U.S. President Donald Trump on Tuesday threatened to impose 200% tariffs on French wines and champagne, as French President Emmanuel Macron is reportedly set to refuse joining his “Board of Peace” on Gaza.
U.S. President Donald Trump on Tuesday threatened to impose 200% tariffs on French wines and champagne, as French President Emmanuel Macron is reportedly set to refuse joining his “Board of Peace” on Gaza.
Can someone explain to me when Presidents suddenly got the power to tariff everything? I could have sworn this was congress’ role.
When Congress stopped doing its job.
And the courts/SCOTUS slow-walked their response. The lawsuits are there, SCOTUS is just not ruling.
The entire US government is corrupt at this point. Both sides back down as soon as their money is threatened and republicans cower in fear every time they second guess their glorious leader. But to answer your question, the Supreme Court of the United States decided Trump can do whatever he wants and they will only fight him when they need to pretend they are impartial. They gave Trump the power over tariffs about a month before his “liberation day.”
At the end of the day it really comes down to the fact that nobody in the entire government of the US has the balls to tell the big baby in charge “no.” And even when they do they only do it to win political points so they look good for the next election.
They don’t. Everything he does is by executive order which expires if congress doesn’t uphold it I believe.
It’s because people are following such orders before they are nulled by courts or congress.
Seems some quirk of the Us american system. The whole world is wondering, too.
In theory, Executive Orders are supposed to be a quick response to emergent situations. Even at its best, Congress is slow and cumbersome, as an assembly of many people tends to be, and as an organ of deliberate legislation should be. Until it can provide a more permanent solution to an urgent problem, the president is empowered to order temporary ones. It’s a good idea. In theory.
The critical point is that this power is supposed to be checked by Courts and Congress. A president that abuses that power should be stripped of it. Unlawful orders should be blocked. SCOTUS could fast-track an urgent case. In theory.
In practice, that’s where the system is falling apart. SCOTUS has long been stacked with partial judges, while states have gerrymandered and indoctrinated to the point where their representatives are no longer beholden to the approval of the people. With SCOTUS and Congress both complicit, those checks no longer actually check.
This isn’t a sudden exploitation of a loophole that has been there from the start. It’s the rotten fruit of decades of vile labour. It’s an ulcer that has been festering for decades and is now rupturing.
I don’t wonder about executive orders functioning as they should (though I find it depressing), I wonder how the hell it got this far, both in the US and in other countries, that it takes an almost cartoonishly petty madman to rip it wide open before it becomes visible, and I still have to argue with family about conservatism being a deeply anti-democratic and anti-liberty movement.
How is it still not obvious that this isn’t the work of one man, but the culmination of many people working together to prepare the stage for his grotesque, narcissistic power play?