Trump Tests the True Limits of Presidential Power

Greetings and welcome to this week’s midair performance of the Carnival of Fools! Like a prestige subscription-service drama, our story resumes from a potent cliff-hanger: Last week, Donald Trump had invoked the laws of cartoon physics as he strapped an ACME-brand tariff regime onto America’s economy and sent it hurtling off a cliff. Bond markets proved immune to the appeal of MAGAnomics; Trump was therefore almost immediately forced to hit the pause button, or at least the slo-mo: Global tariffs are still on at a blanket 10 percent — with a 90-day pause granted for the nations of the world to “negotiate deals,” a phrase with no articulated (or articulable) meaning in this context. That’s the upside; the downside is that we are now embroiled in a full-scale trade war with China.

Let us at least enjoy this breathing spell, this slackening of our plummet toward the ground. The markets may still be roiling, but they have temporarily ceased their agonized peals of pain: America’s short- and long-term financial position shall now crumble at least slightly more slowly and quietly. (Here’s to small blessings.) And even more importantly, this pause gives us a chance to consider all of the other, less discussed yet equally alarming, ways the Trump administration is seeking to permanently warp the power of the American presidency.