This Needs Fixin'

It took almost 2 months, but a court has finally ruled that Trump’s Libation Day tariffs are illegal and unconstitutional.

And now … the inevitable appeals.

So, ya know, don’t start celebrating yet.

The illegal part is simple: the law allowing the President to set tariffs in an emergency that Trump invoked for this does explicitly require an actual emergency and there isn’t one.

Pretty obvious really, though I am a bit surprised that a U.S. court was finally willing to say it.

But the constitutional issue is slightly troubling.

The court based its ruling partly on the recently-expanded nondelegation doctrine, which is popular in many other countries but has never been a major factor in U.S. law until the Republicans decided it could be used to invalidate all federal regulations.

Which is a bad thing.

So it being extraneously cited in a case where nothing but the obvious non-emergency was necessary is concerning, and it’s clearly something that’s going to be more of a problem in the future.

But the lag time bothers me more than that.

It took two months for this ruling to happen, and the inevitable appeals will mean the ruling will likely not be implemented any time soon.

If the appeals courts (and Supreme Court) don’t overrule it, that is.

Betting on the outcome of any U.S. court case is a sucker’s game at the best of times, but betting on the Supreme Court these days is a worse idea than investing in cryptocurrency.

So this will take a while before it’s final.

In addition, the court gave the administration ten days to walk back these tariffs.

Which it had just said the President didn’t have the power to impose and were thus illegal.

That is insane.

If the President didn’t have the power to impose these tariffs, then by any rational interpretation they never actually existed.

The only reasonable remedy then is for the State to stop acting as if they did, refund any money it’s already collected and start talking about restitution for having collected that money illegally.

And that is the really bad part of this decision.

This just reinforces the idea that the State can never suffer any consequences for breaking the law.

Sure, it may get ordered to stop and perhaps be told off for having done it, but everyone affected by the illegal actions is still SOL and no consequences happen to remind the State to not do it again.

And there will certainly be no consequences for any of the people involved in using State power illegally.

So they have no reason not to just do it again.

In addition to seeing that the courts can make decisions like this more quickly, it’s really important that we find a way to ensure that when the State’s power has been misused there are consequences both for the State and personally for every person involved in the illegal actions.

Cause if we don’t they’ll never stop.

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