The supreme court has deferred to executive power for decades. Its decision on tariffs is a long-overdue warning<\/p>\n
After two decades of deferring to executive authority and eroding anti-bribery laws, the supreme court has suddenly limited presidential power<\/a> in a way that could make one ugly form of political influence a bit more difficult to pull off. Last week\u2019s ruling did not merely strip one president of his executive power to unilaterally impose levies across broad swaths of the economy \u2013 it makes it harder for any president to transform tariffs from a broad economic policy into a personal political cudgel that muzzles criticism and enforces fealty.<\/p>\n \u201cA Supreme Court otherwise inclined to endlessly expand Trump\u2019s authority just restricted his go-to tool, ruling that U.S. presidents do not have the power to unilaterally deploy tariffs and dole out punishment and favor to specific companies and economic sectors, friends and family, and entire countries,\u201d said Lori Wallach of Rethink Trade<\/a>.<\/p>\n The Washington Post reported that Apple\u2019s CEO, Tim Cook, dumped $1m<\/a> into Trump\u2019s inauguration, cultivated relationships with Trump officials, and \u201crefrained from publicly criticizing the president or his policies on national television\u201d \u2013 just before securing tariff exemptions for his company\u2019s products.<\/p>\n ProPublica reported that the administration approved a tariff exemption<\/a> for a thermoplastic made by a company \u201cowned by a pair of brothers who have donated millions of dollars to Republican causes\u201d.<\/p>\n A tariff exemption for electronics conveniently benefited Tesla<\/a> and, by extension, its CEO, Elon Musk<\/a>, who bankrolled a multimillion-dollar campaign to re-elect Trump.<\/p>\n The sugar behemoth Florida Crystals, which has lobbied on tariff policy<\/a>, gave $2<\/a>m<\/a> to the main pro-Trump Super Pac, Maga Inc, ahead of Trump slapping<\/a> tariffs<\/a> on imported sugar. Reynolds American likewise delivered $2m<\/a> to the same Super Pac while successfully pushing<\/a> Trump to crack down on<\/a> imports of Chinese tobacco products.<\/p>\n Trump relaxed export controls<\/a> on the microchip maker Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) after the company gave $1million<\/a> to Maga Inc.<\/p>\n Trump reduced<\/a> tariffs on Vietnam and removed<\/a> that country from the United States\u2019s export controls list after the Hanoi government approved<\/a> his family business\u2019s $1.5bn golf course and real estate project.<\/p>\n Continue reading…<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The supreme court has deferred to executive power for decades. Its decision on tariffs is a long-overdue warning After two decades of deferring to executive authority and eroding anti-bribery laws, the supreme court has suddenly limited presidential power in a way that could make one ugly form of political influence a bit more difficult to … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-67524","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67524","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=67524"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67524\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=67524"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=67524"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=67524"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}