Trade War Powers: Past, Present and Future
The Lawfare Podcast
The Lawfare Institute
4.7 • 6.4K Ratings
🗓️ 31 August 2020
⏱️ 56 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Earlier this month, the Trump administration re-imposed tariffs on aluminum imports from Canada, signaling a new salvo in the now years-long trade war it has been waging with countless U.S. trading partners. But what gives the president the authority to pursue such measures unilaterally, even when he lacks support from members of his own party in Congress? To talk through this question, Scott R. Anderson sat down with Kathleen Claussen of the University of Miami School of Law and Timothy Meyer of Vanderbilt Law School. They discussed the scope of the president's authority over trade, where it came from and what a future Congress might be able to do about it.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | The following podcast contains advertising to access an ad-free version of the LawFair |
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| 0:18.2 | Also, check out LawFair's other podcast offerings, rational security, chatter, LawFair |
| 0:25.6 | no bull and the aftermath. |
| 0:32.6 | When it comes to trade executive agreements, you could imagine something like Congress |
| 0:38.4 | withholding appropriations until trade agencies are more forthcoming with what types of agreements |
| 0:43.3 | they're entering into. |
| 0:44.9 | Just to give a better sense of what actually is happening here, USTR reports each year |
| 0:49.9 | that it's monitoring something in the range of 700 trade agreements of this sort. |
| 0:55.3 | As I said, about half of what actually is out there. |
| 0:59.2 | But if you just look at those 700, my research has suggested that no one within USTR actually |
| 1:04.6 | has a copy of many of them. |
| 1:07.0 | It's actually flying blind with respect to somewhere in the range of 10 to 20% of these agreements, |
| 1:13.3 | despite saying that it's monitoring and enforcing them. |
| 1:16.6 | I would think would be of concern to Congress resolving those issues could then become |
| 1:21.8 | front and center. |
| 1:23.4 | So short of that, some differentiation with respect to how we treat TEAs, these trade |
| 1:28.6 | executive agreements would help just considering them a category in the first place and recognizing |
| 1:33.8 | the work that they do would go a long way, I think, to helping sort some of the mess that |
| 1:39.5 | we're dealing with now. |
| 1:41.3 | I'm Scott R. Anderson and this is the LawFair podcast for August 31st, 2020. |
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