Trump and Rubio are playing ‘the art of the squeal’ in Cuba



Commentators keep treating President Trump’s moves against Venezuela and Iran as random, emotional, or “impulsive.” They aren’t. They read like strategic actions aimed at the real peer adversary — China — which now finds itself short roughly 20% of a key commodity that powers everything from industrial output to military operations: oil.

Orange Man Bad managed to hit another long-term communist adversary at the same time: Cuba.

Trump isn’t sending Marines to Havana. He’s squeezing the regime into an economic takeover.

After the Maduro snatch-and-bag operation — and after Washington threatened heavy tariffs on Mexico if it kept shipping petroleum products to Cuba — Havana’s fuel supply has reportedly fallen to roughly 35% of its monthly needs.

In 2025, Cuba imported about 13.7 million barrels of oil — roughly 112,000 barrels per day of crude and refined petroleum products — supplied primarily by Venezuela (about 61% of imports) and Mexico (about 25%), with Russia and Algeria covering most of the rest.

Trump’s executive order in late January authorized heavy tariffs on any country supplying oil to Cuba. Mexico suspended shipments to avoid U.S. retaliation. At the same time, a de facto maritime quarantine has targeted “ghost tankers” attempting to evade sanctions. Even Russian deliveries have run into trouble. Reports say the tanker Sea Horse, carrying roughly 200,000 barrels of Russian gas and oil, diverted in late February to avoid seizure or sanctions risk.

Cuba now faces a severe fuel crunch.

International observers — including U.N.-linked agencies — have described the situation as catastrophic. The island’s power grid has slid toward collapse, and the global fuel spike tied to U.S. action in Iran has only tightened the vise.

The petroleum deficit has reportedly cut national electricity generation capacity by about 65%. That leaves roughly one-third of needed power available at any given time. In Santiago de Cuba and Guantánamo, residents report blackouts lasting more than 20 hours a day. In Havana, scheduled cuts reportedly jumped from four hours to as many as 18 hours a day. Hospitals have reportedly performed surgeries by cellphone light. Water systems that rely on electric pumps have failed across large areas. Garbage collection in Havana has stalled because the trucks are out of gas.

The communist government has responded with wartime austerity measures. Major airports have suspended refueling for international flights. Airlines such as Air Canada and Air France have canceled or rerouted flights, gutting tourism — one of the regime’s few remaining sources of cash. State companies have shifted to reduced schedules to conserve power.

RELATED: Iran, China, and Trump’s ‘art of the squeal’

Photo by the White House via X Account/Anadolu via Getty Images

Washington has offered one narrow escape valve. On February 25, the U.S. issued a limited license allowing American companies to sell oil to Cuba’s emerging private sector. Analysts have described it as “a drop in the bucket.” It isn’t enough to run the heavy thermoelectric plants the national grid needs.

Last week, Trump publicly floated the idea of a “friendly takeover” of Cuba. The phrase stays diplomatically vague, but the surrounding actions and rhetoric suggest a specific approach. Trump described Cuba as a failing nation because it has “no money. They have no anything right now.”

He isn’t going to send a Marine expeditionary force to Havana. He’s pressuring the regime to cut a deal that looks like gently coerced economic integration: end the communist monopoly over banking and energy, allow U.S. firms to buy and operate failing infrastructure (telecom, ports, the power grid), and expand the private sector until the Communist Party can’t enforce centralized control.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio has echoed that direction. He has argued that Cuba needs a “different economic model” and said the U.S. would welcome reforms that open space for economic and political freedom. Reports also suggest back-channel contact, though the administration has not confirmed details.

Cuba’s current leader, Communist Party chief Miguel Díaz-Canel, now sits in the position of a man about to get a colonoscopy. He should pray Orange Man Bad feels generous with the sedation — or he’ll learn the hard way what “the art of the squeal” means.

Glenn Beck: 'I was wrong' about Trump’s tariffs — here’s why he flipped



It’s been a little over a year since President Trump began his second term and enacted a wave of tariffs that rattled the global economy. After observing the impacts, Glenn Beck is finally ready to say three words: “I was wrong.”

For years, he opposed tariffs, believing that free markets were the answer. And while he still believes free markets are the ideal — as they’re “not just efficient” but also “moral” — he realizes in retrospect that they cease to work when the players cheat. Tariffs, he admits, are “not a sin” but a necessary “strategy” to protect American industry from nations that are attacking its economy through trade.

On this episode of “The Glenn Beck Program,” Glenn explains his change of heart.

He first recaps history: America's founders funded the government mainly through tariffs instead of income taxes, and Abraham Lincoln and early Republicans used them to protect young industries and build the nation into an industrial powerhouse. Tariffs only got a bad name after the 1913 income tax shift and the 1930 Smoot-Hawley tariffs (blamed for worsening the Depression), while post-World War II free trade succeeded because the U.S. dominated the global economy.

But that era of “effortlessness, American dominance” has ended.

“Here's what I failed to see,” says Glenn. “Free trade works when all of the players are playing free. ... It works when your trading partners are not subsidizing industries, manipulating currencies, stealing intellectual property, weaponizing supply chains, using slave labor.”

“There comes a time when you then have to look at it and say, ‘OK, wait a minute, wait a minute — now we own the markets, but everybody else has weaponized trade against us. And now we're hollowing out our own industrial base; we're financing our adversaries’ rise,’” he adds.

Today he sees “the bigger picture that Donald Trump is doing with tariffs.”

“I have had very long conversations with the president about tariffs. He has been remarkable ... because he’s been honest,” says Glenn.

“He has the vision to see the world economically as it truly is, but also the vision to see economically, business-wise, how it can be,” he explains.

“[Trump] understood tariffs are not just punishment and higher prices, OK? You use tariffs strategically as leverage, as negotiation — tariffs as industrial policy without the bureaucracy; tariffs used strategically, not universally; tariffs used as a tool to bring trading partners to the table; tariffs being used to build domestic capacity.”

Glenn highlights Trump's repeated claim that foreign countries have committed to investing $18 trillion in U.S. factories since the start of his second term (roughly half the national debt).

“Let's say half of that is true. That's pretty remarkable. You know what that will do? That will rebuild our industrial base, which we hollowed out because we didn't have tariffs!” he exclaims.

To hear more, watch the video above.

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Striking Down Tariffs, SCOTUS Gives Congress Permission To Be Useless

The judges let Congress off the hook, further incentivizing the legislature’s dereliction while effectively usurping power from the political branches of government.

Trump Avoids Drama To Focus on Foreign Imminent Threats

State of the Union addresses are usually sedate affairs, but the Supreme Court turned this year’s into must-see TV. The 6-3 decision invalidating the Liberation Day tariffs landed like a bomb last Friday. Many expected President Trump to train his ire on Chief Justice John Roberts and his colleagues on Tuesday night, especially after his post-ruling outbursts.

The post Trump Avoids Drama To Focus on Foreign Imminent Threats appeared first on .

How the Supreme Court’s tariff split gives Trump an opening



On the question of President Trump’s emergency tariffs, the Supreme Court has spoken. In the court’s view, the International Emergency Economic Powers Act does not authorize the president to impose tariffs during a declared emergency, namely, the massive trade deficits that threaten our economic security.

But the court’s decision in Learning Resources, Inc. v. Trumpwas highly fractured. Only three justices — Elena Kagan, Sonia Sotomayor, and Ketanji Brown Jackson — held that the law, under normal principles of statutory construction, does not give the president authority to impose tariffs.

A tariff wears two hats. It can function as a tax, but it can also operate as an instrument of foreign policy.

Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s dissent, joined by Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito, quite persuasively demonstrates why that is not the case. As Justice Thomas noted in his separate dissent, the power to “regulate … importation” has throughout American history “been understood to include the authority to impose duties on imports.”

The other three justices who formed the majority — Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Neil Gorsuch and Amy Coney Barrett — resorted to the major questions doctrine. This principle of statutory interpretation holds that Congress must speak with super clarity on issues of “economic and political significance” for the Court to approve a delegation to the executive.

The turn to the major questions doctrine implies that the statute, under normal principles of statutory construction, authorizes the president’s action, a point that Justice Gorsuch explicitly conceded in his concurring opinion.

But here’s the rub. The court has never previously applied the major questions doctrine in the foreign policy arena — and for good reason. Under Article II of the Constitution, the president has the core responsibility for foreign policy. Chief Justice Roberts acknowledged as much, stating in the part of his opinion that garnered only three votes that “as a general matter, the President of course enjoys some ‘independent constitutional power[s]’ over foreign affairs ‘even without congressional authorization.'”

That’s quite an understatement. The failure to recognize the full measure of that fundamentally important piece of constitutional law is the first fatal flaw in the chief justice’s opinion.

The key Supreme Court case on this point is United States v. Curtiss-Wright Export Corp. (1936), which Roberts does not mention. In that case, Justice George Sutherland, writing for a near-unanimous court, articulated the principled distinction between foreign and domestic powers: “In this vast external realm, with its important, complicated, delicate and manifold problems, the President alone has the power to speak or listen as a representative of the nation.”

Then, quoting John Marshall’s “great argument of March 7, 1800, in the House of Representatives,” Sutherland added, “The President is the sole organ of the nation in its external relations, and its sole representative with foreign nations.”

The main issue in the case was whether Congress could delegate to the president the authority to prohibit the sale of arms to either side in a war between Bolivia and Paraguay. But Sutherland did not rely solely on the act of Congress. He wrote:

It is important to bear in mind that we are here dealing not alone with an authority vested in the President by an exertion of legislative power, but with such an authority plus the very delicate, plenary and exclusive power of the President as the sole organ of the federal government in the field of international relations — a power which does not require as a basis for its exercise an act of Congress.

In other words, President Roosevelt had the power to ban the sale of arms even without the act of Congress at issue.

The same should be true in Learning Resources, Inc. v. Trump. Thomas’ dissenting opinion convincingly demonstrates why that is the case. While the chief justice claimed that Solicitor General D. John Sauer conceded that “the President enjoys no inherent authority to impose tariffs during peacetime,” that’s not exactly what Sauer said. Rather, he argued that the statute delegated such authority to the president. Under Curtiss-Wright, a claim of inherent authority over foreign policy should still be viable.

In the part of the Curtiss-Wright opinion I elided above, Sutherland noted that the president’s power over foreign affairs, “like every other governmental power, must be exercised in subordination to the applicable provisions of the Constitution.”

For Roberts, the fact that the taxing power is vested exclusively in Congress — and that any bill “for raising revenue” must originate in the House of Representatives — further confirmed that Congress had not delegated to the president any authority to impose tariffs. The point lands a bit oddly, given Roberts’ earlier willingness to treat Obamacare as a tax even though the bill originated in the Senate.

RELATED: ‘Even stronger’: President Trump optimistic even after SCOTUS strikes down tariffs

Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

That move exposes the court’s second fatal flaw: a tariff wears two hats. It can function as a tax, but it can also operate as an instrument of foreign policy.

President Trump’s tariffs plainly fell into the latter category, even if they also happened to raise substantial revenue. This dual character is not unique to presidential tariffs; the Constitution itself recognizes it in a related provision. Article I, Section 10, Clause 2 provides that “No State shall, without the Consent of the Congress, lay any Imposts or Duties on Imports or Exports, except what may be absolutely necessary for executing its inspection Laws.”

That clause reflects the same two-hat reality. An impost or duty — akin to a tariff — can be a revenue measure, but it also can serve a regulatory end tied to a state’s police power. Congress’ exclusive authority to impose taxes under Article I, Section 8, does not erase the states’ limited ability to levy duties for a different purpose: enforcing inspection laws to protect health and safety.

So too with tariffs. The fact that duties and imposts fall within Congress’ taxing power does not negate the president’s authority to use tariffs as an instrument of foreign policy — a “plenary and exclusive” power that Curtiss-Wright describes as vested in the president as the nation’s “sole organ” in external affairs.

That distinction drives Thomas’ characteristically insightful dissent. He points, in effect, to a path by which the president may continue using tariffs while negotiating with and responding to foreign nations in his role as the sole organ of American foreign policy. Time will tell whether the court, if the president takes that route, will remain faithful to its landmark Curtiss-Wright precedent. It should.

Editor’s note: A version of this article appeared originally at the American Mind.

'Congressional action not necessary': Trump details new tariff plan after SCOTUS roadblock



In President Donald Trump's first State of the Union speech of his second term in office, his tariff policies were sure to be mentioned. And, as President Trump noted, February has been a significant month for tariffs, with many new developments occurring just days before the anticipated speech.

On Tuesday night, President Trump explained his plan for tariffs in the future and explained his critique of the recent Supreme Court decision striking down a particular use of a particular type of IEEPA tariffs.

'Congressional action will not be necessary; it's already time-tested and approved.'

Trump began by recounting the overall success of his administration's tariff policies since the beginning of his second term, noting that the United States is "making a lot of money": "The big story was how Donald Trump called the economy correctly and 22 Nobel Prize winners and economists didn't. They got it totally wrong. They got it really wrong."

However, these policies faced a challenge from the Supreme Court last week, as Trump lamented in his speech: "And then just four days ago, an unfortunate ruling from the United States Supreme Court. It just came down. Very unfortunate ruling."

RELATED: Trump finally gets his answer on legality of tariffs in new SCOTUS decision

Photo by Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images

Despite this potential setback, Trump offered his assurances that many companies wish to "keep the deal that they already made ... knowing that the legal power that I, as president, have to make a new deal could be far worse for them, and therefore they will continue to work along the same successful path that we had negotiated before the Supreme Court's unfortunate involvement."

Last Friday, the Supreme Court's 6-3 decision in Learning Resources Inc. v. Trump ruled that Trump's tariffs under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act were not within the president's authority. As a result, Trump's April 2 "Liberation Day" tariffs seemed doomed less than a year after they were announced.

Trump emphasized on Friday that despite his disagreement with the court over the IEEPA tariffs, the ruling had in fact clarified and strengthened the president's authority under other statutes, including the Trade Expansion Act of 1962, the Trade Act of 1974, and the Tariff Act of 1930. On Tuesday night, he said:

So despite the disappointing ruling, these powerful, country-saving ... peace-protecting — many of the wars I settled was because of the threat of tariffs ... will remain in place under fully approved and tested alternative legal statutes. And they have been tested for a long time. They're a little more complex, but they're actually probably better, leading to a solution that will be even stronger than before. Congressional action will not be necessary; it's already time-tested and approved.

On top of that, Trump signed a proclamation ordering the initiation of a temporary 10% global tariff, which he announced on Saturday would be raised to 15%. The 10% import surcharge will be effective for 150 days to "address fundamental payments problems."

However, as of Tuesday, the BBC reported that the additional tariff rate was only instated at the previously established 10%, citing a U.S. Customs and Border Protection document published Monday.

RELATED: Watch the State of the Union tonight on BlazeTV's YouTube channel

Concluding his remarks on tariffs, Trump said, "And as time goes by, I believe the tariffs, paid for by foreign countries, will, like in the past, substantially replace the modern-day system of income tax, taking a great financial burden off the people that I love."

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Supreme Court Tariff Ruling Shows ‘No Guardrails’ Was a Lie, Puts Congress on the Spot

For much of the past year and a half you couldn’t open the New York Times or approach an elite university campus without hearing a panic about how President Donald Trump was becoming a dictator with “no guardrails” to curb him. After today’s 6-3 opinion from the Supreme Court striking down Trump’s tariffs, that complaint looks more foolish than ever. Trump called the opinion “terrible,” “a shame,” "ridiculous," and “totally defective.”

The post Supreme Court Tariff Ruling Shows ‘No Guardrails’ Was a Lie, Puts Congress on the Spot appeared first on .

'Even stronger': President Trump optimistic even after SCOTUS strikes down tariffs



Mere hours after the Supreme Court handed down its decision on Trump's tariffs under the authority of the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, President Trump responded with a lengthy Truth Social post. Though the court ruled against him, Trump was not nearly as angry with the decision as might be expected.

On Friday afternoon, President Trump posted an unexpectedly optimistic message in the wake of SCOTUS' decision. Trump's layered response, which echoed very closely his live reaction in a press conference, spilled into two separate posts.

'Today I will sign an Order to impose a 10% GLOBAL TARIFF, under Section 122, over and above our normal TARIFFS already being charged.'

Trump began by praising the "Strength, Wisdom, and Love of our Country" exhibited by dissenting Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, and Brett Kavanaugh before attacking those in the majority:

"The Democrats on the Court are thrilled, but they will automatically vote 'NO' against ANYTHING that makes America Strong and Healthy Again. They, also, are a Disgrace to our Nation. Others think they’re being 'politically correct,' which has happened before, far too often, with certain Members of this Court when, in fact, they’re just FOOLS and 'LAPDOGS' for the RINOS and Radical Left Democrats and, not that this should have anything to do with it, very unpatriotic, and disloyal to the Constitution."

RELATED: Trump finally gets his answer on legality of tariffs in new SCOTUS decision

Trump then suggested that the court "has been swayed by foreign interests" who are "dancing in the streets" as a result of the ruling.

However, Trump then said that the decision was largely a positive development because it clarified the president's authority under the IEEPA only, while leaving open several other avenues for imposing tariffs: "All of those TARIFFS remain, but other alternatives will now be used to replace the ones that the Court incorrectly rejected."

He drew from Justice Kavanaugh's dissenting opinion to illustrate the "different direction" that he will pursue, "which is even stronger than our original choice." As Trump noted, Kavanaugh wrote,

Although I firmly disagree with the Court's holding today, the decision might not substantially constrain a President's ability to order tariffs going forward. That is because numerous other federal statutes authorize the President to impose tariffs and might justify most (if not all) of the tariffs issued in this case. ... Those statutes include, for example, the Trade Expansion Act of 1962 (Section 232); the Trade Act of 1974 (Sections 122, 201, and 301); and the Tariff Act of 1930 (Section 338).

Trump omitted Kavanaugh's mention of "a few procedural steps" that may be required with these other avenues for tariffs that the IEEPA does not require.

Nearing the end of his post, Trump argued that the Supreme Court had unintentionally made the president's "ability to both regulate TRADE, and impost TARIFFS, more powerful and crystal clear, rather than less."

As a result, Trump issued several orders at the end of his post, indicating his intention to continue the tariffs, including a "10% GLOBAL TARIFF," under the existing statutory authorities cited earlier in the post:

"Therefore, effective immediately, all National Security TARIFFS, Section 232 and existing Section 301 TARIFFS, remain in place, and in full force and effect. Today I will sign an Order to impose a 10% GLOBAL TARIFF, under Section 122, over and above our normal TARIFFS already being charged, and we are also initiating several Section 301 and other Investigations to protect our Country from unfair Trading practices," Trump wrote.

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America Slides Into A Congress-Shaped Hole, And Gorsuch Helps

Our discussion, in media and in law, has been about Trump's excesses and boundary-crossing. A better starting place would be the laziness and uselessness of the Article I branch.

Kavanaugh: Trump Obviously Has Tariff Power And Here’s How He Can Keep Using It

The U.S. Supreme Court may have ruled against President Trump’s use of an emergency economics law to impose tariffs on foreign countries, but that doesn’t mean the president is left without other measures he can pursue to implement them. In its Friday decision in Learning Resources, Inc., et al v. Trump, the high court ruled […]