Correct. The USSC rejected his claim to be able to impose unlimited tariffs (under a law that says no such thing), which forced him to then rely on an entirely different law that potentially offers him the ability to impose much more restricted tariffs; 15%, for 90 days, and he has to impose them equally across all trading partners. Which is threatening to upend a bunch of the deals they already made.
It’s also likely not legal either, but it’ll have to go through the courts again. This time around it’s because the law he’s now using only applies where there is a “balance of payments” issue; basically, where the US is in danger of running out of actual physical money to make payments with. This literally cannot happen with fiat currencies; it’s a law that was designed to handle issues that can only occur with precious metal backed currencies. This a very real problem that used to happen. I think the most famous example I can bring to mind is the Opium Wars, which basically happened because Britain was buying so much tea from China, while selling them almost nothing in return, that they were running out silver to pay the Chinese with.
Correct. The USSC rejected his claim to be able to impose unlimited tariffs (under a law that says no such thing), which forced him to then rely on an entirely different law that potentially offers him the ability to impose much more restricted tariffs; 15%, for 90 days, and he has to impose them equally across all trading partners. Which is threatening to upend a bunch of the deals they already made.
It’s also likely not legal either, but it’ll have to go through the courts again. This time around it’s because the law he’s now using only applies where there is a “balance of payments” issue; basically, where the US is in danger of running out of actual physical money to make payments with. This literally cannot happen with fiat currencies; it’s a law that was designed to handle issues that can only occur with precious metal backed currencies. This a very real problem that used to happen. I think the most famous example I can bring to mind is the Opium Wars, which basically happened because Britain was buying so much tea from China, while selling them almost nothing in return, that they were running out silver to pay the Chinese with.