Politico Nightly has a very interesting observation tied to Trump’s latest fever-dream about a tariff on movies produced outside the United States. Studios are spooked about it and the idea even pushed down entertainment stocks. (As I’ve noted a few times, the current hiatus on the law mattering has a lot of people jumpy.) I’m pretty sure this is yet another idea the President more or less randomly came up with on his own. There are a few problems with it, not the least of which is that movies aren’t physical goods. They are intellectual property. To put it in different terms you might put a tariff on physical books produced in the Philippines and shipped on a boat to the US. But you couldn’t easily put a tariff on the ideas in the book or the text itself. I actually heard in one conversation that there is a specific law preventing any effort to place tariffs on intellectual property in this way. Regardless of all that, the Politico Nightly piece makes a different and really interesting point. It’s been widely discussed that the notional statutory basis of all Trump’s tariffs is quite weak. There’s a small business lawsuit challenging them which is backed by Koch and Leonard Leo-funded groups, interestingly enough. There’s also a state attorneys general challenge. There have been recent signs that the court is question is looking very seriously at this challenge. And Politico notes that a threatened movie tariff, based on the same weak statutory basis and now claiming a national security threat based on “imported” movies might be flaunting the legal absurdity of the President’s actions at just the wrong time.
Related Posts
Trump DOJ Decimates The Civil Rights Division And All It Stood For
A lot of things happened. Here are some of the things. This is TPM’s Morning Memo. Sign up for the email version. The Destruction: Civil Rights Edition If you know, you know. The Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division has for nearly seven decades been at the forefront of some of the…
Ten Hours In: Raucous Protests, Forced Removals And No Serious Discussion Of Republicans’ Proposed Cuts To Medicaid
The House Energy and Commerce Committee met Tuesday afternoon to begin discussing committee Republicans’ budget markup that will enact sweeping cuts to Medicaid as they try to slash $880 billion over 10 years to programs under their jurisdiction. While little of the proposed Medicaid slashing had been discussed 10 hours…
All Dem Amendments Rejected During Overnight Marathon Markup Over Medicaid Cuts
The House Energy and Commerce Committee finished their budget markup hearing Wednesday afternoon, advancing the health care portion of the legislation — which includes massive cuts to Medicaid — in a party line 30-24 vote after more than a day of debate.