Bipartisan Bill to Give Congress More Power over Tariffs

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#8 | Posted by itchyp at 2025-04-04 04:10 AM
OK I know how to settle this. Make the law to apply the same tariffs on the same products that other countries charge us.

Settle what? What "problem" is Trump (and you) are trying to solve?

For example, do you think Canada's 40M people should buy the same amount of "stuff" from US, as 340M buy from Canada. Also, in case you didn't know, excluding oil trade, USA has trade "surplus" with Canada. So, should the companies in the US buy oil somewhere else because Trump can't do kindergarten-level math?

Trade deficits are not the [national] problem - countries, for the most part, don't trade with other countries. People in the US, having for the long time the fortune of the world's largest economy and being prodigious consumers of US-made and foreign-made goods (which are often cheaper and/or better-made or have better/bigger/attractive brands that consumers want) keep buying more of smaller economies' goods, while people in smaller economies keep buying more advanced US services (USA has substantial service trade surplus vs the "rest of the world") and particular products (e.g., technology, military etc.) where we have what David Ricardo called "comparative advantage" (see Paul Krugman's excellent essay Ricardo's Difficult Idea - web.mit.edu - TL;DR: "Free trade good").

drudge.com

drudge.com - Is Trump Trying to Engineer a Recession?

Since 1980s we have been importing disinflation from other countries, initially too poor to buy our products (or debt), but growing and becoming richer and more capitalist in the process, e.g., "Made in" Japan, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Philippines, India, China (since Deng Xiaoping), Vietnam etc., while at the same time supplying them with non-inflationary expansion of USD, thus maintaining / expanding "reserve status" of USD and promoting more trade, which increases our service and manufacturing, i.e., "expanding the global economic pie" rather than trying to grab larger share of smaller one.

98% of the world trade is governed / covered by WTO and/or other FTAs. Most tariffs are either on goods we don't sell in significant quantities in particular geolocation (governed by their specific rules, like medical content, trademarks etc. or there is no sufficient demand for import) or have been exempted for particular negotiated reasons and don't significantly affect either irrelevant [national] "balance of trade" or GDP - at most about 0.50 one-time increase in GDP - definitely not worth all the noise, let alone world-wide trade war which will alienate long-time trading partners, re-route major supply chains away from the [no longer reliable, if not outright "hostile"] US suppliers

How is that "abuse" and "rape" of the USA, when we have been the biggest beneficiaries of generally free trade?

Even CNBC's Jim Cramer, who has been against "free trade" and is for what he calls "fair trade" and tariffs, railed against Trump's idiotic trade war: www.thedailybeast.com - Jim Cramer Hits Trump With Kiss of Death as 'Liberation Day' Looms - 2025-04-01

So Trump needs to change the hard-won free-trade (aka "capitalism") world order (to our detriment) because Prof. Peter Navarro put a bug in Trump's hole in the head where brain should usually reside, and Trump thinks that he "invented" something new, that "no one has ever seen before." It also, along with trying to expand crypto's role in US economy (and self-dealing, as usual), jeopardizes "reserve status" of USD, with serious implications for US economic well-being.
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#12 | Posted by itchyp at 2025-04-04 05:08 AM
-Of course Congress want 'more power'. They can't peddle the influence without the power.
It's sort of their own fault for paying themselves only 174K+tip. Most can make more than that on just one selfdeal.

No, actually they want to claw the power back, as Congress should have never delegated it to Executive / President in the first place, albeit with good intentions - to facilitate rapid execution of it in case of "product dumping" at costs below export country's production and negotiating trade agreements - which have not caused problems, until Trump decided to grossly abuse it - just like he did with many other laws in his personal-business-political-scam_artist life, which got him impeached twice and should have put him in prison, if not for the gross incompetence of Biden, DOJ, federal and state prosecutors and help from corrupt judges and lawyers.

"In recent years, Presidents Trump and Biden have exercised an aggressive level of executive authority to raise tariffs on imported goods. Most of these tariffs have been implemented under broad authority delegated by Congress to combat unfair practices or national security. As a result, tariff revenue as a share of total tax receipts peaked in 2019 over the last eighty years, surpassing levels not seen since the mid-1970s."

Ah, mid-70s, when we last had [national] trade surplus... and high inflation + stagnant growth ("stagflation") and "malaise" - why not re-live those "good times"?

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|------- The constitutional authority to levy taxes, including customs duties (tariffs), indisputably rests with Congress under Article 1, Section 8 of the U.S. Constitution. This authority is fundamental to the government's ability to fund its operations, including national defense, public services, and infrastructure spending.

Until the early 1930s, tariffs, like all other tax rates, were determined by Congress. The enactment of the Trade Act of 1930, otherwise known as the Smoot-Hawley Act, exposed some of the risks of imposing large tariffs to protect American workers. Smoot-Hawley Act imposed the second-highest tariffs in American history, targeting agricultural imports to protect American farmers. The act triggered a global trade war - by 1933, U.S. exports had fallen by at least 60% - and deepened the on-going macroeconomic crisis. This would also be the last act implemented by Congress to set tariff rates.

On the heels of this disaster, Congress began a decades-long trend of ceding the authority to lay and collect customs duties to the executive branch. Importantly here, Section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act of 1934 granted authority to the president to impose tariffs if imports were found to threaten national security.

The Trade Act of 1974 granted the president new authority to negotiate trade agreements and adjust tariffs, while also creating mechanisms to protect U.S. industries and workers. Section 201 provides a mechanism for the U.S. to protect domestic industries from serious injury caused by import surges, and Section 301 grants authority to the U.S. Trade Representative (a cabinet-level position) to take action against foreign countries that violate trade agreements or engage in practices that are deemed unfair. -------|
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These kinds of far-reaching decisions should never be left to a single person, just like the right to Presidential pardon (which is unfortunately in the Constitution) which clearly leads to temptation and/or corruption, and needs to be abolished / remedied by Constitutional Amendment... which after what we saw it having been abysmally abused by Trump and Biden recently (but also by Presidents before them) should not be that difficult.
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#2 | Posted by et_al at 2025-04-03 05:32 PM
Yeah, well good luck with dat.

Interesting recent development, from unexpected(?) source:

"The first known lawsuit against President Donald Trump's tariffs has been filed by the New Civil Liberties Alliance (NCLA) on behalf of a Simplified, a Florida-based home goods and stationary company, who is arguing that the president "unlawfully" overstepped his authority to impose the levies.

The lawsuit is challenging Trump's use of the International Emergency Economic Powers Act of 1977 (IEEPA), which requires extensive investigations before sanctions can be imposed. Trump has used opioid trafficking from China as a reason for the "emergency" tariffs against the country.

The lawsuit contends that Trump has not shown that his actions are "necessary" or tailored to address a drug trafficking emergency. In fact, lawyers note, Trump has said the actual reason for the tariffs is to reduce a trade deficit.

In any case, the IEEPA allows for asset freezes, trade embargos and similar sanctions, but not tariffs, the suit argues.

The law "authorizes presidents to order sanctions as a rapid response to international emergencies. It does not allow a president to impose tariffs on the American people ... Presidents can impose tariffs only when Congress grants permission," the suit states.

"Congress passed the IEEPA to counter external emergencies, not to grant presidents a blank check to write domestic economic policy," it states.

"In the IEEPA's almost 50-year history, no previous president has used it to impose tariffs. Which is not surprising, since the statute does not even mention tariffs, nor does it say anything else suggesting it authorizes presidents to tax American citizens," the lawsuit notes.

NCLA is a right-wing group with financial ties to Leonard Leo and the Koch network is aiming to halt Donald Trump's tariff plan.
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