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For the first two years of President Donald Trump’s tenure, his administration has been the sole driver of federal trade policy. Whether setting tariffs or negotiating trade deals—like the rewrite of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) last year—Trump has been the one doing things and Congress has been mostly content to let it happen, with a few performative grumbles here and there.

Now, for a variety of reasons, Congress is set to play a bigger role on the trade front, whether it wants to or not. Doing so likely will expose a deep divide within the Republican Party—where one faction is trying to claw back congressional control in the trade sphere, while another seeks to hand yet more authority to the chief executive to write the rules for how America participates in the global economy.

Trump asked for the latter during Tuesday’s State of the Union address, calling specifically for Congress to pass the United States Reciprocal Trade Act. “If another country places an unfair tariff on an American product, we can charge them the exact same tariff on the exact same product that they sell to us,” Trump said.

As that explanation suggests, the bill would effectively give the president more excuses to raise trade barriers and impose tariffs, which are really just taxes paid by American importers. For example, the European Union currently charges 10 percent tariffs on cars imported from America but America charges only 2.5 percent on car imports from Europe. If the Reciprocal Trade Act were to become law, Trump could circumvent Congress and raise car tariffs to 10 percent—something that he’s already threatened to do via a different mechanism, and something that would be disastrous for American auto dealers and car-buyers.

The bill has other shortcomings too. It grants authority for the president to respond to “significantly higher tariffs” imposed by other countries, but does not define exactly how high those foreign tariffs must be—which would effectively give Trump and future presidents a blank check to crank up protectionism.

“You could drive a Mack truck through that loophole,” says Scott Lincicome, a trade lawyer and a scholar for the libertarian Cato Institute. “It seems pretty unlikely that, given recent events, the president wouldn’t exploit that authority if it was given to him.”

Indeed, Trump has already made use of the massive loophole in Section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act of 1962. That law gave presidents the authority to impose tariffs for national security purposes but, importantly, did not define what counts as a matter of national security. Trump has used Section 232 to impose tariffs on steel and aluminum imports—including imports from close U.S. allies like Canada and Europe—under the gossamer-thin rationale that national security is served by increasing the price of imported metals.

Restricting Trump’s ability to continue abusing Section 232 is the aim of the other trade bill now circulating in Congress. As I detailed last week, a bipartisan group of lawmakers from the House and Senate have joined together to sponsor the Bicameral Congressional Trade Authority Act, which would give Congress the ability to block future Section 232 tariff proposals and would limit the definition of “national security” in the law.

The dueling bills are a telling representation of the Republican Party’s Janus-like stance on free trade at the moment. Aside from the “R” that appears next to their name, there is no overlap between the 18 Republicans who have sponsored the Reciprocal Trade Act, sponsored by Rep. Matt Duffy (R–Wis.), and the free-traders, like Sen. Pat Toomey (R–Pa.), backing the Bicameral Congressional Trade Authority Act.

“Senate Republicans are overwhelmingly in favor of free trade,” Toomey said last week. “I am very doubtful that [Duffy’s bill] will work, and fundamentally I think it’s a mistake to just grant this authority to the president. That’s the central problem.”

There’s plenty of other internal disagreements over policy within the Republican Party, on everything from fiscal policy to immigration, and from entitlements to foreign interventions. On trade, however, Republicans are faced with a difference of kind—not of degree. There is effectively no middle ground to be had between those who want to give the president greater power to levy tariffs and those who want to claw back the power he already has. Nor could there be, as the two opinions are not merely opposite policy prescriptions but are based on diametrically opposed views about how the power in Washington should be shared.

“You’ve got the principled, practical guys on the one side who want to limit tariff authority, and then on the other side it’s a group of hardcore Trump supporters who may be looking at this a matter of politics and not policy,” Lincicome says.

This deep division within the Republican Party will likely come to a head not over the tariff bills themselves, but in the upcoming debate over ratifying the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA), the new NAFTA.

Though Trump often talks about the USMCA as if it is a done deal, it must be approved by Congress before taking effect. Its chances to pass have already been complicated by Democrats’ takeover of the House, but there is no indication that even a Republican-controlled Congress would pass the USMCA in its current form. Toomey, for example, is on the record as a “no” vote unless changes are made to do away with some of the deal’s protectionist elements, like the stringent barriers for importing automobiles built in Mexico.

Whichever trade bill emerges victorious is likely to be attached to the USMCA, assuming that the trade deal manages to get through Congress. And if either is going to pass this year, one half the GOP will have to prevail over the other.

Asked Wednesday what it would take for pro-trade Republicans to support Trump’s call for the passage of the Reciprocal Trade Act, Sen. Ron Johnson (R–Wisc.) tried to find the largely nonexistent middle ground.

“I certainly would like to see these things approved by Congress,” he said.

Told that the bill Trump wants passed seems designed specifically to circumvent Congress, he paused.

“Well,” Johnson said, “then I’d have a problem with that.”

President Donald Trump said in his State of the Union Address last night that he wants to stop the spread of HIV and AIDS in America within 10 years.

This morning, a Justice Department attorney announced he would try to stop a supervised injection site planned for Philadelphia that would help reduce both the spread of HIV among intravenous drug users and overdose deaths.

U.S. Attorney William McSwain of the Eastern District of Pennsylvania held a press conference Wednesday morning to announce he would be seeking a judicial review that might prevent a local nonprofit named Safehouse from moving forward with plans to build a center funded by private donations.

This nonprofit group is not attempting to force this building and program into the city. Philadelphia officials, including the city’s mayor, police commissioner, and district attorney, are all supportive of a supervised injection center, where intravenous drug users can be supervised by health workers and counseled about treatment options. Philadelphia has a serious problem with drug overdoses and public use, having seen more than 1,200 overdose deaths in 2017.

Other communities with high rates of overdose deaths and outdoor use, like Seattle and San Francisco, are also considering injection facilities. But the Justice Department says such facilities are illegal under federal law, and federal prosecutors have threatened legal actions if these cities move forward.

McSwain’s lawsuit is the first to issue more than just a warning. He’s filing a civil suit and seeking a declaration from the judge that operating an injection center would violate federal drug laws.

McSwain tells the Philadelphia Inquirer that the point here is to essentially scare Safehouse into dropping its plans so that he doesn’t have to prosecute those involved:

“We want to take an incremental, reasonable approach,” McSwain said in the interview. “We’re not interested in some sort of criminal confrontation or drama or trying to be heavy-handed. We think it serves everyone’s interests for the federal court to issue a declaration as to whether this proposed site is illegal or not.”

It is likely that a 1986 federal law will prove central to the case ahead. Known colloquially as the “crack-house statute,” the law makes it a felony punishable by up to 20 years in prison to knowingly open or maintain any place for the purpose of manufacturing, distributing or using controlled substances.

You know what would be a more reasonable approach? Allow Philadelphia to experiment and see if this actually helps. Cities outside the U.S. have had considerable success operating supervised injection facilities, which serve as key hubs for referring drug users into treatment (if they want it), reducing the spread of communicable disease, and otherwise helping city residents manage their addictions in a safe environment.

Last night, after Trump declared he wanted to eliminate the spread of HIV in 10 years, I noted that the administration’s punitive approach to the opioid crisis is a barrier to achieving such a goal. This is a perfect example. A supervised injection site would not only prevent overdose deaths—it would also reduce the spread of HIV and hepatitis by providing clean needles, and it would allow users who have those diseases but don’t know it to get treatment and take preventative measures. A supervised injection facility might not solve Philadelphia’s decades-long heroin crisis, but it’s highly unlikely to make it worse.

Embattled Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam has signed a huge incentive package aimed at online retailer Amazon that could see the company get millions in taxpayer-funded grants.

On Tuesday, the Richmond-Times Dispatch reported that Northam signed Senate Bill 1255, which creates a new “Major Headquarters Workforce Grant Fund” that will make available $550 million in grants to any “qualified e-commerce company” that invests at least $2 billion in an Arlington County, Virginia headquarters, and adds a minimum of 25,000 jobs paying an average of $150,000 a year.

Should this “qualified e-commerce company” add up to 37,580 jobs at its new Arlington headquarters, it could receive an additional $200 million in subsidies, bringing the grand total of taxpayer assistance authorized by the bill to $750 million.

The intended recipient of the bill is obviously Amazon, which announced plans to add 25,000 jobs at a new Arlington headquarters complex in November of last year.

That same month, Northam publicly released a “Memorandum of Understanding” between the Virginia state government and the e-commerce giant, promising the company an identical deal to what the governor signed today. That memorandum also included a promise of $295 million in state infrastructure investments in and around Amazon’s new headquarters.

Offering massive subsidies to companies as a way of luring jobs and investment is hardly a practice unique to Virginia, although this specific proposal to award Amazon nearly a $1 billion in cash payments—as opposed to tax credits or abatements—is somewhat unusual.

The $3 billion in government incentives offered to Amazon to set up another 25,000-person headquarters in New York City, for instance, were mostly city and state tax breaks.

A bill ratifying Northam’s Memorandum of Understanding with the online retailer flew through the state legislature. The state senate passed the bill in a lopsided 35-to-5 vote. The state’s House of Delegates approved the bill with an equally uneven 83-to-16 vote.

No one was more pleased with the signing of the bill today than its sole recipient.

“This is an investment in the growth of Virginia. It will help diversify the economy and serve as a catalyst for drawing in other businesses and sought-after jobs,” said Amazon spokesperson Jill Kerr to the Times-Dispatch.

The subsidy bill signed into law by Northam today, while sizable, is far less than some of the other subsidy deals offered by other states and municipalities in their desperate bid to lure Amazon to town.

One of the last acts of Chris Christie’s tenure as governor of New Jersey was to sign a bill greenlighting $5 billion in incentives should Amazon set up shop in the Garden State. Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan floated a similarly sized $5 billion incentive package in January 2018.

The fact that Amazon passed on these more generous bids suggests that the subsidies signed by Northam today were not all that necessary.

“At the end of the day, it suggests that even New York City and Virginia and Nashville didn’t really need to offer those subsidies, because Amazon is chasing other factors,” Michael Farren, a research fellow at the Mercatus Center, a free market think tank housed at George Mason University, told Reason‘s Eric Boehm back in November 2018.

(Amazon was awarded $102 million in state and local incentives for adding a smaller, 5,000-person headquarters in Nashville, Tennessee.)

Certainly, one would think that a company capable of hiring 25,000 people at an average salary of $150,000 would be the last entity to need taxpayer support. The money Virginia taxpayers will be spending on Amazon either means fewer dollars for genuine public services, or higher taxes for the state’s residents.

Northam is receiving a lot of heat right now for a photo in his medical school yearbook showing a person in blackface standing next to a person in a KKK costume. Northam has forcefully denied being in that picture, but has admitted to wearing blackface during a 1984 dance competition.

These revelations have spurred calls for Northam to resign, something the governor has so far resisted.

His signing over of as much as $750 million in taxpayer subsidies to one of the most successful private companies in the world is a reminder of how terrible politicians can be even when going about the normal business of policy-making.

Donald Trump’s remarks about criminal justice reform during last night’s State of the Union address were striking and seemingly heartfelt. He introduced two former federal prisoners, both African American, who had received draconian sentences for nonviolent drug crimes: Alice Johnson, whom he freed last year by commuting her life sentence for participating in a cocaine conspiracy, and Matthew Charles, whose 35-year sentence for selling crack was shortened by the FIRST STEP Act, which Trump championed. “Alice’s story underscores the disparities and unfairness that can exist in criminal sentencing, and the need to remedy this total injustice,” he said. The president added that the FIRST STEP Act, which passed with overwhelming support in the House and Senate after he endorsed it, “reformed sentencing laws that have wrongly and disproportionately harmed the African American community.”

Charles benefited from a provision of the FIRST STEP Act that retroactively applied penalty reductions approved by Congress in 2010. The 2010 law, the Fair Sentencing Act, was a belated acknowledgment that the crack sentencing scheme created by Congress in the 1980s was a panicky response to the drug menace du jour that proved to be irrational, unjust, and harmful to the very communities it was supposed to protect. Despite agreeing with that critique, Trump seems inclined to repeat the same pattern in response to the “opioid crisis.”

Trump’s references to that subject last night focused on the wall that he mistakenly thinks will stop the “lethal drugs that cross our border and flood into our cities.” But according to the “Opioid Initiative” he unveiled last year, he also wants to “strengthen criminal penalties for dealing and trafficking in fentanyl and other opioids.” Specifically, Trump urged Congress to “pass legislation that reduces the threshold amount of drugs needed to invoke mandatory minimum sentences for drug traffickers who knowingly distribute certain illicit opioids that are lethal in trace amounts.”

Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.)—who, not coincidentally, was a leading opponent of the FIRST STEP Act—introduced such a bill three days later. It would reduce the threshold for a five-year mandatory minimum from 40 grams to two grams of fentanyl and from 10 grams to half a gram of a fentany analog. The threshold for a 10-year mandatory minimum would drop from 400 to 20 grams of fentanyl and from 100 to five grams of an analog. Those weights apply to mixtures containing fentanyl or its analogs, so any detectable amount of either would effectively boost the penalties for selling heroin or other drugs.

The weight thresholds favored by Cotton could easily ensnare low-level dealers or minor participants in small drug trafficking operations, resulting in the same sort of injustices that the president decries in the context of crack sentences. Like the legislators who voted for the crack penalties that nearly everyone now agrees were excessive, Cotton thinks the special hazards posed by these particular drugs justify an especially harsh response.

“Fentanyl is one of the most dangerous drugs there is,” the senator said when he announced the bill. “It killed more than 20,000 Americans last year and has been a driving force behind the opioid crisis in the United States. But while the epidemic has spiraled, our drug laws have been stuck in the past. This bill will make sure, when it comes to opioid distribution and trafficking, the punishment fits the crime.”

Cotton is right that fentanyl and its analogs are involved in a large and rising share of opioid-related deaths—60 percent in 2017, according to the CDC. But the problem is not simply fentanyl’s strength relative to heroin; it’s the variability and unpredictability of black-market drugs. People could consume any of these substances without dying if they knew what they were getting, but prohibition makes that impossible, even as it drives traffickers toward more potent and compact drugs. Cotton’s solution is to double down on an approach that is already making drug use much more dangerous than it would otherwise be.

While the difference between heroin and fentanyl is more significant than the difference between the smoked and snorted forms of cocaine, Cotton’s notion that the government needs to hike fentanyl penalties so that “the punishment fits the crime” is highly dubious, even if you agree that voluntary transactions between adults should be treated as crimes. Not only are drug warriors like Cotton complicit in creating the deadly hazards they claim to be combating, but the street dealers they want to wallop with mandatory minimums may be just as much in the dark about the contents of what they’re selling as their customers are. How is the average dealer supposed to know whether the “heroin” he is selling has been mixed with (or entirely replaced by) fentanyl? And if he doesn’t know, subjecting him to extra-severe penalties makes no sense even as a deterrent, let alone as a proportionate punishment.

Trump seems genuinely torn between a “tough-on-crime” instinct that pushes him toward mindlessly punitive conservatives like Cotton and compassion for people like Alice Johnson and Matthew Charles, which ultimately led him to oppose Cotton and side with reformers such as Jared Kushner, Rand Paul, and (yes) Kim and Kanye in the debate over the FIRST STEP Act. The latter impulse may prevail in any given situation, depending on who talked to Trump last or made more of an impression. What’s missing is an understanding that the policies Cotton favors will inevitably lead to more injustices like the ones the president highlighted last night.