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Opinion of the Court
dent's diplomatic discretion and the choice he has made exercising it. Id., at 376. Whereas the President's authority to provide for settling claims in winding up international hostilities requires flexibility in wielding "the coercive power of the national economy" as a tool of diplomacy, id., at 377, HVIRA denies this, by making exclusion from a large sector of the American insurance market the automatic sanction for noncompliance with the State's own policies on disclosure. "Quite simply, if the [California] law is enforceable the President has less to offer and less economic and diplomatic leverage as a consequence." Ibid. (citing Dames & Moore, 453 U. S., at 673). The law thus "compromise[s] the very capacity of the President to speak for the Nation with one voice in dealing with other governments" to resolve claims against European companies arising out of World War II. 530 U. S., at 381.14
Crosby's facts are replicated again in the way HVIRA threatens to frustrate the operation of the particular mechanism the President has chosen. The letters from Deputy Secretary Eizenstat to California officials show well enough how the portent of further litigation and sanctions has in fact placed the Government at a disadvantage in obtaining practical results from persuading "foreign governments and foreign companies to participate voluntarily in organizations such as ICHEIC." Brief for United States as Amicus Curiae 15; see also SER 1267, 1272 (Joint Statement with Switzerland noting the "potentially disruptive and counterproductive effects" of laws like HVIRA and promising effort by
14 It is true that the President in this case is acting without express congressional authority, and thus does not have the "plenitude of Executive authority" that "controll[ed] the issue of preemption" in Crosby v. National Foreign Trade Council, 530 U. S. 363, 376 (2000). But in Crosby we were careful to note that the President possesses considerable independent constitutional authority to act on behalf of the United States on international issues, id., at 381, and conflict with the exercise of that authority is a comparably good reason to find preemption of state law.
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