The Tariffs Are Still Illegal | Hacker News Reader

The Tariffs Are Still Illegal

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94 pointsioblomov28 comments

I'm genuinely curious to see what the real penalty (if any) there will be for breaking the law at a globally impacting level.

There will be none.

None. The executive is above the law.

SCOTUS believe it's up to congress to try and convict him, and Republicans in Congress believe it's up to the courts to try and convict him. Neither will lift a finger to save you or the republic.

The legislature can at any point in time choose to convene a kangaroo court to punish him, but the Republican party has actively and deliberately emasculated itself when it comes to holding their Don accountable - for anything.

There is generally no legal penalty for the US government, or individual government officials as a matter of policy rather than subordinate individuals going rogue, breaking the law; the remedy is generally just being ordered to stop breaking the law. There may occasionally be compensation to those injured, but even when that occurs it is distinct from a penalty.

Penalties for illegal policy, if they exist, are generally political and dependent on the electorate (or, in principle, Congress.)

My personal take is that the courts are generally accepted as not impartial, so punishment is also accepted as optional since both sides know it's theater. If you disagree, my question is why did it take 6 months for the decision if it's not theater?

The enforcement penalty of the constitution is the state's ability to rescind delegated powers from the federal government. No one seems to think it's bad enough to be worth having a real conversation about that.

Essentially sovereign immunity exists, because there is a collective entity problem and circular liability argument that applies to penalties for the government.

Since we fund and elect the government, we are essentially all collectively responsible for the government, and with our tax dollars we are all collectively liable for the government debts.

In many cases, it doesn’t make sense to penalize ourselves and thus the government often has sovereign immunity in many cases.

https://archive.is/9vylt

The tariffs are illegal, firings probably, wholesale defending of departments probably too, deploying military to police on US soil ... deportations ...

But the judiciary (specifically the majority of SCOTUS) doesn't care what the law is, as long as he is their guy the executive branch can do what it likes and there rest of the American citizens have to pay their illegal taxes and eat the costs of all this while SCOTUS makes Trump more equal than everyone else...

> But the judiciary (specifically the majority of SCOTUS) doesn't care what the law is

Also Congress. They could pass trade laws at any time, but they don't want to be associated with it.

This is the killer bit here, two of the three pillars are not working as they were supposed to. Congress were supposed to "defend their rights" and the top of the judiciary were supposed to make sure the law was upheld.

However for many reasons thats not the case. And I'm not sure what the logical outcome of it is.

The thing is, there's no system of government you can design which confers protection against "approximately half the population, including 2/3s of the highest court and a plain majority of the legislature, is in a personality cult to one guy who completely ignores the law". How could there be? Anyone can just ignore the law and then the people charged with enforcing it can ignore it too. This problem is extra-governmental and does not have governmental solutions.

I don't think this is entirely true. A system of government could dramatically limit the power of the executive or make it easier to remove a president or make it harder for the legislature to make moves (essentially just limit the damage until the cult effect wears off).

While it has its own flaws, I do think that in practice a lot of these things are at least blunted by the Westminster system. (I'm in Canada, so mostly talking about that one specifically... I'm aware there are differences.) I think it kind of addressing both points in a way--limiting the damage of the president and congress.

Everyone elects a member of parliament to the House of Commons. That's it. Our ballots have a single choice on them.

The Prime Minister is just whichever guy a majority in the House of Commons can agree should handle the day-to-day stuff. They have little in the way of codified power, but in practice operate fairly similarly to the US President--selecting ministers to lead key agencies, making orders in council ("executive orders") where Parliament has delegated them that power, etc.

However they remain subordinate to and serve at the pleasure of the House of Commons. At any time the house can make a motion of no confidence and remove the Prime Minister with a simple majority. Certain things such as the budget are an automatic confidence vote--failing to pass a budget means you're dismissed. (Sometimes they're replaced, often this triggers an election to, excuse the pun, give voters an opportunity to get their house in order.)

They're not dramatically limited relative to the US President, but their position is a lot more tenuous and requires ongoing support from government for them to remain in power. Instead of shutting down the government if the prime minister can't put a budget together, we just fire the prime minister. Instead of doing a split-brained thing where two parts of the government get deadlocked, we just fire the prime minister.

What happens if the House of Commons goes crazy? Canada has a Senate. It's 105 members that are selected by appointment. They serve until age 75. They're generally unaffiliated with any specific party. There are actually some women there (~55% versus ~30% in the house). The members are selected by whoever is in power at the time of a vacancy, however it's not generally treated as partisan (and steps are being taken to make it explicitly non-partisan). Over time, though, it would tend to follow larger election/political trends. Since it's a "lifetime" appointment, the Senate can act against populism and as a damper to pull the government towards status quo.

The Senate is described as the chamber of "sober second thought" because anything the House of Commons passes has to be passed by the Senate to become law. It's rare for something to pass the house and not the senate (some notable examples being things like an attempt to criminalize abortion), however I'll say with no basis that that doesn't mean they don't have influence--the house is unlikely to try and send anything up to the senate that they have an indication would be rejected.

And if the Senate goes crazy? We left an escape hatch--constitutional amendments are not voted on by the Senate. The House of Commons can pass a constitutional amendment which has to be approved by the provincial assemblies in at least 7 (of 10) provinces collectively representing at least half of the population.

So to boil that rambling mess down--

The Legislature is essentially trusted with running everything. They delegate power to the Executive which is given wide powers, but the process of taking away that power is made very easy. The check on the Legislature is a group designed to be a lagging indicator and not beholden to anyone that acts as a damper. If anything isn't working, we default to throwing it all out and trying again. We left some escape hatches that involve going back to the people.

We haven't had to deal with the same sort of direct attacks that the US has, but... well, fingers crossed.

That certainly seems like an interesting system, and at the moment I'm open to ideas, although it's essentially impossible that my country will adopt a new system.

I fully agree. I think will be debated for a very long time what allowed the USA to get to this point where half the country has talked itself into authoritarianism as a solution to imaginary immigration problems.

For my money I'd say a combination of

1) Poor economic conditions & extreme wealth inequality provides fertile ground for political extremes on all sides.

2) Gerrymandering producing political candidates that are more extreme and more likely to agree with Trump.

3) Over representation of unpopulated rural states in Congress further tipping the balance of Congress towards Trump.

4) The decades long effect of propaganda networks like Fox, Newsmax, etc. producing a media bubble for half the country such that we no longer have a shared reality.

And some interactions between all those factors that exacerbate the problem.

For a root cause below this, I think people have lost perspective on just how good things are. Members of the greatest generation that experienced the great depression and ww2 would be smacking us upside the head if they were still alive. "poor economic conditions" hardly describes the US. It arguably has the best economy in the world.

Also worth noting that this is not the result of some kind of transient phenomenon: the Republican Party and its allies in the business sector have been deliberately laying the groundwork for much of this for decades.

Just as one example, the Fox News network has been providing propaganda that strays far too often into outright deception for something like 30 years now, and, as many of us can attest, there is a whole category of people who have been watching it for most of that time and believe everything it says. Because of the way it frames reality, that also means they will refuse to believe anything that disagrees with it, and deem it liberal propaganda trying to trick them. My wife recalls telling her parents to "stop watching that" during the 2000 election campaign; they did not, and now are fully down the Trump rabbit hole, with very little hope that we could get them to believe even simple things like "some of the people ICE is detaining are fully legal".

A majority of the House and 60 Senators could pass trade laws at any time, but there aren't 60 Republican senators. Otherwise they can pass trade laws once a year as part of an omnibus bill, definitely not "at any time".

> A majority of the House and 60 Senators could pass trade laws at any time, but there aren't 60 Republican senators. Otherwise they can pass trade laws once a year as part of an omnibus bill, definitely not "at any time".

The 60-vote requirement for cloture only exists because it is readopted every Senate on a simple majority basis, so while not quite “at any time”, the only reason it is not at any time is because the majority of the Senate continues to choose not to allow itself to do that, it is not a Constitutionally, or otherwise externally, imposed limit.

The courts are the last bulwark against this tyranny. They work very slowly, surely not suited to 21st-century speed. But they do work. The tariffs have been found to be illegal, this is headed to the SC. Using National Guard in LA was found to be illegal. Yes, a bit late. But the '26 election is coming and this guy will see how Americans like all this nonsense.

I don't see much in the way of evidence of it working. SCOTUS has already repeatedly put their hands in their pockets when it reached them. They have made their choice.

The consequences land on citizens paying these taxes, losing jobs, and they're going to live with the long term consequences while SCOTUS empowers the executive branch and their friends.

> But they do work

In what way. We've literally seen the courts tell the executive branch "you cannot do this" and then its done anyways. And there are 0 consequences so far. So no, the courts aren't working.

You assume that ICE will allow a voter in a Democratic city into a polling station. All they need to do is start checking people for mumble mumble reason, and polling closes before city folks get a chance to vote.

These guys are way ahead of you. You're playing a game of rock paper scissors, and telling everyone that you're going to use scissors in November '26.

You may have missed the last six months of shadow docket decisions.

The courts below scotus have worked.

I wish people would understand this isn't just about Trump. The government is complicit in his tyranny across all branches at all levels. They had a plan, they coordinated and they executed.

The tariffs are being used by Trump to control other nations. India didn't nominate Trump for Nobel Prize, so 50% tariff for them. Brazil is prosecuting Bolsonaro who aligns with Trump, so 50% tariff for Brazil. Trump is even using the threat of tariffs to strong arm other nations to retreat on their climate commitments [1]. How can all this be legal?

Meanwhile a court has found that Trump's deploying of national guards to Los Angeles (presumably other cities as well), as a national police force headed by Trump is illegal [2]. Trump says a lot of Americans want a dictator [3], and a national police force would certainly help accomplish that goal.

[1] https://archive.today/o0LHW

[2] https://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Justice/2025/0902/trump-nation...

[3] https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/trump-sa...

That stopped being an issue...Christ has it already been 9 months?

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