On August 6 — unless he chickens out — US president Donald Trump will impose a 50% tariff on American buyers of Brazilian coffee.

Brazilian coffee isn’t the only coffee Americans  find themselves paying exorbitant taxes on. Vietnamese, Indonesian, Indian, Colombian, Nicaraguan, and European Union-produced coffee just got hit with tariffs (paid by American consumers) ranging from 18% to 32% as well.

Brazil, however, accounts for 45% of US coffee imports, and 99% of the coffee we drink is imported (outside of Hawaii, American soil/climate are apparently not very hospitable to coffee cultivation).

How much coffee comes to the US from Brazil? About eight million 60-kilogram (132 pound) bags per year. Americans drink 179 billion cups of coffee per year, 491 million cups per day.

That’s about to get a LOT more expensive, whether you go in for fru-fru bespoke beverages prepared by expert baristas at your favorite shop, or just fire up your drip, “k-cup,” or espresso machine at home.

“DON’T MESS WITH PEOPLE’S COFFEE” strikes me as one of the most basic rules implicit in the maintenance of civil society, but apparently Trump didn’t get the memo.

What’s his political and legal rationale for the huge tax increases on American coffee drinkers?

Politically, he’s announced himself annoyed at the Brazilian regime’s prosecution of its previous president for allegedly trying to put over a coup and remain in office despite being defeated in an election. Sounds kind of familiar, doesn’t it?

Legally, he cites an imagined presidential power to impose new taxes any time he decides there’s an “emergency.” No such power is mentioned anywhere in the US Constitution — a document which, in fact, reserves the power to tax exclusively to Congress — but he doesn’t seem inclined toward self-doubt on the matter (or any other matter).

The negative effects on your wallet won’t remain limited to the tariff rate itself, either. There’s also the effect on global demand/supply, an effect that will likely linger long after the tariff is repealed.

The Chinese regime, Reuters reports, just licensed 183 Brazilian coffee companies to sell their wares in that very large market. American coffee drinkers’ loss is Chinese coffee drinkers’ gain. And absent a massive increase in supply, that likely sustained increase in demand  for Brazilian beans presages higher US prices even after Trump’s trade war insanity ends.

Wake up and smell the (expensive) coffee:

Tariffs are onerous taxes — on you.

They’re damaging economic sanctions — on you.

There’s nothing “America First” about them.

Thomas L. Knapp (X: @thomaslknapp | Bluesky: @knappster.bsky.social | Mastodon: @knappster) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

PUBLICATION/CITATION HISTORY

“Taking the Census” by Francis William Edmonds (1854)

“My bill,” US Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) tweeted in June, “will require the U.S. Census Bureau to conduct a new census immediately upon enactment of the bill. In conducting the new census of the U.S. population, it shall require questions determining the citizenship of each individual, and count US citizens only.”

The money shot: “[T]he bill will direct states to immediately begin a redistricting of all U.S. House seats process using only the population of United States citizens.”

Naturally, US president Donald Trump supports the idea.

So does Florida governor Ron DeSantis.

Why? Because Republicans want to rig future  elections by re-drawing — that is, re-gerrymandering — the American political map to benefit themselves.

One problem with the idea: It’s wholly, completely, and unquestionably illegal. According to Article I, Section 2 of the “Supreme Law of the Land,” the US Constitution:

“Representatives and direct Taxes shall be apportioned among the several States which may be included within this Union, according to their respective Numbers, which shall be determined by adding to the whole Number of free Persons, including those bound to Service for a Term of Years, and excluding Indians not taxed, three fifths of all other Persons. The actual Enumeration shall be made within three Years after the first Meeting of the Congress of the United States, and within every subsequent Term of ten Years.”

The “Indians not taxed” and “all other persons” sections are no longer applicable. Native Americans became US citizens (and started getting taxed) in 1924; “all other persons” meant slaves, and chattel slavery was banned in 1865.

The Constitution requires the census to be conducted once within every ten-year period after 1790. It’s already been conducted for this period. An “interim re-do” would not be a valid census.

The Constitution requires an “actual enumeration” of every person in the country, citizen or not.

The Constitution requires apportionment of US House seats according to THAT “enumeration,” not to a count of citizens.

Constitutionally, MTG’s dumb idea is dead on arrival.

We don’t bother much with the Constitution anymore, though. And why should we? As Lysander Spooner noted in 1870, it either got us where we are now or didn’t prevent us from getting here. So it’s hard to argue with a straight face that it’s worth much.

But let’s roll the clock back to BEFORE the Constitution, to reasons for the American Revolution.

Does “no taxation without representation” ring any bells?

“Imposing taxes on us without our consent” featured in the Declaration of Independence’s list of grievances against King George III.

Non-citizens can’t vote, but the fiction used to justify shaking them down for taxes is that they’re “represented” in Congress  by virtue of being counted for House apportionment in the census.

MTG and friends want to abandon even that farfetched excuse in a ham-handed attempt to cling to political power for just a little longer.

And if it works, it WILL be for just a little bit longer.

They’re playing with fire, and when you do that you eventually get burned.

Thomas L. Knapp (X: @thomaslknapp | Bluesky: @knappster.bsky.social | Mastodon: @knappster) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

PUBLICATION/CITATION HISTORY

It’s only mid-2025, but both “major” US political parties are already well into their campaigns to win US House and Senate seats in the 2026 midterm elections. They’re talking up potential candidates, trotting out actual candidates, and, in the case of the House, going all-out to ensure that those pesky voters don’t get in the way of partisan ambitions.

Their current election-rigging schemes revolve around the decennial practice of “redistricting” based on the most recent US census.

Their tool/tactic of choice is called “gerrymandering,” after a Massachusetts newspaper noticed that the boundaries of state senate district created under legislation signed by then-governor Elbridge Gerry in 1812 resembled a salamander.

In Texas and Missouri, Republican-dominated state legislatures are trying to figure out how to maximize the number of House seats held by the GOP, and minimize the number of House seats held by Democrats, after next year’s elections. In California, New York, and Maryland the parties’ positions are reversed.

One perpetual wrench in the machinery of redistricting is race. Historically, black civil rights groups have held that districts must be drawn so as to allow black voters to support “the candidate of their choice,” as if the race of a candidate is or should be the sole factor black voters consider in choosing a member of Congress.

Personal honesty compels me to insert here that I doubt the efficacy and legitimacy of “representative democracy” at all. Not only do I disapprove of giving government any significant power or authority, but I find the idea of a single politician “representing” the interests of BOTH myself AND the other 750,000 or so people in “my district” silly in the extreme.

That said, if we’re going to do this thing, partisan goals and ethnic divisions shouldn’t be part of the calculation. “Redistricting” should be this simple:

First, figure out how many House districts a state is entitled to.

Second, plug the state’s population data into software that chooses a random point within the state and draws the most compact districts possible, from that point, based on population density.

No accounting for partisan voter registration. No accounting for clusters of different ethnicities. One person, one vote, period.

We should no more draw congressional districts based on the proportion of Republicans to Democrats or the proportion of whites to blacks to Latinos, etc., than we should draw them on the proportion of plumbers to sous chefs or the proportion of Led Zeppelin fans to Swifties.

Gerrymandering isn’t about representing the interests of voters, whether as individuals or members of groups. Gerrymandering is about the desires of the country’s two main political parties to maximize their power at the expense of each other’s.

Ending gerrymandering wouldn’t solve the myriad problems with “representative democracy,” nor would it solve our biggest problem: The poverty of expecting political power to actually resolve our conflicts.

It would, however, reduce the “obviously rigged clown show” element in our elections, perhaps freeing up our time and energy so that we can start addressing those larger issues.

Thomas L. Knapp (X: @thomaslknapp | Bluesky: @knappster.bsky.social | Mastodon: @knappster) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

PUBLICATION/CITATION HISTORY