes from Congressional legislation that authorizes such power in case of an emergency. I actually see no emergency warranting these tariff increases–the closest “emergency” may be fentanyl, but the amounts from Canada do not warrant emergency status. So Trump has effectively managed a “stealth tax”, sidestepping the Constitutional power granted exclusively to Congress.
At some point in the future, Trump will announce the tariff revenues as part of his budget package. But he cannot admit that reality right now because it would expose his duplicity. But Congress should be aware of the extraordinary erosion of one of its central powers.
We are witnessing a very strange event in political history. Under the pretext of eliminating “waste, fraud, and abuse”, the Trump Administration is attempting to deconstruct most parts of the government, leaving the Executive Branch the sole repository of power in the US. The strategy is to completely erase any institutional support for the process of checks and balances that the Constitution requires to work properly.
The maneuver clearly intends to reduce the power of the Congress and the Courts. I suspect that the courts will try to preserve their power, but courts lack enforcement powers. Trump’s behavior in courts during 2020-24 suggests that he is more than willing to exploit that weakness through delay and manipulation of the legal process. If push comes to shove in the courts, it is only the Congress that can levy penalties to induce changed behavior.
Which raises an interesting question: why are Republican Congresspeople and Senators willing to give away their principal authority which is to allocate money to keep the government going? It is rare to witness the voluntary forfeiture of power. The immediate answer to this question is that these Republicans fear the power of Trump to oust them through primaries. But this begs the question. If the Federal government is eviscerated, then many of the constituents of these Congresspeople will suffer badly and are likely to take out their anger in an election. This outcome is highly probably if the cuts to the Federal government diminish the benefits of Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, and other social programs. Why is the fear of Trump greater than the fear of angry voters?
I will put my money on the people if the cuts happen quickly, before Trump can defang Federal enforcement of the Constitution. There is a reason Trump went after USAID first–most Americans have little idea of what USAID does. But going after USAID will not fund the tax cuts that the President wants–it is a small amount of money relative to the overall budget.. The budget deal being contemplated by the Republican caucus must go through a process called reconciliation which has strict rules permitting a budget to pass with only 51 votes and not the 60 votes in a Senate with a filibuster rule. Once the American people feel the pain of what it means to lose the Federal government, they may have second thoughts about supporting Trump and those in the Congress who support him.
We will have to see. The budget must be submitted by 14 March and there are still large divisions within the Republican Party about how the budget should be structured. The deficit hawks in the House of Representatives will demand spending cuts that would require cuts in the most important programs affecting the well-being of Americans, such as Social Security and Medicaid. A month is not enough time to work out these fundamental disagreements since the main members of the Freedom Caucus live in gerrymandered districts and have little to fear from Trump’s threats of being primaried. We will see how this works out.
It is important that we understand completely the abject failure of the Republican Party. The people who wrote the Constitution knew that a person like Trump was a real possibility–their experience with King George made them acutely aware of the danger of consolidating power in the hands of one person. To prevent this from happening they employed the idea of checks and balances to prevent such concentrations. Their logic was straightforward: since the lust for power could not be eliminated, they decided to distribute power in three branches of government and assumed that the lust for power in these three branches would be counterbalanced.
The system is not infallible, but it worked for most of the country’s history, the most recent example being the proceedings against President Nixon in 1973. Members of Congress protected the prerogatives of Congress and the Courts held that the President’s power was not unlimited. We are now witnessing the complete collapse of the willingness of the Congress to curtail Trump’s actions, such as the attacks against USAID which is an office created through Congressional action. Rather than telling Trump that he should seeks a law to reorganize USAID, the Republicans in Congress are simply abdicating their sworn duty. The sad fact is that the Republican Party now loves power more than it loves the Constitution or the Republic.
This reality is profoundly unsettling and augurs ill for the future of the country. I am convinced that there will be a backlash against Trump’s actions eventually, but much damage has already been done to our faith in the integrity of our political institutions. The decline in respect for the Supreme Court is just one example of something that will be difficult to restore.
Moreover, the previous Congress, the 118th, was the least productive in recent history: “The 118th Congress is on track to being one of the least functional sessions ever, with only 34 bills passed since January of last year, the lowest number of bills passed in the first year of a congressional session since the Great Depression, according to congressional records.” In place of legislation, the Republicans in Congress are content with a flurry of Executive Orders that clearly infringe upon the duties of Congress.
The Republican Party should be well advised to pay attention to a revised aphorism: Hell hath no fury greater than a people betrayed by their Savior.
President-Elect Trump’s press conference yesterday was an excursion into the mind of a seriously deranged individual. National Public Radio reports in an interview with Laura Barron-Lopez of NPR:
“And in it, the president-elect talked about using force to gain control over countries and territories. He raised the possibility of using military force to secure Greenland and the Panama Canal. He also talked about using economic control to pressure Canada to acquire it.
“And he said that — as you played there, Geoff, renaming the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America. And he also said that — quote — “all hell will break out” if Hamas doesn’t release hostages by the time he takes office.
“In addition to that, he said that he wants to use tariffs at a high level against Denmark to try to pressure it to cede control of Greenland to the United States. And on that idea of the annexation of Canada, Geoff, outgoing Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said that — just outright rejected it on X, saying that there wasn’t a snowball’s chance in hell that it would happen.”
One never knows whether Trump is actually serious–he has a long history of making outrageous statements and never following through on them. But the mind-set revealed in the press conference is straight out of Nineteenth Century Europe when the balance of power was the operating system of global politics and manifested most dramatically in the carving up of Africa by the colonial powers. The period from 1870 to 1914 is commonly known as “The Scramble for Africa“.
After World War II, the US tried to create a different system, based upon multilateral organizations such as the United Nations, the World Bank, NATO, and various other organizations. The aspirations for this system were quite simple. Instead of the system of power politics characterized by Thucydides as one in which “The strong do as they will, and the weak suffer what they must“, the hope was that international politics could be governed by rules and norms agreed upon by the major powers. That aspiration was never realized, and it seems clear that Trump intends to govern US foreign policy by the maxims of power politics and to return the world to the 1800s.
Trump should read some history. He would find that the US did in fact invade Canada in 1812 and gained nothing from that war (forget the Battle of New Orleans and focus instead on the British burning down the White House). He should also learn that the Gulf of Mexico was named the Gulf of Mexico long before the US was even a state. He also needs a refresher course on what it means to be an ally–if Russia or China would dare to invade Greenland, the NATO treaty would obliged the US to defend the island because Denmark is a member of NATO. THe US does not need to “own” Greenland in order to defend it.
What is deeply troubling is that Trump uses the phrase “national security” to justify his fantasies in such a sloppy manner. He seems to be worried that Chinese companies on each end of the Panama Canal gives China a strategic advantage (conveniently ignoring that China is 6000 miles away from the Panama Canal while the US has easy access to the canal). China would have the same problems defending its troops that Russia had when it tried to place nuclear missiles on Cuba in 1962. When confronted with American military power in the Gulf of Mexico, the Russians had no choice but to capitulate.
Unfortunately, Trump seems to be following the policies of Putin and Netanyahu: grabbing land when it appears to be a task with few immediate downsides. Both Putin and Netanyahu seem oblivious to the long-term costs of being an imperial power: the immense cost and the serious damage to the reputation of their states. Randy Newman wrote a song about the phenomenon which is macabrely funny:
And while we are at changing names, Trump should now start thinking about purging foreign names from American geography. We should call Los Angeles the City of the Angels, Baton Rouge should be called Red Stick, and by all means we should get rid of Native American names like Massachusetts (“Large Hill Place”) and Connecticut (“Long Tidal River”). I am not sure I can survive this stupidity for four years.
“Mussolini did not have any philosophy: he had only rhetoric” — Umberto Eco, 1955
Today has been very difficult for many. This post was written in a state of confusion, fear, and rage. So you should tread carefully here, because there are dragons.
We had hoped that Mr. Trump had effectively diminished his allure to voters, but that was not the case. Instead, we now face the prospect of a mob boss political system, bent on enriching only those who submit and disenfranchising those who do not submit.
This terrain will be difficult to navigate, and it creates a problem for those of us who opposed Mr. Trump. Knowing that he will punish anyone who disagrees with him and knowing that the Congress and the Supreme Court will not restrain his basest instincts leaves us in uncharted territory. The Supreme Court has completely abdicated its responsibility to maintain checks and balances in Trump v. The United States and has decided that it does not have the power to check executive power as long as there is some mention in the Constitution of the powers of the President, no matter how indirect or peripheral the reference. With the Republicans in control of the Senate and possibly of the House as well, there is no posssibility that that party will restrain Mr. Trump given his ruthless purge of malcontents in the party.
We should place the blame for this situation squarely on the Republican Party which has completely abandoned its responsibility to defend the Constitution. The Democrats ran a very effective campaign which was not sufficient. What does the failure of opposition to Mr. Trump mean?
The election of 2024 was essentially a rerun of the early 20th Century. The end of the 19th Century brought about a wave of globalization powered by advances in refrigeration, telecommunications, shipping, and transportation. The result was a phenomenal explosion of wealth at the expense of those with limited access to capital and whose only link to the global economy was the sale of their labor. The growing inequality between rich and poor ultimately led to widespread dissatisfaction which resulted in the abandonment of traditional political norms and the adoption of new ideologies, fascism and communism, which channeled that dissatisfaction into acceptance of authoritarian rule. That inequality also led to the Great Depression.
Similarly, the technological revolutions of the 1980s and 1990s led to the creation of fabulous wealth–think Gates, Musk, Jobs, and Zuckerberg. But that wealth was accumulated by tapping into the labor markets of poor states such as China and Vietnam, leading to a massive loss of manufacturing jobs in the developed world. Those unemployed by the 2nd wave of globalization are the ones who abandoned traditional political norms, not only in the US, but in India, Hungary, Italy, France, Sweden, Denmark, and the Cech Republic. They have reasons to be angry.
The pattern of the early 20th century is repeating because the conditions are roughly similar. And, I suspect, the outcome will be the same: economic collapse and war.
The question for me is how do I respond to this situation? My gut instinct is to resist as Trump attempts to create a White, Male, and Christian Republic. I should resist any attempts to cut Obamacare, Social Security, health and safety regulations, and the proposed deportations. These are the issues that Trump used to secure the support to win the election. My suspicion is that those who supported Mr. Trump did not believe that he would truly implement those policies. But they knew exactly who Mr. Trump was: a person who cheated on his taxes, who assaulted women and bragged about his conquests, who punished anyone who did not support him, and who showed little regard for the rule of law. He will, I am certain, insure that everyone appointed to his government will share the same contempt for integrity and lawfulness. Those who voted for Mr. Trump cannot plead ignorance of who he was and how he defined his interests as the single guide for public policy. They knew what they were buying when they voted.
I fear, however, that, for the next two years, resistance will be futile. So I think there should be a second course of action, a course of action which deeply offends my sensibilities as a civic person. The Democrats should simply withdraw from the process of governing. It will be a huge waste of time and, ultimately, counterproductive. The Democrats should simply sit in Congress and refuse to vote or participate in any hearings. Those who supported Mr. Trump should live in the world they voted for. And with tariffs, deportations, and the lack of income security and health insurance, they can figure out how to survive. That economic collapse is inevitable given the obscene inequalities of power and wealth that Trump’s Administration will foster.
Then the Republican Party will have to decide whether it cares more about the Constitution than raw power. And the American people might learn to appreciate the idea of Justice and Equality and to temper their infatuation with unaccountable freedom.
In 1935, Sinclair Lewis published a book entitled It Can’t Happen Here about the election of a Fascist President in the United States. It is a creepy read (and not a particularly good book, but I do not think that Lewis really wanted to write great book–just a book with an important warning to Americans. Americans very rarely think about Fascism in the US, but that is due to willful amnesia. Former President Trump’s rally in Madison Square Garden reminded some of the Nazi rally that was held there in February 1939.
Nazi Rally at Madison Square Garden, 20 February 1939
The Nazi movement grew out of the virulently racist period after the Civil War that spawned the Jim Crow laws that institutionally segregated African-Americans. We are familiar with the images of the Ku Klux Klan, but there was a more explicit movement marrying fascism with institutionalized racism which was known as the Black Legion:
“The Black Legion was a spinoff of the so-called Second Ku Klux Klan, which flourished in the 1920s, fusing anti-Catholicism and antisemitism with anti-Black racism. Strongest in the North — with 500,000 members in Ohio alone — it fell apart by the decade’s end in the face of internal scandals and public denunciations. A doctor in Bellaire, Ohio, named William Shepard founded the Black Legion in 1924. He painted KKK robes black and added pirate imagery and an even greater obsession with militarism and secrecy. By 1935 the Black Legion had grown to hundreds of thousands of members nationwide, largely in the Upper Midwest but spreading to at least 21 states. No one really knows how big it was.”
The Regalia of the Black Legion
The Black Legion grew as Fascism became prevalent in Europe in the early 20th Century. It was a dynamic movement, starting with the first Fascist state in Italy in 1920 (although one could argue that Hungary was actually the first after the collapse of the Soviet Republic of Hungary founded by Béla Kun). By 1940, the only European states not ruled by a fascist party were Great Britain and Switzerland (one could argue that the Swiss worked closely with the Nazis). It was an amazing transformation in the space of only 20 years, counterbalanced by the emergence of the communist brand of totalitarianism in the Soviet Union.
Map of Fascist regimes in Europe in 1940
As Americans vote today, we should all be reminded of the Fascist history in the US. It is not necessarily a fluke in American culture, but rather a persistent presence. It can happen here.
The decision of the Supreme Court on the matter of Trump vs. United States today was a profound disappointment. It offered little on the critical question of whether Mr. Trump’s actions within the Justice Department were official or unofficial acts. Those actions involved replacing certain members of the Justice Department with a new Attorney General (Jeffrey Clark) who wanted to write a letter to various state legislatures suggesting that there were irregularities in the votes cast in the 2020 election which would justify the naming of alternate Electors. The Washington, DC Bar Association moved to disbar Mr. Clark because of these actions, noting that
“‘We must do what we can to ensure that this conduct is never repeated. The way to accomplish that goal is to remove from the profession lawyers who betrayed their constitutional obligations and their country. It is important that other lawyers who might be tempted to engage in similar misconduct be aware that doing so will cost them their privilege to practice law. It is also important for the courts and the legal profession to state clearly that the ends do not justify the means; that process matters; and that this is a society of laws, not men,’ wrote disciplinary counsel Hamilton Fox III. ‘Jeffrey Clark betrayed his oath to support the Constitution of the United States of America. He is not fit to be a member of the District of Columbia Bar.’”
Apparently, the US Supreme Court thinks that Mr. Clark’s behavior fell within the scope of Presidential authority. The majority decision held that
“The indictment’s allegations that the requested investigations were shams or proposed for an improper purpose do not divest the President of exclusive authority over the investigative and prosecutorial func- tions of the Justice Department and its officials. Because the President cannot be prosecuted for conduct within his exclusive constitutional authority, Trump is absolutely immune from prosecution for the alleged conduct involving his discussions with Justice Department officials.”
Additionally, the Special Prosecutor, Mr. Smith, charged that Mr. Trump tried to improperly influence the actions of the Vice-President, Mr. Pence, to delay the certification of Electoral votes. The Supreme Court held that “The indictment’s allegations that Trump attempted to pressure the Vice President to take particular acts in connection with his role at the certification proceeding thus involve official conduct, and Trump is at least presumptively immune from prosecution for such conduct.”
Critical to both of these findings is the curious statement by the Supreme Court that
“In dividing official from unofficial conduct, courts may not inquire into the President’s motives. Such a ‘highly intrusive’ inquiry would risk exposing even the most obvious instances of official conduct to judicial examination on the mere allegation of improper purpose. Fitzgerald, 457 U. S., at 756. Nor may courts deem an action unofficial merely because it allegedly violates a generally applicable law. Otherwise, Presidents would be subject to trial on ‘every allegation that an action was unlawful,’ depriving immunity of its intended effect.”
These presumptions are bullshit. Essentially the Court is holding that subverting a valid electoral outcome is not unconstitutional as long as the subversion is done by the President and anyone who serves under the authority of the Executive Branch. By refusing to examine the motivations for the action, the Court is saying that replacing the appointed Attorney General with someone who would subvert the Electoral College was normal activity within the Justice Department. No one questions whether the President had the authority to name a new Attorney General; the only relevant question is whether that action contitutes a crime against the Constitution.
On this question, the Court punts:
“On Trump’s view, the alleged conduct qualifies as official because it was undertaken to ensure the integrity and proper administration of the federal election. As the Government sees it, however, Trump can point to no plausible source of authority enabling the President to take such actions. Determining whose characterization may be correct, and with respect to which conduct, requires a fact-specific analysis of the indictment’s extensive and interrelated allegations. The Court accordingly remands to the District Court to determine in the first instance whether Trump’s conduct in this area qualifies as official or unofficial.”
In this paragraph, the Court contradicts itself. Having said that an inquiry into the motives of the President are not permissable, the Court ends up holding that whether Mr. Trump was taking action to “ensure the integrity and proper administration of the federal election” is something that needs to be determined. The Court apparently believe that the motive of ensuring the integrity and proper administration of the federal election is both legitimate and appropriate.
Now the lower courts have to make such a determination. But is there any reason to think that the Supreme Court lacked the ability to make such a determination? Did this decision require more evidence as to whether Mr. Trump’s actions were motivated by his strong desire for a legitimate election outcome? The Court wanted to assure that future Presidents are not paralyzed by the fear of prosecution for official acts. But it now appears that the Court wants lower courts to make such decisions on a case-by-case basis. Future Presidents may not be “paralyzed” by threats to prosecute. However, they will undoubtedly be hamstrung by the Supreme Court’s invitation to anyone who differs on the meaning of an “official act” to sue in the lower courts. It has released the Kraken.
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