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Comment by siliconc0w | Hacker News Reader

SCOTUS is entirely to blame for the chaos here, the courts quickly found the tariffs illegal but they used the shadow docket to stay the ruling causing the illegal behavior to continue for a year.

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There are three co-equal branches of government. SCOTUS is to blame for the chaos, but so is Congress. The Republican members of Congress could have joined the Democrats at any point to reassert Congressional power over tariffs and taxation. They chose not to.

They also chose to appoint the conservative majority on the Supreme Court which made these choices.

Any sensible administration implementing such an obviously suspect tariff regime could have easily put the tariffs in a kind of escrow instead of just pretending it's novel policy was trivially constitutional.

Blaming SCOTUS here is not out of the question, but they should not be "entirely" to blame, unless you think it's totally fine to run the Executive branch like you're trying to get away with something. It's not.

Right. I’m okay with blaming both.

Of course not, you're right. I think the parent comment implies the responsibility of the Trump administration, the same way criticizing a botched police response implies blaming a mass shooter for a crime.

A sensible administration would not have used emergency powers to implement worldwide tariffs because they don't like how the world economy is shaping.

It's even more to blame given that it stripped the NEA and IEEPA acts of legislative guardrails in 1987.

[0] https://fivepoints.mattglassman.net/p/the-court-ieepa-and-th...

Thanks, very interesting article! Also these two linked from that one:

National emergencies: Chadha wasn't the problem

https://prototypingpolitics.substack.com/p/national-emergenc...

Elizabeth Goiten (Brennan Center) testimony to a senate committee on May 22, 2024 (a nice summary of the general issue of executive use of emergencies)

[PDF] https://www.hsgac.senate.gov/wp-content/uploads/Testimony-Go...

To blame in a second order but this is the admin's work overall, they shouldn't have tried to fund their PACs and pocket this money into their family & friends' bank accounts. Just shows how broken the system is.

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