Trump Is Ready To Bypass Congress

By Tarini Parti, Brian Schwartz and Gavin Bade

WASHINGTON—Days before his inauguration, President- elect Donald Trump made clear in a two-hour private meeting with Senate Re

--publicans that he wouldn’t wait on them to start implementing his biggest policy priorities: overhauling the immigration system and reshaping the relationship with economic allies and adversaries.

With the experience of governing and a better knowledge of the levers of power, Trump has drafted expansive plans for tariffs and border restrictions, the centerpieces of his 2024 campaign. He has already prepared roughly 100 executive orders, Trump told lawmakers in the meeting, and said he would press the limits of his presidential authority at times to go it alone on those issues, according to people who attended.

Trump’s emphasis on immi-

gration and trade reforms—the North Stars of his “America First” worldview—catapulted him to the presidency in 2016 and drove his historic return to the White House in the latest election. It sustained his fervent base of supporters over the past four years after he was defeated by President Biden in 2020 and admonished by many in his party over his role in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.

Now, Trump is betting he can turbocharge his nationalist trade and immigration agenda into a legacy-cementing policy record, powered by a more decisive electoral mandate than he had the last time. In his first administration, Trump, who was new to governing, faced resistance from the establishment wing of the Republican Party inside and outside the White House. His own advisers were able to block some proposals, and the president was more tentative about legal risks.

Trump has pitched tariffs— and the revenue he expects them to raise—as the solution for a host of issues, including creating more manufacturing jobs, reducing the national debt, subsidizing child care and even ending wars. Trump posted Tuesday on Truth Social he’ll be creating an “external revenue service,” which will collect “tariffs, duties and all revenue that come from foreign sources.” Those tasks are currently handled by U.S. Customs and Border Protection. Trump hasn’t explained how a new entity would do things differently.

At the same time, he blames, not always accurately, an often porous southern border as the cause for the country’s most intractable problems, from high housing prices to terrorist attacks. Most recently, Trump pinned the New Orleans attack on President Biden’s immigration policies, even though the attacker was a U.S. citizen born in Texas.

There is little policy overlap between how immigration and trade policies are carried out, but Trump in some cases plans to use them jointly—for example, his threats of tariffs on goods from China, Mexico and Canada are in part to force them to handle issues at the border.

The executive branch has expansive authority over immigration enforcement, and Congress has delegated more authority on tariffs to the president over time. That gives Trump plenty of runway to bend global foes and allies alike to his will. Still, divisions within his inner circle of advisers could hamper his most ambitious proposals.

“My goal is not to tax people, my goal is to change their behavior,” he told the group of Senate Republicans on Jan. 8 when discussing the use of tariffs, according to Sen. Kevin Cramer (R., N.D.), who was there.

Among his earliest moves, the president-elect is likely to end legal programs aimed at asylum-seeking migrants who otherwise would have entered illegally. He is also expected to revoke humanitarian deportation protections, created by the Biden administration, when they expire for possibly millions of migrants, including those from Haiti, Sudan and other countries in turmoil.

He is also planning to scrap a policy memo that directed Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers to focus on arresting serious criminals and discouraged them from pursuing immigrants who have lived in the U.S. unlawfully for a long time with no criminal record.

The president-elect wants to move swiftly and doesn’t want to hold back over legal concerns, according to people familiar with his thinking. Trump thinks he was wrongfully talked out of some proposals during his first term and doesn’t want to make that mistake again, those people said. A spokeswoman for the Trump transition didn’t respond to a request for comment.

Border mandate

Trump believes he has more public support for his immigration plans than he did in his first term, according to people close to him. Polling ahead of the election showed an overwhelming majority of voters opposed Biden’s management of the border.

Trump’s advisers, battletested from his often tumultuous first administration, are developing complex proposals to turn his campaign promises into reality. His aides have pitched, at times, little-used laws and procedures such as federalizing the National Guard, which is usually under state control, and sending the troops to the border, according to a person familiar with the matter.

The government hasn’t federalized the Guard since 1992, when it used them to help quell riots in Los Angeles after a jury acquitted police officers in the Rodney King beating.

Trump’s team knows that National Guard troops can’t be used to make immigration arrests inside the country, but they are hoping Trump can deploy the additional manpower to the southern border to help with other tasks, such as transportation and administrative duties, Trump’s border czar Tom Homan said. While some states have already deployed National Guard contingents to the border, the administration is planning a much larger federal deployment that would carry out more operations.

“What I think you’re going to see very different from the first term is a willingness to be more aggressive,” said Ken Cuccinelli, a senior fellow at the Center for Renewing America, a pro-Trump think tank, who previously served as deputy secretary of Homeland Security. “And by aggressive, I mean: putting troops on the border, going after the cartels, using more of the tools in the toolbox.”

Trump, who promised the largest deportation campaign in American history during the campaign, can launch deportations without help from Congress because of the executive-branch power of the Department of Homeland Security. But the extent of his efforts will depend on how much funding he is able to get.

In recent weeks, Trump and Homan have shifted away from talking about widespread deportations, focusing instead on prioritizing deporting migrants who crossed the border illegally and have a criminal record and those who already have orders for removal by a judge. While more narrow than Trump’s campaign language, the plan, they say, is still broader than the policy guidance of the Biden administration.

The change in rhetoric has already angered some of the president’s allies, who are urging the coming administration not to narrow the plan.

To unlock Pentagon funding and assets for the border, Trump is expected to use the National Emergencies Act, passed in the 1970s. Trump also used it in his first administration to bypass Congress for funding for border barriers.

While previous presidents signed dozens of emergency declarations, none used the act for initiatives that Congress declined to fund.

Trump will return to Washington emboldened by legal wins during his first term, such as a travel ban blocking citizens of several Muslim- majority nations, which was affirmed by the Supreme Court. Trump has signaled he will reinstate the ban. Trump’s advisers have been debating which countries to include, according to a transition official and others familiar with the plan.

During his first term, Trump publicly pitched curtailing automatic citizenship for anyone born in the U.S.—a right described in the 14th Amendment— several times, but he was talked out of it by his advisers, according to people familiar with the matter.

This time, Trump’s team plans to forge ahead—eager to invite a legal challenge and have the courts settle the issue. Trump’s advisers plan to argue that birthright citizenship is a misinterpretation of the 14th Amendment. Many constitutional scholars and civil-rights groups have said a change to birthright citizenship can’t be done through executive action and would require amending the Constitution.

Title 42

He could also face legal scrutiny if he goes forward with a plan to sign an order reinstating Title 42, a public-health emergency order that is part of a 1944 law. Trump used Title 42 during the pandemic to quickly expel migrants at the southern border without giving them a chance to ask for asylum—a key factor driving the global migrant crisis—on grounds that they might bring Covid-19 into the U.S. Biden maintained the policy for much of his term. It is unclear which infectious disease this Trump administration would cite to justify a new use of Title 42.

Trump has long pitched tariffs as a panacea for a swath of economic problems, arguing they can help rebuild domestic manufacturing and raise American workers’ incomes by making foreign goods more expensive, while also exacting revenge on trading partners who Trump argues have “cheated” the U.S.

Trump’s advisers, who have differing views on the effectiveness and proper use of tariffs, have been studying ways to get close to Trump’s campaign pledge for universal, across-theboard levies.

The president-elect is likely to cobble together a variety of tariff actions to hit different countries and products. The overall impact, and whether companies will be allowed to apply for carve-outs, will likely reveal whether protectionists or more traditional GOP economic advisers have the upper hand.

Treasury Secretary nominee Scott Bessent on Thursday hinted at that multifaceted approach during his Senate confirmation hearing.

Strongly protectionist members of the administration, such as deputy chief of staff for policy Stephen Miller, have argued for a more aggressive, universal approach, that would see tariffs applied to virtually all imports.

To do this, Trump could potentially use the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, a roughly 50-year-old law that gives the president broad authority to impose tariffs and economic sanctions if he declares an economic emergency, according to people with knowledge of the planning.

More traditional economic advisers, such as Bessent and Kevin Hassett, National Economic Council director, are advocating behind closed doors for a more targeted approach, either by exempting certain sectors or by applying tariffs gradually over time, according to the people. Those advisers argue the across-the-board approach risks boosting inflation and will do little to relocate manufacturing to the U.S. Many lower-cost consumer goods would likely still be prohibitively expensive to produce domestically.

The president-elect has reacted favorably to recent memos drawn up by his advisers on instituting tariffs through the International Emergency Economic Powers Act. No president has used the act to implement tariffs on imported goods, despite Trump’s first-term threats to use the law against Mexico if it didn’t stem the tide of migrants or to force U.S. companies to evaluate supply chain alternatives to China.

Trump has also reacted positively to a proposal to broadly utilize Section 232 of the Trade Act of 1974, which allows tariffs to address national security concerns and was used during Trump’s first term to slap duties on steel and aluminum imports, according to people with knowledge of the discussions.

Other sections of the 1974 law could allow actions to counteract unfair trade practices from other nations—used against imports from China in Trump’s first term—or to protect U.S. industries harmed by a sudden influx of foreign imports— used against imported solar panels and washing machines during his first term.

Trump’s fixation with trade dates back to the 1980s, when he laid out in full-page newspaper advertisements his views on the issue. “Japan and other nations have been taking advantage of the United States” for years, wrote the New York realestate developer, in the typewritten letter addressed “To The American People,” with his signature at the bottom. “‘Tax’ these wealthy nations, not America. End our huge deficits, reduce our taxes…” the September 1987 ads demanded. “Let’s not let our great country be laughed at anymore.”

—Michelle Hackman, Lindsay Wise, C. Ryan Barber and Nancy A. Youssef contributed to this article.