19 August 2026
Why Congress Won’t Fight Trump’s Tariffs
Careerist Congressmen are happy when the President comes up with a way to raise revenue without having to increase income taxes. Trump’s tariff scheme makes American consumers pay higher prices for imports by adding higher duties to the cost of buying foreign goods. Those consumption taxes are politically more palatable to wealthy funders of both Trump’s construction projects and legislators’ reelection campaigns.
In her 7/23/2026 NYTimes Guest Essay, Ms. Natasha Sarin is vain to “hope that Congress will eventually push back” against Trump’s audacious subterfuge. He wants to give politicians a way to spend more on government contracts without having equitably to charge those contractors for the privilege. (Funny how Trump is much more concerned with the opinions of people who work for a living when he doesn’t want to lose their votes than when he hires them to complete one of his vanity projects!)
Consequently, the U.S. national debt will far exceed 40 trillion dollars before Trump’s second term of office ends, and everyone in his Republican Party is happy to let their constituents bear that burden as the price of being told what they want to hear. Well, TANSTAFL (There ain’t no such thing as a free lunch).
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Sometime, that obligation will come. The mortgage on the country’s future will long outlive Trump’s White House ballroom, his Oval Office golden tckotskeys, his Triumphal Arch, and other vanity projects. Hopefully, the preference of our democratic majority for short-term revenge on the supposedly unfair 250-year record of the Republic won’t last as long. The Congress should then be controlled by far-sighted leaders who anticipate another 250.
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