this post was submitted on 08 May 2026
21 points (100.0% liked)

Economics

1133 readers
1 users here now

founded 2 years ago
 

In a victory for importers and a setback for the Trump administration, the Court of International Trade struck down a second round of worldwide tariffs that the president ordered to replace import levies that were outlawed by the U.S. Supreme Court.

The court's decision was limited to two importers who challenged the tariffs, along with the state of Washington. It was not immediately clear whether other importers would have to keep paying the levies.

"That's a very good question and one we've sort of been wrestling with," said Jeffrey Schwab, who represented the importers on behalf of the Liberty Justice Center. "It's not entirely clear and probably will depend on what happens now."

top 1 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] Voroxpete@sh.itjust.works 2 points 1 week ago

One thing that's really worth paying attention to in this whole tariff saga is that the notion that Trump can just outright defy court rulings simply does not hold up to reality.

The Trump admin is lawless, absolutely. They do not respect the spirit of the law, and in many, many cases they have outright violated the letter of the law as well. But there is shockingly little evidence of them actually violating court rulings. They say they will. They threaten it all the time. But they never follow through on those threats. Abrego Garcia is back in the US. They're still trying to make the man's life a living hell, because begrudgingly abiding by court rulings isn't even remotely adjacent to respecting the law, but the fact remains that they could - theoretically - have just flat out refused to bring him home. They did not.

Trump's original tariffs are no longer in effect. Companies are collecting refunds. When the Supreme Court eventually (or at least, most likely) rules that these new tariffs are also illegal, they'll be handing out refunds for those too.

None of this is to suggest that the Trump admin is not recklessly and maliciously engaged in a constant path of carnage through America's laws and institutions. If that's what you read from this, go back to grade five and actually learn what words mean. But what it does tell us is that some version of the rule of law does still exist in the US. Those doomers who constantly claim that "It won't matter what courts do because Trump will just ignore them" are wrong. They have been proven wrong time and time again. He will try to evade the law, he will try to recklessly break it and hope that the justice system will be too slow to stop him before he gets what he wants, he will try to weasel his way out of and around the law, and in many cases he can rely on a Supreme Court captive to right wing interests to simply rewrite the law on his behalf. But he has not yet broken the nation's institutions to the point that the law no longer exists. If you believe that, and more importantly if you continue to spread that belief, you are doing the fascists' work for them.

Never willingly hand your enemy a victory. Always make them fight for it. When you cede ground out of fear and despair, you're helping the people who want to hurt you.