I could not agree more with William Galston’s advise in his Wall Street Journal column:
“Our great American companies are hereby ordered to immediately start looking for an alternative to China,†President Trump declared last week in an instantly famous tweet. When skeptics questioned his authority to issue such an order, he cited the International Emergency Economic Powers Act of 1977, or IEEPA.
People who followed the ensuing debate among international-trade lawyers were likely surprised; I know I was. The president may well have the legal power to enforce much, if not quite all, of his tweet. Although he cannot literally compel U.S. companies to repatriate their enterprises from China, he can make it all but impossible for them to continue doing business there.
The language of the IEEPA is amazingly broad. In brief, once the president declares a specific emergency, he may block economic transactions of all kinds between the foreign countries or entities named in the emergency declaration and any party subject to U.S. law. The president is required to consult with Congress before instituting the block, but congressional consent is not required.
As originally enacted, the law allowed Congress to block the president’s action with a resolution not subject to presidential veto (a “legislative vetoâ€). Five years later, in the case of Immigration and Naturalization Service v. Chadha, the Supreme Court held legislative vetoes unconstitutional. So to block an emergency declaration, Congress now has to muster a two-thirds majority of each house to override a president’s veto.
For Congress and critics of sweeping emergency powers, the bad news doesn’t stop here. Because the IEEPA doesn’t include a sunset clause, any amendments the president opposes will also require support from two-thirds of both the House and Senate.
The authority Congress has surrendered will be difficult to reclaim—unless the political parties unite to take it back or Americans elect a president who questions the wisdom of his expanded powers.
Those powers should be questioned.
The media’s take on this, as has so often been the case lately, has been wrong. The scandal is not that President Trump should say such outrageous things but that the Congress should attempt to delegate to the president such outrageous power and that the Supreme Court should defer to Congress’s power to delegate its own authority.
I would think it is obvious that you should give no power to Jimmy Carter that you wouldn’t give to Ronald Reagan and you wouldn’t give any power to Bill Clinton that you wouldn’t give to George W. Bush but apparently not. There is no such thing as a permanent partisan lock on the White House. That is a persistent fantasy but it will remain a fantasy.
Now Trump has that power.
The text of the law is here. There are presently more than 30 active emergencies under the terms of the act. All the more scandalous, it is actually a limitation on the president’s powers under the legislation it replaced, the Trading With the Enemy Act of 1917.
The IEEPA is mostly a sideshow — as the Federal Government has many many laws and means to impose non tariff barriers to foreign trade.
Here is an example on an undersea data cable.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/trans-pacific-tensions-threaten-u-s-data-link-to-china-11566991801
Trump doesn’t have to invoke the IEEPA, he can order the government to fairly consider the national security costs in every permitting / regulatory decision and trade with China would crash overnight.
As a matter of fact, the entity designation on Huawei, blocked joint ventures, currency manipulation designation, none of those used the IEEPA.
The underlying point remains—Congress has granted the president tremendous authority in controlling foreign trade.
What you lament is structural to the nature of the trade regime the US is in today.
When the main lever to regulate foreign commerce is through tariffs; as in the 19th century – there is not a lot of discretion in enforcement by the executive. 10% on all goods is clear as day.
When the main lever is through non-tariff barriers as in today; like acquiring a permit on quality for medicine imports from the FDA; the executive has power in defining enforcement.
There is a common misconception about imports and their effects on the economy. It is this: The domestic cost for the production and distribution of an ounce of unobtanium is $.90 and the retail price is $1.00. The cost from China is $.50 and the retail price is…$.98. What? You thought it would be $.60?
Imports are extremely profitable for the importer and only marginally advantageous to the consumer. That’s a large part of the globalization scam.
In aggregate that’s even more noticeable. Over the last 30 years nearly all of the economic surplus has gone to vendors—very little to consumers. My recollection is $600 billion per year net to retailers and savings of roughly $2 billion to consumers. Minuscule. In essence we’ve been converting relatively well-paying jobs in manufacturing and other production to lower-paying jobs in retail and, as online sales increase, no jobs at all.
That’s a substantial source of the rising income inequality in the U. S.
“That’s a substantial source of the rising income inequality in the U. S.”
That’s just another reason that using GDP as the prominent metric of an economy is such a bad idea.