Which is absurd too because tariffs and taxes are supposed to come from the Senate per the Constitution. The Senate should be protecting the Constitution here, if nothing else.
Unfortunately Congress, in its infinite wisdom, delegated tariff-making authority to the President in cases of emergency. You'll never guess what happened next.
Yay, unaccountable government and the breaking of our Constitutional system. So much to celebrate. The Right is showing they don't actually stand for anything they have every said, but specifically the Constitution or our system of Government. But who cares about what the USA is/stands for when you are busy.... saving the USA. Hypocrites.
The power to levy tariffs was delegated to the President in 1934, when democrats had a filibuster proof majority in the Senate, over 70% of the votes in the House, and the Presidency.
Bizarre to blame “the Right” for not voting to change a system democrats created 91 years ago.
I'm replying to you and your comment specifically. Your support for this seems very at odds with your historical posting. Suddenly you support the Democrats delegating Congressional authority and support Republicans not asserting the Constitution's authority.
That said, how is it bizarre to blame the Right for failing to take back Congressional authority, delegated for 'emergencies', when the President is abusing that delegated authority? This is like a basic concept the 'Right' has pushed very hard, now taken to the biggest extreme by a President that it ever has. Or are we getting too much fent from that Penguin Island and it's a real emergency that requires tariffs on them to stop?
The 'right' are showing themselves for nothing but hypocrites and liars, that beleive in nothing. Not even party over country. One man's zero thought out tariff scheme from the last century over EVERYTHING.
Tariffs have elements of both taxes (which Congress must levy) and foreign policy (which is principally the domain of the President). So as a legal matter, the delegation of power to set tariff rates is a fuzzier case than for other delegations. Though I think on balance, given that the tariff act of 1789 incorporated a specific percentage rate, the founding generation probably saw tariff rates as being the domain of Congress.
That said, what’s the correct answer is only weakly relevant. One side vigorously defends the existence of executive-branch agencies that are supposedly “independent” of the President but somehow can make regulations with the force of law like Congress. The GOP would be committing political malpractice if they listened to those people’s quibbles about non-delegation doctrine.
Your charge of hypocrisy is misplaced. A charge of hypocrisy has persuasive force only insofar as the argument is “your rule isn’t a good one because you can’t even follow it yourself.” You can’t invoke it to insist that your opponents adhere to rules that you don’t even accept as valid. Constitutional norms are a two-way street. If you think “emanations from penumbras” is constitutional law, then I’m under no obligation to apply a different standard from that.
Only 3 Republicans in the Senate feel safe enough to stand up to Trump, which is not nearly enough. If you cross him, he will publicly bully and name-call you, and goad his base into rejecting you at the next primary, even if you otherwise agree with him 99% of the time. Recall how quickly Lindsey Graham, Ted Cruz, and Marco Rubio all turned tail and became utter sycophants after he became President.
You’re missing the forest for the trees. The Buchanan wing of the GOP overthrew the Bush/Cheney establishment, and salted the earth so a Bush or Cheney couldn’t get elected dog catcher in Texas/Wyoming.
Many of the GOP Senators are holdovers from that discredited prior regime. They cower in front of Trump because the base trusts Trump far more than it trusts the party establishment. And that’s not because Trump has magic powers, but because the Bush/Cheney era was utterly disastrous and about half the GOP has turned hard against libertarianism in trade and immigration.
The fact that Senators are afraid to cross Trump is a good thing. It means they are being responsive to their voters. If it wasn’t for that, they’d already be talking about TPP 2.0 and amnesty again.
In that case, why didn't they switch sides and become Democrats?
> about half the GOP has turned hard against libertarianism in trade and immigration
Oh, that's why--at least to some degree. But it's an incomplete explanation. Any GOP leader could have run on a more restrictive trade and immigration platform.
Then the question becomes, why does the base trust Trump so much? How much of it is because they're actually hurting (and in a way that can actually be cured by him); how much is because they are being lied to; how much is because they're easily manipulable; how much is because they are delusional; and how much is because they are morally bereft? Whatever it is, it cannot be explained by competence.
> In that case, why didn't they switch sides and become Democrats?
Because they’re republicans. The GOP historically was skeptical of engaging with the rest of the world—tariffs were a foundational plank of Lincoln’s party. The Reagan-era globalism was a temporary response to the soviet union—which threatened to spread atheism and socialism around the world—that brought liberal internationalists and neoconservatives into the coalition. Bush-era foreign intervention revealed that approach to be obsolete post-soviet union. So the party reverted to something more like it has been.
The minority of the coalition for whom bombing middle eastern countries and exporting jobs to China was the whole point did become democrats. Jennifer Rubin and Bill Kristol are cheering for abortion now as partisan democrats.
> Any GOP leader could have run on a more restrictive trade and immigration platform.
But they didn’t, because the party leadership was overrun by globalists and neocons.
> Then the question becomes, why does the base trust Trump so much?
Because he overthrew the globalists and neocons and has proven in office that he’s neither. Other republicans can’t be trusted. Mitch McConnell would vote for amnesty in a heartbeat if it was in exchange for going to war with Iran.
> Reagan-era globalism was a temporary response to the soviet union
The USA’s global influence and entanglements go all the way back to the Monroe Doctrine and grew substantially after WWII as we sought to help reconstruct the world thereafter (Marshall Plan, Bretton Woods, etc.). And the fact that we could produce goods while the rest of the world was practically shut down, given all the destruction that resulted from the war, boosted our economy into the stratosphere. There was practically zero competition for complicated and technologically advanced goods for 30-40 years. Many people forget (or simply weren’t taught) that the USA was not an economic powerhouse until after WWI. Until then, it was Britain, France, and the Netherlands.
Some of the adverse consequences of globalization started to appear domestically during the Reagan administration, though, as imported Japanese automobiles and electronics began to impact American sales, which in turn led to factory closures and pink slips.
Many of those impacted did get other jobs, but the echoes of anger reverberate. They reverberate even longer when they believe foreigners, who they have no power over, are to blame.
> Because he overthrew the globalists and neocons and has proven in office that he’s neither.
It still doesn’t explain how he won the GOP primary the first time and continues to maintain a cult-like following. If the poll numbers are to be believed, isolationists and nationalists never made up more than a slim percentage of the American electorate until very recently.
Even if they all voted for and support Trump based on this alone, it’s a losing battle. The 1940s-1970s were a unique period where American economic victory was practically assured because everyone else was nearly out of business. We’re not going to return to that situation by raising both trade and immigration barriers. Unless we’re willing to bomb the world to line our pockets again (which I’m not sure we have either the stomach or the practical capability to do), globalization is the most rational path to take. It’s a shame we all must suffer until they come to see the light themselves.
> The USA’s global influence and entanglements goes all the way back to the Monroe Doctrine and grew substantially after WWII
The U.S. had virtually no engagement with the world outside the western hemisphere between the GOP’s formation in 1854 and World War I. Between Lincoln’s election in 1861 to World War I tariff rates exceeded 40%: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Average_Tariff_Rates...
> It still doesn’t explain how he won the GOP primary the first time and continues to maintain a cult-like following.
He maintains a cult-like following because he’s the first republican in recent memory to actually deliver conservative victories instead of blowing all their political capital on wars. Since he took office in 2016, conservatives have ended affirmative action, overturned Roe, cut border crossings nearly to zero, established a legal framework for prosecuting DEI under the civil rights laws, ended disparate impact, shut down entire federal agencies, raised tariffs for the first time since the 1960s. We might get a $45 billion budget for ICE! I’m not even covering everything in the EOs, which have gone under the radar because everyone is flipping out over tariffs. Trump makes clear that Bush/Cheney republicans weren’t even trying.
> If the poll numbers are to be believed, isolationists and nationalists never made up more than a slim percentage of the American electorate until very recently.
Those are abstract labels that don’t mean anything to people. For decades, the de facto policy has been more and more immigration, something that has never garnered more than 34% support among the whole country: https://news.gallup.com/poll/647123/sharply-americans-curb-i.... The percentage of people who want immigration decreased has far exceeded the percentage who want it increased since 1965 except for a brief period around 2020.
Most republicans aren’t “isolationists” in the sense they’d oppose intervention in a situation like World War II. But for example only 20% of people in 2022 favored boots on the ground in Ukraine: https://www.theamericanconservative.com/new-americans-oppose.... That is de facto isolationism because you’re not going to get a stronger test case for liberal internationalism absent Russia invading a country like Germany.
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