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by skissane 386 days ago
> 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
1 comments
ndsipa_pomu 386 days ago
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")
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heylook 386 days ago
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."
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skissane 386 days ago
Right, but I think other people here may be making the opposite mistake-“according to my interpretation of the statute what the Trump admin has done isn’t allowed”-ultimately your or my interpretation doesn’t count, it is the courts

And I haven’t been arguing that the Trump admin is going to win-only that people are underestimating their chances. And even if I’m right about that, they still might lose anyway, and that fact in itself wouldn’t prove that I was wrong.

The fact that the attempt to introduce tariffs using one statute was overturned by this court, doesn’t mean the same court is automatically going to overturn those tariffs under a different statute - different texts, different tests, both the same outcome and the opposite outcome are entirely plausible

And as I said, I don’t actually think these tariffs are a good idea from a policy viewpoint - but that’s largely orthogonal to the question of what courts are going to do to them

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skissane 386 days ago
> 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

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