Member Newsletter
If you’re running for Congress or considering running for Congress or know someone who is doing either, this message is for you. Presidents have no power over tariffs. Full stop. It’s not like war powers or pardons. Trump can only do this because Congress gave Presidents this power, as I explained in the a post yesterday. Congress can take it back at any moment. Given the minuscule Republican hold in the House, that means that every GOP representative is literally and personally responsible for these tariffs and their consequences. Every single one. High prices? Rep. X is responsible. He or she could end this but they’re not. A 401k that might flatline before you do? Thank Rep. X. They could end this but they’re supporting it. It’s crystal clear and has the benefit of being true.
The 2026 midterm is already underway. It really is.
That’s the whole message. It’s malpractice for anyone challenging a Republican member of Congress not to be on this today.
Now, a few subsidiary points.
As a matter of political predictions, I don’t think this will be sustainable. We’re starting the fun with even the most die-hard Trump reps saying they sure hope it will be awesome through gritted teeth with beads of sweat already forming on their brows. We’re already seeing headlines that talk about the biggest trade regime revolution in a century, a new global age of trade restriction, etc. Again, I don’t think it’s sustainable. There are other new ages that we’re definitely already in. We’ve already wrecked the post-war Atlantic alliance and done irreparable damage to the post-war world order which rests upon it. But this is different. These tariffs could help usher in a new era of protectionism and break past economic and trading alliances. They certainly will push us further in a direction of a high-fear rather than high-trust global order. I’m simply saying that I don’t think these tariffs themselves will last. The pain will be too widely distributed, the ideological hold is too thin and the path to overturning them too clear.
Some people have pointed this out to to me: If a statute is required to rescind or limit the president’s tariff authority, what about a veto? Doesn’t that mean a few votes aren’t enough? Yes and no. As a technical matter, that is correct. Since taking away this power requires a law, the president could veto that law. That requires overriding the veto. As a political and electoral matter, this is far too deep in the weeds to get into. Let your hapless Republican member of Congress try to argue that even if he voted to end the tariffs Trump might veto the bill and … seriously, way too deep in the weeds.
The more practical issue is that I doubt very much it would come to that. If and when this dam breaks, it’s not going to be incremental. These tariffs have very, very few supporters even among Republicans — standing and saluting and cheering Trump like a degenerate fluff monkey isn’t the same as being a supporter. You’re not going to have a situation where a third or a quarter of Republicans are moving into an anti-tariff, take-away-his-power faction and the rest are holding tight. It’s a dam breaking situation. And it’s because of that that I don’t think it comes to a vote at all. When Trump realizes that this kind of danger is on the horizon he always folds. Far better to zig and zag (which is weird, yes, but actually very on brand) rather than see his power publicly broken.
I’ll note a revealing line from an Axios piece last night: “Skeptical Republicans are willing to give Trump some time to prove that across-the-board tariffs can lead to an American manufacturing renaissance — but not too much time.” (Emphasis mine.) Let’s get real. “Not much time.” Standing up new manufacturing facilities — not just the physical buildings, but the capital, the supply-chains, the hiring … that all takes three to five years at an absolute minimum. And this isn’t just another chip factory or some other kind of factory in an existing industry. It’s new manufacturing you’re moving from somewhere else, something you hadn’t intended to do before. When Republicans say in whispers “not much time” it’s pretty clear they’re talking months at most, not years. So really, the whole calculus is over before it begins. Even the most die-hard supporters of these tariffs — all ten of them — will tell you that the plan is pain and dislocation which then drives investment in domestic manufacturing to operate within the new economic reality. But again, that’s a years proposition. The whole thing is an out-of-whack mismatch.
Let me add one more detail. This isn’t a bet-the-farm prediction. It’s also not a politic-moral argument. It’s just my read of the political dynamics. The pressure against these tariffs are much greater than the strength of the powers holding them in place.