I want to call two fine posts on tariffs at SCOTUSBlog to your attention. The first, by Adam White, considers the recently executive-imposed tariffs in the context of the Court’s responsibilities:

When it comes to diplomatic and national security powers, the court often defers to the president “as the sole organ of the federal government in the field of international relations.” If justices see the Trump tariffs as mainly a matter of foreign policy, and if they see IEEPA’s “regulate” provision as ambiguous, then perhaps they will give substantial deference to the president’s interpretation.

Then again, another way to see this case would be, first and foremost, as a case about Congress’ “power of the purse.” As we have seen in recent cases involving the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and the Federal Communications Commission, Congress can delegate substantial fiscal power to the executive branch. (In CFPB v. Community Financial Services Association, it was perpetual funding from the Federal Reserve to the CFPB; in FCC v. Consumers’ Research, it was the power to impose fees on the telecommunications services industry.) Yet Trump’s highly publicized approach to tariffs may give the justices pause. The sheer enormity of many of these new taxes, the erratic changes he makes to them, their immediate effects on U.S. companies and consumers, and his repeated identification of tariffs as revenue for domestic policy programs make this at least as much a matter of domestic policy as it is a matter of foreign policy.

The second, from Amy Howe, analyzes the SCOTUS’s likely decision:

The Supreme Court on Wednesday seemed skeptical of President Donald Trump’s authority to impose sweeping tariffs in a series of executive orders earlier this year. During more than two-and-a-half hours of oral arguments, a majority of the justices appeared to agree with the small businesses and states challenging the tariffs that they exceeded the powers given to the president under a federal law providing him the authority to regulate commerce during national emergencies created by foreign threats.

She proceeds to consider the justices’ views seriatim.

My own personal view, not rooted in existing law or precedent, is that the justices should rule that the Congress does not have the authority to delegate its own Constitutional responsibilities to any other branch of government. That won’t happen. The members of Congress want to delegate all of their Constitutional responsibilities to the executive and judicial branches so they can devote fulltime to their core responsibilities: running for re-election and posturing.,

I think they’re likely to limit the president’s authority to impose “emergency” tariffs somehow that does not include requiring the federal government to refund tariffs already collected.

At any rate read the two linked posts for background on the case. They’re highly informative.

Here’s a list of the present active federal emergencies, their start dates, and durations:

I think it’s a scandal and an outrage that so many of these so-called “emergencies” have been active for as long as they have. It calls the entire concept of emergency into question.

As you may notice the Trump Administration likes to declare emergencies. It’s clearly a strategy for exercising executive power. Note, too, that the number of active emergencies declared under each president has tended to increase.

I wanted to take note of Matt Yglesias’s observation about the incoming Mamdani administration in New York City:

No one can predict the future, and a Mamdani administration might turn out to be shambolic, like Brandon Johnson’s in Chicago.

I think he’s being exceedingly kind to Mayor Johnson. Merriam-Webster defines “shambolic” as:

obviously disorganized or confused

I would have said “disastrous” or “ruinous”.

I don’t know what will happen with the case on tariffs before the Supreme Court. What I hope will happen is that the Court will rule that the president has the authority to apply short-term tariffs “in case of emergency”, “short-term” being defined as 150 days, but permanent tariffs require an act of Congress.

The other story of the day is the outcome of yesterday’s elections. None of that happened in Illinois or Chicago so I will refrain from commenting otherwise. I would presume that that the results indicate that the Democratic brand was not as tarnished as some had feared. There are still plenty of people in “blue” cities and states who vote for whatever candidate is running as a Democrat.

There is a lot of expressing of opinions both by Republicans and Democrats about the mayoral election in New York City. I believe that Zohran Mamdani will be elected mayor of New York and that will provide a rare opportunity for a real-life experiment. There are a lot of predictions being made and, frankly, I doubt that many of the most dire will happen but it will provide an opportunity for testing these hypotheses.

Will

• Crime increase substantially?
• A substantial number of New Yorkers flee the city?
• Anti-semitism increase?
• New York become even less affordable?

My own view is that I doubt that Mr. Mamdani will get many of his proposals enacted into law and the most amazing thing will be how ordinary things are.

Victimization and 911 calls might increase but I suspect that crime reports will show a decrease in serious crime. The only way that crime will show an increase is if a) the increase is so large denying it is is impossible and b) if mayors, police chiefs, etc. were rewarded for increasing rates of serious crime.

The narrative being promoted by legacy media outlets paints a picture of poor children starving as a consequent of the undoubtedly illegal suspension of SNAP benefits during the government shutdown. That is not supported by the data.

The graph at the top of the page, derived from USDA and NHNES sources, provides a stark contrast with that narrative. As you can see if anything SNAP is promoting obesity among its beneficiaries. That should not be unexpected. Beneficiaries select calorie-dense foods in preference to nutrient-dense foods. As the researches of the early Neolithic by Robert and Linda Braidwood have demonstrated human being have preferentially sought out the most calorie-dense food in their environments for tens of thousands of year. Unfortunately, in our present circumstances with an overabundance of food that behavior does not serve them well. And it is contrary to the stated intentions of the SNAP program.

The authorizing legislation for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) is the Food and Nutrition Act of 2008 (Public Law 110-246, Title IV). In the legislation the purpose of SNAP is stated explicitly:

It is declared to be the policy of Congress, in order to promote the general welfare, to safeguard the health and well-being of the Nation’s population by raising the levels of nutrition among low-income households.

The section continues:

The Congress hereby finds that the limited food purchasing power of low-income households contributes to hunger and malnutrition among members of such households. It is further declared to be the policy of Congress—
(1) to permit low-income households to obtain a more nutritious diet through normal channels of trade by increasing food purchasing power, and
(2) to the maximum extent practicable, to alleviate such hunger and malnutrition.

The emphasis is mine.

Under the legislation SNAP benefits may be used to purchase meat, fruits and vegetables, dairy products, seeds for growing fruits and vegetables, baked goods, cereals, and practically anything that has a nutritional contents label. The benefits may not legally be used to purchase alcoholic beverages, tobacco products, or anything containing controlled substances.

The simplest way to improve SNAP would be to change the enforcement to prevent the purchase of beverages sweetened with sucrose, fructose, or artificial sweeteners. That could probably be done without changing the existing legislation.

A more extensive improvement in enforcement consistent with the legislation’s stated intent would prohibit the use of SNAP benefits for anything that is sweetened with sucrose, fructose, or artificial sweeteners but, since that would exclude practically everything except for meat, raw fruits and vegetables, minimally processed dairy products, and minimally processed grains, it would probably meet with considerable resistance from beneficiaries, merchants, and manufacturers alike.

What is clear is that obesity is quite prevalent among SNAP beneficiaries. That is confirmed anecdotally by the observation that the spokespeople selected by legacy media for SNAP beneficiaries, purporting to be beneficiaries, are so frequently morbidly obese. And that prevalence of obesity is contrary to the stated purpose of SNAP and should not be facilitated by it.

That is described by some as “paternalism” but, as noted above, promotion of better nutrition for the poor is written into the statute already. If your primary objection is to “paternalism” you should oppose the program outright. If, like me, you should think the stated purpose is appropriate and the law should be enforced, you think that stricter standards should be enforced for the utilization of SNAP benefits.

Although I avoid critiquing elected officials I can’t vote for or against, the editors of the Wall Street Journal do not observe such a restraint themselves. Their views on Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson are summed up pretty well in the first paragraph of a recent editorial:

There are bad ideas, really bad ideas, and then there is whatever Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson is proposing next. His latest desire is a head tax on job creation in the city.

Even Gov. Pritzker opposes the tax:

The idea is so destructive that even Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker opposes it. He told the Economic Club of Chicago that the tax “penalizes the very thing that we want, which is we want more employment in the City of Chicago.” He added that the tax “makes it very hard to attract companies from outside of Chicago and harder for companies that are in Chicago to stay.”

Chicago doesn’t need less employment and it doesn’t need fewer big companies. What it could use fewer of is fewer independently taxing entities. It’s hard to give an exact number, a telling statement of itself, but I would estimate that the number of independently taxing entities levying taxes on Chicagoans is around 2,200.

As is my custom I’m not going to remark on the upcoming mayoral election in New York City. Suffice it to say that I think that New Yorkers can vote for whomever they like.

The one point I do want to make is that regardless of what happens on Tuesday New York City should not be eligible for any federal bailouts whether loans, grants, or other. New York City is the State of New York’s problem.

I should add that the City of Chicago shouldn’t be considered for any bailouts, either. Or the State of Illinois for that matter. If Chicagoans are intent on driving “rich people” or employers out of the city, they can’t say they weren’t warned.

Mayor Johnson is just following the orders of his bosses—the Chicago Teachers Union. I have no idea how anyone could have expected anything different. Given that his present approval rating is 31% (up a few points from this summer and considerably higher than his nadir) I would speculate that some of his erstwhile supporters are unhappy.

I am quite confused by the editors’ of the Washington Post’s most recent editorial, titled “What the SNAP fight is really about”. Ostensibly, the editorial argues in support the SNAP program (we used to call it “food stamps”) but it does a darned good job of arguing that the program is so fatally flawed it should not be sustained in its present form. Here are the opening paragraphs:

SNAP is a safety net, not a jobs program. The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program is supposed to keep people from going hungry in the world’s richest country. It’s not designed for stimulating the economy or propping up stores, truckers or farmers. Nor should it be a bargaining chip for ending a government shutdown.

Every reasonable person agrees that no one in the United States should starve, which is why it’s a genuine problem that SNAP funding is scheduled to lapse on Saturday, prompting stopgap measures by a bipartisan mix of governors and a lawsuit brought by Democrats to force the Trump administration to tap emergency funds.

As you can see, the self-contradictions have already begun. They become even more apparent in the succeeding paragraph:

At the same time, there are legitimate debates about the best ways to feed the needy, how many should qualify and how much they should get. In the 1970s, 1 in 50 Americans received food stamps. Now, 1 in 8 do. On average, these households get $322 a month. Are 42 million Americans really in such danger of suffering malnutrition that the federal government should spend about $100 billion every year to help them feed themselves?

What I suspect this reflects is an argument among the editors. Some of them want SNAP subsidies to be restored as quickly as possible; others recognize that the program itself is deeply troubled and needs work. They resolved the internal conflict with this editorial.

I completely support programs to aid the truly poor. Most of the truly poor either live on Native American reservations or are black people living in the rural South. According to the USDA SNAP recipients have the following demographics composition: 35% white, 25% black, 15% Hispanic, 4% Asian, 1% Native American, and 17% unknown. Of black SNAP recipients 84% live in major metropolitan areas. The truly poor don’t receive the attention they need because they don’t have enough votes.

I should add that one major reform to SNAP that should be made immediately is that SNAP benefits should not pay for the purchase of soda pop or candy as is the case at present. Every time I see a kid hawking candy and pop on a street corner I can’t help but wonder if their merchandise was purchased using SNAP benefits.