The Supreme Court’s sweeping decision invalidating most of President Donald Trump’s tariffs is more than a legal defeat – it’s a warning sign for the long-term viability of Trumpism itself, according to a new analysis in The New Republic.
Trump’s devastating Supreme Court loss – backed by two of his hand-picked justices – signals that the foundations of his populist nationalist agenda are beginning to crack, wrote columnist Greg Sargent.
“The Supreme Court’s stunning decision invalidating Donald Trump’s tariffs isn’t just a major legal setback, though it certainly is that,” Sargent told readers Friday. “The loss before the high court is also another sign that the pillars of Trump’s right-wing nationalist agenda are crumbling in a much broader and deeper sense.”
Sargent identified two core pillars of Trumpism – sweeping tariffs and mass deportations – as now being in crisis. “Together they make up much of the foundation of Trumpism’s fantasy version of nationalist renewal,” he wrote. “Both of those are now in crisis.”
The high court’s 6-3 ruling struck down roughly 60 to 70 percent of Trump’s tariffs, forcing the administration to refund $175 billion plus interest, Sargent noted Friday. Meanwhile, Trump’s deportation agenda, the writer added, has been “widely discredited in the minds of all but the molten MAGA core” and has generated resistance across America.
“It’s also no accident that the tariffs and the deportations are the locus points of Trump’s most spectacular governing failures,” Sargent wrote.
The result, he argued Friday, is a major political setback to the president’s MAGA agenda – and an “unusual situation” for the Republican president.
“The economy and immigration are traditional GOP strengths, but Trump has managed the distinction of being a Republican president who is profoundly unpopular on both,” Sargent added.
The policies, he concluded, have become “the most important reasons that his entire presidency is sinking deeper and deeper into utter, monumental failure.”