Taxation Without Representation
What started as a trade war in 2018 – and a domestic policy aimed at recalibrating the U.S. trade policy – has quietly transformed into a tool of hidden taxation, enabling the U.S. executive branch, meaning the President of the United States, to raise revenue and dramatically influence fiscal policy without legislative consent or even minimal participation in the legislative process by Congress. This divergence from legal norms represents a constitutional rupture – what I call the rise of a shadow fiscal state: a parallel tax system designed and executed solely through executive discretion rather than transparency and congressional legislation.
