The Bag of Rocks: SCOTUS, Iran, and the Week America’s Economy Got Kneecapped

Today seems like the perfect time to remind you of this. The biggest heist in American history happened in broad daylight, and most people don’t even realize they were robbed. Over the past two decades, the US spent roughly $8 trillion on wars without asking taxpayers to write a check. The Federal Reserve just printed the money, and everyone under 40 got stuck holding the bill in the form of housing they can’t afford and debt that follows them to the grave. And in the span of eight days, it just got so much worse.

On February 20th, the Supreme Court ruled 6-3 that Trump’s tariffs were illegal. Not questionable. Not overreaching. Illegal. Chief Justice Roberts wrote that Trump tried to claim sweeping tariff power based on two words separated by sixteen others in a 1977 law, and those words “cannot bear such weight.” The government collected an estimated $175 billion in tariffs that were never lawfully authorized. That money now has to be refunded. Over 2,000 lawsuits have already been filed.

Then on February 28th – eight days later – Trump launched “major combat operations” against Iran alongside Israel. He killed the Supreme Leader. Iran retaliated by attacking US military bases across the Middle East. Oil surged 7-8 percent overnight. The “peace candidate” just started a war. And his entire tariff scheme just got ruled unconstitutional. In the same week.

Let’s rewind for a second. Here’s how you rob a generation: Never raise taxes, always print money, and make sure the inflation hits after the politicians who caused it are long gone.

After 9/11, America launched wars charged straight to the national credit card. The Fed’s balance sheet exploded from under $1 trillion in 2007 to nearly $7 trillion. All that printed money went into financial assets. Stock portfolios doubled. Real estate skyrocketed. Anyone who already owned stuff got richer while doing nothing. Everyone else got crushed.

Reagan slashed taxes and let companies buy back their own stock. The 90s tore down Glass-Steagall and let derivatives run wild. 9/11 gave us cheap money that inflated the housing bubble until it exploded in 2008. The Fed responded by printing trillions more. COVID doubled down on that. By 2022, inflation peaked at 9.1 percent. The Fed slammed the brakes and interest rates crushed anyone trying to buy a house or carry a credit card balance.

Forty years of deregulation, stock buybacks, tax cuts, and money printing. Both parties. Every president since Carter. If you’re under 40 and everything feels rigged – it’s because it is.

So that’s the backdrop. Now watch what Trump did with it. His tariffs were taxing imports at the highest level since the Great Depression. The Tax Foundation called them the largest US tax increase as a percent of GDP since 1993. Per household, that was $1,300 to $2,100 in 2026 depending on whose math you use. The Penn Wharton Budget Model projected they’d reduce long-run GDP by 6 percent and wages by 5 percent. A middle-income household faced a $22,000 lifetime loss. Manufacturing lost 77,000 jobs in 2025. ACA subsidies expired, sending insurance premiums up 114 percent. Almost 70 percent of Americans predicted 2026 would be a year of economic difficulty.

Then the Supreme Court pulled the rug out. Those IEEPA tariffs made up half of all customs revenue. The Tax Foundation estimates they would have raised $1.4 trillion over the next decade. That revenue is gone. And the $175 billion already collected? Penn Wharton says it needs to be refunded. Treasury Secretary Bessent suggested those refunds might never reach consumers and could take years to resolve in court. Trump himself said “five years.” So the government collected $175 billion illegally, spent it, and now might fight for half a decade to avoid giving it back. Cool.

Trump scrambled to replace the IEEPA tariffs with a 15 percent levy under Section 122 of the Trade Act – a law that caps tariffs at 15 percent and expires in 150 days. No president has ever used it this way. It’s already facing legal challenges. The Yale Budget Lab estimates the effective tariff rate dropped from 17 percent to 9 percent after the ruling. The administration claims replacement tariffs will keep revenue “virtually unchanged,” but that math doesn’t add up when you’ve lost your primary tariff authority and owe $175 billion in refunds.

Here’s the deficit problem in plain English: the government was using those illegal tariff revenues to partially offset the massive deficit created by corporate tax cuts. Corporate taxes sit at 21 percent, down from 35 percent. The Congressional Budget Office forecasts a 5.8 percent deficit-to-GDP ratio in 2026. The tariff revenue that was supposed to help close that gap just got ruled illegal. The replacement tariffs expire in July. And the deficit keeps growing.

Gas was $2.98 on February 28th. Oil prices surged immediately. Analysts say gas could jump 20 cents a gallon this week – and that’s the optimistic scenario. If the Strait of Hormuz gets disrupted – a fifth of the world’s oil passes through it daily – gas could hit $5 a gallon. Energy analysts aren’t ruling it out. Higher gas means higher transportation costs means higher grocery prices means higher everything. It’s a cascading failure that lands squarely on the people least able to absorb it.

And here’s the part that makes you want to throw your phone. There was already a deal. The JCPOA – Obama’s Iran nuclear deal – was working. The IAEA confirmed Iran was complying. Even Trump’s own Secretary of State acknowledged compliance. Trump pulled out in 2018. Bombed Iran last June. Iran offered to negotiate. Their foreign minister said a deal was “within reach.” Oman’s mediator said there had been “significant breakthroughs.” Trump bombed them anyway.

His own tweets from 2011 and 2013 read like prophecy written about himself. “Our president will start a war with Iran because he has absolutely no ability to negotiate.” That was Trump. About Obama. Obama negotiated a deal and never attacked. Trump attacked repeatedly after failing to negotiate his own.

So here we are. The tariff scheme got ruled illegal. The replacement expires in 150 days. The deficit is ballooning. The $175 billion in illegally collected tariffs is tied up in litigation. Manufacturing jobs are evaporating. Insurance premiums are through the roof. And now there’s a shooting war in the Middle East threatening to blow up energy prices globally.

The people who got rich off four decades of policy favoritism are doing fine. They own the assets that go up when everything else falls apart. Everyone else just got a bag of rocks tied to their ankles.

The only way to solve all of this is a general strike. https://generalstrikeus.com/

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