The Bonfire of Trump’s Vanities

A richness of embarrassments

Busy day yesterday, so all I have this morning is a brief follow-up on last week’s post about the decision by an appeals court to uphold the Court of Trade’s ruling that most of Trump’s tariffs are illegal — which they clearly are.

Scott Bessent, the Treasury secretary, has argued that this ruling should not stand because it would embarrass the United States. (Actually, it would mainly embarrass Bessent and his boss.) As I noted, this is a novel legal principle: It’s OK to do illegal things when obeying the law would be embarrassing. What I failed to note is the sheer chutzpah of the argument.

Many of my readers probably know the concept — hey, “chutzpah” is in the Oxford English dictionary. In any case, the classic explanation of chutzpah is that it’s when you murder your parents, then plead for leniency because you’re an orphan. Here we have officials engaging in blatantly illegal actions, then saying that they should be let off the book because admitting that their actions were illegal would be humiliating.

Actually, the embarrassment would run deeper than many people realize. Who actually pays tariffs? Mostly American businesses, who have to pay a tax on goods they import. If those taxes were illegal, surely the government will have to refund the money. Sound implausible? Not to investors who have been buying up refund rights.

And who’s facilitating these bets that Trump’s whole tariff strategy will collapse? Cantor Fitzgerald, an investment bank run by the sons of Howard Lutnick, the Commerce Secretary.

So yes, obeying the law would be very embarrassing for the Trump administration. But honestly, there are so many embarrassing things going on now that one more would hardly make a difference. Here, for example, is what the White House put out yesterday:

Raising $8 trillion in tariff revenue would be quite a trick, given that total U.S. imports last year were only $3.3 trillion.

And outside the realm of economics, the United States has just experienced a spectacular diplomatic disaster. America has spent decades trying to cultivate good relations with India, which could be a useful counterweight to China. Now we have a nearly complete rupture, with India actually cozying up to China.

And what was that about? Apparently Trump, in his bizarre pursuit of a Nobel peace prize, tried to bully Narendra Modi, India’s prime minister, into giving him undeserved credit for a cease-fire between India and Pakistan. The two men haven’t talked since.

And there’s much more, like Trump’s claim that the European Union is giving him $600 billion, which is news to the Europeans.

You might say that the Trump administration is suffering from a richness of embarrassments.

Trump has, of course, surrounded himself with slavish sycophants. And he may imagine that the world admires him the way his hangers-on pretend to. The truth, however, is that the world sees him as a dangerous buffoon. Dangerous because he runs America, an economic and military superpower, and has a fanatically supportive domestic base. A buffoon because he’s almost surreally vain, insecure and ignorant.

Given that reality, we really shouldn’t worry that a legal setback on tariffs will embarrass the administration, causing it to lose the world’s respect. Trump already has no respect left to lose.

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