Trump’s tariffs are costly, but if Trump takes over the financial power currently held by the Fed, that’s a much more dangerous threat to the prosperity and democracy of the United States. Especially when you combine this with Trump’s other potentially costly actions like limiting science and scientists, Trump’s constellation of bad economic policies could add up to a considerably weaker U.S. economy.
“Stable power is retiring faster than its replacements can show up—stuck in queues, lawsuits, or supply chain hell. We’ve spent a decade subsidizing volatility, penalizing reliability, and crossing our fingers that storage will arrive on time. Meanwhile, the slow, steady, heavy machines that actually hold the grid together are being dismantled.”
“La Porte, Indiana, is a small city between South Bend, Indiana, and Chicago, Illinois. The recent announcement that Microsoft is investing over a billion dollars into a vast new data center campus in La Porte is expected to be transformational for the town of 22,000 people.
Microsoft was given a 40-year tax abatement on equipment, a renewable state sales tax exemption through 2068, and just $2.5 million of payments in lieu of taxes (PILOT) over four years—roughly 30 percent of what it would normally owe. After that? Nothing. Local utilities would cover the infrastructure.”
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“there’s infrastructure. Data centers demand massive utility upgrades: power lines, substations, water lines, fiber, and roads. These are usually paid for by local utilities, state infrastructure grants, or ratepayers. In Kansas City, Evergy announced it would build two new power plants largely to meet data center demand—costs to be passed on to customers. In Northern Virginia, Dominion Energy’s data center grid upgrades are now a line item in statewide electric rate hikes.”
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“these deals are struck behind closed doors, insulated from scrutiny, and built on the assumption that any growth is good—even if it’s paid for by reaching into your neighbor’s wallet.”
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“Analysts project that data center capacity will more than triple by 2030 and estimate the U.S. will need to reach 35 gigawatts of capacity by then—double today’s total. The surge is largely driven by artificial intelligence (AI), which alone could account for 70 percent of all data center demand by 2030. These facilities already draw more electricity than some nations, and Goldman Sachs projects they’ll consume up to 9 percent of U.S. power by decade’s end. New builds are booming—yet much of that construction is being underwritten, piece by piece, by state and local governments chasing the illusion of growth.
Data centers are not a menace. Left to the market, they’re a genuine asset—critical infrastructure in a country trying to stay competitive in the age of AI. We don’t need to bribe the richest companies on earth to build them.”
“The Constitution grants Congress the sole power of the purse. The executive branch is tasked with faithfully executing the laws Congress passes. If Congress passes a law saying jump, it’s the president’s job to jump. And if Congress passes a law that says spend, it’s the president’s job to spend.”
“The Constitution vests Congress, not the president, with the power to “lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts and excises.” Yet Trump has announced a dizzying array of “duties,” including punitive tariffs on Mexican and Canadian goods, a 25 percent tax on imported cars and car parts, tariffs on Chinese goods as high as 145 percent, and a 10 percent general tax on imports that may rise further based on supposedly “reciprocal” rates that make no sense.
These levies amount to the largest tax hike since 1993 and raise tariffs more than the notorious Smoot-Hawley Act of 1930, which deepened the Great Depression by setting off a trade war. The main authority that Trump cites for these far-reaching, commerce-disrupting, price-boosting tariffs is the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA), a 1977 law that says nothing about tariffs.
The IEEPA—which was designed to constrain, not expand, the president’s powers—authorizes economic sanctions in response to “any unusual and extraordinary threat” to “the national security, foreign policy, or economy of the United States” after the president “declares a national emergency.” Although the law has been on the books for nearly half a century, no president until Trump has ever invoked it to impose a general tariff.
There are good reasons for that. The IEEPA mentions restrictions on transactions involving foreign-owned assets, but it never refers to taxes, tariffs, or any of their synonyms.”
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“The shortcut that Trump chose is inconsistent with the IEEPA in another crucial way. To justify his tariffs, he has cited two supposed “emergencies”: the influx of illicit fentanyl, which goes back a decade or more, and ongoing bilateral trade deficits, which Trump himself has been decrying since the 1980s.
Neither of those constitutes the sort of “unusual and extraordinary threat” that Congress contemplated. “A statute grounded in emergency cannot be stretched to support open-ended policymaking,” Calabresi et al. say, “especially where the alleged threat is neither imminent nor novel.”
Trump’s interpretation of the IEEPA amounts to an assault on the separation of powers. “If decades-old trade deficits now qualify as an ’emergency,'” Calabresi et al. warn, “then any President could invoke IEEPA at will to bypass Congress on matters of taxation, commerce, and industrial policy.”
That result, the brief argues, violates the “major questions” doctrine, which says any assertion of executive power involving matters of “vast political and economic consequence” must be based on “unmistakable legislative authority.” It also violates the “nondelegation” doctrine, which says Congress cannot surrender its legislative powers.”
“Jeffrey Goldberg, editor in chief of The Atlantic, reported on Monday that he had been added by National Security Adviser Mike Waltz to an encrypted Signal group chat with the White House’s principals committee to discuss U.S. war plans in Yemen. Goldberg received the first message at 11:44 a.m. on Saturday, March 15, and around two hours later, the White House announced a new air campaign against Houthi forces. The National Security Council confirmed the group chat was real and claimed Goldberg was added by accident.”
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“The constitutional and policy merits of war are two separate questions, but they’re impossible to fully disentangle. The point of asking Congress for a declaration of war is to allow the people’s representatives to weigh the pros and cons in a deliberate, transparent way. War is the most serious decision a government can make. Citizens of a republic should not have to perform Kremlinology—or wait for an official to fat-finger his contact list—to figure out what their leaders are planning.”
“because executive branch officials interpret and enforce thickets of laws and administrative rules under which we try to live, guidance from the boss is powerful. Interpreted one way, a rule regulating unfinished gun parts leaves people free to pursue their hobbies; interpreted another, and those owning the parts are suddenly felons. The president can push interpretations either way.”