On Friday, the US Supreme Court ruled that the Trump administration's tariff policy was, in fact, illegal. And for those who didn't pay attention in Social Studies class, the Court ruling reminded everyone that it's Congress's job to levy taxes, i.e., not the Executive Branch. You know, because the US sort of fought a war and became a country because one lone dude tariff'd the hell out of a bunch of settlers back in the day, and they ratified a Constitution to not let that happen again.
But while the high court's ruling is still being parsed out in legal circles, the President is imposing new tariffs that are supposedly more legal. I say that, as according to the rules of American law, these new global tariffs would only be legal for the next five months before Congress has to act and make them either permanent or not. It is clear, however, that these tariffs hurt American companies, and the American people in particular, as everything got more expensive.
And for those companies already hurting before the tariffs, after was far, far worse. Case in point, Harley-Davidson's CFO stated the company took a $67 million hit from Trump's now-illegal tariffs. Those are taxes the company passed onto the customers, who were already hurting, and which in turn saw the Motor Co's profits and sales freefall to where they are now.
