Hello and welcome to the political orphanage.

A big cardboard box misfits of every sort can hang out inside of like a clubhouse.

I'm Andrew Heaton, and I am very big on free trade. Like, you know, Dune?

When the trade pilots say, the spice must flow. That's me, only on trade. In the next few weeks, I will likely do an episode on why.

Trade is good, comparative advantage, and some analogies probably involving Scottish wine and anemic French sheep, something like that, the underlying mechanics that explain,

hey, here's why trade's a good thing.

Don't put rocks in the harbor. But today, in the wake of the election, we're going to go all nuts and

bolts on this topic, a practical, what can and can't the president do on trade policy? Can the president set tariffs himself?

Does he have a dial on his desk where he does

boop, boop, boop, boop, 20 percent?

Does he need Congress to formally declare war in order to spark a trade war?

I think this is all very pertinent because one of the big policy objections to the forthcoming

Trump administration, certainly from yours truly, has been, wait, stop, trade's good, trades good,

trade war, bad. But I find myself, when engaged in these conversations, almost immediately thinking,

right, but can the president actually do any of that?

Does he need Congress's permission, or is this just a rhetorical grab bag?

Like when a candidate says, I will ban all guns or something.

The president can't do that.

That's Congress and the Supreme Court and all that kind of thing.

So how much of trade policy is set by the president

versus just the president saying what he wishes trade policy was? Today, we're not going to talk about

the why of trade. We're going to talk about the what. What can the president do on trade? And I promise you, by the end of today's

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