r/politics • u/sweatycat New York • 1d ago

California to Negotiate Trade With Other Countries to Bypass Trump Tariffs

https://www.newsweek.com/california-newsom-trade-trump-tariffs-2055414
92.0k Upvotes

93% Upvoted

6.5k comments sorted by

View all comments

1.8k

u/Mono_KS Foreign 1d ago

On one hand, this is unconstitutional and has no legal ground.

On the other, everything Trump does is unconstitutional and has no legal ground.

So fuck it.

5

u/PercentageOk6120 1d ago

Why is it unconditional? Please explain.

8

u/Muronelkaz Ohio 1d ago

Congress has the power to regulate commerce within and without the United States per the Commerce Clause,

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commerce_Clause

Generally my understanding is that states can't regulate trade between themselves or with foreign nations.

17

u/PercentageOk6120 1d ago

Which is funny because Congress did not issue these tariffs.

So you can’t ask that this part of the constitution should only be partially applied. If Congress regulates it then Trump can’t enforce tariffs via EO. They must be enforced through congress.

1

u/JeanLucPicardAND 1d ago

Congress actually has the power to issue tariffs from a constitutional POV and has ceded most of that power to the executive branch via legislation spanning many decades. Having said that... Traditionally, the President does not actually decree new tariffs without consulting Congress, and he's also only supposed to do it under specific circumstances... but we're obviously beyond tradition at this point.

3

u/demonsanddragons1 1d ago

US Congress has the “power of the purse” vested to it by the Commerce Clause. See Article 1, Sec 8 of the US Constitution. Those powers are interpreted rather broadly, and include laws that regulate the channels and instrumentalities of commerce. This includes the power to regulate trade with foreign nations and among the states.

The “Dormant Commerce Clause” effectively prevents individual states from enacting policies that unduly burden or discriminate against the economies of other states.

It is possible that, here, circumventing the blanket tariffs would allow the state to unduly burden intrastate (meaning between state) commerce. A court would be tasked either balancing the “state interest,” whatever they would be argued to be, against the alleged “burden on intrastate commerce.” If the burden on intrastate commerce is deemed too much, the deal would be unconstitutional.

Source: law student

Note: this is the first legal issue I thought of, and does not represent an exhaustive listing of potential problems.

2

u/PercentageOk6120 1d ago

Did congress issue these tariffs? Because that was done by EO. So congress is not holding the power of the purse in this scenario either.