In yesterday’s Investor’s Business Daily, Club for Growth President David McIntosh and I had a short piece on the perilous implications of President-elect Trump’s threats to unilaterally withdraw the United States from our trade agreements or impose punitive and wide-ranging tariffs on imports. The economic effects of Trump’s promises have been explored at length (see, e.g., this new one on NAFTA and Texas), but most trade law experts are just now digesting the legal issues. What we’re finding is, to use the technical term, a big mess that could have unforeseen economic and constitutional implications in the Age of Trump. As we note:
For almost a century, American trade policy has been formed and implemented by a successful “gentlemen’s agreement” between Congress and the president. Congress delegated to the president some of its Article I, Section 8 powers to “regulate Commerce with foreign nations” so that the president may efficiently execute our domestic trade laws. The president negotiates and signs FTAs with foreign countries, while Congress retains the ultimate constitutional authority over international trade, for example by approving or rejecting agreements or by amending US trade laws.
As a result of this compromise, the United States has entered into 14 Free Trade Agreements with 20 different countries and imposed targeted unilateral trade relief measures — all without significant conflict between Congress and the President.
The question now is whether Mr. Trump, as president, could and should single-handedly implement his trade agenda on Jan. 20, 2017 without any congressional action.
The IBD op-ed scratches the surface of these legal issues, but below are more details on just a few of the many ambiguities lurking in U.S. trade law—ambiguities that, if not properly clarified, could be exploited by a protectionist U.S. president against the original intent of the Congress that delegated their constitutional authority over trade policy under the (incorrect!) assumption that the president would always be the U.S. government’s biggest proponent of free trade.
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