What is an “International Emergency,” and Who Gets to Decide?

In a recent Geo-Graphics blog post, I documented the explosion of “national security”-related notifications to the World Trade Organization—used to justify the erection of new barriers to trade—since Donald Trump’s first term as president. As the U.S. position has long been that no body outside the United States can contest a “national security” notification, any and all protectionist actions can be rendered legal just by invoking those magic words.

Within the United States, different words are used to the same effect: “international emergency.” Under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) of 1977, the president can assert broad authority to regulate a range of economic transactions following a declaration of national emergency. Since the mid-1980s, as shown in the graphic above, the number of ongoing “international emergencies” has climbed steadily, with the growth accelerating over the past two decades.

President Trump, however, is the first president to invoke IEEPA as the legal justification for imposing tariffs, of any scope or magnitude—despite the regulation of foreign trade being a Constitutional prerogative of Congress.

What are the bases for these invocations? To impose 25% tariffs on Canada, arguably this country’s closest ally, he declared fentanyl trafficking across the northern border to be an “international emergency”—this despite the fact that fentanyl seizures by the Customs and Border Patrol at the northern border represent less than 0.1% of U.S. fentanyl seizures between 2022 and 2024. Equally as specious, he declared long-standing U.S. trade deficits to have suddenly become an “international emergency” when slapping massive and arbitrary Liberation Day “reciprocal tariffs” on every country in the world—this despite there being no evidence that such deficits (otherwise known as capital account surpluses, which lower U.S. capital costs) have harmed U.S. economic growth. Most worrying, the administration is arguing that the judicial branch can have no role in adjudicating whether an “international emergency” actually exists—meaning that anything, including mere presidential distemper—can constitute grounds for asserting vast, and perhaps even unlimited, powers over the U.S. economy.

In short, IEEPA has emerged as a major threat to the Constitutional division of powers in the United Sates, as well as to the living standards which Americans have come to enjoy through exchange of the fruits of their labor across borders.