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Culture War Roundup for the week of October 27, 2025

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In other words, the President applied a legal tariff, did not do an export tax, using trade authorities granted by Congress.

He applied tariffs; whether they are legal or not is still in question. Several courts have ruled otherwise. But it's not a slam dunk either way. I'm fairly sure that provision has been used for tariffs before, but even if that is in itself legal (and the appropriate Court of Appeals has said not), at least some of Trump's are different in relevant ways.

I'd say he definitely did do an export tax. Telling Nvidia they could only do their exports if they paid the government 15% is an export tax. It's often said that the power to tax is the power to destroy; Trump is reversing that here by using the power to destroy in order to tax (which is a lot of what governments do). This would be likely be legal, except for the Constitutional prohibition on export taxes. However, it's unlikely to get to court for (ordinary, not Trump-special) procedural reasons (no one who objects has standing -- 15% is perfectly acceptable to both Nvidia and China).

He's doing approximately the same thing with the H-1B fee, only there there's no constitutional question and some people do have standing. I think that SHOULD get struck down under the major questions doctrine or a similar argument, but that's going through the courts as normal. There is a Congress-built structure to admit or refuse aliens, and Trump is using an "emergency out" clause to build his own regulatory and fee structure on top, out of whole cloth. Seems like exactly the sort of thing "major questions" should cover.