Trump says tariffs on China are an emergency, but what makes it one?

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00:00President Donald Trump has declared several national emergencies, including one to allow

00:04his tariffs. But what does an emergency really mean?

00:09In short, chronic trade deficits are no longer merely an economic problem. They're a national

00:15emergency. That's Trump in April declaring a national emergency as he announced a large

00:20round of tariffs on other nations. The National Emergencies Act of 1976 allows the president

00:26to do so. Declaring an emergency unlocks powers, from reprogramming federal funds to calling

00:32up military reserves. But what actually constitutes an emergency?

00:36Basically, it's anything the president says. Not because Congress intended that, but because

00:47no court has been willing to review whether something really was an emergency if the president

00:56said it was.

00:57Throughout U.S. history, courts have not stood in the way of presidential emergency declarations

01:01because it can be hard to draw an exact line between what is and isn't an emergency.

01:06Trump is really pushing that in many of these emergency declarations. And it's possible

01:13that he'll get to one that's so extreme that, you know, even a court, despite not wanting

01:21to second guess these things, is just gonna have to say, wait a minute.

01:26Other than the courts, Congress could push back. They could overturn an emergency declaration

01:31or even the National Emergencies Act itself. But of course, the president could veto that.

01:37And without a supermajority in both houses of Congress, a veto override won't happen.

01:42And in today's extremely partisan Congress with slim margins, none of that is likely to materialize

01:48under this Trump administration. He has complete control of Congress right now.

01:53So neither do the courts nor Congress are really, you know, at all primed to step in.

02:02And that really leaves him a huge, a playground where he can just sort of make things up and

02:10call them emergencies. The president's most recent emergency

02:13declaration came in his takeover of law enforcement in Washington, D.C. For Straight Arrow News,

02:19I'm Lauren Keenan. For more on bias, fact-driven news, download the Straight Arrow News app or visit

02:24SIN.com.