Senate lawmakers try keeping Trump tariffs in check: Kennedy
As the president travels abroad to needle NATO and loudly voice once quiet gripes, back home in the Senate they're fashioning a symbolic lasso to reign in some executive power on trade.
The president's views on isolationist trade wars are as polarizing as his Twitter feed, but both sides of the aisle agree there may be too much power concentrated in one set of tiny hands.
You know the president's protectionism is problematic when people like Chuck Schumer, Sherrod Brown and Bernie Sanders love it. Although sticking it to China and the EU is a tempting revenge fantasy, zero-sum trade control is rooted in leftism and fallacies.
The president's rational admirers know tariffs are ultimately taxes that punish low income Trump voters, but they hope it is part of a shrewd, global negotiating tactic that adds glorious water to an already rising tide. What if it's not? What if this tit-for-tattery has long-term, negative economic impacts and you can't put the genie back in that made-in-China bottle?
That's why the Senate today voted 88-11 to offer an expanded congressional role to confer and oversee any tariff boosting done in the name of national security.
President Trump is not the first White House partier to benefit from the fattening of executive fiat which became extra porky under the two previous administrations, and with a potential Supreme Court justice who may want to further bolster presidential power, it's no surprise the Senate is pre-emptively snatching back some of its mojo.
Trade and security are inextricably linked, but they should both be used to foster more freedom and prosperity, as the unintended consequences of smothering them spell economic death.
Lisa Kennedy Montgomery (Kennedy) joined FOX Business Network (FBN) as a contributor in 2012 and is the host of the primetime program, "Kennedy", which airs Monday through Thursday at 8PM/ET on the FOX Business Network.