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

Show parent comments

330

u/LackingUtility 1d ago

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

Depends. It's not my area of expertise, but at least one way to do it that would be completely constitutional would be to convince other countries to exempt specific products - that just happen to primarily be made in California - from their tariffs. For example, China imposes a 34% tariff on American agricultural products except almonds, which it exempts. Good for California, which produces 80% of the world's almonds. Totally constitutional, as it's not some sort of per-state treaty.

I'm not sure how California would do the reverse. Perhaps a state subsidy on particular products (that it primarily imports from China)? That would be legal.

10

u/CMScientist 1d ago

except almonds

No. Fk the almond farmers. They are all trump voters and waste so much water just because they can.

5

u/LackingUtility 1d ago

Well, yeah, but it was an example of something California exports and no one else does. You could also do technology exports of various types - California does do a decent amount of high tech manufacturing. Or you could do it on software products.

1

u/Background_Prize2745 1d ago

Pretty sure other countries can restrict just based on product and state of origin, since they're the one collecting their side of the tariff. A big state like CA and important states like WA where a lot of corp HQ resides could make this work.