Exactly. The same nonsense-logic for collecting these taxes could be abused to bypass Congress and give away zillions of taxpayer dollars to anybody (including his own companies) that go: "Trump is a cool dude, and I ultra-promise not to do business with Iran or Venezuela or whatever."

Aside: I recommend the phrase "import taxes" over "tariffs", because a disturbingly large portion of my neighbors still don't seem to understand WTF the latter really is.

It does affect trade (setting tariff high enough basically equals to no trade policy for example) with those countries and hence it is foreign policy.

If that's true, then all criminal law in the US is foreign policy because the existence of laws restricts people's decision to visit the US to commit crimes.

Hell we don't even need to go that far afield: your logic implies all taxes are foreign policy, as they all affect foreign trade.

The policies you mention don’t target particular countries, and this is where the difference lies in my opinion. The part of the policies which is countries specific is in fact foreign policy.

By that logic, a president wanting to tariff the whole world could just specify some small country as not included, and then it be foreign policy.

I don’t think tariffs being foreign policy gives the president full control over them because foreign policy is presidents responsibility. Tariffs have this duality between being foreign policy and budget. So I don’t have issue with Congress delegating some of the tariffs power to the executive in some circumstances.

You have this backwards. IEEPA gives the president the authority to use tariffs as a way to achieve a foreign policy goal.

What's the foreign policy goal of the blanket tariffs across every country? Hint: There isn't one.

Its stated goals are revenue generation (Congress's job) and domestic economic development (not foreign policy)

I’m not arguing Trumps use of tariffs was legal (in fact I’m of an opinion it’s obviously not). Just arguing there are cases where executive have rights to set tariffs and it does fall under foreign policy in those cases.

As of blanket tariffs across all countries not being foreign policy I tend to disagree, it’s a policy of protectionism. I just don’t think this particular foreign policy falls under executive oversight, and should originate in Congress.

> Just arguing there are cases where executive have rights to set tariffs and it does fall under foreign policy in those cases.

The case when tariffs fall under foreign policy is only when used to achieve a foreign policy objective only in response to an "unusual and extraordinary threat".

No, because criminal laws don’t have the primary function of influencing foreign countries.

Taxes can be for raising revenue, but they can also function as clubs for changing behavior. Cigarette taxes, for example, have the purpose of deterring people from smoking.

Tariffs similarly can serve as clubs against foreign countries. You might have a tariff on China to get them to change their domestic policies. In that capacity, the tariff is functioning as a foreign policy tool; the revenue generation is incidental.

In the same way economic sanctions are foreign policy. The tax is just a tool to alter the US’s economic relationships with foreign nations.