Trump Confesses He Will Bankrupt the Country Unless SCOTUS Lets Him Break the Law
It’s my opinion that Solicitor General John Sauer succeeds because of the political pressure he brings to bear on Justices.
That was my immediate impression upon listening to the hearing in Trump v. US. Sauer was arguing a clearly unconstitutional stance, adopting arguments (in a case where Trump nearly got his Vice President killed) that the President could order SEAL Team 6 to kill his adversaries, and (having not reviewed the actual evidence) the right wing judges accepted his premise that this prosecution truly represented a case of meanie Democrats treating Trump badly under the law.
And based on that, the right wing justices wrote an opinion that gave themselves a preemptive veto over whether a former President could be prosecuted, effectively preventing meanie Democrats from upholding the law.
That’s what I think happened with SCOTUS’ abuse of the emergency docket to both overturn nationwide stays and to rubber stamp unconstitutional deportion practices. With their first ruling on April 7 in JGG, SCOTUS sent a mild rebuke to Stephen Miller’s bid to deport wide swaths of Venezuelans to a concentration camp under the Alien Enemies Act based on their tattoos: the ACLU couldn’t get a nationwide injunction against the practice under the Administrative Procedures Act, but each detainee could get a habeas review. Based on that precedent, the Trump Administration got their biggest slapdown of the term in AARP, where Justices intervened on Easter Saturday to make the government turn around buses rushing to deport more men under the Alien Enemies Act. In between the two, SCOTUS ruled that the government should describe what steps it had taken to return Kilmar Abrego Garcia after deporting him illegally.
None of these were good rulings, holding that Miller’s dragnet was wildly illegal. Rather, they were mild rebukes to Miller and tactical rebukes to courts. But then Sauer was confirmed on April 3 (before these rulings but after they were appealed) and Miller and Trump’s propaganda campaign wailing about nationwide injunctions and judicial coups ratcheted up. And against a background of SCOTUS rubber stamping any and all termination orders — with the single exception of the Fed Chair — SCOTUS engaged in exceedingly outrageous action in DVD, serially overriding a District Court’s effort to, one, enforce his orders and, two, prevent the government from deporting men to regimes like South Sudan pending a constitutional review. All this was done with tactical orders building off SCOTUS’ fondness for allowing the President to fire whoever he wants (except the Fed Chair), which itself was used as precedent to allow Trump to override due process for deportees until the courts could consider the legal niceties of it all.
Steve Vladeck is, of course, the source to read on the law of Emergency Docket. The law sucks. But I argue that the law sucks because SCOTUS is not responding to the law. They’re responding to Miller’s shrieks, John Sauer’s neat packaging up of those shrieks, and how both mirror in the Fox News bubble most if not all of these right wing Justices pickle in.
Which is what Trump is planning on in VOS Selections, the tariff case in which both right and left are trying to overturn Trump’s arbitrary illegal trade war. As I keep noting, this case is unique among all challenges to Trump’s unlawful power grabs, because conservative legal luminaries and NGOs like CATO, AEI, and the Chamber of Commerce have joined Democratic states in opposing the power grab. If SCOTUS will ever start reining Trump it, it is likely to be this case.
Back on May 28, the Court of International Trade ruled for the plaintiffs (along with small businesses like wine importer VOS Selections, a bunch of Democratic states), finding that IEEPA, the emergency authority Trump had invoked to impose or threaten tariffs, didn’t give him that authority.
After the hearing but before the court issued its ruling, DOJ submitted a bunch of declarations from Trump’s top officials (which because of the timing were never tested) claiming that if they lost the stick of IEEPA, it would lead other countries to stop negotiating on trade deals. Then, after the ruling, DOJ asked for a stay, relying on the argument in those declarations. The motion for a stay said that the plaintiffs — again, the lead plaintiff is a wine importer — would not be harmed by the period of uncertainty as this got litigated because if plaintiffs won, the government would simply pay them back.
For any plaintiff who is an importer, even if a stay is entered and we do not prevail on appeal, plaintiffs will assuredly receive payment on their refund with interest. “[T]here is virtually no risk” to any importer that they “would not be made whole” should they prevail on appeal. See Sunpreme Inc. v. United States, 2017 WL 65421, at *5 (Ct. Int’l Trade Jan. 5, 2017). The most “harm” that could incur would be a delay in collecting on deposits. This harm is, by definition, not irreparable. See Hughes Network Sys., Inc. v. InterDigital Commc’ns Corp., 17 F.3d 691, 694 (4th Cir. 1994). Plaintiffs will not lose their entitlement to refund, plus interest, if the judgment is stayed, and they are guaranteed payment by defendants should the Court’s decision be upheld.
Immediately after the CIT order, DOJ asked the Circuit Court of Appeals for a stay, playing really hard on how without a stay Trump wouldn’t have a stick with which to negotiate his trade war.
As members of the President’s Cabinet have attested, the CIT’s order would irreparably harm the economic and national security of the United States. The Secretary of Commerce explained that the injunction “would undermine the United States-United Kingdom trade deal that was negotiated in reliance on the President’s emergency tariff authority,” plus the recent “China trade agreement,” and “would jeopardize the dozens of similar arrangements with foreign-trading partners that” are being negotiated. A76. “Each of these negotiations,” the declaration explained, “is premised on the credible threat of enforcement of the IEEPA tariffs,” and the injunction could compromise that threat, so that “foreign counterparts will have reduced incentives to reach meaningful agreements[].” Id. That could “leave the American people exposed to predatory economic practices by foreign actors[] and threaten national security.”
Again, the government assured the court that plaintiffs — and everyone else who had paid illegal tariffs — would get paid back: “the government will issue refunds to plaintiffs, including any postjudgment interest that accrues.”
The small business importers responded by describing all the reconstitution of markets that would happen during the appeal, but also describing the problem with permitting the President to continue to use illegal leverage during a period of a stay.
The President has legitimate means of conducting foreign policy; imposing illegal tariffs is not one of them. The President cannot act illegally as a matter of policy convenience, be ordered to stop, and then plead prior reliance on his illegal acts. If Defendants’ arguments were adopted, an injunction barring virtually any illegal action could be stayed by virtue of claiming that the illegality might create useful leverage: If the President illegally detained innocent people without due process, he could argue for a stay of an injunction against that action on the ground that detention could be useful leverage against the innocent detainees or their families, and thereby advance some claimed U.S. foreign policy or national security interests.
On June 10, the Circuit Court of Appeals granted that stay without engaging in the relative harm to either side, instead pointing to Wilcox, one of two SCOTUS shadow docket rulings about the President’s authority to fire people which has since undermined stays generally.
Days before the hearing, Trump rushed out a bunch of things called trade “deals,” which were not written down and about which both sides continue to argue. That includes a “deal” with the EU, Pakistan, and Korea. And on July 31, having not made the 90 deals supposedly leveraged with the stay, Trump simply set new tariffs, Liberation Day Two Point Oh.
On July 31 (the same day as those new tariffs), the full Circuit Court of Appeals heard the appeal. I actually think the judges were far more split than others did (those judges more favorable to the government spoke up later in the hearing), but it was really hard for me to judge given that most judges on the Circuit participated. This is like a mini-Supreme Court ruling before the big one. Still, the conventional wisdom is, I think, that the Circuit will rule against Trump.
Even before that, though, Trump started working the refs.
Even before the hearing, he claimed that America was dead a year ago but was getting rich off tariffs.
A week after the hearing, boasting that the tariffs-not-deals would go into effect that night, Trump said only a “radical left” court could stop him.
Days later he lied about how much money tariffs were bringing in (here’s the reality), and claimed that if a “radical left court” ruled against him, it — not the tariffs — would cause a Great Depression.
Yesterday, he lied that “consumers aren’t even paying these tariffs” (they’re paying about a fifth of them), then lashed out at a Goldman economist who said that would soon change.
Then John Sauer got into the batshittery.
Monday, about the same number of days after the Circuit Court hearing as it was when DOJ submitted the declarations demanding leverage to negotiate deals they ultimately never negotiated, this letter was submitted under Sauer’s name (but not on DOJ stationery). It cited the July 27 EU deal, announced before the Circuit Court hearing, as well as others announced still earlier than that, as an additional authority (which is normally a new Court ruling that might impact a pending one). Most of it derives directly from Trump’s Truth Social bullshit (marked in brackets below), including the President’s claims that America was a shithole country a year ago and that if a court overturns the tariffs, it (and not the underlying illegal actions) will cause a Great Depression. But it presents these in such a way that neither DOJ’s lawyers nor Trump himself can be held accountable to the court for the obvious lies.
[The President believes that our country would not be able to pay back the trillions of dollars that other countries have already committed to pay, which could lead to financial ruin.] Other tariff authorities that the President could potentially use are short-term, not nearly as powerful, and would render America captive to the abuses that it has endured from far more aggressive countries.
There is no substitute for the tariffs and deals that President Trump has made. [One year ago, the United States was a dead country, and now, because of the trillions of dollars being paid by countries that have so badly abused us, America is a strong, financially viable, and respected country again.] If the United States were forced to pay back the trillions of dollars committed to us, America could go from strength to failure the moment such an incorrect decision took effect.
These deals for trillions of dollars have been reached, and other countries have committed to pay massive sums of money. [If the United States were forced to unwind these historic agreements, the President believes that a forced dissolution of the agreements could lead to a 1929-style result. In such a scenario, people would be forced from their homes, millions of jobs would be eliminated, hard-working Americans would lose their savings, and even Social Security and Medicare could be threatened. In short, the economic consequences would be ruinous, instead of unprecedented success.]
Just about the only claim from anyone but Trump is that, “There is no substitute for the tariffs and deals that President Trump has mad,” which was made in the underlying declarations (and so is not a new authority either).
This is Presidential social media tantrum, presented as legal authority.
The small business plaintiffs responded by noting that the government already said this, therefore it doesn’t count as a new authority, reiterating the harm of any stay, and debunking the claim — the only one that comes from DOJ lawyers — that there is “no substitute” for illegal tariffs, such as going to Congress.
If the Court is inclined to consider the substance of the letter, there is no basis for its declaration that there is “no substitute” for “the tariffs and deals that President Trump has made.” Even without IEEPA, the President can obtain ex ante authority to enter into trade agreements, see 19 U.S.C. § 4202(a), or submit agreements for congressional approval, including via fast-track procedures, as prior presidents have done, see 19 U.S.C. § 4501 (implementing the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement).
Scott Bessent gave up the game the other day with Larry Kudlow (around 13:00). When Kudlow, who predictably allowed Bessent to spin a bunch of other bullshit unchallenged, suggested that if the Circuit Court rules against the government, then Trump has other ways of putting together the magical pony economic plan that Bessent had laid out in the interview.
Kudlow: If the tariff court wins on appeal, you’ve got other ways to put this trade and tariff policy together?
Bessent: Larry, good framing here would be if the tariff court rules against us, we will immediately — it will immediately be enjoined, so the tariffs will likely continue. Then it will go to the Supreme Court in October, then we would expect a ruling in January. But I tell you, Larry, the amount of money that’s coming in here, I think the more deals we’ve done, the more money coming in, it gets harder and harder for SCOTUS to rule against us.
As noted, this question — are there other legal ways to do this? — is the only one in Sauer’s letter that doesn’t derive directly from a Trump Truth Social post.
Bessent dodged the question and instead said that if the tariffs are ruled illegal, then they will just draw things out — just like Sauer did with Trump’s criminal case — until the cost of overturning the tariffs would be too big an ask for SCOTUS.
That is, they’re not even claiming any of this is legal.
They’re just boasting that if they can claim the US is paying its bills through inflated claims of tariff revenues, then the Roberts Court won’t dare uphold the law, for fear of being held accountable for the financial ruin Trump is rushing us towards.
And, as batshit as that Sauer letter is, they might well be right.
Update: I’ve annotated the letter.
Atop everything else: what odds the unmarried-until-middle-age-and-subsequently-childless Roberts and Kavanaugh are susceptible to some form of Trumpian blackmail?
This is kind of a reach, with Roberts marrying at 41 and adopting two kids, and Kavanaugh marrying at 39 and having two kids. No idea what anybody would have on Roberts but Kavanaugh has enough between his drinking, his alleged sexual assault of C. Blasey Ford, and his as-yet-unexplained debt.
In essence, the remedy is worse than the problem– the problem created by Trump.
We may soon learn from SCOTUS the exact price for checks and balances = democracy.
If they rule against the tariffs they have to be paid back. Another couple of hundred billion $ the Treasury has to borrow. That’s a big part of the extortion racket Bessent is running on the SC. That he came right out and described it all is an hilarious snapshot of our age. It will be sweet if it gets put into the pleadings or at least the supporting briefs if it gets to the SC
Still no doubt about it this is a toughy for Roberts and the gang.
My comment was held “in moderation” and ultimately not posted. May I know what the issue was?
[Moderator’s note: I have checked Pending, Spam, and Trash folders – there is no comment from you in any of them so I assume the comment you are complaining about is the one with time stamp 9:19 am ET today. We do not have full-time 7/24/365 staff here waiting to turnover comments as soon as they hit auto-moderation. If your comment triggered auto-moderation, we ask for your patience until a human can clear it. Thank you. /~Rayne]
Excellent post. It’s interesting in the article that you linked to above about “how much money tariffs were bringing in,” there was not a single mention among all their glee about how much money the tariffs were raising of who is actually paying these taxes. Hint: It’s not other countries.
And always the caveat that the sums were before taking economic effects into account. In other words, the people making the projections know they are BS because they have explicitly excluded the complication of trying to figure out how much the higher prices will reduce turnover – i.e. tariffs slowing down the economy in the US and everywhere else in the world.
“Error-riddled Truth” as a reasonable warning on Presidential “Truths” is truly a signpost for our era.
Thank you for all of this, as always.
If I am reading this right, the Government is arguing both, that if it loses, ” plaintiffs will assuredly receive payment on their refund with interest”.
And also, “[ The President believes that our country would not be able to pay back the trillions of dollars that other countries have already committed to pay, which could lead to financial ruin.] “.
Those statements seem to clash.
And consumers? How will we get refunds?
I can see the letter from the Treasury Department now . . .
The expansion of the above to cover every other product subject to these tariffs is left as an exercise for the student.
Those other countries will be paying tariffs on their imports, not on their exports to the US.
The Felon Guy still insists that exporters pay tariffs.
It seems really strange that SAUER submitted that letter NOT on DOJ stationery.
Here’s a September 29, 2023 letter [to SCOTUS]
from a REAL Solicitor General ON REAL Solicitor General stationery:
https://www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/23/23-5572/284037/20231003135707020_Extension%20Letter%2023-5572.pdf
[From:
Fischer v. United States https://www.scotusblog.com/cases/case-files/fischer-v-united-states/ ]
Yup. Here’s one signed by Sauer.
So…maybe what makes the difference is the recipient.
[ie: SCOTUS as opposed to some “Radical Left Court”]
And, THANKS for the Update annotating that letter. LOL!
Maybe it’s a sign that DOJ doesn’t recognize the jurisdiction of the court because the US flag has a fringe, signifying that it’s a court of maritime jurisdiction? /snark
Or it is evidence that Sauer does not have DOJ letterhead at hand because he is working from home, despite the government order for everyone to work from their offices.
Question for a lawyer: Are there any ‘tariff deals’?
What is the legal existence of these imposts? Especially the ones ‘completed’ by the sending of a letter to which the recipient nation did not respond?
I suppose that if the fees are collected, there is some presumption of the existence of a legal foundation, but what is it?
I think “are there deals” its a better question for an economist, and Krugman for one (his wheelhouse is international trade) says
1) nothing is written down, these are verbal agreements on a framework for a “deal”
2) a lot of what Trump claims are in the deals is illegal and/or impossible i.e. his claim the EU will create a huge “investment” slush fund for him to use at his discretion.
So, the ‘concept’ of a deal. Right.
I think it would be a mistake to think this Supreme Court majority has any intent other than to legally rationalize Trump’s actions. Trump and the majority share the same social vision and, acting together, have vast power to achieve it. This is one of their moments of glory.
i think it would be a mistake to ignore the part of this post where I explain why this case is different.
Trump is using two norms against his opponents.
One: the recent long history of the US President and the Executive branch is that when it expresses an opinion, that opinion has almost invariably been backed by thorough factual analysis. Past presidents valued and guarded the trustworthiness of the Presidency. Many still treat as it trustworthy. Today, this norm is out the window. Trump gladly these treats believers as suckers and losers.
Two: In normal times Presidential legal filings are made on behalf of the Office of the President, not the individual who is President. The office of the President carries a weightiness tied to its past and its future. Though courts will afford these filings such consideration, Trump does not warrant them. This norm is also out the window. His filings are rooted in the personal nature of the his Presidency. If courts give him more consideration than he’s earned, he’s played them for suckers and losers yet again.
So DOJ is arguing:
1. There is no harm: because we can pay back the tariffs to the plaintiffs
2. There is harm: we have to harm the plaintiffs because paying back the tariffs would harm the economy
3. He who has the power to destroy the spice controls the universe
What I don’t understand is what the courts do with the contradiction between 1 & 2. Don’t judges get mad when lawyers try to have their cake and eat it too?
Well said!
That said, I think the Sauer letter is addressed to SCOTUS, not the Circuit Court.
In spite of whom he says it is addressed to obviously.
Private Bone Spurs may be looking for a promotion to Corporal Bone Spurs, as this is sort of updating that old Vietnam quote to read “It became necessary to destroy the economy in order to save it.”
Lawyers are expressly allowed to make contradictory arguments, “to argue in the alternative.” The arrangement, though, is built on alternate versions of the same reality. For example, “”My client didn’t do it. If he did do it, he had legal justification for it.”
Sauer’s arguments, though, come from different realities:”If you make us follow the law, Supreme Court, YOU will bankrupt both the country and the President’s power.” Otoh, he’s saying, ” Sure, we can easily repay illegally collected tariffs, but we can’t make change that small.”
If the courts enforce the law, as Peterr said above, Trump will predictably make the refund process as slow, hard, and Kafkaesque as possible, in order to keep as much of the illegally collected tariffs as possible.
How do courts resolve the conflict? Ordinarily, she who has the better argument, which most closely matches the law and the facts, wins. As Marcy indicates, though, with Trump, the Supreme Court majority’s decisions are entirely political.
Yes, the bullet points are to the point.
There is one perplexing question. Where are the tariffs going? Into a White House bank account? How will they be used? Will they be used?
Your pen name is perplexing. Tariffs are collected by Customs and remitted to the US Treasury. A very short Internet search would tell you that.
Was at my local bike shop yesterday. I asked if tariffs had kicked in and they said they’ve had to raise bike prices 15-20%.
Yes. My maybe not so humble take is that the Goldman report and Trump’s response is a straw man. Consumers are already paying more than 100 percent of the tariffs. Not only are the tariffs passed onto consumers but the tariffs increase the costs of doing business. What is the multiplier effect on GDP of taxing consumers 300 plus billion a year?
Just GOP fake news like the GOP considering cutting checks so consumers are made whole.
There be profit in chaos, destruction and death.
Car insurance will go up, because so many parts are imported.
https://www.sfgate.com/california/article/why-california-car-insurance-rates-climb-2025-20814063.php
What happens when people can’t afford insurance on their cars, but still have to drive?
Car and auto insurance is already way up. My homeowner premiums have increased as much as 40% in one year. Only gonna get worse.
Matt Foley says:
August 13, 2025 at 1:54 pm
California changed its requirements at the start of the year – my car insurance went up a lot. This is for next year…
The administration says that committments not yet completed will have to be paid for. Wimpey Wellington would always gladly pay next Tuesday for a hamburger today.
I still want some reporter to bring the receipts to a press conference with the president (or at least the press secretary) and ask:
American company A paid $X in import taxes or tariffs in July, American importer B paid $Y in import taxes, and American company C paid $Z in import taxes in July. Why did these American companies pay these taxes when you (the President) said that other countries are paying the tariffs?
Presumably all moneys collected as tariffs should be sequestered in an escrow account pending the final conclusion of this litigation. That way, it won’t be frittered away on whatever projects POTUS and his team dream up, and we won’t be exposed to ruin if they lose their really weak case. An easy thing for SCOTUS to order as soon as the inevitable appeal reaches them. Which is not to say that it will happen.
Or, the tariffs can put in abeyance until there is a final legal answer.
But he has a ballroom to pay for .
He claims donors will pay for all that. (His estimate of the price has doubled since he first proposed it. His size requirement may have multiplied, also. I mean, the entire WH is like 6K square feet.)
The total current square footage of the whole WH is about 50,000 feet. Trump’s original proposal for his new East Wing Versailles ballroom is about 90,000 sq. ft. So the total new square footage would be 140,000, minus the size of the current East Wing.
90,000 is over 2 acres. That’s enough for 10 single homes with yard on my street.
earlofhuntingdon says:
August 13, 2025 at 7:53 pm
Thanks for correcting my bad information!
And yeah, that “ballroom” is really way too big for the location. He can put it at Bedminster or Mar-al-Ego, no problem. The WH is NOT his to fck up.
But it is his to grift from. The “ballroom” may come to function more as a White House “Events Center” with a rotating list of “brought to you by” sponsors and pricey admission fees.
Typo
“There is no substitute for the tariffs and deals that President Trump has mad,”
Mad->made
Although he is mad.
“So, he’s only going to sell Putin *some* of Alaska? “ per Kevin M. Kruise on Bluesky
“Trump may offer Putin minerals access in exchange for peace, Telegraph reports“
https://kyivindependent.com/trump-may-offer-putin-minerals-access-in-ukraine-in-exchange-for-peace-telegraph-reports/