At the risk of speculating TOO much, its what you might expect from a "Door in the Face" negotiation tactic.
Which Trump absolutely has employed in the past.
As I said if he's too temperamental to actually negotiate, articulate demands, make some concessions, and reach a deal then yeah, we're in trouble.
We'll probably be getting the first whispers of offers and counteroffers over the weekends. The administration has been much more leak-proof (Issues with Signal chat notwithstanding) and moving much more quickly this time around, indeed the details of the tariffs didn't leak in advance, hence it catching many by surprise! It's absurd to assume there's not a lot of active discussion happening behind closed doors already.
But I think that a guy who knows he's only got about 3 years to impose as much of a policy impact as possible (probably less than 2 if the midterms don't go well) is going to be more aggressive up front.
Remains to be seen, the one interesting thing is that Tariffs are just paper barriers to trade. A 'social construct,' if you will.
We haven't physically built a wall or blown up any bridges.
If countries are willing to play ball and lower all (their) paper barriers to trade, then goods can 'instantly' start flowing again, and possibly under better overall terms. Like, just last week Trump committed to bombing the Houthis in hopes of restoring safe access to the Suez for global shipping. He clearly WANTS goods to flow smoothly.
I will precommit now, that if other countries actively take steps to reduce tariffs and otherwise appease Trump's demands and Trump is too temperamental to accept these offers in good faith and we still have most of these Tarriffs in place at the same levels come May 2nd 2025 (unless real deals are pending come that date), it is a bad thing and we will be in for some rough times. I will criticize/condemn Trump and Co. in no uncertain terms.
If other countries DON'T take active steps to reduce tariffs or otherwise negotiate, I will have to admit that my model of the world is drastically misinformed.
So my full expectation is that there will be a couple weeks of rapidfire and rough negotiations with some touch-and-go moments, but ultimately other nations will do the needful and come the end of April Trump will make a YUUUGE fanfare about signing Tariff reductions and trade agreements with those countries that capitulated, and markets will 'correct course.'
Trump has given himself a lot of runway to try and land this plane relatively smoothly, but there's going to be a lot of turbulence on the way in, that seems certain.
I'll also grant that this causes substantial uncertainty for American investors and entrepreneurs which is 'bad.' But, uhhh, what other country could they find that is inherently more stable and inviting for investment?
I'm extremely leery about the potential short or medium term impacts here.
Yet, I find myself willing to see what happens, because the revelations of the past 6ish years is that the Experts WERE pushing buttons on the control panel, and were getting paid very handsomely to push the buttons, but weren't particularly motivated to push buttons that would benefit the people they nominally owed allegiance to. I'm not even talking strictly about NGOs and such, but that's a symptom of it. Hell, during Biden's term, we can't even be sure WHO was at the controls while Biden was half-cogent.
Lets push some buttons that will break some things in the short term, and then (hopefully) quickly build some replacements that are generally better for parties other than elites in the political class.
And I'm young enough I can wait to recover from any short or medium term losses before I'm forced to retire. I grew up during and in the aftermath of the '08 crash. Mentally I've been braced this sort of event for like 10 years. I do feel for those who are stuck in a position where their livelihood is reliant on stock prices, but if you're at or near retirement age you should be in safer assets anyway.
The (classical) Liberal World Order was premised on free trade and financial/industrial interconnections between various countries disincentivizing wars and conflicts and fostering greater cooperation. I sincerely believe that they do have this effect, but I can see and admit there are parts of this order that are causing major issues and yet are not being corrected. I'd point to mass immigration as one example, and collapsing global fertility as another. BOTH of these should in theory be addressable without attacking the foundations of the order itself... but we've not been allowed to even have the discussion.
I would suggest that we're in a particularly unfavorable equilibrium that could collapse into an even worse equilibrium in the nearish future. Whether this is due to irrational/malicious actors screwing with things, or due to inexorable historical forces is a good discussion. But taking a gamble that if you start wrenching on the controls now you can steer away from the iceberg and not crash into something else, well, that is not a thing to be done flippantly.
I can certainly understand people who would rather not have Trump and Co. be the ones at the helm, but the system itself wasn't going to let us have anyone better.
Trump benefits from comparison to every other politicians' SOP.
Trump says many things that are false. Other major politicians say many things that are false, and very, VERY often lie by omission. Its generally accepted that they don't have a theory to operate under other than "say whatever I need to in order to get re-elected."
Trump is the one whose statements get treated as critical emergencies and as a practical matter people notice when the media keeps declaring emergencies that never actually materialize.
Your credibility for going after Trump relies on you also going after other politicians, including those on your team, with comparable enthusiasm.
I'll remind people that media credibility was heading to the toilet BEFORE Trump arrived on the scene. It dropped below half in 2005.
So as much as people want to make this a problem about Trump, its a problem that plagues our whole political/media complex and it does seem appropriate to point out that obsession with Trump's behavior is probably the result of dysfunctional thought processes. I don't think I've ever actually used the term "Trump Derangement Syndrome" towards anyone, though.
faceh
27d ago
Management, up to and including C-Suite, should really be the ones on the hook as they're the ones with authority and responsibility.
faceh
27d ago
I wondered for a second why he has to pull the trigger himself and not a trusted, very steady-handed compatriot.
But it actually occurs to me he probably didn't want anyone to risk ending up with a death on their conscience, or worse a manslaughter charge, if something goes wrong.
faceh
27d ago
Probably made up and didn't actually happen, but its the exact kind of idea that would align incentives.
faceh
27d ago
Perhaps, but look at the exact context of the incident that led to this.
George Floyd died while he was in handcuffs, face to the floor, with a grown man kneeling on top of him. He was 'unarmed' by any fair definition of the word.
A lot of people believe the cop's actions killed him, a lot of people believe it didn't, and say it was probably the drugs. Indeed, the mainstream conservative position is turning into Derek Chauvin deserves a pardon.
The rule proposed by Yudkowsky cuts the knot and just removes any 'bad' cops from the job even if we don't know for sure they're bad cops, so as to restore trust to the police as a whole, where the people who believe ACAB at least see that there's a consequence for the death of 'innocent' (yeah, I know I know) people in police encounters, and the "law and order" people can see that its the simple application of a facially neutral rule that holds the police to a 'high' but not unfair standard.
I think the best 'consequences' are those that follow naturally/intrinsically from failure to be honest. Lying must have a cost, one that cannot be avoided if you lie/defect consistently.
If you're flying a passenger plane, you probably shouldn't have an ejection seat or parachute if your passengers don't have such an escape option. That way you will be extra sensitive to possible danger. The norm that The Captain is the last to leave a sinking ship operates similarly. And you can also surmise that the more responsibility inherent to your position, the more severe the consequences should be for misuse or screwup.
Sometimes you can't make the consequences that immediate but you can still align incentives. Did you (or a company you run) design an airplane? You should be forced to take flights on that particular model of plane regularly for a couple years to showcase your confidence. Boeing should probably take this idea.
For politicians, I'd suggest that they must be forced to endure the direct consequences of rules they impose. If you are supporting criminal justice reform, you should probably be required to live at least part-time in the most crime-ridden districts in your jurisdiction. If you want to drastically increase police authority or make penalties for crimes harsher, you should be subject to 'random' investigations where you will be arrested and tried for ANY crimes discovered. "If you've done nothing wrong you have nothing to hide," right?
The penalty for publishing bad science or bad statistics, especially if you intentionally hide the stuff that would destroy your conclusions... well that's tricky. We discussed this a while back and I admitted to not having a solution. Prediction markets are a decent mechanism, require scientists to put their money at risk on a market betting on whether their results will replicate or not.
Many institutions seem to have failed or been corrupted by introducing 'false' consequences, where a member who is caught screwing up is 'publicly' reprimanded but privately, they're not punished, or maybe they're even rewarded, and rather than removed from power, they get shuffled off somewhere else in the system and hope that nobody notices.
Partially this is due to a 'circling the wagon' effect, if someone is part of your ingroup you don't want to let the outgroup hurt them so that you, too, can be protected if they come for you. Even a 'good' person would want to insulate their fellows from consequences since they are insulated in return.
But I suspect a lot of it comes from malicious actors FIRST convincing members of a group to remove the factor that actually punishes malfeasance, and then grabbing up as much power as they can for their own purposes... and other bad actors see that there's power to be grabbed and minimal consequences, so it becomes attractive to bad actors.
So the REALLY important factor is that the consequences actually have to filter out bad actors or incompetents from the system entirely, which allows the system to improve via iteration. You can't have consequences that ONLY inflict pecuniary loss, for example, if the person can afford to pay the 'fines' and yet continue to maintain their position of influence and authority.
faceh
27d ago
There's probably a pretty solid essay or law review article to be written (probably already has) pointing out that empirically, it is better for the courts to stick to textualism/legislative intent when interpreting the law, as they have an extremely dubious track record when it comes to interpreting science and statistics while reasoning about what laws mean or 'ought' to mean.
Recent decisions the go into the form and function of various firearms/ parts of firearms when ruling on gun control laws suffer from similar issues.
Yep. I think it was Yudkowsky who had a list of possible police reforms in the wake of the Death of George Floyd that included immediate and permanent removal of any police officer who is involved in the death of an unarmed person during an interaction. They just cannot work in law enforcement thereafter.
Drastic, but if there's an extremely low rate of deaths in police interactions (that's a claim the pro-police side usually makes) then it restores trust to know that no cop will ever be put back on the streets after killing someone without justification. And of course, prison time can still result if there wasn't justification. Minimal cost overall.
It would be really handy to remove the massive 'benefit of the doubt' that goes in favor of on-duty cops that allows the actual nasty/predatory ones to act with impunity for far longer than they would if they were held to the standard of a normal citizen. And it aligns incentives so that cops are really motivated to avoid doing anything life-threatening to unarmed persons.
At its core, that is what feels like is the major problem. Incentives aren't aligned in a way that points towards outcome everyone wants. We'd all like to be able to take scientific research seriously and NOT have to be immediately skeptical. Scientists would like to believe they're pushing boundaries of knowledge forward and have some social prestige from that pursuit. We want policies to be informed by good, accurate, reliable information, while accounting for uncertainties.
But that requires screwups to be uncovered and corrected quickly and bad actors to be removed before they cause too much damage. It ain't what we have currently.
How can people trust with this level of malfeasance? How do we get the trust back? How do we stop people from doing this kind of thing? I just don’t know.
TAPS
THE
Although admittedly this is not about 'elites' doing things on behalf of a whole society. A lot of blame can probably be ascribed to people who spread this information without checking it or by uncritically accepting it and parroting it as if it is true.
Which, it turns out, includes a SCOTUS Justice. Its in an actual, published SCOTUS opinion now (albeit a dissent, so it probably won't be used as precedent).
Should she formally retract that, somehow?
faceh
28d ago
More directly:
Being untrustworthy should come with fairly immediate consequences upon revelation.
And you should DEFINITELY be kicked from any position of trust and banned from future ones.
faceh
28d ago
Remember back when Trump issued a bunch of Travel Bans in his first term? Those were largely upheld by the Supreme Court, even though a LOT of immigrants/refugees/foreign nationals were 'wronged' by their implementation.
Because the interests of persons who are NOT citizens of the U.S. with respect to the U.S. Government are not nearly as sacrosanct.
He might or might not have a false arrest case.
If he thinks that the U.S. has wronged him, he should still probably go to his Home Country and ask them to represent his interests wrt the U.S.'s actions.
He doesn't really have the standing to compel the United States to do anything, and bringing suit against the Country would probably get his Green Card or refugee status revoked anyway.
surely it's not fair to them to ask them to front the cost of the trip back, which they wouldn't have needed if not for the government screw-up.
I mean, if he can meet the standard for a false arrest case he might have a shot.
But I think the entire point of the case is hinging on whether there was or was not probable cause to detain him.
And its not inherently required to return him to U.S. soil to hold that hearing either.
Like, if you get arrested (they falsely thought that you were a vagrant for sleeping at a bus stop with alcohol on your breath) and taken to jail, then it turns out there was no basis to actually arrest you, you get released. But the cops aren't obligated to drive you home. They might do so by way of apology/to avoid bad press.
Fundamentally I think its FAIR to fly him home. In fact I'd say that's the best way to smooth over the situation to mitigate bad press. But that's only IF there's an actual finding that the detention was unjustified/unlawful and there is in fact no other legal reason to keep him out.
Goes to my other point that every Nation State claims the authority to exclude foreign nationals if the need arises.
Remember Trump's Travel Bans from his first term?
The Supreme Court upheld most of THOSE travel bans when the administration bothered to defend them. This should add on to the point about what 'due process' foreign nationals are entitled to.
faceh
29d ago
maybe I just downplay every story because every story for 10 years has been amplified to 10.
I feel this way whenever Trump says something truly 'out there' like wanting to make Canada the 51st state.
Okay, yeah, that's pretty crazy to outright say it. But meh, unless he started massing troops at the border you can't arse me to care when every second sentence out of his mouth for 4 years was turned into a national headline predicting immediate doom.
The dude blew up one of Iran's top generals INSIDE Iraq during his term, and we didn't actually see a war with Iran. There's no reason to keep declaring 4 alarm fires just because Trump is blowing smoke.
So yeah, I'm going to tend to assume that almost every crisis the media portrays is in fact exaggerated until proven otherwise.
My worry is that there's a negative incentive here. There's nothing to disincentivize the government to do the wrong thing in your framework
Perhaps.
But under the previous setup, there was nothing to disincentivize people from coming in illegally, since they knew that even if they got 'caught' it could take a long time for 'due process' to occur before they get removed.
I strongly believe that's the goal of the current actions the admin is taking. Make it clear that you can't just hop the border and expect to stay here for years while your case is held up endlessly in court. You have a real chance of getting removed, and a real chance of ending up in a foreign prison if you have a criminal record.
I DO NOT think that the Trump admin wants to deport thousands upon thousands of criminals and pay for them to stay in an El Salvadoran prison. There's no strong benefit to having to pay for their imprisonment indefinitely, vs. kicking them out and not have to worry about them returning.
Now, your concern becomes very valid if it comes to intentionally targeting noncitizens for removal as a means to, e.g. punish dissent or scare citizens into taking or refraining from taking some action.
But I don't think there's any way around the fact that a national government claims the inherent authority to decide which foreign parties are and are not allowed to be in the country. And thus you can't expect them to accept a regime where ANY attempt to remove noncitizens, regardless of justification, has to be held up by the courts before it is executed.
Like, we agree that if there were an active war popping off, the U.S. would be justified in kicking out any citizens of the enemy nation that were residing in its borders, yes?
Trump is in fact trying to make the argument that there's an 'invasion' occurring, and so you can see how this might slide the situation into a bit of a grey area.
I believe the US government should be compelled to reverse its actions if it accidentally removes someone who has the authorization to be in the country and ships them off to a foreign prison (regardless of whether the government can be compelled to do so in the current legal framework)
I think if this becomes enough of an issue then yeah, perhaps there should be some actions taken by the home countries of the person in question.
Like I can't believe nobody seems to think that the countries that these people are nominally citizens of aren't interested in freeing them from a foreign prison? Why is everyone expecting U.S. COURTS to intervene on behalf of foreign nationals???
I also think the economic incentives are such that if the U.S. accidentally removes people who are doing very productive work for the U.S., then various parties have reason to intervene and pay large sums of money to both retrieve them and lobby to prevent it from happening again.
Well, once at the time he was originally arrested/detained. This is why if you're traveling through a foreign country you're supposed to keep your passport and/or visa on your person.
If he had documentation proving his right to be there with him and they still arrested him (sans evidence of another crime) then I agree that is a due process violation.
I don't think people would complain too harshly if an American citizen got arrested abroad b/c they lacked sufficient identification, and needed to call up the embassy to verify their identity and entitlement to presence in the country to get released, though.
And that would be his second chance to present evidence, when there's some hearing via either the U.S. or his home country to show proof of his status and/or disprove the basis for his detention so as to obtain release from custody.
faceh
29d ago
I think they're at least entitled to get a hearing as to whether they were legally entitled to be in the U.S., and to contest any grounds the U.S. used to remove them, on that basis.
I'm NOT certain if it then follows that they can demand that the U.S. return them back to U.S. soil.
What would probably result in that case is that they get released from El Salvadoran custody and then can buy a plane ticket back on their own dime. Not certain though. The whole idea is that Green card status is a privilege that is granted by the U.S. government and exists only so long as the government chooses. Its not a strict entitlement.
Wouldn't that solve the issue? They got their due process (albeit not on U.S. soil) and are not barred from re-entering the U.S. if they want, since they still have the green card.
Again admitting that its Draconian to sweep up nonviolent, legal 'guests' and 'visitors' alongside verifiable criminals.
BUT I WOULD ONCE AGAIN SUGGEST THAT SUCH PEOPLE CAN PETITION THEIR HOME COUNTRY FOR REDRESS.
It is the sworn testimony of the relevant ICE Field Director that they knew at the time they removed him that it was unlawful and they did it anyway. Due to an "administrative error." There is not any controversy about Abrego Garcia's status or whether the government could lawfully deport him to El Salvador.
I quibble with that reading of it. It isn't clear that the 'administrative error' was discovered before the guy was actually removed. The implication that he was removed on a 'good faith' basis says to me that whomever actually removed him thought the order was valid, and somebody else later noticed the mistake. I'm not taking them at their word, though.
But either way, the guy isn't required to be kept on U.S. soil, and I don't KNOW of any law (it might exist, but a google search and ChatGPT query didn't find it) that would require that the U.S. bring him back to U.S. soil.
Maybe they stop paying for his detention, he's released into El Salvador, and he can pay for a flight back?
I will reiterate: why doesn't he request assistance from his home country where he actually has citizenship?
The whole question is "is there any order a court could issue that would cause El Salvador to return the relevant individual?" If the answer is "yes" then the government loses on redressability.
Uh, not quite.
The Court has to have some statutory or common law authority on which to base an Order. Judges sometimes just issue orders to do things without such basis, and parties sometimes comply with it, but if the Court says "you are hereby directed to stop paying for the detention of this person on the basis of my own personal authority/interpretation of the law" then he's really overstepped.
This gets to the idea that Courts have very, VERY little power to intervene in foreign affairs matters, which are virtually unreviewable since they involve Plenary powers of the executive branch. Even SCOTUS doesn't claim authority to mess around with treaties entered by the Executive. If the President enters an agreement with a foreign government, Courts are usually not going to step in and interfere with that, for separation of powers reasons. Directly ordering the Executive to stop payments to a foreign government probably violates separation of powers.
(This is also why the use of the Alien Enemies Act is pretty likely to pass muster, although that relies on his military authority)
Ordering the Executive to carry out his duties under CHAPTER 23 §1732 and thus "to demand of that [foreign] government the reasons of such imprisonment; and if it appears to be wrongful and in violation of the rights of American citizenship, the President shall forthwith demand the release of such citizen..." is just enforcing the legislature's intent and making the government follow its own rules.
So the order would have to be based on some legal entitlement to compel the U.S. government to do or stop doing something.
What statute exists that authorizes a non-citizen to compel the U.S. to take ANY steps whatsoever regarding their imprisonment in another country?
If we don't care about such basis, then the Judge might as well just unilaterally say "I declare that this person is a U.S. citizen for all pursuits and purposes and is thus entitled to be returned to the U.S. immediately."
But I suspect you'd agree that is beyond the pale?
faceh
29d ago
I've also been trying to ascertain why they need to remain on U.S. soil to receive "due process."
Can't find anything that states that they have to be present in the U.S. for it to 'count.'
The part where they're removed to a different country isn't going to inherently prevent them from getting a hearing as to their legal status in the U.S.
What it does presumably do is make it almost pointless to pursue a hearing they know they'd lose.
The procedural steps you denigrate are important, as here, to ensure that such a person is actually removeable!
Correct! Except I'm not 'denigrating' them, I'm pointing out that by the migrants skipping procedure, they've made it that much harder to employ due process protections.
If they didn't skip the steps when entering the country, it would be MUCH easier to determine their rights and status under the law! Government would have some record of their entry, they'd presumably be able to present some tangible evidence of their status, and they might actually have a case file open to process their claims to stay here.
So I'm not all that surprised that the Admin is shortcutting the "remove them from the country" part by taking advantage of the fact that they lack strong proof of their entitlement to remain here.
What would be different about this analysis if Abrego Garcia were a citizen?
Because a U.S. Citizen would actually have a cognizable entitlement to make the government follow through on a 'duty' that they can implore the U.S. Government to actually act on, via the U.S. Court system.
To wit:
it shall be the duty of the President forthwith to demand of that government the reasons of such imprisonment; and if it appears to be wrongful and in violation of the rights of American citizenship, the President shall forthwith demand the release of such citizen...
"I am a U.S. Citizen held in a Foreign Prison, there is no justification for holding me, do your job and take the steps to get me out."
Vs. a foreign national trying to use a U.S. Court to force a foreign goverment to do something. When said foreign national should presumably be asking their HOME COUNTRY for help. Why are they demanding the U.S. take action rather than their home country?
No, a U.S. Court has no jurisdiction over a foreign sovereign government, but they can order the U.S. to comply with its own laws and do the thing where it retrieves a U.S. citizen from Foreign custody. Which should be pretty easy when the U.S. is the one that is paying to keep them there.
As we're finding out, though, that's a precarious thing for a Court to do when the Executive does not want to follow their instructions and has some legal basis for ignoring/bypassing them.
I just don't think there's an argument for bypassing procedures for U.S. Citizens.
I do not see any reason why the government could not make an identical argument if an "administrative error" meant they deported a United States citizen.
Here's a small hint, U.S. Citizens are 'owed' certain 'duties' by 'their' (key word) Government. Non-citizens (once they've been determined to be such) are not.
Here's the actual Federal Law on the matter:
https://uscode.house.gov/view.xhtml?path=/prelim@title22/chapter23&edition=prelim
And the quote:
§1731. Protection to naturalized citizens abroad
All naturalized citizens of the United States while in foreign countries are entitled to and shall receive from this Government the same protection of persons and property which is accorded to native-born citizens.
Bonus points:
§1732. Release of citizens imprisoned by foreign governments
Whenever it is made known to the President that any citizen of the United States has been unjustly deprived of his liberty by or under the authority of any foreign government, it shall be the duty of the President forthwith to demand of that government the reasons of such imprisonment; and if it appears to be wrongful and in violation of the rights of American citizenship, the President shall forthwith demand the release of such citizen...
Granted, what this looks like in practice is up for debate. What does "unjustly deprived" mean?
I'll reiterate the point I already made that I think the only way the Administration gets any heavy pushback on these actions is if they accidentally deport an actual U.S. citizen, who is then tangibly, physically harmed or killed while in custody, where-ever that is.
I actually agree that these measures are pretty draconian, but its hard to feel like "due process" is a major concern.
It'd be MUCH, MUCH easier to get Due Process if these folks, you know, followed the process and entered the country via the channels established to keep track of them and grant them permission to be here, so they can have a 'known' status.
"I intentionally skipped the procedural steps that would have established my right to stay in the country, but don't you DARE skip the procedural steps that would delay my inevitable removal from the country" is not a winning argument, I daresay.
I can see the argument that 'labor' as a class is somehow fungible and that it is best to allow labor to flow to where it is most needed/most cost effective, even across borders. If there's farm work that needs to be done in the U.S., and ample farm workers in Mexico, then you can acquire mutual gains through trade! So 'free trade' does, to some degree, imply free movement of laborers, which implies some level of immigration.
But the apparent reality is that the benefits of most immigration, particularly lower skilled, accrue primarily to the upper and political classes, while costs are borne by the relatively low classes and strains infrastructure for everyone. That time Desantis flew 50 migrants into Martha's Vineyard and the entire town basically declared a state of emergency to get them out ASAP really drove that home. The Migrant hotels in New York also bolstered the point, we don't even have to get into exaggerated stories of Haitians in Ohio to see the issue.
But this should still be easy-ish to fix within the rules of our system, just be willing to deport troublemakers, and shift some of the burdens/costs to the upper classes too so they internalize the cost of their policies and adjust them to make them more efficient. But like almost every other Liberal Shibboleth, it became a HUMAN RIGHTS ISSUE that ISN'T SUBJECT TO DEBATE.
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