Trump Is Probing the Constitution for Weaknesses, and Finding Them
By Jonathan Chait
@jonathanchait
June 1, 2018
8:54 am
Thursday morning, President Trump declared steel and aluminum tariffs on the European Union, Canada, and Mexico. He also announced a pardon of Dinesh D’Souza, a right-wing provocateur and conspiracy theorist, whose cause had been taken up by Senator Ted Cruz, and floated granting two other pardons he might enjoy. What both these maneuvers have in common is Trump’s discovery of powers available to him under the Constitution that enable him to make change without any approval from other branches of government. It is a bit like a small child discovering dangerous weapons lying about the house.
Tariffs are a taxing power. Raising taxes usually requires two chambers of Congress. Why can Trump do it? A 1962 law gives the president authority to impose tariffs for national security reasons. In the middle of the 20th century, control of natural resources and certain kinds of manufacturing determined the outcome of wars. Japan and Nazi Germany selected areas of conquest in order to acquire oil and other resources needed to fuel their militaries; factories that built cars and appliances could be converted to making tanks and fighter planes. The law allowing the president to set tariffs for national security reasons set few limits on how this alleged need would be defined, but that didn’t matter, because presidents used it sparingly.
Great-power competition to turn control resources and factories into military domination barely exists any more. But the law still does, and Trump has exploited this ambiguity to full effect. It would be too kind to say his tariff policy has zero relationship to military necessity; in reality it has a negative relationship. Trump has imposed tariffs on America’s allies, not its enemies. Indeed, Canada, one of the tariff targets, is part of the Department of Defense’s industrial base.
Meanwhile, Trump has unilaterally relaxed trade sanctions on ZTE, a Chinese telecommunications firm that poses a wide array of serious national security risks. Why is Trump bailing out a dangerous Chinese firm that has violated American law? Well, he made his strange decision shortly after China announced a $500 million investment in a theme park right next to a Trump-owned property in Indonesia, which will put money directly in Trump’s pocket.
At best, the tariff power is being used capriciously, in a way that has lost all touch with its original intent. At worst, in combination with the president’s decision to maintain his worldwide business empire while in office, it is a recipe for using government policy to facilitate personal bribes.
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https://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2018/06/trump-tariffs-pardons-probing-constitution-for-weaknesses.html
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