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Donald Trump could entrench a MAGA Supreme Court for a generation

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WHEN HE RAN for president in 2016, Donald Trump released two lists of potential justices to assure Republicans he would choose conservatives to fill Supreme Court vacancies. He issued a third list in 2017 and final roster in 2020—days before Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s death allowed him to cement a 6-3 conservative majority on America’s highest court.

Mr Trump recently said his campaign has turned listless because he “no longer need[s]” to shore up his conservative bona fides. Indeed, thanks to Mr Trump the court has overturned Roe v Wade, bolstered gun rights, hobbled administrative agencies, battered the wall separating church from state and all but immunised presidents from criminal prosecution. With large majorities deploring the end of Roe and the court’s popularity in the dumps, announcing plans to push the court still further to the right may not be an enticement to swing voters. Still, if he is re-elected Mr Trump may get to appoint at least two more justices, because both Justice Clarence Thomas and Justice Samuel Alito might decide to go on his watch to keep the court conservative. That would take him to a total of five justices, a feat only a handful of presidents have managed.

Who would they be? The Centre for Judicial Renewal, a wing of the American Family Association, a religious-right organisation, trumpets five candidates and warns Mr Trump off four judges he appointed to circuit courts because, among other things, one (Amul Tharpar) used a transgender litigant’s preferred pronouns and another (Neomi Rao) converted to Judaism. One of its “green rating” picks, chosen for his “biblical worldview” (one of its ten attributes of a “constitutional judge”) is James Ho, who was tapped by Mr Trump in 2017 for a seat on an appellate court—and who appeared on his 2020 Supreme Court list.

Judge Ho is the most combative jurist on the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, America’s most conservative intermediate court. Even on a tribunal that forces right-wing causes backed by dubious legal principles onto the Supreme Court’s docket, Judge Ho distinguishes himself.

In June, writing for a unanimous Supreme Court, Justice Brett Kavanaugh laid out an error in a ruling by Judge Ho and two colleagues that had rolled back access to mifepristone, an abortion medication. The pro-life doctors challenging the Food and Drug Administration’s regulations, Justice Kavanaugh explained, lacked the right to sue because the mifepristone rules had caused them no harm. No mention was made of Judge Ho’s peculiar argument that doctors who “delight in working with their unborn patients” can challenge rules governing abortion pills because they “experience an aesthetic injury” when fetuses are aborted.

The contention that doctors have standing to oppose a medication because it strips them of “a source of profound joy” is not Judge Ho’s only injection of far-fetched positions—and personal scruples—into his jurisprudence. Early in his tenure he wrote of the “moral tragedy of abortion” in a case involving a Texan law requiring the burial of fetal remains. As solicitor-general of Texas in 2009, he wrote a brief describing the right to bear arms as “the ultimate guarantor of all the other liberties enjoyed by Americans”. Two years ago, a covid public-health measure in Mississippi challenged by Golden Glow, a tanning salon, spurred Judge Ho to call for a return to Lochner v New York—the decision that struck down decades of worker protections until the Supreme Court abandoned it in 1937.

Judge Ho also regularly inserts himself into culture-war battles, boycotting graduates of Yale and Columbia for clerkships and lashing out at critics. This outspokenness beyond his chambers is in stark contrast to the more reserved man he could succeed under a second Trump presidency, Justice Thomas. At 76, he is the oldest, and longest-serving, sitting justice. But like Justice Thomas, Judge Ho, aged 51, purports to interpret the constitution in light of its original meaning. Both men seem to have idiosyncratic impressions of that meaning, often writing only for themselves to articulate a position none of their fellow jurists are willing to defend. The ties are intimate: Justice Thomas hired Mr Ho as a law clerk in 2005 and, 13 years later, administered his oath of office in the personal library of Harlan Crow, the right-wing billionaire from whom Justice Thomas has accepted luxury trips, raising  ethics concerns.

Judge Ho has a colleague on the Fifth Circuit who could also find himself elevated if the justice he clerked for in 2008—Samuel Alito—retires. Andrew Oldham, aged 46, may lack Judge Ho’s bombast, but his views on the law are just as radical. During his confirmation hearing in 2018, Judge Oldham declined to say whether Brown v Board of Education, a ruling that declared segregation in schools unconstitutional, was correctly decided. He has pursued a deregulatory agenda on the Fifth Circuit that has, at times, found friendly majorities at the Supreme Court. On October 25th, he wrote for Judge Ho and another short-list pick of the Centre for Judicial Renewal, Judge Kyle Duncan, that counting mail-in ballots postmarked by election day but received a few days later is illegal—despite the long-standing practice being adopted in nearly half of America’s states.

If Republicans take control of the White House and Senate in January, little will stand in the way of Mr Trump seating the likes of Judges Ho and Oldham. Their prospects may turn on the Senate margin; with at least a 52-48 gap, Mr Trump could afford to lose Lisa Murkowski and Susan Collins, two moderate Republicans, and still eke out enough years to entrench a MAGA Supreme Court for a generation.

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Economics

Opinion polls underestimated Donald Trump again

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FOR THE third presidential election in a row Donald Trump has stumped America’s pollsters. As results came in on election night it became clear that polls had again underestimated enthusiasm for Mr Trump in many states. In Iowa, days before the election a well-regarded poll by Ann Selzer had caused a stir by showing Kamala Harris ahead by three percentage points. In the end, Mr Trump won the state by 13 points.

Overall, the polling miss was far smaller. Polls accurately captured a close contest in the national popular vote and correctly forecast tight races in each of the battleground states. National polls erred by less than they did in 2020, and state polls improved on their dismal performances in 2020 and 2016. Yet this will be little comfort to pollsters who have been grappling with Mr Trump’s elusive supporters for years.

The Economist’s nationwide polling average found Kamala Harris leading by 1.5 percentage points, overestimating her advantage by around three points (many votes have yet to be counted), compared with an average error of 2.7 points in past cycles. State polling averages from FiveThirtyEight, a data-journalism outfit, had an average error of 3.0, smaller than the average of 4.2 points since 1976.

Chart: The Economist

But in contrast to 2016, when pollsters’ misses were concentrated in certain states, those in this cycle were nearly uniform across state and national polls. In the seven key states, polling averages underestimated Mr Trump’s margin by between 1.5 and 3.5 points (see chart). Pollsters may claim that their surveys captured the “story” of the election. But the awkward question remains: why did they underestimate Mr Trump for the third cycle in a row?

In past election cycles, pollsters have tweaked survey “weights” to make their samples of voters more representative. Although polls aim to sample the population randomly, in practice they often systematically miss certain groups. Weights are used to increase the influence of under-represented respondents. This has been especially true in recent years as response rates have plummeted.

After the 2016 election, when surveys systematically missed voters without college degrees and therefore underestimated support for Mr Trump, pollsters began accounting for respondents’ education levels. And after 2020, in an effort to ensure that Republican voters were represented, more pollsters began weighting their samples by respondents’ party registration and self-reported voting history. This caused the range of poll outcomes to narrow (weighting reduces the variance of survey results), with many pollsters finding similar results in key states and nationwide.

If there is a lesson from this year’s election, it could be that there is a limit to what weighting can solve. Although pollsters may artificially make a sample “representative” on the surface, if they do not address the root causes of differential response rates, they will not solve the underlying problem. They also introduce many subjective decisions, which can be worth almost eight points of margin in any given poll.

A pollster which gets those decisions right appears to be prophetic. But with limited transparency before the election, it is hard to know which set of assumptions each has made, and whether they are the correct ones. To their credit, the pollsters get together to conduct comprehensive post-election reviews. This year’s may be revealing. Still, without a breakthrough technology that can boost the representativeness of survey samples, weighting alone is unlikely to solve pollsters’ difficulty in getting a reliable read on what Trump voters are thinking.

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Economics

Donald Trump also won a reprieve from justice

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IT WAS A high-stakes election for all Americans, most of all Donald Trump. Had he lost, there was a fair chance that he would have gone to prison. He faces four separate sets of criminal charges, each with a prospect of jail time. Instead, once back in the White House, Mr Trump will be able to quash his two federal indictments and the two state cases against him are all but certain to be frozen.

That Mr Trump has managed to largely evade legal accountability is partly a result of his stalling for time, in anticipation of this very outcome. His strategy was aided by the Supreme Court, a third of whose justices he appointed. And yet his supporters see a justice system that is pliable and easily weaponised. To some in MAGA world, Mr Trump’s threats to train it against his political enemies now sound eminently reasonable.

The first post-election piece of business in Mr Trump’s trials will come in the hush-money case in Manhattan, where, barring further delay, he is due to be sentenced on November 26th. In May he was convicted on 34 counts of falsifying business records to conceal a payment to a porn star. Each charge carries a maximum of four years in prison. Yet there is hardly any chance of the judge imposing jail time—constitutional scholars agree that a sitting president cannot be locked up. In any event Mr Trump’s lawyers will probably ask to postpone sentencing until after his term in office ends.

Next come the two federal cases brought by Jack Smith, a special counsel in the Department of Justice (DOJ). Mr Trump stands accused of refusing to return classified documents upon leaving the White House and of attempting to overturn his defeat after the 2020 election. He denies wrongdoing in both. DOJ policy says that a president cannot be prosecuted while in office. Extinguishing these cases is simple: Mr Trump can fire Mr Smith and direct DOJ lawyers to drop them. He can do this even before his attorney-general is confirmed, notes Mary McCord, a former federal prosecutor.

In Georgia, meanwhile, Mr Trump faces charges in state court over his meddling in the 2020 election. The case is on hold while an appeals court weighs whether the prosecutor who brought the charges should be removed for alleged impropriety. If it ever gets going again, it will not include Mr Trump so long as he is the sitting president. But his 14 remaining co-defendants could still stand trial.

Then there is the civil litigation against Mr Trump for his role in the January 6th riot. Several Capitol police officers have sued him, alleging that he instigated the attack; courts are in the middle of sorting out whether his conduct is immune from civil liability. If they say it is not immune, precedent suggests that civil suits against a sitting president can proceed.

Soon enough attention will turn from Mr Trump’s legal jeopardy to that of his opponents, whom he has vowed to target. At a MAGA victory party attended by your correspondent, shortly before the conga line started, several of his supporters suggested that Joe Biden ought to drop the federal prosecutions against Mr Trump as a show of goodwill. Then one gleefully added that she would love to see their man “take the Bidens down”.

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Economics

What Trump’s historic election victory means for the global economy

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A worker is making textile export orders at a production workshop of a textile enterprise in Binzhou, China, on July 8, 2024.

Nurphoto | Nurphoto | Getty Images

Donald Trump‘s election victory over Vice President Kamala Harris marks a historic return to the White House — an extraordinary political comeback that is likely to have seismic ramifications for the global economy.

Speaking to his supporters in Florida early Wednesday, Trump said an “unprecedented and powerful mandate” would usher in “the golden age of America.”

The former president’s litany of campaign pledges include steep tariffs, tax cuts, deregulation and a push to withdraw from key global agreements.

Analysts say it is hard to pin down the extent to which Trump will seek to implement these measures in his second four-year term, but the consequences of any will have clear repercussions across the globe.

Lizzy Galbraith, political economist at asset manager Abrdn, said it remains to be seen exactly what style of presidency investors can expect when Trump returns to the White House.

“Congress has a really big part to play in this,” Galbraith told CNBC’s “Squawk Box Europe” on Thursday.

Trump's principle tariff focus will be China — not elsewhere, says political economist

“If Trump does have unified control of Congress, as is looking very likely and is what we expect to happen over the next few weeks and days, then he does have greater latitude to implement his tax-cutting agenda, his deregulatory agenda, for example, but we are also likely to see elements of his trade policy sitting alongside that.”

On tariffs, Galbraith said there were currently two schools of thought. Either Trump seeks to use them as a bargaining tool to gain concessions from other parties — or he delivers on his promise and implements them much more broadly.

Trump’s favorite word

Trump has previously described “tariff” as his favorite word, calling it “the most beautiful word in the dictionary.”

In an effort to raise revenues, Trump has suggested he could impose a blanket 20% tariff on all goods imported into the U.S., with a tariff of up to 60% for Chinese products and one as high as 2,000% on vehicles built in Mexico.

For the European Union, meanwhile, Trump has said the 27-nation bloc will pay a “big price” for not buying enough American exports.

Former US President Donald Trump arrives during a “Get Out The Vote” rally in Greensboro, North Carolina, US, on Saturday, March 2, 2024.

Bloomberg | Bloomberg | Getty Images

“Now, I think it is worth pointing out that we do think that in any situation which Trump is using tariffs quite often, his principal focus is going to be on China. And we don’t see Trump’s secondary tariff pledge — that baseline tariff, which would hurt European companies — as being all that feasible,” Galbraith said.

“So, it’s not necessarily our base case that you see something like a baseline tariff applied that would really hurt European goods although there is still a distinct possibility there that specific European products could be affected,” she added.

Analysts have warned that Trump’s plan to impose universal tariffs are highly likely to raise prices for consumers and slow spending.

Europe

Ben May, director of global macro research at Oxford Economics, said the direct impact of Trump 2.0 on economic growth is likely to be limited in the near term, “but masks major implications for trade and the composition of growth, and for financial markets.”

For instance, May said that in a scenario in which the more radical aspects of Trump’s policy agenda are adopted, particularly on tariffs, the impact across the globe will be “very sizable.”

“A key unknown is whether a clean sweep raises the risk that a Trump administration will push through more extreme policy measures, such as larger, less-targeted tariffs,” May said in a research note.

“Uncertainty over Trump’s stance on the conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East also adds to the risk of greater instability in both regions, which could take a toll on regional, and even global, growth,” he added.

Europe is seen as a loser of a Trump presidency, Barclays strategist says

The prospect of a second Trump presidency had long been viewed as negative for Europe and the European Union more broadly.

Yet, analysts at Signum Global Advisors said in a research note on Wednesday that “the magnitude of that truth remains underappreciated.”

Indeed, they argued that several factors mean the EU is likely to be “the biggest loser of a second Trump era,” citing trade tensions, an ongoing frustration with key European policy decisions and Trump’s likely desire to double down on America’s advantage at attracting capital relocation.

Asia

Analysts at Macquarie Group said Thursday that, at face value, Trump’s election victory is “bad news for Asia,” particularly China, but the region is “more prepared” than in 2016, when he first moved into the White House.

A cargo ship is sailing towards the docking of a foreign trade container terminal in Qingdao Port, Shandong province, in Qingdao, China, on June 7, 2024.

Costfoto | Nurphoto | Getty Images

“A key tenet of Trump’s campaign was higher tariffs. While well telegraphed, the headwinds that are likely to sweep across Asia, particularly China, should spike volatility and compress multiples as uncertainty prevails,” analyst at Macquarie Group said in a research note.

“A counter-balance to this is a likely acceleration in China stimulus measures,” they added. “The Chinese government has already outlined its ambitions to support economic growth at the 5% level and address property market woes to support domestic consumer confidence.”

Mitchell Reiss, an American diplomat and distinguished fellow at the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) think tank, said there are likely to be some differences to the Trump playbook this time round.

A 'lot of opportunities for growth' in defense stocks after Trump's win, RUSI fellow says

“I think that President-elect Trump has said that he would like to increase tariffs on China again until the playing field is level, in his view,” Reiss told CNBC’s “Squawk Box Europe” on Thursday.

“What was interesting the last time when Trump won was the number of China hawks that staffed his administration. This was a very tough administration in terms of personnel and in terms of their view of how they saw China as an adversary, expansionist in the South China Sea and contrary to American values and friends and allies around the world,” he continued.

“So, I don’t think that that’s going to change. I think that might be mitigated a bit by the economic interaction that we have with China, but I think that it is going to be a complicated relationship going forward.”

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