[mangoman]

I don't think it requires the courts to agree - just that there's a burden or disadvantage and that it's in the "public interest" which seems like a pretty low bar to make up a story that sounds plausible. i think the idea that a trade deficit is a disadvantage is kinda brain dead, but it's plausible sounding enough to argue in court. throw in unequal tariff rates and it seems like an easier win than the IEEPA's emergency justification.

[ajross]

> I don't think it requires the courts to agree

This is misunderstanding civics. Laws are not algorithms. All laws must be interpreted. The government organ responsible for interpreting laws is the judiciary, definitionally.

It's not like there's a condition in a law saying "get the courts to agree". It's that there is a disagreement (among parties with standing) about what the law means. And so they fight about it in court, which is why we have courts.

[JCattheATM]

> It's that there is a disagreement (among parties with standing) about what the law means.

IMO that's being awfully generous.

[irjustin]

> I don't think it requires the courts to agree

Eventually the courts have to agree/disagree if someone starts challenging it up the chain.

[thaumasiotes]

Technically they don't. They can say, for example, that the burden placed on commerce is a political question. That would be a declaration that they agree with the government, which looks like agreeing that a burden exists right now, but automatically switches positions whenever the administration does.

[tptacek]

They could say that, but they won't, because "unequal impositions or discriminations aforesaid" is a straightforwardly justiciable question. Deciding whether things are "unequal" or "discriminatory" is almost exactly what courts are for.

[margalabargala]

Nearly every country that Trump tariffed does have some sort of tariff on the US. Canada has a sizable dairy tariff, for example.

Whether that dairy tariff is particularly onerous on the US, worth antagonizing our closest ally for, that would be the political question, but certainly it's definitionally unequal.

[throw0101d]

> Nearly every country that Trump tariffed does have some sort of tariff on the US. Canada has a sizable dairy tariff, for example.

Canada has a dairy tariff after a certain volume is imported. The US has not hit that volume and so the tariffs are currently zero.

> Last year, Canada was the second-highest importer of U.S. dairy products, buying about $1.14 billion US, and it was the United States' top export market for eggs and related products.

* https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/trump-canada-us-dairy-trade...

USMC also has a carve out for allowing more dairy imports:

* https://ustr.gov/trade-agreements/free-trade-agreements/unit...

It should also be noted that the US subsidizes its dairy farms, which could be considered an unfair advantage and justification for anti-dumping measures (Trump's logic for many Chinese imports, e.g., steel). So Canadian dairy products cannot compete in the US market because they're 'too expensive' compared to what US farmers are selling things at: is that fair?

[wqaatwt]

Right. The average tariff on US goods applied by the EU is 4.1% IIRC Canada was significantly lower. So having “some sort of a tariff” isn’t that meaningful on its own.

[mensetmanusman]

It’s impossible to get the effective tariff rate because everyone works around them with VATs and random things like movie ticket taxes for foreign films that are effective tariffs but not officially counted as such.

[bruce511]

Like most things in life, tarifs can be used well, or used badly.

Canada's Dairy Tariff is specifically designed to protect a specific local industry, which exists, is of national interest to keep, and which could come under threat from cheap alternatives imported from abroad. It's specific, targeted, and serves a valuable purpose. They have been in place a long time, and provide a stable trading environment making the future easier to predict.

Trumps tarrifs are the complete opposite. He could have done tarifs well, but he's lazy and so opted for "easy" instead. By tarrifing countries you mix all industries together.

For example coffee. The US imports 99% of their coffee. The local coffee industry is tiny, and limited to Hawaii. There's no national interest, no local jobs, nothing. Tariffing coffee just makes it more expensive.

No one is planting coffee trees. Partly because the US has the wrong climate, but also because growing new trees (or building a factory) takes years, and a lot of investment. That means confidence that the situation today will last long enough to get a return.

In truth the tarrifs seldom make it past the weekend, or a couple weeks, then they're suspended. The administration openly admits they're negotiating "trade deals". So, I can't invest anything based on current tarrifs because they're very impermanent.

This nonsense is not about whether tarifs are good or bad. This is about how they gave been done (which is epically badly, and stupidly.)

On the upside a generation of future kids will learn about this, and how doing the right thing badly is worse than doing nothing at all.

[eru]

> Like most things in life, tarifs can be used well, or used badly.

I've yet to see a good use of tariffs.

[worik]

Any Canadians here to comment on the milk tariff policies?

I have spent ten days of my life in Canada and I learnt of the tariffs by news reports concerning people driving to USA, loading up on milk, coming home.

Tariffs are not always stupid. But in most cases there is a better alternative.

E.g. Canada could subsidise domestic milk producers. (We used to do that in New Zealand)

There is a lot of nonsense talked about economics ("tariffs always bad" is an example) because there are strong incentives at work for the actors. It makes it very difficult for policy makers to have good, responsive, effective economic policy.

Money and politics? What could go wrong....

[tptacek]

I have no idea what this has to do with what I said. Maybe you think Trump can formulate a convincing argument that he is acting with the intended scope of the Tariff Act. Ok? All I'm saying is: his argument would very much be subject to challenge in court, and this is not a non-justiciable "political question".

[margalabargala]

I was agreeing with you, and expanding by pointing out an example of an inequality.

[lolinder]

"Aforesaid" is a very specific word that means that the "unequal impositions or discriminations" refers back to specific concepts previously referenced in the law. He can't (legally) just invent his own interpretations for what "unequal impositions" and "discriminations" entails, he has to convince a court that the specific actions he's retaliating against are covered by the "aforesaid" definitions.

Here's the complete text [0]. The act authorizes imposition of tariffs on any country that:

> Imposes, directly or indirectly, upon the disposition in or transportation in transit through or reexportation from such country of any article wholly or in part the growth or product of the United States any unreasonable charge, exaction, regulation, or limitation which is not equally enforced upon the like articles of every foreign country; or

> Discriminates in fact against the commerce of the United States, directly or indirectly, by law or administrative regulation or practice, by or in respect to any customs, tonnage, or port duty, fee, charge, exaction, classification, regulation, condition, restriction, or prohibition, in such manner as to place the commerce of the United States at a disadvantage compared with the commerce of any foreign country.

This is pretty specific. The tariffs/customs/dues/whatever don't even have to be unfair relative to what the US charges on that country's imports into the US, it's specifically targeting cases where a foreign country discriminates against US trade over and beyond the dues it charges on other countries' trade.

It'd be very difficult to prove that discriminatory treatment for each and every one of the 180+ countries caught up in Trump's tariffs.

[0] https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/19/1338

[disgruntledphd2]

And given that most trading partners are members of the WTO then the kind of behavior covered here would be covered by the most favored nation clauses.

[Terr_]

> Trump's tariffs.

Republican tariffs, they're complicit. Literally every single Republican in the House voted to shield Trump's "national emergency" [0] from being challenged as invalid.

[0] The National Emergency of... a relatively small amount of fentanyl seized at the Canadian border.

[genewitch]

The amount of fentanyl (just fent) siezed through April of this year since January was enough to kill 700,000 people. I guess you can disbelieve the story that car part vsndors were trafficking fentanyl, but it is a problem.

[StackRanker3000]

Between 2022 and 2024, 0.1% of all fentanyl seizures were at the northern border with Canada, vs ~99% at the border with Mexico. There’s also an (equally small, relatively speaking) reverse flow of fentanyl into Canada from the US. Not to mention that fentanyl trafficking is completely orthogonal to tariffs, except that the former is used as an excuse to utilize the latter to bully an ally.

[wqaatwt]

Yeah the much higher volume of fentanyl going FROM the US TO Canada is a huge issue. Other way around? Not so much in comparison.

[genewitch]

when you say "from the US" can you explain exactly what you mean? and what sources you're drawing from to show that the fentanyl is coming "from the US" into Canada? I realize it sounds like i'm incredulous, but it's only because the US doesn't manufacture fentanyl. Canada does. Mexico does.

But alright, i guess people import it to the US to illegally traffic it back north. and somehow that makes a majority of the traffic! never stop learning, that's what i always say.

[lerchmo]

Enough to kill is a meaningless metric.

[genewitch]

It's millions of "doses." Fentanyl is a scourge, and all manner of language decorations are okay to use in my book. "little blue pills" certainly doesn't match the description of any common medications, like Sildenafil or Naproxen, so approximately zero people would have overdosed and died.

[Terr_]

Yeah: By my napkin-math, the average person has enough blood in them to kill ~20 other people by bad blood transfusions.

Yet it would be beyond stupid to claim that each person stopped at the border "saved" 20 Americans.

[mineshaftmisgui]

The political machine learns quickly, the previous administration used the Covid emergency declaration as a pretext to cancel student debt. Both sides have turned to extend the reaches of the checks and balances instead of reining them in. This is the root cause.

[XenophileJKO]

This still seems like a very low bar. If the country has ANY trade treaty with someone else that has trade advantage, than it would appear like that fits the letter of the law.

[aetherson]

We have most favored nation status with most other countries, so they generally don't have any other nation that is getting better terms than we do. That's the point of the WTO.

[skissane]

> We have most favored nation status with most other countries, so they generally don't have any other nation that is getting better terms than we do. That's the point of the WTO.

However, MFN status is full of exceptions. For many countries, the US could plausibly argue that they are being discriminated against despite having MFN status due to one of the exceptions to it

[ndsipa_pomu]

They would surely have to convince the court that the exceptions were "unreasonable" which would be a higher bar than just declaring that there is an exception (i.e. an exception for a specific reason is not "unreasonable")

[heylook]

So many people in here are making the same mistake. The whole purpose of the courts is to decide whether some behavior does or does not fit within the confines of some statute. They don't just say "oh yeah whatever you say, go ahead." This very decision is just several instances of the court saying "the law says you can only tariff when X. you said X is true, but it's obviously not, so you can't tariff."

[skissane]

> an exception for a specific reason is not "unreasonable"

I doubt it is that simple.

I don’t know how exactly judges are going to define “reasonable” in this specific area of law-but “reasonable” normally means not just that you have a reason, but also that the judge concludes it is a valid or good enough reason-and different areas of law often have different tests for deciding what reasons are valid or good enough

[thaumasiotes]

So, they need to argue that the foreign countries' practice imposes a disadvantage in fact on the commerce of the USA compared with the commerce of any foreign country? They already have argued that; it was headlined in Trump's first announcements.

[tptacek]

Any business impacted by the tariffs will have standing to go to federal court and argue that trade practices accepted for a century by legislatures and administrations of both parties do not constitute "unequal impositions" under the intended meaning of the statute.

[thaumasiotes]

They'd have to argue something other than that. There could be a standing regulation that says "Ships carrying any American goods must pay 30% higher docking fees"; if that had been accepted for a century, it would still be a slam dunk case of "unequal impositions".

[skissane]

> Discriminates in fact against the commerce of the United States, directly or indirectly, by law or administrative regulation or practice… in such manner as to place the commerce of the United States at a disadvantage compared with the commerce of any foreign country.

I think the administration would find it easier to prove this than you think. They just have to find some regulation which they claim disadvantages the US compared to other countries. Given most countries have thousands of pages of regulations, it likely isn’t hard to find something in there that they can argue puts the US at a disadvantage-especially since what really matters is not whether it actually does, rather whether they can convince a court that it does

Real example: the US claims Australia bans US beef, Australia insists it is allowed. I believe the real problem is this-Australian regulations say US beef is allowed if the cattle are born in the US, raised in the US, slaughtered in the US… and the problem is the US cattle industry has such poor record-keeping, they intermingle US-born cattle with live cattle imports from Canada and Mexico and can’t produce the necessary paperwork to prove a shipment of beef is purely US-grown and hasn’t been mixed with beef from non-US origin cattle

Now, there is no reason in principle why the US cattle industry couldn’t improve their record-keeping to the point that it meets Australian regulations. But that would cost money and be politically unpopular-so instead US politicians just spread the rather misleading claim that “Australia bans US beef”. What really matters legally, is not the reasonableness of the claim, it is whether they can get a US judge to accept it-and quite possibly they could

And there’s probably several other cases where US companies can’t export their products to Australia because they aren’t willing to comply with Australian regulations. And likely many similar stories for other countries too. And if DOJ lawyers try to argue these cases fit under the legislation you are citing, IANAL but I think they’d have decent odds of success

> it's specifically targeting cases where a foreign country discriminates against US trade over and beyond the dues it charges on other countries' trade.

But, in this Australia case, all they have to do is find another country which can export beef to Australia because it does comply with these regulations, and there is their argument that Australia discriminates against the US. Should it matter legally that these regulations are reasonable and not intentionally discriminatory and US inability to comply is due to US unwillingness to pay for the reforms necessary to do so? I think it should, but entirely plausible that a judge decides it shouldn’t

EDIT: to be clear, I think these tariffs are pretty stupid-but whether something is stupid is a separate question from whether courts will uphold it. Many courts will uphold a lot of things which you or I know to be stupid

[thaumasiotes]

> They just have to find some regulation which they claim disadvantages the US compared to other countries.

Well, sort of. The threshold is much lower than that; the law is explicit that no regulation is necessary:

>> by law or administrative regulation or practice

[awesome_dude]

Yeah - the tariffs imposed on the islands with little to no population are definitely because nobody buying anything is blame for the fact they have a surplus

[skissane]

That was stupid but also practically irrelevant-if an uninhabited territory has zero exports, you can set the tariff as high as you like, with no exports nobody is going to pay it. To be clear, I don’t agree with these tariffs and think they are a mistake, but I think we should focus on their real world harms not a silly administrative error

We know how it happened: Heard and McDonald Islands is an uninhabited Australian territory off the coast of Antarctica. In the 19th century, it was inhabited by sealers for an extended period (mostly Americans, some Australians too)-but they left after hunting the seals to extinction. In the 20th century it became a nature reserve, although it saw multi-year occupation by scientific research bases. Since the 1990s, no humans have been there except for brief visits; apparently nobody has been there in person for over a decade. It is illegal to come ashore without permission from the Australian government, and their policy is to almost always refuse permission (with rare exceptions for scientific research).

Yet despite all this, ISO 3166-1 gave it a country code, HM. And US government databases ended up showing imports from it, almost certainly due to data entry errors, the imports having really come from somewhere else. But it appears nobody was paying attention, so it ended up as a tiny trade deficit in official US trade statistics. And then the Trump administration mindlessly applied the rule “IF official US trade statistics show a deficit THEN impose tariff”. And still nobody noticed. And then after they publicised it, somebody did, and they were widely mocked for the mistake, and I believe this specific tariff has since been rescinded.

Most likely HM was actually a typo for Hong Kong (HK) or Honduras (HN)-adjacent keys on the keyboard. Or maybe the M is correct and the H is the typo, in which case it could easily have been The Gambia (GM) or Bermuda (BM) or Jamaica (JM)-also adjacent keys

Australia has another uninhabited territory (Ashmore and Cartier Islands), and another near uninhabited (Coral Sea Islands, staffed by a tiny rotating crew of government employees)-but, for whatever reason, ISO never gave either its own country code, [0] so this couldn’t have happened to them. (Likewise, Australia claims a big chunk of Antarctica, a claim which most countries-US included-don’t recognise-so the Australian Antarctic Territory doesn’t get its own ISO code, it gets subsumed under Antarctica’s, AQ.)

[0] I guess the reason may be land area - Ashmore and Cartier Islands have a land area of slightly over a square kilometre, less than a square mile; Coral Sea Islands have a land area of 3 km^2, which is slightly over one square mile; by contrast, Heard Island is 368 km^2 (142 sq mi). ISO generally resists giving codes to uninhabited territories unless they contain significant land

[Marsymars]

> That was stupid but also practically irrelevant-if an uninhabited territory has zero exports, you can set the tariff as high as you like, with no exports nobody is going to pay it. To be clear, I don’t agree with these tariffs and think they are a mistake, but I think we should focus on their real world harms not a silly administrative error

If the administration put out all their executive orders in spelling-mistake-riddled crayon, it would also be “practically irrelevant”, but it would similarly show the level competence behind the tariffs’ implementation.

[awesome_dude]

Falkland Islands were also hit with a tariff that had little to do with the reality of a trade imbalance caused by anything other than they don't buy stuff.

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c5ygx81gpg6o

[skissane]

> Falkland Islands were also hit with a tariff that had little to do with the reality of a trade imbalance caused by anything other than they don't buy stuff.

That they don’t buy stuff is only half the story. The other half is they export a lot of primary produce - to the US, primarily frozen fish. The US imports a lot of food so they are interested in Falklands fish. US exports are much higher up the value chain, and Falklands having such a small population has rather limited demand for those high value exports-hence the inevitable trade imbalance.

Which isn’t saying US tariffs on Falklands is good policy-I think it is stupid.

Compare a country like Australia-like Falklands, Australia exports a lot of stuff the US wants to buy. Unlike Falklands, Australia has a decent sized relatively well-off population, who buy a lot of stuff from the US-as a result, the US actually has a trade surplus with Australia. Now, of course, Australia is on a completely different scale from the Falklands: but my point is, if Falklands had a ratio of primary production to population closer to Australia’s, the US would quite possibly have a trade surplus with it too, albeit obviously a smaller one-Australia has around 7800 as many people as Falklands, but only 750 times the primary exports - meaning on a per capita basis, Falklands has around 10 times the primary exports of Australia.

[nananahehheh]

Nah like they said they have to show it meets an existing definition, not just make whatever claim they want that appeals to some random model or sense of injustice

[boroboro4]

> It'd be very difficult to prove that discriminatory treatment for each and every one of the 180+ countries caught up in Trump's tariffs.

To be frank they will need to do this to 20, maybe 30 countries to cover most of it (money wise).

[KPGv2]

> just that there's a burden or disadvantage

You're omitting a key clause: a burden or disadvantage . . . by any of the unequal impositions or discriminations aforesaid

The "unequal impositions aforesaid" are:

1. a country that imposes duties/tariffs on the US but "is not equally enforced upon the like articles of every foreign country"

2. discriminates "in such manner as to place the commerce of the United States at a disadvantage compared with the commerce of any foreign country"

So the law only gives authority for retaliatory tariffs when the US is specifically being targeted.

[Aurornis]

> think the idea that a trade deficit is a disadvantage is kinda brain dead, but it's plausible sounding enough to argue in court.

If you think it’s a terrible argument, why do you think the courts would think otherwise?

[hcknwscommenter]

That is a fundamental misunderstanding of how the judicial, legislative, and executive branches are set forth in the constitution. The co-equal branches are supposed to check and balance each other. Merely making up a "story that sounds plausible" but is in fact "brain dead" should not be enough for the courts. That should be such an obviously losing argument that the executive is immediately injunction to cease while the court case proceeds and eventually definitively determined to be acting illegally.

[vintermann]

"should" carries a lot of weight here.

[tptacek]

I think that's directionally true in this case but not generally true: powers delegated to the executive branch by the Constitution can indeed allow the President to make up complete bullshit and largely avoid judicial scrutiny (at least with a conservative SCOTUS that believes in unitary executive power).

(Case in point: Trump's travel ban last term).

[_heimdall]

> largely avoid judicial scrutiny (at least with a conservative SCOTUS that believes in unitary executive power).

Has the supreme court been refusing to hear an unusual number of cases against Trump.

I know the common feeling is that they have been siding with him more than usual, but that isn't avoiding scrutiny.

[kelnos]

> i think the idea that a trade deficit is a disadvantage is kinda brain dead, but it's plausible sounding enough to argue in court.

Argue, perhaps, but ultimately a court could decide that no, it's not a disadvantage. And that seems to be exactly what the court has done here?