5 ms·

Yes this is one reason tariffs are so valuable to a corrupt POTUS. They have essentially unilateral and very fine-grained control over them, down to exempting s

Yes this is one reason tariffs are so valuable to a corrupt POTUS. They have essentially unilateral and very fine-grained control over them, down to exempting specific companies or products outright.

duped 2y ago
Congress needs to step up on this, honestly. The entire idea that the President can unilaterally implement trade policy is as plain a violation of separation of powers I can think of, and SCOTUS is a fan of non-delegation doctrine.
- hcurtiss 2y ago
  [flagged]
  - llamaimperative 2y ago
    Who is advocating for that?
- luxuryballs 2y ago
  iirc as soon as anything becomes beyond the border the President holds the keys for various reasons including the ever-vague “national security” but also due to being prescribed as the primary negotiator https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_Clause https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_Clause
  - duped 2y ago
    Tariffs are not treaties, they're taxes/duties - only Congress has the power to raise them. Article I is extremely clear on that. Historically, tariffs were always raised by acts of Congress, not by Presidential fiat. Trump is using extremely misguided legislation from the 1960s/70s where Congress allowed the President to enact tariffs for national security and emergencies. There is a very strong argument (in the sense it resonates with the conservative SCOTUS majority) that Congress cannot delegate its fundamental powers to the executive by legislation alone. I think people are just too cowardly to bring a case in front of the courts to challenge the constitutionality of it all. Non-delegation doctrine is what the Federal Society want to use to kneecap all federal regulation. Trump operates on a spoils system so it's not in the interest of conservatives or businesses to challenge him, for fear of retribution.
    - slt2021 2y ago
      Trump is using tariffs not to raise revenue, but rather use it as a stick to force companies to invest in USA. Previously they were outsourcing and offshoring as much as they could get away with it. Which led to transfer of advanced technologies outside USA and America losing its manufacturing and technology edge
      - johnnyanmac 2y ago
        So how's that going? Outsourcing seems to be going strong, the tarriffs instead pissed off allies who are preparing counter-tarriffs, and the CHIPS Act is being dismantle as we speak (there goes our investment.
        slt2021 2y ago
        If TSMC acquires Intel (which is in the works), then chips act (basically a government handout to private corp) wont be needed anymore
        cyberax 2y ago
        Yeah. Just killing the US semiconductor production is the cheapest option.
        johnnyanmac 2y ago
        Well, until it isn't. It's cheap for Intel and the administration short term though.
        slt2021 2y ago
        I believe that the long-term plan is to turn TSMC into an American company
      - duped 2y ago
        Cool, still unconstitutional.
- alexashka 2y ago
  [flagged]
  - bloomingkales 2y ago
    We handed Congress to a complicit party. This is a full bunker situation until the midterms.
  - greedo 2y ago
    Clearly a non-sequitur, but I'll bite anyways. Paul Pelosi is a VC, and I'm sure that most of the Pelosi net worth is due to his income, not hers. Since the laws preventing members of Congress from trading on information they receive as part of their duties, you can't say that the Pelosi's have violated any securities laws. And both sides of the aisle benefit from this. Whether it's legalized insider trading or jumping to corporate jobs when out of office, it's a corrupting influence. All members of Congress, SCOTUS and POTUS should have to place their assets into blind trusts. That won't stop this corrosive influence, but it is the bare minimum.
    - kjellsbells 2y ago
      > Since the laws preventing members of Congress from trading on information they receive as part of their duties, you can't say that the Pelosi's have violated any securities laws The feds can and do go after people for using family members and friends to execute trades. So if Nancy Pelosi told her husband some material non-public info, and Paul Pelosi traded on it, that would still be insider trading. There was a guy at Microsoft who was caught once using a friend to place trades. He said he talked himself past his ethical concerns by reasoning that members of Congress do it. https://www.businessinsider.com/sec-alleges-insider-trading-at-microsoft-2013-12 https://www.businessinsider.com/sec-alleges-insider-trading-... Edit: to be clear, the absence of a prosecution does not mean that the Pelosis did not insider trade. Nor that they did. We can't tell from this distance, only speculate.
      - miley_cyrus 2y ago
        "Paul Pelosi, 83, sold 30,000 shares of Google (GOOGL) stock in December 2022, just one month before the tech giant was sued over alleged antitrust violations." https://finance.yahoo.com/news/deceptive-tactic-nancy-pelosi-disclosed-180000159.html https://finance.yahoo.com/news/deceptive-tactic-nancy-pelosi...
- johnnyanmac 2y ago
  Sorry they are right now cutting Medicare/Medicaid/snap right now to justify billionaire tax cuts. https://www.newsweek.com/nearly-all-republicans-vote-against-conditioning-tax-cuts-wealthy-2034439 https://www.newsweek.com/nearly-all-republicans-vote-against...
- paulddraper 2y ago
  tl;dr the New Deal. The Reciprocal Trade Agreements Act by Congress gave FDR sweeping authority over tariffs without direct congressional approval. Then later the Trade Expansion Act under Kennedy. Historically, these have served to decrease tarrifs.
- wwweston 2y ago
  Legislators step up when enough of their voting constituencies make it clear that they value something as a non-negotiable (assuming votes still matter). Which means those who care about this are back to not only contacting legislators but also persuading a lot fellow voters that separation of powers is crucial and worth prioritizing over familiar well-handled and loved heuristics.
- megaman821 2y ago
  Yes a million times. For all the rhetoric about authoritarians, the Democrats never seem to want regin in Executive power when they are they majority. It is like a game of chicken where America winds up with a populist dictator from either the left or right.
  - janalsncm 2y ago
    Yes because populism is a reaction to government being generally unresponsive to people’s needs. Congress has become increasingly unproductive and unresponsive. There are many popular policies that Congress essentially ignores, and many problems that go unsolved. So trust in government dwindles and people crave strongman solutions. I’m not sure there is a solution. There are so many interlocking problems gumming up the process that any “we just need to fix X” solutions (where X is gerrymandering, money in elections, lobbying, the two party system, first past the post, corruption, income inequality, the electoral college, the slow death of journalism, consolidation of industries, etc) are nearly impossible and also probably insufficient because they all feed back into one another: they are both causes and effects. So when people are mad about a downstream effect like the price of eggs and digging any deeper touches one of the topics above (“to fix egg price gouging you need to reinvent the political system” sounds a lot like “to make an omelette first you need to create the universe”), it’s really easy to throw your hands up.
    - briantakita 2y ago
      A codebase accumulates messes during it's entire lifetime. Sometimes, it gets to the point to where a rewrite is a good option. Even if the rewrite doesn't have all of the features...Even if possible, it may be better not to keep all of the features. As some features aren't important enough to maintain. The same can be said about government structures.
      - janalsncm 2y ago
        That is a fair analogy of the problem. But the solution is inherently more complex. 1. The agents of political change are themselves subject to politics. (Unlike maintainers of a codebase, who are able to make top-down decisions about the code.) If you make a bad decision, it may be the last one you’re allowed to make. 2. There are no unit tests for politics. There is only history, which is an imperfect predictor. 3. Code is deterministic. Policy is not.
- stock_toaster 2y ago
  > Congress needs to step up on this, honestly. Congress seems pretty unwilling to do much of anything right now.

Yes this is one reason tariffs are so valuable to a corrupt POTUS. They have essentially unilateral and very fine-grained control over them, down to exempting specific companies or products outright.

duped 2y ago

Congress needs to step up on this, honestly. The entire idea that the President can unilaterally implement trade policy is as plain a violation of separation of powers I can think of, and SCOTUS is a fan of non-delegation doctrine.

hcurtiss 2y ago
[flagged]
- llamaimperative 2y ago
  Who is advocating for that?
luxuryballs 2y ago
iirc as soon as anything becomes beyond the border the President holds the keys for various reasons including the ever-vague “national security” but also due to being prescribed as the primary negotiator https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_Clause https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_Clause
- duped 2y ago
  Tariffs are not treaties, they're taxes/duties - only Congress has the power to raise them. Article I is extremely clear on that. Historically, tariffs were always raised by acts of Congress, not by Presidential fiat. Trump is using extremely misguided legislation from the 1960s/70s where Congress allowed the President to enact tariffs for national security and emergencies. There is a very strong argument (in the sense it resonates with the conservative SCOTUS majority) that Congress cannot delegate its fundamental powers to the executive by legislation alone. I think people are just too cowardly to bring a case in front of the courts to challenge the constitutionality of it all. Non-delegation doctrine is what the Federal Society want to use to kneecap all federal regulation. Trump operates on a spoils system so it's not in the interest of conservatives or businesses to challenge him, for fear of retribution.
  - slt2021 2y ago
    Trump is using tariffs not to raise revenue, but rather use it as a stick to force companies to invest in USA. Previously they were outsourcing and offshoring as much as they could get away with it. Which led to transfer of advanced technologies outside USA and America losing its manufacturing and technology edge
    - johnnyanmac 2y ago
      So how's that going? Outsourcing seems to be going strong, the tarriffs instead pissed off allies who are preparing counter-tarriffs, and the CHIPS Act is being dismantle as we speak (there goes our investment.
      - slt2021 2y ago
        If TSMC acquires Intel (which is in the works), then chips act (basically a government handout to private corp) wont be needed anymore
        cyberax 2y ago
        Yeah. Just killing the US semiconductor production is the cheapest option.
        johnnyanmac 2y ago
        Well, until it isn't. It's cheap for Intel and the administration short term though.
        slt2021 2y ago
        I believe that the long-term plan is to turn TSMC into an American company
    - duped 2y ago
      Cool, still unconstitutional.
alexashka 2y ago
[flagged]
- bloomingkales 2y ago
  We handed Congress to a complicit party. This is a full bunker situation until the midterms.
- greedo 2y ago
  Clearly a non-sequitur, but I'll bite anyways. Paul Pelosi is a VC, and I'm sure that most of the Pelosi net worth is due to his income, not hers. Since the laws preventing members of Congress from trading on information they receive as part of their duties, you can't say that the Pelosi's have violated any securities laws. And both sides of the aisle benefit from this. Whether it's legalized insider trading or jumping to corporate jobs when out of office, it's a corrupting influence. All members of Congress, SCOTUS and POTUS should have to place their assets into blind trusts. That won't stop this corrosive influence, but it is the bare minimum.
  - kjellsbells 2y ago
    > Since the laws preventing members of Congress from trading on information they receive as part of their duties, you can't say that the Pelosi's have violated any securities laws The feds can and do go after people for using family members and friends to execute trades. So if Nancy Pelosi told her husband some material non-public info, and Paul Pelosi traded on it, that would still be insider trading. There was a guy at Microsoft who was caught once using a friend to place trades. He said he talked himself past his ethical concerns by reasoning that members of Congress do it. https://www.businessinsider.com/sec-alleges-insider-trading-at-microsoft-2013-12 https://www.businessinsider.com/sec-alleges-insider-trading-... Edit: to be clear, the absence of a prosecution does not mean that the Pelosis did not insider trade. Nor that they did. We can't tell from this distance, only speculate.
    - miley_cyrus 2y ago
      "Paul Pelosi, 83, sold 30,000 shares of Google (GOOGL) stock in December 2022, just one month before the tech giant was sued over alleged antitrust violations." https://finance.yahoo.com/news/deceptive-tactic-nancy-pelosi-disclosed-180000159.html https://finance.yahoo.com/news/deceptive-tactic-nancy-pelosi...
johnnyanmac 2y ago
Sorry they are right now cutting Medicare/Medicaid/snap right now to justify billionaire tax cuts. https://www.newsweek.com/nearly-all-republicans-vote-against-conditioning-tax-cuts-wealthy-2034439 https://www.newsweek.com/nearly-all-republicans-vote-against...
paulddraper 2y ago
tl;dr the New Deal. The Reciprocal Trade Agreements Act by Congress gave FDR sweeping authority over tariffs without direct congressional approval. Then later the Trade Expansion Act under Kennedy. Historically, these have served to decrease tarrifs.
wwweston 2y ago
Legislators step up when enough of their voting constituencies make it clear that they value something as a non-negotiable (assuming votes still matter). Which means those who care about this are back to not only contacting legislators but also persuading a lot fellow voters that separation of powers is crucial and worth prioritizing over familiar well-handled and loved heuristics.
megaman821 2y ago
Yes a million times. For all the rhetoric about authoritarians, the Democrats never seem to want regin in Executive power when they are they majority. It is like a game of chicken where America winds up with a populist dictator from either the left or right.
- janalsncm 2y ago
  Yes because populism is a reaction to government being generally unresponsive to people’s needs. Congress has become increasingly unproductive and unresponsive. There are many popular policies that Congress essentially ignores, and many problems that go unsolved. So trust in government dwindles and people crave strongman solutions. I’m not sure there is a solution. There are so many interlocking problems gumming up the process that any “we just need to fix X” solutions (where X is gerrymandering, money in elections, lobbying, the two party system, first past the post, corruption, income inequality, the electoral college, the slow death of journalism, consolidation of industries, etc) are nearly impossible and also probably insufficient because they all feed back into one another: they are both causes and effects. So when people are mad about a downstream effect like the price of eggs and digging any deeper touches one of the topics above (“to fix egg price gouging you need to reinvent the political system” sounds a lot like “to make an omelette first you need to create the universe”), it’s really easy to throw your hands up.
  - briantakita 2y ago
    A codebase accumulates messes during it's entire lifetime. Sometimes, it gets to the point to where a rewrite is a good option. Even if the rewrite doesn't have all of the features...Even if possible, it may be better not to keep all of the features. As some features aren't important enough to maintain. The same can be said about government structures.
    - janalsncm 2y ago
      That is a fair analogy of the problem. But the solution is inherently more complex. 1. The agents of political change are themselves subject to politics. (Unlike maintainers of a codebase, who are able to make top-down decisions about the code.) If you make a bad decision, it may be the last one you’re allowed to make. 2. There are no unit tests for politics. There is only history, which is an imperfect predictor. 3. Code is deterministic. Policy is not.
stock_toaster 2y ago
> Congress needs to step up on this, honestly. Congress seems pretty unwilling to do much of anything right now.