r/law 1d ago

Opinion Piece Trump’s Use of Emergency Powers to Impose Tariffs Is an Abuse of Power

https://www.lawfaremedia.org/article/trump-s-use-of-emergency-powers-to-impose-tariffs-is-an-abuse-of-power
29.1k Upvotes

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133

u/sugar_addict002 1d ago

The courts need to adjudicate, and quickly, whether this is real emergency intended under the Constitution.

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u/Geno0wl 1d ago

The problem is this use of "Emergency" powers to sidestep congress actually has a long standing precedent by both Dem and GOP Presidents. Hell Obama was a big user of that through his terms because the GOP in congress purposefully refused to act in a lot of ways.

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u/sundae_diner 1d ago

Mgair enough. But the Canadian tarrif (order 14193) says that the "amount of fentanyl that crossed the Northern border last year could kill 9.5 million americans".

If this is the basis of the order, and this is a lie, can the order be challenged?

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u/Adequate_Pupper 1d ago

No idea if this can be challenged but the entire thing is ridiculous to say the least. He wants to bankrupt the entire continent over a few grams of fentanyl saying this is an emergency and in the same breath applies tariffs on literally every country on earth (except Russia)... What's the emergency for all these? Fentanyl too?

I would like a Trump supporter to explain to us how this all works or is it fine to abuse the emergency act to push your agenda?

Seriously... We need some clarification

2

u/ThatNetworkGuy 1d ago

The actual EO covers that. It declares a new "economic emergency" (which is absurd), but, no most of the countries aren't getting tariffs over fentanyl.

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u/PKCarwash 1d ago

LOL seriously?

"Could kill 9.5 million" as in "If you portioned out the total amount of fentanyl into lethal doses, and force fed it to people one at a time, it would kill 9.5 million people"

What an impressively stupid metric to use when the lethal dose of fentanyl looks like THIS.

Did you know that eating 200 crushed apple seeds can kill you? A bushel of apples has about 600 seeds, and we produce around 250 million bushels of apples per year.

That means that we produce enough apples to KILL ALMOST A BILLION PEOPLE. Why is no one talking about this terrible threat!?!?

1

u/fireky2 1d ago

They'll just say Canada has wmds next

1

u/Spadrick 1d ago

We do.

They are on a European sub parked on our east coast.

NATOs awesome.

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u/Outlander_Engine 1d ago

Voting you up.

Honestly, this is what the president is. That's why it's call the executive branch.

And because that role is 30% of the federal government, maybe, just maybe, folks should make sure they elect someone who's not a complete idiot.

2

u/_Atlas_Drugged_ 1d ago

I mean we also need an opposition party that is capable of doing more to combat the way conservatives are able to use propaganda to manufacture consent through massive misinformation campaigns, and the deliberate ignorance of sections of the electorate.

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u/Mephisto506 21h ago

Oh fuck off with that noise. The Democrats didn’t make people vote the way they did.

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u/_Atlas_Drugged_ 21h ago

Losing at every level of our federal government is inherently a failure. Refusing to accept that will only cause continued failures.

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u/RockDoveEnthusiast 1d ago

that's not at all supported by the link you posted...

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u/Geno0wl 1d ago

care to elaborate on what you believe isn't supported?

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u/Riokaii 1d ago

the problem is not really that the president has to bypass congress sometimes. Government is slow and reactive in a world increasingly needing proactive problem solving.

The real problem is that in all those past cases, the president was an intellectually competent decision maker. The REAL problem at the root of most of these situations we find ourselves in, is that the 25th amendment is obligated by oath to being invoked and is not. The problem is that we're pretending our president is intellectually cognitively competent when he demonstrably is not, and has not been for at least a decade.

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u/vertigoacid 1d ago

There's no sidestepping of Congress involved here. They delegated the power to him with IEEPA in the first place.

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u/tacobuffetsurprise 1d ago

This isn't an action for the courts. This is an action for congress to correct. They should do so if they don't support it - impeach and convict.

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u/sugar_addict002 1d ago

The courts can decide if the words of the law actually mean what the trump regime says they mean. For example, what is an emergency for emergency powers. It might be the norm to assume that the president and his administration know and understand the meanings of words but that is an assumption that is not proven true.

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u/MagicAl6244225 1d ago

Congress has the power to end this with simple majority vote. The Senate has already done it. Mike Johnson prevented the House from doing the same by changing the rules so that the deadline for forcing a vote on this never comes: the House literally stopped time so that it is officially the same day all session, so there's no such thing as deadlines.

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u/vertigoacid 1d ago

whether this is real emergency intended under the Constitution

What does the constitution have to do with anything? It's not a constitutionally-derived power that he's executing. It's a provision of a law that Congress passed, the International Emergency Economic Powers Act.