Editorial: Tariffs and the need for checks and balances
Last week, President Donald Trump announced his decision to pause most of the tariffs he announced on “Liberation Day,” for a period of 90 days. This came after substantial losses in the stock market and global uncertainty about the economy. This all raises the question: Should any single person be able to do this?
The week before, Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky emerged as one of the few elected Republican members of Congress willing to stand in defiance of Trump’s tariffs.
“I don’t care if the president is a Republican or a Democrat,” he said on the Senate floor. “ I don’t want to live under emergency rule. I don’t want to live where my representatives cannot speak for me and have a check and balance on power.”
The Senate voted 51-48 to cancel the arbitrary and unjustified taxes on imports from Canada, with the only Republicans in support being Paul and Sens. Mitch McConnell, Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski.
Trump’s official justification for tariffs on Canada is fentanyl. In the last fiscal year, 43 pounds of fentanyl were seized at the U.S.-Canada border. By comparison, over 20,000 pounds were seized at the southern border in that same time period. (As an aside, a 2023 Department of Homeland Security report indicated most of the fentanyl cases involved American citizens driving it in.)
Even on the frivolous terms set out by Trump to justify those tariffs, they make no sense.
The more sweeping tariffs just paused by Trump are on even shakier ground. Officially, those tariffs are based on his belief that trade deficits, which have been a norm for decades, are a national emergency. Even setting aside what trade deficits really are, can something that has been the case for decades really be a national emergency?
As noted by economist Wayne Winegarden from the Pacific Research Institute in a recent Southern California News Group op-ed, “The persistent U.S. trade deficits mean that, by definition, Americans are purchasing more goods and services from abroad because they prefer the quality and cost combinations offered by these products.”
He continued, “Since the dollars must come home, it also means that the U.S. must have a capital surplus, meaning people from other countries, on net, invest more in the U.S. because they prefer the diversity, return, and risk benefits available in the U.S. markets.”
What Trump is mad at, apparently, is that Americans are so rich they’re buying from companies around the world and those companies in turn are investing back in America.
If only we had a mechanism to rein in poorly thought-out sentiments. Oh wait, we do, it’s how our government was designed in the U.S. Constitution. Congress, not the president, is supposed to be setting trade policy.
But Congress mostly doesn’t want to do its job. Instead of acting like a branch of government, it’s largely content cheering on whatever the executive branch is doing. Which is how America, for the last two decades, has repeatedly found itself embroiled in pointless wars around the world and now stoking trade wars based on whatever the president wants to do.
Neither Trump, nor any other president, is a king. At some point, Congress might want to get around to curtailing the ability of whoever is president to conjure up phony emergencies and threaten to bring down the world economy because the president doesn’t understand basic economics.
Written by the Southern California News Group editorial board.