The Fake Crisis Behind Trump's Tariffs
It Could Happen Here
Cool Zone Media and iHeartPodcasts
4.0 • 6.5K Ratings
🗓️ 12 March 2026
⏱️ 25 minutes
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Summary
As Trump fakes a balance of payments crisis to implement more tariffs, Mia faces her demons to explain what any of that means.
Sources:
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/mar/10/senate-democrats-bill-small-businesses-trump-tariffs
https://archive.vn/E3fwh#selection-479.0-482.0
https://www.stlouisfed.org/open-vault/2026/feb/us-dollar-role-as-reserve-currency
https://www.stlouisfed.org/publications/page-one-economics/2016/11/01/international-trade
https://www.wilsoncenter.org/blog-post/bolivias-balance-payments-crisis-brings-back-bad-memories
https://www.elibrary.imf.org/display/book/9781557758286/ch02.xml
https://www.krwg.org/local-viewpoints/2026-03-10/scotus-decision-on-tariffs
https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/gov-healey-demands-refunds-mass-182527561.html
https://thehill.com/regulation/court-battles/5775500-businesses-sue-trump-tariffs/
https://www.stlouisfed.org/publications/page-one-economics/2025/oct/what-is-the-balance-of-payments
https://www.investopedia.com/insights/what-is-the-balance-of-payments/
https://www.congress.gov/bill/93rd-congress/house-bill/10710/text
https://www.rba.gov.au/education/resources/explainers/the-balance-of-payments.html
https://adamtooze.substack.com/p/chartbook-434-back-to-the-1970s-again
https://fraser.stlouisfed.org/files/docs/publications/frbslreview/rev_stls_196103.pdf
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/952314
https://www.elibrary.imf.org/view/journals/022/0003/003/article-A003-en.xml
https://scholarship.law.columbia.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=3545&context=faculty_scholarship
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is an I-Heart podcast. |
| 0:02.5 | Guaranteed Human. |
| 0:05.9 | Cool Zone Media. |
| 0:10.5 | Welcome to Ika Rappan here, a podcast about tariffs and how to justify them. |
| 0:16.4 | I am your host, Mia Wong. |
| 0:19.0 | And today we are talking about tariffs, the Supreme Court ruling, |
| 0:24.1 | and how Trump is manufacturing a crisis to justify the next set of tariffs that he has imposed. |
| 0:32.2 | Oh, boy. So, all right, to recap, our last tariff segment. So people understand what I'm talking about when I talk |
| 0:39.2 | about the Supreme Court ruling from a few weeks ago. So Trump had been claiming the ability to do |
| 0:45.3 | tariffs under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, an act that famously never says the word |
| 0:51.3 | tariff. And the Supreme Court was like, no, actually, the International |
| 0:55.7 | Economic Powers Act does not give you the power to levy tariffs, a thing that it does not say |
| 1:00.9 | that you can do. So Trump got extremely mad about this, and he imposed a 10% tariff across the board |
| 1:09.0 | using a different law, as he said he was going to do. |
| 1:13.0 | Now, this 10% across the board tariff was run through Section 122 of the Trade Act of 1974. |
| 1:19.9 | We're going to get into that. |
| 1:21.8 | Okay, so he imposes a 10% tariff using this, like, different authority from Section 122. |
| 1:27.8 | And the next day, he goes, I'm going to raise the tariff rate to 15%. |
| 1:31.5 | And this is the tariff rate on the entire world. |
| 1:34.4 | But then he just forgot to do it because he got distracted by, I think, invading Iran. |
| 1:39.1 | So he has never actually, you know, raised the tariff rate to 15%, which he said that he had done. |
| 1:45.5 | So it's now just at 10% on the entire world instead of, you know, all of the sort of individual |
... |
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