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Congress Can Stop This Anytime It Wants
America and the world don’t have to be held hostage by Trump’s tariffs
It’s hard to predict which pieces of Trump administration news will push me over the edge. Sometimes I wake up and read the news and chuckle at the inanity or ineptitude of what these guys are doing. Sometimes I get angry and resolve to contact my elected representatives. But every once in a while, a piece of news sends me into a bit of a doom spiral.
This happened most recently with the news that Donald Trump is planning new tariffs on cars made outside the United States.
I don’t know why this one got to me. Bigger things are going on. There’s the scandal around the national security group’s Signal chats, the sloppiness and stupidity of which (not to mention the contempt for the public revealed in the administration’s attempts to lie its way out of this) should surprise no one but still has the capacity to shock. There’s also the ongoing DOGE wrecking ball, which this week threatens to damage our public health infrastructure and dangles like a Sword of Damocles over much of the nation. And there’s the fact that legal residents of the United States are being detained and deported for their political views, which sure seems like a violation of the Constitution.
But the car tariffs got me for some reason. Maybe it’s the fact that it will affect my family’s finances more directly than some of these other events. I immediately began to revise my plans to replace my aging car, vowing to maintain it well because I won’t be able to buy a car for a little longer now, given that prices will rise under Trump’s plan. Maybe it’s the fact that the tariffs are so stupid, a sign that this administration’s obsession with self-destructive trade wars is going nowhere anytime soon. Maybe it’s simply sheer accumulation; this piece of news just happened to be the rotten cherry on top of a toxic sundae, putting me over my limit.
I once had a family member who was a reckless and unpredictable driver. When he was driving, he sped dangerously and behaved emotionally, filled with rage at everyone else on the road. To sit in the backseat of his car, as I had to a few times, felt as if you were taking your life in your hands.
