Make Alabama Great Again! Trump rumored to soon announce tariffs on everything exported there by the other 49 states?

Photo above – broiler chickens are the leading product of Alabama. But the state hardly makes any automobiles, chips, or pharmaceuticals. Could tariffs on exports by other states to Alabama fix all that?

There’s no denying it. Alabama has some problems. The median income is only $51,000 – 2/3rds of what the rest of America takes home. There are few factory jobs. In the evenings unemployed young men congregate at the “We Have Electricity” bar in Tuscaloosa, looking forward the 2026 opening of that giant new state penitentiary in Elmore County. It will cost almost $2 billion to build and employ over 1,300 guards. “It will be larger than the county seat”, one official boasted.

Hopefully, our president envisions a brighter future for Alabinos. Will he consider a tariff on other US states' exports to Alabama? Things like cars, computer chips, and aspirin? The tariff level might have to be as high as 104%, in order to work. “Tough luck . .. I mean tough love” the president is likely to quip to reporters.

The largest car dealer in Alabama is Mullinax Ford, in Mobile. It sometimes has as many as 100 vehicles on the back lot. I reached out to owner Larry Mullinax for a reaction to possible tariffs, but my call was not returned by publication time. So, I’m going to theorize that Larry was busy negotiating a deal to build his own F150 assembly line before the tariffs take effect next month. It could be bigger than the county seat, when he gets it done.

Of course, UAW members – in Detroit, Flint, Dearborn and Toledo – are apoplectic with rage. “This isn’t helping us AT ALL” one autoworker fumed. “It’s one thing to put sky high tariffs on Hondas and Toyotas arriving here by the boatload. But if Trump puts tariffs on our own cars sold in Alabama, he’ll be taking bread off our tables. We’re just barely making ends meet on our $140,000 a year (plus overtime) contract anyway. This-is-some-bullshit . . . “

Of course, it would probably be illegal for the president to arbitrarily impose tariffs on trade between the US states. Article 1, section 8 of the US constitution prohibits tariffs on goods sold from one state to another. Oddly, that same section of the constitution apparently also vests the power to levy international tariffs with congress, not the sitting president. See link below.

If anyone is going to challenge Trump’s tariff reign of terror in court, they better get busy. These things take months – possibly years - to wend their way through district, appellate, and appeals courts all the way to the Supreme Court. By then America might even have a democrat president, who has even weirder ideas on what goods deserve a tariff, to fulfill his own vision on how the government should create winners and losers in the US economy.

I’m just sayin’ . . .

Who Controls U.S. Tariffs? The Constitution vs. Presidential Power – U.S. Constitution.net