President Donald Trump’s chaotic approach to imposing tariffs on most US trading partners might best be described as embodying the concept of ‘scofflaw’. Originally coined to describe a person who flouts a difficult-to-enforce law, the word describes merchants who defied the prohibition era’s edicts prohibiting the sale of alcohol.
Unsurprisingly, even the supposed paramount legal authority of the US Supreme Court is being flouted by Trump now. The court recently ruled that his regime’s scooping up of a law-abiding member of the community by mistake and consigning him to an El Salvadorian prison, should be overturned and his return ‘facilitated.’
The Trump administration responded by misrepresenting the Supreme Court decision and claiming it was unable to abide by the ruling. The US regime is actually paying El Salvador millions of dollars to house these exiled prisoners.
It is difficult to feel too much sympathy for the Supreme Court as it’s (partly) responsible for the current situation by its earlier ruling essentially giving all US presidents a ‘get out of jail free’ card.
However, as Lucian K Truscott recently noted in Salon magazine:
“Democracies don’t necessarily die in darkness, but in the sunlight of outright defiance of the law by a president charged with its enforcement.”
The sloppy incoherence of Trump’s erratic tariff plans has seen a massive and ongoing destruction of value on seesawing global stock and bond markets. Financial luminaries, such as JP Morgan CEO Jamie Dimon, are now on record decrying the tariffs’ impact and suggesting their imposition would slow world growth.
Realistically, the imposition of blanket, high tariffs will never replace the steadily rising government revenues globally from domestic income taxes, which have been increasing for decades.
New Zealand has not been spared the tariff onslaught, but our government has stated it is appreciative that the new US tariff is, so far, only at 10 per cent. NZ had been welcoming steadily rising exports to the US. Still, we are already seeing reported concern about rising export costs for our exporters. This said, Trump’s tariff proclamations could change at any time.
The key holdout to this tariff blackmail has been a competing superpower. Unlike many countries that have (according to Trump) been lining up to placate the US, China promptly responded to his massive tariff imposition with a hefty tariff of its own on US goods.
Trump is now fully engaged in a worldwide trade war aimed at subduing US global trade partners while targeting numerous domestic enemies, as he appears to perceive them. In my opinion, we are seeing revenge for indignities Trump feels he has suffered.
As former president of the Federal Reserve Bank of St Louis, James Bullard, recently said on CNN: “Who wants to invest when you don’t know what the rules are going to be?”
(¹) With acknowledgment to US song writing team, Richard Rogers and Lorenz Hart
More from The Porter Report: Food, glorious food¹
