$800 De Minimis Import Tax Exemption Set To End Friday
- Thread starter Mike N
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I’m sorry I wasn’t around here when the “tariffs are going to destroy the country” and their “destroying the economy and crashing the stock market on purpose” post. Because we see how both of those things really happen!
Back when I worked for "Generic Elephant" there was one product line that required a special steel from Germany. No one in the US made it and it was such a low demand for it no US company was going to pay the big bucks to change their mill to make it. The whole argument that this will rehome manufacturing to the US is dubious at best.
And even in the cases were it does, it'll be like 5 jobs and a line of robots.
Well looks like the courts just ruled these tariffs are illegal.
People may actually be getting refunds on the money if Supreme Court upholds ruling.
People may actually be getting refunds on the money if Supreme Court upholds ruling.
A mean....a court. Nothing official will take place until it goes to the top.
But considering 30 countries didn't even know how to ship a package, this shouldn't be a big deal anyway!
It’s complicated. It doesn’t cover all the executive orders.
Let all this simmer over the Labor Day weekend and see what uncertainty does for equities markets on Tuesday.
And today the executive invoked a 5 billion dollar foreign aid package using a procedure last used by Jimmy Carter:
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WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump has told House Speaker Mike Johnson that he won’t be spending $4.9 billion in congressionally approved foreign aid, effectively cutting the budget without going through the legislative branch.
Trump, who sent a letter to Johnson, R-La., on Thursday, is using what’s known as a pocket rescission — when a president submits a request to Congress to not spend approved funds toward the end of the fiscal year, so Congress cannot act on the request in a 45-day timeframe and the money goes unspent as a result. It’s the first time in nearly 50 years a president has used one. The fiscal year draws to a close at the end of September.
The letter was posted Friday morning on the X account of the White House Office of Management and Budget. It said the funding would be cut from the State Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development, or USAID, an early target of Trump’s efforts to cut foreign aid.
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These guys really know their Herbert Hoover and Jimmy Carter moves.
What could possibly go wrong trying again, you know?
We are all just spectators to this.
The United States Constitution grants to the Congress these powers:
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Article I Section 8, clause 1
The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States; but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States;
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The last time Congress tried using that power in 1930 it turned out to be an unmitigated, absolute, utter catastrophe.
There’s an old saying that success has many fathers but failure is always an orphan child.
I suppose we’ll know enough by November 2026 to see who claims all this or not.
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Elections are scheduled to be held in the United States, in large part, on November 3, 2026. In this U.S. midterm election, which will occur during Republican President Donald Trump's non-consecutive second term, all 435 seats in the U.S. House of Representatives and 35 of the 100 seats in the U.S. Senate will be contested to determine the 120th United States Congress. Thirty-nine state and territorial U.S. gubernatorialelections, as well as numerous state and local elections, will also be contested.
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What is so wonderful about this Republic is our elections are constitutionally mandated to occur by our founding document, the United States Constitution.
2026 United States elections - Wikipedia
en.m.wikipedia.org
If we the people aren’t happy with our Congress every two years from now until Judgement Day we get to elect an entire new House and a third of the Senate:
And we’ve had those Congressional elections every even number year since 1790, t
The only other alternative to free and fair elections.
My Little Armalite
If folks don’t like a trade war, they can walk to a ballot box and and end it, you know?
So, Briar, if only Congress can “lay and collect taxes,” why is the Internal Revenue Service under the Executive Branch? What did your Con Law 1 Prof say about that? Thx.We are all just spectators to this.
The United States Constitution grants to the Congress these powers:
—-
Article I Section 8, clause 1
The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States; but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States;
——
The last time Congress tried using that power in 1930 it turned out to be an unmitigated, absolute, utter catastrophe.
There’s an old saying that success has many fathers but failure is always an orphan child.
I suppose we’ll know enough by November 2026 to see who claims all this or not.
——
Elections are scheduled to be held in the United States, in large part, on November 3, 2026. In this U.S. midterm election, which will occur during Republican President Donald Trump's non-consecutive second term, all 435 seats in the U.S. House of Representatives and 35 of the 100 seats in the U.S. Senate will be contested to determine the 120th United States Congress. Thirty-nine state and territorial U.S. gubernatorialelections, as well as numerous state and local elections, will also be contested.
—-
What is so wonderful about this Republic is our elections are constitutionally mandated to occur by our founding document, the United States Constitution.
2026 United States elections - Wikipedia
If we the people aren’t happy with our Congress every two years from now until Judgement Day we get to elect an entire new House and a third of the Senate:
And we’ve had those Congressional elections every even number year since 1790, through boom times and bad times, even bloody wars.
Even in 1862 and 1864.
And in 1942 and 1944
They are as sure and certain to come as the calender
Battle Hymn of the Republic
And this prevents violence and civil war.
The only other alternative to free and fair elections.
My Little Armalite
If folks don’t like a trade war, they can walk to a ballot box and and end it, you know?
Shit.
I’m going to be paying a lot more for my Icelandic Rotted Shark Meat.
I’m going to be paying a lot more for my Icelandic Rotted Shark Meat.
None of the speculation really matters. Right now, people whose names are never mentioned in the news are driving the bureaucracy where they think it needs to go. Trying to gauge the game by watching what the two political parties are doing is akin to watching the three cups over one ball being shuffled about. The cups are the political parties. They neither determine or control where the ball will be at the end of the game. The real question is who is shuffling the cups. Once you know that, you have a better chance at understanding the confidence game that is played with our economy and national agenda, each and every day. Regardless, guessing which cup is covering the ball is a sure loss.
Importing companies, who pay the tariffs, may get a reprieve from paying them. But, people who paid a higher price at the checkout counter? Forget about it.
The Appeals Court ruling will get appealed. SCOTUS will make the final determination.
But given their predilection for fabricating Constitutional law, flip a coin.
They ruled well because, regardless of politics, it is a tax on the public and a tax on choice.
Most if the emergency issues are made up nonsense. US customs is not going to check every small package for drugs. We are talking millions of packages a day.
This is just a tax on the middle class in disguise. Not a very good disguise at that. Has anyone noticed that everything is going up but not your pay? Yes we can build factories in the US. Yes your children can work in them. And yes, they will be paid in low wages. Unions already weakened will be the next target
Most if the emergency issues are made up nonsense. US customs is not going to check every small package for drugs. We are talking millions of packages a day.
This is just a tax on the middle class in disguise. Not a very good disguise at that. Has anyone noticed that everything is going up but not your pay? Yes we can build factories in the US. Yes your children can work in them. And yes, they will be paid in low wages. Unions already weakened will be the next target
Until 1913 thus nation primarily relied on excise taxes on whisky, beer, wine, and tobacco and from time to time tariffs.
Which led to lots of good ballads about revenuers (Dept of Internal Revenue)
Thunder Road
The income tax had to have a constitutional amendment to be constitutional.
It raised so much revenue tariffs were reduced and foreign trade flourished through the administrations of Harding, Coolidge and Hoover.
The tragedy of Herbert Hoover was he actually was a very stable genius. He knew of the importance of free trade and had wide experience in coordinating European relief during the First World War.
It was the plight of farmers, then half the country, who like today lost money on all crops they planted for years during boom times, that led Hoover to want protective tarrifs only against cheaper foreign agricultural products.
Hoover actually got most of the blame for Smoot Hawkey, for acting Presidential and allowing Congress to serve its constitutional function. It’s actually true he was unfairly treated as the Father of Smoot Hawley.
Even today, Trump uses various emergency powers Congress delegated to FDR after Hoover and the Republicans were just wiped out in the 1932 elections.
Even Hoover joining America First and his adoration of Hitler is usually forgiven. His entire party seemed to be wrapped up in a fear of another war and appeasement, and hated FDR so much they loved fascism instead.
And Henry Ford and Charles Lindbergh were orders of magnitude worse than poor Hoover, who didn’t publish the fraudulent Protocols of the Elders of Zion like Ford and didn’t have three German women secretly bear his children like Lindbergh. In 1938 a lot of American conservatives adored Hitler’s economic miracle in Germany. After Pearl Harbor most like Hoover, repented and honorably served the nation.
The Internal Revenue Service, the FBI, the Justice Department are all technically part of the Executive branch but in normal times are not directly controlled by the President.
If America can tax it’s way to more prosperity the voters will certainly reward the party of higher tariffs.
But of the just over three trillion dollars of products and services Americans sell overseas, nearly all can and are sold by other industrialized nations who do not set 95 year high tariffs on their trading partners.
And a large portion of the just over four trillion we import is made into goods here or resold at a profit by American companies.
Generally, the higher the tax on something the less there is of it sold.
Either the consumer price is raised or the importer’s profits are reduced.
And, what will the government do with extra tariff revenue?
Cut the over a trillion a year deficit?
Or give it away in more tax cuts and “free” gimmie checks?
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Aside from Thomas, who should be impeached and removed for accepting a three hundred thousand dollar motor home bribe and millions of dollars in junkets, and is not only corrupt but incompetent and bought and paid for—-
The other eight, including even Alito (at times) went through law school like I did, and were lawyers before they were made judges.
They all know Article I, Section 8, Clause 1.
They know there has to be an emergency under the 1930 Smoot Hawley tariff law Trump cites for the executive to deal with reciprocal (not irrational or punitive) tariffs.
They know that no man is above the law.
That the executive is not an American king.
They don’t want to be regarded as a modern day Justice Roger Taney.
Roger B. Taney - Wikipedia
The law is really a sort of civic religion among lawyers.
They’ll all (except Thomas) have law school exhibits and alcoves and wings honoring them.
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After agonizing deeply for months over his vote in Baker v. Carr, a landmark reapportionment case, Whittaker suffered a nervous breakdown in the spring of 1962. At the behest of Chief Justice Earl Warren, Whittaker recused himself from the case and retired from the Court effective March 31, 1962 due to a certified disability, citing exhaustion from the heavy workload and stress.[7]
As of 2025, Whittaker remains the only Supreme Court Justice appointed from Missouri. He is also the most recently appointed Justice to have received his legal education from a public law school.
Charles Evans Whittaker - Wikipedia
A lawyer who is the highest judge in the land looks in the mirror every day, the same as the rest of the nation.
By the way, the most famous law student at the Kansas City School of Law was not Whittaker.
It was Harry S Truman, who flunked out.
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Another added cost…I just had An Post (Irish Post Office) add an 11euro ”administrative fee” to the collection of the tariff on a package. This began as of 8/29. They figured out how to collect it pretty quick. They are requiring sellers to collect email addresses for An Post to bill the end recipient.
Like Lord of the Rings
One psychopath to rule them all
One psychopath to rule them all
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