The Constitutionally Dubious Law Empowering Trump’s ‘Emergency’ Tariff Authority

Editor’s note: We are happy to release a short excerpt from Ben Bayer’s article, “The Constitutionally Dubious Law Empowering Trump’s ‘Emergency’ Tariff Authority,” originally published by the Southern California News Group on April 25, 2025. The article will be released in its entirety in New Ideal on April 30, 2025.

The president’s constitutional role is to execute the laws passed by Congress and thereby to protect the individual rights of the nation’s citizens. But a notoriously vague law like the IEEPA constitutes an unjustified congressional delegation of its powers (in this case, to impose tariffs) to the president. Because it delegates this power on the dubious grounds of threats to “the economy,” it invites the abuse of collectivist statists who pretend to speak for the “greater good” of a nation’s economy as a whole.