Executive vs Judiciary

Tariffs, the coming constitutional crisis, the risk of unrest, and commercial implications.

On 28 May, the New York-based US Court of International Trade held that the Trump administration does not have the right to impose the tariffs declared on “Liberation Day”, as well as the tariffs on Mexico, China and Canada. The court claimed that the International Emergency Economic Powers Act 1977, which assigns very broad emergency measures to the president if he declared an emergency, does not grant the president the right to levy tariffs, which it claimed is a right reserved for Congress.

We are not lawyers. Nor is our key point a legal point. Rather, it pertains to the nature of democracy. Trump promised to deliver tariffs and to balance trade, to punish the universities for their extremism and fight DEI, to cut public spending. The public voted for him on that basis. However, at every step, the courts have tried to hamper Trump’s ability to implement his campaign promises.

The list of conflicts between the courts and the executive includes the following Trump policies:

• The deportations of certain foreign nationals, including illegal aliens and foreign criminals.

• Ending paroles given by Biden to certain nationalities to enter the US without proper immigration documentation.

• Ending birth right citizenship for illegal migrants.

• Ending federal funding to cities that refuse to cooperate with immigration enforcement.

• Ending federal funding to universities, such as Harvard, that persist in policies of racial favouritism (DEI).

• Dismissing large numbers of federal employees.

• Dissolving the Department of Education (this has been a longstanding populist demand).

• Banning transgender individuals from being in the military.

The Judiciary vs The Executive.

From the perspective of some lawyers and jurists, this is right and good: the constitution deliberately bounds the powers of the president and subjects him to judicial and congressional oversight to protect democracy. This is the essence of checks and balances, intended to prevent the tyranny of the majority.

From the perspective of the average voter, the public voted for a particular agenda. Then, the establishment, represented by the courts, the civil service, congress, and the special interests that make campaign donations, hire retired bureaucrats, and befriend judges, conspired together to stop the president. From their perspective, the system has become immune to change through the electoral process, rather, the system is paralysed in place by the tyranny of the entrenched minority.

(We are not arguing which side is right. We are merely clarifying the conflict.)

A growing portion of Trump supporters believes that more drastic measures must be taken to ensure that Trump’s agenda is implemented. They believe this agenda is the only way to save America from irreversible decline and from the replacement of the founding white majority by migrants, both legal and illegal.

Commercial Impact:

• The Trump Administration believes that it is responsible for a surge in recruitment in the military (others attribute this to policies initiated under Biden, but, there is no precedent for the army hitting 85% of its recruitment target by April, which has happened under Trump this year).

• When political conflict reaches an extreme point, as it has in the United States, questions of right and good become more important than questions of law. There is a deep division within America about this very question.

  The Second American Civil War

• The tariff suspension came just as the EU and the USA were negotiating the tariffs. Essentially, the decision removes from President Trump of one of the key weapons he needs to pursue the objective of balanced trade and reindustrialisation, an objective which he was elected to achieve.