[kelnos]

> He doesn’t have to convince the courts of that. [..] As long as the President is plausibly exercising a foreign policy power Congress gave him...

Sure he does. The various tariff-related acts don't give the president carte blanche to set tariffs whenever he pleases. The acts give him the power to enact tariffs under certain conditions. If the president cannot convince a court that "having a trade deficit" falls under one of those conditions, then a court should, very correctly, tell the president he cannot enact those tariffs.

> The President makes foreign policy

That's a rather simplified view of the president's constitutional powers; the reality is more complex, and in this case that complexity does matter.

[rayiner]

> The acts give him the power to enact tariffs under certain conditions

Right, but the “condition” in the law is that the President first makes a “finding” that other countries have engaged in unfair treatment. The president only needs to convince the court the finding has been made. But whether a trade deficit results from trade barriers or something else is a decision that Congress has delegated to the President to make.

[KPGv2]

> The president only needs to convince the court the finding has been made.

It's unclear to me if you think this is just a true statement of how Executive power works, or if you are arguing that the correct standard of review for a very restricted legislative delegation of authority is rational basis scrutiny.

[rayiner]

I don’t think even rational basis review applies here, because there’s no constitutional right or due process issue. Courts simply don’t get to supervise this particular arrangement on the substance.

[saghm]

The phrasing is "finds a fact" (emphasis mine), not "makes a finding". They need to convince the court that what they found is a fact, which means that it needs to actually reflect reality.

[rayiner]

That’s not how judicial review works. Even in the ordinary agency context when you’re talking about domestic issues rather than foreign policy, courts defer to fact findings of agencies.

[saghm]

Whether or not the courts defer to agencies in different scenarios is not nearly as big a part of "how judicial review works" as it sounds like you're trying to claim. Literally last year the Supreme Court removed a major precedent to how deferential the courts need to be to federal agencies[1], so there's absolutely nothing inherent to judicial review that would require things to continue working the way you claim they do even if it was current precedent.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loper_Bright_Enterprises_v._Ra...