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Comment by light_hue_1 | Hacker News Reader

The Constitution says Congress sets tariffs. The law Trump is using to do this doesn't even contain the word tariff.

Can we please stop this insanity? We had a great economy before this guy messed with it.

This is why we keep economic policy in an independent agency instead of giving it to politicians.

It's been about 100 years of congress abdicating their responsibility and delegating rule-making to agencies under the control of the executive, as well as the federal government coalescing power through the commerce clause and various other means. The US Government was never designed to be this top-heavy, and certainly not designed to allow one branch this much control. Natural consequences of a congress asleep at the wheel. More focused on quick public opinion wins through ham-fisted rules without having to actually write and maintain legislation than reducing the influence and power of the federal government and ceding power back to the states as designed.

Congress lawfully delegated some decisions to the executive, in 1934 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reciprocal_Tariff_Act. They can undo that, if they want. I suspect they will, but only when it’s well beyond abundantly clear they need to.

Congress delegated almost all decisions to the Executive.

That’s how the system works given that legislation is high-level, often vague and sometimes riddled with errors. Congress sets the goals and Executive i.e. public sector makes the decisions about how to implement it.

The Republican constituency has begun to elect people on trial or even convicted of rape and pedophilia. It's too late, the well has been poisoned and a third of the population (with disproportionately powerful votes) have completely and totally lost their minds.

The Congress has not challenged the president, and very likely would vote for the tariffs anyway as the majority would support anything the president would say.

All the big corporations & big Money also have not challenged the president.

This is People’s & Money’s will.

> very likely would vote for the tariffs anyway as the majority would support anything the president would say.

Very true, however,

1) it does slow the process somewhat and therefore also reduces total throughput, this keeps government more stable and also gives more time to respond. Slow and stable may or may not be the best way to run a company, but the government is not a company.

2) It would put the individual congresspeople on record, and they are somewhat more dependent on/accountable to their local population. If for example all the farmers realized that the tariffs would destroy the farmer's livelihood, we could see Iowa withdrawing suport.

The US goverment was set up the way it is for reasons.

Roman from RCR explained it here of how the president is able to: https://youtu.be/RLiRNzZSUaU?&t=1707

I thought the whole video is good watch too.

We are only 100 days in. It’s going to absolutely get worse.

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