Trump’s declarations routinely begin as sweeping assertions of personal control that immediately cause one to ask, “Can he do that?” That fundamental question then spawns a stream of additional questions as his subordinates maneuver to piece together something that resembles the president’s dream. If the DFC can’t be turned into a universal war insurer, the administration will hunt for a substitute that sounds close enough—probably something more narrow, conditional, and bureaucratic than what the president initially claimed.
That’s how you end up with government by improvisation, where the public is supposed to treat the revised and less fantastical version as proof that Trump’s original pronouncement was true—and where the legal and accountability questions keep accumulating because the governing style relies on answering them after the fact.
George Will makes a case that the U.S. president has, and should have, the authority to make war as Trump is now doing in Iran. [DBx: Conversations over the past few days with colleagues and friends who I respect have caused me to question that which I long did not – namely, Congress must pre-approve the use of military force. Will’s column contributes positively to this pondering.] Two slices:
Surprise is a substantial military asset. If the Trump administration had briefed legislators in advance, could it have achieved the targeted killings crucial to its regime decapitation objective — an objective intended to economize violence?
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For decades, this column has been a tireless — to some readers, a tiresome — critic of the swollen, often lawless, modern presidency. Now more than ever it is urgent to regard executive power as, in Daniel Webster’s words, “a lion which must be caged.” But conditions, threats, and capabilities change, so moral and political imperatives do, too. Changes in modern circumstances, including technologies, often strengthen, if not the argument for, then the opportunity for, executive unilateralism.
Last week, for example, conservative legal analyst Andrew McCarthy wrote in National Review that Trump’s Section 122 tariffs are illegal because they do not meet the preconditions outlined in the law.
As McCarthy and others have noted, Section 122 allows presidents to impose tariffs of up to 15 percent for up to 150 days to “deal with large and serious United States balance-of-payments deficits.” The United States does not currently have a balance-of-payments deficit with the rest of the world, and the Trump administration’s attempt to invoke this law in response to trade deficits ignores the law’s plain language.
Indeed, Trump’s attorneys even admitted as much during the legal battles over the IEEPA tariffs. When that case was before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, the administration’s lawyers pointedly noted that balance-of-payments deficits are “conceptually distinct” from the trade deficits and admitted that Section 122 would not apply.
In the lawsuit filed Thursday, the states’ attorneys note the federal government’s response in the previous lawsuit. When it comes to Section 122, they argue, Trump has not identified “any actual justification permitted” by the law.
“The President cannot meet the statutory requirements of Section 122, and his effort to impose tariffs under this statute is unlawful,” the states argue.
Also writing about the legal challenges to Trump’s latest round of tariffs is Ilya Somin.
Various trade-in programs to subsidize household upgrades of everything from appliances to mobile phones haven’t triggered a durable shift toward greater domestic consumption. And now Beijing has cut the budget on those subsidies in the latest fiscal plan.
China’s economy can still grow despite these policy failures. And its relatively closed financial system allows it to avoid financial panics or crashes if its plans don’t work. Foreigners will continue to visit China and be impressed by corners of the economy that are working—some of which, such as AI, pose serious strategic challenges to the West.
But the Chinese economy isn’t the juggernaut of Communist myth that America should emulate. Its top-down model of political control is leading to slower growth and fewer gains for the working class.
This letter in today’s Wall Street Journal by Jeffery Wyant makes an excellent point. A slice:
The Northeast’s cost of LNG could be reduced by as much as half if the Jones Act were rescinded (“U.S. LNG Exports to the Rescue,” Review & Outlook. March 3). This 1920 law requires all cargo from one U.S. port to another U.S. port to be shipped on U.S.-built, U.S.-flagged and U.S.-owned vessels—crewed by Americans. Since no U.S.-built ships are large enough to ship LNG to the Northeast efficiently, LNG must be imported from terminals overseas.
To save nonexistent U.S. shipbuilding and crewing jobs, millions of households in the Northeast pay much higher electricity bills than if LNG were shipped directly to the Northeast from the LNG export terminals in Louisiana and Texas.
Arnold Kling ventures some guesses about what AI will bring in 2026.
