r/politics • u/sweatycat New York • 20h ago

California to Negotiate Trade With Other Countries to Bypass Trump Tariffs

https://www.newsweek.com/california-newsom-trade-trump-tariffs-2055414
89.0k Upvotes

93% Upvoted

6.2k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

125

u/Severe_Experience190 18h ago

He's not legally allowed. The power to tariff lies with Congress as outlined in the constitution, he's using the claim of an 'invasion' from immigrants to enact war time powers and using that to justify tariffs. It's a gross abuse of power.

6

u/Nunya_Business- 17h ago

Great point but I just wanted to clarify some things. You are right that the power to enact tariffs lies with the legislature, however over the years the legislature has delegated a lot of its trade powers to the executive branch so as to make treaties and international relationship easier. Specifically they give the president broad authority to enact tariffs when they are to combat “unfair trade practices “. Trump has abused this by coming up with bs calculations as to how much a country is charging US exports even if these numbers are not based on solid economic reality or theory. Congress of course has the power to stop the tariffs but congress has not been a functioning branch of government for a long long while.