The Price of Arrogance
The American people are being fleeced.
This did not happen by accident. It happened by choice, in a clear sequence, by an administration that promised to lower costs and raised them instead. Here is the part they would rather you not sit with for too long: the same government that built this mess has the power to end it. Not the president. Congress. The authority has been sitting in the Capitol the entire time.
How We Got Here
Twelve days into his second term, on 2/1/2025, the president levied tariffs on Mexico, Canada, and China. He did it on his own, without a vote in Congress, and in doing so broke trade agreements the United States had negotiated and signed in good faith. Prices at home started climbing almost immediately. A year later, on 2/20/2026, the Supreme Court struck those tariffs down. That should have been the end of it. Instead, the administration simply re-imposed tariffs under different legal authorities, and the wall stayed up.
Eight days after that ruling, the administration launched an offensive military campaign against Iran, after campaigning on a promise of no new wars. The strikes rattled one of the most energy-rich regions on earth, and the price of oil, gas, and diesel jumped across the globe. Today, diesel is over $6.00/gallon, its highest price in history.
The Price of Tariffs
Let’s start with a moment of grounding. What is a tariff? A tariff is a tax on the American people. It is not paid by the foreign country named in the headlines. It is paid by the American company that imports the good, and that company does what any business does with a new cost: it passes the tax along to you at the register. When you hear "tariff on China," read "tax on Americans who buy things from China."
That tax is now enormous. The average U.S. tariff rate has climbed to its highest level since the 1930s. According to the Budget Lab at Yale, the current slate of tariffs is on track to cost Americans $1.9 trillion over the next decade, or roughly $1,100 per household each year. The Joint Economic Committee found families had already paid an average of $700 more in just the first eight months of this term.
These tariffs—this tax—hits hardest the people who can least afford it. Tariffs fall on the goods, food, clothing, and household necessities that make up the lion’s share of a working family's budget. The Budget Lab found the burden on the lowest-income households, measured against what they earn, runs about three times heavier than on the richest. A tariff is a regressive tax that places a heavier burden on low-income families.
The Price of Tariffs
You feel it most in the one bill you cannot skip. The USDA expects grocery and food prices to rise about 3 percent this year, on top of the increases families already absorbed over the past several years. Some staples are far worse. Beef is up more than 12 percent over the past year. Coffee has jumped nearly 20 percent. A tariff on imported produce, coffee, or cooking oil does not stay on a spreadsheet in Washington. It shows up on the shelf in your neighborhood, and it stays there.
The Price of War
Now the pump. When the president gave his State of the Union in late February, the national average for gas was $2.92 a gallon. Within days of the strikes on Iran, that number began to climb, and it has been above $4 a gallon since. Over the past year, gasoline is up 27.4 percent, and in the most recent inflation report it accounted for more than a third of the entire monthly increase in prices.
Here is the part worth understanding. The Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy reports that Americans have paid more than $90 billion in higher fuel costs since the war began, and the number keeps climbing. Not all of that is the market doing what markets do. A large share of it is pure windfall for the oil industry. Refiners buy their crude months in advance through futures contracts, locking in a price precisely to protect themselves from sudden shocks like this one. So when the price at the pump spiked, much of the gasoline behind that spike came from crude the refiners had already bought at pre-war prices. You paid the war price. They kept the difference. That gap is not a cost being passed along. It is profit, and it was made possible by a war the American people never voted for.
What Can Congress Do?
Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution gives the power to lay taxes, duties, and imposts to Congress. Read that again. Not to the president. To Congress. The Founders put the power to tax in the hands of the branch closest to the people, on purpose, because a tax is the government reaching into your pocket and that decision was never meant to belong to one person.
So how has the president been setting tariffs at all? Because over the years Congress handed him pieces of its own authority through a stack of trade statutes, laws that let a president act quickly in narrow circumstances. That power is borrowed. It can be taken back. And when the Supreme Court struck down one basis for these tariffs, the administration just reached for another, which tells you everything about how determined it is to keep the wall standing and to continue to drive up your prices.
Congress does not have to wait for the next election or the next court ruling. It can repeal or rewrite the statutes it used to lend this power away. It can pass a resolution to eliminate specific tariffs. It can require that no tariff on food or everyday essentials takes effect without a vote of Congress. Any one of these would begin to bring prices down and pull the United States back into compliance with the agreements it signed. The tools are on the shelf. The only thing missing is the will to pick them up.
Conclusion
Americans are paying more for nearly everything, and Congress can lower those prices the moment it decides to act. We are fighting a new war after being promised there would be none. We are tearing up trade agreements built over decades of careful work. We are handing windfall profits to oil companies and calling it the cost of doing business. And we are doing all of it after the highest court in the country ruled against the policies behind it, yet they continue. Strip away the slogans and one conclusion is left standing: the American people are being fleeced, and Congress is holding the shears.
