Settings

Theme

Tariff's found illegal, but will stay for now

bloomberg.com

82 points by ajd555 4 months ago · 36 comments

Reader

duxup 4 months ago

This whole thing where “well this is wrong but you have to pay the illegal tax anyway” makes no sense.

  • dillydogg 4 months ago

    Very similar to the old "only Congress can change the law where they agreed to create the department of education and it is unconstitutional to get rid of it without Congress, but we don't care if you fire every employee" gag

    • duxup 4 months ago

      The majority in SCOTUS seems to just be “it’s ok if our guy does it”.

  • ajd555OP 4 months ago

    Definitely odd to see that the default is to let this keep happening, counterintuitive is a word that comes to mind

  • nine_zeros 4 months ago

    > This whole thing where “well this is wrong but you have to pay the illegal tax anyway” makes no sense.

    There is a reason why faith in American judiciary is at an all time low. The government is doing illegal things with no repercussions. People are getting harmed. How can anyone trust the system?

    • awalsh128 4 months ago

      The rulings coming out from the Supreme Court wreak of bias. This isn't uncommon and is checked by more of a balanced court but holy hell. I have no concept of jurisprudence and I can still see how blatantly partisan most of the rulings have been lately.

      • weard_beard 4 months ago

        FYI Wreak - to cause, make happen, enact. Reek - stinks awfully like garbage.

        I think you mean reek here.

        • swores 4 months ago

          Actually, it's ironically an excellent Freudian slip considering "wreak" doesn't just mean to make happen, it means to make happen in a violent, or wild, malevolent way - appropriate for the reeking actions of the Supreme Court who are definitely wreaking havoc!

  • 3eb7988a1663 4 months ago

    Violation of the Constitution? Guess we will continue to let it slide until some future date.

    • msgodel 4 months ago

      The constitution is ultimately enforced by nullification/secession. If the states don't want to do their job the violations will likely continue.

  • TimorousBestie 4 months ago

    It was the obvious consequence of SCOTUS getting rid of the nationwide TRO, but here we are anyway.

  • cosmicgadget 4 months ago

    Because they know scotus will overturn it and want to save people the trouble.

    Probably something about the energetic executive needing to have total discretion over what a fentanyl emergency is and how to mitigate it.

  • jerlam 4 months ago

    Similar to "you lost the election, but you have the same power for almost three months".

    • adastra22 4 months ago

      It’s in the constitution, and it made sense when it was written. A gradual transition of power still makes sense imo.

    • dragonwriter 4 months ago

      The Presidential transition is within a few days of one month after the voting in the election that elects the President (and even less time after those votes are counted.)

      It’s about 2½ months after the elections in which the people that elect the President are elected, but that’s a whole separate election.

      • swores 4 months ago

        You're pedantically correct, but in a way that's irrelevant unless the Electoral College sees its electors vote against the wishes expressed by the public in the public elections (which is now legally restricted from happening in the majority of states anyway).

        Realistically, unless there's either effectively a coup by the Electoral College, or an incredibly close election that needs to wait for recounts or a runoff (second) public election in one or more states to know who the president will be, the president is known after the public election even if the paperwork for the votes that technically elect them don't happen until a couple of months later. So I'd consider the comment you replied to to be more true than yours despite yours being technically more accurate.

    • stuaxo 4 months ago

      In the UK they are all booted out straight away, why can't it be like that in the US?

      • swores 4 months ago

        I agree that it's a negative, and if it were up to me I'd change things to make it more like the UK (though not only is it not up to me, but I may be biased as a Brit myself), however:

        One big difference is that in the UK the cabinet is made up of MPs, and the second biggest party in parliament has a shadow cabinet at all times; so when they get elected (and, although things may be different next election, UK has traditionally been a two party system so it's always either the current biggest or the second biggest party who will win the election) they basically have the heads of department already in place, ready to take over and start working with the large non-partisan civil service.

        Compared to the US, where congress/senators (equivalent to our MPs, in that they're the politicians who just won their local elections) haven't spent the previous years working as "shadow secretary of health/defense/education/whatever" (and they're not the people those jobs will be filled by) and although the president elect may have put some thought into it before the election, they haven't yet finalised decisions and discussed with their candidate for those positions about actually hiring them.

        And I'm not sure about the numbers but I think that the US has a larger amount of partisan civil servants (west wing staff and thousands of other presidential appointments across the various departments) compared to the UK where there are partisan advisers for government members, but a larger proportion of work/responsibilities rest with career civil servants who don't change when a new government gets elected.

        There's also the potential for slow recounts or, in some states, the need for runoffs (aka a whole new election), which is why there's a gap between the public election and the Electoral College voting - if it were up to me, I'd definitely get rid of the whole concept of the Electoral College, it's ridiculous (see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45072350 & my reply to it).

        (I've simplified a few things, for example UK cabinet doesn't have to be entirely MPs it can also include peers from the House of Lords, such as when the current Labour government got elected the PM decided not to keep the MP who had been his Shadow Attorney General in that role, giving it to a Lord instead... but this comment is already too long, so I've left out various details / edge cases like that.)

  • deckar01 4 months ago

    Consider how many of these injunctions have been ignored, challenged, and gone through a separate appeals process, only to be struck down by a SCOTUS shadow docket ruling. I suspect the reasoning is that a final SCOTUS ruling will be faster by not issuing an immediate injunction.

    https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/supr...

dmitrygr 4 months ago

> Tariff's found illegal, but will stay for now

Can someone please fix the title? Apostrophes are not used like this.

mitchbob 4 months ago

https://archive.ph/jEHau

toomuchtodo 4 months ago

What does it look like when everyone sues to claw back the unlawful tariffs paid? YC startup opportunity (take a cut of whatever you claw back for customers).

  • hypeatei 4 months ago

    This would be hard to do given sovereign immunity. I highly doubt you'd get them to waive their immunity for an "official act" done by the President. The FTCA does allow for some exceptions but it's pretty narrow.

    • toomuchtodo 4 months ago
    • toomuchtodo 4 months ago

      Trump faces returning $100bn in tariffs after court ruling - https://www.thetimes.com/article/a09594e1-46f2-413a-8cba-507... - September 1st, 2025

      > Researchers at the Capital Economics consultancy said that if the Supreme Court agreed that Trump had abused his presidential powers the “Treasury would still need to return most of the now close to $100 billion in additional customs duties collected”. They added that countries and trading blocs, such as Britain and the European Union, could also “backtrack on any preliminary [trade] agreements”.

    • gamblor956 4 months ago

      TLDR the other comment's citations: The USG has already waived sovereign immunity with respect to improper customs duties, by statute.

      This actually happens quite a bit, so there are well-established procedures for this. It's just never happened on this scale before.

saubeidl 4 months ago

Rule of law is dead in the US. It's sad watching it slide further and further into autocracy.

cosmicgadget 4 months ago

Nondelegation is about to disappear from the scotus vocabulary for a couple of months.

southwindcg 4 months ago

Article title: "Trump’s Global Tariffs Found Illegal by US Appeals Court"

msgodel 4 months ago

Tariffs definitely weren't illegal in the past, most of the federal government's revenue came from them up until the IRS was created.

  • verzali 4 months ago

    Tariffs approved by congress are not illegal. Tariffs imposed arbitarily by executive order are, at least according to this ruling.

Keyboard Shortcuts

j
Next item
k
Previous item
o / Enter
Open selected item
?
Show this help
Esc
Close modal / clear selection