Tariffs
February 20, 2026 — John Hinderaker
On a 6-3 vote, the Supreme Court ruled this morning that the International Emergency Economic Powers Act does not empower the President to impose tariffs. As a result, President Trump’s “drug trafficking” and “reciprocal” tariffs have been struck down. Today’s decision is not a surprise. I have written about these cases several times, including here. I wrote in that post: I have not done a deep analysis of the legal
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February 2, 2026 — John Hinderaker
After a telephone conversation with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, President Trump has announced a new trade deal with India that cuts tariffs and provides that India will buy oil from the U.S. and our new ally Venezuela, rather than Russia. Reuters reports: Here’s what happened on Monday: * Trump announced the deal on social media following a call with Modi. The deal slashes U.S. tariffs on Indian goods to
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November 16, 2025 — John Hinderaker
The conventional wisdom is that higher tariffs mean higher prices. While this is certainly true as to a particular product that is subject to a tariff–coffee, for example, in the current instance–inflation is a monetary phenomenon. Higher prices of a specific product are not inflationary; demand for that product will fall, and that demand will go to substitutes (e.g., in the coffee instance, tea or Diet Coke) or to random,
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November 9, 2025 — John Hinderaker
This morning, on Truth Social, President Trump teased the idea of a “tariff dividend” that would benefit most Americans: Trump is right that the economy is doing well, inflation is low (although the cost of living is not actually declining), the stock markets are high–too high, most believe–and the tariffs are bringing in money. As for “trillions of dollars,” however, that is delusional unless Trump is counting the foreign investment
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November 4, 2025 — John Hinderaker
I wrote here and here about the federal lawsuit that challenges President Trump’s authority under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act to impose most of his tariffs, including his worldwide “reciprocal” tariffs. The case, V.O.S. Selections, Inc. et al. v. Trump, originated in the Court of International Trade, which held 3-0 that the challenged tariffs were not authorized by Congress. That decision was upheld on a 7-4 vote by the
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October 26, 2025 — John Hinderaker
President Trump is in Asia, and his trip appears to be producing results: The United States announced finalized trade deals Sunday with two Southeast Asian nations — Cambodia and Malaysia — that contain provisions aimed against China, and further progress with two others in the region, Thailand and Vietnam. This is a big deal: The two final deals and two framework agreements announced Sunday cover about 68 percent of approximately
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August 30, 2025 — John Hinderaker
Yesterday, the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit upheld, on a 7-4 vote, a decision by the United States Court of International Trade that President Trump’s emergency “reciprocal” tariffs are illegal. The Constitution gives power over tariffs to Congress. The question is whether Congress’s grant of powers to the president covers certain of Trump’s tariffs: This case involves the extent of the President’s authority under IEEPA to “regulate” importation
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August 15, 2025 — John Hinderaker
The New York Times sees a dark cloud in every silver lining, when we have a Republican president. Especially Donald Trump. Thus, today’s Times email headlined: “The Stock Market Is Getting Scary. What You Should Do.” The Dow and the S&P are both at or near record highs. So, what is scary about that? The Times subhed offers a clue: “Stocks Keep Climbing Past Bad News.” What is the bad
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August 1, 2025 — John Hinderaker
Rita Panahi is an excellent television host on Sky News Australia. She has her own show as well as being one of the hosts on Outsiders. I was on her program Wednesday night; the video below starts with her wildly popular Lefties Losing It segment. I come on around three minutes into the segment and am on for the duration. We talked about failed predictions of economic doom, Trump’s tariff
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July 28, 2025 — Bill Glahn
Huh. Who knew? From CNBC, Even with high tariffs, Trump’s trade war suddenly is starting to look not so scary on Wall Street. “Suddenly.” Economists cite a strong global growth backdrop, a less-than-expected inflationary impact of the tariffs and a general easing in financial conditions as reasons for why the landscape looks less dire. “Economists” have been wrong every inch of the way so far, so guess we should take
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July 13, 2025 — John Hinderaker
These days, there are lots of newspaper headlines about the “Trump tariffs.” At this point, no one knows whether Trump’s tariff strategy–whatever it is–will ultimately succeed. If it does, reporters will stop talking about the “Trump tariffs,” just as “Reaganomics” disappeared from headlines once Reagan’s economic policies had proved spectacularly successful. It is useful to see what people in other countries are saying about the administration’s tariff policies. Thus, this
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June 24, 2025 — John Hinderaker
This meme was submitted as a candidate for The Week In Pictures: I can relate. I feel reasonably conversant with Middle Eastern history, but I don’t claim to understand tariffs. For one thing, there are countless thousands of them. And which ones are important, i.e., relate to something that a given country actually wants to import? And what about non-tariff barriers, like quotas, which generally are worse? When President Trump
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June 5, 2025 — Bill Glahn
Are the tariffs working? The headline from the BBC, Tariffs prompt record plunge in US imports. The details, Goods brought into the US plunged by 20% in April, recording their largest ever monthly drop in the face of a wave of tariffs unleashed by US President Donald Trump. You literally have to go down to the final two sentences to learn the bottom line of the report, Exports so far
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May 30, 2025 — John Hinderaker
Those were the topics I talked about last night with James Morrow on the U.S. Report, on Sky News Australia. It was a fun conversation as always. In addition to hosting the U.S. Report, James is also one of the three hosts on Sky News’ Outsiders program: I think you will enjoy it:
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May 29, 2025 — John Hinderaker
Big news yesterday and today on the tariff front. Yesterday, the U.S. Court of International Trade ruled that President Trump’s “Worldwide and Retaliatory Tariffs” and “Trafficking Tariffs” on goods from Mexico and Canada exceed the authority delegated to him by Congress. The administration immediately appealed that ruling, and today it was stayed by the Federal Circuit pending further litigation. So the tariffs remain in place, for the moment. The Constitution
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May 13, 2025 — Bill Glahn
Again. From Politico today, Trump tariffs have little impact on prices so far, defying grim forecasts. Huh. Politico elaborates, Prices climbed at an unexpectedly slow pace last month, offering a boost to President Donald Trump, whose aggressive trade policies have sparked fears of a resurgence in inflation. The Labor Department on Tuesday reported that prices rose at an annual rate of 2.3 percent, the smallest increase since early 2021. The
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May 11, 2025 — Bill Glahn
Either there are zero (0) ships headed from China to ports in California, or there are 53. It’s one or the other, it cannot be anything in between. In the media war over Trump’s tariffs, truth is the first casualty. And AI is holding the smoking pistol. The headline from CNN yesterday was provocative, Zero ships from China are bound for California’s top ports. Officials haven’t seen that since the
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