Trump’s Tariffs: SCOTUS, and the Impact on International Trade Law & the American People

Episode Notes

Transcript

Raj Bhala:

It boils down to one, and I call that xenophobic Archy that this administration does not like, certainly does not trust foreign producer exporters, foreign governments, international supply chains, and that’s the xenophobia and the Archy. A-U-T-A-R-K-Y is an economic term and it means no trade. The idea is to reduce trade and become self-reliance, self-sufficient, and I think you put the two together and what’s really going on in terms of a bottom line justification is you can’t trust foreigners. And we got to bring back jobs and incomes onshore and reshore to the United States. So forget about globalization. Let’s do everything at home.

Announcer:

Welcome to the award-winning podcast, Lawyer 2 Lawyer with J. Craig Williams, bringing you the latest legal news and observations with the leading experts in the legal profession. You are listening to Legal Talk Network.

J. Craig Williams:

Welcome to Lawyer 2 Lawyer on the Legal Talk Network. I’m Craig Williams, coming to you from Southern California. I read a blog named May It Please the court and have three books out titled How To Get Sued the Sled and my newest book. How would You Decide 10 famous Trials That Changed History? You can find all three on Amazon. In addition, our new podcast miniseries in Dispute, 10 famous trials that changed history is currently featured here on the Legal Talk Network and on your favorite podcasting app. Please listen and subscribe well at the start of his second term. President Trump has imposed a series of tariffs affecting nearly all goods imported into the country, causing much controversy. These tariffs on goods from countries all over the world include steel, aluminum cars, auto parts, furniture, pharmaceuticals, and a host of other things. Well, since Trump’s announcement, there have been many legal challenges regarding these tariffs.

Back in August, the United States Appeals Court ruled that Trump’s tariffs were in fact illegal. In response, the Trump administration asked the Supreme Court to overturn that decision. SCOTUS will hear arguments in this case in November, so will SCOTUS rule Trump’s tariffs are illegal and who are these tariffs actually impacting? Today on lawyer, lawyer will spotlight tariffs. We will discuss President Trump’s use of tariffs, SCOTUS and tariffs, the court of international trade and their potential impact on international trade law, Indian law, and the American people. And without further ado, we’re joined by our very special guest, attorney, author and Professor Raj Bhala . He’s a university distinguished professor at the University of Kansas School of Law, born in Toronto of Indian and Celtic Heritage. Raj is one of the world’s top most scholars and teachers in international trade law and has worked in 29 countries and traveled to another 21 countries. He’s also prominent in the fields of Islamic law and literature. Raj has also testified before the United Kingdom Parliament, the International Trade Committee on pre-trade agreements and human rights. Welcome to the show, Raj.

Raj Bhala:

Thank you very much. It’s an honor and pleasure to be here.

J. Craig Williams:

Well, we are equally thrilled to have you on the show this morning, Raj, but tell us how did you get so interested in international law? What was the spark?

Raj Bhala:

The spark I think was the entry into force of NAFTA in 1994 and the birth of the World Trade Organization in 1995. I was at some practitioner conferences in Washington DC and I was a new professor at the time and it struck me that the world had changed or the world was about to change radically with these new free or freer trade agreements. And I thought we do not have in the American curriculum, the American law school curriculum courses on international trade law that are designed to prepare the students for this new world of NAFTA and the WTO. So I thought let’s try and translate these new treaties into the curriculum and thus began my courses in international trade law and advanced international trade law, and they were a natural outgrowth of what I had been teaching in international banking law and what I had practiced at the Federal Reserve in New York International Banking and Payments law. So really it was external events that catalyzed my interest in trade and then my desire to serve the students, keep our curriculum relevant and keep it moving forward.

J. Craig Williams:

That’s a really interesting backstory. So let’s get right into it. We’re here to talk about tariffs today. So let’s define what a tariff is, how it works, who gets what money out of the tariff.

Raj Bhala:

A tariff is a tax also called a duty or a levy or an imposition on merchandise that is imposed at the border of the importing country by the custom service of that importing country. And so for example, if the merchandise coming into the United States from China is worth $100 and our tariff is 10%, then we apply the 10% a valor value duty to a hundred dollars and we get a $10 tariff. Who pays that tariff? Well, the importer of record, the IOR is legally liable to pay that tariff. The IOR of course is going to try and pass the tariff on to you and me, the retail consumer or the wholesale buyer. If it cannot, if the market is too competitive or if what economists call elasticities of price and substitution don’t allow for that passage down the commercial chain, then the IOR might have to eat the tariff cutting into the importer’s profit.

Possibly the importer of record may try and push the tariff back upstream to the Chinese producer exporter who may be affiliated with the importer or may be independent. So basically we’ve got a tax imposed at the border on merchandise that is originating from another country and the parties that are most likely to pay it are going to be the retail consumer, the importer itself and or because it could be all three, the producer exporter. And I’ll jump and anticipate your next question is what’s the purpose of this tariff? Why do we do this? Well, we do it to collect revenue. That’s the first reason. And in our nation’s history, tariffs were the primary source of government revenue right up until 1913 or so when the Supreme Court said an income tax is constitutional, the tariff was our main source of revenue. And if you’ve seen the play Hamilton, he talks about tariffs and I think four of the first five acts of our new Congress after 1780 or starting in 1789 were tariff bills and tariffs funded some of the nation’s great projects including building West Point and the Naval Academy and funding exploration in the west and buying Louisiana from the French.

But after the income tax took hold, the contribution of tariffs to the overall government revenue was about 1% and that’s where it is until inauguration day, January 20th, 25. The other purpose of tariffs obviously is to protect a domestic producer of a like product. Now by that what I mean is let’s suppose in our hypothetical that China is shipping steel to the United States. What’s the point of the 10% tariff? Well, in addition to collecting revenue from the Chinese shipper, we’re also trying to protect the steel workers, the steel companies, US Steel now owned by Neon steel in Pennsylvania and Ohio. And so that 10% tariff that we impose on the foreign like product steel will allow our domestic steel company to raise its prices up to say 9, 8, 9, almost 10%, and it can take that additional revenue from its own higher prices, plug it back into factories in Ohio and Pennsylvania to get more competitive. So you’ve got two basic motives, collect revenue and protect your domestic producers so that they can hopefully get more competitive against foreign exporters. But as I’m sure we’re going to come to terrorists have taken on a whole new dimension with the first and second Trump administrations and that’s national security.

J. Craig Williams:

Right. I want to go back for just a moment to your reference to Hamilton because I want to start with that history. I mean, we had a pretty sour relationship at the Boston Tea Party with tariffs. How did we ever get from the point where we throwing tea overboard because of tariffs to actually endorsing tariffs as part of our own government?

Raj Bhala:

Well, this is a great story in our nation’s history and that is that Alexander Hamilton in his 1791 report on the manufacturers said, there is no way the infant industries in the United States industries that make iron or muskets or shoes or textiles can compete with the mature industries of the mighty British empire. We’ve just thrown off that yoke of colonialism. But of course the British still want to trade with the new American Republic and Hamilton is saying, well, we’ve got infant industries we need to protect, so let’s impose high levies on British and other foreign merchandise. And so he does that and he’s actually what we would call today, not only an advocate of infant industry tariff protection, but also industrial policy, something we’re seeing both the Biden and Trump administration have very much been active along with ironically communist China that is President Xi Jin Jinping’s party in China is engaged in that kind of industrial policy.

And then just to forward the history a little bit, many of the battles in Congress during the 18 hundreds were over tariffs. The North wanted higher tariffs to protect those infant industries. The South preferred lower tariffs because its agricultural products were being shipped to Europe and the South, the southern states feared that if we had high tariffs against European industrial products, the Europeans would retaliate against southern agricultural exports into the EU going into Europe. And there’s another parallel historically, and that is the idea of retaliation that Europe or Canada or China will retaliate and some have against higher US tariffs.

J. Craig Williams:

We get right into what tariffs are going on today. As you mentioned with the president Trump’s two administrations, but he’s kind of based his rationale for tariffs on stopping migrants and illegal drugs reaching the United States, which seems to be kind of the opposite of what you’ve been just saying about supporting infant industries and supporting American industries. What’s going on? What’s the rationale?

Raj Bhala:

That’s exactly right, and I want to make sure I say very clearly. Nothing that I offer is in any way meant to be partisan. It’s utterly nonpartisan and it’s definitely not meant to be ad hominem. I try and be very lawyer-like called balls and strikes. Now in this case, as you quite rightly said, the president has offered a number of justifications for his tariffs in January, 2025 in his America first trade policy memorandum. We saw most of them. One of them as you mentioned, is that we need tariffs to compel Canada, China, and Mexico to crack down on the flow of fentanyl across the southern and northern borders. Another justification which he had actually discussed and threaten in his first term is that we need tariffs to again compel Mexico and Canada and China to crack down on illegal migrants, undocumented aliens coming into the US across the two borders.

Then we’ve also seen, and it’s manifest in that inauguration, they America first trade policy memorandum. Another justification which is that we need tariffs to correct bilateral trade imBhala nces that the US has a bilateral trade deficit with say China or with Canada with a number of countries. So if we raise tariffs, then we will import less and hopefully export more to those countries and the trade Bhala nce will be reBhala nced hopefully in our favor still. Another justification has been that national security, that the trade imBhala nces and the immigration flows and fentanyl are undermining the safety and security of Americans. They’re eroding our industrial base. We’re losing jobs and in many sectors that are critical, for example, steel or aluminum or cars, car parts. Just a couple of nights ago, the president imposed 25% tariffs on medium sized and heavy trucks. Another example of the national security justification is copper.

I will point out that he’s using it as we lawyers say perhaps in a way that’s sliding down a slippery slope because it’s been used also for wood lumber and lumber derivatives like kitchen cabinets. And so some questioned that justification as well as the others. I think, and this is my own view, that what’s really going on here, when you look across all the different justifications that have been offered over the last several months, it boils down to one, and I call that xenophobic Archy, that this administration more than so in its first iteration, does not like, certainly does not trust foreign producer exporters, foreign governments, international supply chains, and that’s the xenophobia and the archy, and that’s not autocracy. Autocracy is a political term, political science term, Archy, A-U-T-A-R-K-Y is an economic term and it means no trade. The idea is to reduce trade and become, and I think you put the two together and what’s really going on in terms of a bottom line justification is you can’t trust foreigners and we got to bring back jobs and incomes onshore and reshore to the United States.

So forget about globalization, let’s do everything at home. That I think cuts across all the justifications. If you go through each one of them individually, it’s very difficult to justify them. I mean, we can talk about bilateral trade imBhala nces and why economists teach us that those really don’t matter. Switzerland is a good example. We have a bilateral trade deficit with Switzerland, but that’s mainly because of watches Gold and chocolates and Switzerland is hardly a national security threat to the United States. So we can go through each one of them and say, well, nah, that doesn’t quite make sense. So there must be something deeper. Right? We lawyers always search for the deeper true explanation or to talk in terms of law and literature in Shakespeare, we always try and differentiate appearances from reality, and I think those earlier justifications that are stated, our appearances, the reality is xenophobic archy.

J. Craig Williams:

Well, at this time, let’s take a quick break to hear a word from our sponsors. We’ll be right back and welcome back to Lawyer 2 Lawyer. I’m joined by attorney author and professor Raj Bhala . He’s a university distinguished professor at the University of Kansas School of Law. You just wrote an article in the Lawrence Times about urinalysis of the 50% tariff that United States imposed on Indian goods in August, 2025. Talk to us about that.

Raj Bhala:

Yeah, and I should say that was an article that was very nicely done about a great privilege like being on your program. I had giving a university distinguished professor lectureship and the article mentioned that, as you said, the 50% tariffs on India. Well, the 50% tariffs on India are divided into two parts. There’s a 25% tariff, the reciprocity tariff, the idea that India has been untreated us unfairly because it has high tariffs on agricultural products against US agricultural products, and it has other protectionist measures that have gone on for decades that are impeding US exports into India. So that’s 25% reciprocity tariff, and then the other 25% is imposed because India continues to buy oil from Russia and the US alleges that those oil purchases give Russia revenue. It needs to fuel Russia’s war in Ukraine. Now, the Indian case is really interesting because there’s truth on both sides.

The Americans are right. I mean India has been recalcitrant ever since the 1986 to 1994. Uruguay round about bringing down its internal barriers, especially on agriculture. The Indian side will say however, that the Americans continue to subsidize directly or indirectly their farmers. And to quote a famous Indian trade minister who he once said, the Indian farmer can compete against the American farmer, but he cannot compete against the US Treasury. So there’s that battle that’s been going on on the Russian oil. Certainly the Americans are not wrong. I mean the Russians are getting revenues from India. In fact, it’s even been alleged that the Indians are buying cheap Russian oil and refining it and selling it at a profit for themselves. From the Indian side, the Soviet Union during the Cold War was always a steadfast friend of India vis-a-vis Pakistan. Of course, Indian Pakistan are sadly rivals since birth since the British partition in 1947 of the Indian subcontinent and the Soviets always supplied India with the weaponry it needed to deal with Pakistan.

And in fact, in 1971 in drag, Gandhi signed a friendship treaty, a 20 year friendship treaty Prime minister in drag Gandhi of India with the Soviets and the Indians have always regarded the Soviets and now the Russians as an easy friend, meaning that the Russians, Soviets don’t ask for much in return, whereas they regard the Americans as always wanting a quid pro quo, like, we’ll give you the weapons, but then we want a base. Now from the American side, again, it’s a fascinating complex case study. The Americans are like, wait a second. You are the world’s largest free market democracy. You’ve never missed an election. You’ve had peaceful transitions of power, an election cycle, right? You are the world’s or one of the world’s most religiously pluralistic countries. We have warm relations thanks to non-resident Indians in the us and our big issue that we share, our common values are to confront China, if not contain China.

You are the one country India that has fought an invasion by China in October, 1962, roughly during the Cuban Missile Crisis, and you still have thousands of troops at the line of actual control in the Himalayas. You confront them and they have killed many Indian troops. So why are you giving us a hard time on farm market access or buying Russian oil? And the Indians will say, they won’t put it in these terms, but they’ll basically say, we’re really non-aligned. We don’t want to be pressured into one camp or another. And India is big enough to say that most of the Asian countries will also say the same thing like Singapore don’t force us to choose. But that’s sort of unpacking a little bit of those 50% tariffs on India

J. Craig Williams:

This summer. As summer ended, I had the opportunity to drive across the country from Cape Cod back to California. And as I drove through the bread basket and the farm states from Ohio out to the Rockies, and having lived on a farm before, I’m somewhat familiar with the sequence of the way that farming occurs. And I saw soybean field after soybean field and cornfield after cornfield that had not been harvested. And I can’t believe these farmers are letting these crops rot in the field, but what’s going on because of tariffs, this is not just as you said, you were talking about putting soldiers on the line. Well, here we’ve got farmers. What’s going to happen

Raj Bhala:

In farm country? I think these tariffs are generally a disaster, and soybeans are a great example. American soybean farmers, including here in the Midwest and Kansas, the ones, the fields that you drove through, they were traditional suppliers to China and to other countries against whom The second Trump administration has now put significant tariff barriers. And one way those foreign countries like China have retaliated is to shift their purchases away from US suppliers, US farmers, Kansas farmers, Missouri farmers to Brazil and other third countries. So we call that basically trade diversion. Because of the high reciprocity and other tariffs that the Trump has put on our traditional export markets, their governments are orchestrating third country suppliers away from us. And that accounts very much for why you saw what you saw driving across the country. It should not have come as a surprise, if I may say to anyone, because this was laid out in the presidential campaign and it was laid out in the America first trade policy memo that this is what the administration was going to do.

Now, the administration’s response is, we will consider some kind of adjustment or a bailout or however you want to stylize the term for the farmers. The problem with that is it may be inadequate for one thing, it doesn’t solve the long-term problem of the lost market. When an American farmer loses the China market or the India market, those big markets to Brazil, the supply chain shift and they’re hard to recoup. That’s one problem. That adjustment or bailout is not going to solve the longer term problem. A second problem is it gets the government in the situation of intervening in the economy more than it might otherwise. I mean, this is traditionally a party, the Republican party that prefers free markets, and now we’re seeing all kinds of encroachments, industrial policy encroachments like buying 10% of the shares of some companies. And then there’s the third problem, and that is that the likes of India and other export markets, China have entered into free trade agreements.

India has signed a free trade agreement with the United Kingdom with Australia. China has its own regional comprehensive economic partnership. Canada has a breathtaking array of good free trade agreements. So does Mexico, whereas the US has a pulled out of the transpacific partnership. Just yesterday with Prime Minister Kearney, president Trump questioned whether or not the US would really be serious about renegotiating the U-S-M-C-A NAFTA 2.0. So if you’re the American farmer, you are looking at a situation where your export markets first are shrinking because of the tariff wars, second trade diversion, third, no free trade agreements, whereas China or India or Canada, they are getting, those farmers are getting duty free quota free access through their free trade agreement networks. And our farmers are being prejudiced, if you will, by the unlevel field of not having duty free entry into the Chinese or Indian markets.

J. Craig Williams:

Let’s talk for a moment about the legal side of this. I mean, this lawsuits have been filed, they’ve wound their way up through the courts. I believe just recently the Court of International Trade made a declaration that the tariffs were illegal, or at least some of them were illegal. Surely it’s going to go up to a Trump friendly SCOTUS for review. Farmers are looking for relief. Are we looking at another Boston Tea Party here? Yes. What’s going on? What’s going on with SCOTUS and the law

Raj Bhala:

Here? Yeah, no, that’s a great question. Yes, the Court of International Trade in New York sided against the Trump administration saying that the 1977 International Emergency Economic Powers Act, the I EPA does not authorize the president to impose reciprocity tariffs, the ones that are being used for the trade imBhala nces and fentanyl and immigration. And then recently by a seven to four decision, the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit affirmed the CIT ruling against the Trump administration, but stayed implementation of its order pending review by the Supreme Court. So in a rare instance where a Supreme Court is hearing Supreme Court hearing a trade case, we’ve got one in November, that case will be heard by the court and then we’ll see when a decision may come out. It could be November to June. Let me start off with a heretical statement, though. Heretical is a lawyer and an officer of the court.

It doesn’t matter what the Supreme Court decides whether they rule against or in favor of the Trump administration, and that’s because the president has four other statutory authorities to use to levy the tariffs if the Supreme Court rules against him. If the Supreme Court says the language of I, EPA does not permit you to levy these reciprocity tariffs, the president can look to section 2 32 of the Trade Expansion Act of 1962. He’s already been using that for those sector specific national security tariffs. He can use Section 3 0 1 of the Trade Act of 1974 that he’s used for the China tariffs back in the first administration. The Biden administration has used it, and he recently won a case the Trump administration did under Section 3 0 1. He’s also got section 1 22 of the 1974 act, which authorizes him to raise tariffs up to, I think 15% for 150 days.

And then finally he’s got section 3 38 of the Tariff Act of 1930, which allows them to take action, never been used before, but allows ’em to take action against unfair foreign trade. And he knows that the administration has got that backup plan ready to go further. Even if he didn’t use any of those four statutory authorities, he can go back to Applyable Congress and have a EPA amended to authorize him to impose the reciprocity tariffs on the merits. Obviously, I’m not a constitutional expert, but let me say this, maybe by way of Obiter dicta, the language of a EPA says this, the president can regulate importation in order to deal with an unusual and extraordinary threat to US foreign policy, national security or the economy that emanates wholly in part from abroad. Now, unpacking that language are fentanyl, immigration and trade Bhala nces, unusual and extraordinary threats.

Arguably, they’re not. The last overall trade surplus the United States had was in 1975, and we’ve had a problem of controlling our borders for a long time. But the president is given a great deal of deference in deciding what’s a threat, and he can credibly argue to the Supreme Court that, Hey, at this point, they are so huge, if you will, that they are threats. Then the language of regulate importation. The argument against the Trump administration is that the A statute and legislative history really don’t say tax tariff duty, the language you started off our interview on. Well, that’s true, but if we think commonsensically, if a EPA has been used by presidents starting with Carter to ban importation of goods from threatening countries like Iran, and if you can ban importation of a product under the language regulate importation, why can’t you put a tariff on it?

A tariff is something less than a ban. It’s less of an impediment commonsensically if I would be asking, Hey, anti-Trump counsel in front of me in the Supreme Court, not anti-Trump, but on the other side, I don’t mean anti-Trump in the sense of politically, but arguing against the Trump administration. Why is it that what’s wrong with this logic that the language says regulated importation? Regulated importation has been used by every president since Carter to ban imports A for Shiri. You can tariff imports. So we’ll see happens. Scotus watchers are probably looking at who’s who. There’s some two or three votes clearly on one side, two or three on the other side, and we’ll see in the middle. Let me say one other thing. I think it’s such an important point that you’ve raised. We lawyers are very adept at taking a set of facts and characterizing them in different ways.

Well, our set of facts or legal facts is a epa, and one way that has traditionally been characterized is that it is a law about tariffs. The issue is separation of powers and the foreign commerce clause. Article one, section eight, clause three of the Constitution that empowers Congress, not the president to levy tariffs, the President does it only under delegated authority from Congress. So that’s the framing of the case against the Trump administration that a EPA is about trade and tariffs. But the other characterization is no, A EPA is a national security law. Look at how it’s been used against Iran, North Korea, Nicaragua, all kinds of countries for national security purposes. And so different characterizations, both plausible of the same statute. My own view is they’re both correct. It is about national security. It is about tariffs, and it’ll be of course for the Supreme Court to decide that’s why they get paid the big bucks.

J. Craig Williams:

Let’s take a quick break to hear a word from our sponsors. We’ll be right back and welcome back to Lawyer 2 Lawyer. I’m back with attorney author and Professor Raj Bhala . He’s a university distinguished professor at the University of Kansas School of Law. We’ve talked about farmers, we’ve talked about India, Canada, Mexico, international countries, Russia. Let’s talk about the people here in the United States. What is it that’s going to affect us, you and me with tariffs? Is there anything we can do about it to avoid it, or is it just so omnipresent that we can’t?

Raj Bhala:

Yeah, that’s a heartrending question because obviously the wealthy have sufficient disposable income to either pay tariffs or find substitute products or even spend part of their year overseas where they don’t have to suffer tariffs. But working class families and lower middle class families, families that are trying to put their kids through college with shrinking college financial aid budgets suffer in that sense. The tariff can be regressive, and I see that every day. I think we all do. And the evidence, the data from the government on inflation, producer price index, consumer price index, tariffs are finding their way into higher price levels. They’re not the only cause, but they are a cause. So there is pain, and even the president has said, there will be some pain, but it’ll be worth it. And when he says that, what I think he means is, well, there’ll be increased jobs in the long run because again, we’re onshoring or reshoring the production of kitchen cabinets, aluminum for beer cans or medium or heavy sized trucks.

I’m not so sure that there will be that kind of halian future because the US has lost its comparative advantage in several of those sectors, and there’s nothing wrong with that. This is what Adam Smith, and more importantly David Ricardo, or more, I should say, more to the point on comparative advantage, David Ricardo taught us a long time ago that comparative advantages evolve over time. The cost of bringing back some of those sectors would be prohibitively high. Let’s use coffee for example. We put 50% reciprocity tariffs on coffee from Brazil. And if you’re like me, I mean, I just love coffee. Well, one third of all, at least coffee imports in the United States come from Brazil and Starbucks sources all of its coffee, all of its Arabica beans. It only wants Arabica beans. The better quality ones, all of them come from Brazil. So you just put a 50% tariff on that.

Well, what’s our alternative? We grow coffee only in the state of Hawaii. It’s the only place we really can grow. And Hawaii’s production has been declining for various reasons, and Hawaii couldn’t possibly substitute for Brazil or for that matter, Vietnam or Columbia. So it’s not realistic to think we can bring back production where we just don’t have or lost a comparative advantage. There’s another thing you say, what to do about this. Well, your program is a wonderful example, I think, of what to do. And that’s educate. Try and educate the American public about what tariffs are and what their impacts are so that they can make more intelligent informed choices, whether it’s politically or economically or socially as they go forward in their lives. This is not to scold anyone, but I think we all know that the level of understanding of how tariffs work and how the international trading system works generally is not as high as it should be. And so programs like yours and good media sources are, I think a great way to do it, to help educate the public. And of course, if you’re going to law school, take international trade law courses,

J. Craig Williams:

Of course. Well, Raj, we’ve just about reached the end of our programs. It’s time to wrap up, get your final thoughts about this and let us know about you.

Raj Bhala:

My most important final thought, of course, is to thank you very much for this wonderful opportunity. I’m really grateful for it. Another thought I would offer is that we are facing what Pope Francis called in a very different context in 2015, not an era of change, but a change of eras, a change of eras. We are now living in a change from a broad consensus in favor of free trade and trade liberalization to protectionism, mercantilism, or what I’ve called xenophobic archy. We’re also living in a change of eras away from the international rule of law where we championed NAFTA and the WTO. What incentivized me per your first question to get into this business. We’ve moved away from that to unilateralism, to our own proclamations and executive orders, regardless of whether they violate international trade rules. And they do. They violate the reciprocity tariffs violate the most favored nation and tariff binding rules in the general agreement on tariffs and trade the gat.

And we’re also seeing a change of eras in terms of diplomatic norms. Trade negotiators can get pretty heated inside a closed room, but trade negotiations generally are conducted in a civil manner. It’s a good problem to have when you’re fighting about tariffs as opposed to nuclear weapons or violent conflicts like in the Middle East or in Eastern Europe. And yet, the way our discussion has become, our discourse has become really ugly. It’s become very personal. It’s not lawyer like anymore in the best sense. So these changes of era economically in terms of the rule of law, in terms of diplomacy, that’s what we’re living through. So I would leave us with that thought to contemplate and is that the world, that kind of world we want our kids to live in? I mean, that’s, we law professors spend our time on trying to teach good, professional, ethical, legal behavior and support the rule of law domestically and internationally and to make wise economic choices, and that’s the change of ears that I think I’m working in now at the University of Kansas.

J. Craig Williams:

Well, Raj, don’t forget to let us know about your law and literature website.

Raj Bhala:

I sure will. We’ve got the first, I think, in the World Law School affiliated website on law and literature. We invite anyone who is interested in writing a working paper on law and literature. It can be Shakespeare, it can be Kafka, it can be Maya Angelou. It can be John Don, it can be Henry James. Any intersection of law and literature with your favorite author, your favorite poet. Maybe you want to write about why Percy bi Shelley was right in saying poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world. So definitely visit that website. It’s at the University of Kansas Law School, and then contact us and we’ll be happy to consider your working paper.

J. Craig Williams:

Right. I have that as law.ku.edu/law literature.

Raj Bhala:

That’s it.

J. Craig Williams:

Great. Well, Raj, it’s been an absolute pleasure to have you on the show today. Thank you very much.

Raj Bhala:

Thank you. My pleasure.

J. Craig Williams:

Well, here are a few of my thoughts about today’s topic. I think Raj has really opened up my thought process about what tariffs are, how broadly they affect people, and what a disaster they can be, and also potentially what a benefit they can be for the United States government in terms of its funding, but it’s also isolationist and it’s very different than we’ve been used to in terms of dealing with how our country interacts with other countries. I think the lack of a free trade agreement and other country’s free trade agreements is putting us at a significant disadvantage. But then again, you’re the voter, so vote on November 4th and see what the midterms are going to turn out, whether or not we’re going to continue to have this kind of a presidency or it’s going to be more of a lame duck presidency. Well, that’s it for my rant on today’s topic. Let me know what you think. If you’d like what you heard today, please rate us on Apple Podcasts, your favorite podcasting app. You can also visit us legal talk network.com, where you can sign up for our newsletter. I’m Craig Williams. Thanks for listening. Please join us next time for another great legal topic. Remember, when you want legal think Lawyer 2 Lawyer.

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