The Court of International Trade Invalidated Señor TACO’s Trade Agenda

As Always, Putin Is Watching Closely

"Señor TACO" by Nancy Ohanian

It’s being reported that Russia has massed 50,000 troops— I’ve seen them described as both “fresh” and battle-hardened”— on Ukraine’s northeast border. This happened in the face of Trump’s warning that he’s “playing with fire” and that Trump would give him two weeks to clean up his act… or else. Or else what? The Kremlin, which described Trump as “emotional” (implying he’s like a woman with a period), isn’t taking his empty threats seriously. Putin’s circle views Trump as a loudmouthed coward whose attempts to play the bully are little more than a joke and who is more interested in blaming Putin’s aggression on Biden than doing anything to stop the aggression from accelerating.

The new Trump descriptive going around everywhere: TACO (“Trump Always Chickens Out”) was meant to apply to his chaotic tariff agenda. Putin and other foreign leaders are gambling the core Trump characteristic doesn’t only apply to his disastrous trade policies.

And why should they take him seriously? Trump’s entire foreign policy legacy is a smoldering ruin built on bravado, betrayal and incoherence. He tried to extort Ukraine for dirt on a political rival— got impeached for it— and then turned around and lavished praise on autocrats like Putin and Kim Jong-un while alienating NATO allies and gutting American credibility abroad. Under Trump, U.S. foreign policy was run like a mob racket: self-serving, transactional and drenched in petty vendettas.

The day after an obscure federal trade court unanimously struck down his whole catastrophic tariff onslaught, Politico reported that “Markets are surging. America’s trade partners are gleeful. Millions of U.S. businesses can’t believe their luck. Yep— Trump’s flagship economic policy was ruled illegal last night, in a bombshell court verdict with potentially seismic repercussions for the rest of his presidency and the entire global economy. Just before 7 p.m. last night, a three-judge panel at the U.S. Court of International Trade struck down the vast majority of Trump’s tariffs issued since Jan. 20, and said cash must be repaid to those firms who have already paid. The judges— appointed by Ronald Reagan, Barack Obama and Trump himself, since you ask— unanimously agreed that the president exceeded his authority by claiming America’s long-standing trade deficit was a “national emergency” which gave him tariff powers normally left to Congress. Make no mistake: This is a crushing defeat for Trump, who has repeatedly said he wants to build a new economic model based on his trade tariffs. Instead, the court has struck them down right in the middle of tense negotiations with the EU, China and other key trading partners who had only been forced to the negotiating table by the tariff threat. It’s unclear if those talks will even continue.”

Like Putin, Paul Krugman has always been aware that this particular clownish emperor never had any clothes to begin with, writing that like all of Trump’s signature policies the tariffs “involved blatant violations of the letter of the law, its spirit, or both... And the Court, to almost everyone’s surprise, decided to do its job. It basically said to Trump.” The judges called bullshit on Trump’s excuse for seizing control of tariff policy with a declaration of a fake emergency.

“Presumably,” wrote Krugman, the Trumpists will try to undo this judgment, one way or another— exploiting other loopholes in the law, maybe trying to bully the Court into submission, maybe just defying the Court altogether. But this is a huge political defeat, and Trump has nobody to blame except his own overreach. You can bet that trade negotiators around the world are snickering, and maybe celebrating with TACOs for lunch.”

Some worry that now Trump will lash out to “prove” what a manly man he is. Where? Harvard? Immigrants? Starving Palestinians in Gaza? NPR? Deaf people? Iran? His “America First” bluster has masked a regime of kleptocracy, cruelty and chaos. With congressional Republicans sitting around with their fingers up their asses, he has stacked his cabinet with grifters, flouted the rule of law and turned the Department of Justice into his personal hit squad. The idea that Trump would rein in Putin— or even understands what’s at stake in Ukraine— is almost laughable. Besides, he sees Putin less as an adversary and more as a model to emulate: a strongman unencumbered by law, opposition or truth. Trump’s erratic threats, coupled with his transparent admiration for Putin and his contempt for NATO have already emboldened authoritarian regimes. His two-week ultimatum to Putin isn’t diplomacy; it’s performance art for his MAGA moron base. The Kremlin knows it. Kyiv knows it. The Pentagon knows it. The only ones still pretending otherwise are the grifters orbiting Mar-a-Lago and the MAGA caucus eager to sell out U.S. security for a photo op and a fundraising bump.

Trump 2.0 isn’t just a retread of the chaos and corruption of his first term that causes him to be voted out of office— it’s worse. This time, he’s surrounded by true believers and unrestrained by even the thin institutional checks that once barely held him in. He's purging federal agencies, stacking the judiciary with loyalists, and turning the U.S. into a staging ground for the global far right. If you're wondering why Putin's not afraid of Trump, it's because he's watching America slide— all too willingly— into the very authoritarian mold he's spent decades perfecting. If Putin rolls across Ukraine’s northeast border now, it won’t be in spite of Señor Trumpanzyy. It will be because of Señor TACO.