This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Wednesday, August 28th, 2019.

I'm Caleb Brown.

It's fair to describe the President's rationale for national security tariffs on steel

as flimsy.

A new case in federal court is challenging the President's national security claims in support

of those tariffs, American Institute for International Steel v United States.

Cato has filed a brief in support of the petitioners.

I spoke with Cato's Will Yeateman and Simon Lester

about the case last week.

I feel like a broken record every time I point out that the president has made use of his authorities

with regard to trade, the authorities that have been delegated to him by Congress over many years. He has used them in ways that Congress

until very recently never foresaw. Yeah, that's right. I mean the Constitution as many of us know and for anyone who doesn't I'll point it out gives explicit power over tariffs and regulating foreign commerce to Congress, but after Congress sort of and

to Congress, but after Congress sort of botched its use of that power in 1933, a lot of that power in 1933,

a lot of that power was delegated to the president and so over the past you know few

decades we've grown up in this world where the president had great authority over

trade and generally was out there trying to to to liberal trades, negotiate tariff lowering agreements with other countries.

But now we have President Trump coming to power. You know, you can talk about how

politicians are inconsistent about positions and I'm sure there's somewhere Trump has flip-flopped but on

trade for decades he's been a consistent protectionist and there may have been some debate as to exactly how he would

implement that how he would apply that as president but he's pretty much

followed through and he's taken all this power that was delegated to him and

looked through all the statutes, you know, with help

...