Does Donald Trump have unlimited authority to impose tariffs?
Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. The original intention was for American presidents to be mere legal executors—not emperors able to impose their will unilaterally. Over time, though, Congress has ceded more and more authority to the executive branch, and the courts, the third coequal branch of government, have happily blessed the arrangement.
Nowhere is this clearer than in trade policy. The constitution explicitly grants to Congress the powers “to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts and excises" and “to regulate commerce with foreign nations". And yet laws passed over the past century have turned power over to the president to raise and lower tariffs as he sees fit.
President-elect Donald Trump is promising to immediately use these powers when he returns to office on January 20th 2025 by imposing tariffs of 25% on all imports from Mexico and Canada and 10% on those from China. Could he really do so? Legally, yes. To get his way Mr Trump could invoke a myriad of legal authorities—some with off-putting three-digit numerical names like Section 232 and Section 301—but the most straightforward would be the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA).
This allows the president to impose tariffs with few limits (“to deal with any unusual and extraordinary threat…if the president declares a national emergency with respect to such threat"). IEEPA has attractive features for Mr Trump. “It’s an emergency power, so there’s minimal procedural requirements.
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