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Todd Tucker @toddntucker.com · 26/08/2026

The judge also distinguished this from other cases by noting that the federal government here was not trying to wriggle out of its obligations, but choosing to take on new ones by regulating California oil production.

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Todd Tucker @toddntucker.com · 26/08/2026

The California district court judge noted that when state law interferes with the federal government addressing a declared emergency, federal law must prevail. He didn't second-guess the merits of the DPA declaration.

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Todd Tucker @toddntucker.com · 20/08/2026

Thanks to @jacobinmag.bsky.social for this film recommendation of 1969's Mister Freedom in the latest issue, streaming on @criterionchannl.bsky.social Anticipated The Boys and other superhero satires by about five decades. Plus it's Serge Gainsbourg acting!

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Todd Tucker @toddntucker.com · 30/07/2026

Let's run through some of the specific essays. 1. I kick things off with an intro and a tour of the pros and cons of the recent US turn towards government-owned equity stakes. There is some promise here for climate, but getting the balance of ownership v. control is tricky.

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Todd Tucker @toddntucker.com · 30/07/2026

Our contention is that - in the wake of DOGE and SCOTUS attacks on the administrative state - we can't just hit restart or provide a list of favored policies. Instead, we need to address power and structural barriers to government delivering for all. subscriber.politicopro.com/newsletter/2...

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Todd Tucker @toddntucker.com · 28/07/2026

Jonathan Chait is right: abolish the Senate. Senate malapportionment has always been bad, and it's slated to get worse. It's a great time to begin thinking about how to fix it (and there are fixes that don't involve full abolition).

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Todd Tucker @toddntucker.com · 28/07/2026

NEW from @joepeck.co.uk & me @rooseveltinstitute.org: One year after the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, we're off track on emissions commitments & tax credits have been pared back. But all is not lost: more clean energy/manufacturing investments are going up than even the original IRA estimates.

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Todd Tucker @toddntucker.com · 24/07/2026

And rallying industry towards the cause of national missions is something that the US also once did, particularly in the FDR era with the Reconstruction Finance Corporation (RFC).

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Todd Tucker @toddntucker.com · 24/07/2026

Steering private capital to better align with the public interest in the boardrooms themselves is something many of the US' top trading partners already do.

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Todd Tucker @toddntucker.com · 24/07/2026

The latest idea in this space is @BernieSanders' proposal to deposit 50% of the shares of leading AI companies into a new sovereign wealth fund. While it could mean $$, the bigger reason to consider this is greater democratic control over our era's most disruptive technology.

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Todd Tucker @toddntucker.com · 24/07/2026

But the tool of equity stakes are very common internationally, including in other advanced economies. And it can help government move at the speed of markets and shareholders.

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Todd Tucker @toddntucker.com · 24/07/2026

The administration has also made virtually no attempt to rationalize its actions.

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Todd Tucker @toddntucker.com · 24/07/2026

Trump moving into having the US government take equity stakes in private companies is controversial, to put it mildly.

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Todd Tucker @toddntucker.com · 24/07/2026

NEW @thenation.com: @elizabethwwilkins.bsky.social and I get into why public equity stakes are as much about democratizing the economy as fixing market failures.

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Todd Tucker @toddntucker.com · 22/06/2026

Lots of fun seeing Comedy Bang Bang tonight!

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Todd Tucker @toddntucker.com · 22/05/2026

Fun to wrap up a short stint at LSE's Programme on Cohesive Capitalism, working out of the rechristened Sir Arthur Lewis Building - one of my heroes.

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Todd Tucker @toddntucker.com · 05/05/2026

We identify five reasons for American policymakers to continue to be bullish about manufacturing.

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Todd Tucker @toddntucker.com · 05/05/2026

Every manufacturing job supports four times the comparable number for the service sector.

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Todd Tucker @toddntucker.com · 05/05/2026

Even looking just at jobs, manufacturing continues to command a wage premium at all levels of education, after introducing appropriate controls.

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Todd Tucker @toddntucker.com · 05/05/2026

Manufacturing contributes more than other sectors on a per-job basis to value added (76 percent greater), exports (688 percent greater), and R&D spending (1,288 percent greater).

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Todd Tucker @toddntucker.com · 05/05/2026

We find that conversation too narrow. The US manufacturing sector is still the second largest in the world, the second most important in domestic output, the leading funder of research and development (R&D), the top export sector, and the second largest employer of engineers.

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Todd Tucker @toddntucker.com · 05/05/2026

A lot of the debate over manufacturing policy in the US focuses on this graph, which shows that continually fewer American workers are in manufacturing relative to services.

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Todd Tucker @toddntucker.com · 16/04/2026

Finally, as an OG global justice activist, there is a poetry that today - the 2026 Bank spring meetings - is the 27th anniversary of labor activists shutting down DC partly over the World Bank's anti-industrial policy stance. Arc, moral universe, bend, justice, something? Dunno, but I'll take it.

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Todd Tucker @toddntucker.com · 16/04/2026

As I explore in my piece, that's a major about face from past prescriptions - though it's still missing some of what makes structural changes (such as the energy transition that Jones-Peck explore) unique. Full Bank report here: openknowledge.worldbank.org/entities/pub...

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Todd Tucker @toddntucker.com · 16/04/2026

In my piece, I explore the bipartisan history of the Davis-Bacon Act, and how it survived to this day - stabilizing construction work - and why other New Deal era policies aimed at stabilizing other industries (NIRA, Walsh-Healey Act) have been eroded. (Hint: it's the courts.)

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Todd Tucker @toddntucker.com · 16/03/2026

Grammys politics >> Oscars politics

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Todd Tucker @toddntucker.com · 22/02/2026

In the past, when the Court issued opinions with such sweeping economic implications, Congress stepped into the void to figure out, e.g. whether and how to issue back pay. Today's Congress is unlikely to be so nimble. @stevevladeck.bsky.social with the history.

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Todd Tucker @toddntucker.com · 20/02/2026

The whole thing is going to do vanishingly little to make any one's life better or cheaper, since Trump is already reimposing the tariffs under other authorities.

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Todd Tucker @toddntucker.com · 20/02/2026

Finally, the liberal bloc was in the majority against the tariffs, and got uncomfortably close to endorsing the major questions doctrine (though they protested otherwise). The use of emergency powers to resolve domestic economic problems dates back to FDR, but that didn't get much weight from them.

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Todd Tucker @toddntucker.com · 20/02/2026

A second right-wing bloc - in dissent - preferred to keep the major questions doctrine right where it was, as a cudgel against domestic progressive priorities like fighting climate change and pandemics. They sided with Trump, on the basis of (IMO) the fairest interpretation of the law and history.

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Todd Tucker @toddntucker.com · 20/02/2026

One right-wing bloc - in the majority - used the decision as an opportunity to extend the deregulatory impulse of the major questions doctrine into beating back MAGA priorities.

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Todd Tucker @toddntucker.com · 20/02/2026

Kavanaugh notes that the (libertarian law firms') plaintiffs' non-delegation doctrine arguments would invalidate basically all tariff authority - not just IEEPA.

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Todd Tucker @toddntucker.com · 20/02/2026

Kavanaugh does the SCOTUS math in a footnote: the three most MAGA justices won't apply major questions to foreign affairs, and the liberal justices (say they) won't apply it at all.

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Todd Tucker @toddntucker.com · 20/02/2026

Kavanaugh suggests that Roberts is creating a Trump or tariff exception to non-deference in foreign affairs.

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Todd Tucker @toddntucker.com · 20/02/2026

Kavanaugh notes how many geopolitically sensitive foreign affairs matters are implicated in the tariffs at the moment.

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Todd Tucker @toddntucker.com · 20/02/2026

Or take this: if only we had more frequent global pandemics, then the SCOTUS would not find it so legally suspect when Biden tried to address one!

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Todd Tucker @toddntucker.com · 20/02/2026

Here he just outright states it: the Major Questions doctrine is a hurdle for government trying to solve new problems, not old ones.

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Todd Tucker @toddntucker.com · 20/02/2026

Kavanaugh tips how we would rule on, say, a progressive president using IEEPA to impose carbon tariffs. That wouldn't be allowed, because solving a new problem with old tools is suspect. Tariffs for traditional trade purposes, in contrast, are nothing new.

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Todd Tucker @toddntucker.com · 20/02/2026

Kavanaugh argues that - were it not for major questions doctrine - there would not have been a majority against Trump's tariffs.

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Todd Tucker @toddntucker.com · 20/02/2026

Kavanaugh makes a point I've made but I haven't seen elsewhere in the case history to date: 1977 was a peak of congressional skepticism over executive power. That even the Church-era Congress didn't rein in WH tariff power has to get some contextual weight.

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Todd Tucker @toddntucker.com · 20/02/2026

Kavanaugh notes that the majority's reasoning would allow Trump to shut down all trade with the world, but not to impose the lesser restriction of a tariff.

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Todd Tucker @toddntucker.com · 20/02/2026

Kavanaugh's is also the only opinion to mention FDR, which he does twice. He notes that "Congress first explicitly extended that wartime power to national emergencies in 1933, during the Franklin Roosevelt Administration... (The Great Depression was “an emergency more serious than war”)."

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Todd Tucker @toddntucker.com · 20/02/2026

Kavanaugh puts a lot of weight on the 1976 unanimous SCOTUS precedent on Section 232 tariffs, as evidence that Congress would have known how malleable its tariff statutes were.

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Todd Tucker @toddntucker.com · 20/02/2026

Kavanaugh's is the only opinion to go deep into IEEPA's legislative history, to demonstrate they knew exactly what they were doing in delegating tariff power to the president.

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Todd Tucker @toddntucker.com · 20/02/2026

Kavanaugh deems as a "double bankshot argument" the attempt to argue that IEEPA can't allow tariffs on imports because then it would also allow tariffs on exports (which the Constitution prohibits).

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Todd Tucker @toddntucker.com · 20/02/2026

Kavanaugh notes that Congress has lots of tools it hasn't yet used to constrain Trump's tariffs.

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Todd Tucker @toddntucker.com · 20/02/2026

Kavanaugh notes that the decision will likely provide no lasting relief to those harmed by tariffs, while introducing substantial uncertainty into trillions of dollars in trade deals now being negotiated.

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Todd Tucker @toddntucker.com · 20/02/2026

Kavanaugh notes that the major questions doctrine has never been applied in the foreign affairs context.

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Todd Tucker @toddntucker.com · 20/02/2026

Unlike the majority and concurring opinions, Kavanaugh puts a lot of weight on the 1970s precedents that Congress was well aware of when it duplicated TWEA's language in 1977's IEEPA.

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