Trump imposed tariffs under IEEPA, a law enacted in 1977. How many times had presidents used IEEPA to impose tariffs before Trump?

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Zero presidents had ever used IEEPA to impose tariffs before Trump, in the law's 48-year history from 1977 to 2025. Presidents used IEEPA more than 60 times to freeze assets of foreign adversaries, block specific transactions, or impose sanctions on targeted countries, but never to impose broad-based tariffs on trade. Congress intended IEEPA for narrow responses to specific foreign threats—like freezing Iranian assets during the 1979 hostage crisis—not for rewriting U.S. trade policy. Trump's use of IEEPA to impose worldwide reciprocal tariffs on nearly every trading partner was unprecedented.

Trump imposed tariffs under IEEPA, a law enacted in 1977. How many times had presidents used IEEPA to impose tariffs before Trump?

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