Congress seems to have explicitly preferred this approach, however. They could've set up a system with uniform rules and a mandatory process that the president can't overrule, as is commonly done with other areas like environmental rules. The president does have some power over the EPA, but can't arbitrarily instruct the EPA to drop rules simply because he disagrees with the outcome of the rulemaking process. But here Congress said that if the President disagrees with any ruling of the IPC "for policy reasons", he need merely notify the ITC and the ruling will be voided. That seems to indicate Congress wanted case-by-case review of ITC determinations for policy conformance. Why would they write that into the law? My guess is precisely to allow national economic interests to take priority over the rules on a case-by-case basis.
Congress, in most cases of late, prefers to give more arbitrary authority to the Executive branch rather than actually craft specific and meaningful rules.
Sounds like they built a recipe for patronage with this law. By creating a system such as what you describe, it's ripe for businesses to $$ convince $$ the right politicians that their success is in the best interest of the country.
