#tariffs
12 entries with this tag
At His Half-Empty Dallas Convention, Trump Promised to Send Every Adult American Citizen a $5,000 "Dividend" — but Only If Republicans Win Both the House and the Senate in November: a Trillion-Dollar-Plus Offer With No Funding Plan, Framed as an Explicit "Elect My Party and I'll Pay You," From the Same President Whose Earlier $2,000 "Tariff Dividend" Checks Were Promised and Never Arrived
On September 9, 2026, in his keynote at the Republican midterm convention in Dallas, Trump promised to pay every adult U.S. citizen a $5,000 "dividend" — on the express condition that Republicans win both the House and the Senate in November. His words: "If the Republicans win the House of Representatives and the United States Senate, both of them ... I will issue a dividend to every adult citizen in the United States of America for $5,000." He branded it the "Trump dividend" and added a caveat that the money must be spent domestically, "not in other nations such as Canada, Germany or China." The offer drew immediate accusations that it amounts to a bribe: a president dangling a cash payment to the entire electorate, contingent on his party winning the election. Two facts make it worse. First, it is almost certainly undeliverable as described — economists put the cost at over $1.2 trillion, there is no funding mechanism, and any such payout would require congressional approval that even Republicans have been reluctant to give. Second, Trump has done this before and not delivered: his 2025 promise of $2,000 "tariff dividend" checks by mid-2026 never materialized, with prediction markets ultimately giving it about a 3% chance. The $5,000 version is more than twice as large, funded by nothing more specific than "our tremendous economic success" — a success contradicted by the record gas prices, trade war, and inflation documented across this archive. It is a promise engineered to move votes, unlikely to be kept, offered to a half-empty arena the party's own candidates avoided.
Reacting to a Strong Jobs Report by Demanding the Opposite of What It Called For, Trump Threatened to Halt U.S. Trade With Every Country It Runs a Deficit Against — Most of Its Major Partners — Unless the Federal Reserve Cuts Interest Rates: an Act of Economic Hostage-Taking Economists Likened to the Protectionism That Deepened the Great Depression, and That One Analyst Said Could Make the Depression "Look Like a Walk in the Park"
On September 4, 2026 — hours after a stronger-than-expected jobs report showed employers added about 162,000 jobs in August, nearly triple what economists forecast, with unemployment holding at 4.1% — Trump posted an ultimatum on Truth Social: "LOWER THE RATE OR I'LL STOP TRADING WITH COUNTRIES WITH WHICH WE HAVE A DEFICIT." He was threatening to halt U.S. trade with every nation the country runs a goods deficit against — which is most of its major trading partners, from China to the European Union to Mexico — unless the Federal Reserve cuts interest rates, and he doubled down when challenged. The threat is reckless on every axis. It reacts to good economic news by demanding an emergency measure (rate cuts) that a strong economy does not call for. It attempts to extort an independent central bank into serving the president's political timetable — the same assault on Fed independence documented elsewhere in this archive. And the act itself, a broad trade cutoff, is what economists have spent a century warning against: more than 1,100 of them, including Nobel laureates, have signed a letter against his tariff approach that quotes directly from the 1930 warning against the Smoot-Hawley protectionism that helped turn a downturn into the Great Depression, while banks like Scotiabank model his measures pushing trade costs to "Great Depression levels." As one analyst put it, a full halt could make the Great Depression "look like a walk in the park." Whether Trump carries it out or not, a president threatening to detonate the global trading system to bully the Fed is the kind of statement that moves markets and reveals a method.
His Trade War With Canada Collapsing and His Talk of Annexing It as the "51st State" Going Nowhere, Trump Signed an Executive Order Renaming Lake Ontario — a Great Lake the United States Shares With Canada, Bearing a 400-Year-Old Indigenous Wendat Name That Predates Both Countries — to "Lake America," a Decree That Changes Nothing but a U.S. Federal Database and Which Canada Answered in Four Words: "Then, Now and Always"
On August 27, 2026, six days after trade talks with Canada collapsed and he slapped 50% tariffs on some $20 billion of Canadian goods, Trump signed an executive order renaming Lake Ontario — one of the Great Lakes, shared along its entire length by the United States and Canada — to "Lake America," effective "immediately." The order directs Interior Secretary Doug Burgum to update the U.S. Geographic Names Information System so that "the lake once known as Lake Ontario will, from this day forward, be known as Lake America." It is the second time Trump has renamed an international body of water for his own country, after decreeing the Gulf of Mexico the "Gulf of America." The trouble is that a president can rename a shared lake only in his own government's databases; he cannot rename it in Canada, which owns the other shore, or anywhere else on Earth. Lake Ontario's name is more than four centuries old, derived from the Wendat word "Ontari'io" — "the lake is beautiful, the lake is big" — predating both the U.S. Declaration of Independence and the Canadian Confederation. Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney answered that his country will call it Lake Ontario "then, now and always"; Ontario Premier Doug Ford agreed. As CNN dryly put it, Trump couldn't make Canada the 51st state, so he settled for renaming its lake. It is statecraft as tantrum: unable to win the trade fight or the annexation fantasy, he reached for the one thing he could do with a pen — erase a neighbor's name from an American spreadsheet and call it a victory.
Trump Announced a 50% Tariff on Canada as Punishment for Wildfire Smoke Drifting Across the Border — Blaming Canada for "Invading" America With "Filthy, Polluted, and Unhealthy Air" — and the Plan Includes a 50% Tariff on the Canadian Firefighting Aircraft the U.S. Relies On to Fight Its Own Wildfires
On July 18, 2026, with more than 900 wildfires burning across Canada, President Trump announced that the United States would hit Canada with a 50% tariff — as punishment for the smoke drifting south. He accused Canada of failing to maintain its forests and declared that the U.S. was being "invaded by filthy, polluted, and unhealthy air," saying the "pollution cost" must be added to the tariffs Canada already pays. There are two problems with tariffing a country over smoke. The first is that smoke is not a traded good; it is the product of a hotter, drier climate the administration denies exists, and it crosses the border on the wind regardless of any tariff schedule. The second is worse: the administration's plan includes a 50% tariff on — and potential decertification of — the Canadian-made aircraft that the United States itself depends on to fight wildfires. The specialized water-bombers that Canada builds are contracted by U.S. states and federal agencies precisely because America does not have enough of its own. Making those planes too expensive to keep under contract would degrade U.S. wildfire response — meaning Trump's answer to Canadian wildfire smoke is a policy that would leave America less able to fight the fires, Canadian and American alike, that produce it. It is a tariff on the weather, backed by a tariff on the firefighters.
Trump's Media Company — Which He Owns Nearly 60% Of — Will Sell Wall Street a Millisecond Head Start on His Own Market-Moving Truth Social Posts for Up to $100,000 a Month, Letting High-Frequency Traders Trade on Presidential Announcements Before the Public Even Sees Them
Trump Media & Technology Group unveiled "Truth API," a paid, licensed data feed that gives banks and high-frequency trading firms "the fastest" access to posts from the 10 most influential Truth Social accounts — Trump's being "by far the most prominent" — delivering them to paying clients up to a thousandth of a second before the public gets them. The fee runs up to $100,000 per month, or $60,000 a month on a three-year plan. It launches August 1, 2026, and the company says it has already signed up customers, including high-frequency trading firms and financial news organizations. The value is obvious and specific: Trump's posts routinely move markets. On April 2, 2025, his "Liberation Day" tariff post helped send stocks down nearly 5%; days later, "THIS IS A GREAT TIME TO BUY!!!" — announcing a 90-day tariff pause — sent them up 9.5%, adding $4 trillion to the S&P 500; his June 2025 "THE CEASEFIRE IS NOW IN EFFECT" post instantly moved oil. Selling a head start on those announcements to the fastest traders is, in effect, monetizing advance access to U.S. government policy. Ordinary conflict-of-interest law would bar a federal official from owning a company that profits off his office — but the president and vice president are explicitly exempt from that provision, and Trump owns roughly 60% of Trump Media (a stake worth about $2 billion on paper, held in a revocable trust controlled by Donald Trump Jr.). Ethics experts were blunt. Kathleen Clark of Washington University: "He's selling expedited, privileged access to information about what he is doing as president... yet more brazen corruption, an improper exploitation of government power to enrich himself." The Project on Government Oversight's Dylan Hedtler-Gaudette: "It's odious, selling access to the highest bidders." The move comes as Trump Media flails — DJT stock is down roughly 70% since he took office, closing around $9.66 against a pre-inauguration price near $40, with losses topping $1 billion — making the one asset that still reliably prints money the presidency itself.
Trump Posts "MY REAL POLL NUMBERS ARE THE HIGHEST THEY HAVE EVER BEEN" on the Same Day His Approval Hit a Record Low — Worse Than His Post-January 6th Numbers
On the morning of June 24, 2026, Trump posted to Truth Social: "MY REAL POLL NUMBERS ARE THE HIGHEST THEY HAVE EVER BEEN. THANK YOU!!! President DJT." He cited no poll. The actual polling, released the same week, showed the opposite: a Reuters/Ipsos survey put his approval at 34% (64% disapprove); Economist/YouGov had him at 39% (58% disapprove); American Research Group found a new low of 30%; and Marist found just one-third approve of his handling of the economy, his worst ever in that poll. The RealClearPolitics average for May 29–June 23 was 40.4% approve / 57.7% disapprove — lower than the 41.1% he averaged during his final ten days in office at the end of his first term, in the aftermath of the January 6th Capitol riot. The only favorable number was a single outlier Daily Mail poll at 47%. The decline tracks almost perfectly with economic anxiety over tariff-driven price increases, five months before the November midterms. It is at least the second time Trump has declared "highest ever" poll numbers without evidence — he made the same claim in November 2025.
Vance Crashes Supreme Court Dinner Uninvited — Chief Justice Roberts Ignores Him Completely
JD Vance showed up uninvited to a private dinner hosted by Chief Justice Roberts for his former law clerks, tagging along as a plus-one with his wife Usha. Roberts didn't give Vance special seating, didn't mention him in his remarks, and treated the Vice President of the United States as a forgettable guest. This from the man who called Roberts "profoundly wrong" for believing in checks on executive power — while Trump calls the justices "lap dogs" and "disloyal" and is trying to intimidate the court ahead of major rulings.
3,700 Trades in 3 Months: Trump's Financial Disclosure Reveals Astonishing Trading Activity as He Props and Drops Companies
Trump's financial disclosure to the Office of Government Ethics revealed 3,642 securities transactions in Q1 2026 — roughly 60 trades per trading day, valued at $220M–$750M. He's buying and selling Nvidia, Microsoft, Amazon, Meta, Boeing, and dozens more — the same companies whose stock prices move when he announces tariffs, approves chip deals, or shifts policy. Wall Street insiders called the volume "astonishing."
"I'll Remember Them": Trump Pressures Companies Not to Claim $175 Billion in Tariff Refunds the Supreme Court Says They're Owed
After the Supreme Court struck down Trump's IEEPA tariffs as unconstitutional (6–3), companies are owed up to $175 billion in refunds. Trump is now publicly pressuring them not to claim the money: calling companies that don't seek refunds "brilliant" and warning "I'll remember them." The president is using implicit threats to discourage businesses from exercising a legal right affirmed by the Supreme Court.
Trump Now Blockades the Strait He Threatened to End a Civilization to Reopen
After peace talks collapsed, Trump ordered a full U.S. Navy blockade of the Strait of Hormuz — "any and all ships" in either direction. Iran had been letting tankers through for a $2M toll. Trump spent weeks threatening to end Iran's civilization over the strait's partial closure. Now the U.S. is closing it itself.
Supreme Court Strikes Down IEEPA Tariffs 6-3
The Supreme Court ruled 6-3 that Trump lacked authority to impose tariffs under IEEPA, with Chief Justice Roberts writing he lacked "peacetime authority" to tax. Over $130 billion had already been collected.
Tariff Trade War Economic Damage
Trump's tariffs constituted the largest U.S. tax increase as a percentage of GDP since 1993, costing average households $1,500/year. The U.S. lost the equivalent of 2,800 factories. The Supreme Court ruled his tariff authority was unauthorized.