Susan Page

And that, I think, was a little bit of a surprise to congressional Democrats in the audience.

Well, I mean, time will tell, but that would be a surprise.

And of course, tariffs are essentially a tax and a regressive tax, unlike income taxes that are less regressive.

So it seems unlikely that any time in the foreseeable future we're going to see income taxes replaced by tariffs.

But the president's devotion to tariffs, his belief in tariffs as the right economic sword for him to use, is clearly unshaken.

It hasn't been shaken by Americans in polls saying that tariffs are doing more to hurt the economy than help it, and not shaken by the Supreme Court.

You know, we were sort of waiting to see

what the president would say to the justices of the Supreme Court who were seated in the front row of the hall.

Four of them attended the speech.

Three of them had voted with the majority in that decision and against Trump.

But his words to them were pretty temperate.

He said it was disappointing.

But then he said it wouldn't make much difference because he could impose tariffs using other legal mechanisms.

So clearly, Americans may not be sold on tariffs, but it is clear that Donald Trump still is.

Well, he referred to the Republican proposal, which would be to, instead of Obamacare, to contribute to Americans' health savings accounts so they could buy their own insurance.

This is not a proposal that has been fleshed out.

It's not one in which we understand how it would work.

Many health care experts believe it could not possibly work.

And in any case, the Affordable Care Act has, after kind of a rough start, become very well established in the United States.

So this seemed to me something that the president was trying to be able to say he had talked about health care without really talking in a serious way about replacing the Affordable Care Act.