Trump mulls a national emergency declaration to allow for new tariff program – report

This is the story that looks to have accelerated the dollar gains in the past 5 minutes. The report says that Trump is considering to declare a national economic emergency in order to obtain legal justification to slap large tariffs on US allies and adversaries.

The declaration is said to allow Trump to construct a new tariff program under the International Economic Emergency Powers Act, which will unilaterally authorise the president to manage imports during a time of “national emergency”.

The sources said that no final decision has been made yet but “nothing is off the table”. The full story here.

To be fair, this isn’t really a surprise no? We already know that why markets are afraid of tariffs is because Congress will have no means of stopping that. It falls under the president’s jurisdiction at the end of the day. But I guess what the story shows is that Trump is willing to pull out all the stops in making sure he comes down hard on his threats on tariffs. So, there’s that.

EUR/USD is now down 0.6% to 1.0275 and GBP/USD down 1.1% to 1.2330 currently. Meanwhile, USD/JPY is trading up 0.3% to 158.50 while AUD/USD is down 0.6% to 0.6193. At the same time, risk trades have turned sour with S&P 500 futures now down 0.2% on the day.

This article was written by Justin Low at www.forexlive.com.