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
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u/Neve4ever 17h ago

Your and Mono_KC's comments are eerily similar to Automatic-Wonder-299 and Qubeye's comments upthread.

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u/LackingUtility 17h ago

Eerily similar in the sense that multiple people separately discussing the legality of a proposal will nonetheless fall into two groups: for or against.

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u/Neve4ever 17h ago

Mono_KS's comment

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.

And Automatic-Wonder-299's

On One hand, that’s pretty unconstitutional

On the other hand, the constitution has already been shredded at this point, so who care

That's eerily similar. Further, it's how both you and Qubeye respond from the same angle on how you'd imagine California can do it. Your comment;

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.

And Qubeye's

They can do it constitutionally by negotiating with a country so that country makes holes in their tariffs for goods made in California so they aren't included, and in exchange California spends some of their state budget to purchase goods made in that country, sponsoring visas, etc.

Perfectly legal. California gets more business revenue, keeps a good reputation, and will have a functional economy while everyone else crashes and burns under Trump.

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u/LackingUtility 17h ago

Yes, and? Are you under the impression that two people can't have the same idea?

If you're trying to become some sort of bothunter, you're doing a really poor job.