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Fareed Zakaria GPS

Interview With Former U.S. Ambassador To NATO Victoria Nuland; Interview With Author Ross Douthat. America's Flailing Economy Under Trump; Who Will Blink First in the U.S.-China Trade War; Trump's Promise to End War in Ukraine on Day One. Aired 10-11a ET

Aired April 27, 2025 - 10:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

[10:00:34]

FAREED ZAKARIA, CNN ANCHOR: This is GPS, the GLOBAL PUBLIC SQUARE. Welcome to all of you in the United States and around the world. I'm Fareed Zakaria, coming to you from New York.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ZAKARIA: Today on the program, ever since President Trump announced his tariffs on so-called liberation day --

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: They rip us off.

ZAKARIA: Markets have been chaotic and volatile. Are they likely to calm down? What are the larger consequences? I talk with financier Ray Dalio and "Economist" editor-in-chief Zanny Minton Beddoes.

Then Washington says it will move on if Russia and Ukraine don't accept its proposed peace deal. What will happen? My guest is a top former State Department official, Victoria Nuland.

Also, what's at stake as the Vatican chooses the successor to Pope Francis? I'll discuss that with Ross Douthat of "The New York Times."

(END VIDEOTAPE)

ZAKARIA: But first, here's "My Take."

As the Trump administration floods the zone with one radical shift after the other, the tariff hikes have gotten the most attention, but the policy that could end up costing the United States even more in the long run is the Trump administration's assault on the universities and on research more broadly.

America has led the world in science for so long that it's easy to believe that this has always been one of the country's natural strengths. In fact, in the 19th and early 20th century, America was more a follower than a leader. British industrialists often complained about American businesses stealing their technology and violating their patents.

In the first years of the 20th century, the country that walked away with the most Nobel Prizes in science was Germany, with one-third of all the awards. Next was Britain, with almost 20 percent. The U.S. took just 6 percent of the Nobels in science.

Three powerful forces transformed the scientific landscape in the mid- 20th century. The first was Hitler, who drove a generation of the best scientific minds in Europe, many of them Jewish, to seek refuge in America. Of Germany's Nobel Prizes in science won by 1932, about a quarter were won by Jews who made up less than 1 percent of the German population. Many of these scientists came to America and formed the backbone of its scientific establishment.

After the 1965 immigration reform, the U.S. continued to attract the best minds in the world, many from China and India, who would come to study, then stay and build research labs and technology companies.

The second force was the two world wars. By 1945, Britain, France and most of all Germany had been utterly devastated, with millions of their citizens dead, their cities reduced to rubble and their governments crippled with mountains of debt. The Soviet Union came out of World War II victorious, but having lost around 24 million people in the conflict. The U.S., by contrast, emerged in 1945 utterly dominant, economically, technologically and militarily.

The third force that propelled the U.S. forward was the visionary decision by the American government to become a massive funder of basic science. During the 1950s total research and development spending in the U.S. reached nearly 2.5 percent of GDP. The majority of such spending on the planet. And it did so by creating an innovative model. Universities around the country, public and private, competed for government research funds.

The federal government wrote the checks but did not try to run the programs themselves. That competition and freedom created the modern American scientific establishment, the most successful in human history.

All three of these forces are now being reversed. The Trump administration is at war with the country's leading universities, threatening them with hostile takeovers, and withholding billions of dollars in research funding. America's crown jewels of science, the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation, are being gutted.

[10:05:04]

America's second advantage towering over the rest of the world has obviously ebbed since 1945. But it is worth pointing out in the last decade China has become the world leader in many key measures of science. China has a larger share than America of articles published in the leading 82 scientific journals that the "Nature" index tracks. In engineering and technology articles, China is also now well ahead of the United States.

In patent applications, there is no longer any contest. China receives almost half of all applications in the world. And even in leading universities, China has gone from having 27 in the top 500 in 2010 to 76 in 2020 by one measure. The U.S. has gone in the other direction, from 154 to 133.

The final advantage that the United States has, and one that China could not match, is that it attracts the world's best and brightest. Between 2000 and 2014, over one-third of the Americans who won Nobel Prizes in science were immigrants. In 2019, almost 40 percent of all software developers were immigrants. And in the major cancer centers in 2015, the percentage of immigrants ranged from around 30 percent in Fred Hutchinson to 62 percent at MD Anderson.

But this is changing fast. Students are being rounded up to be deported, and graduate students and researchers from China now face the prospect of constant FBI investigations. China has created generous incentives to welcome its best and brightest back home. Many others are choosing to go elsewhere. From Europe to Canada to Australia.

Last month, "Nature" magazine asked its readers who are American researchers, whether they were thinking of leaving this country. After more than 1,600 who responded, a stunning 75 percent said that they were.

These are the building blocks of America's extraordinary strength, created over the last 100 years, and they are now being dismantled in 100 days.

Go to CNN.com/Fareed for a link to my "Washington Post" column this week, and let's get started.

This week hedge fund billionaire and Trump donor Kenneth Griffin had this to say about the president's managing of the economy. "The United States was more than just a nation. It's a brand. It was like an aspiration for most of the world. And we're eroding that brand right now."

Indeed, on the back of the president's decisions on tariffs and statements about Fed chair Jerome Powell and more, the S&P 500 is down significantly since Inauguration Day. Yields on treasury bonds are rising as the value of the dollar is falling, which suggests investors are losing confidence in American leadership. And with it, the once almighty dollar.

Joining me now is Ray Dalio, the founder of Bridgewater Associates, the world's largest hedge fund. He's the author of the forthcoming book, "How Countries Go Broke." And Zanny Minton Beddoes, who is the editor-in-chief of "The Economist."

Zanny, lovely to have you. And let me ask you first, in October, you guys had a cover of the U.S. dollar, as I recall, shaped like a rocket ship going up and the cover line was the envy of the world. And today, this week, you have a badly damaged American eagle looking like it needs, you know, restorative surgery on many fronts.

What has changed in this short period?

ZANNY MINTON BEDDOES, EDITOR-IN-CHIEF, THE ECONOMIST: Well, the administration has changed and we have a new administration engaged in a revolutionary project to remake America's foreign policy, to completely transform its economy, to attack independent institutions, law firms, universities, the Federal Reserve chairman. And that's led to massive shocks, a massive geopolitical shock. But most importantly, as Ken Griffin said, a dramatic economic shock in the form of the tariffs, a huge self-inflicted wound.

And so suddenly, the United States, from being an incredibly successful economy, which is what we were highlighting last year, has put these enormously self-inflicted wounds and is becoming a place where outsiders look and think, is this a credible economy? We can't predict what's going to happen tomorrow or the next day. Institutions, credibility, the rule of law, all the things that people took for granted in the U.S. are now being questioned. And we have another huge number of days to go.

[10:10:02]

ZAKARIA: So, Ray, your Bridgewater, the firm you founded, put out a report a couple of days ago and it says -- it reflects what Zanny was saying and says that all of this produces huge risks. We expect a policy induced slowdown, including a probability of a recession. The Fed is going to be less able to handle this and so there are risks of stagflation. The combination of slow growth and inflation. U.S. corporates are under threat. There's exceptional risk to U.S. assets.

Would you agree with that?

RAY DALIO, FOUNDER, BRIDGEWATER ASSOCIATES: By and large I'd agree with that. I don't think it covers what's going on. So let me just clarify. We have a problem with the debt. We have a problem with internal order. Democracy, as we know it, the system. We have a problem of a geopolitical order, rising power, challenging an existing power in that global environment. These things exist as the backdrop of this set of circumstances. Now, there's been volatility. There's been, yes, in my opinion.

ZAKARIA: I guess what I'm trying to get at is you seem to be reluctant to comment directly.

DALIO: No, I'll comment directly.

ZAKARIA: What are the effects of the Trump administration's policies in the last 100 days economically?

DALIO: The effects of those policies economically is to bring to the surface issues about the polarity that exists. And at the same time, it's doing it in a volatile way that is causing trouble in terms of the volatility of that.

ZAKARIA: OK.

DALIO: So it is dealing with problems. And at the same time, it is the way it is dealing with problems could be done more smoothly, more cooperatively to produce a less volatile result.

ZAKARIA: Zanny, let me ask you. You said we're still not, you know, we're still not out of the woods because many of these tariffs have just been paused. You're talking about negotiating with dozens and dozens of countries simultaneously. You know, assume the best case scenario that they get a bunch of trade deals with most of these countries. I want to keep China for later. You still are at a situation where tariffs will be much higher. Right? I mean, American tariffs were around 2.5 percent. I don't know where they will end up, but they're clearly going to be somewhere between 10 percent and 20 percent.

Now, so does that itself -- I mean, that alone changes the economic outlook, correct?

MINTON BEDDOES: Yes, absolutely. I mean, this has been the single biggest tariff increase in history. U.S. tariffs, as you say, were around 2 percent. They went above 20 percent. They're well above 20 percent now. It's a tenfold increase. And Ray is an expert on long- term economic trends. And I agree with him. There are fundamental challenges facing the U.S., particularly the size of the budget deficit.

But what I think is undisputable is that this administration has chosen an economic course, this enormous increase in tariffs, which pretty much every economist will tell you, is completely self- defeating. Whatever you hear, this is a tax on consumers. It's likely to push the economy into recession. But more important than that is that it is eroding investors faith in the dollar. And the dollar is the absolute basis of the global financial system.

U.S. treasuries are the safest of safe assets. And what we've seen right now is that in the last few weeks is that investors are worrying about U.S. assets because you're seeing the stock market fall, you're seeing bond yields rise, bond prices fall and the dollar fall. And that kind of simultaneous falling of pretty much every asset is something that you can see in emerging markets when they have a crisis.

But it's not what you expect in the United States. And because the United States, as Ray has written, is sort of at the basis of the global financial system. That is what is seriously dangerous right now. We could at some point, and I'm not saying it's necessarily going to happen, but there's an uncomfortably high risk that we have a serious dollar crisis as investors move out secularly of U.S. assets. And that would be catastrophic, even worse than the impact of this enormous tariff increase.

And frankly, all of that is, to me, the wrong medicine for the problems that the U.S. has. I happen to think the U.S. economy is in much better shape than many people do, but with this self-inflicted wound, it is really hurting itself and causing potentially enormous damage to the rest of the world, too.

ZAKARIA: Stay with me. When we come back, I'll ask Zanny and Ray whether the problems between Donald Trump and Jay Powell, the Fed chairman, are over or just beginning.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK) [10:19:25]

ZAKARIA: And we are back with Ray Dalio and Zanny Minton Beddoes.

So, Ray, let me ask you about something you know a lot about because we are right now the deadlock, the most important deadlock is a U.S.- China deadlock where in order to get the world economy to a more stable place, and you wrote this in your post about a beautiful rebalancing between the U.S. and China, you need the two sides to start talking.

The U.S. says they were waiting for China to call. The Chinese say the U.S. started this. You put these tariffs on. First the U.S. has to reduce the tariffs, then we're willing to talk.

[10:20:04]

How is this going to resolve itself? My sense is the Chinese are holding pretty firm.

DALIO: The United States has too much debt. It cannot add to the debt the way it is operating. It is the world's biggest consumer, largely financed by government debt in the way that it's operating. China is the biggest producer. They produce a lot of goods more than the United States, Japan and Germany combined. They manufacture goods and they put it out. And they save too much and they buy with dollars. We cannot continue this debt money problem. We're at the end of a debt money world order.

ZAKARIA: And so how are we going to get the negotiation --

(CROSSTALK)

DALIO: There is only -- it is only through cooperation, calmness and analytical work in which we recognize that these imbalances are unsustainable. They're not just financially unsustainable. In a world that is near war, that there could be, there cannot be mutual dependencies. And so how that is done together is the most important thing.

ZAKARIA: OK. Let me, Zanny, ask you about another thing that I worry about, which is that for now the conflict between Trump and Jay Powell, the Fed chairman, has gone away. But it feels to me like this is going to be the great tension of 2025 because the American economy is clearly slowing. Trump wants Powell to lower interest rates to make it easier for people and businesses to borrow.

Powell and the Fed are going to be reluctant to do that because tariffs are inflationary. There's a lot of signs there's still inflation in the air. He's not going to want to do that. Don't you think this is going to produce a lot of tension going forward?

MINTON BEDDOES: Yes. It's the simple answer. You've got it spot on. I mean, I think this, you know, the president backed down in his criticism earlier this week I think because the markets were showing serious signs of vulnerability, because it was another reason that investors were freaking out about the U.S. But does that mean that he is going to stop and be able to hold himself and resist the temptation to make Jay Powell a scapegoat? I don't think so.

I think that as the economy slows, as the, you know, we get closer and closer to recession, as the shelves are bare, as the consequences of this crazy tariff policy become clear, President Trump is going to want to find someone to blame, and the Federal Reserve is going to be an obvious place to blame, particularly Chairman Powell. So I think this is going to come back. And even if it doesn't, the events of the last few days have, I think, made people realize that the next person and, you know, Chair Powell's tenure comes to an end next year, the next person that President Trump is likely to want to put in there is someone who perhaps will be more pliant to him.

So the whole basis of the credibility and independence of the Fed, I think, is now already somewhat questioned, even though Chairman Powell is absolutely going to do the right thing and will set it up for, as you say, a to and fro this year, which I think will send the markets rocketing. Each time President Trump says something critical and then when the markets go too bad, maybe he'll pull it back.

But this is going to be a big tension because as the economy slows, the Fed faces this big challenge. On the one hand, it has a dual mandate. And on the one hand, it would ordinarily be cutting rates if the economy was heading for recession. But because we are going to face substantially higher prices, it's got a problem that if it cuts rates in the face of higher inflation, and so the Fed will be cautious, I think, about cutting rates, which will drive President Trump insane, I suspect.

ZAKARIA: We've got to end it there.

Ray Dalio, Zanny Minton Beddoes, pleasure to talk to you, guys. Thank you.

Next on GPS, is peace in Ukraine possible? Will the White House be able to find a deal in the coming days? I'll ask a top State Department official from the Biden years.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[10:28:21]

ZAKARIA: Candidate Donald Trump promised on the campaign trail that he would end the war in Ukraine within 24 hours of taking office.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: In one day, 24 hours.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ZAKARIA: Well, it has now been 2400 hours. And as we approach Tuesday, the 100th day of Trump's second presidency, many wonder whether peace is in the offing and whether it will be a just peace. Joining me now is Victoria Nuland, a career foreign service officer.

She's had an important hand in managing the Ukraine portfolio for many years. Most recently, she was undersecretary for political affairs and acting deputy secretary of state in the Biden administration.

Welcome, Toria. Let me ask you. There's talk now about a possible, you know, some contours of a deal. And you've read some of it. I'm sure I have as well. And it seems as though the idea is Russia gets to keep all the territory it has, but Ukraine won't recognize it. Ukraine gets some kind of security guarantees from Europeans, not from Americans. What strikes you as unlikely to work in this? And what strikes you as likely to work?

VICTORIA NULAND, FORMER SENIOR STATE DEPARTMENT OFFICIAL: Well, Fareed, good to be with you. You know, I would start with the fact that we seem to be negotiating in public, which is not helpful in these kinds of extremely sensitive negotiations. Any deal is going to have to include benefits for all sides. And what we seem to be getting through press reporting is a very, very, very good deal for President Putin and very few assurances, particularly of ongoing security for Ukraine. And if there's not sufficient security for Ukraine, even if they are going to make territorial concessions, which they haven't agreed to, this thing will just happen again and Putin will come back for more if Ukraine is not allowed to be strong enough to hold the lines wherever they agree.

So, that's one thing I'm concerned about. And also, you know, the United States has a lot of leverage with all parties here, obviously with Ukraine, but with Russia that it hasn't used, and with Europe. And we seem only to be focused on the concessions that Ukraine has to make.

ZAKARIA: And when you look at the Russian side, what strikes me is so far, Vladimir Putin does not seem to have shown a willingness to stop fighting, to accept a ceasefire, to even accept temporary ceasefires which get violated. What is your sense? Does Putin really want to stop right now, or does he think he can keep going?

NULAND: Well, you're absolutely right. I think President Trump had this -- had this right a month ago when he wanted to test willingness by having a 30-day ceasefire on both sides. And that would have given time and space to begin real serious negotiations and not in public. The Ukrainians agreed to that, and Putin did not.

And even with all of these extremely favorable terms for Putin that were leaked over the last couple of days, Putin did not agree to stop fighting. And I actually think it's pretty difficult for Putin on his side to end this war, because he has built Russia over the last three years into an economy and a society that is 100 percent dedicated to this war and sustaining itself around this war.

And were it to end, he'd have thousands and thousands of returning soldiers who could, in fact, pose a threat to him. And he'd have to come off war footing and actually start providing for his people, which he hasn't done in a very long time. ZAKARIA: What do you think Ukraine could live with in terms of a

security guarantee? Because Trump has made clear he's not going to provide a security guarantee. He will not support Ukrainian membership in NATO.

Is there a kind of European guarantee that will work? Because the Europeans are doing or at least have committed to do a lot more on defense, right?

NULAND: They have indeed. First of all, Ukraine has to know that whatever it agrees to in terms of territory, it can protect and defend the rest of the territory that it controls and prevent a third wave of Putin attack when he gets tired of whatever he has agreed to.

So, it has to have a very, very strong military going forward. It has to have air defenses. And it has to have international support.

The Europeans have talked about a peacekeeping force. That's one way to do it. Another way to do it would be to have western forces or international forces offshore who could, you know, strike Russia if it broke the deal.

But the, you know, without those kinds of guarantees, why would Putin just not come back for more when he gets bored of this deal? Because he's made very clear that he doesn't consider Ukraine a country, and his aspiration is to control all of it.

ZAKARIA: You know, the Ukrainians well. My sense is that if they don't feel like they're getting the kind of things you're describing they will keep fighting. I mean, they're fighting for their country, for their independence. And my sense is that the idea that we have so much leverage over them that they will just -- they will just fold if we tell them to fold isn't quite right.

NULAND: It's absolutely not right. You know, Russia could stop fighting tomorrow, and this war would end. If Ukraine stops fighting, Ukraine ends. And no president of Ukraine -- no population in Ukraine will live with that.

And even if it came to that, and Russia had territorial or political control of Ukraine, there'll be an insurgency for years and years and years. There'll be refugee flows into Europe, and Putin will keep moving. He'll keep coming towards NATO territory looking for more.

So, this is an important moment for the United States to use its leverage to end it here, to tell autocrats everywhere, not just Vladimir Putin, that they can't just bite off a piece of their neighbor and get away with it.

ZAKARIA: Victoria Nuland, thank you for joining me.

NULAND: Thank you, Fareed.

ZAKARIA: Next on GPS, Pope Francis' legacy and what the world needs from the next pope, with "The New York Times" columnist Ross Douthat.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[10:39:35]

ZAKARIA: Who am I to judge? That was Pope Francis' response when asked about gay priests in 2013, just a few months into his papacy. It was a stunning statement coming from the head of the Catholic church, an institution that considers homosexual acts contrary to the natural law.

Similarly, groundbreaking words on many different subjects continued through the 12 years of his papacy. Francis had legions of supporters, as evidenced by the crowds paying their last respects but he also had many critics.

[10:40:08]

So, what is his legacy? And what is likely to come next? Joining me now to discuss all of this is "The New York Times" columnist and author of the new book, "Believe: Why Everyone Should Be Religious," Ross Douthat.

Ross, welcome. I want to ask you first about that statement. But it seems to me that that epitomizes what people say about Pope Francis' reign, that he talked a good game, but he didn't actually change the church in the more liberal direction that many of his most ardent supporters thought he would.

ROSS DOUTHAT, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: I think the best way to put it is that he created a large zone of ambiguity around Catholic teachings, and this wasn't just about homosexuality or same sex marriage. It was also around issues like divorced and remarried Catholics, whether they should be admitted to communion without getting an annulment.

He opened a debate about whether women could be ordained as deacons and didn't actually settle it. So, he gave, I think, in certain ways, more liberal Catholics, a lot more room to argue and maneuver without going all the way to a kind of formal, explicit break in church teaching.

But what that meant in practice was that divisions within the church tended to widen because the more liberal factions and the church saw themselves as having openings that they hadn't had before, and wanted to push further. And more conservative factions that had tended, for understandable reasons, always to be very loyal to the pope, ended up finding themselves in rebellion or near rebellion against him.

So, you know, in a way, you had Catholicism in Sub-Saharan Africa, for instance, going in one direction in a kind of conservative resistance to the pope. And Catholicism in a country like Germany, where the church is very liberal, trying to push as far as it could in a liberal direction. So, he leaves behind a church that is sort of straining apart in certain ways, I think, with a lot of, yes, a lot of uncertainty about just how far change can actually go.

ZAKARIA: So, that means the successor becomes very important. And I wondered what you thought was -- you know, was the likelihood or what are the battle lines? Because Francis appointed a lot of cardinals and he appointed a lot of people from sort of obscure places, not the usual big cities. But does that mean they are liberal? And how will this play out?

DOUTHAT: Yes, it doesn't -- doesn't necessarily mean that they're all liberal or would be liberalizers. And Francis himself was a very complicated figure who sort of favored the liberal faction in the church in many ways, without himself being quite as liberal as some of his supporters.

So, you have a range of cardinals right now who people actually don't know a lot about, right? It's sort of like if you assembled a Senate in the United States by picking mayors from an odd assortment of cities and small towns around the country. So, it makes it actually quite hard to. handicap or sort of figure out who the different groups are in the upcoming conclave.

I think you could say that it maybe gives an advantage to insiders, to someone like, you know, the cardinal secretary of state, Pietro Parolin, who people have cited as a frontrunner just because he's one of the only people who has actually met most of the cardinals now converging on Rome. And there probably is some sense in which the cardinals will be looking not for a conservative, exactly, but maybe for a moderate or stabilizing influence after Francis' disruption. But really, it creates just a lot of deep uncertainty where not anything but almost anything could happen in a situation like this one.

ZAKARIA: In your book, you talk about your hopes that there is a kind of religious revival. Is this -- is it more than a hope? Do you think there's real data that shows that there is a -- there is an uptick in the long secularization of western societies?

DOUTHAT: Yes, I think there's -- it's a different situation in Europe and the United States. I think right now there's real data, especially in the United Kingdom also to some degree in France, suggesting that there is actually a modest but real religious revival where Generation Z in England is more likely to practice Christianity than their parents or grandparents, which is a striking thing.

In the United States, it's more that we're considering a religious revival. The rate at which the rise of Americans who say they have no religious affiliation, has plateaued. There's sort of a pause in secularization. There's a lot of religious interest and debates about religion right now, but the number of churchgoers in the U.S. is sort of stable but not yet rising.

[10:45:04]

So, we'll know more in five or 10 years about how far the renewed interest in religion actually goes here.

ZAKARIA: I take it you don't want to make a wager as to who will be the next pope. DOUTHAT: Well, technically, I believe I could be excommunicated for gambling on a papal election. So, a wager -- a wager is quite out of bounds. But I would guess it would either be someone like Cardinal Parolin, sort of quickly a kind of insider anointed quickly, or someone who is not on the list of betting favorites at the moment at all.

ZAKARIA: The conclave result. Ross Douthat, thank you very much. Always a pleasure.

DOUTHAT: Yes. And I -- I knew -- I knew that would come in. Thank you, Fareed.

ZAKARIA: Pleasure. Next on GPS, President Donald Trump has so far declared eight national emergencies, and we are not even 100 days into his second term. I'll explain how he is exposing a deep flaw in America's constitutional structure when we come back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[10:50:39]

ZAKARIA: And now for the last look. This month, when President Donald Trump imposed tariffs on the world, he didn't just frame it as a smart economic reset. He called it a national emergency.

Similarly, in January, Trump sought funding for securing the southern border by declaring a national emergency. And for a way to boost fossil fuel production, you guessed it, a national energy emergency. So far, Trump has declared eight national emergencies in his first 100 days, more than any other president. That's according to the Brennan Center for Justice.

The reason for this is clear. Invoking an emergency has come to mean that the president can bypass Congress, intimidate courts, and run roughshod over normal procedures, even civil liberties. And while the current number is striking, it's not a Trumpian innovation.

Presidents have become addicted to emergency powers. Unlike many other countries the U.S. Constitution says nothing about how to declare or end an emergency. This has allowed presidents to organically assume a wide range of powers. This usually happened during wartime.

In the 1970s, after scandals of presidential overreach like Watergate and Vietnam, Congress imposed some limits. This led to the national emergencies act of 1976, which established a process to govern the use of emergency declarations. This included, crucially, a legislative veto allowing Congress to override a president's emergency declaration with a simple majority. But in 1983, when the Supreme Court ruled that legislative veto unconstitutional, the result wasn't a curb on presidential power, but in fact a framework that formalized its massive expansion.

Today, Americans are living under dozens of ongoing national emergencies, mostly tied to foreign policy like sanctions. The oldest standing one targeting Iran, dates back to the Carter administration. Others come from the post 9/11 era, when Congress granted the executive branch, sweeping new powers, all in the name of national security.

Both parties have used emergency powers to serve their broader agendas. In 2022, President Joe Biden attempted to forgive student loan debt by using an emergency authority related to the COVID-19 pandemic. But the second Trump administration has broken all records.

Earlier this month, Trump leaned on the International Emergency Economic Powers Act to justify his tariffs. Also known as IEEPA, this is a 70's era statutory power granted by the National Emergencies Act. And it lets the president act when there is a, quote, "unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security, foreign policy, or economy of the United States," unquote.

While IPAA authorizes a long list of actions, the word tariff does not appear among them. It's also worth asking are trade deficits something America has had with many countries for decades truly extraordinary, or unusual, or even an emergency? Many legal scholars say no. But the trouble is, courts are often reluctant to weigh in on issues of national security.

In theory, reining in such abusive emergency powers is simple, as the Brennan Centers Elizabeth Goitein suggests Congress could reform the national emergencies act and require that these emergency declarations end after 30 days, unless renewed. But presidents are obviously reluctant to sign away their own power, so passing it would require a supermajority, which is a two-thirds vote in House and Senate to overcome a presidential veto.

That's almost inconceivable in today's divided Washington, where one side is stacked with Trump loyalists. It's just one illustration, though, of how Congress has become little more than a feeble debating society rather than the first branch of government meant to put a constant and meaningful check on the second branch, the presidency.

[10:55:02]

As Deborah Pearlstein, the director of Princeton's Program in Law and Public Policy, told GPS, "These statutes were lying around like loaded weapons for a president who was not acting in good faith to use them. And in his second term, Donald Trump is pushing the boundaries of presidential power in a way that is well beyond what the constitution envisioned.

And yet, despite a distinct danger of creating a super presidency that would undermine America's democratic system, Congress and the courts have been largely acquiescent. When they wake up, it might be too late.

Thanks to all of you for being part of my program this week. I will see you next week.

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