> Isn’t the point of our government structure to stop any one person from acting like a king.
That isn’t the “point” of our government structure. The constitution deliberately mixes an electorally accountable deliberative body (Congress), an electorally accountable unitary executive (the President), and a judiciary insulated from elections.
As explained in Federalist 70, the executive is unitary and “vigorous,” by design: https://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/fed70.asp. Federalist 70 even brings up the example of Roman Dictators to illustrate the need for a strong executive: “Every man the least conversant in Roman story, knows how often that republic was obliged to take refuge in the absolute power of a single man, under the formidable title of Dictator, as well against the intrigues of ambitious individuals who aspired to the tyranny, and the seditions of whole classes of the community whose conduct threatened the existence of all government, as against the invasions of external enemies who menaced the conquest and
destruction of Rome.”
What the constitution seeks to avoid is consolidation of all the government’s powers under a single entity. The President is powerful and can act unilaterally, but must stick to exercising executive rather than legislative or judicial powers.
So the real question with tariffs is whether one sees them as more of a general policy or a tool of foreign relations. The former is a power within the deliberative consideration of Congress. The latter sphere of authority is assigned to a singular President.
Exactly so. It is quite difficult to come up with a wealthy non-state actor who's wreaked the same sort of havoc as a Hitler or Mao. Let alone even relatively minor players on the international stage who're responsible for billions to trillions in actual damages to people's living standards.
The typical complaint against billionaires is stuff like their yacht is too big or people don't like one policy they took advantage of. It isn't really to the same scale. At their worst, wealthy non-state actors lobby powerful figures in government to act.
> The sort of havoc Mao wreaked made the greatest state in the world in 2025 by any capitalist measure.
Not in terms of the general welfare. If the question is "which peoples have the most money" the leaderboards are still dominated by historically capitalist economies in the US and Europe. Its true that China's trajectory is much more promising and their industrial policy has the west licked (although I argue mainly because the west has banned industry more than because China is some paragon of efficiency). But they started a long way behind because the west mainly relied on wealthy inter-state actors and the Chinese were burdened with a remarkably strong civic leader named Mao.
> All we get with this agreement is stability
No; the deal is massive wealth creation and rapid improvements in material prosperity. It is all driven by factories, and the thing that comes with factories is factory owners. Every time people tried factories without factory owners it ended poorly. The west is running a deindustrialisation experiment and it doesn't look like a winner to me either. I wish we'd leave the experimenting to 3rd parties instead of let China experiment with capitalism while we go off into the economic never-never.
More factories -> more stuff is the basic correlation to keep an eye on. Factory owners are going to be a part of that too; they're probably going to be obscenely well off. I support it. The important thing is rewarding the people who build and run factories.
That isn’t the “point” of our government structure. The constitution deliberately mixes an electorally accountable deliberative body (Congress), an electorally accountable unitary executive (the President), and a judiciary insulated from elections.
As explained in Federalist 70, the executive is unitary and “vigorous,” by design: https://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/fed70.asp. Federalist 70 even brings up the example of Roman Dictators to illustrate the need for a strong executive: “Every man the least conversant in Roman story, knows how often that republic was obliged to take refuge in the absolute power of a single man, under the formidable title of Dictator, as well against the intrigues of ambitious individuals who aspired to the tyranny, and the seditions of whole classes of the community whose conduct threatened the existence of all government, as against the invasions of external enemies who menaced the conquest and destruction of Rome.”
What the constitution seeks to avoid is consolidation of all the government’s powers under a single entity. The President is powerful and can act unilaterally, but must stick to exercising executive rather than legislative or judicial powers.
So the real question with tariffs is whether one sees them as more of a general policy or a tool of foreign relations. The former is a power within the deliberative consideration of Congress. The latter sphere of authority is assigned to a singular President.