King Donald is going to issue another royal edict in an attempt to get around the SCOTUS ruling. He will impose global 10% import tariffs under section 122 of the 1974 Trade Act. He can do this, but per the law they expire in 150 days and require Congress to approve any extension.

Trump will now pivot to making use of other laws to implement his tariff agenda, but it will be more challenging for him. www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

If Congress was smart, which it’s not, it would immediately pass a law requiring an automatic refund if all IEEPA tariffs. This would side step years of legal haggling over refunds, but then again, Congress is full of lawyers, so…….

The surprise with the IEEPA tariff ruling is that it was 6-3. It should have been 9-0 but Thomas and Alito are lost causes and Kavanaugh is not much better.

About time. www.wsj.com/us-news/law/...

The Federal deficit is on an unsustainable path, and neither party wants to deal with it. www.wsj.com/economy/fede...

To the Tower with him and off with his head. Virginia Giuffry gets her revenge from beyond the grave. Now who’s the next child of privilege to fall? Someone with grubby little hands perhaps? www.cnn.com/world/live-n...

Moron.

WSJ is on a roll here. Ironic that a conservative paper is doing some pretty good reporting on the dysfunction in the Trump Administration.

As expected. The importer of record pays the tariff and then passes on the cost to consumers in the form of higher prices. This is particularly true for large retailers such as Walmart and Costco because their margins are so small (around 3%) that they lack the capacity to absorb the cost.

It’s beginning to look as if some Republicans in the Senate are starting to develop a degree of testicular fortitude when it comes to to trade in general, and the USMCA in particular. About time; better late than never I suppose. www.politico.com/live-updates...

Most goods from Mexico and Canada are still entering the US tariff free under the USMCA, but the mandatory review in July is giving Trump an opportunity to spike the agreement. Doing so would cause significant harm to all three countries. www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

Almost all January job growth was in health care and education. Also, 2025 employment data was revised down. US actually lost 1 million jobs last year (83,000 lost in manufacturing where we are told there will be a renaissance). At best, tea leaves here are mixed.. www.politico.com/news/2026/02...

A reminder that current “prosperity” in the US is built on a foundation of fiscal excess that is unsustainable in the long run. The ratio of debt to GDP is already the highest since WW II and it going to get worse very fast. www.politico.com/news/2026/02...

He’s insane. Lives in a fantasy world of his own construction.

The party that once advocated free markets and constitutional conservatism is now the party of protectionism and the imperial Presidency, and Mike Johnson seems to want to keep it that way, at the request of King Donald of course. www.politico.com/live-updates...

Initial estimates suggest that 134 million people watched Bad Bunny at the Super Bowl half time show, and 4.7 million watched the Turning Point USA alternate. Enough said.

Who would have thought? Undocumented immigrants represent a significant proportion of the work force in hospitality, construction, agriculture, food processing, landscaping and home help. The impact of Trump’s immigration policies on prices will be significant. www.wsj.com/politics/pol...

The real problem here is that Bitcoin has no intrinsic value and no use case outside of (perhaps) money laundering, and perhaps speculators are finally waking up to that fact. www.wsj.com/finance/curr...

Of course Trump is building his own version of the Nazi brownshirts, and of course they will do his bidding when the time comes. The GOP is complicit in this, and the Democrats are too compromised by their own ideological ditheting to do much about it. www.economist.com/leaders/2026...

How about putting the faces of those ICE agents who murdered innocent people on TV?

There are an estimated 130,000 undocumented immigrants in Minnesota, compared to 2.1 million in Texas and 1.6 million in Florida. The ICE surge in Minnesota is not about immigration enforcement, it’s about political optics and retribution.

Yep, send another fascist to review the actions of his fellow fascists, that’s really going to help.

ICE executes another person. www.nytimes.com/2026/01/24/u...

This is Liam Ramos. The five year old that ICE took from a Minneapolis school and sent BY HIMSELF WITHOUT HIS FAMILY to a detention facility in Texas. There are monsters among us and they are wearing masks, carrying guns, and work for the US government.

The guy is mentally ill, and should be removed from office by the cabinet invoking the 25th amendment, or impeached by Congress. Unfortunately, given the lack of spine among those around him, that probably isn’t going to happen. www.wsj.com/world/europe...

Unfortunately I think this is an accurate assessment. If the tariffs imposed under the IEEPA are declared illegal (I think they will be), he will try to use other laws to achieve the same effct. www.nytimes.com/2026/01/19/u...

This is not news. Of course importers pay import tariffs, and even if exporters do reduce their prices, importers still pay import tariffs on the reduced prices, so importers ALWAYS pay import tariffs. www.wsj.com/economy/trad...

An independent Fed is the corner stone of the dollar’s supremacy in international financial markets, which has huge benefits for the American economy, so of course Trump is trying to destroy that, and of course this will benefit China. www.wsj.com/finance/curr...

Trump basically wants to tax Americas to force Europeans to pressure Denmark to give him Greenland. This is a bit nuts. (Yes, his proposed new import tariffs are indeed a tax levied at the border on American importers of Europe goods).

There is literally no legal basis for this. It’s totally absurd, and if this doesn’t get Congress to get of its ass and limit his insane trade policies, I don’t know what will. www.wsj.com/politics/pol...

And now for some unexpected good news. www.reuters.com/world/us-sen...

We are in the twilight of American scientific dominance. Not surprised by the rise of Chinese academia, have seen it coming for some time. Cuts to NIH and NSF grants implemented by the Trump Administration will have a major impact on these rankings going forward. www.nytimes.com/2026/01/15/u...

SCOTUS decision day and still no ruling on the legality of IEEPA tariffs. Given the urgency of the issue, and the Gov’s own request for a speedy resolution, I’m a bit surprised.

This is what many of us fear.

All true…..

Wow. youtu.be/KckGHaBLSn4

Well, this is quite the read. Authoritarianism is recast as neo-royalism based on the power of elites who engage in transactional policies based on personal power and rent seeking by a clique. www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

“I am tired and exhausted by the fools and idiots that get to govern us,” he said. “I am tired of their theft, corruption and injustice.” Iranian talking about his government, although I’m sure many of us feel the same way about our government.

They don’t want to do it, and they will slow walk any investment for as long as they can until Trump is gone. Three years is nothing in the oil industry, where the investment horizon can be decades. www.wsj.com/business/ene...

Now looks like next Wednesday.

While the U.S. turns away from free trade and starts to isolate itself behind protectionist walls, the rest of the world is deepening its commitment to free trade. www.nytimes.com/2026/01/09/b...

Big oil is wary of investing in Venezuela due to costs, economic and political risks, but Trump has already announced they are going to invest $100 billion and will now try to strong arm them into doing that. Welcome to the wacky world of State Capitalism. www.nytimes.com/2026/01/09/b...

If it smells like a cover up……..https://www.cbsnews.com/minnesota/news/bca-withdraws-renee-good-ice-shooting-investigation/

There is speculation that SCOTUS will rule tomorrow on the legality of Trump’s tariffs applied under IEEPA, which covers about 70% of his tariffs. My guess, 7-2 ruling that they are illegal (should be 9-0 but Alito and Thomas are true believers in the Trump dictatorship).

This is not quite the win some might think. A falling deficit on the current account is an indicator of a weak economy (strong demand in a robust economy pulls in imports of goods). www.wsj.com/economy/trad...

Academic Freedom, Texas style. www.nytimes.com/2026/01/07/u...

So it appears that the Administration’s strategy for Venezuela is to leave in charge the same people that looted the country and ran it into the ground for the last decade, and expect them to behave differently. Zero chance of that.