News / tariffs
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1 min read
Two Courts Down, Still Searching for a Legal Tariff
Read more . . . →The Supreme Court said Trump’s tariffs were illegal. Then a trade court struck down the replacement tariffs too. Now the administration is launching “forced labor” investigations into 58 countries — the EU, Canada, Brazil, basically anyone who trades with America — as the next legal vehicle to reimpose the same tariffs under a different statute. This is not economic policy. It’s a man running out of courtrooms. While the lawyers scramble, 98,000 manufacturing jobs have vanished since the tariff push started. The factories are not roaring back. The towns built around those jobs are not roaring back. What is roaring...
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1 min read
Trump's Tariffs Killed More Small Business Jobs Than COVID Did
Read more . . . →The math is in. The smallest American businesses — fewer than 10 employees — lost 4.5 times more jobs in 2025 than they did during the entire pandemic year of 2020. No lockdowns. No virus. Just Trump’s tariffs running for 13 straight months. 292,000 jobs gone from businesses that can’t offshore, can’t lobby, can’t absorb a 145% cost shock and survive it. The Joint Economic Committee broke it down by sector. Leisure and hospitality — restaurants, hotels — down 48,000 jobs and 15% of revenue. Small manufacturers down 38,000 jobs and 11% of revenue. These aren’t abstract numbers. These are...
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1 min read
The Tariff Refund That Isn't Coming
Read more . . . →The Supreme Court killed most of Trump’s tariffs. The government owed $166 billion in refunds. They built a portal and said everyone would get their money back. Two-thirds of eligible importers couldn’t log in when it launched. Small businesses spent hours on hold with Customs and got no answer. Trade experts are now telling anyone who’ll listen that the government will probably just keep tens of billions it’s legally required to return — not out of malice, just attrition. The application process is complex enough that most small claims will time out or get buried, and nobody’s going to prison...
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1 min read
Happy Small Business Week
Read more . . . →During National Small Business Week, the people in charge want you to think about the heroic small business owner grinding away at their dream. What they don’t want you to think about is the Joint Economic Committee data they dropped at the same time: small businesses with fewer than 10 employees have been shedding jobs for 13 straight months, and the losses in 2025 were 4.5 times worse than during the actual pandemic. Not a little worse. Four and a half times worse. The tariffs that were supposed to save American business are eating the businesses they were supposed to...
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1 min read
Roaring back: 98,000 manufacturing jobs gone since the tariffs hit
Read more . . . →The promise was simple: slap tariffs on everything, factories come back, workers win. Trump said it enough times it started to sound like gravity. Twelve months in, the U.S. has shed 98,000 manufacturing jobs. Not some. Ninety-eight thousand. Since April’s tariff escalation alone, 72,000 more. The factories aren’t roaring back. The workers are just gone. He just announced 25% tariffs on EU cars and trucks. More factories coming, supposedly. Except supply chain managers surveyed by CNBC are now reporting double the layoffs compared to last year — 32% reporting job cuts, up from 16% in April. The tariffs didn’t bring...
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1 min read
3,000 Rallies Today Because the Tariff Revolution Was a Scam
Read more . . . →Three thousand May Day rallies across the country today. Five hundred labor unions marching. The National Education Association — three million members — calling a national walkout. The slogan is “Workers Over Billionaires,” which is apparently still a controversial position in 2026. Trump said tariffs would bring the factories “roaring back.” A year later, 100,000 manufacturing jobs are gone. A Kearney report confirmed the tariffs didn’t drive reshoring or reduce import dependence. What they did was hand every American household a $1,500 tax bill — the largest tariff increase as a share of GDP since 1993. The factories didn’t come...
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1 min read
"Tariff Relief" Means Pack Up Your Workers and Leave
Read more . . . →Trump dropped his “tariff relief” offer to Canadian steel companies yesterday: move your production to the US or keep paying 50%. The United Steelworkers — the union representing the people actually doing the work in Hamilton, Sault Ste. Marie, and across the country — called it blackmail and extortion. Not metaphorically. That’s the actual terminology for “relocate everything or face consequences.” They chose a precise word and they meant it. The workers on those lines are already being laid off under the current tariff regime. Trump’s offer doesn’t save them — it gives their employers an offramp to close up...
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1 min read
Cleveland-Cliffs Cuts Another 950 — Seventh Straight Losing Quarter
Read more . . . →Cleveland-Cliffs is shutting mills in Pennsylvania and Illinois and putting 950 more steelworkers on the street at the end of June. That’s on top of the 1,200 they already cut in March. Seventh straight losing quarter, $225 million torched last quarter alone, and CEO Lourenco Goncalves — the guy who spent 2025 on cable news cheerleading Trump’s steel tariffs as the savior of American industry — wants you to know that next quarter is going to be great. Trust him. Here’s the thing the brain trust never figured out: tariffs only save steel if someone still buys the steel. Cars...
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1 min read
Whirlpool Begged for the Tariffs. It's Still Shipping Jobs to Mexico.
Read more . . . →Whirlpool wrote the tariff playbook. The company lobbied Washington for appliance duties, praised them at every press event, and publicly backed Trump’s “Liberation Day” schedule because — on paper — it was supposed to kneecap LG and Samsung. Turns out the America First poster child just laid off 341 workers at its Amana, Iowa plant this spring, a plant that had 3,000 people in it five years ago. Union reps say it could be down to 500 by year’s end. Where’s the work going? Mexico. Whirlpool poured over a billion dollars into Mexican facilities and tripled its workforce south of...
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1 min read
Tariff Refunds Are Coming. You're Not Getting a Dime.
Read more . . . →The government is about to start handing out tariff refunds on April 20th. Billions flowing back to the companies that “passed the costs on to consumers” — their words, not mine. So naturally those savings are coming back to us too, right? Of course not. CNBC surveyed a bunch of CFOs and not a single one plans to share the refund money with customers. Zero. Every penny stays at the top. This is the grift working exactly as designed. Trump slaps tariffs on everything, prices go up, companies jack their margins and blame “the tariffs,” and when the refunds come...
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