The largest tax hike in US history

Emily Singer of Daily Kos reported that because of the tariffs affecting trade with almost every country people are already losing their jobs. Stellantis NV, which makes the Ram trucks, announced they were temporarily laying off 900 people over five facilities. The tariffs were cited as the reason. That happened about the time Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick announced on CBS News that because of the tariffs employment would start “leaping.” Stock markets didn’t believe him and fell even further today. Yesterday Sens. Chuck Grassley and Maria Cantwell introduced a bill that would require the president to notify Congress before imposing tariffs. Then Congress would have 60 days to approve or deny them. Passing the Senate might be possible. Passing the House would be difficult. Then the nasty guy would veto it. We have the situation that Congress ceded power to the Executive and to get it back Congress needs approval from that Executive. Of course, he’s not going to give up power. Kos of Kos noted a problem in the nasty guy’s merch business – nearly all of it comes from China. And finding American manufacturers is a problem. For example, an American flag made in the US would cost a supplier about $45 and to cover his expenses and get a bit of profit he would have to sell it for $55 or $60, which would have few takers. The flag made in China cost about $5. He can make a profit selling it for $15 to $20. Kos also noted is the big lesson from elections around the world last year is that people hate inflation. It is what kept Kamala Harris from getting elected. And here come tariffs that make everything more expensive. The working people won’t be able to afford much, even getting one of those new minimum wage jobs of a factory moving back to America. All that means is voters are turning angry – and they’ll choose food over nasty guy merch. In a pundit roundup for Kos Greg Dworkin quoted a tweet by Greg Sargent:

As far as I can determine, Trump's supposed legal authority to impose these incredibly sweeping and destructive tariffs rests largely on the idea that trade deficits constitute a national emergency. How on earth is this remotely legitimate?

It isn’t legitimate. But the people who can stop him aren’t stopping him. From Politico (author not given):

I’ve asked multiple corporate executives in recent weeks whether companies are likely to start investing in manufacturing in the United States in response to Trump’s policies, and the message has basically been: That’s an unanswerable question right now. Because making those decisions requires understanding the relative costs of doing it versus not doing it, and Trump is far too unpredictable to allow for that kind of calculation.

Crowsa Luxemburg quoted a tweet by vfxgordon:

Also note that the tariffs are not broken down by country, they’re broken down by top level internet domain. It’s why islands that are populated entirely by penguins (the .hm domain) and why the Diego Garcia military base on BIOT (.io) are listed, also why Reunion (.re) and Gibraltar (.gi) are listed separately from France & the UK. They 100% used an LLM to generate this list and didn’t catch the mistake because they’re all dumb as rocks.

Heard and McDonald Island have an internet domain even though no one lives there? Huh. Luxemburg added:

They’ve just asked chatgpt to spit out a spreadsheet haven’t they.

In the comments exlrrp posted a meme showing a big explosion labeled, “Trump launches unprovoked global trade war: Destroys U.S. economy.” Watching it are a group of men in red hats saying, “F---ing Hillary!” “Deep state!” “They’re trying to make Trump look bad!!” “It’s fake!” “Thanks Brandon!” D Lavoie posted a headline from CNN Business:

Americans will pay $6 trillion for Trump’s tariffs – the largest tax hike in US history.

Further down exlrrp posted a meme from Occupy Democrats, “Come on guys, stay calm! I’m sure the guy who went bankrupt six times and ran a fraudulent university knows what he’s doing.” There are also a lot of cartoons featuring penguins in honor of the residents of Heard and McDonald Island, who were slapped with tariffs. In another pundit roundup Dworkin quoted Sargent again. The nasty guy was in a call with auto CEOs and threatened them against raising prices after the tariffs go into effect. Isn’t that an admission his arguments for tariffs is bogus? Down in the comments are memes in honor of Transgender Day of Visibility. One is by Liberal Jane. It shows a lunch counter waitress saying, “Sweetheart, LGBTQIA+ people’s existence is not up for debate.”