Sen. Ted Cruz has begged President Donald Trump to stop listening to the tariff hawks in his administration and “take the deal” countries are offering to lower trade barriers.
Isn’t this dude a Senator? He can help end the stupid tariff war any time he wants. If he can grow a spine and bring 4 friends with him he can at least put pressure on his pals on the house of representatives.
Ted Cruz famously has no friends.
Infamously, he’s the Zodiac killer
His dad killed JFK. It’s a whole family thing for the man who refuses to call people by the name they’ve chosen.
“If you killed Ted Cruz on the floor of the Senate, and the trial was in the Senate, nobody would convict you.”
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And no spine
Ted Cruz has all of the calcified appendages which are correct for a normal human Senator.
Isn’t this dude a Senator?
~ Lindsey Graham
Might also be worth noting that his wife is a managing director at Goldman Sachs. I have to imagine she’s spent the last week in meltdown mode.
“I probably like Ted Cruz more than most of my colleagues like Ted Cruz, and I hate Ted Cruz."
-Al Franken
https://edition.cnn.com/2017/05/31/politics/al-franken-ted-cruz/index.html
Yeah 2/3 of congress can end the whole trade war. This is just showmanship.
You don’t even need that much. At least at this stage, Trump is abusing existing laws as a sledgehammer against the economy. While Trump can veto new laws passed by “just” 50% of the Congress, they would at least have some leverage to pressure him.
But he won’t. Because he’s a morally defunct crumpet.
How dare you impune crumpets by comparison.
Oh, fuck, we have invoked the wrath of Lemmy’s infamous crumpet stans.
You crumped around. Now it’s time to find out.
In my defense, I really love watching these dumbasses trying to figure out what the heck a crumpet is, and then getting angry because they don’t know and just assume it’s something awful.
I can pretend, if that helps move things along:
“IT’S THE EXACT SAME THING AS AN ENGLISH MUFFIN!”
The trap is baited. Now, we wait.
Oh so like a regular Muffin with currant and baked beans?
derisive snort
Everybody knows, it’s his daughters that call the shots.
Bruh…
If we’re waiting for Raphael Cruz to grow a spine we’ll never stop waiting.
There’s a reason the title includes “begs” and I’m honestly surprised he’s doing that.
Does Cuck Cruz even know what a spine is?
The Senate has already passed a bill that limits the President’s power to set tariff rates on Canada. The House probably won’t take that up.
Right now, there’s also a Senate Bill with 7 GOP senators signed on that would limit the President’s power to unilaterally set tariffs (requires 48 hours notice to Congress, can’t last more than 60 days without Congressional approval, gives Congress fast track procedures for voting down new tariffs). There are some serious constitutional flaws in it (most notably the legislative non-aggrandizement doctrine, but also an issue with tying to sidestep the bicameralism and presentment requirement), though, and I’m not sure it would hit the point where it could overcome a presidential veto.
So right now it’s not clear whether this GOP opposition would actually build into real legislation that could actually have an effect, or whether this is all showmanship trying to influence Trump himself to roll this back.
It is so he can look like he was putting up a fight.
Yeah, he’s probably seeing that his constituent supporters are starting to feel the negative effects. He’s just putting on a show.
What? And lose the votes of the old guys who drive RVs covered in MAGA signs?
At some point he is going to have to pick between them and his main sources of income.
Trump’s aides love tariffs because Trump loves tariffs. He’s been obsessed with them his entire life.
Rafael isn’t criticizing Trump, he’s giving him an escape hatch, trying to pretend that this is all “bad advice”.
NPR played a clip from 1987 of him calling into some radio show to bitch about trade imbalances.
Exactly. He’s been holding onto this notion for decades, and no one has ever disabused him of it. Now he’s a mentally declining old idiot and it’s too late to teach him that he’s wrong.
This is why Bessent is trying to bail. He’s never been a fan of this “tariff everyone” approach, and it’s now finally occurred to him that he’s going to get the blame to cover Trump’s ass.
Can’t tell narcissists they’re wrong, they just lash out. If he believes he’s right he’ll make 8000 excuses as to why his plan failed. IV seen it before in the family my aunt married into. Even when wrong they were never wrong, until a “higher ranking” narcissists in the family bullied them into submission. Sadly, no higher ranking narcissist than the president
Must be nice being in a position where when things go right (does that actually ever even happen with these fucking people?), you take all of the credit. But when things go wrong, it’s because of your aides and advisors.
As a Canadian, Raphael Cruz must be lamenting how Trump is treating his nativeland.
From the US Constitution:
"Article I, Section 10, Clause 2:
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 it’s inspection Laws: and the net Produce of all Duties and Imposts, laid by any State on Imports or Exports, shall be for the Use of the Treasury of the United States; and all such Laws shall be subject to the Revision and Controul of the Congress." source
I won’t call you Ted, because I know how much you hate people forcing preferred names. Rafael Cruz, you have the power granted to you by the US Constitution to stop the trump tariffs. You don’t need to ask trump. The power is yours. Use it!
How Congress delegates its tariff powers to the president
According to the Congressional Research Service, there are six statutory provisions currently in place that control how the president and the executive branch can use tariffs. Three provisions require federal agency investigations before a tariff can be imposed. The other provisions do not require an investigation before actions are taken.
…
Among the three provisions that allow the president to act on his own to impose tariffs without an investigation, only one has ever been used: the International Emergency Economic Powers Act of 1977. The act allows the president to declare an emergency under the National Emergency Act (NEA) and then use his extensive economic powers to regulate or prohibit imports. The CRS says that President Trump was the first chief executive to use this act in February 2025, when he announced tariffs on Canada, China, and Mexico. The emergency stated by the president can be terminated at this request, or by a joint resolution of Congress.
Those Acts are laws written by Congress. Congress also has the power to write new laws amending or removing the previous ones. Again, its still in Rafael’s (and his coworkers) hands to stop trump’s tariffs.
Congress also has the power to write new laws amending or removing the previous ones.
Sure. With a majority in two houses and a signature from the President. Or a supermajority, in the event they need to override a veto.
Again, its still in Rafael’s (and his coworkers) hands to stop trump’s tariffs.
A big part of the problem is that Cruz’s allies still think the tariffs are a good idea. Or, at least, they think their political futures are predicated on supporting Trump’s tariffs, because Trump commands the party middle-management that guarantees them their elevated positions. They won’t take away Trump’s authority, because it doesn’t benefit them to do so.
This isn’t strictly a Trump problem. It is the problem of governing a nation of 330M people with a captured cartel of 438 cronies of business goons.
I don’t disagree, but Cruz is being disingenuous that he doesn’t have a pathway. He could introduce legislation removing trump’s tariff powers. Even if it doesn’t pass, he could still force his colleagues to vote on the record to keep the tariffs in place.
Cruz is being disingenuous that he doesn’t have a pathway
Individually, he’s got as much say as Bernie Sanders or Cory Booker.
He could introduce legislation removing trump’s tariff powers
He didn’t even have to do that much. Just sign on to existing legislation. Cruz chickened out on that vote and left the Kentucky Chucklefucks, Collins, and Murkowski to do the heavy lifting. But it’s DOA in the House, so even this seems perfunctory.
Dude’s a total slimeball and a deceitful POS, without a doubt. But with Schumer rolling over on general spending bills, he’s not even the first Senator in the line of people I’m angry at.
It’s really amazing how the GOP members of Congress have willingly given up their power.
It’s really amazing how the GOP members of Congress have willingly given up their power.
I have to chime in on this one. The President didn’t just suddenly get all this authority; both mainstream parties started handing it over willingly decades ago.
The Executive Branch of our Government, led by the President, is in control of far too many things.
That’s fair, but the are handing him these wins. All of his picks have been smooth sailing and if they had a spine they could impeach him right now. It’s not that there are no ways to stop this, it’s that he’s “too big to fail” and the Rs let it get this way.
I agree that the Republicans are letting the President get away with this and it’s going to destroy Trump and his cronies when they lose control of Congress.
they dont want to get primaried by trumps magat allies. opposing trump is political suicide for them.
The abdication is real.
I can’t hear him. I stopped listening to Ted Cruz.
JFC, I can’t tell you how much I hate it that Rapheal Cruz and I agree on something.
You wanted him, you got him. Now live with the consequences like big boys.
Runaway Ted’s mistake is thinking Trump wants peace. Trump doesn’t want peace. HE WANTS PROBLEMS! ALWAYS!
Mo Donnie Mo Problems
Creating chaos and being unpredictable is a form of control. Stalin kept everyone wondering if they were next to be killed.
Why is rafael still using a preferred name?
I think I’ll call her Rachel from now on
She’s an immigrant, too.
My God, I FORGOT that!
What deals? Trump’s tariff against the US numbers are made up, they are US trade deficits. Are other countries supposed to lower this number somehow? Is he forcing them to stop exporting to the US? Well that’s going to have the same effect as tariffs, right? Or is he going to force them to buy more US products? First of all, that’s straight up Mafia behavior; but also the US just doesn’t manufacture that much to begin with.
How is this going to make any sense.
I bet Trump doesn’t listen to Rafael because he doesn’t go by his birth name…
and he’s an immigrant
Well he is in luck. My senator is introducing a bill to limit his ability to impose tariffs:
https://www.npr.org/2025/04/09/nx-s1-5354912/trump-tariffs-senate-bill-bipartisan
Leopards everywhere today! What the hell is going on?!
