Donald Trump’s trade war has become his quagmire: legal, economic and political. On 28 May, the court of international trade ruled his tariffs exceeded his constitutional authority. Point by point, the decision decimated Trump’s arguments as flimsy and false, implicitly castigated the Republican Congress for abdicating its constitutional responsibility, and reminded other courts, not least the supreme court, of the judicial branch’s obligation to exercise its authority regardless of the blustering of the executive and the fecklessness of the legislative branches.

Trump’s tariffs, along with his withdrawal of active support for Ukraine and passivity toward his strongman father figure Vladimir Putin, have broken the western alliance, forcing the west to make its own arrangements with China, and cementing the idea for a generation to come that the United States is an untrustworthy and unstable partner.

On the economic front, Trump’s tariffs have already begun to increase inflation, shutter trade, devalue the dollar, and undermine manufacturing. They will soon create shortages of all sorts of goods, ruin small business, and force layoffs that bring about stagflation that has not been seen since the 1970s, which was then the result of an external oil shock, not self-harm. On 3 June, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development reported that as a result, principally, of Trump’s tariffs, the US will suffer a decline in the rate of growth from what had been forecast this year. “Lower growth and less trade will hit incomes and slow job growth,” the OECD stated.

As a political matter, besides being unpopular, Trump’s tariffs, in combination with his assaults on the institutions of civil and legal society, have drawn out the most intelligent and skillful members of the conservative legal establishment, who themselves have been some of the most crucial players in the rise of the right wing, to man the ramparts against him. These are not the familiar Never Trumpers, but newly engaged and potentially more dangerous foes.

While corporate leaders uniformly abhor Trump’s tariffs, they have stifled themselves into a complicit silence on the road to serfdom. But Trump’s new enemies coming from the conservative citadel of the Federalist Society are filing brief after brief in the courts, upholding the law to halt his dictatorial march.

Trump naturally cannot help but turn everything he touches into sordid scandal. After announcing his “Liberation Day” tariffs, which tanked the stock market, Trump declared a pause during which he promised he would sign, seal and deliver 90 deals in 90 days. But he has announced only a deal with Britain. Most of the deals Trump has seen have been with the Trump Organization. Under the shadow of a threatened 46% tariff, Vietnam, after a visit from Eric Trump, granted a $1bn Trump Tower in Ho Chi Minh City and a $1.5bn golf club and resort near Hanoi with “two championship golf courses”, relative crumbs alongside the billions the Trump family has accrued from across the Middle East, not to mention the $400m jet that his team solicited from Qatar to serve as his palatial Air Force One.

Standing before the white marble plinth of the Unknown Soldier at Arlington national cemetery on Memorial Day, 26 May, after reading prepared remarks about “our honored dead” to a gathering of Gold Star families, Donald Trump fell into a reverie about his divine destiny. “I have everything,” he said. He spoke about the parade of troops and tanks he has ordered for 14 June, his 79th birthday, which happens to coincide with the date that George Washington created the Continental army. “Amazing the way things work out. God did that, I believe that too. God did it.”

Two days after Trump had mused about his election by heaven to possess “everything”, the court of international trade issued what the Wall Street Journal called the “ruling heard ‘round the world … proving again that America doesn’t have a king who can rule by decree’”.

The US court of appeals for DC then temporarily

© The Guardian