The Supreme Court’s ruling that Trump’s unilateral tariffs on imported goods are unconstitutional because they are a tax paid by those businesses that import goods, and taxes can only be adopted by Congress, is a major blow to one of Trump’s signature policies and to Trump himself.
Trump’s immediate response was to attack the Court’s majority as “un- American” and then impose a 15 percent tariff tax on 84 countries, citing an existing law unilaterally without any discussion. This is an attempt to save face, and lasts only 150 days, when Congress has to vote on it, and it probably won’t pass given widespread opposition to Trump’s tariffs.
The Court does not stand above politics. It is subject to the developments and sentiments within the capitalist ruling class and national politics.
What does this ruling portend? Does it reflect a change among a significant layer of the ruling class to reign in Trump? If so, that would be reflected in broader policies. Or is it a narrow ruling concerning harm done to affected businesses by this tax, or on the economy? Or something else?
Time will tell.
The Court does not stand above politics. It is subject to the developments and sentiments within the capitalist ruling class and national politics.
But one thing is clear — it does not overturn the Court’s many rulings expanding the powers of the presidency.
Many who consider themselves socialists, fighters for the rights of oppressed nationalities and women, and honest supporters of democracy, have reacted to Trump’s second term with warnings about his drive toward authoritarianism.
It is clear that he has achieved that, and consolidated an authoritarian state.
From the beginning of his first term in 2017 Trump has projected himself as the strongman who can set America straight. After he was defeated in the 2020 election, which Joseph Biden won, Trump prepared his comeback with the consolidation around him of far right exponents in the Republican Party of the establishment of a regime of absolute power, a dictatorship, although they do not use that word.
The consolidation of an authoritarian regime is a step towards that dictatorship.
He had immediately appealed to white racism when he first ran in 2016, and consolidated a hard white racist base of supporters which he has maintained to the present, of some 35-39 percent of the voting population.
Also in his first term he was able to pack the Supreme Court with three new rightist judges, to give the Court a six person rightist majority. This Court has ruled in favor of Trump by 90 percent in cases that have been ruled against him by lower Courts.
In ruling after ruling, the Supreme Court his expanded the power of the presidency under Trump, part of building the authoritarian regime.
He rules through edicts, or fiats, called Presidential Executive Orders when he doesn’t get his way otherwise. These circumvent Congress. He pays no attention to the U.S. Constitution, the Bill of Rights, laws passed by Congress, state laws or policies, or anything else. In 2025 he issued 225 such orders. His favorite method has become to post his fiats the night before on his Truth Social platform and then issue them the next day, which are carried out by his loyal agencies.
This alone proves that he is the head of an authoritarian state.
He has created a federal armed force consisting of ICE and Border Patrol agents, with greatly expanded funding and hiring of racist thugs and brutes that answers to him and his loyal Cabinet members, who control the agencies of the executive branch.
He has demanded total personal loyalty in his regime and in the Republican Party on all levels, and punishes any who question his statements and aspects of his policies, another aspect of authoritarianism.
His incessant boasts about being the “greatest” President ever, the “greatest” of this and that on all levels, putting his name on everything he can, for example the Kennedy Center for Performing Arts although he has shown no interest in what happens there (for example symphonies), demands that train stations be named Trump Station, etc., reflect his assertion of authoritarian rule.
He has established a personal secret police force composed of armed agents of the Border Patrol and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). The Border Patrol was known for its lawless brutality when it was on the southern border with Mexico, which is now evident wherever it goes in the country.
He has unleashed this force first of all against people with brown skin in cities controlled by Democrats, as part of his declared intention of deporting as many as possible, as we have graphically seen in the case of Minneapolis, part of the racist agenda of his regime and his Republican Party. In doing so, he has unleashed state terror of brutal masked thugs against Latinos, and Black Somalies and Haitains, that also is meant to cower whites who oppose this terror.
Those grabbed up and sent to sordid unhealthy prisons (“detention centers”), including immigrants, those legally working in the U.S, and citizens. Children are included. Most of those sent to the detention centers are “disappeared” without access to family members who don’t know where they are. The disappeared include those unknowns who have died in custody.
The use of this force will not stop there, but expand, if he can do it, to wider sections of the population.
Trump’s authoritarian regime has upended U.S. society, in addition to his selected use of the Border Patrol and ICE. He has gutted all regulations and policies that get in his way, including anything that contradicts prioritizing coal, oil and natural gas including climate change and alternative nonpolluting energy sources like solar and wind although they have become less costly than fossil fuels.
He has launched an investigation by the FBI, now under his control, of opponents, protesters whom he calls “terrorists” etc.
Restrictions of emissions of cars etc. have been abolished by fiat. He has barred importation of electric vehicles. Canada, reacting to Trump’s tariffs and threats to annex the country, has established trade agreements with China, including the importation of Chinese-made electric vehicles, the cheapest and reliable.
The Environmental Protection Agency has been converted into the Environmental Destruction Agency.
The FBI has been ordered to investigate the international Extinction Rebellion organization.
He has gutted entire federal agencies and taken over all independent federal agencies with the exception of the Federal Reserve Bank’s leading committee, although that is in his sights and with the possible help of the Supreme Court.
The Court has agreed to consider overturning the 14th amendment regarding conferring citizenship on all who are born in the U.S.
He has outlawed Diversity, Equity and Inclusion for Blacks and women in the government, industry and education. Higher education has been made subservient to this ruling, building upon what Biden started with attacking campus protest of Israel’s genocide on Palestinians, and the adoption of the definition of anti-Zionism as anti-Semitic.
He outlaws “trans” terms and rights, and attacks LGBTI + rights.
Under his threats and implantation of financial penalties universities and colleges have bent to his polices. He has also demanded the rewriting of history and what is taught concerning slavery, Jim Crow and continuing Black oppression, the labor movement, and anything that is deemed “negative” about U.S. history, with some of his spokespeople saying that includes anything that is “anti-capitalist or anti-Christian.” Confederate monuments and figures are defended, and Confederate leaders are among the heroes of U.S. history in this view.
He has drastically slashed scientific study and research at universities, not just climate science. It is one of his contradictions and ironies that this demotes the U.S., not “makes it great again.”
He has established a “Board of Peace” of select countries, initially to administer Gaza under his control, now widened as an alternative to the United Nations Security Council. Trump is the Board’s chair, decides what it will do, decides who its member countries are accepted and which can be expelled.
All these policies and many more indicate we are living today under an authoritarian regime.
Trump’s approval ratings have gone down, except among his hard white racist base. The scenes of masked armed men seizing and brutalizing people because of their color or language they speak, and protests against this with white protesters themselves being attacked and even shot and killed are one factor. Another is the continuing rise in prices for working people for basic necessities like food and shelter, in spite of Trump’s promises.
As of yet, there remain bourgeois democratic rights, although these are being whittled down, from the outlawing of certain speech, the separation of church and state, the right to assemble to protest government policies, and to be free of unreasonable search and seizure under the Fourth Amendment. This has been overwhelming made clear by the actions of the Border Patrol and ICE, but are wider than that.
While we are living in an authoritarian government, it is not yet a dictatorship.
There are many indications, including recent electoral loses by Republicans, and growing disaffections with Trump in the populous, that it will be hard for Republicans not to suffer loses in the November elections that will lose their slim majority in Congress — that is, if there were free and democratic elections.
In the Republican-controlled states there have been many policies that suppress the vote of especially Blacks, including redrawn electoral maps, threats to surround polling stations with ICE/Border Patrol thugs, and place obstacles to working people in general to register or vote. The latest is Trump’s threat to federalize the control of elections (the normal job of the States), and to require proof of citizenship.
Americans are not used to have documentary proof of citizenship on them (like regimes that require identification cards at all times) and many do not have such documents readily available as they have never been required before.
Trump says this requirement is needed to prevent non-citizens from voting. Many studies have shown that the number of non-citizens voting is a handful.
But the real reason for this requirement was blurted out by Trump’s Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem. She said the citizen requirement was necessary to ensure that “the right people vote and the right people are elected.”
Trump said that if the requirement is not adopted by Congress, he will issue a Presidential order to do so.
Trump and the Republicans are planning to ensure that the “right people” are elected. If they succeed this would be a major step toward dictatorship, with the other capitalist party marginalized.
Trump’s FBI seized stored ballots cast in 2020 in Fulton, Georgia, that Trump challenged in the presidential election, demanding that officials there “find” enough votes to help him win. Presumably they will be “recounted” to show he won there and the 2020 elections were “stolen” from him. But they also indicate what he may do in spite of Republican’s efforts to disqualify voters in the November midterm elections.
What can be done to counter Trump’s authoritarianism?
The Democrats say vote for them. But that is no answer. Mainstream Democratic politicians off no alternative to Republican policies. They sidestep from saying what they are for, with an exception concerning the ICE/Border Patrol attacks where they seek an agreement with the Republicans and Trump that is going nowhere. And they have finally begun to say even that because of the widespread protests that have swept the country. The Democrats reject the demand to “abolish ICE” or to establish real immigration reform that embraces as citizens immigrants who have worked in the U.S. for years, and welcomes immigrants in general, which helps the economy.
They do not say one word about which of Trump’s Presidential Executive Orders they would reverse. They say not one word about reversing the ban on DEI, or reinstating the true history of the United States in education from universities down to elementary school. They agree with his foreign policy, including his assertion of an updated version of the nineteenth century imperialist Monroe Doctrine, Trump’s “Domroe Doctrine,” asserting control over the entire Western Hemisphere, etc.
The protests and actions against Trump’s armed thugs of the ICE/Border Patrol continue, including now the successful blocking of and the building of new “detention centers.” All the protests have been locally organized. What is needed now is a massive democratically-organized national conference to establish national organization and leadership.
These are the type of actions coupled with broad new organizational leadership that can push back against Trump. They can set an example of how to pushback on other issues, including DEI and all forms of oppression, including not only against non-whites, but women and LGBTI+ people. Need we add that the fight against catastrophic climate change must also be included?
Should these types of actions become generalized to include mass opposition to the ever-increasing exploitation of the broad working class and all other forms of oppression under capitalism, that would raise the need for a new revolutionary political party based on the working class and all the oppressed. Such a deeply-rooted mass revolutionary party is key to an effective challenge not only to capitalism’s rising authoritarianism and threats of dictatorship but also to the imposition of a fascist regime that today’s crisis-ridden capitalism in the face of growing mass opposition, may well contemplate.