Everything’s an Emergency Now
Executive orders have replaced laws. From tariffs to COVID, both parties are guilty.
Why does it seem like we’re living in the Perma-Emergency State — where presidents, both Democrat and Republican, bypass Congress and yell “Emergency!” to grab power? And just like that, the Constitution takes a back seat, and everything runs on executive fiat.
Trump’s latest move—his executive order to slap across-the-board tariffs under the pretext of “national security”—is just the latest abuse. He claims that trade deficits are now an extraordinary threat to the country. Really? We’ve had trade deficits for over 50 years. They aren’t always bad. They’re nothing new, and they’re certainly not a national emergency.
This isn’t just about Trump. Obama opened the door with his “pen and phone” mentality. Trump kicked it wide open. Biden sprinted through it during COVID. Now Trump wants back in with a Sharpie and a vendetta. And the pattern continues — each president expands executive power, and the next goes even further. We’ve turned the Constitution into a suggestion, not a standard, and Congress has become even more neutered than these perpetually mask-wearing New Yorkers I see all around me.
Declaring a national emergency under laws like the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) and the National Emergencies Act (NEA).—laws designed initially for real crises like wartime disruptions, hostile foreign powers, or sudden global threats. They were not written to address routine trade deficits. However, due to Trump’s crafty and subversive behavior, he uses this as a legal pretext to justify his tariff executive order. Heabeling trade imbalances as a “national emergency” unlocking powers never meant for economic policy maneuvering.
Trade deficits are not invasions, pandemics, or cyberattacks. They’re the natural result of global markets and consumer choice. Do you like German cars? You buy a BMW. Germany doesn’t buy your homemade candles. That doesn’t mean you’ve been scammed. It means you’re a participant in a global economy.
You run a trade deficit with your local grocer, the gas station where you get your gasoline, and every other retailer from which you purchase goods every week. You buy from them; they buy nothing from you. They're the result of global market dynamics and consumer preferences. Sometimes lousy trade deals occur — but they are not "unusual and extraordinary threats."
The same applies to international trade. America buys from Brazil, Brazil from France, and France from us. That’s how the global economy works. Money, investment, and value flow in many directions — not just a neat back-and-forth between two countries.
But Trump doesn’t see it that way. His obsession is “zeroing out” the balance as if the U.S. is getting ripped off whenever someone else exports more than they import. That’s not economics — that’s ego. And now he’s calling that ego trip a national emergency. It’s not just bad economics — it’s a dangerous way to run a government.
He’s using emergency powers meant for war or global catastrophes to impose his personal preference. And when one man can unilaterally define his beliefs as an emergency, that’s not just overreach — that’s borderline tyranny.
I want to talk about these stupid tariffs for a second.
Alex Berenson said on his Substack today:
Donald Trump has decided to upend the global trading system by imposing tariffs of 10 percent to almost 50 percent or more on goods we import from other countries.
The goal is to force companies to bring millions of manufacturing jobs back to the United States.
This will never work.
The reason is the same reason that we are never going to make farming a major job creator again. Manufacturing is just too efficient now. Between 1945 and 2010, manufacturing jobs fell from about 32 percent of all American employment to about 8 percent. We cannot turn this around with new factories. Where are they going to come from? It’s not just the industrial Midwest that is hurting. Northern England, eastern Germany, rural Japan — they’re all hollowing out economically.
And even if those jobs and factories did exist — and they do not — companies are not going to make billion-dollar decisions to build factories based on tariffs that aren’t even legislated and can be removed on a whim. If Donald Trump is serious about an economic change this important and risky, he needs Congressional support. He needs to show the world, and the businesses making these investment decisions, that these tariffs will outlast his Presidency.
Want to strengthen U.S. manufacturing? Great. Pass legislation. Offer smart incentives. Work through Congress as the Constitution intended. Don’t hijack emergency powers because you can’t sell your ideas the democratic way.
People cheered when Biden declared COVID-19 a national emergency and used it to extend eviction moratoriums, pause student loans, and expand Medicaid without a single congressional vote. Progressives even begged him to do the same for climate change. Now, Trump is using the same logic — just for tariffs. And the same people who screamed about “authoritarianism” under COVID-19 are suddenly quiet.
What will MAGA loyalists say if their political savior is out of office and someone like AOC is sworn in on January 20th, 2029—only to wake up the following day and declare a national emergency over climate change? Imagine her ‘emergency’ executive orders: banning all gas-powered vehicles effective immediately, mandating every household switch to electric stoves, enforcing nationwide composting with fines for non-compliance, or requiring citizens to install solar panels or risk penalties. What if she freezes meat production to reduce carbon emissions or caps the number of flights Americans can take each year?
If one side can justify using "emergency powers" to rewrite the rules overnight, what’s to stop the other side from doing the same when it's their turn?
It’s all wrong—no matter who’s doing it.
This isn’t how self-government works. This is how monarchy works. We’re supposed to be a constitutional republic. If a president has a plan that is so brilliant and necessary, make your case, win the argument, and pass a law.
Because when everything becomes an emergency, nothing is.
I’m Clayton Craddock—a father, business owner, musician, and truth-seeker who believes in asking hard questions and thinking independently. I share my thoughts on ‘Deep Cuts’ to challenge the status quo and dig beneath the surface.
If you would like to connect, please get in touch with me at Clayton@claytoncraddock.com
Broken record here: I maintain, and have for decades, that the two gravest threats to the American people and OUR Constitution (neither of which have ever been the property of any regime) are 'taxation' (surveillance/extortion) of personal incomes, and the continued existence of political 'parties' (money-laundering self-serving criminal cartels.)
I am long past familiar with the rote rationales for both anti-constitutional devices for looting the American people and rendering moot any form of recognizable liberty, and I have never found them valid. Income taxation is a brazen protection racket based on the fallacious notion that the business of the people is on every occasion the business of a regime, and political parties exist purely to enrich themselves by instructing the people (whom they each regard as the enemy) on what they believe in and what they want, whether they believe in or want it or not.
I have little time and zero sympathy for any propositions or agendas promoted as for the betterment of the American body politic, if they do not include the immediate elimination of both these lawless blights. Nor do I have much patience left for the perennial whining from the sidelines of every policy question, by those who continue willingly to collaborate with IRS, GOP or DNC, all of which have stood as enemies of the American people and plunderers of our achievements since each of them had been founded.
Zero tolerance time, folks. Shit, or get off the pot already.
How about recognizing, at long, long last, what it is exactly that we need to take our country back FROM??? Short of this, our country remains as it has for generations, under hostile occupation by the worst enemies America has ever known.