The phrase is "taxation without representation", and Trump is the representation. The original founders were upset England could raise taxes and they couldn't vote or do anything about it. We now have elected officials who decide taxes
People in DC have a legit complaint about "taxation without representation". Realistically, most people do too since corporations and industry are the only ones whose interests are typically represented, but that's more of a failure on our part for not firing the people who refuse to work for us. We elect them after all.
I agree with you, but I would still argue that what is going on now is exactly what the Constitution was designed to prevent: rule by executive fiat. Congress controls fiscal policy, and they have complete given up any semblance of their duties in fealty to Trump.
Heck, the law that Trump is using to set tariff policy is designed to only be used in cases "of national emergency", and Trump has simply defined national emergency to mean whatever he wants it to mean. I think this article gives a good overview of the issues: https://www.thebulwark.com/p/trump-usa-china-deal-is-bad-eco...
It's similar to how Trump has redefined the simple meaning of "foreign invasion" to give cover to his deportations (in some cases I'd call them abductions) without due process.
The people may have voted for this, but in the medium/long term it will be absolutely detrimental to our democracy.
Yeah, the basis for the modern authoritarianism is "the president alone represents the will of the people". As if Congress and Senate weren't elected as well. As if the public workers didn't have their work created and regulated by the laws the elected Legislative imposes.
> The people may have voted for this, but in the medium/long term it will be absolutely detrimental to our democracy.
None of which was unanticipated. People had been warning voters about the danger to our democracy long before the election and a huge number of Americans decided that they really didn't care about protecting our democracy.
Look, if you're going to make voters in Red America choose between democracy and voting for a Republican, they are going to pick the latter 100% of the time.
It's just not important to them. If it were, they wouldn't have first primaried in, and then showed up for the guy in 2024[1].
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[1] I can forgive 2016 and 2020, since at that point, his behavior wasn't that far out of bounds. Since then, he's moved on to conspiring with fraudulent electors, trying to rig vote counts, arresting and imprisoning people without trial, and looking to suspend habeas corpus. Not to mention pay-to-play for access, and treating the treasury like his own personal slush fund.
Did they really make a conscious decision or was it we want a guy that runs the government like a Reality TV show. Ooops Donny doesn't like Mike (Waltz) any more so time to leave the Island. Pete sure is good at owning the libs - he gets to stay.
But the executive branch isn't supposed to be able to raise taxes and he's blatantly using a loophole to do all of this. Your point would be true if it was congress doing this.
"Article I, Section 8, Clause 1: The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States; but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United"
And congress decided that the president can raise tariffs himself. Congress has given away a lot of power, of the years.
Ironically I think this is one instance that sort of thing made sense, but they should have done their usual and made some sort of government agency to oversee it themselves. Neither congress nor the president are good managers of tariffs as they're unpopular in the short term, as we've seen, and need a long term outlook.
It's fascinating that just last year, SCOTUS has determined that Congress couldn't delegate its powers to rulemaking agencies that Congress explicitly creates, charters, and funds.
Yet, somehow, this implicit 'delegation' (where Congress is very actively doing nothing) is somehow kosher. As long as they won't impeach the leader of their party, anything goes! The man could drop a nuclear bomb on Ohio, and as long as he had 34 surviving votes in the Senate, he'd be fine.
If this kind of congressional silence is endorsement, why the hell did SCOTUS get involved to start legislating regulations from the bench in the first place?
It's not implicit, they're directly doing it. They made a law giving the executive this exact power. They then passed a law redefining the length of a day so they would prevent the countdown in that law from them actually reviewing these.
That's right, the Republicans decided the rest of 2025 is just one long legal day.
A day is a year, and we're now in a permanent state of emergency, yet, apparently, Congress isn't allowed to delegate the job of policing pollutants to the EPA, and the judiciary must come in and save us from it.
Well, the people voted for Congress, and Congress could curtail Trump's tariff-setting ability anytime they want to, and they have chosen not to.
FWIW I agree that Congress has completely abdicated their duties, but by and large "the people" voted for this, it was not hidden or secret (for all his flaws Trump was very clear what he would do with respect to tariffs for a long time), and I think "taxation without representation" is an incredibly poor analogy.
The president is elected to enact the will of congress and to represent the US internationally. He is not elected to be the people's representative in government. That's what congress is for, and that's one of the reasons why the executive is not supposed to have the ability to impose taxes.
What Trump is doing is unambiguously taxation without representation, as he is not the representative of the citizenry. For one, no single person can be the "representative of the citizenry".
Or, to put it another way, "representation" means that the people have a say in what's happening. With the executive branch, that's not the case. The mechanism for that is Congress.
Yes they did. He made it very clear that he wanted massive tariffs which by necessity would mean that people would have to pay massive taxes on everything they want to buy. Before the election experts were very clear that those tariffs would cost the consumer and importer. People were told that he wanted to go crazy with tariffs, they were repeatedly told that tariffs would take money out of their pockets, and they voted for that. Nobody should be surprised by that now.
> He made it very clear that he wanted massive tariffs which by necessity would mean that people would have to pay massive taxes on everything they want to buy.
He also falsely claimed - and his supporters, as is typical, accepted those claims - that other countries would eat that cost.
They voted for tariffs. They were willfully ignorant on their being a tax.
> Everyone was really quick to call out that lie though.
Not on the channels they watch.
There's an entire separate Fox News Cinematic Universe safe space you can immerse yourself in exclusively.
Even when they bring on a sacrificial lib to yell at, humans in general are phenomenal at ignoring or explaining away clear evidence their strongly held beliefs are wrong.
