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- Courage, My Word, It Didn't Come, It Didn't Matter
Courage, My Word, It Didn't Come, It Didn't Matter
The House tries to lock down Republican cowardice and keep them sleep walking
mister mix
April 10, 2025
Trump’s power to fuck around with tariffs is delegated to him by Congress, and they could pass a bill to take it away (which he would veto), but that would look unseemly so this is what’s happening instead:
Republicans are quietly pushing a procedural rule that would curb the power of the US Congress to override Donald Trump’s chaotic tariff policy.
The House of Representatives’ rules committee on Wednesday approved a measure that would forbid the House from voting on legislation to overturn the president’s recently imposed taxes on foreign imports.
The sleight of hand was embedded in procedural rule legislation setting up debate on a separate issue: the budget resolution that is central to Trump’s agenda.
If adopted, the rule would in effect stall until October a Democratic effort to force a floor vote on a resolution disapproving of the national emergency that Trump declared last week to justify the tariffs. This mirrors a similar tactic used previously to shield Trump’s earlier tariffs.
The move came as Trump announced a major reversal on Wednesday, with a 90-day pause on tariffs for most countries while raising them to 125% for China.
Creating chaos and demanding order is a pretty common authoritarian technique, and Johnson doesn’t want to get in the way of the chaos part of the program. The demands for order will come later, after things fall apart.
I shouldn’t mess up the narrative here by pointing out that Democrats are yet again having a problem with messaging, this time about tariffs. This piece in the Bulwark details how some of them are having a hard time because unions are kinda-sorta supporting tariffs. There are some Democratic leaders who just can’t stop themselves by being “open minded” and seeing “the other side” about these tariffs. (If you want the counterpoint to this, Josh Marshall thinks Democrats are pretty on-message.)
I don’t know what’s so hard about saying “we do need to bring more manufacturing back to the US, but engaging in a trade war with China that’s going to cause inflation and devastate our economy isn’t the way to do it.”
Welp, another interesting day coming, when the markets will probably figure out that a 125% tariff on Chinese goods is bad no matter what Trump has done with the tariffs on the Falkland Islands and Sierra Leone.
The last word on courage goes to James Fallows:
That post is Bluesky-logged-in only, so here’s the link to Fallows’ piece.
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