The State of the Union Is Not Good

 

In his January 15, 1975, State of the Union address (photo), President Gerald Ford famously declared, "the state of the union is not good". That was 51 years ago - in a very different century in a very different America with a very different kind of president. A lot has happened in between, but the state of the union is again not good, whatever our president may choose to tell the country on Tuesday..

Donald Trump is by far the least ideological president in my lifetime. Tariffs seem to be among his few strongly held personal beliefs. They have also been central to his second-term domestic agenda, along mass deportations of immigrants . Tariffs, the White House has variously argued, could help rebuild lost American industries, reduce prices for consumers, lower the national debt, and even (a la the 19th century) replace income taxes with tariffs fill the gap in revenue.

Major American companies declined to challenge Trump's tariffs in court. So it fell to smaller businesses, in Learning Resources v. Trump, to argue that Trump’s tariffs went beyond what the International Emergency Economic Powers Act of 1977 (IEEPA) authorized. That law allows a president to "regulate" imports during a national emergency but makes no specific reference to tariffs. Since 1977, no president has attempted to levy tariffs by invoking IEEPA.

In a 6-3 decision, Chief Justice John Roberts held that Trump had exceeded his powers under IEEPA and "must identify clear congressional authorization to exercise it.” Trump reacted typically, telling reporters, “They’re very unpatriotic and disloyal to our Constitution.” In fact, it was a rare rebuke from the Court to a president who has often appeared to be governing as some unaccountable monarch who needs to be reminded that we have a constitution and that the congress, not the president, is the constitutional organ entitled to impose taxes and raise revenue through tariffs. The Congress can, of course, continue its modern tradition of irresponsibility and delegate tariff-imposing power to the president, but the point of Learning Resources v. Trump is that Congress thus far has not done so, at leat not in the manner the president has claimed.

Congress, in fact, has not done much of anything lately. Far from acting like the first and only legislative branch of our federal government and thus a check on a president's authoritarian aspirations, it has both actively and passively empowered this administration to arrogate additional power to itself. 

Perhaps the voters might not mind if the results were lower prices and an overall sense of national well-being. But Trump's tariffs have had the opposite effect. Likewise, his war against immigrants has escalated into a war on American cities and American citizens. And, while it is not uncommon for lame-duck presidents to focus on foreign policy (where a president's opportunities to be effective may often be greater), this is obviously not what Trump's 2024 voters wanted.

Undoubtedly, the President will tell the Congress and the country that the state of the union is good. But, unlike when he tries to tell us grandiose things about himself, what he is claiming about the country is being contradicted by voters' direct experience. Trump might be better served by some of Gerald Ford's humility. But Gerald Ford he is not. And humble he most certainly is not.