US Trade Court finds Trump tariffs illegal • Hacker News Board

Re: US Trade Court finds Trump tariffs illegal

#551

Post by tptacek » Fri, May 30, 2025, 3:16 PM UTC

rayiner wrote: post #550

tptacek wrote: post #540

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your bigger problem here is "accomplishing foreign policy objectives using tariffs" is not an authority Congress has delegated to the executive branch, and, in fact, this cuts against his argument (that he is instead responding to an "economic emergency", despite the performance of our economy and the fact that he's responding to conditions that we have been working with for generations). You have somehow put yoursel…

If “racism” can be a “public health emergency” ( https://abcnews.go.com/US/york-governor-declares-racism-publ... ) then surely the gutting of american industrial capacity qualifies as an “economic emergency.” One that has serious national security implications, too. Surely it falls within the “emanations from the penumbras” of Congress’s delegation. And I never said the tariff power belongs to “wholly to the executiv…

Yeah I don't think this "the other side called racism a public health emergency so we the word no longer means anything" argument is going to get you very far in court, but maybe you just think it'll get you somewhere here. Either way, under current law, the administration's foreign policy objectives have virtually nothing to do with their (limited) tariff authority.

Re: US Trade Court finds Trump tariffs illegal

#552

Post by saghm » Fri, May 30, 2025, 5:50 PM UTC

rayiner wrote: post #537

saghm wrote: post #484

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The phrasing is "finds a fact " (emphasis mine), not "makes a finding". They need to convince the court that what they found is a fact, which means that it needs to actually reflect reality.

That’s not how judicial review works. Even in the ordinary agency context when you’re talking about domestic issues rather than foreign policy, courts defer to fact findings of agencies.

Whether or not the courts defer to agencies in different scenarios is not nearly as big a part of "how judicial review works" as it sounds like you're trying to claim. Literally last year the Supreme Court removed a major precedent to how deferential the courts need to be to federal agencies[1], so there's absolutely nothing inherent to judicial review that would require things to continue working the way you claim they do even if it was current precedent.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loper_Bright_Enterprises_v._Ra...

Re: US Trade Court finds Trump tariffs illegal

#553

Post by tristan957 » Fri, May 30, 2025, 6:34 PM UTC

rayiner wrote: post #518

tristan957 wrote: post #474

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure how you can call disenfranchisement activist wordplay. It makes me not even want to engage with you. Just because someone didn't vote doesn't immediately mean the reason was disenfranchisement. Given you live in Maryland, how can you claim voting is easy in the the entire US? Are you familiar with voting laws in every state and how elections can be weaponized by the state governments against certain popu…

> I'm not sure how you can call disenfranchisement activist wordplay. It makes me not even want to engage with you. "Disenfranchisement" means legally or physically people from voting. Activists repurposed that term to attack any sort of rules and regulations around voting, with the specific purpose of making Voter ID seem akin to laws requiring a grandfather eligible to vote. The whole point is to muddle the facts r…

If you cannot vote because you have no way to prove who you are or cannot get to a polling location, that is a de-facto lack of a right to vote, otherwise knows as disenfranchisement. If you can own guns but not buy ammo, you also would not have a second amendment right.

I don't even know what you're going into with the civic ritual portion of the comment. You originally said voting in the US is easy, which I countered, and you seemingly did not respond to it.

Re: US Trade Court finds Trump tariffs illegal

#554

Post by TrapLord_Rhodo » Fri, May 30, 2025, 6:53 PM UTC

They've issued a stay. So, this is a giant nothing burger until 9 June, and then it's a giant nothing burger until it gets to the supreme court, because they can issue a stay until they've ruled on it.

Trump seems to be in control of the supreme court, so i imagine this will all end in a giant nothing burger.

Re: US Trade Court finds Trump tariffs illegal

#555

Post by SlightlyLeftPad » Fri, May 30, 2025, 7:14 PM UTC

tptacek wrote: post #506

SlightlyLeftPad wrote: post #490

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn’t it actually more accurate to say that they _can_ delegate power and while unconstitutional, it remains in effect until challenged by the judicial branch?

You can make that argument about literally anything, so it's not especially meaningful or worth noodling on in a thread.

I disagree, it is worth talking about because the impacts of delegated decisions made impact real people in meaningful ways while those may or may not be challenged in court. To say a branch can’t delegate absolute authority is also a mischaracterization of reality. Assuming orders are challenged in the first place, it often drags on for many months or years leaving the impacts in effect until that concludes.

Re: US Trade Court finds Trump tariffs illegal

#556

Post by tptacek » Fri, May 30, 2025, 7:33 PM UTC

SlightlyLeftPad wrote: post #555

tptacek wrote: post #506

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can make that argument about literally anything, so it's not especially meaningful or worth noodling on in a thread.

I disagree, it is worth talking about because the impacts of delegated decisions made impact real people in meaningful ways while those may or may not be challenged in court. To say a branch can’t delegate absolute authority is also a mischaracterization of reality. Assuming orders are challenged in the first place, it often drags on for many months or years leaving the impacts in effect until that concludes.

It's a classic example of an argument that proves too much. It might be correct, but it's not useful.

Re: US Trade Court finds Trump tariffs illegal

#557

Post by aiforecastthway » Fri, May 30, 2025, 8:23 PM UTC

aiforecastthway wrote: post #434

mangoman wrote: post #121

I'm not a lawyer or even close to it, but why wouldn't the trump admin use the tariff act of 1930? quote: "Whenever the President shall find as a fact that any foreign country places any burden or disadvantage upon the commerce of the United States by any of the unequal impositions or discriminations aforesaid, he shall, when he finds that the public interest will be served thereby, by proclamation specify and declar…

> why wouldn't the trump admin use the tariff act of 1930? Probably because they knew it'd be a losing argument. The court that authored this slip opinion would be unlikely to be persuaded by such an argument, for two reasons. First, the opinion spends several pages applying the non-delegation and major questions doctrine. Based upon that discussion, I am pretty confident that this court would've found your interpret…

Update: on appeal, the government is sticking to its original argument (see page 15 of the motion). So it appears that on appeal the government continues to believe the path of least resistance does not pass through the 1930 Act argument about which OP is asking.

Re: US Trade Court finds Trump tariffs illegal

#558

Post by insane_dreamer » Fri, May 30, 2025, 11:14 PM UTC

mrtksn wrote: post #517

insane_dreamer wrote: post #502

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is that a verified figure? Or are they like the DOGE "savings" figures? It's sad that it's come to the point of not being able to trust official government figures. That used to be a given, unlike some other countries (China being one).

It doesn't have anything to do with DOGE, that's just the tax the US importers are paying as a result of Trump tariffs: https://www.cnbc.com/2025/05/12/tariff-receipts-topped-16-bi... It's just tax on consumption, the companies can choose whatever way to handle that(i.e. make less profit if they have the margins, increase prices if they can still sell it, go out of business etc. ).

I know it has nothing to do with DOGE.

My point is that DOGE's total clusterf*ck of published numbers/data, whether intentionally or by incompetence, has now made me think twice about numbers being published by the government (doesn't help that Trump is an inveterate liar).

Re: US Trade Court finds Trump tariffs illegal

#559

Post by SlightlyLeftPad » Sat, May 31, 2025, 3:59 AM UTC

kelnos wrote: post #302

rayiner wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Tariff Act of 1930 reflects the duality between the President’s executive power to conduct foreign policy and Congress’s legislative power to set taxes. Until the early 20th century, tariffs were the primary mechanism for raising federal revenue. So Congress viewed tariffs as a tax, within Congress’s purview. But the 1930 Tariff Act also recognizes that tariffs are also a tool of foreign policy, which is within t…

Congress didn't delegate tariff power to the president absolutely. The executive branch still needs to make the case that the tariffs are being put into place for specific reasons that are covered by the specific ways that Congress delegated tariff power. The court here seems to have decided the executive has not done that.

Eventually, it may not matter what the courts think as their power is also effectively limited by the reduction of consequences for ignoring court orders.

Source: https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/house-bill/1/te...

SEC. 70302. RESTRICTION ON ENFORCEMENT.

    No court of the United States may enforce a contempt citation for

failure to comply with an injunction or temporary restraining order if no security was given when the injunction or order was issued pursuant to Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 65(c), whether issued prior to, on, or subsequent to the date of enactment of this section.

Re: US Trade Court finds Trump tariffs illegal

#560

Post by cvz » Sat, May 31, 2025, 4:42 PM UTC

growlNark wrote: post #544

cvz wrote: post #297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The U.S. constitution is about the structure of the government and the things it can and cannot do. It's a remarkably short and readable document for what it is and when it was first written. And while it has been amended very slowly, it has been amended all the way up until today. It seems you have an issue with just one part of it, the bill of rights. Besides property---which doesn't just mean land---that part addr…

Tbh, I really don't think there's much of value in the constitution for most people. It seems easier to characterize as a fig leaf for the crimes the state commits against its citizens (see eg our prisons, or our treatment of immigrants, the extremely shallow protections we have against our employers, etc). > It seems you have an issue with just one part of it, the bill of rights. Besides property---which doesn't jus…

You give a damn about speech. You're publicly criticizing the foundational document of a government, and calling that government a failure. That open criticism is necessary for change to happen and, in the United States, the constitution forbids the government from removing that criticism or punishing you for it.

The constitution is intentionally more difficult to amend than an ordinary law. The entire point is that the government cannot easily remove restrictions on itself. It's not an appropriate place to put, say, housing or employment laws, which should be ordinary laws so they can keep up with a complex and rapidly changing world. It's also not an appropriate place to put a statement that housing is important or that there is a right to housing, because such a statement is unenforceable and would need a separate law designed to enforce that right. There are plenty of countries with a "constitutional right to housing" that still have homelessness because it's such a difficult issue to solve.

Throwing a constitution out and starting over would be even more difficult than amending it and would lose what's already in it. Maybe we need an amendment ending prison labor and private prisons. Maybe we need an amendment extending more rights to immigrants. That doesn't mean that the constitution as it already exists is invalid and worthless.