Senate Finance Chairman Chuck Grassley said Tuesday he is pushing forward with legislation that would put a check on President Donald Trump’s trade powers.
Without criticizing Trump directly, the Iowa Republican said Congress has created a constitutional crisis by surrendering too much power to the president to impose tariffs.
“It adds up to something pretty simple: Congress has delegated too much authority to the president of the United States,” Grassley said in a call with reporters.
Grassley argued that far-reaching policy decisions such as imposing tariffs should be made by the elected representatives of the people, and that the imbalance between the executive and legislative branches of government has given the president powers that go beyond what the framers of the Constitution intended.
But he emphasized that the constitutional crisis is no fault of the current president. “There’s absolutely no constitutional crisis that this president or any other president has created,” he said. “The constitutional crisis comes from the elected representatives of the people over the last 80 years making a dictator out of the presidency … let’s say making a kingship out of the presidency of the United States.”
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