26. Trade · Minor · Contested — excluded from counts
Adopt the China policy package by executive order or memorandum
Printed page 790 26. Trade · from “The Case for Fair Trade”
“If the new U.S. President wishes to defend this country against the serious existential threat posed by Communist China, that President will adopt all of these proposals through the requisite presidential executive orders or memoranda.”
What has happened
- Partially done
The largest order in the package was undone by the Supreme Court and then by the President's own hand: EO 14389 ended every IEEPA duty after *Learning Resources, Inc. v. Trump* held that IEEPA does not authorize tariffs. What was adopted by executive order therefore shrank rather than grew, and six of the essay's proposals still have no order or memorandum at all - Great Firewall sanctions (#2087), Hong Kong clearinghouses (#2084), Chinese sovereign bonds (#2085), a prohibition on Chinese-made drones in American airspace (#2079), DHS and DOJ artificial-intelligence contracting (#2088) and a COVID-19 origins commission (#2092). A seventh, the social-media ban (#2080), was reversed by executive order. `partial` under playbook 3's rule for open-ended "all of these" asks: no allowlisted source states the sweep is complete, because it is not.
- Partially done
Within a month the President had adopted several of the essay's proposals by exactly the instruments the Quote names. EO 14195 (2025-02-01) put duties on all products of the PRC; EO 14256 (2025-04-02) ended the de minimis exemption for them; and the America First Investment Policy memorandum of 2025-02-21 takes up the capital-markets proposals - restricting PRC-affiliated investment, reviewing Holding Foreign Companies Accountable Act auditing, variable interest entities, and pension eligibility - in a single presidential document. That is the method the Quote asks for, applied to part of the package.
Research log
What was searched, and what didn’t count as evidence
Research notes
This is the roll-up item for the Fair Trade essay’s China package, so it is the one place where the tally matters. Of the fifteen Chapter 26 asks on printed pages 789-790, executive orders or presidential memoranda in the window reach nine (#2075, #2077, #2078 at one remove, #2079, #2081, #2082, #2083, #2086, #2089) and reach none of the six named in the second event. Two of the nine were later undone or struck down.
The Status is on the method, not on the outcome of each proposal: the Quote asks that the President adopt the proposals “through the requisite presidential executive orders or memoranda”, and he did so for part of the package.
- Action
- issue
- Object
- Presidential executive orders or memoranda implementing the China policy package
- ID
- 2093