Instead, we had a completely chaotic implementation of tariffs which seemed to be completely at the whim of Trump with zero supportive industrial policy. So much so that the term 'Taco' https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trump_Always_Chickens_Out was coined to describe Trump's approach.

The charitable explanation is that Trump had no plan and was making it up as he went along. The less charitable explanation is that the chaos was an intentional feature to enable a quid pro quo of favourable policy in exchange for under the table payments via crypto or 'investments' in his family's various businesses.

When you couple completely illegal application of a supposed 'emergency' to invoke tariffs with a chaotic, whim based implementation, is there any wonder that they failed?

Sadly, that has been a fairly common attribute for a fairly large majority of people anointed as 'prophets' and 'saints'.

Looks like the flagging brigade got this story flagged as well. Of course, HN mods will do nothing about it as usual.

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47208913

Points: 2

# Comments: 0

When the sitting president of the United states repeatedly states he would like to have an illegal third term, that elections are fraudulent and must be under his control, continually takes actions testing the limits of what he can get away with in terms of authoritarian behaviour, and only backs down temporarily when he faces massive backlash, you can forgive people for being alarmed.

You can't be serious about that statement. At best it reflects overwhelming naivete about how governments (let alone those engaged in war) work. At worst, its a deliberate attempt at misinformation.

And how exactly would Iran be 'ours' without boots on the ground in this scenario?

One of the (many) pretexts for the war, at least from Trump seems to be that Iran 'interfered' in US elections. From the Washington post

'President Donald Trump shared an article about Iran seeking to interfere in U.S. elections on his Truth Social account a couple of hours after U.S. strikes began in Iran early Saturday.

“Iran tried to interfere in 2020, 2024 elections to stop Trump, and now faces renewed war with United States,” the post read, with a link to a piece from Just the News, a conservative website from which Trump frequently shares articles. Shortly after, the president posted another article from the site, albeit unrelated to Iran; it was about the Fulton County, Georgia, prosecutor Fani T. Willis.'

Does the US even have a functioning Congress left? Who will even believe such a preposterous lie? Even the most die hard MAGA supporter will find it hard to believe this fabrication.

It's like Trump doesn't feel the need to even maintain the fig leaf of a causus belli. He must truly feel that he is now the king of the United States to be so emboldened.

Trump Always Chickens Out (TACO) is a term that gained prominence in May 2025 after many threats and reversals during the trade war U.S. president Donald Trump initiated with his administration's "Liberation Day" tariffs.

The charitable explanation is that he chickens out when confronted with real backlash.The less charitable explanation is that he 'chickens' out after the appropriate bribe has been paid to him.

Kavanaugh's dissent is particularly peculiar as he wrote 'refunding tariffs already collected could be a “mess” with “significant consequences for the U.S. Treasury.”'

So, the justification is that undoing an illegal act is going to be unwieldy for the govt, so presumably, as a corollary, the govt must be allowed to continue doing illegal acts. This honestly reads as a blanket support for Trump personally, than any reasoned legal argument.

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47062408

Points: 11

# Comments: 1

I am hoping against hope that people regardless of political association, will demand accountability. America, our democracy and the rule of the law will be on trial in the coming days. Let's see how we fare.

> Noem also said "there is an increasing trend of replacing legitimate oversight activities with circus-like publicity stunts, all of which creates a chaotic environment with heightened emotions."

Wow, just wow! The sheer brazenness of calling legitimate congressional oversight 'circus-like publicity stunts' is on a whole new level. Apparently, the administration at it's sole discretion can decide that congressional oversight is a 'publicity stunt' and disallow it.

Forget doing what is right for the country. At point do the MAGA folks realize that they are enabling a future Democrat in the White House to do the exact same thing, except for causes they don't agree with when they cheer on such blatant authoritarian behaviour.

Wow. Just wow.