Look, I'm listen to your music atdigas is so dumb.
Well usually that's why I'm doing it to annoy you.
Partly, don't listen.
Well, whiskey, come and take my pain, the money all ry, oh whiskey.
Don't why think alone when you can drink it all in.
With Ricochet's Three Whiskey Happy Hour, join your bartenders, Steve Hayward, John You, and the International Woman of Mystery, Lucretia, where.
They lapps it up and David, ain't you easy?
On the show?
Tap got a giving and.
Let the whiskey blow.
Well, Hi everybody, and welcome to a tariff free episode of the Three Whiskey Happy Hour.
Actually that's not quite true.
We've dropped all our tariffs on other podcasts, but we do have one hundred and twenty five percent tariff on our own podcast for all discussions about tariffs, although we will spend a couple of minutes on it.
But we're glad to have John U back this week.
Because John and you are in your app since last week. John, to my shock and to the surprise of many listeners, I was in terror that was going to go very badly, but Lucretia wasn't the host and was very nice to me.
And that's why you're like, Steve, You're like a beaten dog. She just didn't beat you, so you thought she was being nice to you. Yeah, just zero. You just made it back from negative one hundred to zero. But you're not at plus one hundred, my friend, Well.
Okay, could beat uh. This is so I uh here, wait wait, wait wait.
I want to stop you for a second. I want to point out that I think it was the week before when we maybe whenever, it was when we talked about the the death of Raoul Grajalva. I said I hated the guy, but I especially hated him because he was awful to Steve. Right, there's a compliment.
I don't know, I know, I know.
I just have to uh, well, all right, John, I have in the can that.
As long as there's an enemy, Steve, I'm on your side.
Okay, good, well, good to know that we have our snapping turtle back and forth. So's to get in trouble for that, So I guess, so catch listeners up.
This is what Friday evening.
I've got my last bottle of pre terraf lafreug maybe in hand because I wanted it. This was week five of five weeks in a row, on the road the entire week, and I don't even remember now where I've been. All I know is that I want to shoot my scheduler, except I look at that my scheduler every morning in the mirror, so it's my own darn fault.
But I can give you a sort of a report from hind enemy lines.
After class down in Malibu this week, I went to Boulder, Colorado for three days to be you know, as if being at Berkeley wasn't bad enough, John, Right, it's their annual conference on world affairs that I have not attended since before COVID, And oh my god, the Trump de arrangement syndrome is so out of control and Boulder that they really do need to be quarantined. And I'll just make a long story short.
Although the panels were supposed to be about general topics, I'll skip over all that.
Everything was about Trump. And so my fun provocation was saying, oh, because I was on a panel, John, you'll know of her with Ellen wintraup from fired from the Federal Election Commission.
She's very upset about that, and I kept making the point that well, you liberals of boulders understand that this is the presidency that liberals have always wanted, designed by Woodrow Wilson, perfected by Franklin Roosevelt, and Roosevelt's only Trump was only exercising the powers that Roosevelt wanted to exercise. So there, and that didn't go down very well, but it was fun.
I have to say.
You know, you always fall back on that trope, Steve, like anybody who is a modern leftist cares about what FDR did. He's no longer the icon you think he is to the left.
Well, yes, and no, I think I think yes, you're right.
However, I mean, you've even got dumb ass, dumb excuse me, it's been a long day dumb conservatives speaking well of FDR. You know, So why were left on anywhere? Embrace FDR that you know, the history has moved on, Steve, The arch of history bends away from FDR.
H correct?
I mean I generalize it this way. You really could see the contempt for and ignorance of all history. So you know, I brought up things like Humphy's executor and various other aspects of I read a couple passages from Roosevelt's speeches and say, which, of course they've never heard. Try having Trump say those words and see how you like them. And you could see people this is brand new to them.
And so I was on, I.
Don't know if you know this woman Lisa Graves, John, she worked on the Senate Judiciary Committee about the same time you did, I think, in the nineties, and boy, she way out left and she said, this is the nation's worst constitutional crisis ever. And I just sort of calmly said, well, I would have thought the Civil War might have been a little worse as Oh, yeah, of course, except for that.
Yeah, it was. It was.
It was a lot of fun embarrassing the liberals for what they don't know and anyway, but it's exhausting. Good lord, anyway, what should we start with. You know, we're big in tariffs to death. I do think there are a couple of things that are under discussed, and we do have a question from a listener. But either you have an opening bid on what you think about where things stand today.
No, John, you're you're the expert. You're the financial expert.
Well no he isn't.
Oh you're talking about for the economy? Well, or what anything, just the whole world. I mean, we're I think, I mean, I think of the tariffs one is a just a self self inflicted error on the part of the Trump administration. But they're moving in the right direction now, which is I think if the whole thing ended up becoming aimed at China and China's allies and ended up unifying the rest of you know, our allies, I think, actually that's
what it should have been in the first place. So Trump's keeping the Chinese tariffs at over one hundred percent was that it's like one hundred and forty percent, and he suspended the other tarriffs towards other countries and say he does negotiate, you know, like free trade agreements with
most of our allies. That's actually the ideal outcome to me. Now, if you'd started that way, then you wouldn't have to have lost over a trillion dollars in the stock market and taken a hit in his public approval ratings and possibly go into recession this year. So that's the self inflicted error part.
I don't get.
Why not just start out by saying we're gonna target all these tariffs on China and we're gonna encourage our allies to also put tariffs on China. They're the real task in all this.
Can I ask you, John, if this is not my area of expertise, I don't pretend to. I look at it from a thousand foot bird's eye view, and I'm loving kind of every minute of it, just because it's the elite scum who've been getting rich of the middle class and the lower middle class for years. But leave that aside. Is there not the possibility that had had Trump gone after just China from the beginning and not all of the what is it ninety countries? Is that
how many tariffs he issued? I know it was pretty clear about the fact that these are at best reciprocal tariffs. In many most cases, the tariffs imposed upon other countries weren't close to even close to what those countries were imposing on us. That's a whole different thing we don't need to talk about. But because he was, he showed his willingness to say America's first on this one. And by the way, yeah, China's the worst, and et cetera,
et cetera. But unless you guys get on board with me and America, there's also the possibility that something might happen in terms of tariffs to you and will be better off than you will because I control this. You already have huge tariffs on American goods coming into your countries as we know, so they don't have a lot to a lot to completely to push back on. I guess is the way. I mean, look at China, what
are we at one hundred and twenty five percent tariffs? Okay, so there are some very serious things that we get from China that we shouldn't medications, some rare earth minerals. I get that, But do we really need more cheap Chinese junk?
Well?
Maybe not, I think so I've followed along John that maybe the end game was to isolate China and bring more people over to our side. Yeah, I know, but I think the reason you wouldn't start out explicitly that way is that that wasn't gonna work.
You actually needed the rough Trump treatment. Well put it this way.
I mean, I've been following this trade stuff for a very long time, back to the Reagan years, and.
We've been Please, actually you should view this.
I think of a piece with the way Trump has treated Europe over NATO in the Ukraine situation. I think there's a similar strategy playing out and playing out pretty well perhaps. And in the case of trade, the terriffs were set. There's all a confusion about this, but it's actually very simple. A lot of the trade barriers are not tariffs. It's the non tariff trade barriers. It's the regulations that disqualify some of our imports. This has been a problem for decades.
And supposedly the old the trade liberalization.
Rounds are supposed to lower non tear iff trade barriers, and we go up. We've been going for years saying please, please reduce your non tariff trade barriers, and Trump just said, screw it. I'm just gonna thump you really hard. And so that's part of the game here, is not the terriffs, because I think some countries have zero tariffs formerly, but they have the non like Israel I think, but they have non tariff trade barriers, and Trump is trying to cut that at a stroke.
Not you don't think so, you don't think so.
If it were true, then the teriff rates he said on other countries would bear so rational relationship to a measurement of the tariffs are non type. Right, But no, no, what he did if you look at the formula. Yeah, he looked at what is the trade deficit between this country and that country and set the tariff amount based on that, which has the weird and illogical assumption that the US trade relationship trade bounced with every country in
the world should be zero. Yeah, doesn't make any sense, and that the United States should not have a trade deficit at all.
That doesn't making The numbers.
He's out there are just like irrational, They have no nothing, They bear no relation to reality. If he actually said, we've calculated how much these non terfforate like the VAT tax, right, the sales tax in your uprageously high folded into the price of goods, discriminates against our products, I suppose, but none of the teriff rates against all the European countries. Said oh, this is how much we think the VAT is equivalent in terms of tariff term.
So if they did that then I would believe them. But they didn't do that. They just made it up.
And number two is why is it so bad to have a trade deficit? The United States for most of its history has had a trade deficit. The reason it's good that we have a trade deficit is that means every country have a trade deficit with We have a capital surt plus account with them that's in the positive. That means they're sending that money back to buy and invest here for most of our history because we were developing country and this is the place to invest if
you believe in innovation. It's good that that's the case. We shouldn't really want a trade positive trade balance with the rest of the world.
Well, I mostly agree with that.
A trade deficit by itself is not something to be worried about. And I'll bet that all the people around Trump, except for Peter Navarro, understand that. I think, once again, this is probably being Trump the crazy man deliberately, so I stay crazy, not literally crazy, but I think, you know, if you're really going to shake these countries up and really deliver a blow and make them change, that's one
of the things you added into the mix. Because they say this isn't even reasonable, and Trump says, precisely, it's not reasonable. Why don't I go to the question, see what you think, Lucretia. That we got from our friend the Gora, who sent me a note saying regard us of all the ins and outs of the of the
economics of it that we've just talked about. Is there is there a way in which this can be compared to Ronald Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative, which was not only an idea and so on merits, but upended a generation's worth of settled doctrine that upset our allies right, upset our entire establishment.
And I always forgive the Gora for going off and meeting me for Richard Epstein.
Almost almost Okay, what what?
What?
What happened there? And it's just what happened to you miss something kind of weird?
No, I can't. I can't even get that out of my mind. The Gore is my good liber libertarian friend who lives in Australia, our friend. He's out. He's your friend too, John, you just don't know it. And he's he's very much a libertarian. I have yet to find an issue with which he and I actually disagree, but he claims to be a libertarian and doesn't like it
when I slam libertarians. And and so when Richard came on, you know, a few weeks ago, when you were you were busy, he said that he was leaving me it was one of those memes with the guy Kreshia in the back and it was the gore in the middle, and it was Richard Epstein that he was having eyes for.
The distracted boyfriend me. Yes, that's called right.
Does he know what Richard actually looks like?
Yes? But sometimes politics and political ideology texts precedents over those things. John. The good news is that for conservatives it usually doesn't have to because genuine conservatives are always more attractive. So that's sort wait, I have to tell you, sorry, but we need to lighten this up. This talk of
tariffs is very heavy. So the other day someone posted this picture of all of these women from Martha's Martha's Vineyard and just you know, this whole litany of all of their hypocrisies about you know, yeah, sure I believe in uh, you know, clean energy, but I don't want windmills, and yeah, you know, just all of these hypocrisies that were used to from the left. But the funny thing was they were all dressed in the same dumb outfit and a couple of them were thin and attractive, but
most of them were overweight. And he'd made the comment something along the lines of they go to XX some kind of fancy yoga and spend seventeen dollars on smoothies. So I wrote back, and I think this got more more what likes and things like that than anything I've ever written. And I wrote back and I said, looks to me like they should do a little more yoga and have a few less seventeen dollars smoothies, because the hypocrisy and double standards of the left are just boring. But lookism never is.
Oh boy, after I called them fat, basically all right.
One last thing on Orry's right, one.
Last thing on Tariff's and this again, John, maybe back a little bit in your wheelhouse too. I'm not sure, but you know, one of the thoughts is what's trump way.
Up to here?
What are some of the ancillary purposes? And one was, well, we want to drive down interest rates because driving down interest rates good for consumers, good for home buyers, et cetera, and will greatly reduce the cost of refinancing our huge debt that Biden ran up and so farth And it looked on day one like it might happen. You know, the ten year note actually dipped below four percent, but then it snapped back really big. It's now back almost
to where it was before the tariff cycle began. It's I think it ended at four point four or five today, And so people are saying the bond market rebelled during the week, and you know the famous line of James Carville from thirty years ago, when I'm reincarnated, I want to come back as the bond market because that seems to control everything, and there's certain truth to that. I mean, the thing to say I think about the bond market is it is the ultimate discipliner now of profligate governments.
The more governments run up debt, the more they have to pay attention when the bond market says you've got to stop or things are going to go upside down really fast.
Whether there's a coordinated effort or not, I don't know.
There's lots of rumors about it, but that's typical of the media and stuff today. But it does look like that may have been a factor in things, that things were about to go weird in the bond market, and that would have been very bad.
Look, you can see why the bond rates would be going up because right you have trade deficits with these countries they bring the money to the United States, they have to earn dollars, Yeah, a lot of them. A lot of foreign investors and governments use treasury bills as their safest, safest place to park money. If you think we're going to have a recession and we're going to be cutting trade with the rest of the world, they're going to take their money and invest it somewhere else,
and so there's probably less demand for dollars. There's less demand for treasury bills.
You know.
Over I think something like over a trillion and a half dollars have just you know, have been just disappeared from the stock market, and asset about money has not come back.
You know what, I'm well fake money. It's I mean, I'm sorry. I'm still up on the ear because I know what the hell I'm doing. But that's me. I was.
I was down on Wednesday when things went well, excuse me, I went really bad. I better take drinks, more Scots I'm having I think I said this, I'm having let froud again because darn it, I want it and it's my last.
Well, there's the problem. You're instead of smoking, you're getting your all of your carcinogens inside whiskey.
It could be right, somebody talk while I caught for a minute.
Yes, Steve, the reason you're there's reason you're you know, even for the years, because you probably dug a hole and put your money in there in the backyard and then undug it up and pulled it out yesterday. Because if you were just out of the market, you would have gone up, and now you're back to where you were. I still destroyed trillions of dollars in assets that were there before because and not and not because of anything that happened in the economy. It's because of bad public policy.
That's why.
Because of that's why.
Well the way a manteu so first of all, I was not the last thing.
I also don't think this comparison to SDI makes sense to me. I mean, there's a difference between like having a revolutionary view of the way certain policies should be and really being insightful.
That's not happening with trade.
He's like pulling out the oldest, you know, sort of discredited ideas about how trade works, and he's using it to attack our allies.
Not our enemies.
I mean SDI was aimed at the Soviet Union, not our allies. A lot of the I mean a lot of the trade measures he's talking about are aimed at countries that have been our friends for since before World War Two. Not I don't see why we should be out there punishing the Europeans. I don't see why we should be out there punishing.
One tariff that Trump imposed was higher than that imposed upon the country itself.
Not one?
Not one?
What do you mean?
I mean if we imposed a thirty percent tariff on Denmark? Denmark, I don't know the actual numbers. I'm making this up, but Denmark imposed a sixty percent tariff on us in every single case. Yes, it is. I can chew the charge.
In fact, there's almost no correlation between the tariffs he put on and the tariffs they have on us. Like he put over a huge teriflema.
That doesn't mean what I said.
We was in Korea have.
A free trade agreement. Korea has almost no tariffs on American goods.
And what was the tariffy placed on South Korea?
Oh?
I think it was like.
Enormous because he only cares about the trade deficit with Korea because they send us a lot of TVs and cars.
We have a huge trade deficit with career. That doesn't have anything to do with the tariff rate.
But remember what the purpose is. The purpose is to stop buying goods and goods I'll leave services alone. That's a different subject. Goods that Americans want, stop buying them from other countries and go back to making them in the United States. I know that's an oversimplification, but no, I think that's what Meg is demanding.
Yeah, that makes no sense.
As a matter of economics, we should the other way. No, No, should the United States make everything for itself. Like if it's cheaper to make avocados in Mexico, we should still not allow avocados or Mexico and growma in the United States.
They used to grow, they used to grow in the United States. Why do they Why are they cheaper to be grown in Mexico. Why, there's a very good reason for it. We don't have tariffs on that, or didn't. And they can exploit the labor in other countries that we don't allow to be exploited here, and that's why
they can do it. It's you know, it's it's having Nike build their stupid four hundred dollars worthless tennis shoes in some you know backwoods with three year olds sewing them because they don't have to pay them anything.
And then well, you know, but didn't we give Nike a special exemption on their shoes.
I think we did.
It's very well, look, let's get out on this and move on to something that we actually know more about, like the law and the kind institution. I will just mention this again from my personal stock experience, and this goes back gosh, almost fifty years. So you know, my dad, as I mentioned, was in specially electronics manufacturing, and at one point, this would be late sixties, he bought a small company that made consumer electronics.
He thought he wanted to try consumer electronics.
And they made or my dad helped design and brought out a new line of record players. They're portable record players. You could actually put batteries in them. His idea this is before you know, even cassette players, right or the Walkman or ghetto blasters. He thought, oh, people might want to take a record player to the beach. This is the heyday of all the beach bank at Bingo movies and stuff.
Right.
So, and you also get a model and it pulled it up like a small suitcase with the speakers built in and all that, and this was in the days. Well, he also had a model that you could use a plug for. He also made some Cebee radios that, oddly enough, in the I learned in the Cebee radio community that still exists. Ham radio people are still kind of popular as a cult item, you know, more than fifty years after he quit making them. And the problem then was,
I remember this as a teenager. You can't compete with the Japanese. You know, he had cheap labor on assembly lines at minimum wage, and the Japanese could still make them and export them to America cheaper.
So he ended up giving it up.
And you know that was true in American TVs, right, we quit making TVs.
The reason why this is as good as a matter of trade is that, yeah, then you know, the US laborer can focus on producing the things that we're efficient at that don't depend on little labor costs. Right.
We don't make cheap clothes.
In the United States anymore at all, like cheap every day close.
They're mostly made abroad. I think that's a good thing.
I don't think Americans if we can avoid it should be spending their time.
And you know, cheap garment factories. Far better for.
Them to spend time and energy making higher value goods and make it.
And I at least offer an ulternative.
Americans to spend time making people's underwear if we don't have to.
How about we make those cheap, useless clothes as expensive as making decent clothes, and we stop allowing women to hugely overweight, obese women running around in cheap yoga pants and UH and crop tops.
How about we.
What I what I don't understand, John, is why you say it's it's it's not sound economic theory to think that if we impose tariffs so that it becomes more expensive to make these goods in other countries, UH, does not sound that will it'll bring back manufacturing. But the opposite happened. The opposite happened because they could make them more cheaply in other countries, because they didn't have to be subject to labor laws and environmental laws and on
and on and on and on. They started making them elsewhere. Why can't that be reversed? What economic theory says that can't be reversed?
Well, the decline in manufacturing in the United States. First of all, the percentage of manufacturing United States has actually been rather constant since the eighties. Right, It hasn't actually gone down because of trade relation, has gone down because of America's moved to become a service dominated economy.
Well, no, productivity is a lot higher.
I mean, this is the the key answer, though, is you want Americans to focus on high productivity jobs, because productivity is what gives you a salary.
We shouldn't be having.
Americans work on these low productive jobs like making underwear and socks. Right, that's a waste of people's.
Time here in the United States.
Well, far better for that to occur in other countries that have lower labor costs, and people who work here should focus on things with write more value. It doesn't make sense for any country to want to produce everything in themselves. North Korea does that, So the Soviet Union tried that at least have failed economy.
What you're saying is that Ricardo was still right, and there's an irony here.
Yeah, I mean love of comparative advantage. I mean it's mathematically true.
Well, what I recall is that the liberal critics of free trade thirty forty years ago, all said.
Really sound like they sound like Lucretia. Well, Cretia sounds like Ross Perrot, arguing this is again the.
Genius of Trump. He's mad.
He's made Democrats come out for free trade and against tariffs, which you know, you.
Guys, what what is your definition of free trade? Don't ever use that unless you actually mean free trade. Free trade is we send our stuff over, they send their stuff back. That's free trade. There is no such thing as free trade. We don't have free trade now, we didn't have it before. This idea that Trump is trying to restore free trade that we that we have but we don't have. I mean, it's so stupid.
Well, look at the.
John's point that actually I want to restate it more precisely, John.
The man.
Our manufacturing output share of the economy has been flat for what forty fifty years? It has not gone down. What's gone down is manufacturing employment.
Again. An example is.
I know a guy in Madison, Wisconsin, has an aluminum cast parts company. They make transverse axle casings, some of which they sell to Volkswagen in Germany.
It's an export business. Used to be.
It has been the family for like one hundred years in Madison used to be a Vabia Larry labor intensive job. Now it is all automated and he has six employees, all highly paid, highly trained.
Because it's computerized, they.
No longer have the quality control inspection done with you know, human beings with magnifying glasses. It's all computerized with laser beams. And he says the competition is really tough with China. He says he's always competing with China to sell to Voltswagen and BMW into American automakers. And then the other problem is for Lucretia I think is, oh, let's suppose we do this and we stick with it in a
very aggressive way. I don't think it's going to bring back the places that started our focus on this, which is Michigan, Indiana.
Ohio, Michigan. I don't care. You accused me of that last week too, But.
That's not about did I make that point last week that the American auto industry moves south and is thriving that sort will go to Okay, if you're happy with that, that's fine.
But I think that you know, thinking.
About the fact that you say that that manufacturing in the United States has remained flat since what did you say, nineteen eighty Yeah, when every American household has probably five times the amount of goods that they purchase, whether it's instead of one car, they now have three, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. So the fact that it stayed flat means it fell greatly. And that includes the whole
discussion of automation and so forth. And so I don't agree with John from the point of view that somehow it's demeaning work to make socks or something like that. Those people that don't make socks anymore because they're made in Bangladesh or Indonesia or China, they're on welfare, John, they're not producing, they're not you know, having salary jobs where they have a good living. They have turned the entire country into elites versus everybody else. And that's what
Trump is trying to fix. Bessett came out and said, in so many words, that's what we're trying to fix.
We are a vastly richer country than we were before.
Yes, but not everybody.
But as a country, not every single person. Some people are going to do better, some people are going to do worse. But as a country, you were vastly wealthier. You just poor people have multiple cars and televisions. When I was growing up in the seventies, I don't remember poor people having multiple cars. Says what we just we are wealthier country.
I don't think that.
You know the fact, from what I can tell, the bottom of the bell curve of our income distribution has gotten a lot smaller. There's been a lot more movement and pushing into the middle. But second, it's not that it's demeaning work. It's that it's work that's it's just not worth it given the job skills that Americans have. If there are people who are unemployed, it's because nowadays they choose to be unemployed.
We have.
We're in a labor shortage right now. We've been for several years. I mean, maybe we're eat Starbucks is demeaning, but you get paid a lot more and it's a lot more productive work based on the salaries and benefits than you.
Do making cheap clothing.
That's the way economy. Economy is now knowledge economy. It's a services based economy because that's the future, okay, And that's how people a going to get better paid and it's not by like trying to resurrect, you know, defunct anachronistic industries that I think it's good have left the country and are being done by poor countries. Now.
All right, So at this point, because it may be a whole new scene a week from now, I'm going to impose a five hundred percent tariff on further discussion of this issue today and move on.
You're going to suspend it the next day.
Well, but we won't be taping tomorrow.
So all right, Look, the legal scene continues to be hugely interesting.
So what do we want to take up? First?
We had a Supreme Court following up on their ruling a week ago on the use of the Alien Enemies Act. I guess there's been a ruling by an immigration judge just here today Friday, that the Trump administration can proceed with deporting that Mohammed Khalili guy, whatever his name is, the Columbia graduate student who's you know, pro Homas and
all the rest of that. The other one thing, this is a story I didn't even learn about until today, even though it's been out for a few days, that Trump issued an executive order to all of his regulatory agencies saying, please review all your regulations for their constitutionality given the recent changes in constitutional doctrine at the Supreme Court about regulation, the Chevron doctrine, the major question doctrines,
and so forth. And if you and I'm sure the wording, but the point is, if you think it fails the test of constitutionality under these new doctrines, you should repeal those regulations.
Now, maybe we should start with that one. Do you want to do that one? Lucretia and John?
And start with you John, I mean, I have some thoughts on this, but can they do this side?
Is this really pushing the envelope? What's what's going on here?
Uh? This is a potentially And I said this when it came out. It came in this you know this this some EO came out in the huge batch from at the beginning and when it's completely unnoticed. And I remember telling people in the press, the really revolutionary EO is the one buried in there that says we're going to start uh withdrawing or ending the enforcement of regulations that don't meet these principles. And some of the principles are you know. I people got obsessed with some of
the tiny details. But two of the principles are a regulations that exceed the proper scope of the Commerce Clause and right that violate federalism. And then another one says cases where they believe Congress has excessively delegated power to the executive branch. If you apply those two, you could strike down a whole lot of what the administrative state does these days. Notice that the executive or doesn't say what the Supreme Court thinks is the proper scope of
the Commerce Clause. It doesn't say what the Supreme Court says about non delegation because the Supreme Court has still yet to strike down a law on non delegation grounds, which I think they should, but they haven't since nineteen
thirty seven. So this means if you read it that say, the EPA is going to say, we think the Endangered Species Act violates the Commerce Clause when it addresses animals that can't even move across a state boundary AH, or we think the Steve's favorite statute that won't be named but has to do with is an excessive delegation from because it gives too much legislative power to the agencies that could really got a lot of the regulatory state if they apply it the way the.
Executive Order is written.
Now, the problem they have is usually when you pull out a regulation, you have to follow something called the Administrative Procedure Act. So the Mystery Procedure Act requires when you create a regulation or you withdraw one, you have to go through this arduous process. It takes about a year and a half before the court challenges start. So they're trying to evade that by saying that there's a basically a public interest.
Exception to having to go through this process.
It's not used in the way they want to. Yeah, it's in the law, but it hasn't been used this way ever before. Not saying that the courts that you can't do it's just like no one ever thought you could do it this way.
So there's going to be.
A legal challenge to every single one they do, saying no, you have to go through this year and a half process.
You just can't do it right away.
But I think this could really be a sweeping change in the regulatory state that liberals are only now hearing about.
So, John, you covered so much. It's not fair, but I mean, and not much that I disagreed with quite frankly, but he wanted to bring back up your delegata potestas non potest delagare principle, which, as you say, has not been The delegated power cannot be delegated. I mean, that's just a simple principled interpretation of delegated power. If we the people have delegated our power to Congress, Congress cannot delegate that power to someone else. That's the whole principle
behind it. And I agree with you they absolutely shouldn't, and I would push that point. The Supreme Court when it decided to abandon that was absolutely erroneous, wrong and has destroyed the country in many ways because of it. Okay, that statement being done, I actually have a question for you. That is, you mentioned that you didn't think that that the Trump's admit Trump's interpretation of the Act. What's it called again? Three A's seed your Act? That was the word?
I couldn't remember. The Some of that is actually dependent upon how the Court ultimately decides this universal universal junction stuff. Don't injunction stuff, don't you think because if the Left challenges every single uh abolishment of every single regulation that the Trump administration argues is a violation of of Loper or it's a violation of Harvard or you know, all of these different cases that you're right, have come down
in favor of the executive for the most part. If they don't rein in these out of control on both sides, but mostly of course on the left. You know, that's just those are just the numbers. If the Supreme Court is not willing to say that a district court judge cannot issue remedies for plaintiffs not before the court. You know, one of the rules it's supposed to apply. Lots of different reasons. Why all of these injunctions, whether they benefit
or hurt my cause they're wrong. And the Supreme Court if it stepped in on that, I think that the Trump's the Trump administration would be much more successful in the stuff that's already out there, but also on getting rid of these regulations. What do you think or do you think that's not it? You think they'll be successful challenging this, and they won't do it with universal injunctions or national junction.
I don't think this is going to raise a nationwide injunction issue, but it could generally when you challenge these regulations.
Under the APA process.
You are, you're you're supposed to bring the cases in Washington d C courts. You know, the d C Circuit is the administrative law court in the country almost because they hear almost every major APA rulemaking there.
There's like all you describe it.
There's a process that allows you to go right to the d C Circuit immediately if you're challenging a regulation, so you don't have to go through a longer process. Some statutes even require you to go to the d C Circuit. So and the liberals should want to do that because the d C Circuit is quite strongly filled with Biden and Obama appointees. So I don't think it's going to have to raise a nationwide injunction issue because
the Democrats right have. You know, liberals have a very favorable form where they're supposed to bring these cases.
Anyway, Well, let me follow on with that because that was another case that happened this week where the UH and by the way, the dread coward Roberts was the only dissenter, but no no reason given whereby they determined that that that scumbag gang banger that got sent to the l. Salvador prison did have due process rights, but he had to exercise them in louis was it Louisiana, Texas? Texas, Texas, and not in what was it d C?
Washing? Yeah?
Yeah, and so so maybe the Supreme Court is getting more serious about this idea of jurisdiction. And I just wondered what you thought about that.
Actually, you could read all of these recent cases involving immigration, involving I mean, there's a case out here in San Francisco involving the effort to stop the Garment from firing anybody. The there's another case about trying the Feller Garment, trying to stop the Trump administration from blocking grants. And in all these cases where the Supreme Court has intervened extremely early,
that's effectively what they've been telling the lower courts. They've been saying to them, stop this rush to judgment against Trump. You have been overriding standard procedure. For example, the judge here turned out didn't have a single plaintiff in his courtroom actually worked for the federal government and had lost their job.
Right.
I was like, that's such a basic rule to have standing that you need someone's actually been harmed. These guys came into court. They're basically public employee unions. They came into court in public interest groups and they said, while the country's going to be harmed if these people get fired, because then the parks will be closed, so we can sue. And the courts of lung said, you can't sue on behalf of the public quote unquote, you have to actually
be affected directly by the government's actions. So that's really what's been going on. The court has not decided really much of anything on the merit. For example, the case of the Venezuelan as you mentioned, Uh, the district judge in the Circuit court I think went way beyond their remit and said, oh, there's no invasion here, right, we're in peacetime, there's no invasion. We're going to find as a matter of fact that the Venezuelan government has no
ties to this gang Triina de la Ragua. And the Supreme Court wiped that all out because it said, you never had jurisdiction over this case in the first place.
It has to go back to has to go to Texas.
But that for.
Sure Roberts dissented on but again we don't know why.
Yeah, we don't know why.
He didn't. He didn't write an opinion.
But the point is that we also don't know for sure what the court's going to say when that eventually comes back. The courts really kicked the can down the road on all these issues. On the merits. All they're doing is sending it back and saying, restart the cases and the right procedure in the right place. Stop this sloppiness. Because these judges have been so eager to rule get Trump, they aren't following normal procedures.
I could go on, Steve, but I'm deferring.
Well, I don't well, I don't know.
I'm I'm confused as to actually which cases we are talking about because there's now three or four and I can't untangle them.
I do wonder about the APA, but in.
A stative procedure act. So while there is some talk of Congress rewriting its statute or repeating a statute that gave emergency broad tariff setting power to the president back in the nineteen seventies, because you know, remember Tear, I mean, I do think that regulating commerce with foreign nations is an Article one power under the Commerce Clause, right, And I think that regardless of what you think about the tariff policy. I think that is too broad a power
to give the president to do. Similarly, is it time to think about rewriting of the Administrative Procedure Act?
Last time I talked to Jeremy Rapkin.
About this, and I thought he wrote one of the best books about this subject thirty years ago, and it was a long time ago, more than ten years ago.
I talked him about it.
He very much thought we ought to rewrite the Administrative Procedure Act that would include in a more rigorous ways of challenging the basis of regulations in court. And actually it was really a preemptive shot to scaling back because Chevron deference.
And those kinds of things.
But I hear no talk about that from any of our friends who would like to revive Congressional prerogatives and get Congress doing its job again.
No, I mean, I think Demonstrative Procedure Act has outlived its state.
It's really a product of the forties, right, You know what it is if you look.
Back at the history of it before the Administrative Procedure Act, you know Congress.
Would and the New Deal period gave U huge.
Amounts of powered agencies with like no guidance, right, and so you know, they came up with the idea that we could create a procedure for all regulations and it would be kind of democratic. We would have a period where anyone in the public can read a draft that will put out there the regulation, and then you'll have comments, and then you'll have the agency will have to respond to every comment, take them and rationally respond and then issue the regulation and it'll improve everything.
You know.
I think there was one study done by the Wall Street Journal that showed that a lot of these comments or ai generated just repetitive or useless.
The only people who.
Really pay attention to these are the industries that are affected, are their opponents or the supporters, and they write thoughtful comments. But this process is so slow and really doesn't have anything to do with making the regulation really better that it's just, you know, it's a kabookie play, you know, sort of a fake democratic way to make regulations.
Well, I think I mean as at a one level detail as I recall the history of it, and I like I say, I read it a long time ago. The problem with all the new de regulatory agencies is there was no consistency in the way they made their regulations. You know, one agency would say, well, here's a new
regulation that starts in ten days. It's like what and and you know what standards they used and all the rest of that, and so that you know, that's what the APA was often called the constitution of the administrative State, right, and but look, it says that, you know, courts can only strike down regulations if they're arbitrary and capricious.
Those are the key terms in it.
And they have a couple of times struck down regulations on those grounds, but not very often, because good grief, it sure seems to me a lot of regulations would be vulnerable to being arbitrary and capricious on any number of grounds. The courts have always said, no, we're going to let the agencies do what they want, right, And so I don't know, I.
Think that should be revisited. Maybe it wouldn't work a.
You know, the APA is such a failure that the real reform and regulation making was President Reagan's decision to concentrate review of regulations under Chris Tamuth that you know, not a AI then in the Office of Management Budget or they subject all major regulations to cost benefit analysis.
Which is not even in the APA.
That's how useless it is that the APA doesn't even require that the costs not exceed the benefits of a regulation. Instead, President Reagan basically said, well, we're just as president, I'm going to use my executive authority and block any regulation from any agency that can't prove that the benefits that way the costs, and people.
Attack them for them. So that's not in the APA.
You can't as president just come in and make up your own criteria for every regulation.
But thank god he did.
Yeah, And I was just going to say, in what world of separation of powers and executive power can the president not do that? Except the world that's been screwed up over judicially regulated, over administrative rate. I mean, of course the president can decide, because who else do we hold accountable if not the president? That's the whole argument.
I get frustrated. I know all of these kind of secondary legal issues and legal theories we discussed, but when it comes down to it, the president gets to decide because he's the one accountable. That's Hamilton, It doesn't matter, right, And if he wants to have a rule that says there's got to be a cost benefit analysis. More power to him.
Yeah, but I think John, isn't it right that the cost benefit test that the Reagan people imposed did not apply to the independent regulatory agencies. It only applied to the ones that the president.
Has to rect control of, like the cabin offices, right, I think?
No, that's actually but after Humphrey's executor gets overturned, right right?
Well, of course you know the idea that I mean, I remember Chris, you know you and I know Chris. I remember Chris is talking about how, ah, we had this great uh you know that sort of understated way he does things. He would say, oh, we had this great cost benefit analysis standard and it led to and then he pauses and said, marginal improvement.
In some regulations.
I mean, even he thought that this hadn't worked very well, right you? No, I see John has disappeared off the screen, so who knows, you know, But even.
How do I say this? Even distinguishing between independent regulatory agencies and other administrative agencies misses the point.
No, I understand that, you know.
I just think that it's.
Probably necessary to repeat that often and loudly, because otherwise you get lost in the weeds on these things, and you miss the point.
Well, except if the weeds grew up big, well, and I'll do it this way. That's trying to do annalg it.
It's not right. One reason why it'd be good to have more tools, such as a cost benefits.
Standard in the law that allowed you and me or an interest group to challenge it effectively in court. That becomes an adjunct of presidents who want to control it because there's too much for them to chase after. That's part of the point, right, and it allows more pressure points against the administrative state for citizens. And then, by the way, you don't just depend on the president. It means that you and I or our friends can challenge what agencies are doing when there's a Democrat in the
White House. That's why these things are useful. Now I know they're wonky, and wonkiness bores you, and so let's then move on to that.
It's not that at all, and I am in favor of incremental changes wherever they can be made. But I think the point is that we need to restore the fundamental notion of what executive power means, and we need to be able, unlike our friends on the other side of the aisle to recognize that the same powers that can be exercised by Trump, by Reagan can be exercised by a Biden or an Obama. And what's the what's the check on that? A dependence on the people is the primary control on government?
All right, well, then let's do our last topic, I think, because we're coming toward the end of our time. So you, uh, you managed to slip in your favorite epithet about our sainted Chief Justice.
That was sarcasm, just in case the dread counter for me, I know, that's why. That's why I was making sure we were all clear on this.
So right now you are not alone in being exercised, I'll put it that way, with the way uh Justice Barrett has come out on some of these recent cases.
So let me begin by saying that two of the most extraordinary judges, federal judges in the United States, are women, two women for whom I have the utmost respect for their their legal acuity, for their soundness, I mean everything about them. Jonas Rogers Brown and Edith Edith Jones. Now both of them, by the way.
You've got you've got a total fangirl crush.
That's I love both of them. But they're solid, you know, they're absolutely solid, I argued to these guys, and you know, we have text messages. I'm in the gym, you know, I'm writing text messages. It's ridiculous. But so you always have to take that with a little great as salt. But my point was that I don't think we should
allow women on the Supreme Court. Why because the women that actually can get on the Supreme Court have been profound disappointments, even those who were appointed by Republican presidents and were, you know, the great Savior. Sure, Amy Conie Barrett's been on the right side of a few things, even some really important few things, but she is really
really unreliable. And that's that's tough. Now. I said that the explanation for why Edith Jones and Janice Rogers Brown are not on the Supreme Court is the Clarence Thomas explanation. They're going to be willing to tolerate a woman who's mushy and you know, okay, and as long as she's empathetic, you know, willing to bring an M thirteen gang as a gang member as a foster child into her home, like Amy Cony Barrett or cry over with her whole family over George Floyd. Oh I hate women like that.
I hate them, and she's bragging about it. Okay, Okay, I just I'm almost in. My point is this that they don't want strong, solidly conservative women on the court because there is much of a threat to the whole feminist, transgender LGBTQ regime, as Clarence Thomas was to the Affirmative Action regime. And that's why. I mean, you could not have found a better person for the Supreme Court than either Janice Rogers Brown or Edith Jones. That is my right, yes, although as Clarence Thomas.
I just want to add for the record, for listeners benefit, some of whom will know the person you should add Alice Batchelter Batch Shelter to your list of women who meet the Lucretia litmus test.
I believe you, but I don't know her well.
She was at she was at the Philadelphia Society meeting a couple of weeks ago.
I should have had you, I was, but I guess I don't know anything about her. I know a great deal about Janice, I know a great deal about Edith. I don't know anything about it. I trust you on that.
But she's fabulous. So that's all I need to know.
You know, the whole thing about Amy Cony Barrett's uh nomination process in the confirmation process, to excuse me, was you know what focused on her catholic supposed this and that, and none of it really got down. You know, do you did? What was it? The idiot Diane Feinstein said, you're I forget it was a really instant thing about her Catholicism.
Yeah, in court that actually that guaranteed your confirmation though, by the way, that was a huge blunder on Feinstein's part.
It backfired badly.
But the fact that those things are even relevant and allowed to be relevant just shows it's not serious.
You know.
Yeah, well, you know, if.
She had some really strident pro constitution fully understanding every aspect of the constitution opinions, DAYDA never let her on the court. That's my point. You have opinion she ever gave, but they didn't bring any up.
I think you're being totally unfair to Justice Barrett.
I really do.
I mean, I think that she is voted the right way on any major issue that we care about, right, she hasn't She had a Roe versus Wade.
Texas versus Pennsylvania.
If she great, So you're not going to get someone who votes exactly the In fact, I don't think the court was ever going to get.
A oft in Texas Pennsylvania.
But look, you're not going to get a justice who votes exactly the way you want every single time, right right.
Thomas doesn't.
Look, Look, I don't agree with everything.
Justice Thomas vote the way he votes in every single case. Rovers's way would still be the law if she were not on the court.
The look of the sixty three, it wasn't five to.
Four, Well it's five to four. Actually, well just because Roberts, well, Roberts Roberts, it was. But he had a stupid no. Yes, well, his opinion did.
Not want to overturn Row. Right in that case.
He said, we can decide this case a certain way and keep Roe as precedent. But he thought he dissented from overturning Row.
But he did say that the law could stand though he in other words, he blessed the law. So they they you know, the play, They won the case, and his reasoning just made a mess of it.
I thought, I mean that that, I think, but still would.
Have gone the other way. Harvard case would have gone the other way. And she has voted the right way on every major issue.
That every major issue, not everyone.
Well, you're talking about these cases against Trump where she hasn't voted exactly on all these emergency appeals. These are such small, unimportant cases compared to abortion, guns, an affirmative actionsvatives.
An indictment of her than than ever because you're just an ideologue on the court. I want a constitution.
You want someone who's going to vote the right way that Trump wins every case every time.
No, No, not at all, not at all.
I want these cases. I don't want to have lost.
I want someone who cares about the Constitution.
More than I and any What What is Trump done that you disagree with on any of these constitutional legal issues?
What Trump? You said? John?
You mean bar Trump? Trump is no Trump.
Because you're criticizing her for voting against Trump, I'm not.
I'm critical. And give you an example.
Give me example of the case where you agree with her or you disagree with Trump?
Where where do where?
Give me a single example of anything Trump is done in the legal constitution area. But they're not all legal or constitutional. That legal or constitutional that you disagree with.
Well, no, there's policy issues. I don't know of any legal or constitutional things I disagree with.
He's been right on the constitutional law every single one of these issues. I mean, that's that's that's that's being an ideologue.
Can I we we were up against our hour?
Can I suggest this as the question to be thought about because we're not going to.
Sort it out here.
I think Lucretia's point that bears weight is that even when Bart votes right, she'll often do a concurrence that I think.
Can be construed mischievously. And those are important.
I mean, it's important that the vote comes out the right way, of course, but sometimes I mean, of course, your concurrences of the sense are often important for future cases.
Uh. And I'll just say that there. I think she bears a close scrutiny and good analysis by somebody to say, what's her what's her real core, what's her line of reasoning here?
Where does it point? What are the vulnerabilities and strengths from our point of view? And that I you know, I have to say that I scratched my head once in a while saying why I don't remember specific examples right now I'm sorry, but I say, that's interesting.
Why would she do that? That's okay, Uh, to be.
Continued, is what I want to say, because I think we should actually prepare for that discussion sometime and not tru We skipped our foreign policy argument John that we've been having.
On Live, I know, twice for two episodes. Yeah, I know, Okay, No, we were the host today.
I know.
I just said I'm tired from five weeks on the road. Lucretian, you have some babylon Bees for us.
I do.
Democrats worried Trump may not have China's best interest at heart. That was good, this one we didn't talk about. But Trump, here's something I do agree with. Trump says, you know what, the federal government shouldn't be telling you how much water can come out of your shower. You pay for your water. That's up to you. Actually, I've had several friends from California have their high flow shower head send to my house, and then I send it to them because the California
laws are even worse anyway. Protesters and it's of course all these scumbag leftists you know that look like they haven't showered in six weeks at least protesters remain unaffected by Trump's shower head deregulation. So this one you you had to be paying attention to the news this past week. Uh, the ex execrable Jasmine Crockett. People elected that thing to Congress?
How is that possible? But anyway, so you in case you didn't hear remarks, basically it was we need illegal aliens because we ain't we done picking cotton.
Yeah right, and so this is the Babylonbee Jasmine Crockett Floatstone Mighty, Mississippi to purchase fresh shipment of Mexican slaves.
Okay, for you sports fans out there, I don't get this one because I don't pay any attention, but I'll read it for sports fans. White Sox introduced new premium indoor suites with no windows so you don't have to watch the White Sox play.
Well yeah, yeah, oh right? Is it?
Is it true?
I think so? I'm not saying so bad. Yeah, I'm not paying attention to baseball at all yet.
It's way too early, but yeah, I think the White Socks are, you know, pretty bad.
Okay, just a couple of really quick ones. Texas fans sale of assault rifles with capacity of less than thirty pounds. China trade war update, Trump classifies Panda Express as domestic terror organization. I promise you there is nothing about China that is in that our Chinese food that's at Panda Express. So, yeah, it doesn't really work. But Republicans vow to get really serious about cutting spending in like thirty or forty years.
Yeah, that's unfortunately sadly true. Right right, all right, John, you're working on a new one.
Always drink your whiskey, meat and Steve.
So, I'm trying to change up our ending.
And so today in honor of our great warriors a doge, I am giving you a musical exit starting right now.
Well, we got a lot, a lot of hard work today.
We gotta rock.
At the Government center to make the secretaries feel better when they put the stamps on the letter.
They got a lot, a.
Lot of great desks and chairs now at the Government Center where they put the stamps on the letter, and then they write it down in the letter.
Two.
We gotta rock the log a rock and don't stop to night about at the Government center where they put the stamps on the letter, write it down in the ledger.
We won't up until we see Secretary smile and see some office.
Boys jump up for joice.
We'll tell oh, mister a Hearn, calm down, wild sir, that's the only way the center is ever gone and get better. So we gotta rock a rock, a rock an not stop tonight at the Government's center. They put the stamps on the letter, write it down in the ledger. Oh tonight, we'll make them feel all right.
Oh to night. What you say, man, Oh yes, tonight, we'll go there tonight. We'll take the an thing we got. We'll take the air ricochet. Join the conversation.