Document Type
Article
Publication Date
2025
Abstract
The International Emergency Economic Powers Act (“IEEPA”) empowers the President to “regulate . . . importation.” In Learning Resources v. Trump, the United States District Court for the District of Columbia ruled that such language did not empower the President to impose tariffs. The District Court reasoned that there was a distinction between the power to “regulate” and the power to “tax,” and that tariffs required a power to tax. This Essay explains why the District Court was wrong.
The Constitution’s original meaning and Supreme Court precedent indicate that tariffs can be an exercise of Congress’s power to regulate foreign commerce, not just an exercise of Congress’s power to tax. Thus, by empowering the President to “regulate . . . importation,” IEEPA empowers the President to regulate importation through a traditional and familiar means: tariffs.
What’s more, although IEEPA delegates broad tariff authority to the President, the delegation does not run afoul of the nondelegation doctrine; that doctrine recognizes that Congress may delegate more freely in the foreign affairs context. Nor does the delegation run afoul of the major questions doctrine, given that the President is not claiming “unheralded” powers. Congress has delegated foreign import authority to the President for over two-hundred years, and the statutory language in IEEPA has been understood as delegating tariff authority for the last fifty years.
Recommended Citation
Squitieri, Chad, The President’s Authority to Impose Tariffs, 2025 Harv. J.L. & Pub. Pol’y Per Curiam 12 (2025).
