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It Could Happen Here

The Fake Crisis Behind Trump's Tariffs

It Could Happen Here

Cool Zone Media and iHeartPodcasts

Politics, Daily News, News, Society & Culture

4.06.5K Ratings

🗓️ 12 March 2026

⏱️ 25 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

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://www.reuters.com/legal/litigation/trumps-new-tariffs-shift-focus-balance-payments-economists-see-no-crisis-2026-02-24/

https://archive.vn/E3fwh#selection-479.0-482.0

https://www.toyassociation.org/PressRoom2/News/2026-News/court-orders-refunds-for-ieepa-tariffs-implementation-process-ongoing.aspx

https://www.stlouisfed.org/open-vault/2026/feb/us-dollar-role-as-reserve-currency

https://sudanreeves.org/2018/05/10/the-collapse-of-sudans-economy-is-accelerating-along-with-human-suffering/

https://www.stlouisfed.org/publications/page-one-economics/2016/11/01/international-trade

https://www.khanacademy.org/economics-finance-domain/ap-macroeconomics/ap-open-economy-international-trade-and-finance/the-balance-of-payments/a/the-balance-of-payments

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

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

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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