• kescusay@lemmy.world
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    20 hours ago

    Every headline like this should make clear that him imposing tariffs by fiat is illegal and unconstitutional.

    I hate the fact that the media just reports that he’s doing it without ever citing Article 1, Section 8:

    The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States; but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States;

    Every one of these tariff manipulations has been 100% illegal, because the supposed emergencies he’s using to excuse them are nonexistent.

    • RandAlThor@lemmy.caOP
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      19 hours ago

      Congress has surrendered its powers to Trump. Democrats in congress are sleeping on the job.

      • Tja@programming.dev
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        4 hours ago

        While shitting on democrats is fun, even if they 100% were all against it, it would make no difference. The American people made sure to give republicans a majority in all chambers, so what dems do is a small piece of trivia. Have the day you voted for!

      • Triasha@lemmy.world
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        6 hours ago

        REPUBLICANS in Congress have abdicated their constitutional duties. A few Democrats are collaborating.

      • Random_Character_A@lemmy.world
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        12 hours ago

        Democrats really can’t do much and you might not realise how close US is to the situation where Trump starts calling people foreign agents or criminals and locking them up. You ever wonder why he’s defying courts and clinging on to the ability to send people outside US judicial system.

      • ikt@aussie.zone
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        16 hours ago

        it didn’t surrender anything, americans elected turnip in a majority of all houses

        the Republican Party now has a majority in both the House of Representatives and the Senate.

        that’s damn near as much as saying go ahead do whatever you want as possible

        • atzanteol@sh.itjust.works
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          8 hours ago

          it didn’t surrender anything

          It absolutely has. The he executive has literally no authority to impose tariffs - that’s Congress’ job. The executive has no authority to not spend money that Congress has appropriated - yet he is

          These are easily blockable by Congress and should be in articles of impeachment.

          Additionally Congress gave the president the ability to gain “temporary powers” during an “emergency” - and guess who gets to declare what constitutes an emergency? The president. And SCOTUS has blocked Congress from even being able to take it away without the president having a veto.

        • dubyakay@lemmy.ca
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          18 hours ago

          you elected turnip

          Canadians don’t even vote for the Prime Minister of Canada. How would they have voted for the president of the US?

          • Soulg@ani.social
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            5 hours ago

            Says Americans did it for me, regardless democrats can’t do anything meaningful without the majority in a situation where Republicans are completely against any cooperation

      • Ledericas@lemm.ee
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        15 hours ago

        8 Ds in the house has died this year alone. and no R has died as of yet. Ds dont have contigency replacements like the Rs do, they often do get rid of thier own most of the time before it gets worst.

    • Windex007@lemmy.world
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      20 hours ago

      Not a lawyer. Not an American.

      But there must be more context, because by my read of this specific text it doesn’t appear to be defined as a power EXCLUSIVE to Congress?

      • atzanteol@sh.itjust.works
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        8 hours ago

        Generally speaking if the Constitution doesn’t say you have a power and explicitly does say somebody else does it means that you don’t.

        Though there are centuries of interpretations, laws, and norms that fill in the gaps that can make it more nuanced. It’s difficult to take a straight reading of the text and apply it to an event.

      • catloaf@lemm.ee
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        19 hours ago

        Not really. The US Constitution is a rather short document. This was by design, to only provide a bare framework for a government, to be amended over time. But that didn’t really happen, and most work has been done in Congress and by SCOTUS after Marbury v. Madison.

        You can read a whole bunch of info in articles like https://constitution.findlaw.com/article1/annotation03.html, but the tl;dr is that the Constitution says only Congress can make laws, but it can delegate some other authority. The section we’re talking about here doesn’t say it’s a power exclusive to congress, no, but it says Congress shall have the power to lay and collect taxes, and Congress acts through law (literally, “acts of Congress”), so logically, taxes can only be set through Congressional law. And usually they are. But all the rules have gone out the window.