November promises to be a major month for tariffs, with a bunch of new ones scheduled to snap into effect in the days ahead. But we’ve got one piece of news this morning in the opposite direction: After months of seemingly stalled negotiations, South Korea announced it has reached a trade deal with the White House. Details aren’t yet public, but a top South Korean official said American tariffs on the country will come down a bit, from the 25 percent rate that went into effect this summer to 15 percent. (In our brave new tariff-strangled world, a 15 percent tariff is what passes for “free trade.”) Happy Wednesday.

Here Comes the Pain

by Andrew Egger

With Republicans and Democrats both dug in behind their shutdown battle lines, one thing seems to be increasingly clear: The possibility of shutdown-related pain isn’t dislodging anyone. That pain is arriving with a vengeance, and the biggest question now is how long it will last.

Two of those major pain points will truly kick in on November 1. That’s when open enrollment starts for Obamacare plans—plans that no longer benefit from expiring pandemic-era subsidies. The sticker shock will be major, and it’s already begun: Enrollment letters are hitting mailboxes across the country, bringing unwelcome news about how much more expensive people’s coverage will be in the new year.

But that’s not the most dire financial cliff the government is running off of. Also on November 1, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program will effectively be out of cash, which means the 20 million American households that rely on food stamps won’t see benefits hit their accounts again until the shutdown is resolved. The Department of Agriculture has said it will not tap emergency funds to keep SNAP benefits flowing, although many states are suing to try to force the administration’s hand.

It now seems vanishingly unlikely that the shutdown will be resolved before we drive over these cliffs, since both sides seem to be counting on the pain generated by one or the other to bring their opponents back to the negotiating table.

“November 1 rolls around pretty quickly,” Sen. Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.) told The Bulwark yesterday. “So [Trump’s] probably gonna see on Twitter all this is starting to come out about how much people are gonna have to pay [for health insurance], and how it’s gonna affect his approval. And he’s not going to be happy about it. And then all he needs to do is to tell [Senate Majority Leader] John Thune to negotiate something and come up with a fix for this.”

That’s a fairly confident posture. But over in the House, Speaker Mike Johnson seems equally sure that the abrupt halt to SNAP benefits will evaporate Democrats’ will to continue the shutdown. “The pain register is about to hit level 10,” he said on a call with House Republicans yesterday, as reported by Politico. “We deeply regret it on our side.”

That deep regret, however, does not seem to translate into a desire for action: Johnson has flatly rejected the possibility of standalone legislation to keep SNAP funded, calling such bills “a waste of our time.”

How public opinion will bounce next isn’t clear. Republicans’ show of sorrow over the abrupt halt of food stamp funding rings pretty hollow given the way the White House is openly flouting government-funding rules to keep money flowing to the places they really care about. While USDA says its hands are tied on SNAP benefits, the Pentagon has no problem going through the budgetary couch cushions to find cash to keep military paychecks going—even taking private donations from billionaires. Meanwhile, it’s hard to see how Johnson can place the blame for SNAP expiration at Democrats’ feet when he is the one pledging to block bills that would do nothing but restore its funding.

Democrats are undoubtedly going to feel the squeeze too, however. This was always the danger—as we’ve said around here repeatedly—of them making their shutdown stand over an issue of policy rather than an issue of power; of them grinding things to a halt over Obamacare subsidies rather than, say, blocking Trump’s ability to usurp congressional spending authorities. The Democratic party’s shutdown narrative is “we’re doing all this to spare the public pain,” a position that becomes more difficult to maintain the higher the pain spikes from the shutdown itself.

What’s obvious for now is that the pain is coming. It’s a sad commentary on the sorry state of Congress that things have gotten this far—and who knows how much farther they’ll have to go before we see a breakthrough. Many of the problems we face today spring from an authoritarian wannabe president who is happy to trample all over the legislature and help himself to its powers. We’d all like to see a world where Congress starts standing up to him and defending its constitutional lawmaking prerogatives. But it’s also not clear these jokers would know what to do with their own power if they ever got it back.