US President Donald Trump’s sweeping tariffs on Mexican, Canadian, and Chinese imports rest on shaky legal ground. But they are unlikely to be struck down in court. By exploiting a gap between the law and brute power, the Trump administration is laying bare the weakness of America’s constitutional order.
The US Constitution assigns authority over foreign trade and taxation to Congress alone. While Trump has made an extravagant show of ignoring Congress’s duly enacted laws in recent weeks, his tariff orders themselves invoke federal law: the 1977 International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA). And yet, the IEEPA does not support Trump’s current tariffs.
The law’s language makes this clear. A president may declare a “national emergency” to address an “unusual or extraordinary” foreign threat to America’s “national security, foreign policy, or economy.” Once that is done, the IEEPA grants vast emergency-specific powers, including the authority to “regulate” the “importation” of “any property.” But these additional powers apply only to the emergency at hand; they may not be used for “any other purpose.”
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