Trump's record emergency declarations: Reshaping presidential power
Donald Trump, the President of the USA, has declared more states of emergency than any other president in recent 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 created to allow the president to respond flexibly in crisis situations. However, in Trump's case, as Axios explains, it became a way to govern without needing Congress's approval. Legal experts are concerned that such actions could alter 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 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 used this law to impose tariffs on U.S. 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. This allowed the administration to allocate 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 serve confrontations with hostile powers, is now being used to change the global economic order.
