Supreme Smackdown
Tariffs never made any sense to us. Civilized prosperity is built on trade, not autonomy. The man who makes his own shoes, grows his own food, and builds his own automobile, is a very busy man.
Monday, February 23rd, 2026
Bill Bonner, from Paris, France
Investors fidgeted early Friday morning...waiting for the Supreme Court to clarify its position on tariffs. At issue was not whether they are a good idea or a bad one, but whether POTUS has the power to impose them.
Then, at 10am...the Supreme Court gave the nation....and its president...a much-needed gift. You’ll recall that the two most powerful lobbies in Washington — firepower and Israel — almost completely control the White House, Congress, and soon, the Fed. What they don’t control is the Supreme Court. And Friday, SCOTUS snarled. Reuters:
US Supreme Court strikes down Trump’s global tariffs
The U.S. Supreme Court struck down Donald Trump’s sweeping tariffs that he pursued under a law meant for use in national emergencies, handing the Republican president a stinging defeat in a landmark ruling on Friday with major implications for the global economy.
In the way thing are s’posed to work, this is a gift to the nation. The White House was doing something unlawful; the court said it lacked the authority to do it. The feds might also have to disgorge the unlawful revenues they’ve already received. How that is to work will be determined by lower courts.
This may not be the end of tariffs, however. On Friday, Mr. Trump vowed to use other legislation to impose a 10% tariff on almost all imports. By Saturday, it had gone up to 15%.
But SCOTUS has definitely blasted the rigging of the tariff ship. It now floats, aimless and helpless. Trump can no longer use tariffs as his personal, Art of the Deal, leverage.
It’s a gift for American consumers, who will be spared the additional tariff taxes. But in the curious way History works, the decision is even a bigger gift for POTUS. Now, the coming economic slowdown won’t be ‘his fault.’ Deficits, debt, inflation, recession, job loss, cooties — all will be blamed on SCOTUS; it derailed his brilliant program.
The real problem for Team Trump was that it had tied itself to the mast of leaky ship. The tariffs were always a preposterously bad idea. Left in place, they would weaken the nation, its consumers, and its industries. And yet, tariffs were supposed to bring the ‘Golden Age’ Mr. Trump promised.
But it was always a delusion. The more money the tariffs brought in, the more they weren’t working. Each dollar collected signaled an import into the US market that the consumer preferred to buy, rather than the competing domestic product (if there were one). And if the tariff revenue went down, it would leave the feds with less revenue to pay down debt or (more likely) spend.
And the early signs were bad. MarketWatch:
US trade deficit is tariff-proof. Imports jump to record high in 2025
High tariffs were supposed to slash chronically large U.S. trade deficits. Turns out they really didn’t.
Imports actually rose almost 5% last year and hit a record high. What’s more, the trade deficit in 2025 was still the third-largest ever.
Inflation? Barrons:
Headline inflation ended the final month of last year on a high note, according to data published Friday, with pressures rising close to the 3% threshold and well ahead of Wall Street forecasts.
Beef prices, for example, have been rising steadily since the pandemic, and were last pegged 15% higher to last year’s levels. Ground beef is up 72% over the past five years, with FDA data suggesting cumulative 28% gains in chicken prices and a 22% rise in pork costs.
And with cattle herds at the lowest levels since the early 1950s, no amount of Fed easing is going to make steaks or burgers any cheaper over the coming year.
Oil is up 20% over the last 60 days. Electricity has been rising at 7% per year. And Barron’s adds that ‘higher education’ has been doubling every 12 years for the last 43 years...with no end in sight.
And growth! There was supposed to be a huge tsunami of investment coming into US manufacturing...and ‘growth like we’ve never seen before,’ said Trump. But what’s this? Forbes:
The U.S. economy grew at a rate of 1.4% in the last quarter of 2025, new government data showed Friday, significantly slower than the two previous quarters, with President Trump pointing to October’s government shutdown as the culprit.
Tariffs never made any sense to us. Civilized prosperity is built on trade, not autonomy. The man who makes his own shoes, grows his own food, and builds his own automobile (he has to find oil, pump it up and refine it too)...is a very busy (and very poor) man.
But now the Trump administration has been freed from its worst economic policy. And if ‘The Donald’ is smarter than he looks, he will take advantage of this gift, avoid re-imposing tariffs, and quietly welcome the inevitable decline that his policies helped create. He can blame SCOTUS for everything. And maybe he’ll have a more plausible crisis in which to unleash his emergency measures.
Remember, Trump is doing the mischievous gods’ work. He can’t let the courts stop him.
‘SCOTUS destroyed the most beautiful economy America ever had,’ he will tell people. ‘Only I can fix it!’
Regards,
Bill Bonner
Where the hell was the supreme court when Biden let in 25 million illegal immigrants. The cost of that will suffer this country for another 20 years. There have been tariffs going on since 2016. Some that Trump started and Biden kept on collecting. This is all just more smoke and mirrors.
Bill always talks about real wealth as opposed to fake GDP.
Real wealth is what people do, the tangibles they produce. To me that is production.
The US at the time of WW2 was self sufficient, it had and produced natural resources, it was the leading industrial nation, it was avant- guard, inventive.
I watched the 12 blast furnaces of Bethlehem steel successively spark fireworks as the molten steel flowed out of furnaces into waiting rail cars, thirty-five thousand employed.
Americans produced their own food, every possible fruit and vegetables in season. Beef trucks running up and down the interstate from thousands of ranches to feeder lots and local slaughterhouses.
The production numbers and innovation during WW2… astounding.
All gone. All destroyed over 80 years of mismanagement and greed.
Today, the US is no better than England. They needed resources from empire.
Our empire was always vainglorious, in the minds of dunderheads, ephemeral and destructive.
There is a vivid story in the demise of a once great nation but there is no one smart enough to tell it. We are a nation of imbeciles. They call it higher education, and it increases in costs every 12 years. Everything increases in costs; it all goes to the top 20% and the rest can’t afford to live.