Cite as: 530 U. S. 363 (2000)
Opinion of the Court
gress's explicit delegation to the President of power over economic sanctions, Congress's express command to the President to take the initiative for the United States among the international community invested him with the maximum authority of the National Government, cf. Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co., 343 U. S., at 635, in harmony with the President's own constitutional powers, U. S. Const., Art. II, § 2, cl. 2 ("[The President] shall have Power, by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, to make Treaties" and "shall appoint Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls"); § 3 ("[The President] shall receive Ambassadors and other public Ministers"). This clear mandate and invocation of exclusively national power belies any suggestion that Congress intended the President's effective voice to be obscured by state or local action.
Again, the state Act undermines the President's capacity, in this instance for effective diplomacy. It is not merely that the differences between the state and federal Acts in scope and type of sanctions threaten to complicate discussions; they compromise the very capacity of the President to speak for the Nation with one voice in dealing with other governments. We need not get into any general consideration of limits of state action affecting foreign affairs to realize that the President's maximum power to persuade rests on his capacity to bargain for the benefits of access to the entire national economy without exception for enclaves fenced off willy-nilly by inconsistent political tactics.16 When such
16 Such concerns have been raised by the President's representatives in the Executive Branch. See Testimony of Under Secretary of State Eizenstat before the Trade Subcommittee of the House Ways and Means Committee (Oct. 23, 1997) (hereinafter Eizenstat testimony), App. 116 ("[U]nless sanctions measures are well conceived and coordinated, so that the United States is speaking with one voice and consistent with our international obligations, such uncoordinated responses can put the US on the political defensive and shift attention away from the problem to the issue of sanctions themselves"). We have expressed similar concerns in our cases on foreign commerce and foreign relations. See, e. g., Japan Line,
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