Trump imposed new taxes with only a wave of his hand, and Nevada Republicans are fine with that

Former Gov. Steve Sisolak and his fellow Democrats in the Nevada Legislature didn’t raise taxes.

But in 2019 they passed a couple bills that tried to maintain some existing taxes.

Neither of the bills they passed had been supported by two-thirds majorities of both houses of the Legislature, as required by the state constitution if enacting any measure that “increases any public revenue in any form.”

So Nevada Republicans sued, and won, and the Democratic effort — not to raise taxes but merely maintain existing ones — was ruled unconstitutional.

Fast forward to today, and Donald Trump, on his own and without consultation or approval from the legislative branch of the U.S. government,  has implemented a series of tax increases on businesses. Those businesses will try hard as they can to pass the cost of those new taxes to consumers in the form of higher prices.

And Nevada Republicans are fine with that.

Taxation by edict

A tariff is a tax. 

Specifically, it’s a tax on imported goods. 

U.S. firms that import goods from abroad are charged a tax based on the value of the import. Businesses pay that tax to U.S. Customs and Border Protection. 

Tariffs are every bit as much a tax as the sales tax Nevadans pay to state and local governments when they buy clothes or dog food or a car.

When the importer sells those imported goods in the U.S., naturally they try to pass along as much of the cost of the tax to consumers as possible.

So prices rise.

Because Trump said so.

And Nevada Republicans are fine with that.

Like the state of Nevada, the United States of America has a Constitution, too. And like Nevada’s constitution, the U.S. Constitution also has some rules about raising or increasing government revenue.

Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution mandates that “The Congress” — not the president, even if it’s Trump — “shall have the power to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts, and excises.” 

Under Section 8, Congress — not Trump — also has the power “To regulate commerce with foreign nations.”

Nevada Republicans threw a hissy fit when Sisolak and Democrats tried to maintain existing taxes without what Republicans believed was proper approval from Nevada’s legislative branch. 

Trump hasn’t given a second thought to the U.S. legislative branch while he has raised taxes, and then paused them, and then raised them, and then exempted some goods from them, etc., in a dizzying array of madcap proclamations. 

A lawsuit against Trump’s lawless acts filed Wednesday by a cadre of Democratic state attorneys general, including Nevada’s Aaron Ford, notes the 1977 International Emergency Economic Powers Act Trump disingenuously cites as legitimizing his one-man tax hike binge only applies when an emergency presents an “unusual and extraordinary threat.”

The only emergency presenting an unusual and extraordinary threat is Trump.

But Republicans who have majorities in both houses of Congress have thus far been fine with that. 

The same goes for Republicans in Nevada.

Strong leadership, NV GOP style: ‘Well, let’s see how it goes’

Nevada Republican Gov. Joe Lombardo did submit a humble plea to Trump last week, beseeching the president to repeal the tax on lithium imported from China. Oddly for someone who is fond of saying “no new taxes” when in front of audiences, Lombardo didn’t object to the import tax because it was a new tax. He objected to it because he fears it will stymie the growth of the state’s nascent lithium recycling and manufacturing industry. 

And although Lombardo has made clear time and again that he devoutly believes the ideal number of new taxes is zero, all he’s said about the threat Trump’s new taxes on imports pose to the the state budget, the state’s economy, and the well-being of his constituents is that Nevada will just have to “make adjustments on the fly.” Which sounds like a conclusion every bit as deliberative as the one behind Trump’s tax on imports to begin with. No wonder the two men endorsed each other.

Ever wary of being outdone in the art of folksy deflection, when asked recently about Trump’s new taxes on imports on KUNR,  Nevada’s only Republican in Congress, Rep. Mark Amodei, customarily filled the air with many words. But a single phrase among them encapsulated the rest: “Well, let’s see how it goes.”

Ask the Nevada State Republican Party (Fake Elector Michael McDonald, proprietor), and they’ll happily tell you that it is those icky Democrats, not the dreamy Republicans, who meekly go along with higher taxes. So even defeating a bill that would not actually raise anyone’s taxes, but would only reset taxable value of homes when they’re resold (to hedge funds, for example), is one of the party’s “top concerns” of this year’s state legislative session, according to a recent party email. 

And yet a scan of statements from the state party over the last several weeks reveals no mention of Trump’s tsunami of new taxes on imports, let alone an objection to Trump raising taxes unilaterally, i.e., by unconstitutional edict.

For the record, and because Trump’s multiple Queen-of-Hearts-style decrees accompanied by rampant flip-floppery can be confusing, the new taxes on imports Trump has proclaimed that are currently in effect include:

• 10% taxes on nearly all imports from virtually everywhere and anywhere;
• 25% import taxes on automobiles, auto parts, and multiple other products from Mexico and Canada;
• 145% import tax on goods from China, except for phones, computers, and the other stuff the tech billionaires instructed Trump not to tax.

Meanwhile, the “Liberation Day” import taxes — the “reciprocal tariffs,” as the grossly inaccurate Trump dubbed them — that threw markets (and your retirement savings) into chaos and prompted even some Trump supporters to shake their heads in disbelief and despair, are scheduled to resume on July 9. 

Unless Trump strikes “beautiful deals” with just about every nation on the planet between now and then. 

Which nobody believes will happen. 

Or unless Trump caves and backs down — as he already did once on the “reciprocal tariffs,” and as he’s indicating he will do for China — but then tries to save face by dialing up some new hare-brained inanity. 

Which everybody assumes will happen.

But as businesses and industries that prize stability will anxiously attest, it’s impossible to know what Trump will do about … anything … because Trump is a volatile and easily triggered scatterbrain who himself has little if any idea what he’s going to do next. 

Meanwhile, the damage Trump has already inflicted not only on the economy but on U.S. global credibility seems deeper, darker, and more irreversible each day. 

Trump is devolving the country into a backwater, an economic and political anachronism that traded its alliances and interconnections with, and leadership of, the world’s wealthiest and most democratic nations for membership in a decadent syndicate of lawless thugs — no longer the most powerful nation the world had ever seen integrally involved in promoting peace, progress, and prosperity, but a menacing carceral state wreaking of despotism and corruption, and shunned and avoided by the peoples of free and law-abiding nations. 

And Nevada Republicans are fine with that.