Trump's emergencies: Reshaping presidential power without congress
Donald Trump, the President of the United States, declared more states of emergency than any other president in recent U.S. history. The portal Axios reports that Trump used this tactic "aggressively and creatively" to expand his powers, reduce the role of Congress, and bypass regulations.
The ability to declare national states of emergency was established to allow the president to act flexibly in crisis situations. However, in Trump's case, as Axios explains, it became a means of governing without needing to secure Congress's approval. Legal experts express concerns that such actions could lead to changes in the constitutional balance of power among the executive, legislative, and judicial branches.
Trump used states of emergency for various purposes, such as imposing tariffs on other countries, accelerating energy production, extracting resources, or militarizing federal lands at the border with Mexico.
Controversial use of IEEPA
The authority to declare an emergency in international economic relations under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) allows presidents to expand their powers in situations of "unusual and extraordinary threats" to U.S. national security, economy, or foreign policy. Trump used this law to impose tariffs on American allies as well as on small countries and uninhabited islands.
Elizabeth Goitein, director of the Brennan Center's Liberty and National Security research program at New York University, explained to Axios that Trump broke unwritten norms for the first time in 2019 by declaring an emergency at the southern border to redirect billions of dollars for building a border wall without Congress's approval.
As a result, the 1977 provision regarding emergencies in economic relations, originally intended to be used in confrontations with hostile powers, is now being used to change the global economic order.
