There is a version of winning that should make you embarrassed.
It goes like this:
Someone tells you that what you’re doing is wrong. A court, a colleague, a governing body; it doesn’t matter.
Instead of listening, instead of reconsidering, you go find a technicality;
You technically win.
You look exactly like the kind of person no one wants to do business with.
That’s what we watched Donald Trump do this week.
Trump imposed sweeping emergency tariffs on imported goods
Roughly $133 billion was collected. Companies importing into the United States paid those tariffs; then, as companies do, passed every dollar of that cost down to consumers
Americans pay more for groceries, electronics, clothing, and car parts.
The Supreme Court then ruled that the emergency powers used to impose those tariffs were illegal. This is how checks and balances are supposed to work. Even justices Trump himself appointed sided with the majority.
A reasonable person accepts that ruling and moves on. Trump’s response was to lash out at the justices as a “disgrace to the nation” and immediately invoke Section 122 of the Trade Act of 1974 to reimpose a 10% global tariff through a different legal door.
I never want to be associated with finding loopholes; in business, in relationships, or in how I treat people. Even if something is technically legal, if the spirit of the situation says you’re wrong, you’re wrong. Hunting for a technicality to dodge accountability doesn’t make you clever; it makes you petty.
I’ve watched this behavior my whole life; in business, in personal dealings, in politics, and it’s one of the clearest signals of character I know. When someone is told “no” by a legitimate authority and their first instinct is to look for another door rather than ask whether they were actually wrong, they reveal everything. They care more about not losing than about doing the right thing.
Now dozens of companies are lining up to sue the administration for tariff refunds. Costco, Revlon, Bumble Bee Foods, and lots of others. Trade lawyers say this could take years. The Court of International Trade will be backed up for a decade sorting out who gets what.
However, the companies paid the tariffs and then passed them on to their customers. The American consumer absorbed this at checkout, at the hardware store, and in their grocery bill. If refunds flow back only to corporations, the people who actually felt the pain see nothing. Prices don’t come back down. That’s not justice. That’s the same inequality that got us here.
Small businesses that couldn’t absorb the costs and couldn’t afford lawyers to fight back? Many of them are already gone. They don’t get a refund. They don’t get their customers back. The loophole economy doesn’t protect them; it never does.
Checks and balances exist for a reason. They exist because no one is above being wrong; not a president, not a CEO, not anyone. When the system says you overstepped, the answer is not to find a different door and walk through it anyway while calling the people who stopped you a disgrace.
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