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Everything that is currently happening in the United States has to be viewed through the lens of how quickly the country is becoming an authoritarian state (or whether it already is). In that context, Friday’s federal appeals court ruling that most of the tariffs that form the centerpiece of Donald Trump’s economic agenda are illegal is a big deal.

It puts the United States to a test that we believe it can no longer pass. 

Juristically, the decision is a no-brainer. 

Siding with a lower court, the judges affirmed that Trump exceeded his authority by making up emergencies to grant himself the power to willy-nilly impose tariffs on just about every country on Earth.

They don’t put it quite like that, but that’s the gist of the 7-4 decision. 

As we have pointed out, this is an integral part of the authoritarian playbook that Trump has been following: a leader, such as a Reichskanzler in 1930s Germany or a US president in 2025, uses real, imaginary, or manufactured crises to declare the need for quick and decisive executive actions that would otherwise not be available to him.

In this case, in order to arbitrarily impose tariffs on goods arriving in the US from around the globe, Trump declared a series of emergencies. These ranged from the threat posed by drugs entering the country from Mexico and Canada to the supposed danger that the economy faces from large trade deficits.

While the president likes to point out that these tariffs have brought in tens of billions of dollars in additional revenue already, he fails to mention that these costs are borne by American businesses and consumers, and not the countries from where the goods originate (even though it does harm them by making their products more expensive in the US). 

In other words, companies have to pay a tax for the goods they are importing, whether those are luxury cars, raw materials, or riding gloves. And they then often pass on the cost of those duties to their customers.

If this decision stands, that money might have to be paid back, which would have a major impact on the economy (some of it good, some of it bad) and on the trade deals Trump concluded with several countries after using the threat of tariffs as a negotiating tool. 

Because the court recognized the far-reaching consequences of its ruling, it delayed the enforcement of Friday’s order until mid-October. 

In theory, that would give the Supreme Court time to reach a final decision in the case while simultaneously allowing the administration to take steps to soften the blow of seeing the cornerstone of the president’s economic policy be invalidated. 

And this is the aforementioned test that we believe the US government will fail. 

In a functioning democracy, the Supreme Court would recognize that Trump exceeded his authority, and that his power grab is unconstitutional because establishing these types of tariffs is clearly the job of Congress.

The problem is that this is not the reality in which we live. 

In fact, the thing that should happen, i.e., the Supreme Court deciding that Trump’s actions were unconstitutional, and the administration then saying: “Our bad. We messed up, so let’s just pay back this money and renegotiate a bunch of trade deals,” is the least likely outcome. 

In fact, it seems almost laughable to think that this is what could happen. 

The most likely scenario, we think, is that one of the supposedly co-equal branches of the government will bail Trump out. 

Hypothetically, Congress could pass a law giving the president the authority to set these tariffs and thereby render the issue moot. 

However, that would be akin to signing away one of the legislative branch’s most important powers… and it is unclear whether Republicans have the votes to get this done.

Conversely, they do have the votes on the Supreme Court, where the conservative majority has demonstrated time and again that it will put the whims and wishes of the president above the Constitution, and it therefore seems likely that “his” judges will do so again.

However, by ruling in his favor in this case, even if it is not for a legal reason but rather to protect the US economy from disruption, they might as well declare him king, because then Trump will just keep making up emergencies to expand his power.

That would be a really bad outcome.

But it’s not the worst one.

An even bigger problem arises if, improbably, the Supreme Court upholds Friday’s decision (or decides not to take up the case to wash its hands of this mess) and the administration simply ignores it. 

Based on how Trump has been wielding his power and how much he loves tariffs, that seems almost certain… and it might actually be another reason why the Supreme Court would disregard the laws of the land to rule in his favor. Because, if the tariffs will remain in place either way, why risk a constitutional crisis? 

In court, Trump’s lawyers made it quite clear that invalidating the tariffs would plunge the US economy into turmoil, which might even be true. But it is also true that this chaos is of the president’s making. Nobody forced him to impose these taxes on the American people; he just enjoyed the power of being able to bully the rest of the world. 

His reaction to the appeals court ruling shows that he has no interest in complying, and we would bet our life against a ham sandwich that nobody in the White House is currently drawing up plans on what to do if the Supreme Court sides with the Constitution and not Trump. 

“ALL TARIFFS ARE STILL IN EFFECT! Today a Highly Partisan Appeals Court incorrectly said that our Tariffs should be removed, but they know the United States of America will win in the end,” the president wrote in a social media post. 

“If these Tariffs ever went away, it would be a total disaster for the Country. It would make us financially weak, and we have to be strong,” Trump added. “The USA will no longer tolerate enormous Trade Deficits and unfair Tariffs and Non Tariff Trade Barriers imposed by other Countries, friend or foe, that undermine our Manufacturers, Farmers, and everyone else. If allowed to stand, this Decision would literally destroy the United States of America.”

That doesn’t exactly sound like a guy who would comply with an adverse ruling. 

What it does sound like is a despot who will do as he pleases instead of complying with laws and court orders. 

And, when viewed through the lens of how far the US has progressed down the road toward authoritarianism, the most likely outcomes here allow only one conclusion: You have reached your destination!