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Political recent trends by Zetpress? As the United States formally proposed tariffs on $50 billion worth of Chinese products, including flat-screen televisions, medical devices, aircraft parts and batteries, China countered with tariffs on $50 billion worth of American goods from states that overwhelmingly voted for President Trump. While advisers to the president initially tried to mitigate concerns over an impending trade war, Mr. Trump doubled down late Thursday by announcing that he would formally consider additional tariffs on $100 billion worth of Chinese products in response to China’s retaliation. The escalating trade conflict may have given the administration additional motivation to move more quickly to resolve the North American Free Trade Agreement — another trade deal the president has consistently attacked.

On September 16 the editorial board of the New York Times did the impossible. It said something nice about President Trump. “The normalization of relations between Israel and two Arab states, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain, is, on the face of it, a good and beneficial development,” the editors wrote. They even went so far as to say that the “Trump administration deserves credit for brokering it.” I had to read that sentence twice to make sure I wasn’t dreaming. Perhaps the world really is ending.

US Foreign politics and Brexit 2020 latest : Americans are likely to greet this news with bemused puzzlement. How is all of this not already the case? After all, free trade between the states has been the sine qua non of American nationhood since the ratification of the Constitution in 1787. In fact, the regulation of interstate commerce was the primary role envisioned for Congress by the Founders. Furthermore, trade deals signed by the Federal government have always embraced the whole of the American market. How can a nation-state even exist without these basic building blocks of national sovereignty?

In every instance we adhered to the process explicitly laid out in the Constitution: The president has the constitutional duty to nominate; the Senate has the constitutional obligation to provide advice and consent. It is written plainly in the Constitution that both presidents and senators swear an oath to uphold and defend. Is Biden saying that McConnell should ignore his sacred constitutional duty? Biden knew then, as he knows now, that there’s no constitutional duty, nor is there any precedent, either prohibiting or requiring Republicans to fill a vacancy. Nor is there any prohibition (as nearly every Democrat has already argued) against “rushing” such a nomination. Three Supreme Court justices have been confirmed with less than 45 days — including Ginsburg, who was nominated by a Democrat and confirmed by a Democrat-majority Senate. As my colleague Dan McLaughlin points out in meticulous historical detail, every real norm points to the Republicans’ filling the vacancy. Discover more info on https://zetpress.com/.