“Poland will still provide basing and infrastructure to support military presence of about 1,000 American troops,” Trump announced to reporters during a press conference in the White House Rose Garden on Wednesday alongside Poland’s President Andrzej Duda. “The Polish government will build these projects at no cost to the United States — the Polish government will pay for this.”
Prior statements said the two presidents considered the reallocation of 2,000 US Troops from Germany to Poland as part of a new cooperative military deal, but Trump has now confirmed landing on the 1,000 number, in what will surely prove deeply provocative concerning ratcheting US-Russia tensions (and it should be added what will also prove yet another conundrum for Russiagaters who see Trump as some kind of pro-Putin stooge).
Trump and Poland’s President Duda watch F-35 flyover at the White House on Wednesday, via Reuters.
Duda celebrated the agreement as showing its more powerful and much larger neighbor Russia that the US is to have an increasing and steady military footprint in his country.
Trump’s comments hinted at a continued US commitment right on Russia’s doorstep: “They get hurt, unfortunately, too often, right? Too often,” Trump said of Poland. “They are in the middle of everything. When bad things happen, it seems Poland is the first one that is in there and it is unfortunate.”
Trump also indicated he’s celebrating Poland’s agreement to purchase F-35 fighter jets, which literally involved a somewhat not widely publicized flyover of the White House of a single F-35, which reportedly induced “panic” among many D.C. residents, considering it’s tightly restricted airspace.
U.S. President Donald Trump and Polish President Andrzej Duda took time away from their talks Wednesday to watch an F-35 fighter jet fly over the White House grounds. pic.twitter.com/HB1jR5B97T
The F-35 could be seen making a slow, low pass over the Washington monument and White House. Some D.C. residents apparently unaware of the planned flyover (which Trump had initially said would include two Marine Corps F-35 fighters), took to social media to question whether the nation’s capital was under some kind of attack.
“They’re going to put on a very small show for us and we’re doing that because Poland has ordered 32 or 35 brand new F-35s at the highest level,” Trump said during the press conference as Duda looked up and waved while the jet flew overhead.
Polish leaders had originally requested that America establish a permanent station with a full Army brigade which would be called “Fort Trump”; however, the Wednesday announcement will undoubtedly be touted by Warsaw as a sign of political success.
Polish media earlier reported the deal bolsters some 4,000 troops the U.S. now rotates in and out of Poland by over 1,000 soldiers and envisages the European Union’s largest eastern member will cover the cost of upgrades of military infrastructure and related utility bills.
“Security is priceless and we can afford it,” Dera said [Andrzej Dera, a minister at Duda’s chancellery in Warsaw]… Duda’s visit comes 20 years after Poland joined NATO. –Bloomberg
Last year, President Trump slammed NATO members – demanding that they increase their defense spending targets to at least the 2% of GDP they previously committed to.
While details of the new military cooperation agreement were not immediately forthcoming, Trump said during the Wednesday press conference, “As stated in the joint declaration, the United States and Poland continue to enhance our security co-operation.”
via ZeroHedge News http://bit.ly/2WHLZgA Tyler Durden
For a brief moment, a few singularly unlucky tourists got to experience one of the most unique experiences the Windy City has to offer: Coming to know the sheer terror of fearing you’re about to plunge more than 100 stories to your death.
According to CBS News Chicago, the protective layer of glass on the Willis Tower’s Skydeck cracked into thousands of shards on Monday, terrifying a group of tourists – although nobody was ever really in danger. Something similar happened back in May 2014; again, nobody was hurt, or ever really in danger.
A spokesperson for the Willis Tower said the protective layer did what it was supposed to do, though he didn’t explain exactly what they believe caused the glass to shatter. The spokesperson compared the glass to “a screen protector” on a smartphone and that it’s intended to prevent scratches on the Willis Tower observation deck glass, and said it had been replaced late Monday.
But the brush with imminent death seemed real enough to terrify some small children, one witness said.
“There was a woman with two kids and they looked really pale and scared because the floor just cracked,” witness Jesus Pintado said.
“I’m scared of heights in general so when I saw that happen, I was like nope, not going on,” witness Karly Pintado said.
City officials contacted by CBS confirmed that the building’s engineers are handling the problem (because let’s be honest, there’s no money in the city budget for that).
In 2014, officials closed all four observation boxes on the Skydeck after cracks appeared in the coating.
When the exhibit opened in 2009, engineers said the floor, which consists of three layers of half-inch thick glass, was designed to hold five tons.
Watch a video of the cracks below:
via ZeroHedge News http://bit.ly/2F720C5 Tyler Durden
While hardly groundbreaking at a time when futures markets are pricing in almost 3 rate cuts by the end of 2019 (and some traders are already pricing in the subsequent rate hikes in late 2020 and early 2021), today legendary trader Paul Tudor Jones said that “we’re probably on the cusp of the first rate cut after a long hiking cycle,” speaking in an interview ahead of an event Wednesday in New York sponsored by his non-profit organization JUST Capital.
And, predicting the by now well-ingrained Pavlovian response of the market, PTJ recommended the “standard playbook” of trades – long rates, short dollar, long stocks (at least initially, a la BofA’s Michael Hartnett): “at some point short the dollar and at some point long stocks, at least initially,” the hedge fund manager said.
Jones, like most others, were surprised by recent events, admitting that “I didn’t think we’d have a first cut in 2019. I don’t think we would have had that had we not gotten into this tariff battle, and so it has accelerated everything.”
The catalyst for the surprise was, of course, Trump’s renewed trade war (for an extended discussion of what triggers prompt Trump to escalate and de-escalate trade war, see this post), with Jones stating that “the tariffs are a very material event,” adding that “We haven’t had any experience in modern times with them. So you have to re-adjust the entire outlook.”
The tariffs sped up where “the Fed would have ultimately gone and fast-forward the possibility — and I double underscore possibility — that we’re going to get a more protracted global slowdown,” Jones said.
And unlike many of his peers, PTJ was humble in his predictions of the future: “I don’t know what the long-run consequences will be,” he added. “The consequences will be slower-moving than many people anticipate.”
What was more interesting, besides his bland reco of all dovish trades that have worked in the past during an easing cycle, was his discussion of what he views as best trade over the next year to two years: gold.
“The best trade is going to be gold. If I have to pick my favorite for the next 12-24 months it probably would be gold. I think gold goes beyond $1,400… it goes to $1,700 rather quickly. It has everything going for it in a world where rates are conceivably going to zero in the United States.”
“Remember we’ve had 75 years of expanding globalization and trade, and we built the machine around the believe that’s the way the world’s going to be. Now all of a sudden it’s stopped, and we are reversing that. When you break something like that, the consequences won’t be seen at first, it might be seen one year, two years, three years later. That would make one think that it’s possible that we go into a recession. That would make one think that rates in the US go back toward the zero bound and in the course of that situation, gold is going to scream. “
Watch the full interview below.
via ZeroHedge News http://bit.ly/2ZmDYdM Tyler Durden
President Trump told ABC News‘s George Stephanopoulos in an Oval Office interview that he might not call the FBI if foreign governments offered damaging information against his rivals in the upcoming 2020 election.
While initially suggesting it would be absurd to call the FBI instead of taking the information, Trump said “I think maybe you do both,” adding “I think you might want to listen, there isn’t anything wrong with listening.”
“If somebody called from a country, Norway, [and said] ‘we have information on your opponent’ — oh, I think I’d want to hear it.”
Trump also pushed back on the notion that opposition research provided by a foreign government would be considered election interference – saying “It’s not an interference, they have information — I think I’d take it,” adding “If I thought there was something wrong, I’d go maybe to the FBI — if I thought there was something wrong.”
President Trump lamented the attention on his son, Donald Trump Jr., for his role in the now-infamous Trump Tower meeting in June 2016. Stephanopoulos asked whether Trump Jr. should have taken the Russians’ offer for “dirt” on then-candidate Hillary Clinton to the FBI.
“Somebody comes up and says, ‘hey, I have information on your opponent,’ do you call the FBI?” Trump responded.
“I’ll tell you what, I’ve seen a lot of things over my life. I don’t think in my whole life I’ve ever called the FBI. In my whole life. You don’t call the FBI. You throw somebody out of your office, you do whatever you do,” Trump continued. “Oh, give me a break – life doesn’t work that way.” –ABC News
When Stephanopoulos pointed out that FBI Director Christopher Wray said that a candidate should call the FBI in regards to foreign-sourced oppo-research, Trump said: “The FBI director is wrong, because frankly it doesn’t happen like that in life,” adding “Now maybe it will start happening, maybe today you’d think differently.”
Trump then claimed that “if you go talk honestly to Congressmen, they all do it, they always have,” adding “That’s the way it is, it’s called oppo-research.”
Watch:
via ZeroHedge News http://bit.ly/2MLTC0Z Tyler Durden
While December answered one of the burning questions facing traders, namely where approximately is the Powell Put, or the level where the Federal Reserve will abandon monetary prudence and flip from hawkish to dovish, another question still remains, i.e., where is the “Trump Put”, or the price level below whichthe US president will not engage in further trade war escalation.
To be sure, the history of the US administration’s rhetoric and actions on trade policy over the last 18 months clearly suggests the state of the equity markets played a role. Consider the following observations from Deutsche Bank’s Binkhy Chadha:
The start of the trade war. The first concrete action in the trade war, the imposition of tariffs on washing machines and solar panels, came on Jan 22 2018 at a time when the S&P 500 was surging to new record highs almost daily and talk in the market was of a “melt up”. The market peaked and sold off just days later, although the tariff announcement was most likely not a direct driver given scant attention paid to it at the time.
The market starts paying attention. By the end of February 2018, the market had recovered 2/3 of the way back to the peak when the next installment of the trade war arrived in the form of steel and aluminum tariffs. The market sold off again, but only briefly and then rallied back. Soon after a plan for taking action against China was announced. The market then sold off sharply and stayed near a bottom. It started rallying only after President Xi appeared to de-escalate by promising to open up China’s economy and President Trump thanked him on Twitter followed by de-escalations such as the announcement of trade talks in China.
Testing the market’s resolve. The US and China jointly issued a statement on May 19 2018 that progress was made on a deal, only for President Trump to then negate it with a tweet a few days later. This was also immediately followed by the threat of global auto tariffs and proposed tariffs on $50bn of Chinese goods. As the market reacted only mildly to these announcements and continued to grind higher, the administration embarked on a series of escalations over the summer, culminating in a 10% levy on $200bn of Chinese goods in mid-September, slated to rise to 25% by year end. The market peaked shortly after in late September and then fell sharply.
Spin and repair phase. As the market sold off through October and fell under 2650, we got the first Trump tweet about the Fed, asking them to be dovish. A Trump-Xi phone call on Nov 1 saw a short- lived rally but the market sold off again, which prompted another tweet aimed at the Fed.
Freefall. Hopes of a G20 truce saw the market rally briefly again in late November, but while a plan to strike a deal was announced it was quickly overshadowed by the arrest of Huawei’s CFO in Canada and Trump’s “tariff man” tweet in early December. The market went into free fall even as the administration tried to de-escalate. Criticism of the Fed ratcheted up at the same time.
De-escalation phase. Starting late December 2018 and continuing all the way through Apr 2019, there were several efforts to de-escalate with numerous statements and tweets asserting that talks with China were going very well. Prompted in part by the conciliatory moves and hopes of a resolution the S&P 500 rallied uninterrupted through April.
Renewed tensions just as market notched a new high. The surprise tweet re-escalating trade tensions and raising the tariff rate on $200bn Chinese goods from 10% to 25% occurred on the weekend right after the S&P 500 reached a new high.
This can all be summarized by two charts, the first showing the locus of major escalations, which tend to cluster at market tops…
… while there are virtually no trade war escalations when the S&P is below 2,650.
Meanwhile all selloffs are followed by de-escalations:
So is there a “Trump put” when the S&P drops below 2650?
While escalations and de-escalations on trade occurred at a variety of levels and trajectories of the S&P 500 and they were clearly not the only driver, Deutsche Bank notes several empirical regularities.
One, major escalations followed new market peaks, the timing suggesting the administration viewed the peaks as an indicator of stock market strength even though as we have noted they have been in a range for over 17 months now.
Two, rallying markets were sufficient for escalations and new peaks not necessary.
Three, selloffs, either sharp or extended, were followed by de-escalations or conciliatory moves. The Q4 2018 20% selloff was followed by an extended period of de-escalation.
Four, there were no escalations below 2650 and this naturally looks to be the Trump put level, if there is one.
Five, complaints about the Fed in hindsight may well have been an indicator of subsequent intent on trade policy, with preemptive complaints associated with intentions to maintain or escalate trade pressure; an absence of Fed tweets suggesting an intent to de-escalate.
Finally, we would emphasize that while the S&P 500 2650 level appears to be the put level followed by de-escalation, these de-escalations were not effective in preventing the market from falling significantly further in Q4 last year with the eventual bottom another 11% lower.
Is the level of the S&P the only trigger to watch for trade war “de-escalation”? No: in Chadha’s view, a more likely imminent trigger for sustained de- escalation is the state of US manufacturing, where the Trump-bump to the ISM has already been wiped out; and prospects are for continued declines, taking it to recession levels. Deutsche Bank explains:
In October 2016, the month before the presidential election, the ISM manufacturing index, in its early stages of recovery from the prior US dollar and oil shocks printed 51.7. It then rose to 58-60 by the summer of 2017 and stayed there for about 15 months, in what was unusually sustained period of growth at high levels. Since the slowdown began in November last year, the ISM has been falling sharply and has already fallen to 52.1, while new export orders which have been leading the headline continue to point down.
So the “Trump bump” to manufacturing in the US which takes place in many swing states has already petered out. As a result, a continued decline and in particular a falling below 50 will be hard to spin as anything but a manufacturing recession. It may thus force Trump to once again concede to China in hopes of sparking a fresh rebound.
But besides the stock market and the state of US manufacturing, arguably most critical for the de-escalation calculus are the President’s job approval ratings, but – as DB correctly notes – these are unlikely to fall until the trade war begins to impact consumer goods sourced from China or Mexico.
One can therefore argue, that the lightning rod for the administration to de-escalate would be a decline in approval ratings. But there is a major risk here: approval ratings tend to be slow moving; and so far the impacts have fallen largely on corporates. It is also notable that President Trump’s approval ratings did not respond to the large declines in the stock market in Q4 last year, even though with a lag consumer confidence did. But the subsequent government shut down did see his approval ratings fall, arguably with a lag as it began to impact public services such as TSA-related delays at airports. So approval ratings may not fall until tariffs or supply issues associated with imports begin to impact the prices of US consumer goods from China, which in turn will only happen months after Trump enables tariffs on the last, 4th tranche, which will include tariffs on virtually all Chinese imports.
At that point it just may be too late to hope for a graceful concession as both Trump and Xi will be way too deep in their “war of personalities”, and the hit to Trump’s approval rating may be far greater if he is perceived as waving a white flag in the trade war, than if he simply maintains a strategy which ends up pushing stocks into a bear market and the economy into a recession.
Appendix A: a history of trade-related escalations and de-escalations by the White House.
Appendix B: a history of Fed-related Trump tweets.
via ZeroHedge News http://bit.ly/2X9KlUq Tyler Durden
Sun Tzu, the legendary Chinese general of the 6th century BC Zhou Dynasty, famously wrote in the Art of War:
“When you engage in actual fighting, if victory is long in coming, then men’s weapons will grow dull and their ardor will be damped. If you lay siege to a town, you will exhaust your strength.”
Modern day governments understand this principle very well. And that’s lesson #1 I want to discuss today.
If you’ve turned on a television, seen a newspaper, or casually browsed the Internet today, you probably saw some startling news about more protests erupting in Hong Kong.
I told you about this earlier in the week when I was on the ground there– over a million people took to the streets to demonstrate against a Draconian new law that the Hong Kong government is proposing which aims to make it easier to extradite political dissidents to mainland China.
People in Hong Kong are militant about their freedom, and they’re refusing to bend the knee over this proposed law.
Yet the government is still pressing ahead despite overwhelming opposition. So much for representative democracy.
Other governments around the world have spoken out about it, including even the United States, which issued a statement expressing “grave concern” about the law.
(I’m sure Julian Assange and Edward Snowden are still in disbelief that Uncle Sam has a problem with the extradition of political dissidents…)
But… China understands its Sun Tzu very well. This is a siege. Foreign governments, media, and people in Hong Kong are all attacking against this proposed legislation.
However, the attackers will eventually exhaust their strength.
All of these foreign governments will go back to minding their own problems. The people in the streets will go home. The media will grow tired of reporting on the story and turn their attention to Donald Trump’s latest Twitter rant.
China just needs to be patient and wait for its enemies to exhaust their strength. And then, one day when everyone has been worn down by life’s distractions, they’ll pass the law.
Time is on their side. Protests and demonstrations only delay the inevitable.
There’s a second lesson that’s come out of these Hong Kong protests that I want to discuss today, and it’s about the police.
People are in the streets of Hong Kong to voice their disgust over this bill… and the police are right there with them, firing tear gas into the crowds.
We like to think that the cops’ sole purpose is to catch criminals and put them in jail.
But these images out of Hong Kong are a stark reminder that, even more important than catching criminals, their ultimate fealty is to the political class and ruling elite… to protect the government from the people, instead of the other way around.
via ZeroHedge News http://bit.ly/2wRvZJy Tyler Durden
After receiving tremendous backlash for his party-splitting threat to run for president in 2020 as an independent candidate, former Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz is taking a breather from his tentative run until September, according to The Week.
Schultz announced in January that he was “seriously considering” running for president in 2020. But after an early media blitz and a series of appearances across the country, he mostly dropped off the radar in recent weeks, sparking questions about what exactly the status of his potential campaign was and whether he was still exploring a candidacy. –The Week
In a Wednesday letter, Schultz explained that after traveling the country (15 states) and meeting with “thousands of people,” he “unfortunately experienced acute back pain” that required him to “cut his travels short” and undergo three back surgeries.
🚨☕️ Howard Schultz explains his absence from the thinking about running for president trail – says he’s been recovering from back surgeries. pic.twitter.com/vR6Fm7VfXZ
“I am feeling much better,” Schultz added, “and my doctors foresee a full recovery so long as I rest and rehabilitate. I have decided to take the summer to do just that.”
A previous report form Fox Business had suggested that Schultz delayed his campaign decision to see whether former Vice President Joe Biden would emerge as the likely nominee, with the report saying that “this would be a significant impediment to Schultz running for president since his campaign would focus on similar issues to Biden.” –The Week
Did Joe Biden spook Schultz out of announcing his run?
via ZeroHedge News http://bit.ly/2IBBfXq Tyler Durden
In an interview with the Wall Street Journal yesterday – ahead of today’s sentencing – Stanford University head sailing coach John Vandemoer called his role in the college admissions cheating scandal, “the biggest mistake of his life.”
Having pleaded guilty – admitting to taking bribes from Mr. Singer (the college scandal’s mastermind) for Stanford’s sailing program in exchange for flagging some of the college counselor’s clients as recruited athletes, even though they weren’t competitive sailors, and therefore giving them a boost in the admissions process – Vandemoer claims that while he understands now the illegality of the arrangements, he didn’t stop to think at the time about whether what he was doing was wrong.
However, as The Wall Street Journal reports, when pressed by the judge in his plea hearing in March, Mr. Vandemoer admitted to knowing that what he was doing was wrong at the time.
But, despite his plea and admission to knowing he did wrong, Mr. Vandemoer was sentenced Wednesday to one day in prison, followed by six months home confinement with electronic monitoring.
In total, he faces two years of supervised release and must pay a $10,000 fine. Prosecutors had asked for 13 months in prison and one year of supervised release.
U.S. District Judge Rya Zobel said she was moved to impose a softer sentence than what the government recommended because of Mr. Vandemoer’s unique position in the case – having not pocketed money for himself.
“I have no doubt that he knew what he was doing was probably wrong,” Judge Zobel said. However, she added, there was general agreement he was “probably the least culpable” of all the coaches in the case.
Mr. Vandemoer said he saw himself as bringing in donations, not taking bribes.
However, federal prosecutors, in their sentencing memo, said Mr. Vandemoer benefited because by getting money for his team, he enhanced his career standing.
“His actions not only deceived and defrauded the university that employed him, but also validated a national cynicism over college admissions by helping wealthy and unscrupulous applicants enjoy an unjust advantage,” they said.
Mr. Vandemoer is one of 50 people, including nine coaches, charged in a vast college admissions scam that became public in March.
via ZeroHedge News http://bit.ly/2IH3zaV Tyler Durden
Despite President Trump’s earlier assertion of executive privilege over the documents, The House Oversight and Reform Committee voted largely along party lines on Wednesday to hold Attorney General William Barr and Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross in contempt for “for refusal to comply with subpoenas.”
There was one Republican who ‘crossed the aisle’ – Rep. Justin Amash (R-Mich.) broke with his party to vote with the Democrats on the panel.
The panel’s 24-15 vote Wednesday for the civil contempt resolution gives Democratic Chairman Elijah Cummings the option to file a lawsuit to enforce the panel’s subpoenas for the documents tied to the Trump administration’s addition of a citizenship question to the 2020 census.
As The Hill details, the citizenship question has been hotly contested since Ross announced in March 2018 that it would be included on the 2020 census, stating that the Justice Department had requested the question in order to help enforce the Voting Rights Act.
In his opening statement, Cummings hit back at the president’s claim of executive privilege over the documents, calling it “another example of the administration’s blanket defiance of Congress’ mandated responsibilities.”
And the chairman said that his committee has obtained evidence indicating that Ross had pursued the addition of a citizenship question to the census before DOJ officials asked for the question, and that Trump advisers began discussing the question ahead of the president’s inauguration in 2017.
“Although we have limited information about this scheme, we have been blocked from fully determining the real reason the administration sought to add the citizenship question,” Cummings said. “That is because the Department of Justice and the Department of Commerce have refused to turn over key documents requested by the committee.”
Republicans who voted against the contempt measures claimed that the vote is an attempt by Democrats to influence the Supreme Court’s current consideration of whether to allow the citizenship question on the census. Three federal judges have ruled against the question’s addition to the census. However, the Supreme Court’s conservative majority seems poised to rule in the Trump administration’s favor.
Representative Jim Jordan of Ohio, the top Republican on the committee, asked why Democrats don’t want to ask about citizenship even though many people think the question already is included in the census.
“Every person you ask will say, ‘yes we should do that,’” Jordan said.
Referring to Democrats, he said, “Why don’t they want to know?”
Ross, in a statement, called the committee’s action “shameless” and said Democrats “aren’t going to let the facts get in the way of their own concocted stories.”
Barr additionally is accused of ordering Justice Department official John Gore to defy a subpoena for his testimony.
The Justice Department said the Oversight Committee abandoned efforts to reach an accommodation by going forward “with an unnecessary and premature contempt vote.”
It’s unclear what will happen now that the committee has voted on the resolution.
CNN reports that depending on how the Departments of Justice or Commerce respond, House Democrats could go to the floor with both criminal and civil contempt. They could also drop criminal before going to the floor if some accommodation happens.
According to a committee aide, a criminal contempt vote would have to go through the floor. However, civil contempt could go through the Bipartisan Legal Advisory Group, which is made up of the three highest-ranked House Democrats and two highest-ranked House Republicans.
In other words, this game of tit-for-tat is far from over (and must be burning some serious billable hour holes in various budgets).
via ZeroHedge News http://bit.ly/2RaKYYj Tyler Durden
The United States is currently in a state of emergency. Thirty-two of them, actually.
The two most recent ones have received most of the attention. President Donald Trump declared one earlier this year in order to justify building a wall at the southern border, and he declared the other to block Huawei, a Chinese telecom company, from doing business in the United States. But the longest-running national emergency dates back to 1979, declared by President Jimmy Carter in response to the Iranian hostage crisis. The hostages were released in 1981, but the “national emergency” continues.
These days, the National Emergency Act of 1976 mostly serves as a way to bulk up executive power in order to accomplish such goals as banning trade with Sudan—a national emergency declared under President Bill Clinton in 1997 that’s still ongoing—or as a way to get around Congress when it won’t approve billions of dollars in spending. It’s a convenient tool for ticked off executives, in other words, not the last resort for addressing acute national crises.
Congress can respond to presidential emergency declarations by disapproving of them after the fact, which Congress did earlier this year in response to Trump’s border wall emergency. But the president only has to veto those resolutions of disapproval, as Trump did, to keep the emergency in place.
Sens. Rand Paul (R–Ky.) and Ron Wyden (D–Ore.) say that should change. Under a bill the two introduced Wednesday, all presidential emergency declarations would expire after 72 hours unless Congress voted to allow them to continue. In the event of a true national emergency, a president would still be empowered to respond quickly, but passage of the Reforming Emergency Powers to Uphold the Balances and Limitations Inherit in the Constitution (REPUBLIC) Act would transfer ultimately authority back to Congress, the senators say.
“Congress fails its responsibilities to the American people and the constitution when it leaves the executive virtually unchecked to unlock and exercise emergency powers in perpetuity,” Paul said in a statement.
In addition to the automatic 72-hour sunset on emergency declarations, the bill would also set an automatic 90 day limit on congressionally approved national emergencies, thus forcing lawmakers to continually renew declarations and allowing older, no-longer-relevant declarations to expire. Paul’s and Wyden’s bill would also establish an expedited process for Congress to approve presidential emergency declarations and would repeal statutory authority empowering a president to unilaterally control communication technology in the event of an emergency without congressional approval.
Importantly, the bill would not affect presidential powers under the 1977 International Emergency Economic Powers Act, which Trump threatened to use recently to unilaterally impose tariffs on Mexican imports. That law is meant to allow presidents to respond to foreign adversaries with economic sanctions—legally, it is unclear whether tariffs could be part of that response—in the event of a national emergency, and the REPUBLIC Act specifically exempts it from congressional oversight.
Still, Paul and Wyden’s proposal would be a step towards reversing the decades-long trend of handing congressional powers over to the executive branch. It’s a welcome signal that at least some members of Congress, on both sides of the aisle, are interested in restoring a semblance of balance to the federal government’s distribution of powers.
“Presidents have run roughshod over the constitution for far too long because Congress keeps shirking its obligations,” Wyden said in a statement about the bill’s introduction. “Checks and balances are more than pretty words on a page; they’re a bedrock principle of our democracy.”
from Latest – Reason.com http://bit.ly/2WBDhM7
via IFTTT
