The Supreme Court told him no. Six justices, including three he appointed, said the tariffs were illegal. That was February. By July he’d slapped tariffs on sixty countries under a different statute and walked up to a microphone at a GM proving ground in Michigan to say, out loud, that the new ones are “doing the same thing” as the ones the court struck down. He said it was “a shame” he had to “go a harder way.” The man described his own workaround for a Supreme Court ruling like he was complaining about a detour on his commute.
A toy company from Vernon Hills, Illinois, beat him at the Supreme Court five months ago and is already suing him again. Their filing says the administration tried “to re-create materially the same global tariff regime” and that “the third time’s not the charm.” A toy company. Learning Resources. They make counting bears and foam dice for kindergartners. They’ve now sued the President of the United States twice over the same set of taxes and won the first round 6-3. The second complaint was filed before the tariffs were twenty-four hours old.
None of this is hidden. He said it on camera. The workaround is the point. The quiet part has been the loud part for a while now, but there’s something about watching a president describe circumventing the highest court in the country with the same energy as a guy bragging about his EZ Pass. The counting-bears company saw it coming faster than Congress did.