Wall Street Journal demands GOP strip trade power from Trump before he damages the country
TOM BOGGIONI
08 JUN 2018 AT 14:36 ET
According to the editorial board of the conservative Wall Street Journal, Republicans must band together and strip President Donald Trump of some of his trade powers before he does irreparable damage to the U.S. economy. Under the headline, Congress vs. Trump on Tariffs, the board blamed Democrats for the laws that have allowed the President to impose tariffs — citing national security — before saying the GOP needs to “rein” Trump in.
“Republicans have complained for years that the executive has encroached on the powers of the legislature, but the GOP hasn’t done much to stop the invasion. This week a bipartisan coalition in the Senate is finally rebelling against the Trump Administration’s unilateral trade war, and we’re glad to see it,” the editors wrote, adding that they are encouraged by push-back from Tennessee Sen. Bob Corker (R).
Noting that U.S. presidents were granted additional constitutional authority on trade dating back to the “Smoot-Hawley tariffs in 1929 that kicked off a global trade war and contributed to the Great Depression,” the journal said that Trump is now misusing them.
“The long-time assumption was that while Congress represented parochial or regional interests, a President would act in the national interest to expand trade. And for decades executives of both parties did. George H.W. Bush negotiated Nafta, while Bill Clinton pushed it through Congress. Free-trade Republicans in Congress passed bilateral trade deals under both Democratic and GOP Presidents,” the opinion piece read.
“Enter Donald Trump, who has now taken that authority and is using it for protectionist, rather than trade-opening, ends. It’s no accident he’s using Section 232, which gives him enormous latitude to define a national-security trade threat and virtually unlimited authority to impose a tariff or quota remedy,” it continued. “For the first time in nearly a century, a President is more protectionist than Congress, and Congress needs to rein him in.”
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https://www.rawstory.com/2018/06/wall-street-journal-demands-gop-strip-trade-power-trump-damages-country/
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