Democrats ran for office last election cycle promising to run the country with a steady hand, enticing voters with so-called normalcy after four years with President Trump in office. They promised to put the country back on track and prioritize the well-being of all Americans. Instead, what we are witnessing is a dysfunctional Democratic Party that has failed to deliver.
In addition to Democrats’ botched handling of inflation, supply chains, and the baby formula crisis, they have allowed Washington’s bureaucratic elite to continue its harmful practice of government overreach into private enterprise. The latest example of this – the abuses being carried out by the International Trade Commission (ITC) – is threatening to hamstring American companies whose innovation and creativity have resulted in millions of jobs, economic growth, and popular services for the benefit of companies who contribute very little to the economy, if at all.
The ITC is supposed to investigate and protect American businesses from unfair trade practices and prevent foreign companies from committing intellectual property theft and copyright infringement. The ITC accomplishes this in part by hearing cases brought before it and issuing import bans, or “exclusion orders,” on certain products, prohibiting them from being shipped to the United States.
Unfortunately, like so many federal agencies, the ITC no longer feels constrained by the mandate Congress gave them. In recent years, flaws in the ITC’s structural framework have allowed foreign entities, as well as some businesses acting in bad faith here in America, to weaponize the ITC for financial gain. Companies with no serious legal claims have targeted U.S. businesses that contribute millions to the American economy by bringing frivolous and often duplicative lawsuits that allege patent infringement to the ITC. rather than federal or district courts. However, the patents belonging to these companies are often vague and lack real quality, further undercutting their claims of infringement by those companies that already have proven themselves.
These bad actors know they can get speedy and unnecessarily harsh rulings from the ITC, a fact they use as leverage to extort money from industry leaders who achieved success through merit. If the ITC issues an exclusion order, it means that American companies would no longer be allowed to sell those goods in the U.S. It’s happening to major players and household names across multiple industries, such as Ford, Toyota, Home Depot, Apple, and GE.
If that sounds like overreach, you’re absolutely right. Like the SEC, CFTC, and several of the alphabet soup agencies, the ITC has gone from being considered an independent agency to one that bureaucrats use to issue politically-motivated rulings that hurt both businesses and consumers. The ITC’s weaponization is a threat to innovation and competition from American companies, and down the road it will continue to be a problem regardless of which party controls the White House. ITC commissioners are nominated by the president, which means abuses carried out by the agency ultimately fall at the feet of the president and their party. Predictably, Democrats have done nothing to solve this problem.
If big government Democrats exercised some control to rein in agencies like the ITC, perhaps so many successful American companies wouldn’t be in the crosshairs of would-be competitors. Sadly, organization hasn’t been a strength of Democrats in Washington. An organized government would not have had such a weak response to inflation or allowed the worst supply chain crisis in decades to spiral out of control. Competent party leaders would have addressed the baby formula shortage months before it became a problem.
Democrats in Washington need to end the dysfunction that has defined the U.S. government for two years now. Removing disorder in Washington is the only way he and future presidents can ever hope to finally curb the culture of overreach that exists in Washington. If not, then abuses like those at the ITC will continue at other agencies and harm American enterprise and consumers.
Diante Johnson is the president of Black Conservative Federation.
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