Trump tariffs ruled illegal

HHusky · May 29

https://hardcorehusky.com/discussion/comment/2075024#Comment_2075024

Since you’ve obviously already read it, explain why it’s ridiculous.

HHusky · May 29

The Constitution assigns Congress the exclusive powers to “lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises,” and to “regulate Commerce with foreign Nations.” U.S. Const. art. I, § 8, cls. 1, 3. The question in the two cases before the court is whether the International Emergency Economic Powers Act of 1977 (“IEEPA”) delegates these powers to the President in the form of authority to impose unlimited tariffs on goods from nearly every country in the world. The court does not read IEEPA to confer such unbounded authority and sets aside the challenged tariffs imposed thereunder.

Sounds pretty radical!

UW_Doog_Bot · May 29

https://hardcorehusky.com/discussion/comment/2075021#Comment_2075021

Tbf I'm cool with reining in the executive.

The left isn't though.

EverettChris · May 29

”Nearly every country in the world” seems like solid technical reasoning!

Thanks for the reminder on how you posted a KJB dissent as some sort of legal ruling. Quite the attorney here.

HHusky · May 29

https://hardcorehusky.com/discussion/comment/2075041#Comment_2075041

But you were going to tell what struck you as the most ridiculous when you read the opinion. Go ahead.

HHusky · May 29

The Government’s “pressure” argument effectively concedes that the direct effect of the country-specific tariffs is simply to burden the countries they target. It is the prospect of mitigating this burden, the Government explains, that will induce the target countries to crack down on trafficking within their jurisdictions. See Gov’t Resp. to Oregon Mots. at 39. But however sound this might be as a diplomatic strategy, it does not comfortably meet the statutory definition of “deal[ing] with” the cited emergency. It is hard to conceive of any IEEPA power that could not be justified on the same ground of “pressure.”

The Government’s reading would cause the meaning of “deal with an unusual and extraordinary threat” to permit any infliction of a burden on a counterparty to exact concessions, regardless of the relationship between the burden inflicted and the concessions exacted. If “deal with” can mean “impose a burden until someone else deals with,” then everything is permitted. It means a President may use IEEPA to take whatever actions he chooses simply by declaring them “pressure” or “leverage” tactics that will elicit a third party’s response to an unconnected “threat.” Surely this is not what Congress meant when it clarified that IEEPA powers “may not be exercised for any other purpose” than to “deal with” a threat.