Trump's record-breaking states of emergency raise alarm
Donald Trump, the President of the USA, has declared more states of emergency than any other president in recent United States history. The portal Axios reports that Trump used this tactic "aggressively and creatively" to expand his powers, diminish the role of Congress, and bypass regulations.
The right to declare national states of emergency was originally established to allow the president to act with flexibility in crisis situations. However, in Trump's case, as Axios explains, it became a means to govern without needing to obtain Congress's approval. Legal experts express concerns that such actions could lead to changes in the constitutional balance of power between the executive, legislative, and judicial branches.
Trump utilised states of emergency for various purposes, including imposing tariffs on other countries, accelerating energy production, extracting resources, or militarising federal lands at the border with Mexico.
Controversial use of IEEPA
The right to declare an emergency in international economic relations (International Emergency Economic Powers Act - IEEPA) allows presidents to expand their powers in situations of "unusual and extraordinary threats" to the national security of the USA, its economy, or foreign policy. Trump utilised this law to impose tariffs on US allies as well as small countries and uninhabited islands.
Elizabeth Goitein, director of the Brennan Center's Liberty and National Security research programme at New York University, explained to the portal Axios that Trump broke unwritten norms for the first time in 2019 by declaring an emergency at the southern border to allocate the administration 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 for confrontations with hostile powers, is now being used to alter the global economic order.
