If this is true, the plan is so much worse than we thought. This demands a full-scale investigation…

“How rare and fleeting courage can be. It’s the same lesson we are dealing with with Russia. Appeasement does not work. Only strength works,” Auchincloss said on MSNBC.

“These businesses need to band together and speak in unison. That’s why they have trade associations,” he continued. “That’s the whole point, is to do that. Same thing with law.”

“Because ultimately trying to court the bully one on one is not actually going to win them any special favor and all it’s going to do is embolden [Trump] to take further damaging action,” he went on.

“We know how transactional he is and frankly we know how corrupt he is,” said Auchincloss. “This is an element that we need to watch carefully because at the beginning of his presidency Trump and the Trump family issued memecoins, basically monetized the presidency to the value of their net worth.”

“And the reason that I bring that up is because that allows every business and every country to purchase shares in Donald Trump’s net worth secretly,” he continued.

“So now that they have tariffs levied against them and tariffs that were calculated inscrutably, theres going to be a tremendous market for buying influence with Donald Trump because it’s very clear that he’s not listening to his Treasury Secretary about how these tariffs are set,” explained Auchincloss.

This is a concern voiced by an increasing number of commentators. Lobbyists for corporations and foreign countries are going to come to Trump asking for carveouts and exemptions from the tariffs. It will be a simple matter for Trump to demand bribes — paid into an offshore bank account for example — in return for lifting the tariffs on that specific entity.

Trump can hold court like a king, doling out tariff favors as he sees fit as his personal wealth and power grow. In the meantime, Americans will suffer en masse.

“He’s assigning [the tariffs] upon a whim,” said Auchincloss. “And if they can show him a receipt for ‘hey I gave you a billion dollars worth of crypto’ he may change his mind on that. That further undermines any sense of credibility or certainty in our economy about how these tariffs are set and further undermines his argument that somehow we’re going to reshore businesses.”

“If you’re a textiles manufacturer in the United States right now, you have no confidence in what these tariff rates are going to be over the next several years because of how corrupt and incompetent this administration is,” he continued. “So you’re not going to make the capital investments necessary to really redomesticate any industry.”

Congressman Auchincloss is absolutely correct. These tariffs are not going to do what Trump promises. What they’ll actually accomplish is the cratering of the U.S. economy and the further consolidation of power inside the White House.

The time for Congress to act is now. They must take steps to repeal these tariffs and remind Donald Trump that he’s a president, not a monarch.