A reporter made a statement to Trump "I've spoken with some economists about your Tariff proposals and they say they don't see how it won't make items cost more". Trump's reply to the reporter was "I don't need Congress, but they'll approve it. I'll have the right to impose them myself if they don't". I see two problems with that statement by Trump. First, he doesn't address the statement the reporter is asking. Nothing in the statement was about Congressional  approval. It was about the cost that would be passed on to the American people. The second thing that bothered me is the fact that he dismisses Congress as someone that has no say at all about the economy and how it will affect the people. 

I am not anti-tariff. In some cases they are very necessary to protect American jobs.  In some socialistic systems and communistic systems some of the industries are supported by the government to ensure employment. This support can lead to a company from a socialist system to have the ability to sell their products for less than what it actually cost them to produce them. If I remember right that is called Dumping. In the late 1980's I was working at a copper fabrication company in Kenosha, Wisconsin. There was a Finnish company that was undercutting our prices because they were being subsidized by the Finnish government. Our company filed a complaint with the Federal Government and won. There was an extra cost like a tariff added to their product to eliminate their competitive advantage. 

If a product being sold in America has a competitive advantage because the company is being subsidized by their government there should be some consequences. Otherwise our businesses would go broke, shut down and  people would wind up unemployed. In situations like that tariffs are a good thing. To just put a blanket 20 percent tariffs on all foreign goods is just like adding a tax onto the consumer. Who do you think is going to pay that tariff? Other governments will not be paying it. The foreign companies won't just eat the 20 percent and in some cases take a loss selling to America. It will raise prices on just about everything from cars to the fish we buy in the grocery stores. It could very well create shortages which would drive up prices. It could very well turn some competitive Americans businesses into businesses that are no longer able to be competitive because they depend on foreign made parts and equipment. Of course there would be retaliation and governments would put tariffs on American made products. Across the board tariffs are not a good thing for our so-called free market system. In fact, they can kill a free market system. 

Trump sounding like a dictator that doesn't need Congress is another thing that really scares me. Our system was created on the premise of checks and balances. The Legislative branch writes the laws and the Executive branch approves the law. For the President to say that he doesn't need Congress is contrary to the vision of our Forefathers, the people who wrote our Constitution. I don't think our Forefathers ever envisioned our political party system and I definitely don't think they ever envisioned what the Republican Party has become. Congress are the people's representatives. There are so many of them because they are supposed to be going back to their districts and finding out the needs of the people and bringing their voices back to Washington. That has not been happening enough. 

Presidents have always issued executive orders. I can understand a wartime President like Roosevelt, Truman, Johnson and Wilson having to issue a large number of executive orders. Wartime decisions have to be quick decisions. Not everything can be debated by Congress. Sometimes the buck has to stop at the President's desk. I have to ask you, do you really think that Trump's tariffs are something that are such a dire emergency they don't have time to be debated by Congress? To come up with legislation that affects the people is supposed to be the job of Congress. A President bypasses Congress and just writes an executive order in my opinion is someone that just doesn't want to listen to the voice of the people. 

Maybe that is one of the things that I have liked about Biden. He really has tried to work with Congress to come up with bipartisan legislation to help solve the problems of the country. When you look at the Constitution it has always been Congress's job to solve the so-called border crisis or the environmental crisis. Situations like those are not supposed to be solved by the flick of a pen. Immigration and restrictions on immigration have far reaching problems for different areas of the country and for many different industries. The same with the environmental crisis. My point is that many times when a President writes an executive order, in reality, it is a failure of that President and of that Congress to come up with solutions that benefit the country and not just a political party. In fact, I blame Congress more than the President because that is why we sent them there. 

For Trump to start out by saying that he doesn't have to work with Congress to me is something that a want to be tyrant would say. I have heard many Republicans call Biden a tyrant and a dictator and I just scratch my head. Do people actually believe that? I look at the number of executive orders that Biden has written and I see he has written 130. That comes out to 43 executive orders a year. I looked at Obama and because he was in office 8 years instead of 4 like Biden he wrote 276 executive orders which comes out to 35 per year. I looked at George W Bush and I see that he wrote 291 executive orders which comes out to 36 per year.  Now I look at Trump. He wrote 220 executive orders over his 4 years which comes out to 55 a year. Just by the numbers which one looks more like the dictator that doesn't want to work with Congress or Congress didn't want to work with. 

Who's at fault? We the voters are at fault. We have bought into this party's politics hook, line, and sinker. I am not a member of the Democratic Party and even though I agree with them today doesn't mean I have always agreed with them. Just right now the things that the Republican party and especially what Trump is saying scares the hell out of me. Project 2025 scares the hell out of me. Anything that puts a political party or a President above the Constitution scares the hell out of me. I have read the Oath of Office that these guys take and there is no mention of a political party. It is an oath to protect and defend the Constitution. I feel enactment of things like Project 2025 are meant to burn that Constitution they have sworn an oath to protect.