Article 1, Section 8 establishes that Congress can regulate commercial activity between the U.S. federal government and foreign nations, between each of the states — also known as interstate commerce — and between the federal government and Native American tribes. This clause, and the Supreme Court’s many cases involving it, allows Congress to also regulate anything that can encourage or restrain commerce, including transportation, TV signals, air safety and waterways.
The Constitution does not give the president unilateral authority to levy tariffs. President Donald Trump has been using the International Emergency Economic Powers Act of 1977 to justify his wide-ranging tariffs, saying in an April 2, 2025 White House fact sheet that “foreign trade and economic practices have created a national emergency.”
Constitutional law experts such as Michael McConnell, director of the Constitutional Law Center and professor at Stanford University, say the scope of Trump’s tariffs are unprecedented and could be a violation of the separation of powers, and that the Economic Powers Act provides no authority for the president to implement taxes.
“That act delegates various powers to the president ‘to deal with any unusual and extraordinary threat’ to U.S. national security, foreign policy or economy,” McConnell wrote in an op-ed for The New York Times. “The statute makes no mention of tariffs or other taxes, and before Mr. Trump, no president ever interpreted it to include such a power.”
McConnell said that if the act is broadly interpreted to allow tariff powers, it would “empower Mr. Trump and future presidents to take upon themselves extensive powers never intentionally delegated by Congress. If the courts uphold the Trump tariffs, it will be a major step toward a presidency that does whatever the president wishes to do.”
On Nov. 5, 2025, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments for Learning Resources v. Trump, a case that would decide if the act gives the president the authority to levy tariffs.
-by Mikayla Bunnell, UConn Journalism
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