Karoline Leavitt Says American Businesses Should Have No Recourse When Trump Mood Swings Destroy Their Businesses
Karoline Leavitt went on a rant today, attacking the three judges (one Reagan appointee, one Obama appointee, and a Trump appointee) who ruled that Donald Trump cannot usurp Congress’ authority to levy tariffs. (The Federal Circuit Court of Appeals issued an emergency en banc stay of the order.)
The courts should have no role here. There is a troubling and dangerous trend of unelected judges inserting themselves into the Presidential decision-making process. America cannot function if President Trump — or any other president, for that matter — has their sensitive diplomatic or trade negotiations railroaded by activist judges. President Trump is in the process of rebalancing America’s trade agreements with the entire world, bringing tens of billions of dollars in tariff revenues to our country and finally ending the United States of America from being ripped off. These judges are threatening to undermine the credibility of the United States on the world stage.
Let’s ignore, for the moment, Leavitt’s typically inflammatory rhetoric.
Let’s consider her premise.
Leavitt is saying that America’s small businesses should have no recourse if Trump unlawfully destroys their business.
One of the five plaintiffs in the lawsuit, Terry Cycling’s Nikolaus Holm, which sells women’s cycling clothing, described in a filing submitted on April 10 that;
- His company had already paid $25,000 in unplanned tariffs
- Tariffs may cost the company $250,000 by the end of 2025
- If the tariffs in effect on April 10 stayed in place, they would have to pay $1.2 million in tariffs in 2026
- It had already raised prices by up to 30% to pay for the tariffs
“Tariffs will become the single largest line item operating expense on Terry Cycling’s Profit & Loss Statement,” Holm described. “It would be larger than payroll.”
In Karoline Leavitt’s world, small business owners like Holm should have absolutely no recourse if Trump’s mood swings and unlawful usurpation of Congress’ power destroys their business.
Update: DC Judge Rudolph Contreras also threw out Trump’s tariffs (but stayed the injunction for 14 days).
How he found he had jurisdiction — after the Court of International Trade had already ruled; Contreras basically said they did not have jurisdiction, and how he used their prior ruling to dismiss Trump’s inflammatory claims of harm — are matters of some interest.
But for the purposes of this post, here’s how Contreras described the harm that Trump’s usurpation of Congress’ duties had done to the two family-owned toy companies that sued.
They cannot offset the highest IEEPA tariffs without raising prices 70 percent or more “as a matter of pure survival,” Woldenberg Decl. ¶ 9; their customers have already canceled over $1 million in orders, id. ¶ 10; and they face an immediate 40 or 50 percent decline in sales, year-over-year, id. ¶ 11. The companies “cannot possibly absorb the costs of the increased tariffs” without “changing [their] pricing radically.” Id. ¶¶ 6, 14. But they cannot pass price increases onto their customers without selling substantially fewer products. Id. ¶¶ 16, 18. Plaintiffs are not “massive entities that can withstand such losses in their core business[es].” See Everglades Harvesting & Hauling, Inc. v. Scalia, 427 F. Supp. 3d 101, 116 (D.D.C. 2019). Nor can they reduce the quality of their products to support lower prices: reducing quality is “unthinkable” for “premium brands” like Plaintiffs, and is practically unworkable because it would require them to “change the design and/or production of more than 2,000 products at once.” Id. ¶ 15.
Without an injunction, Plaintiffs may have to refinance loans on unfavorable terms; significantly scale back operations and product offerings; close facilities; lay off employees; or possibly sell their businesses. Mot. Prelim. Inj. at 41. Granted, financial losses typically do not constitute irreparable harm. E.g., Wisc. Gas Co. v. FERC, 758 F.2d 669, 674 (D.C. Cir. 1985). But that is not the case when “the loss threatens the very existence of the movant’s business.” Id.
The government argues that Plaintiffs’ harms are speculative and conclusory. See Defs.’ PI Opp’n at 37–39. The Court disagrees. See Pls.’ PI Reply at 20–21 (detailing, to the extent possible, the specific costs that Plaintiffs have incurred because of the Challenged Orders). How could Plaintiffs possibly describe the exact costs they will face from paying tariffs that the President imposes, pauses, adjusts, and reimposes at will?
Note that Contreras used Trump’s moodiness and unreliability against him in this ruling.
Stephen Miller’s shrill attacks on judges Karoline Leavitt parroted today have, heretofore, been directed at people Miller has spent years demonizing, primarily migrants (about whom he lies shamelessly). Miller has trained Trump’s rubes to believe that migrants should have no due process.
But this time around, Miller’s puppet Leavitt is saying that small business owners are not entitled to due process.
I have no confidence that “or any other president” actually means Democrats because they are subject to a different set of rules according to the GOP. She has apparently never heard of Judicial Review.
It is my impression that judicial review is exactly what the administration is trying to eliminate.
Once again, it;s Joe Biden’s fault: he used to ride Amtrak.
Bit of a Freudian slip in there:
“President Trump is in the process of […] finally ending the United States of America.”
He’s ripping off the US, with his various unthought-through plans.
He doesn’t think. He’s a gut player. He just acts and reacts.
The textual analysis (re: success on the merits combined with subject matter jurisdiction) is fascinating to read and I was wondering if he packaged it that way to give a textually oriented Supreme Court reasons to pause before overturning. If they do the latter they would have to turn giant backflips to achieve it.
re photo, Leavitt’s wearing her gold T for Trump necklace. We know who her real boss is and it’s not Jesus. So sick of these MAGA cultists using their religion as a virtue signal. So offensive.
I don’t want to speculate as to what it is that motivates Leavitt (money, power, ideology, ego, etc.), but in the public displays, by word and deed, of the Christian religion, I see a useful reminder of what we may be up against: the biblical vision of many for a wholly christian nation, one leading to the “end-times” and the “second coming”. For the apocalypticist nobody else (the non-believers) and nothing else (our planet) matters. Knowing this helps me to understand why it is that others may think and do what would otherwise be so unfathomable, so antidemocratic, so inhumane, so “unchristlike.”
Another way to say it is Death Cult.
Yeah, usually only monks and members of Black Sabbath wear crosses of that size.
Check out Nancy Mace’s giant cross earrings! Jesus gonna have to do a whole lot of smitin’ when he comes back.
You got a nice red dress and a party on your inauguration
You got a brand new soul
Mmm, and a cross of gold
But Karoline, they didn’t give you quite enough information
Only The Good Die Young by Billy Joel
Digby reposted a Trump “truth” about his tariffs being overturned. It’s an interesting rant. Kind of like all of his holiday greetings that he sends out.
Now he is upset with Leonard Leo and his Federalist judges. Some of them are not quite up to Trump’s standards of Trump now, always and forever.
“a real ‘sleazebag’ named Leonard Leo, a bad person who, in his own way, probably hates America.”
Hey, when you’re right, you’re right, big guy.
One of the occasional instances where Trump accidently gets something right.
Why should he hate the US?
The US has given him more than anything he ever dreamed he’d see.
Because he is from Queens, and never accepted by the real power brokers and old money in the City.
re-Molly Pitcher May 30, 2025 3:49 pm
I was responding to P-villain’s May 30, 2025 1:26 am “Leonard Leo, a bad person who, in his own way, probably hates America” when I wrote “Why should he hate the US?
The US has given him more than anything he ever dreamed he’d see.”
Unless his history is similar to Trump’s.
I suspect that this Leo rant will backfire, since every FedSoc judge will realize that Convict-1 / Krasnov has no loyalty to anyone but himself and no principles beyond self-preservation. Remember that Leo is the muse for many of their beliefs so challenges like this will not be well received. I would not be surprised for more FedSoc judge rulings to be against Convict-1 / Krasnov even if these are carefully couched in legal camouflage.
I think they know full well what he is, their useful idiot with a short shelf life.
Not just FedSoc judges. trump has antagonized many people who might well be inclined toward him, or at least willing to put up with him. I have not seen this noted by anyone else, but the list of people trump has slighted — unnecessarily even in the narrowest partisan view — is remarkably long and starts with flag officers.
Also, big farmers, physicians, Mormons, and even, FFS, Canadians.
He clearly thinks he is king and that the autocrat needs no friends. Which is true, The autocrat needs no friends, until he does.
In service of two masters doesn’t work for MAGA. Trump trumps Federalist Society.
While a business owner now can say that the tariffs are the largest line item on an expense report and the Trump response is that it is just speculation, it tells you we are being led by an alternate reality.
An alternate reality creep ‘America’s Cop (should read ‘dick’) croaks, from a “PRIVATE ILLNESS”?!
“The NYPD confirmed Kerik’s death on Thursday following what was described as a private illness”.
https://www.newser.com/story/369485/nypd-commissioner-on-911-dead-at-69.html
It’s “cardiac-related” according to the Hindustan Times
https://www.hindustantimes.com/world-news/us-news/bernie-kerik-cause-of-death-ex-nypd-commissioner-had-been-unwell-recently-hospitalized-101748569833179.html
That’s kind of broad. What the heck are they hiding?
Why does Hindustan Times give a crap about him?
And how is it they leave out his City-paid for rental apartment sex orgies while police commissioner during 9/11?
Just because he died doesn’t mean his crap needs to be whitewashed from the history books.
Re: xyxyxyxy @ 1:33 pm
Hindustan Times is a right-wing rag mostly aligned to the Modi government and its policies. But interesting in that they go so far as to say “cardiac-related” when American media sticks to repeating Kash Patel’s line of a “private illness”. Who knew that TDS can sometimes be fatal?!
Still could be just about anything—in a loose sense, all deaths are “cardiac-related” because the heart stops.
“Private illness?” LOL.
To echo Rayne, Hercule Poirot derisively observed about deaths put down to heart failure, that he had yet to meet a corpse whose heart still beats. The assessment says nothing about cause of death. It could be anything from too vigorous sex for a man of his age, to blocked arteries, to drug use.
Private illness, his “wife” probably put a broomstick up his ass for cheating on her.
Cancer, maybe? A lot of people will hide that one.
It’s a private illness
A craving for money
Do what you want me to do
It’s a private illness
A craving for money
And any old grifter will do
Suggested headline: God reverses Trump’s pardon of convicted felon.
Pompous press secretary parroting poop.
Sorry, but she’s not pompous. You have to have at least a little bit of gravitas before you can be pompous. There’s nothing about Karoline Leavitt that says “gravitas.”
She’s just petulant.
PompAss?
Well, she’s definitively gotten chubbier since 1/20/25… so.
And wholly vapid.
Central government making pricing decisions for businesses, and taking the proceeds, sounds a lot like socialism if not communism.
I guess all of those years of being indoctrinated against those economic forms was wasted.
Socialism combined with nationalism.
That sounds eerily similar to Adolph’s Party’s name.
I see they’re really flailing hard to raise dust in order to obscure two GOP-appointed judges ruling against Trump’s business-killing tariffs.
Three Judges Blocking Trump’s Tariffs Have Decades-Long Histories of Democrat Activism
https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2025/05/29/three-judges-blocking-trumps-tariffs-have-decades-long-histories-of-democrat-activism/
Gosh, Breitbart – how stupid was Trump not to have known this before appointing such obvious Democrat activist judges? How clueless was the Federalist Society that they didn’t shout this to the rooftops and bring it to Trump’s attention before they were confirmed? Any why didn’t you, Breitbart, scream about this back before they got on the bench?
Those sneaky Democrat activist judges are something else, I guess.
We will just forget to mention those Federalist Society activist Supremes who handed Trump immunity, wiped out abortion, handed elections to dark money and an endless list of Leonard Leo’s dreams.
I think I would put my money on the Trade Court’s having jurisdiction as opposed to the District Court but both avenues are now covered.
Central to both decisions concerning the trade deficit tariffs (what the Trade Court refers to as the Worldwide and Retaliatory Tariffs (as opposed to the Trafficking Tariffs) is the Fair Trade Act of 1974.
“Section 122 sets specific limits on the President’s authority to respond to balance-of-payments problems, such as a 15 percent cap on tariffs and a maximum duration of 150 days. See id. Congress’s enactment of Section 122 indicates that even ‘large and serious United States balance-of-payments deficits’ do not necessitate the use of emergency powers and justify only the President’s imposition of limited remedies subject to enumerated procedural constraints.” Trade Court slip op. at 31.
From this the Trade Court reasons that when Congress shortly later passed the International Economic Emergency Powers Act (IEEPA) – Trump’s claimed source of authority – it did not intend for that generic and expansive statute to subsume the specific restrictions of Section 122 of the Fair Trade Act on the scope of Presidential authority to address trade deficits. Congress is presumed to pass laws that operate consistent with other existing laws.
The District Court cites the Fair Trade Act as a statutory example supporting the proposition that “[e]very time Congress delegated the President the authority to levy duties or tariffs in Title 19 of the U.S. Code, it established express procedural, substantive, and temporal limits on that authority.” District Court slip op. at 18. From this (and other authorities) the court reasons that the power to “regulate” in IEEPA does not include the power to levy tariffs.
So, it’s a matter of picking your poison in terms of statutory analysis.
The Supreme Court has technical ways to get rid of both decisions. But the magical pass it just gave the Federal Reserve suggests they may be prepared to play the adults in the room. A hallmark of the Roberts’ Court is that markets always win. Roberts could let Justice Barrett write an opinion that says “We construe statutes and IEEPA does not afford the President authority to impose these tariffs. His problem is not with us but with Congress. Congress can write a proper bill that affords him most of what he wants.” Alito and Thomas will dissent.
Belt and suspenders.
And yes, Altio and Thomas will dissent.
The release of the District Court’s decision following the Trade Court’s decision suggests the “belt and suspenders” was no accident.
It does rather neatly box in the DOJ in terms of the arguments they can make. They can’t argue on appeal of the Trade Court ruling that the Trade Court did not have jurisdiction and it should have gone to the District Court, and then at the same time argue that the District Court didn’t have jurisdiction but it belongs in the Trade Court.
In reply: Peterr
May 30, 2025 at 4:25 pm
Can’t doesn’t seem to be a part of their world view. With this group anything is possible.
Gap predicted a tariff hit of as much as US$300 million…
Marcy,
Your quote”Leavitt is saying that America’s small businesses should have no recourse if Trump unlawfully destroys their business.”
Imagine North Korea Leader destroys your business. What would your recourse in NK be? Reread Leavitt’s quote. Calling your elected representative and reading Emptywheel.net to stay informed are 2 steps i take to protect democracy. We are in this together. Peace.
Yogarhythms and family
Chicken TACO is not happy.
Zappa and Terry Bozzio explain
https://youtu.be/ZjTsPrMTpbk?si=e0xyBtJHzAtq4W9F
We know tariffs are really taxes. And the tax code is ferociously complicated because members of Congress consider tax carve-outs for their donors to be, uhh . . . constituent service. It’s a large part of what they can offer in exchange for campaign contributions (which, by the way, is why the byzantine tax code never really gets reformed).
Trump has asserted broad authority to levy tariffs. If the Supremes uphold his authority to do that somehow, his opportunities for grift will be staggering. Everyone who wants to save their business from going into the tank will seek the same kind of carve-outs that we have in the tax code.
Money won’t just talk. It will scream at 180 decibels.
Another potential business destroyer, “U.K. study has found a dramatic decline in flying insect populations”
https://www.yahoo.com/news/researchers-uncover-disturbing-trend-examining-104553698.html
A lot of people don’t like bugs or insects. But we all like eating the food they pollinate.
The great decline in their numbers on multiple continents is one of the more frightening and under reported threats to our future.
and a local bee incident (near Lynden, WA) has now made National news: truck carrying 250 million bees in hives overturned this a.m. freeing many of those bees. professional bee keepers have arrived and are in the process of scooping up the bees and putting them back into hives, then will check each hive for a Queen, and re-distribute the Queens until all the bees that can be corralled have been. estimate 24-48 hours until road can re-open. They’re optimistic the majority of bees will be rounded up, and off to their pollinating destination.
cascadiadaily (dot) com for more info, or pretty much any news source.
update: the bees had just finished pollinating Whatcom Co. blueberry fields, and were on their way to South Dakota.
15 plus years ago, my then wife and I were struck by the lack of bug splat on our windshield after driving from Colorado to WA.
We’re both from the Midwest originally and have vivid memories of childhood road trips where parents would have to pull off the highway frequently to wash the windshield.
In the late 90s-early 00s, we experienced that same thing on climbing trips around the West.
Over the last decade, the decline has been increasingly apparent and more news articles and scientific reports bear that out.
While in west Texas in the mid-90s, I noticed a lack of tomato worms…and the tomato plats were *healthy*.
Granted, Karoline is a pretty good liar, but the juxtapose of her silver cross with the boobs seems a bit dissonant and perhaps goes a tad over the top.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=–5FehaEAhQ
More than a tad over the top. I would say she lies brazenly, rather than skillfully. Her lies aren’t very hard to detect or counter, she’s just confident she’ll never pay a price for them.
“I would say she lies brazenly …”
Many of us reach out to our own source of strength as we walk our rocky roads. Here is Karoline’s:
Karoline Leavitt says prayer before taking the press briefing podium
Fox News April 11, 2025
I miss infrastructure week.
Kind of reminds me of S. Clay Wilson’s Angels and Devils.
Your comment sounds a lot like slut shaming to me. I fail to see how her anatomy is relevant to the conversation.
Context is everything.
It’s the juxtaposition of the cross (symbol of “holiness”) and the exposed cleavage (symbol of sex & fertility) that defines the “tradwife” look.
Context is a lot, but not everything. I suggest that you and any others who choose to comment refer to the First Law of Holes.
matt, that was unnecessary. Check the hole you’re in.
Let me try to get your logic straight, PJ and others.
You believe that mocking on a woman’ breasts is warranted as long as she doesn’t look or act like a “true Christian”?
Or if she’s the President’s Press Secretary?
Sure, I’m the one in the hole.
Nobody mocked Ms. Leavitt’s breasts, although they were mentioned.
As far as being “true christian” is concerned, I’ll stay outta that mess, as I am equally contemptuous of all organized religions, branches, sects, and cults.
Finally, “slut” and “tradwife” are so far apart in meaning that they’re almost antonyms—and nobody typed “slut” but you.
XRacerX, my initial peeve was with “the juxtapose of her silver cross with the boobs seems a bit dissonant and perhaps goes a tad over the top,” thus my mention of “true Cristian.”
But seriously, how is that comment, or your mention of “the exposed cleavage (symbol of sex & fertility)”, not a mockery of her breasts? I guess you would have us believe that you were complimenting her supposed “tradwife” look.
By the way, slut shaming is not a term that I came up with. I used it because it is the commonly-accepted term used simply to describe the criticism of women based on their perceived or actual sexual behavior, appearance or expression. It’s a form of sexist bullying, and I hate to see it on this site.
Sadly, your comments appears to qualify. Perhaps more sad is that you don’t see it.
Though her anatomy may not be relevant to the conversation, what IS relevant is what Leavitt chooses to wear when she appears behind the podium as the Press Secretary and speaks to the nation on behalf of the administration and President Trump—a president who values physical appearance more highly than other attributes. Don’t forget who does the hiring.
its pretty apparent she gave away her soul. The question is: to Trump or Miller?