Last week, a federal court ruled that President Donald Trump had exceeded his statutory authority by imposing a raft of tariffs based on the "national emergency" supposedly caused by the longstanding U.S. trade deficit. Those tariffs are part of an alarming pattern: In his rush to enact his agenda, Trump frequently treats legal constraints as inconveniences that can be overridden by executive fiat.
The U.S. Court of International Trade rejected Trump's reliance on the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) to justify sweeping import taxes he announced in February and April. The three-judge panel said that 48-year-old law, which does not even mention tariffs and had never been used this way before, does not authorize the president to "impose unlimited tariffs on goods from nearly every country in the world."
That decision did not affect tariffs that Trump has imposed or proposed under different statutes, such as his taxes on cars, steel, and aluminum. But by invoking the IEEPA, Trump hoped to avoid the specific rationales and sometimes lengthy procedures those laws mandate.
