Weaponizing of 'emergency' label comes to a head

The president's powers now face a Supreme Court challenge

- VERONIQUE DE RUGY CONTRIBUTING WRITER

the word “emergency” is a magic key; it unlocks powers Congress never granted, suspends the discipline of regular order and decorates bloated bills with provisions too dubious to pass on their own. What was once meant to be a narrow exception for genuine crises has become a routine pretext for government overreach — a means of inflating executive power and corroding the nation’s fiscal credibility.

Start with the most brazen claim, and one soon to be scrutinized by the Supreme Court: that a president may impose sweeping tariffs under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) merely by declaring that a half-century of trade deficits constitutes an emergency.

Tariffs are taxes paid by Americans, and the Constitution assigns the power to tax to Congress. Yet the Trump administration argues that the president’s tariff power is beyond reproach because only he is the designator of emergencies.

The Washington Post’s George Will summarized the stakes crisply: a statute being read as a roving license to restructure the economy and give the president “unreviewable power to impose taxes ... of whatever amount, and for as long as he chooses.” Amicus briefs from across the political spectrum press the simple point that the IEEPA doesn’t authorize this, and an emergency cannot be a long-running condition that has coincided with rising American prosperity.