The problem with Emergency Economic Powers Act of 1977 and similar "emergency" delegations is that, although they "require a genuine 'unusual and extraordinary threat', they delegate power without providing Congress with a kill switch if a President lies.
Joe Biden and the Democratic Congress could have fixed this in 2021 and 2022 but they didn't, even though they KNEW that a returning Trump or someone similar would abuse it. How did they know? Because he ALREADY HAD, to illegally divert appropriated funds to build his Wall, even after Congress refused to fund it.
So, why didn't they? Because the dirty little secret is that NO Administration of either party wants to return power to Congress once they have it, because they can't imagine that their side would abuse it, just the other guys. The United States and the world will now pay for that failure of imagination. If there's ever a second chance to fix this, I hope they've finally learned.
There is a kill switch. Congress can end the state of emergency Trump declared at any time. They can also reassert control over tariffs, which they have the Constitutional power to control.
The problems are first, that the current House Speaker is virulently opposed to these actions, and second, Trump can veto these bills, so a 2/3 vote would be required.
We may need a Great Depression 2 before the Speaker would change his mind, and both chambers would have a 2/3 vote. At which point it will be too late.
The scandal of such legislation is the way it enables Congress to evade its Constitutional responsibilities. The possibility of Congress countermanding a Presidential action seems to serve two purposes: 1) to deceive the public, to say, "Oh no, we didn't give away our power. We can still overrule the President", which is obviously illusory; and 2) to deceive themselves with the same logic, in order to avoid the stress of cognitive dissonance. The exercise is a contemptible means of avoiding any action that might increase the risk to continued tenure in office and the money, power, and prestige that comes with it.
"As an economist, I feel professionally obligated to point out that there is nothing inherently bad about trade deficits."
Well with all due respect, either you are not a very good economist, or you are an intellectually dishonest one that is working to influence regime politics.
While the US pushed global economic policy, the rest of the world exploited it accessing the rich American consumer markets while implementing nationalist industrial policy. Trade deficits are fine where there is an imbalance of raw materials or capability... neither exist with the US. The trade balance has been for cheaper labor only, and that has decimated large swaths of the country... and you either don't know about them, or more likely don't care about them in your upper class coastal liberal enclave.
It is well past time for the US to stop giving away all its industry, manufacturing and working class jobs to keep enriching the upper class. The top 10% have had it good, but it was never sustainable. It is time for the US to implement its own national industrial policy. Foreign companies that want to sell their products to American consumers can make those products here in the US.
Once the trade deficit gets back to parity, the US can lower tariffs as makes sense.
This is a really helpful framework for thinking about Trump’s tariffs. I wonder how likely it is that a challenge to the constitutionality of the International Emergency Economic Powers Act would succeed.
The world doesn’t operate based on comparative advantage which would require countries to purchase items at more expensive prices than they can achieve themselves internally or from others. Markets clear based on absolute advantage only. So the question is what does the US have that China wants ? Food and resources and for now, some tech. What will China want from the US in 20 years? Maybe nothing if they are able to peel Siberia away from Russia.
The notion that running trade deficits and financing them in perpetuity is fantasy and will lead to ruin. We’re creating a helpless country full of providers of services which others can easily replicate at minimal cost. In this case you’d be better off having the capabilities to produce what you need internally so when your currency plummets you don’t have to mortgage your home to buy a car.
This theoretical analysis seems unconnected to Trump's actual actions. He imposed tariffs on coffee and bananas; we're not going to be producing enough of either to replace imports. And how would that help our international competitiveness, anyway?
And he's killed off agencies whose job was to help nascent manufacturing startups get off the ground. And crippled existing factories that need imported products (other than the critical minerals he exempted).
And no one is going to start a factory under the threat that those tariffs could be removed as quickly and whimsically as they were imposed.
Yup. Poor choice of tools but when you only have a hammer and two years, this is what you get.
If this is going to get done, it's going to get done by the forces of capitalism, not by some agency whose "job" is to help nascent startups, as if that has ever accounted for anything.
He's not serious about developing internal manufacturing capabilities. He keeps vacillating between saying the tariffs are permanent, and crowing about the deals he's cutting with countries when they lower their tariffs. No sane investor would fund a manufacturing startup in these conditions. The forces of capitalism are going to stay dormant.
At the time Trump entered office, it looked like the stars could align for an American mining boom. Mining jobs had finally recovered to pre-COVID levels, thanks in part to demand for the metals required to engineer the transition away from fossil fuels (and, paradoxically, continued demand for coal). A lot of the gains in mining stocks were thanks to the Inflation Reduction Act, which offered a huge tax break to mining and metal processing companies and mandated that the consumer EV credit apply only to cars with a certain percentage of domestically-sourced material.
Trump 2.0 was poised to capitalize on that progress and unleash permits for U.S. mines under pared-back environmental regulations. In March, he issued an executive order to boost production of minerals in the U.S. — a maneuver that, combined with trade actions targeting China specifically, could have been the final step to bring about a mining and mineral processing resurgence in the U.S. and wrest some global market control away from China and other countries under its sphere of influence. In 2024, more than half of the mineral commodities consumed by the U.S. were imported from foreign sources, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.
Trump’s new global tariffs, however, sent the broader stock market into freefall, mining stocks very much included. He exempted many metals from the tariffs in their rawest form, but that was all the relief miners got. There were few exceptions for refined metal products or the inputs used for mining and mineral exploration. At the same time, metals prices — including commodities integral to battery production such as copper and lithium — are falling, with producers warning that now may be the high point for prices this year.
Part of this pricing issue is because the market appears to expect lower demand for new products that require those metals, such as EVs. Another part, as U.S. officials have said previously, is that China has been flooding the globe with minerals sold at a loss to win market influence. For this reason, D.C. policy wonks had been lobbying for legislation to address this pricing issue.
Now Trump has piled onto the industry's problems. This period could be especially painful for American mining companies, as it is exceedingly possible that a combination of lower commodity prices and higher costs for machinery and parts shatters whatever tailwinds were buoying many U.S. mining and metals projects. We may not see projects canceled yet, but a sense of extreme anxiety is sweeping the minds of many in the mining sector.
“If you look at the carrot of the pro-domestic mining policy versus the stick of the recessionary impacts from the demand side and the availability of capital impact from the supply side, the carrot is a raindrop and the stick is an ocean,” Emily Hersh, a veteran of the mining industry, told me.
Al Gore III, head of the D.C.-based electric vehicle and battery mineral supply chain association ZETA, said he agreed with Hersh’s assessment: “She’s right. We’ve been waging war against a raindrop for the last year, and now we’re in the ocean.”
It is not countries that trade. It is individuals and organisations that trade. Otherwise, with your opinions and way of thinking, you could argue to prevent trade between California and Montana.
There is a sea of ignorance in the anti-tariff analysis. People have not educated themselves on the top thinkers in the Trump administration explaining the reasons why and what they expect. Maybe it is over the head of the average reader, or maybe there is just too much greed to demand that debt-spending propped up investment markets keep getting propped up with more debt spending.
There is a national security consideration... a big one. The US was the the most wealthy country in the world beginning in 1890. NAFTA, the WTO and China as a Most Favored Nation trading partner were HUGE mistakes, but the mistakes started before that. Reagan tried to reel it in. In fact Reagan was the first to push an industrial policy that threatened Japan with tariffs for its government subsidized smaller and more fuel-efficient tin cans, and Japan instead moved car manufacturing to the US. That shift benefited both countries.
The blanket tariffs are needed because of trade deficits. US trade deficits are a sign that the other country is valuing their own industrial policy over that of the US. Globalism is a face in this case... countries always pursue their own self interest while the US practices this weird religion of free global markets that only result in it being exploited and taken advantage of.
Globalism benefits the top 10% and the top 1%, but not those below. Those below have been hammered... failing to even keep up in terms of real wages, while the standard of living has risen for everyone else in the world... especially the American upper class that screams like stuck pigs about their Wall Street accounts.
You’re not wrong that the benefits of globalization have been unevenly distributed and American manufacturing has suffered, which is a legitimate national security issue. It is right to do something about these problems. But Trump’s economic policies won’t fix them, and are likely to make them worse.
But why has American manufacturing "suffered"? One key reason is technology. Also, the benefits of globalization are still based on international rules and governance since there is no global level democracy to regulate the economy
Frank, reducing poverty worldwide thanks to trade and market interactions is not a mistake. Also, as long as national borders and nationalism are separating the world, humans will always have subjective and arbitrary opinions that trade is "unfair" for "us" and not for "them. You are not proposing any real soltuons
With your thoughts about trade deficits, you could also argue in favor of preventing trade between US states. Statistical deficits will always exist spontaneously.
Frank, the people, as you are not in favor of security for all. You just want arbitrary security for people you admire. And also, missing the term national security it not patriotism , it is collectivism.
This Court has been moving in two directions, one Trump would like and that bodes well for his firing of, say, NLRB commissioners, and the other he wouldn't and that bodes ill for his blunderbuss tariffs, which seem on first read plainly illegal.
The pro-Trump direction is the movement toward the unitary executive theory that would give presidents authority to fire anyone in the executive branch at will, including even commissioners of independent agencies designed by Congress to be insulated from rash executive action. In its most extreme manifestation, it would mean that Trump could fire any Fed Board governor at will for not, say, lowering interest rates when he wants. This is dangerous. Wall Street Journal types like this general idea, because they like the idea of a Republican president slashing agencies and being able to direct what they do or not do without any hangups. This arises from a hostility to, as they see it, anti-business regulation that such agencies represent in their prototypical examples. I'm not sure they've thought through what this would mean for the Fed, which is an agency they surely like and would like to remain independent. Anyway, we shall see.
But, at the same time, the Court's been moving away from deference to the executive branch in its interpretations of congressional authorizations. This is signified most clearly by the gradual undermining (with ideas like the "major questions doctrine") and final overruling of Chevron in the Loper Bright case, which held that the executive branch is entitled to no special deference in its interpretations of congressional mandates. It is for courts to decide whether the executive action overstepped the bounds that Congress established.
Such cases in the administrative law realm are often complex and involve an elaborate determination by an agency in advance of establishing a regulatory rule pursuant to a broad congressional mandate. The Chevron argument had been, look, the agencies know what they're doing; they're the experts; that's why Congress left it to them. We judges don't know much about it by contrast, and so should not second-guess those agencies' frequently technical determinations. To which the response was, nonsense, interpreting laws is what courts do, whether the area is complicated or not, and we can figure it out. This Court has adopted that view.
Here, the question is even more straightforward. There's no elaborate agency finding or regulation at issue. There's just a straightforward law to interpret, one that plainly does *not* authorize the president to establish tariffs willy nilly except in cases of emergency. Whatever emergency means, it can't mean "because the president wants to." That's what it means here, as is plain from the laughable fentanyl justification of tariffs on Canada for example.
The Court may be reluctant to stop Trump in the midst of such a major policy drive. But they should remember that Congress may act to validate Trump's moves by simply modifying the law that, by its plain terms, forbids them. I'm not an expert on this area, but I imagine they could even do it as part of budget reconciliation, thus avoiding the filibuster in the Senate. Let them vote for the damn tariffs.
The most interesting dispute here is whether this is truly "a break from our constitutional law." Here's how I see the two competing arguments.
(1) Congress has the constitutional power over tariffs. They have delegated that power to the president, but only in case of a loose but not entirely unreasonable definition of an emergency. Generally, the Supreme Court will defer to congressional language. But they are also concerned about unconstitutional delegations of power. This will be a hard question for them, and a decision can reasonably go either way: (a) by not being more specific, congress unconstitutionally delegated emergency power to the president; or (b) congress was not wrong to give emergency power to the president (showing deference to congressional will), and if the president abused that authority, that is congress's political call to make.
(2) If (a) is the answer, the court will be subject to domestic censure for exercising too much political power, more than the constitution gives them. This happens all the time, and in extreme cases undermines the court's legitimate authority. Who are they to boss congress around? And if (b) is the answer, the apolitical court (as the constitution designed it) will lay the problem at the feet of congress, which will be as much -- or more -- to blame than the president.
Both of these options have bad consequences, but my own preference under our constitutional structure is (b). What the constitution requires is political accountability, and it is the political branches that are subject to that remedy. The focus on the president here is only a function of what the legislative branch gave him (and which the then-president signed into law). That is why the proper focus of any growing anger among the voters should be squarely, forcefully and directly aimed at their congressional representatives. It is, after all, them -- and in this case particularly the Republicans -- who are allowing the president to abuse the power they legitimately but accountably gave him.
Congress can change that law any time they want to. It is their bet that their voters at home won't mind; or won't mind enough for the representatives to worry about. As the consequences of this decision play out, where the president bet the entire global economy on his petulant but deeply held beliefs about the global economic system, the voters should keep their eyes where the constitution thinks they should be focused: holding their elected representatives accountable. The voters won't have another lawful chance to hold Trump directly accountable, but the midterms are coming up. Next year they will certainly be able to let their more directly answerable political representatives know how they feel.
I urge them all to take advantage of their constitutional obligation or privilege. This one strikes me as very important.
Who wants tariffs locally? Imagine, for example, states as California and Texas starting to impose tariffs on each other with arguments that this will benefit the states' economies. The USA can still serve as an example of how to integrate economics, trade, and markets at the world level.
Just before Sunday night football in August of 1971 President Nixon took to the airwaves and used and executive order to dramatically change the world of international finance and set the stage for lasting damage to the economy and political system of United States. He imposed an a 10% duty on all imports, and devalued the dollar by 8%, effectively an immediate across the board 18% tariff. More crucially Nixon abandoned the link between dollar and gold. This handed Congress a seemly limitless credit card opening the door to the political corruption of promising voters benefits that only others would have to pay someday.
The results of that systemic political corruption is now upon us. In the intervening 50 years the US has gone from a creditor nation to the largest debtor nation on earth. While crude and bombastic and naive in his way, Trump is attempting to recover the economic manufacturing engine given away by others, especially Clinton with Nafta and most favored nation status to China. Her is your favorite Nancy Pelosi sounding a lot like Trump.
https://x.com/i/status/1907836058005295612 You may not like Trump's method, but at least he is doing for his voters what he promised. And those voters making below the median income could care less about your stock portfolio. Schadenfreude!
Yes you are right I was wandering in my thoughts. 1. Trumps unilateral tariffs are nothing new. 2. Nixon's tariff package did far more long term damage to our democracy by amplifying political corruption leading to our current debt issues. 3. Trumps tariffs, would have been applauded by the Democrats, even if one of their own Clinton gave away US jobs and technology. 4. Trump followed through on promised tariffs to his voters with some logic that they would bring back jobs and cut our deficit. 5. Those voters have no direct tie to the stock market, and may take pleasure in the pain to the "rich". Left unsaid is that those who will be hurt the most are the upper middle class whose historical home is the Republican party.
Well, at least this article has provoked a lively discussion, if only to prove that no 2 or 3 humans will ever agree on any matter, never mind several million! It will take his fellow Republicans and above all, the American voters to get rid of Mr. Trump at the next elections. By then, who knows what will be left of the grand old U.S. of A..............................
One can agree that trade deficits are not inherently bad. But it is hard not to acknowledge that hollowing out of the country's manufacturing (which is reflected in the trade deficit) might not be so good. Witness our dependence upon China for surgical gloves (remember the shortages during Covid?), chemical precursors for pharmaceuticals, electronics, etc. Might there not be some desire to re-shore things like this?
Imports and exports are always going to be statistical for different countries. Some are going to have more imports and some more exports. Otherwise, you can argue in favor of preventing trade between US states.
The problem with Emergency Economic Powers Act of 1977 and similar "emergency" delegations is that, although they "require a genuine 'unusual and extraordinary threat', they delegate power without providing Congress with a kill switch if a President lies.
Joe Biden and the Democratic Congress could have fixed this in 2021 and 2022 but they didn't, even though they KNEW that a returning Trump or someone similar would abuse it. How did they know? Because he ALREADY HAD, to illegally divert appropriated funds to build his Wall, even after Congress refused to fund it.
So, why didn't they? Because the dirty little secret is that NO Administration of either party wants to return power to Congress once they have it, because they can't imagine that their side would abuse it, just the other guys. The United States and the world will now pay for that failure of imagination. If there's ever a second chance to fix this, I hope they've finally learned.
There is a kill switch. Congress can end the state of emergency Trump declared at any time. They can also reassert control over tariffs, which they have the Constitutional power to control.
The problems are first, that the current House Speaker is virulently opposed to these actions, and second, Trump can veto these bills, so a 2/3 vote would be required.
We may need a Great Depression 2 before the Speaker would change his mind, and both chambers would have a 2/3 vote. At which point it will be too late.
Not unless they can override a veto they can't, even if they can pass legislation to end a bogus "emergency". Not good enough.
I did say that 2/3 was needed... I agree it's not good enough.
The scandal of such legislation is the way it enables Congress to evade its Constitutional responsibilities. The possibility of Congress countermanding a Presidential action seems to serve two purposes: 1) to deceive the public, to say, "Oh no, we didn't give away our power. We can still overrule the President", which is obviously illusory; and 2) to deceive themselves with the same logic, in order to avoid the stress of cognitive dissonance. The exercise is a contemptible means of avoiding any action that might increase the risk to continued tenure in office and the money, power, and prestige that comes with it.
"As an economist, I feel professionally obligated to point out that there is nothing inherently bad about trade deficits."
Well with all due respect, either you are not a very good economist, or you are an intellectually dishonest one that is working to influence regime politics.
While the US pushed global economic policy, the rest of the world exploited it accessing the rich American consumer markets while implementing nationalist industrial policy. Trade deficits are fine where there is an imbalance of raw materials or capability... neither exist with the US. The trade balance has been for cheaper labor only, and that has decimated large swaths of the country... and you either don't know about them, or more likely don't care about them in your upper class coastal liberal enclave.
It is well past time for the US to stop giving away all its industry, manufacturing and working class jobs to keep enriching the upper class. The top 10% have had it good, but it was never sustainable. It is time for the US to implement its own national industrial policy. Foreign companies that want to sell their products to American consumers can make those products here in the US.
Once the trade deficit gets back to parity, the US can lower tariffs as makes sense.
I think you need to get yourself educated in economics
This is a really helpful framework for thinking about Trump’s tariffs. I wonder how likely it is that a challenge to the constitutionality of the International Emergency Economic Powers Act would succeed.
The world doesn’t operate based on comparative advantage which would require countries to purchase items at more expensive prices than they can achieve themselves internally or from others. Markets clear based on absolute advantage only. So the question is what does the US have that China wants ? Food and resources and for now, some tech. What will China want from the US in 20 years? Maybe nothing if they are able to peel Siberia away from Russia.
The notion that running trade deficits and financing them in perpetuity is fantasy and will lead to ruin. We’re creating a helpless country full of providers of services which others can easily replicate at minimal cost. In this case you’d be better off having the capabilities to produce what you need internally so when your currency plummets you don’t have to mortgage your home to buy a car.
This theoretical analysis seems unconnected to Trump's actual actions. He imposed tariffs on coffee and bananas; we're not going to be producing enough of either to replace imports. And how would that help our international competitiveness, anyway?
And he's killed off agencies whose job was to help nascent manufacturing startups get off the ground. And crippled existing factories that need imported products (other than the critical minerals he exempted).
And no one is going to start a factory under the threat that those tariffs could be removed as quickly and whimsically as they were imposed.
Yup. Poor choice of tools but when you only have a hammer and two years, this is what you get.
If this is going to get done, it's going to get done by the forces of capitalism, not by some agency whose "job" is to help nascent startups, as if that has ever accounted for anything.
Agreed this will be over in two years.
He's not serious about developing internal manufacturing capabilities. He keeps vacillating between saying the tariffs are permanent, and crowing about the deals he's cutting with countries when they lower their tariffs. No sane investor would fund a manufacturing startup in these conditions. The forces of capitalism are going to stay dormant.
Another example of Trump's incompetence with regard to manufacturing: he's torpedoing nascent mining startups
From https://heatmap.news/economy/trump-tariffs-mining?_hsmi=355609134
At the time Trump entered office, it looked like the stars could align for an American mining boom. Mining jobs had finally recovered to pre-COVID levels, thanks in part to demand for the metals required to engineer the transition away from fossil fuels (and, paradoxically, continued demand for coal). A lot of the gains in mining stocks were thanks to the Inflation Reduction Act, which offered a huge tax break to mining and metal processing companies and mandated that the consumer EV credit apply only to cars with a certain percentage of domestically-sourced material.
Trump 2.0 was poised to capitalize on that progress and unleash permits for U.S. mines under pared-back environmental regulations. In March, he issued an executive order to boost production of minerals in the U.S. — a maneuver that, combined with trade actions targeting China specifically, could have been the final step to bring about a mining and mineral processing resurgence in the U.S. and wrest some global market control away from China and other countries under its sphere of influence. In 2024, more than half of the mineral commodities consumed by the U.S. were imported from foreign sources, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.
Trump’s new global tariffs, however, sent the broader stock market into freefall, mining stocks very much included. He exempted many metals from the tariffs in their rawest form, but that was all the relief miners got. There were few exceptions for refined metal products or the inputs used for mining and mineral exploration. At the same time, metals prices — including commodities integral to battery production such as copper and lithium — are falling, with producers warning that now may be the high point for prices this year.
Part of this pricing issue is because the market appears to expect lower demand for new products that require those metals, such as EVs. Another part, as U.S. officials have said previously, is that China has been flooding the globe with minerals sold at a loss to win market influence. For this reason, D.C. policy wonks had been lobbying for legislation to address this pricing issue.
Now Trump has piled onto the industry's problems. This period could be especially painful for American mining companies, as it is exceedingly possible that a combination of lower commodity prices and higher costs for machinery and parts shatters whatever tailwinds were buoying many U.S. mining and metals projects. We may not see projects canceled yet, but a sense of extreme anxiety is sweeping the minds of many in the mining sector.
“If you look at the carrot of the pro-domestic mining policy versus the stick of the recessionary impacts from the demand side and the availability of capital impact from the supply side, the carrot is a raindrop and the stick is an ocean,” Emily Hersh, a veteran of the mining industry, told me.
Al Gore III, head of the D.C.-based electric vehicle and battery mineral supply chain association ZETA, said he agreed with Hersh’s assessment: “She’s right. We’ve been waging war against a raindrop for the last year, and now we’re in the ocean.”
It is not countries that trade. It is individuals and organisations that trade. Otherwise, with your opinions and way of thinking, you could argue to prevent trade between California and Montana.
Of course. It was meant figuratively, not literally. The argument still applies.
There is a sea of ignorance in the anti-tariff analysis. People have not educated themselves on the top thinkers in the Trump administration explaining the reasons why and what they expect. Maybe it is over the head of the average reader, or maybe there is just too much greed to demand that debt-spending propped up investment markets keep getting propped up with more debt spending.
There is a national security consideration... a big one. The US was the the most wealthy country in the world beginning in 1890. NAFTA, the WTO and China as a Most Favored Nation trading partner were HUGE mistakes, but the mistakes started before that. Reagan tried to reel it in. In fact Reagan was the first to push an industrial policy that threatened Japan with tariffs for its government subsidized smaller and more fuel-efficient tin cans, and Japan instead moved car manufacturing to the US. That shift benefited both countries.
The blanket tariffs are needed because of trade deficits. US trade deficits are a sign that the other country is valuing their own industrial policy over that of the US. Globalism is a face in this case... countries always pursue their own self interest while the US practices this weird religion of free global markets that only result in it being exploited and taken advantage of.
Globalism benefits the top 10% and the top 1%, but not those below. Those below have been hammered... failing to even keep up in terms of real wages, while the standard of living has risen for everyone else in the world... especially the American upper class that screams like stuck pigs about their Wall Street accounts.
You’re not wrong that the benefits of globalization have been unevenly distributed and American manufacturing has suffered, which is a legitimate national security issue. It is right to do something about these problems. But Trump’s economic policies won’t fix them, and are likely to make them worse.
But why has American manufacturing "suffered"? One key reason is technology. Also, the benefits of globalization are still based on international rules and governance since there is no global level democracy to regulate the economy
Frank, reducing poverty worldwide thanks to trade and market interactions is not a mistake. Also, as long as national borders and nationalism are separating the world, humans will always have subjective and arbitrary opinions that trade is "unfair" for "us" and not for "them. You are not proposing any real soltuons
With your thoughts about trade deficits, you could also argue in favor of preventing trade between US states. Statistical deficits will always exist spontaneously.
Frank, the people, as you are not in favor of security for all. You just want arbitrary security for people you admire. And also, missing the term national security it not patriotism , it is collectivism.
Huh? Nonsense.
This Court has been moving in two directions, one Trump would like and that bodes well for his firing of, say, NLRB commissioners, and the other he wouldn't and that bodes ill for his blunderbuss tariffs, which seem on first read plainly illegal.
The pro-Trump direction is the movement toward the unitary executive theory that would give presidents authority to fire anyone in the executive branch at will, including even commissioners of independent agencies designed by Congress to be insulated from rash executive action. In its most extreme manifestation, it would mean that Trump could fire any Fed Board governor at will for not, say, lowering interest rates when he wants. This is dangerous. Wall Street Journal types like this general idea, because they like the idea of a Republican president slashing agencies and being able to direct what they do or not do without any hangups. This arises from a hostility to, as they see it, anti-business regulation that such agencies represent in their prototypical examples. I'm not sure they've thought through what this would mean for the Fed, which is an agency they surely like and would like to remain independent. Anyway, we shall see.
But, at the same time, the Court's been moving away from deference to the executive branch in its interpretations of congressional authorizations. This is signified most clearly by the gradual undermining (with ideas like the "major questions doctrine") and final overruling of Chevron in the Loper Bright case, which held that the executive branch is entitled to no special deference in its interpretations of congressional mandates. It is for courts to decide whether the executive action overstepped the bounds that Congress established.
Such cases in the administrative law realm are often complex and involve an elaborate determination by an agency in advance of establishing a regulatory rule pursuant to a broad congressional mandate. The Chevron argument had been, look, the agencies know what they're doing; they're the experts; that's why Congress left it to them. We judges don't know much about it by contrast, and so should not second-guess those agencies' frequently technical determinations. To which the response was, nonsense, interpreting laws is what courts do, whether the area is complicated or not, and we can figure it out. This Court has adopted that view.
Here, the question is even more straightforward. There's no elaborate agency finding or regulation at issue. There's just a straightforward law to interpret, one that plainly does *not* authorize the president to establish tariffs willy nilly except in cases of emergency. Whatever emergency means, it can't mean "because the president wants to." That's what it means here, as is plain from the laughable fentanyl justification of tariffs on Canada for example.
The Court may be reluctant to stop Trump in the midst of such a major policy drive. But they should remember that Congress may act to validate Trump's moves by simply modifying the law that, by its plain terms, forbids them. I'm not an expert on this area, but I imagine they could even do it as part of budget reconciliation, thus avoiding the filibuster in the Senate. Let them vote for the damn tariffs.
The most interesting dispute here is whether this is truly "a break from our constitutional law." Here's how I see the two competing arguments.
(1) Congress has the constitutional power over tariffs. They have delegated that power to the president, but only in case of a loose but not entirely unreasonable definition of an emergency. Generally, the Supreme Court will defer to congressional language. But they are also concerned about unconstitutional delegations of power. This will be a hard question for them, and a decision can reasonably go either way: (a) by not being more specific, congress unconstitutionally delegated emergency power to the president; or (b) congress was not wrong to give emergency power to the president (showing deference to congressional will), and if the president abused that authority, that is congress's political call to make.
(2) If (a) is the answer, the court will be subject to domestic censure for exercising too much political power, more than the constitution gives them. This happens all the time, and in extreme cases undermines the court's legitimate authority. Who are they to boss congress around? And if (b) is the answer, the apolitical court (as the constitution designed it) will lay the problem at the feet of congress, which will be as much -- or more -- to blame than the president.
Both of these options have bad consequences, but my own preference under our constitutional structure is (b). What the constitution requires is political accountability, and it is the political branches that are subject to that remedy. The focus on the president here is only a function of what the legislative branch gave him (and which the then-president signed into law). That is why the proper focus of any growing anger among the voters should be squarely, forcefully and directly aimed at their congressional representatives. It is, after all, them -- and in this case particularly the Republicans -- who are allowing the president to abuse the power they legitimately but accountably gave him.
Congress can change that law any time they want to. It is their bet that their voters at home won't mind; or won't mind enough for the representatives to worry about. As the consequences of this decision play out, where the president bet the entire global economy on his petulant but deeply held beliefs about the global economic system, the voters should keep their eyes where the constitution thinks they should be focused: holding their elected representatives accountable. The voters won't have another lawful chance to hold Trump directly accountable, but the midterms are coming up. Next year they will certainly be able to let their more directly answerable political representatives know how they feel.
I urge them all to take advantage of their constitutional obligation or privilege. This one strikes me as very important.
Who wants tariffs locally? Imagine, for example, states as California and Texas starting to impose tariffs on each other with arguments that this will benefit the states' economies. The USA can still serve as an example of how to integrate economics, trade, and markets at the world level.
Just before Sunday night football in August of 1971 President Nixon took to the airwaves and used and executive order to dramatically change the world of international finance and set the stage for lasting damage to the economy and political system of United States. He imposed an a 10% duty on all imports, and devalued the dollar by 8%, effectively an immediate across the board 18% tariff. More crucially Nixon abandoned the link between dollar and gold. This handed Congress a seemly limitless credit card opening the door to the political corruption of promising voters benefits that only others would have to pay someday.
The results of that systemic political corruption is now upon us. In the intervening 50 years the US has gone from a creditor nation to the largest debtor nation on earth. While crude and bombastic and naive in his way, Trump is attempting to recover the economic manufacturing engine given away by others, especially Clinton with Nafta and most favored nation status to China. Her is your favorite Nancy Pelosi sounding a lot like Trump.
https://x.com/i/status/1907836058005295612 You may not like Trump's method, but at least he is doing for his voters what he promised. And those voters making below the median income could care less about your stock portfolio. Schadenfreude!
What is your point? That Trump is doing well by benefiting his pro-business cooperations while hurting most of the voters or?
Yes you are right I was wandering in my thoughts. 1. Trumps unilateral tariffs are nothing new. 2. Nixon's tariff package did far more long term damage to our democracy by amplifying political corruption leading to our current debt issues. 3. Trumps tariffs, would have been applauded by the Democrats, even if one of their own Clinton gave away US jobs and technology. 4. Trump followed through on promised tariffs to his voters with some logic that they would bring back jobs and cut our deficit. 5. Those voters have no direct tie to the stock market, and may take pleasure in the pain to the "rich". Left unsaid is that those who will be hurt the most are the upper middle class whose historical home is the Republican party.
All right, thanks for your elaboration and reasoning
Well, at least this article has provoked a lively discussion, if only to prove that no 2 or 3 humans will ever agree on any matter, never mind several million! It will take his fellow Republicans and above all, the American voters to get rid of Mr. Trump at the next elections. By then, who knows what will be left of the grand old U.S. of A..............................
One can agree that trade deficits are not inherently bad. But it is hard not to acknowledge that hollowing out of the country's manufacturing (which is reflected in the trade deficit) might not be so good. Witness our dependence upon China for surgical gloves (remember the shortages during Covid?), chemical precursors for pharmaceuticals, electronics, etc. Might there not be some desire to re-shore things like this?
Imports and exports are always going to be statistical for different countries. Some are going to have more imports and some more exports. Otherwise, you can argue in favor of preventing trade between US states.