The International Emergency Economic Powers Act: Origins, Evolution, and Use
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The International Emergency Economic
Powers Act: Origins, Evolution, and Use
Updated September 1, 2025
Congressional Research Service
https://crsreports.congress.gov
R45618
SUMMARY
The International Emergency Economic Powers
Act: Origins, Evolution, and Use
The International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) provides the President broad
authority to regulate a variety of economic transactions following a declaration of national
emergency. IEEPA, like the Trading with the Enemy Act (TWEA) from which it branched, sits at
the center of the modern U.S. sanctions regime. Changes in the use of IEEPA powers since the
act’s enactment in 1977, including its use to impose tariffs on imports from almost all countries
in 2025, have caused some Members of Congress and policy analysts to question whether the
statute’s oversight provisions are robust enough given the sweeping economic powers it confers
upon the President during a declared emergency.
R45618
September 1, 2025
Christopher A. Casey,
Coordinator
Analyst in International
Trade and Finance
Jennifer K. Elsea
Legislative Attorney
Liana W. Rosen
Specialist in International
Over the course of the twentieth century, Congress delegated increasing amounts of emergency
Sanctions and Financial
power to the President by statute. TWEA was one such statute. Congress passed TWEA in 1917
Crimes
to regulate international transactions with enemy powers following the entry of the United States
into the First World War. Congress expanded the act during the 1930s to allow the President to
declare a national emergency in times of peace and assume sweeping powers over both domestic
and international transactions. Between 1945 and the early 1970s, TWEA became the central
means to impose sanctions as part of U.S. Cold War strategy. Presidents used TWEA to block international financial
transactions, seize U.S.-based assets held by foreign nationals, restrict exports, modify regulations to deter the hoarding of
gold, and limit foreign direct investment in U.S. companies. In addition, when a temporary tariff the President had imposed
on all imports into the United States was challenged in federal court, the government argued that TWEA provided legal
authority for the President’s action.
Following committee investigations that discovered that the United States had been in a state of emergency for more than 40
years, Congress passed the National Emergencies Act (NEA) in 1976 and IEEPA in 1977. The pair of statutes placed new
limits on presidential emergency powers. Both included reporting requirements to increase transparency and track costs, and
the NEA required the President to assess annually and extend, if appropriate, an emergency. Some experts argue that renewal
process has become pro forma. The NEA also afforded Congress the means to terminate a national emergency by adopting a
concurrent resolution in each chamber. A decision by the Supreme Court, in a landmark case, however, found the use of
concurrent resolutions to terminate an executive action unconstitutional. Concerned about the termination provisions in the
NEA, Congress amended the statute to require a joint resolution, significantly increasing the difficulty of terminating an
emergency.
Like TWEA, IEEPA has become an important means to impose economic-based sanctions since its enactment; like TWEA,
Presidents have frequently used IEEPA to restrict a variety of international transactions; and like TWEA, the subjects of the
restrictions, the frequency of use, and the duration of emergencies have expanded over time. Initially, Presidents used IEEPA
to target foreign states or their governments. Over the years, presidential administrations have increasingly used IEEPA to
target non-state individuals and groups, such as terrorists, persons who engage in malicious cyber-enabled activities, and
certain persons associated with the International Criminal Court.
As of September 1, 2025, Presidents had declared 77 national emergencies invoking IEEPA, 46 of which are ongoing.
National emergencies invoking IEEPA often last nearly a decade, although some have lasted significantly longer—the first
state of emergency declared under the NEA and IEEPA, which was declared in response to the taking of U.S. embassy staff
as hostages by Iran in 1979, is in its fifth decade.
IEEPA grants sweeping powers to the President to control economic transactions. Despite these broad powers, until 2023,
Congress had never attempted to terminate a national emergency invoking IEEPA. Instead, Congress has directed the
President on numerous occasions to use IEEPA authorities to impose sanctions. Congress may want to consider whether
IEEPA appropriately balances the need for swift action in a time of crisis with Congress’s duty to oversee executive action.
Congress may also want to consider IEEPA’s role in implementing congressional influence in U.S. foreign policy and
national security decision making.
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The International Emergency Economic Powers Act: Origins, Evolution, and Use
Contents
Introduction ..................................................................................................................................... 1
Origins ............................................................................................................................................. 2
The First World War and the Trading with the Enemy Act (TWEA) ........................................ 2
The Expansion of TWEA .......................................................................................................... 4
The Efforts of Congress to Limit Executive Emergency Authorities ........................................ 7
The Enactment of the National Emergencies Act and the International Emergency
Economic Powers Act ............................................................................................................ 9
IEEPA’s Statute, its Use, and Judicial Interpretation ..................................................................... 10
IEEPA’s Statute ....................................................................................................................... 10
Requirements for an IEEPA Declaration............................................................................ 11
Consultation and Reporting .............................................................................................. 14
Amendments to IEEPA ........................................................................................................... 14
The Informational Materials Amendments to IEEPA ....................................................... 15
USA PATRIOT Act Amendments to IEEPA ..................................................................... 16
IEEPA Trends .......................................................................................................................... 18
Presidential Emergency Use ............................................................................................. 19
Congressional Nonemergency Use and Retroactive Approval ......................................... 28
Current Uses of IEEPA ........................................................................................................... 30
Use of Assets Frozen under IEEPA ......................................................................................... 32
Presidential Use of Foreign Assets Frozen under IEEPA ................................................. 32
Congressionally Mandated Use of Frozen Foreign Assets and Proceeds
of Sanctions ................................................................................................................... 36
International Law Implications of Seizing and Repurposing Frozen Assets .................... 40
Judicial Interpretation of IEEPA ............................................................................................. 42
Dames & Moore v. Regan ................................................................................................. 42
Separation of Powers—Non-Delegation Doctrine ............................................................ 44
Separation of Powers—Legislative Veto .......................................................................... 45
Fifth Amendment Takings Clause ..................................................................................... 46
Fifth Amendment Due Process Clause.............................................................................. 48
First Amendment Challenges ............................................................................................ 50
First Amendment—Informational Materials and Communications Exception
under IEEPA .................................................................................................................. 52
Use of IEEPA to Continue Enforcing the Export Administration Act (EAA)................... 57
Use of IEEPA to Regulate Cryptocurrency ....................................................................... 59
Issues and Options for Congress ................................................................................................... 60
The Use of IEEPA to Impose Tariffs ....................................................................................... 60
Delegation of Authority under IEEPA..................................................................................... 61
Definition of “National Emergency” and “Unusual and Extraordinary Threat”............... 62
Scope of the Authority ...................................................................................................... 63
Amending the NEA to Require Joint Resolutions of Approval ........................................ 64
The NEA, IEEPA, and “Never Ending Emergencies” ...................................................... 65
The Status Quo.................................................................................................................. 65
Implications of Terminating National Emergencies Invoking IEEPA..................................... 66
The Export Control Reform Act of 2018 ................................................................................ 68
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The International Emergency Economic Powers Act: Origins, Evolution, and Use
Figures
Figure 1. Declarations and Executive Orders Citing IEEPA ......................................................... 20
Figure 2. Balance of Emergencies Citing IEEPA by Presidential Term ........................................ 21
Figure 3. Average Length of Emergencies Citing IEEPA.............................................................. 22
Figure 4. Cumulative Number of Ongoing National Emergencies by Year .................................. 23
Figure 5. National Emergency Act Declarations ........................................................................... 25
Tables
Table 1. Amendments to IEEPA .................................................................................................... 15
Table A-1. National Emergencies Declared Pursuant to the NEA as of September 1, 2025 ......... 69
Table A-2. Resolutions to Terminate National Emergencies ......................................................... 75
Table A-3. IEEPA National Emergency Use by Executive Order ................................................. 79
Appendixes
Appendix A. NEA and IEEPA Use ................................................................................................ 69
Contacts
Author Information...................................................................................................................... 106
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The International Emergency Economic Powers Act: Origins, Evolution, and Use
Introduction
The issue of executive discretion has been at the center of constitutional debates in liberal
democracies throughout the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Specifically, the question of how
to balance a commitment to the rule of law with the exigencies of modern political and economic
crises has been a consistent concern of legislators and scholars in the United States and around
the world.1
The U.S. Constitution is silent on the question of how to handle emergencies. As such, over the
past two centuries, Congress and the President have answered that question in varied and often ad
hoc ways. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the answer was often for the President to act
without congressional approval in a time of crisis, knowingly risking impeachment and personal
civil liability.2 Congress claimed primacy over emergency action and would decide subsequently
either to ratify the President’s actions through legislation or indemnify the President for any civil
liability.3
By the twentieth century, a new pattern began to emerge. Instead of retroactively judging an
executive’s extraordinary actions in a time of emergency, Congress enacted statutes authorizing
the President to declare a state of emergency and make use of extraordinary delegated powers.4
The expanding delegation of emergency powers to executives, and the increase in governing via
emergency power by executives, was a common trajectory among twentieth-century liberal
democracies.5 As innovation quickened the pace of social change and global crises, some
legislatures felt compelled to delegate to their executives, who traditional political theorists
assumed could operate with greater “dispatch” than the more deliberate and future-oriented
1 Clinton Rossiter, Constitutional Dictatorship: Crisis Government in the Modern Democracies (Princeton, NJ:
Princeton University Press, 1948); Edward Corwin, Total War and the Constitution (New York: Knopf, 1963). Giorgio
Agamben, State of Exception (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005); Carl Schmitt, Political Theology: Four
Chapters on the Concept of Sovereignty (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985).
2 See, for example, John Locke, Two Treatises of Government, ed. Thomas Hollis (London: A. Millar et al., 1764), pp.
340-341: “This power to act according to discretion, for the public good, without the prescription of the law, and
sometimes even against it, is that which is called prerogative […].”
3 Jules Lobel, “Emergency Power and the Decline of Liberalism,” Yale Law Journal 98, no. 7 (May 1989), pp. 13921398; John Fabian Witt, “A Lost Theory of American Emergency Constitutionalism,” Law and History Review 36, no.
3 (August 2018); George M. Dennison, “Martial Law: The Development of a Theory of Emergency Powers, 17761861,” The American Journal of Legal History 18, no. 1 (January 1974); Saikrishna Bangalore Prakash, Imperial from
the Beginning: The Constitution of the Original Executive (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2015), pp. 208-210;
Matthew Warshauer, Andrew Jackson and the Politics of Martial Law (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press,
2006). As Thomas Jefferson wrote, an executive officer acting illegally for what he determines to be the good of the
country “does indeed risk himself on the justice of the controlling powers of the constitution, and his station makes it
his duty to incur that risk.” Thomas Jefferson, The Works of Thomas Jefferson, ed. Paul Leicester Ford, Federal Edition
(New York: Putnam, 1905), p. 11:146, qtd. in Prakash, Imperial from the Beginning, p. 214.
4 U.S. Congress, Special Committee on National Emergencies and Delegated Emergency Powers, A Brief History of
Emergency Powers in the United States, committee print, 93rd Cong., 2nd sess., July 1974 (Washington, DC: GPO,
1974), pp. 40-41.
5 For scholarship on this general trend, see, for example, William E. Scheuerman, Liberal Democracy and the Social
Acceleration of Time (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004); John M. Carey and Matthew Soberg Shugart,
eds, Executive Decree Authority (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998); Peter L. Lindseth, “The Paradox of
Parliamentary Supremacy: Delegation, Democracy, and Dictatorship in Germany and France, 1920s-1950s,” Yale Law
Journal 113, no. 7 (May 2004); Jules Lobel, “Emergency Power and the Decline of Liberalism”; Mary L. Dudziak,
War-Time: An Idea, Its History, Its Consequences (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012); and Corwin, Total War
and the Constitution; Rossiter, Constitutional Dictatorship.
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legislatures.6 Whether such actions subvert the rule of law or are a standard feature of healthy
modern constitutional orders has been a subject of debate.7
The International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) is one example of a twentiethcentury delegation of emergency authority.8 One of more than a hundred emergency statutes
under the umbrella of the National Emergencies Act (NEA),9 IEEPA grants the President
extensive power to regulate a variety of economic transactions during a state of national
emergency. Congress enacted IEEPA in 1977 to limit the emergency economic powers that it had
delegated to the President under the Trading with the Enemy Act (TWEA). Nevertheless, some
scholars argue that judicial and legislative actions subsequent to IEEPA’s enactment have made it,
like TWEA, a source of expansive and unchecked executive authority in the economic realm.10
Other scholars argue that IEEPA is a useful tool for Presidents to quickly implement the will of
Congress either as directed by law or as encouraged by congressional activity.11
Until the late 2010s, there had been little congressional discussion of modifying either IEEPA or
its umbrella statute, the NEA. Presidential actions in the late 2010s and 2020s, have drawn
renewed attention to presidential emergency powers under the NEA, of which IEEPA is the most
frequently used.
Origins
The First World War and the Trading with the Enemy Act (TWEA)
The First World War (1914-1919) saw an unprecedented degree of economic mobilization.12 The
executive departments of European governments began to regulate their economies with or
without the support of their legislatures. The United States, in contrast, was in a privileged
6 Scheuerman, Liberal Democracy and the Social Acceleration of Time, ch. 2; See, for example, Carl Schmitt, “The
Plight of European Jurisprudence,” tr. G. L. Ulmen, Telos 83 (Spring 1990); Locke, Two Treatises of Government, pp.
340-341: “[…] since in some governments the lawmaking power is not always in being, and is usually too numerous,
and so too slow, for the dispatch requisite to execution; and because also it is impossible to foresee, and so by laws to
provide for, all accidents and necessities that may concern the public, or to make such laws as will do no harm, if they
are executed with an inflexible rigour, on all occasions, and upon all persons that may come in their way; therefore
there is a latitude left to the executive power, to do many things of choice which the laws do not prescribe.”
7 For arguments that emergency government subverts the rule of law, see, for example, Sanford Levinson,
“Constitutional Norms in a State of Permanent Emergency,” Georgia Law Review 40, no. 3 (Spring 2006); Bruce
Ackerman, The Decline and Fall of the American Republic (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2010). For
arguments that states of emergency can be a standard feature of modern constitutional orders or that they can reflect or
anticipate the preferences of the legislature, see, for example, Kim Lane Scheppele, “Small Emergencies,” Georgia
Law Review 40, no. 3 (Spring 2006), p. 836; Carey and Shugart, Executive Decree Authority, p. 3.
8 International Emergency Economic Powers Act, P.L. 95-223 (October 28, 1977), 91 Stat. 1626, codified as amended
at 50 U.S.C. §§1701 et seq. (2018) (IEEPA).
9
National Emergencies Act, P.L. 94-412 (September 14, 1976), 90 Stat. 1255, codified as amended at 50 U.S.C.
§§1601 et seq. (2018) (NEA); CRS Report R46379, Emergency Authorities Under the National Emergencies Act,
Stafford Act, and Public Health Service Act, coordinated by Jennifer K. Elsea (2020).
10 See, for example, Patrick A. Thronson, “Toward Comprehensive Reform of America’s Emergency Law Regime,”
Michigan Journal of Law Reform 46, no. 2 (2013), pp. 757-759; “The International Emergency Economic Powers Act:
A Congressional Attempt to Control Presidential Emergency Power,” Harvard Law Review 96, no. 5 (March 1983), p.
1120.
11 See, for example, Scheppele, “Small Emergencies,” pp. 845-847: Statutes like IEEPA show “that emergencies have
been brought inside the constitutional order by being normalized in the ordinary legislative process.”
12 See Stephen Broadberry and Mark Harrison, eds., The Economics of World War I (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2005).
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position relative to its allies in Europe. Separated by an ocean from Germany and AustriaHungary, the United States was never under substantial threat of invasion. Rather than relying on
the inherent powers of the presidency, or acting unconstitutionally and hoping for a subsequent
congressional ratification, President Wilson sought explicit pre-authorization for expansive new
powers to meet the global crisis.13 By the end of 1917, Congress had passed 22 statutes
empowering the President to take control of private property for public use during the war.14
These statutes gave the President broad authority to control railroads, shipyards, cars, telegraph
and telephone systems, water systems, and many other sectors of the American economy.15
TWEA was one of those 22 statutes.16 It granted to the executive an extraordinary degree of
control over international trade, investment, migration, and communications between the United
States and its enemies.17 TWEA defined “enemy” broadly and included “any individual,
partnership, or other body of individuals [including corporations], of any nationality, resident
within the territory ... of any nation with which the United States is at war, or resident outside of
the United States and doing business within such a territory.... ”18 The first four sections of the act
granted the President extensive powers to limit trading with, communicating with, or transporting
enemies (or their allies) of the United States.19 These sections also empowered the President to
censor foreign communications and place extensive restrictions on enemy insurance or
reinsurance companies.20
Section 5(b) of TWEA would form one of the central bases of presidential emergency economic
power in the twentieth century. Section 5(b), as originally enacted, states:
That the President may investigate, regulate, or prohibit, under such rules and regulations
as he may prescribe, by means of licenses or otherwise, any transactions in foreign
exchange, export or earmarkings of gold or silver coin or bullion or currency, transfers of
credit in any form (other than credits relating solely to transactions to be executed wholly
within the United States), and transfers of evidences of indebtedness or of the ownership
of property between the United States and any foreign country, whether enemy, ally of
enemy or otherwise, or between residents of one or more foreign countries, by any person
within the United States; and he may require any such person engaged in any such
transaction to furnish, under oath, complete information relative thereto, including the
production of any books of account, contracts, letters or other papers, in connection
therewith in the custody or control of such person, either before or after such transaction is
completed.21
13 Rossiter, Constitutional Dictatorship, pp. 241-243; U.S. Congress, A Brief History of Emergency Powers in the
United States, pp. 40-41.
14 J. Reuben Clark, Emergency Legislation Passed Prior to December, 1917: Dealing with the Control and Taking of
Private Property for the Public Use, Benefit, or Welfare (Washington, DC: GPO, 1918), pp. 1-125.
15 Clark, Emergency Legislation Passed Prior to December, 1917, pp. 1-125; Rossiter, Constitutional Dictatorship, p.
243; David M. Kennedy, Over Here: The First World War and American Society (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
2004), ch. 2.
16 For an overview of TWEA’s development, see Benjamin A. Coates, “The Secret Life of Statutes: A Century of the
Trading with the Enemy Act,” Modern American History 1, no. 2 (2018).
17 Trading with the Enemy Act, P.L. 65-91 (October 6, 1917) §2, 40 Stat. 411, codified as amended at 50 U.S.C. §4305
(2018) (TWEA).
18 TWEA §2.
19 TWEA §3.
20 TWEA §4.
21 TWEA §5b.
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The statute gave the President expansive control over private international economic transactions
in times of war.22 While Congress terminated many of the war powers in 1921, TWEA was
specifically exempted because the U.S. government had yet to dispose of a large amount of alien
property in its custody.23 The disposition of property seized under emergency powers would
become a central tension in the structure of emergency authority over the next century.
The Expansion of TWEA
The Great Depression, a massive global economic downturn that began in 1929, presented a
challenge to liberal democracies in Europe and the Americas. To address the complexities
presented by the crisis, nearly all such democracies began delegating discretionary authority to
their executives to a degree that had previously been done only in times of war.24 Congress
responded, in part, by dramatically expanding the scope of TWEA, delegating to the President the
power to declare states of emergency in peacetime and assume expansive domestic economic
powers.
Such a delegation was made politically possible by analogizing economic crises to war. In public
speeches, President Franklin D. Roosevelt asserted that the Depression was to be “attacked,”
“fought against,” “mobilized for,” and “combatted” by “great arm[ies] of people.”25 The
economic mobilization of the First World War had blurred the lines between the executive’s
military and economic powers. As the Depression was likened to “armed strife”26 and declared to
be “an emergency more serious than war”27 by a Justice of the Supreme Court, it became routine
to use emergency economic legislation enacted in wartime as the basis for extraordinary
economic authority in peacetime.28
As the Depression entered its third year, the newly-elected President Roosevelt asked Congress
for “broad Executive power to wage a war against the emergency, as great as the power that
would be given to me if we were in fact invaded by a foreign foe.”29 In his first act as President,
Roosevelt proclaimed a bank holiday, suspending all transactions at all banking institutions
located in the United States and its territories for four days.30 In his proclamation, Roosevelt
claimed to have authority to declare the holiday under Section 5(b) of TWEA.31 However,
because the United States was not in a state of war and the suspended transactions were primarily
domestic, the President’s authority to issue such an order was dubious.32
22 TWEA §2.
23 U.S. Congress, House, Trading with the Enemy Act Reform Legislation, Report of the Committee on International
Relations on H.R. 7738, 95th Cong., 1st sess., H.Rept. 95-459 (Washington, DC: GPO, 1977), p. 4.
24 William E. Scheuerman, “The Economic State of Emergency,” Cardozo Law Review 21 (2000), p. 1872.
25 See, for example, Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Inaugural Address of 1933 (Washington, DC: National Archives and
Records Administration, 1988); Rossiter, Constitutional Dictatorship, p. 256; U.S. Congress, A Brief History of
Emergency Powers in the United States, p. 56.
26 Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Inaugural Address of 1933.
27 New State Ice Co. v. Liebmann, 285 U.S. 262, 306 (1932) (J. Brandeis, dissenting).
28 Scheuerman, “The Economic State of Emergency,” p. 1878.
29 Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Inaugural Address of 1933.
30 Proclamation 2039 of March 6, 1933, “Bank Holiday, March 6-9, 1933, Inclusive,” 48 Stat. 1689.
31 In his proclamation, President Roosevelt did not refer to the “Trading with the Enemy Act,” but instead chose to use
the more-opaque “Act of October 6, 1917.” Proclamation 2039.
32 President Herbert Hoover had likewise contemplated using TWEA for such a purpose. However, Hoover’s Attorney
General, William D. Mitchell, had expressed serious doubts about the legality of such an action. In the last days of
(continued...)
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Despite the tenuous legality, Congress ratified Roosevelt’s actions by passing the Emergency
Banking Relief Act three days after his proclamation.33 The act amended Section 5(b) of TWEA
to read
During time of war or during any other period of national emergency declared by the
President, the President may, through any agency that he may designate, or otherwise,
investigate, regulate, or prohibit.... 34
This amendment gave the President the authority to declare that a national emergency existed and
assume extensive controls over the national economy previously only available in times of war.
By 1934, Roosevelt had used these extensive new powers to regulate “[e]very transaction in
foreign exchange, transfer of credit between any banking institution within the United States and
any banking institution outside of the United States.”35
With America’s entry into the Second World War in 1941, Congress again amended TWEA to
grant the President extensive powers over the disposition of private property, adding the so-called
“vesting” power, which authorized the permanent seizure of property.36 Now in its most
expansive form, TWEA authorized the President to declare a national emergency and, in so doing,
to regulate foreign exchange, domestic banking, possession of precious metals, and property in
which any foreign country or foreign national had an interest.37
The Second World War ended in 1945. Following the conflict, the allied powers constructed
institutions and signed agreements designed to keep the peace and to liberalize world trade.
However, the United States did not immediately resume a peacetime posture with respect to
emergency powers. Instead, the onset of the Cold War rationalized the continued use of TWEA
and other emergency powers outside the context of a declared war.38 Over the next several
decades, Presidents declared four national emergencies and assumed expansive authority over
economic transactions in the postwar period.39
During the Cold War, economic sanctions became an increasingly popular foreign policy and
national security tool, and TWEA was a prominent source of presidential authority to use the tool.
Hoover’s presidency, Mitchell said that Hoover “should not issue [such an] executive order unless it was unanimously
agreed by [the] outgoing and incoming administrations that it was necessary and assurances [were] obtained from
Congressional leaders that [such an action] would be ratified promptly and that enabling legislation would be passed”
as there was only a “shoe string” on which to base the legality of such an order. Raymond Moley, The First New Deal
(New York: Harcourt, Brace and World, 1966), pp. 146-147.
33 Emergency Banking Relief Act, P.L. 73-1 (March 9, 1933), 48 Stat. 1 (EBRA). The House, despite having no copies
of the bill and relying upon a draft text read aloud by the Speaker, passed the bill after 38 minutes of debate. The
Senate voted to pass the measure the same evening. U.S. Congress, A Brief History of Emergency Powers in the United
States, p. 57.
34 TWEA as amended by EBRA. Italics show the language added by EBRA.
35 E.O. 6560 (January 15, 1934). These actions came in the context of greater participation by the executive in
international economic transactions generally. The Reciprocal Trade Agreement Act of 1934 gave the President the
authority to negotiate bilateral trade agreements, marking the beginning of a period of increasing U.S. trade
liberalization through executive action. Douglas A. Irwin, Clashing Over Commerce (Chicago: Chicago University
Press, 2017), chap. 9.
36 P.L. 77-354 (December 18, 1941), 55 Stat. 838.
37 Ibid.
38 Scheuerman, “The Economic State of Emergency,” p. 1879; Robert S. Rankin and Winfried R. Dallmyr, Freedom
and Emergency Powers in the Cold War (New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1964).
39 Proclamation 2914 (December 16, 1950); Proclamation 3972 (March 23, 1970); Proclamation 3972 (February 23,
1971); Proclamation 4074 (August 15, 1971). See also CRS Legal Sidebar LSB10267, Definition of National
Emergency under the National Emergencies Act, by Jennifer K. Elsea (2019); CRS Report 98-505, National
Emergency Powers, by Elizabeth M. Webster (2021).
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In 1950, President Harry S. Truman declared a national emergency, citing TWEA, to impose
economic sanctions on North Korea and China.40 Subsequent Presidents referenced that national
emergency as authority for imposing sanctions on Vietnam, Cuba, and Cambodia.41 Truman
likewise used Section 5(b) of TWEA to maintain regulations on foreign exchange, transfers of
credit, and the export of coin and currency that had been in place since the early 1930s.42
Presidents Richard M. Nixon and Gerald R. Ford invoked TWEA to continue export controls
established under the Export Administration Act when the act expired.43
TWEA was also a prominent instrument of postwar presidential monetary policy. Presidents
Dwight D. Eisenhower and John F. Kennedy used TWEA and the national emergency declared by
President Roosevelt in 1933 to maintain and modify regulations controlling the hoarding and
export of gold.44 In 1968, President Lyndon B. Johnson explicitly used Truman’s 1950 declaration
of emergency under Section 5(b) of TWEA to limit direct foreign investment by U.S. companies
in an effort to strengthen the balance of payments position of the United States after the
devaluation of the pound sterling by the United Kingdom.45 In 1971, after President Nixon
suspended the convertibility of the U.S. dollar to gold, he made use of Section 5(b) of TWEA to
declare a state of emergency and place a 10% ad valorem supplemental duty on all dutiable goods
entering the United States.46
40 Proclamation 2914 of December 16, 1950, “Proclaiming the Existence of a National Emergency, 15 Federal Register
9029, December 19, 1950. This emergency would remain in place until 1976 and would be used to justify a host of
emergency powers. See the partial list of executive orders issued pursuant to Proclamation 2914 in U.S. Congress,
Special Committee on National Emergencies and Delegated Emergency Powers, Executive Orders in Times of War and
National Emergency, Report of the Special Committee on National Emergencies and Delegated Emergency Powers,
committee print, 93rd Cong., 2nd sess., June 1974 (Washington, DC: GPO, 1974), p. 15.
41 U.S. Congress, House Committee on International Relations, Subcommittee on Trade and Commerce, United States
Embargo on Trade with South Vietnam and Cambodia, 94th Cong. 1st sess., June 4, 1975 (Washington, D.C., GPO,
1975), p. 2; 31 C.F.R. 500.101-500.808 (1975).
42 Executive Order 10348 of April 26, 1952, “Continuing in Force Orders and Regulations Relating to Blocked
Property,” 17 Federal Register 3769, April 29, 1952.
43 Executive Order 11677 of August 1, 1972, “Continuing the Regulation of Exports,” 37 Federal Register 15483,
August 3, 1972; Executive Order 11683 of August 29, 1972, “Revoking Executive Order No. 11677 of August 1, 1972,
and Continuing in Effect Executive Order No. 11533 of June 4, 1970, Relating to the Administration of Export
Controls,” 37 Federal Register 17813, September 1, 1972; Executive Order 11796 of July 30, 1974, “Continuing the
Regulation of Exports,” 39 Federal Register 27891, August 2, 1974; Executive Order 11798 of August 14, 1974,
“Revoking Executive Order No. 11796 of July 30, 1974, and Continuing in Effect Executive Order No. 11533 of June
4, 1970, Relating to the Administration of Export Controls,” 39 Federal Register 29567, August 16, 11974; Executive
Order 11810 of September 30, 1974, “Continuing the Regulation of Exports,” 39 Federal Register 35567, October 2,
1974; Executive Order 11818 of November 5, 1974, “Revoking Executive Order No. 11810 of September 30, 1974,
and Continuing in Effect Executive Order No. 11533 of June 4, 1970, Relating to the Administration of Export
Control,” 39 Federal Register 39429, November 7, 1974; Executive Order 11940 of September 30, 1976, “Continuing
the Regulation of Exports,” 41 Federal Register 43707, October 4, 1976.
44 Executive Order 10896 of November 29, 1960, “Amendment of Executive Order No. 6260 of August 28, 1933,” 25
Federal Register 12281, December 1, 1960; Executive Order 11037 of July 20, 1962, “Amendment of Section 12 of
Executive Order No. 6260 of August 28, 1933, as Amended,” 27 Federal Register 6967, July 24, 1962.
45 Executive Order 11387 of January 1, 1968, “Governing Certain Capital Transfers Abroad,” 33 Federal Register 47,
January 3, 1968.
46 Proclamation 4074 of August 15, 1971, “Imposition of Supplemental Duty for Balance of Payments Purposes,” 36
Federal Register 15724, August 17, 1971, reprinted in 85 Stat. 926. Although the proclamation did not explicitly refer
to TWEA in order to avoid the possible embarrassment of using a statute named the “Trading with the Enemy Act” to
impose a tariff principally aimed at U.S. allies, the proclamation was carefully worded to not exclude TWEA as an
authority under which the proclamation was issued. When a legal challenge was issued, the Government argued, and
the U.S. Court of Customs and Patent Appeals agreed, that TWEA was the source of the authority for the proclamation.
United States v. Yoshida Int'l, Inc., 526 F.2d 560, 584 (C.C.P.A. 1975). See also CRS Insight IN11129, The
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The reliance by the executive on the powers granted by Section 5(b) of TWEA meant that
postwar sanctions regimes and significant parts of U.S. international monetary policy relied on
continued states of emergency for their operation.
The Efforts of Congress to Limit Executive Emergency Authorities
By the mid-1970s, following U.S. military involvement in Vietnam, revelations of domestic
spying, assassinations of foreign political leaders, the Watergate break-in, and other related
abuses of power, Congress increasingly focused on checking the executive branch. The Senate
formed a bipartisan special committee chaired by Senators Frank Church and Charles Mathias to
reevaluate delegations of emergency authority to the President.47 The special committee issued a
report surveying the President’s emergency powers in which it asserted that the United States had
technically “been in a state of national emergency since March 9, 1933” and that there were four
distinct declarations of national emergency in effect.48 The report also noted that the United States
had “on the books at least 470 significant emergency statutes without time limitations delegating
to the Executive extensive discretionary powers, ordinarily exercised by the Legislature, which
affect the lives of American citizens in a host of all-encompassing ways.”49
In the course of the Committee’s investigations, Senator Mathias, a committee co-chair, noted, “A
majority of the people of the United States have lived all of their lives under emergency
government.”50 Senator Church, the other co-chair, said the central question before the committee
was “whether it [was] possible for a democratic government such as ours to exist under its present
Constitution and system of three separate branches equal in power under a continued state of
emergency.”51
Among the more controversial statutes highlighted by the committee was TWEA. In 1977, during
the House markup of a bill revising TWEA, Representative Jonathan Bingham, Chairperson of
the House International Relations Committee’s Subcommittee on Economic Policy, described
TWEA as conferring “on the President what could have been dictatorial powers that he could
have used without any restraint by Congress.”52 According to the Department of Justice, TWEA
granted the President four major groups of powers in a time of war or other national emergency:
International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA), the National Emergencies Act (NEA), and Tariffs: Historical
Background and Key Issues, by Christopher A. Casey (2025).
47 The bipartisan special committee was called the “Senate Special Committee on the Termination of the National
Emergency,” and was charged with conducting “a study and investigation with respect to the matter of terminating the
national emergency proclaimed by the President of the United States on December 16, 1950.” U.S. Congress, Senate
Subcommittee on International Trade and Commerce of the Committee on International Relations, Trading with the
Enemy: Legislative and Executive Documents Concerning Regulation of International Transactions in Time of
Declared National Emergency, committee print, 94th Cong., 2nd sess., November 1976 (Washington, DC: GPO, 1976),
p. iii.
48 U.S. Congress, A Brief History of Emergency Powers in the United States, p. v. The four national emergencies were
those proclaimed by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1933, President Truman in 1950, and the two proclaimed by
President Nixon in 1970 and 1971.
49 U.S. Congress, A Brief History of Emergency Powers in the United States, p. v.
50 Qtd. in U.S. Congress, Trading with the Enemy: Legislative and Executive Documents, p. iii.
51 Ibid.
52 U.S. Congress, House, Committee on International Relations, Revision of the Trading with the Enemy Act: Markup
before the Committee on International Relations (“House Markup”), 95th Cong., 1st sess., June 1977 (Washington, DC:
GPO, 1977), p. 5. House and Senate committee reports expressed the view that past Presidents had abused the authority
to regulate economic transactions in a national emergency conferred by TWEA by using it in circumstances far
removed from those that originally gave rise to the declaration of national emergency. H. Rept. No. 95-459 (June 23,
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(a) Regulatory powers with respect to foreign exchange, banking transfers, coin, bullion,
currency, and securities;
(b) Regulatory powers with respect to “any property in which any foreign country or a
national thereof has any interest”;
(c) The power to vest “any property or interest of any foreign country or national thereof”;
and
(d) The powers to hold, use, administer, liquidate, sell, or otherwise deal with “such interest
or property” in the interest of and for the benefit of the United States. 53
The House report on the reform legislation called TWEA “essentially an unlimited grant of
authority for the President to exercise, at his discretion, broad powers in both the domestic and
international economic arena, without congressional review.”54 The criticisms of TWEA centered
on the following:
(a) It required no consultation or reports to Congress with regard to the use of powers or
the declaration of a national emergency.
(b) It set no time limits on a state of emergency, no mechanism for congressional review,
and no way for Congress to terminate it.
(c) It stated no limits on the scope of TWEA’s economic powers and the circumstances
under which such authority could be used.
(d) The actions taken under the authority of TWEA were rarely related to the circumstances
in which the national emergency was declared.55
In testimony before the House Committee on International Relations, Professor Harold G. Maier,
a noted legal scholar, summed up the development and the main criticisms of TWEA:
Section 5(b)’s effect is no longer confined to “emergency situations” in the sense of
existing imminent danger. The continuing retroactive approval, either explicit or implicit,
by Congress of broad executive interpretations of the scope of powers which it confers has
converted the section into a general grant of legislative authority to the President.”56
1977); S. Rept. No. 95-466 (October 3, 1977). Both reports noted that President Lyndon B. Johnson, citing President
Truman’s declaration of national emergency with respect to Korea in 1950, had imposed controls on direct investment
abroad by U.S. nationals in 1968, and that President Gerald R. Ford had used President Nixon’s declaration of national
emergency with respect to the balance of payments in 1971 to justify extending the controls and regulations of the
Export Administration Act when that act lapsed temporarily in 1976. H. Rept. No. 95-459, at 5; S. Rept. No. 95-466, at
2. More generally, the House report noted that the national emergency authority of TWEA had been used by President
Franklin D. Roosevelt to regulate the banking industry in 1933 and to impose consumer credit controls in 1941 and by
President Richard M. Nixon to impose a surcharge on imports into the United States in 1971. Thus, the House report
concluded, TWEA “has become essentially an unlimited grant of authority for the President to exercise, at his
discretion, broad powers in both the domestic and international economic arena, without congressional review.” H.
Rept. No. 95-459, 7.
53 U.S. Congress, Trading with the Enemy Act Reform Legislation, p. 2.
54 Ibid.
55 Ibid., 9.
56 Ibid.
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The Enactment of the National Emergencies Act and the
International Emergency Economic Powers Act
Congress’s reforms to emergency powers under TWEA came in two acts. First, Congress enacted
the National Emergencies Act in 1976.57 The NEA provided for the termination of all existing
declared emergencies in 1978, except those making use of Section 5(b) of TWEA, and placed
new restrictions on the manner of declaring and the duration of new states of emergency,
including
•
•
•
Requiring the President to transmit immediately to Congress a notification of the
declaration of national emergency.
Requiring a biannual review whereby “each House of Congress shall meet to
consider a vote on a concurrent [now joint, see below] resolution to determine
whether that emergency shall be terminated.”
Authorizing Congress to terminate the national emergency through a privileged
concurrent [now joint] resolution.58
Second, Congress tackled the more complicated question of TWEA. Because the authorities
granted by TWEA were heavily entwined with postwar international monetary policy and the use
of sanctions in U.S. foreign policy, unwinding it was a difficult undertaking.59 The exclusion of
Section 5(b) reflected congressional interest in preserving existing regulations regarding foreign
assets, foreign funds, and exports of strategic goods.60 Similarly, establishing a means to continue
existing uses of TWEA reflected congressional interest in “improving future use rather than
remedying past abuses.”61
The subcommittee charged with reforming TWEA spent more than a year preparing reports,
including the first complete legislative history of TWEA, a tome that ran nearly 700 pages.62 In
the resulting legislation, Congress did three things. First, Congress amended TWEA so that
57 P.L. 94-412 (September 14, 1976), 90 Stat. 1255, codified as amended at 50 U.S.C. §§1601 et seq.
58 Ibid. While the NEA terminated the national emergencies on September 14, 1978, it explicitly enabled the
continuation of those emergencies with respect to Section 5(b) of TWEA to give the Congress more time to consider
how to address the issue of sanctions and international economic regulation. The International Emergency Economic
Powers Act (IEEPA) grandfathered powers that “were being exercised [under TWEA] with respect to a country on July
1, 1977,” including those with respect to Cuba, North Korea, Vietnam, and Cambodia. P.L. 95-223 (December 28,
1977) §101(b). The grandfathered powers, however, would require a declaration or renewal. See, for example,
Memorandum of September 8, 1978, “Determination Extending the Exercise of Certain Authorities Under the Trading
With the Enemy Act,” 45 Federal Register 40449, September 12, 1978; Memorandum of September 12, 1979,
“Memorandum From the President on Embargo Regulations Under the Trading With the Enemy Act,” 44 Federal
Register 53153, September 13, 1979; Presidential Determination of September 8, 1980, “Determination Concerning the
Exercise of Certain Authorities Under the Trading With the Enemy Act,” 45 Federal Register 59549, September 10,
1980.
59 U.S. Congress, Trading with the Enemy Act Reform Legislation, pp. 6-7.
60 U.S. Congress, Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs, International Emergency Economic
Powers Legislation, Report to Accompany H.R. 7738, 95th Cong., 1st Sess., S.Rept. 95-466 (Washington, DC: GPO,
1977), p. 3.
61 U.S. Congress, Trading with the Enemy Act Reform Legislation, 10.
62 House Markup, p. 9; U.S. Congress, House, Subcommittee on International Trade and Commerce of the Committee
on International Relations, Trading with the Enemy: Legislative and Executive Documents Concerning Regulation of
International Transactions in a Time of Declared Emergency, 94th Cong., 2nd sess., November 1976, committee print
(Washington, DC: GPO, 1976).
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TWEA was, as originally intended, only applicable “during a time of war.”63 Second, Congress
expanded the Export Administration Act to include powers that previously were authorized by
reference to Section 5(b) of TWEA.64 Finally, Congress wrote the International Emergency
Economic Powers Act to confer “upon the President a new set of authorities for use in time of
national emergency which are both more limited in scope than those of section 5(b) and subject to
procedural limitations, including those of the [NEA].”65
The Report of the House Committee on International Relations summarized the nature of an
“emergency” in its “new approach” to international emergency economic powers:
[G]iven the breadth of the authorities, and their availability at the President’s discretion
upon a declaration of a national emergency, their exercise should be subject to various
substantive restrictions. The main one stems from a recognition that emergencies are by
their nature rare and brief, and are not to be equated with normal ongoing problems. A
national emergency should be declared and emergency authorities employed only with
respect to a specific set of circumstances which constitute a real emergency, and for no
other purpose. The emergency should be terminated in a timely manner when the factual
state of emergency is over and not continued in effect for use in other circumstances. A
state of national emergency should not be a normal state of affairs. 66
IEEPA’s Statute, its Use, and Judicial Interpretation
IEEPA empowers the President to exercise an array of economic powers “to deal with any
unusual and extraordinary threat, which has its source in whole or substantial part outside the
United States, to the national security, foreign policy, or economy of the United States, if the
President declares a national emergency with respect to such threat.”67 The statute provides that
the authorities granted by IEEPA to the President “may only be exercised to deal with an unusual
and extraordinary threat with respect to which a national emergency has been declared for
purposes of this chapter [i.e., IEEPA] and may not be exercised for any other purpose.”68 Each
“new threat” for which IEEPA is invoked requires a new declaration.69
IEEPA’s Statute
IEEPA, as currently amended, empowers the president to
(A) investigate, regulate, or prohibit:
(i) any transactions in foreign exchange,
63 P.L. 95-223 (December 28, 1977) (Title I) (“Section 5(b)(1) of the Trading With the Enemy Act // 50 USC app. 5. //
is amended by striking out “or during any other period of national emergency declared by the President” in the text
preceding subparagraph (A).”); 91 Stat. 1625, codified as amended at 50 U.S.C. §4305 (2018); House, Trading with the
Enemy Act Reform Legislation, p. 2.
64 Ibid. (Title III); House, Trading with the Enemy Act Reform Legislation, p. 2 (“Title III of the bill makes a series of
conforming amendments to the Export Administration Act, which transfer to that act the authority, heretofore exercised
under section 5(b) of the Trading With the Enemy Act to regulate exports of non-U.S.-origin goods and technology by
foreign subsidiaries of U.S. concerns.”).
65 Ibid. (Title II); House, Trading with the Enemy Act Reform Legislation, p. 2.
66 House, Trading with the Enemy Act Reform Legislation, p. 11.
67 50 U.S.C. §1701.
68 50 U.S.C. §1701(b).
69 Ibid.
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(ii) transfers of credit or payments between, by, through, or to any banking institution,
to the extent that such transfers or payments involve any interest of any foreign country
or national thereof,
(iii) the importing or exporting of currencies or securities; and
(B) investigate, block during the pendency of an investigation, regulate, direct and compel,
nullify, void, prevent or prohibit, any acquisition, holding, withholding, use, transfer,
withdrawal, transportation, importation or exportation of, or dealing in, or exercising any
right, power, or privilege with respect to, or transactions involving, any property in which
any foreign country or a national thereof has any interest by any person, or with respect to
any property, subject to the jurisdiction of the United States.
(C) when the United States is engaged in armed hostilities or has been attacked by a foreign
country or foreign nationals, confiscate any property, subject to the jurisdiction of the
United States, of any foreign person, foreign organization, or foreign country that he
determines has planned, authorized, aided, or engaged in such hostilities or attacks against
the United States; and all right, title, and interest in any property so confiscated shall vest,
when, as, and upon the terms directed by the President, in such agency or person as the
President may designate from time to time, and upon such terms and conditions as the
President may prescribe, such interest or property shall be held, used, administered,
liquidated, sold, or otherwise dealt with in the interest of and for the benefit of the United
States, and such designated agency or person may perform any and all acts incident to the
accomplishment or furtherance of these purposes.70
Presidents may invoke IEEPA under the procedures set forth in the NEA, subject to the
requirements described above. When declaring a national emergency, the NEA requires that the
President “immediately” transmit the proclamation declaring the emergency to Congress and
publish it in the Federal Register.71 The President must also specify the provisions of law that he
or she intends to use to address the emergency.72 The NEA authorizes the President to exercise
additional statutory emergency authorities to address a previously declared national emergency,
as long as the intent to exercise them is published,73
Requirements for an IEEPA Declaration
In addition to the requirements of the NEA, IEEPA provides several further restrictions. As noted
above, IEEPA imposes different requirements if the President seeks to exercise powers with
respect to a national emergency that has not expressly been declared by invoking IEEPA. The
President may exercise IEEPA authorities only to deal with an unusual and extraordinary threat
with respect to which a national emergency has been declared for purposes of IEEPA. and “not ...
for any other purpose.”74 Accordingly, IEEPA authorities are available only with respect to a
national emergency declared for the purpose of using IEEPA authorities, and that emergency must
be declared “with respect to” addressing an unusual and extraordinary threat from abroad.
Consequently, the statutory text does not seem to support a President’s invocation of IEEPA
70 50 U.S.C. §1702.
71 50 U.S.C. §1621.
72 50 U.S.C. §1631.
73 50 U.S.C. §1631 (stating the President may list intended authorities “either in the declaration of a national
emergency, or by one or more contemporaneous or subsequent Executive orders published in the Federal Register and
transmitted to the Congress”).
74 50 U.S.C. §1701(b).
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authorities (by executive order or otherwise) by referring to a preexisting national emergency that
had not been declared under IEEPA.75
Presidents have developed a practice of issuing executive orders to either expand or modify the
scope of previously declared national emergencies to account for changed circumstances
regarding a particular threat.76 In keeping with the limitations IEEPA imposes restricting the use
of its authorities to national emergencies declared for that purpose, and requiring a new
declaration to address a “new threat,”77 past Presidents appear to have avoided adding IEEPA
authorities as an expansion of non-IEEPA emergencies78 or expanding declared IEEPA
emergencies to cover distinct new threats.79
President Donald Trump appears to have departed from this trend by issuing three executive
orders on February 1, 2025,80 that stated they expanded an earlier national emergency proclaimed
75 IEEPA authorities are broad, but not unlimited. See, for example, Micei Int’l v. Dep’t of Com., 613 F.3d 1147, 1153
(D.C. Cir. 2010) (“Nothing in the text of IEEPA delegates to the President the authority to grant jurisdiction to any
federal court.”); TikTok Inc. v. Trump, 507 F. Supp. 3d 92, 112 (D.D.C. 2020) (enjoining enforcement of regulation as
exceeding authority conferred by IEEPA because provisions “likely constitute indirect regulations of ‘personal
communication[s]’ or the exchange of ‘information or informational materials’” in violation of §1702(b)).
76 See, for example, Executive Order 13566 of February 25, 2011, “Blocking Property and Prohibiting Certain
Transactions Related to Libya,” 76 Federal Register 11315, March 2, 2011 (addressing threat to the national security
and U.S. policy after finding that “Colonel Muammar Qadhafi, his government, and close associates have taken
extreme measures against the people of Libya, including by using weapons of war, mercenaries, and wanton violence
against unarmed civilians”); expanded by Executive Order 13726 of April 19, 2016, “Blocking Property and
Suspending Entry Into the United States of Persons Contributing to the Situation in Libya,” 81 Federal Register 23559,
April 21, 2016 (changing scope of the national emergency after Qadhafi was deposed to cover “ongoing violence in
Libya, including attacks by armed groups against Libyan state facilities, foreign missions in Libya, and critical
infrastructure, as well as human rights abuses, [and] violations of the [U.N.] arms embargo”); Executive Order 13338
of May 11, 2004, “Blocking Property of Certain Persons and Prohibiting the Export of Certain Goods to Syria,” 69
Federal Register 26751, May 13, 2004 (declaring national emergency to deal with threat posed by “the actions of the
Government of Syria in supporting terrorism, continuing its occupation of Lebanon, pursuing weapons of mass
destruction and missile programs, and undermining United States and international efforts with respect to the
stabilization and reconstruction of Iraq”), modified in scope by Executive Order 13399 of April 25, 2006, “Blocking
Property of Additional Persons in Connection With the National Emergency With Respect to Syria,” 71 Federal
Register 25059, April 28, 2006 (modifying scope of the national emergency to assist in the investigation of the
“assassination of former Prime Minister of Lebanon Rafiq Hariri, and the deaths of 22 others, and other bombings or
assassination attempts in Lebanon since October 1, 2004, that are related to Hariri’s assassination or that implicate the
Government of Syria or its officers or agents”), expanded by Executive Order 13572 of April 29, 2011, “Blocking
Property of Certain Persons With Respect to Human Rights Abuses in Syria,” 76 Federal Register 24787, March 3,
2011 (expanding scope of the national emergency to cover “the Government of Syria’s human rights abuses, including
those related to the repression of the people of Syria”).
77 50 U.S.C. §1701(b).
78 See Table A-3. While IEEPA was not invoked in the first declaration of national emergency following the terrorist
attacks of September 11, 2001, President George W. Bush declared a second state of emergency invoking IEEPA.
Executive Order 13224 of September 23, 2001, “Blocking Property and Prohibiting Transaction with Persons who
Commit, Threaten to Commit, or Support Terrorism,” 66 Federal Register 49079, September 25, 2001.
79 President Jimmy Carter declared a new national emergency to address a threat emanating from countries neighboring
Iran in the same executive order in which he modified an existing national emergency. Executive Order 12211 of April
17, 1980, “Sanctions Against Iran,” 45 Federal Register 26685, April 21, 1980 (issued “in order to take steps additional
to those set forth” in Executive Order 12170, but declaring a new national emergency with respect to “added unusual
and extraordinary threat … created by subsequent events in Iran and neighboring countries, including the Soviet
invasion of Afghanistan”).
80 Executive Order 14193 of February 1, 2025, “Imposing Duties To Address the Flow of Illicit Drugs Across Our
Northern Border,” 90 Federal Register 9113, February 7, 2025; Executive Order 14194 of February 1, 2025, “Imposing
Duties To Address the Situation at Our Southern Border,” 90 Federal Register 9117, February 7, 2025; Executive
Order 14195 of February 1, 2025, “Imposing Duties To Address the Synthetic Opioid Supply Chain in the People’s
Republic of China,” 90 Federal Register 9121, February 7, 2025.
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with respect to the southern border he declared on January 20, 2025 (January Proclamation) to
invoke IEEPA.81 The January Proclamation, which invoked his authority under the NEA, did not
invoke IEEPA authorities or describe the threat (i.e., an “invasion”) as unusual and
extraordinary.82 In each of the February Executive Orders, President Trump noted he had
“previously declared a national emergency with respect to the grave threat to the United States
posed by the influx of illegal aliens and illicit drugs into the United States in Proclamation
10886.”83 He then announced: “Pursuant to the NEA, I hereby expand the scope of the national
emergency declared in that proclamation to cover,” among other things, the respective “failure”
of Canada, Mexico, and China to take actions to address criminal activities, such as illicit drugs
and human trafficking into the United States, including by using IEEPA to impose tariffs.84 The
February Executive Orders appear to be contrary to past presidential practice of exercising
IEEPA’s powers only with respect to a national emergency declared for that purpose, and that new
threats (if understood to mean involving distinct geographical areas) require separate declarations
of new national emergencies.85
The February Executive Orders also declared, respectively, that the “failure” of Canada, Mexico,
and China to act constitutes “an unusual and extraordinary threat, which has its source in
substantial part outside the United States, to the national security and foreign policy of the United
States.”86 Based on those findings, the President announced that he “declare[d] and reiterate[d] a
national emergency under the NEA and IEEPA to deal with that threat,”87 leaving some ambiguity
with regard to the intent to declare new national emergencies or expand the existing emergency.
The House of Representatives and Senate have treated the February Executive Orders as
declaring new national emergencies. On March 6, 2025, the Ranking Member of House Foreign
Affairs Committee, Representative Gregory M. Meeks, introduced two joint resolutions to
terminate national emergencies:88 the national emergency declared on February 1, 2025, with
respect to Canada;89 and the national emergency declared on February 1, 2025, with respect to
Mexico.90 Neither joint resolution claims to terminate the emergency declared on January 20,
2025.91 Additionally, on March 11, 2025, the House of Representatives agreed to a resolution
providing, “Each day for the remainder of the first session of the 119th Congress shall not
81 Proclamation 10886 of January 20, 2025, “Declaring a National Emergency at the Southern Border of the United
States,” 90 Federal Register 8327, January 29, 2025. The President declared in the Proclamation that “a national
emergency exists at the southern border of the United States.” Ibid.
82 Ibid. (describing threat to U.S. sovereignty that is geographically specific to the southern border caused by “cartels,
criminal gangs, known terrorists, human traffickers, smugglers, unvetted military-age males from foreign adversaries,
and illicit narcotics” as a “grave threat to our Nation” and an “imminent threat”). The Proclamation asserted the intent
to authorize military mobilization under 10 U.S.C. §12302 and to authorize the diversion of military construction funds
for not- previously authorized construction projects to support use of the Armed Forces. For information about the use
of this authority, see CRS Legal Sidebar LSB11278, Diverting Military Construction Funds During a National
Emergency: Legal Framework, by Jennifer K. Elsea (2025).
83 Executive Order 14193 [Canada]; Executive Order 14194 [Mexico]; Executive Order 14195 [China].
84
Ibid.
85 50 U.S.C. §1701(b). The plain language of the statute appears to preclude the President from relying on IEEPA to
“expand” a previously declared national emergency to address a separate threat and appears to preclude the President
invoking IEEPA authorities by referring to a preexisting national emergency that was not declared under IEEPA.
86 Executive Order 14193 [Canada]; Executive Order 14194 [Mexico]; Executive Order 14195 [China].
87 Ibid.
88 H.J.Res. 72; H.J.Res. 73.
89 H.J.Res. 72.
90 H.J.Res. 73.
91 H.J.Res. 72; H.J.Res. 73.
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constitute a calendar day for purposes of section 202 of the National Emergencies Act (50 U.S.C.
§1622) with respect to a joint resolution terminating a national emergency declared by the
President on February 1, 2025.”92 Accordingly, sufficient calendar days will not elapse prior to
the end of the session to force the automatic discharge of any relevant resolution of termination
from the committee of jurisdiction.93 On March 11, 2025, Senator Tim Kaine introduced “a joint
resolution to terminate the national emergency declared to impose duties on articles imported
from Canada” by the February 1, 2025 Executive Order.94 The Senate approved that resolution on
April 2, 2025, and it is pending before the House.95
Consultation and Reporting
Another IEEPA requirement that differs from the NEA is that the IEEPA provides that the
President shall consult with Congress “in every possible instance” before exercising any of the
authorities granted under IEEPA.96 Once the President declares a national emergency invoking
IEEPA, he or she must immediately transmit a report to Congress specifying
(1) the circumstances which necessitate such exercise of authority;
(2) why the President believes those circumstances constitute an unusual and extraordinary
threat, which has its source in whole or substantial part outside the United States, to the
national security, foreign policy, or economy of the United States;
(3) the authorities to be exercised and the actions to be taken in the exercise of those
authorities to deal with those circumstances;
(4) why the President believes such actions are necessary to deal with those circumstances;
and
(5) any foreign countries with respect to which such actions are to be taken and why such
actions are to be taken with respect to those countries.97
The President subsequently is to report on the actions taken under the IEEPA at least once in
every succeeding six-month interval that the authorities are exercised.98 As per the NEA, the
emergency may be terminated by the President, by a privileged joint resolution of Congress, or
automatically if the President does not publish in the Federal Register and transmit to Congress a
notice stating that such emergency is to continue in effect after such anniversary.99
Amendments to IEEPA
Congress has amended IEEPA eight times (Table 1). Five of the eight amendments altered civil
and criminal penalties for violations of orders issued under the statute. Other amendments
protected the exchange of certain informational materials from regulation under IEEPA and
expanded IEEPA’s scope following the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. Congress also
92 H.Res. 211 §4.
93 50 U.S.C. §1622(c).
94 S.J.Res. 37.
95 Ibid.
96 50 U.S.C. §1703(a).
97 50 U.S.C. §1703(b).
98 50 U.S.C. §1703(c).
99 50 U.S.C. §1622. For information regarding the expedited procedures for terminating a national emergency, see CRS
Report R46567, National Emergencies Act: Expedited Procedures in the House and Senate, by Michael Greene (2025).
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amended the NEA in response to a ruling by the Supreme Court to require a joint rather than a
concurrent resolution to terminate a national emergency.
Table 1. Amendments to IEEPA
Date
Action
December 28, 1977
IEEPA Enacted
(P.L. 95-223; 91 Stat. 1625)
August 16, 1985*
Following the Supreme Court’s holding in INS v. Chadha, 462 U.S. 919 (1983), finding
so-called legislative vetoes unconstitutional, Congress amended the NEA to change
“concurrent” resolution to “joint” resolution. (P.L. 99-93; 99 Stat. 407, 448).
* While not technically an amendment to IEEPA, IEEPA is tied to the NEA’s provisions
relating to the declaration and termination of national emergencies.
August 23, 1988
IEEPA amended to exclude informational materials (Berman Amendment, see
elaboration below).
(Omnibus Trade and Competitiveness Act of 1988; P.L. 100-418; 102 Stat. 1107, 1371)
October 6, 1992
Section 206 of IEEPA amended to increase civil and criminal penalties under the act.
(Treasury, Postal Service, and General Government Appropriations Act, 1993; P.L. 102393; 106 Stat. 1729)
October 6, 1992
Section 206 of IEEPA amended to decrease civil and criminal penalties under the act.
(Department of Defense Appropriations Act, 1993; P.L. 102-396; 106 Stat. 1876)
April 30, 1994
IEEPA amended to update the definition of informational materials.
(Foreign Relations Authorization Act for Fiscal Years 1994 and 1995; P.L. 103-236; 108
Stat. 382)
September 23, 1996
IEEPA amended to penalize attempted violations of licenses, orders, regulations or
prohibitions issued under the authority of IEEPA.
(National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 1997; P.L. 104-201; 110 Stat. 2725)
October 26, 2001
USA PATRIOT Act Amendments, see elaboration below.
(Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to
Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism (USA PATRIOT) Act of 2001; P.L. 107-56; 115 Stat.
272)
March 9, 2006
Section 206 of IEEPA amended to increase civil and criminal penalties under the act.
(USA PATRIOT Improvement and Reauthorization Act of 2005; P.L. 109-177; 120 Stat.
192)
October 16, 2007
The International Emergency Economic Powers Enhancement Act amended Section 206
of IEEPA to increase civil and criminal penalties and added to the prohibitions
conspiracy to violate licenses, orders, regulations or prohibitions issued under the
authority of IEEPA. Civil penalties are capped at the greater of $250,000 or twice the
amount of the transaction found to have violated the law. Criminal penalties now
include a fine of up to $1,000,000 and imprisonment of up to 20 years.
(International Emergency Economic Powers Enhancement Act; P.L. 110-96; 121 Stat.
1011)
Source: Congressional Research Service (CRS), based on United States Code, annotated.
The Informational Materials Amendments to IEEPA
As originally enacted, IEEPA protected the rights of U.S. persons to participate in the exchange of
“any postal, telegraphic, telephonic, or other personal communication, which does not involve a
transfer of anything of value” with a foreign person otherwise subject to sanctions. Amendments
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in 1988 and 1994 updated this list of protected rights to include the exchange of published
information in a variety of formats.100 As amended, the act currently protects the exchange of
“information or informational materials, including but not limited to, publications, films, posters,
phonograph records, photographs, microfilms, microfiche, tapes, compact disks, CD ROMs,
artworks, and news wire feeds,” provided such exchange is not otherwise controlled for national
security or foreign policy reasons related to weapons proliferation or international terrorism.101
USA PATRIOT Act Amendments to IEEPA
Unlike the Trading with the Enemy Act, IEEPA did not allow the President to vest assets as
originally enacted.102 In 2001, at the request of the George W. Bush Administration, Congress
amended IEEPA as part of the USA PATRIOT Act103 to return to the President the authority to
vest frozen assets, but only under certain circumstances:
[T]he President may ... when the United States is engaged in armed hostilities or has been
attacked by a foreign country or foreign nationals, confiscate any property, subject to the
jurisdiction of the United States, of any foreign person, foreign organization, or foreign
country that [the President] determines has planned, authorized, aided, or engaged in such
hostilities or attacks against the United States; and all right, title, and interest in any
property so confiscated shall vest, when, as, and upon the terms directed by the President,
in such agency or person as the President may designate from time to time, and upon such
terms and conditions as the President may prescribe, such interest or property shall be held,
used, administered, liquidated, sold, or otherwise dealt with in the interest of and for the
benefit of the United States, and such designated agency or person may perform any and
all acts incident to the accomplishment or furtherance of these purposes. 104
Speaking about the efforts of intelligence and law enforcement agencies to identify and disrupt
the flow of terrorist finances, Attorney General John Ashcroft told Congress
At present the President’s powers are limited to freezing assets and blocking transactions
with terrorist organizations. We need the capacity for more than a freeze. We must be able
to seize. Doing business with terrorist organization must be a losing proposition. Terrorist
financiers must pay a price for their support of terrorism, which kills innocent Americans.
Consistent with the President’s [issuance of E.O. 13224 105] and his statements [of
September 24, 2001], our proposal gives law enforcement the ability to seize the terrorists’
assets. Further, criminal liability is imposed on those who knowingly engage in financial
transactions, money-laundering involving the proceeds of terrorist acts. 106
100 P.L. 100-418 (August 23, 1988); P.L. 103-236 (April 30, 1994). The amendments were introduced by Rep. Howard
Berman (D-CA) and are occasionally referred to as the “Berman Amendments.” For more background, see, “Sleeping
with the Enemy? OFAC Rules and First Amendment Freedoms,” Perspectives on History (May 2004).
101 Codified as amended at 50 U.S.C. §1702(b)(3).
102 P.L. 95-223. House, Trading with the Enemy Act Reform Legislation, p. 15 (“This grant of authorities does not
include the following authorities … : (1) the power to vest … property.”); Senate, International Emergency Economic
Powers Legislation, p. 5 (“Authority to vest property, seize records and regulate purely domestic economic transactions
would not be granted.”).
103 Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism
(USA PATRIOT) Act of 2001, P.L. 107-56, 115 Stat. 272.
104 P.L. 107-56 §106, 115 Stat. 272, 277, codified at 50 U.S.C. §1702(a)(1)(C) (2018).
105 Executive Order 13224.
106 Administration’s Draft Anti-Terrorism Act of 2001: Hearing before the Committee on the Judiciary, 107th Cong., 1st
sess., serial no. 39 (Washington, DC: GPO, 2001), p. 7 (testimony of Attorney General Ashcroft).
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The House Judiciary Committee report explaining the amendments described its purpose as
follows:
Section 203 of the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (50 U.S.C. §1702)
grants to the President the power to exercise certain authorities relating to commerce with
foreign nations upon his determination that there exists an unusual and extraordinary threat
to the United States. Under this authority, the President may, among other things, freeze
certain foreign assets within the jurisdiction of the United States. A separate law, the
Trading With the Enemy Act, authorizes the President to take title to enemy assets when
Congress has declared war.
Section 159 of this bill amends section 203 of the International Emergency Economic
Powers Act to provide the President with authority similar to what he currently has under
the Trading With the Enemy Act in circumstances where there has been an armed attack
on the United States, or where Congress has enacted a law authorizing the President to use
armed force against a foreign country, foreign organization, or foreign national. The
proceeds of any foreign assets to which the President takes title under this authority must
be placed in a segregated account can only be used in accordance with a statute authorizing
the expenditure of such proceeds.
Section 159 also makes a number of clarifying and technical changes to section 203 of the
International Emergency Economic Powers Act, most of which will not change the way
that provision currently is implemented.107
The government has apparently never employed the vesting power to seize Al Qaeda assets
within the United States. Instead, the government has sought to confiscate them through forfeiture
procedures.108
The first, and to date, apparently only, use of this power under IEEPA occurred on March 20,
2003.109 On that date, in Executive Order 13290, President George W. Bush ordered the blocked
“property of the Government of Iraq and its agencies, instrumentalities, or controlled entities” to
be vested “in the Department of the Treasury ... [to] be used to assist the Iraqi people and to assist
in the reconstruction of Iraq.”110 The President’s order excluded from confiscation Iraq’s
diplomatic and consular property, as well as assets that had, prior to March 20, 2003, been
ordered attached in satisfaction of judgments against Iraq rendered pursuant to the terrorist suit
provision of the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act (FSIA)111 and Section 201 of the Terrorism
Risk Insurance Act (TRIA)112 (which reportedly totaled about $300 million).113
A subsequent executive order blocked the property of former Iraqi officials and their families,
vesting title of such blocked funds in the Department of the Treasury for transfer to the
Development Fund for Iraq (DFI) to be “used to meet the humanitarian needs of the Iraqi people,
for the economic reconstruction and repair of Iraq’s infrastructure, for the continued disarmament
of Iraq, for the cost of Iraqi civilian administration, and for other purposes benefitting of the Iraqi
107 U.S. Congress, House, Report of the Committee on the Judiciary to Accompany H.R. 2975, 107th Cong., 1st sess.,
H.Rept. 107-236 (Washington, DC: GPO, 2001), p. 62.
108 See United States v. All Funds on Deposit with R.J. O'Brien & Assocs., 783 F.3d 607, 617 (7 th Cir. 2015) (insurance
companies’ attempt to intercede in civil forfeiture action involving Al Qaeda assets).
109 Executive Order 13290 of March 20, 2003, “Confiscating and Vesting Certain Iraqi Property,” 68 Federal Register
14307, March 24, 2003.
110 Ibid.
111 28 U.S.C. §1605A.
112 P.L. 107-297, 116 Stat. 2322 (2002).
113 See Tom Schoenberg, “Fights Loom for Iraqi Riches,” Legal Times (March 31, 2003). Judgment creditors were paid
about $140 million from the vested assets to cover the unsatisfied portions of judgments and interest.
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people.”114 The DFI was established by UN Security Council Resolution 1483, which required
member states to freeze all assets of the former Iraqi government and of Saddam Hussein, senior
officials of his regime and their family members, and transfer such assets to the DFI, which was
then administered by the United States. Most of the vested assets were used by the Coalition
Provisional Authority (CPA) for reconstruction projects and ministry operations.115
The USA PATRIOT Act made three other amendments to Section 203 of IEEPA.116 After the
power to investigate, it added the power to block assets during the pendency of an
investigation.117 It clarified that the type of interest in property subject to IEEPA is an “interest by
any person, or with respect to any property, subject to the jurisdiction of the United States.”118 It
also added subsection (c), which provides
In any judicial review of a determination made under this section, if the determination was
based on classified information (as defined in section 1(a) of the Classified Information
Procedures Act) such information may be submitted to the reviewing court ex parte and in
camera. This subsection does not confer or imply any right to judicial review. 119
As described in the House Judiciary Committee report, these provisions were meant to clarify and
codify existing practices.120
IEEPA Trends
Like TWEA prior to its amendment in 1977, the President and Congress together have often
turned to IEEPA to impose economic sanctions in furtherance of U.S. foreign policy, national
security, and economic objectives. While initially enacted to circumscribe presidential emergency
authority,121 presidential emergency use of IEEPA has expanded in scale, scope, and frequency
since the statute’s enactment. The House report on IEEPA stated, “emergencies are by their nature
rare and brief, and are not to be equated with normal, ongoing problems.”122 National
emergencies invoking IEEPA, however, have increased in frequency and length since its
enactment.
Between 1977 and September 1, 2025, Presidents have invoked IEEPA in 77 declarations of
national emergency under the NEA.123 On average, these emergencies last more than nine years.
Most emergencies have been geographically specific, targeting a specific country or government.
However, since 1990, Presidents have declared non-geographically-specific emergencies in
response to issues like weapons proliferation, global terrorism, malicious cyber-enabled activities,
114 E.O. 13315, 68 Federal Register 52,315 (September 3, 2003).
115 GAO-04-579T Recovering Iraq’s Assets (March 18, 2004). As of March 2004, according to GAO, the CPA had
spent $1.67 billion of the $1.9 billion for “emergency needs, including salaries for civil servants and pensions, and for
ministry operations.” Ibid., 7. The CPA was also authorized to use the more than $900 million in assets seized by the
U.S. military in Iraq for humanitarian and reconstruction activities. Ibid.
116 P.L. 107-56 §106, 115 Stat. 277 (2001).
117 P.L. 107-56 §106, codified at 50 U.S.C. §1702(a)(1)(B) (2018).
118 P.L. 107-56 §106, codified at 50 U.S.C. §1702(a) (2018).
119 P.L. 107-56 §106, codified at 50 U.S.C. §1702(c) (2018).
120 House, Report of the Committee on the Judiciary to Accompany H.R. 2975, p. 62.
121 House, Trading with the Enemy Act Reform Legislation, pp. 2-9.
122 Ibid., 11.
123 This tally does not include IEEPA invocations made in connection with executive orders expanding the scope of an
initial declaration of national emergency. See Table A-1.
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and trade practices.124 The erosion of geographic limitations has been accompanied by an
expansion in the nature of the targets of sanctions issued under IEEPA authority. Originally,
IEEPA was used to target foreign governments; however, Presidents have increasingly targeted
groups and individuals.125 Usually Presidents use IEEPA as an emergency power; however,
Congress has directed the President to use IEEPA or expressed its approval of presidential
emergency use in several statutes.126 Between 1976, when the NEA was enacted, and 2019, one
joint resolution to terminate a national emergency was introduced.127 In the late-2010s, some
Members of Congress began to express concern with the NEA. Between 2019 and September 1,
2025, Members of Congress introduced 23 joint resolutions to terminate a national emergency; 11
of those resolutions involved IEEPA (Table A-2). Despite this interest in terminating national
emergencies, no emergency declared under the NEA has been terminated without presidential
assent.
Presidential Emergency Use128
IEEPA is the most frequently cited emergency authority when the President declares a national
emergency under the NEA.129 Rather than referencing the same set of emergencies, as had been
the case with TWEA, IEEPA requires the President to declare a national emergency for each
independent use,130 and permits the exercise of IEEPA powers only in connection with a national
emergency declared for the purpose of invoking IEEPA.131 As a result, the number of national
emergencies declared under the terms of the NEA has proliferated over the past four decades.
124 For example, Executive Order 13694 of April 1, 2015, “Blocking the Property of Certain Persons Engaging in
Significant Malicious Cyber-Enabled Activities,” 80 Federal Register 18077, April 2, 2015; Executive Order 13818 of
December 20, 2017, “Blocking the Property of Persons Involved in Serious Human Rights Abuse or Corruption,” 82
Federal Register 60839, December 26, 2017; Executive Order 13848 of September 12, 2018, “Imposing Certain
Sanctions in the Event of Foreign Interference in a United States Election,” 83 Federal Register 46843, September 114,
2018; Executive Order 13873 of May 15, 2019, “Securing the Information and Communications Technology and
Services Supply Chain,” 84 Federal Register 22689, May 17, 2019; Executive Order 13920 of May 1, 2020, “Securing
the United States Bulk-Power System,” 85 Federal Register 26595, May 4, 2020; Executive Order 14257 of April 2,
2025, “Regulating Imports With a Reciprocal Tariff To Rectify Trade Practices That Contribute to Large and Persistent
Annual United States Goods Trade Deficits,” 90 Federal Register 15041, April 7, 2025.
125 See “Presidential Emergency Use.”
126 See “Congressional Nonemergency Use and Retroactive Approval.”
127 H.J.Res 69, 109th Cong. Congress did not vote on the joint resolution because the President terminated the
emergency before a vote was required to be held. Proclamation 7959 of November 3, 2005, 70 Federal Register 67899
(November 8, 2005).
128 The numbers here define emergencies by executive orders declaring an emergency. This choice causes some
anomalies in the data. For example, the national emergency with regard to controlling the whereabouts of highly
enriched uranium extracted from nuclear weapons in Russia lapsed when the notice extending the emergency was not
published in the Federal Register by the emergency’s anniversary date on June 21, 2012. As such, President Barack
Obama issued an executive order declaring a new national emergency to reinstate the restrictions. For consistency, such
anomalies have been treated as two distinct national emergencies. Such treatment decreases the average duration of
emergencies. See, for example, Executive Order 13159 of June 21, 2000, “Blocking Property of the Government of the
Russian Federation Relating to the Disposition of Highly Enriched Uranium Extracted From Nuclear Weapons,” 65
Federal Register 39279, June 26, 2000; Executive Order 13617 of June 25, 2012, “Blocking Property of the
Government of the Russian Federation Relating to the Disposition of Highly Enriched Uranium Extracted From
Nuclear Weapons,” 77 Federal Register 38459, June 27, 2012.
129 See Figure 4.
130 50 U.S.C. §1701(b) (“Any exercise of such authorities to deal with any new threat shall be based on a new
declaration of national emergency which must be with respect to such threat.”).
131 Ibid. (“The authorities granted to the President by section 1702 of this title may only be exercised to deal with an
unusual and extraordinary threat with respect to which a national emergency has been declared for purposes of this
chapter and may not be exercised for any other purpose.”).
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Presidents declared four national emergencies under the auspices of TWEA in the four decades
prior to IEEPA’s enactment. In contrast, as of September 1, 2025 Presidents have declared 88
national emergencies under the NEA, 77 of which invoked IEEPA.132 As of September 1, 2025,
there were 51 ongoing national emergencies; all but five involve IEEPA.
Figure 1. Declarations and Executive Orders Citing IEEPA
Source: CRS. 2020s current as of September 1, 2025.
Note: Executive orders include declarations of national emergency that cite IEEPA that were made by executive
order and any subsequent modifications or amendments to an emergency or such an order.
Each year since 1990, Presidents have issued roughly 4.5 executive orders citing IEEPA and
declared 1.5 new national emergencies citing IEEPA.133 (Figure 1).
On average, emergencies invoking IEEPA last more than nine years.134 The longest emergency
was also the first. President Jimmy Carter, in response to the Iranian hostage crisis of 1979,
declared the first national emergency under the provisions of the NEA and invoked IEEPA.135
Eight successive Presidents have renewed that emergency annually for more than 40 years. As of
132 Declarations of emergency under the NEA that do not invoke IEEPA have all made by presidential proclamation.
See, for example, Proclamation 6491 of October 14, 1992, “To Suspend the Davis-Bacon Act of March 3, 1931, Within
a Limited Geographic Area in Response to the National Emergency Caused by Hurricanes Andrew and Iniki,” 57
Federal Register 47553, October 16, 1992; Proclamation 6867 of March 1, 1996, “Declaration of a National
Emergency and Invocation of Emergency Authority Relating to the Regulation of the Anchorage and Movement of
Vessels,” 61 Federal Register 8843, March 5, 1996; Proclamation 6907 of July 1, 1996, “Declaration of a State of
Emergency and Release of Feed Grain From the Disaster Reserve,” 61 Federal Register 35083, July 5, 1996;
Proclamation 7463 of September 14, 2001, “Declaration of National Emergency by Reason of Certain Terrorist
Attacks,” 66 Federal Register 48199, September 18, 2001; Proclamation 7924 of September 8, 2005, “To Suspend
Subchapter IV of Chapter 31 of Title 40, United States Code, Within a Limited Geographic Area in Response to the
National Emergency Caused by Hurricane Katrina,” 70 Federal Register 54227, September 13, 2005; Proclamation
8443 of October 23, 2009, “Declaration of a National Emergency With Respect to the 2009 H1N1 Influenza
Pandemic,” 74 Federal Register 55439, October 28, 2009; Proclamation 9844 of February 15, 2019, “Declaring a
National Emergency Concerning the Southern Border of the United States,” 84 Federal Register 4949, February 20,
2019; Proclamation 9994 of March 13, 2020, “Declaring a National Emergency Concerning the Novel Coronavirus
Disease (COVID-19) Outbreak,” 85 Federal Register 15337, March 18, 2020.
133 The practice of issuing IEEPA-related executive orders has also changed over time. During the Iran hostage-taking
in 1979, for example, President Carter issued a new and separate E.O. with each fine-tuning of the initial national
emergency declaration; overall from November 1979 to his last day in office in January 1981, President Carter issued
12 executive orders relating to the hostage crisis and negotiations with Iran. Later presidents have opted, instead, to
issue one executive order to declare the existence of a national emergency, and then to revisit that order to adjust or
expand its reach by amending the original language.
134 Emergencies invoking IEEPA that have been terminated lasted an average of 6.5 years. However, most emergencies
citing IEEPA have not been terminated, including the first ever declared, which has been ongoing since 1979.
135 Executive Order 12170 of November 14, 1979, “Blocking Iranian Government Property,” 44 Federal Register
65729, November 15, 1979.
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September 1, 2025, that emergency is still in effect, largely to provide a legal basis for resolving
matters of ownership of the Shah’s disputed assets.136 That initial emergency aside, the length of
emergencies invoking IEEPA has increased each decade. The average length of an emergency
invoking IEEPA declared in the 1980s was four years. That average extended to 12 years for
emergencies declared in the 1990s and 16 years for emergencies declared in the 2000s and
continues to grow (Figure 3).137
Presidents have terminated emergencies or allowed them to expire. On average Presidents have
proclaimed seven emergencies under the NEA per four-year term (six of which invoke IEEPA),
and terminated or did not renew an average of three emergencies per four-year term (two of
which invoke IEEPA) (Figure 2).138 As a result, Presidents declare an average of four more
emergencies under the NEA per term than they terminate or allow to lapse (slightly less than four
of which invoke IEEPA). As such, the number of ongoing national emergencies has grown nearly
continuously since the enactment of IEEPA and the NEA (Figure 4). Between January 1, 1979,
and September 1, 2025, there were on average 16 ongoing national emergencies each year, 14 of
which invoked IEEPA.
Figure 2. Balance of Emergencies Citing IEEPA by Presidential Term
Source: CRS. Current as of September 1, 2025.
136 Notice of November 8, 2022, “Continuation of the National Emergency With Respect to Iran,” 87 Federal Register
68013, November 10, 2022.
137 Not enough time has passed to understand whether the trend will continue with those national emergencies declared
in the 2010s.
138 Rounded to the nearest whole emergency. Includes the partial term for President Trump as of September 1, 2025.
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In most cases, the declared emergencies citing
IEEPA have been geographically specific. For
example, in the first use of IEEPA, President
Jimmy Carter issued an executive order that
both declared a national emergency with
respect to the “situation in Iran” and “blocked
all property and interests in property of the
Government of Iran.”139 Five months later,
President Carter issued a second order
dramatically expanding the scope of the first
EO and effectively blocked the transfer of all
goods, money, or credit destined for Iran by
anyone subject to the jurisdiction of the
United States.140 A further order expanded the
coverage to block imports to the United States
from Iran.141 Together, these orders touched
upon virtually all economic contacts between
any place or legal person subject to the
jurisdiction of the United States and the
territory and government of Iran.142
Figure 3. Average Length of Emergencies
Citing IEEPA
Many of the executive orders invoking IEEPA
have followed this pattern of limiting the
scope to a specific territory, government, or
Source: CRS. Current as of September 1, 2025.
its nationals. Executive Order 12513, for
Notes: A single emergency was declared in the
example, prohibited “imports into the United
1970s (Iran) and that has lasted 40 years. 2010s do
States of goods and services of Nicaraguan
not have sufficient data to create an average length
origin” and “exports from the United States of
that would be meaningful for the purposes of analysis.
goods to or destined for Nicaragua.” The
order likewise prohibited Nicaraguan air carriers and vessels of Nicaraguan registry from entering
U.S. ports.143 Executive Order 12532 prohibited various transactions with the “Government of
South Africa or to entities owned or controlled by that Government.”144
139 Executive Order 12170.
140 Executive Order 12205 of April 7, 1980, “Prohibiting Certain Transactions With Iran,” 45 Federal Register 24099,
April 9, 1980. The order exempted “food, medicine and supplies intended strictly for medical purposes, and donations
of clothing intended to be used to relieve human suffering.”
141 Executive Order 12211 of April 17, 1980, “Further Prohibitions on Transactions With Iran,” 45 Federal Register
26685, April 21, 1980.
142 Exceptions were made for family remittances.
143 Executive Order 12513 of May 1, 1985, “Prohibiting Trade and Certain Other Transactions Involving Nicaragua,”
50 Federal Register 18629, May 2, 1985.
144 Executive Order 12532 of September 9, 1985, “Prohibiting Trade and Certain Other Transactions Involving South
Africa,” 50 Federal Register 36861, September 10, 1985.
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Figure 4. Cumulative Number of Ongoing National Emergencies by Year
Source: CRS. Current as of September 1, 2025.
Notes: Orange dashed line indicates national emergencies citing IEEPA. Hashed space indicates all national
emergencies.
While the majority of national emergencies invoking IEEPA have been geographically specific,
many emergencies have lacked explicit geographic limitations.145 President George H.W. Bush
declared the first geographically nonspecific emergency in response to the threat posed by the
proliferation of chemical and biological weapons.146 Similarly, President George W. Bush
declared a national emergency in response to the threat posed by “persons who commit, threaten
to commit, or support terrorism.”147 President Barack Obama declared emergencies to respond to
the threats of “transnational criminal organizations” and “persons engaging in malicious cyberenabled activities.”148 President Donald Trump declared an emergency to respond to “foreign
adversaries” who were “creating and exploiting vulnerabilities in information and
communications technologies and services” during his first administration,149 and declared an
emergency during his second administration to respond to “trading partners” whose “economic
policies” he determined were “suppress[ing] domestic wages and consumption.”150
145 This number excludes those emergencies declared to extend the Export Administration Act of 1979.
146 Executive Order 12735 of November 16, 1990, “Chemical and Biological Weapons Proliferation,” 55 Federal
Register 48587, November 20, 1990.
147 Executive Order 13224.
148 Executive Order 13581 of July 24, 2011, “Blocking Property of Transnational Criminal Organizations,” 76 Federal
Register 44757, July 27, 2011; Executive Order 13694 of April 1, 2015, “Blocking the Property of Certain Persons
Engaging in Significant Malicious Cyber-Enabled Activities,” 80 Federal Register 18077, April 2, 2015.
149 Executive Order 13873 of May 15, 2019, “Securing the Information and Communications Technology and Services
Supply Chain,” 84 Federal Register 22689, May 17, 2019.
150 Executive Order 14257 of April 2, 2025, “Regulating Imports With a Reciprocal Tariff To Rectify Trade Practices
That Contribute to Large and Persistent Annual United States Goods Trade Deficits, 90 Federal Register 15041,” April
7, 2025.
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Without explicit geographic limitations, these orders have included provisions that are global in
scope. These geographically nonspecific emergencies invoking IEEPA have increased in
frequency over the past 40 years.151
151 See, for example, Executive Order 13694; Executive Order 13818 of December 20, 2017, “Blocking the Property of
Persons Involved in Serious Human Rights Abuse or Corruption,” 82 Federal Register 60839, December 26, 2017;
Executive Order 13848 of September 12, 2018, “Imposing Certain Sanctions in the Event of Foreign Interference in a
United States Election,” 83 Federal Register 46843, September 14, 2018; Executive Order 13873; Executive Order
13920 of May 1, 2020, “Securing the United States Bulk-Power System,” 85 Federal Register 26595, May 4, 2020;
Executive Order 13928 of June 11, 2020, “Blocking Property of Certain Persons Associated With the International
Criminal Court,” 85 Federal Register 36139, June 15, 2020. Some have argued that this shift was the result of
humanitarian concerns about the effects of sanctions on the populations of the targeted states. See, for example, Daniel
W. Drezner, “Sanctions Sometimes Smart: Targeted Sanctions in Theory and Practice,” International Studies Review
13 (2011), p. 13; Thomas Weiss, et al. eds., Political Gain and Civilian Pain: Humanitarian Impact of Economic
Sanctions (New York: Rowman and Littlefield, 1997); Matthew Craven, “Humanitarianism and the Search for Smarter
Sanctions,” European Journal of International Law 13, no. 1 (2002). Beginning in the 1990s, United Nations Security
Council sanctions began to target the political and economic elites of a state, rather than the whole population. Kern
Alexander, Economic Sanctions: Law and Public Policy (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), p. xi. However, use of
such orders has expanded beyond political and economic elites. See, for example, Executive Order 13928.
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Figure 5. National Emergency Act Declarations
Source: Federal Register; CRS.
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In addition to the erosion of geographic
limitations, the stated motivations for
declaring national emergencies have expanded
in scope as well. Initially, stated rationales for
declarations of national emergency citing
IEEPA were short and often referenced either
a specific geography or the specific actions of
a government. Presidents found that
circumstances like “the situation in Iran,”152 or
the “policies and actions of the Government of
Nicaragua,”153 constituted “unusual and
extraordinary threat[s] to the national security
and foreign policy of the United States” and
would therefore declare a national
emergency.154
Examples of Actions Taken in NonGeographic Emergencies Citing IEEPA
•
Chemical and biological weapons proliferation
•
Measures to restrict the participation by United
States persons in weapons proliferation activities
•
Measures to prevent proliferation of weapons of
mass destruction
•
Prohibiting transactions with terrorists who
threaten to disrupt the Middle East peace process
•
Blocking property and prohibiting transactions
with persons who commit, threaten to commit, or
support terrorism
•
Blocking property of transnational criminal
organizations
•
Blocking the property of certain persons engaging
in significant malicious cyber-enabled activities
The stated rationales have expanded over time
•
Blocking the property of persons involved in
in both the length and subject matter.
serious human rights abuse or corruption
Presidents have increasingly declared national
•
Imposing certain sanctions in the event of foreign
emergencies, in part, to respond to human and
interference in a United States election
155
156
civil rights abuses, slavery, denial of
157
158
•
Limiting investments by U.S. persons in certain
religious freedom, political repression,
national security technologies in countries of
159
public corruption, and the undermining of
concern
160
democratic processes. While the first
reference to human rights violations as a
rationale for a declaration of national emergency came in 1985,161 most such references have
come in the past 20 years (Table A-3).
Presidents have also expanded the nature of the targets of IEEPA sanctions. Originally, the targets
of sanctions issued under IEEPA were foreign governments. The first use of IEEPA targeted
“Iranian Government Property.”162 Use of IEEPA quickly expanded to target geographically
defined regions.163 Presidents have also increasingly targeted groups, such as political parties,
152 Executive Order 12170.
153 Executive Order 12513.
154 Ibid.
155 Executive Order 12532; Executive Order 13396 of February 7, 2006, “Blocking Property of Certain Persons
Contributing to the Conflict in Côte d’Ivoire,” 71 Federal Register 7389, February 10, 2006; Executive Order 13067 of
November 3, 1997, “Blocking Sudanese Government Property and Prohibiting Transactions With Sudan,” 62 Federal
Register 59989, November 5, 1997; Executive Order 13692 of March 8, 2015, “Blocking Property and Suspending
Entry of Certain Persons Contributing to the Situation in Venezuela,” 80 Federal Register 12747, March 11, 2015.
156 Executive Order 13067.
157 Ibid.
158 Executive Order 13405 of June 16, 2006, “Blocking Property of Certain Persons Undermining Democratic
Processes or Institutions in Belarus,” 71 Federal Register 35485, June 20, 2006.
159 Ibid.
160 Ibid.
161 Executive Order 12532.
162 Executive Order 12170.
163 See, for example, Executive Order 12513.
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corporations, or terrorist organizations, and individuals, such as supporters of terrorism, suspected
narcotics traffickers, or associates of the International Criminal Court.164
The first instances of orders directed at groups or persons were limited to foreign groups or
persons. For example, in Executive Order 12978, President Bill Clinton targeted specific “foreign
persons” and “persons determined ... to be owned or controlled by, or to act for or on behalf of”
such foreign persons.165 An excerpt is included below:
Except to the extent provided in section 203(b) of IEEPA (50 U.S.C. 1702(b)) and in
regulations, orders, directives, or licenses that may be issued pursuant to this order, and
notwithstanding any contract entered into or any license or permit granted prior to the
effective date, I hereby order blocked all property and interests in property that are or
hereafter come within the United States, or that are or hereafter come within the possession
or control of United States persons, of:
(a)
the foreign persons listed in the Annex to this order;
(b)
foreign persons determined by the Secretary of the Treasury, in consultation
with the Attorney General and the Secretary of State:
(i)
to play a significant role in international narcotics trafficking centered in
Colombia; or
(ii)
materially to assist in, or provide financial or technological support for
or goods or services in support of, the narcotics trafficking activities of persons
designated in or pursuant to this order; and
(c)
persons determined by the Secretary of the Treasury, in consultation with the
Attorney General and the Secretary of State, to be owned or controlled by, or to act
for or on behalf of, persons designated in or pursuant to this order. 166
In 2001, President George W. Bush issued Executive Order 13219 to target “persons who threaten
international stabilization efforts in the Western Balkans.”167 While the order was similar to that
of Executive Order 12978, it removed the qualifier “foreign.” As such, persons in the United
States, including U.S. citizens, could be targets of the order.168 The following is an excerpt of the
order:
Except to the extent provided in section 203(b)(1), (3), and (4) of IEEPA (50 U.S.C.
1702(b)(1), (3), and (4)), the Trade Sanctions Reform and Export Enhancement Act of
2000 (title IX, P.L. 106-387), and in regulations, orders, directives, or licenses that may
hereafter be issued pursuant to this order, and notwithstanding any contract entered into or
164 See, for example, Executive Order 12865 of September 26, 1993, “Prohibiting Certain Transactions Involving
UNITA,” 58 Federal Register 51005, September 29, 1993 (prohibiting transactions with the National Union for the
Total Independence of Angola (UNITA), the second-largest political party in Angola); Executive Order 13129 of July
4, 1999, “Blocking Property and Prohibiting Transactions With the Taliban,” 64 Federal Register 36759, July 7, 1999
(prohibiting transactions with the Taliban); Executive Order 13224 (prohibiting transactions with persons who commit,
threaten to commit, or support terrorism); Executive Order 12978 (prohibiting transactions with certain narcotics
traffickers); Executive Order 13928 (blocking property of certain persons associated with the International Criminal
Court); Executive Order 14203 of February 6, 2025, “Imposing Sanctions on the International Criminal Court,” 90
Federal Register 9369, February 12, 2025 (same).
165 Executive Order 12978 of October 21, 1995, “Blocking Assets and Prohibiting Transactions With Significant
Narcotics Traffickers,” 60 Federal Register 54579, October 24, 1995.
166 Ibid. Emphasis added.
167 Executive Order 13219 of June 26, 2001, “Blocking Property of Persons Who Threaten International Stabilization
Efforts in the Western Balkans,” 66 Federal Register 34777, June 26, 2001.
168 See, for example, Aaran Money Wire Serv., Inc. v. United States, 2003 WL 22143735, at *3 (D. Minn. August 21,
2003).
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any license or permit granted prior to the effective date, all property and interests in
property of:
(i)
the persons listed in the Annex to this order; and
(ii)
persons designated by the Secretary of the Treasury, in consultation with the
Secretary of State, because they are found:
(A)
to have committed, or to pose a significant risk of committing, acts of
violence ... 169
Several subsequent invocations of IEEPA have similarly not been limited to foreign targets.170
In sum, presidential emergency use of IEEPA initially was directed at foreign states, with targets
that were delimited by geography or nationality. Since the 1990s, Presidents have expanded the
scope of their declarations to include groups and individual persons, regardless of nationality or
geographic location, who are engaged in specific activities.
Congressional Nonemergency Use and Retroactive Approval
While IEEPA is often categorized as an emergency statute, Congress has used IEEPA outside of
the context of national emergencies. When Congress legislates sanctions, it often authorizes or
directs the President to use IEEPA authorities to impose those sanctions.
In the Nicaragua Human Rights and Anticorruption Act of 2018, for example, Congress directed
the President to exercise “all powers granted to the President [by IEEPA] to the extent necessary
to block and prohibit [certain transactions].”171 Penalties for violations by a person of a measure
imposed by the President under the act would be, likewise, determined by reference to IEEPA.172
This trend has been long-term. Congress first directed the President to make use of IEEPA
authorities in 1986 as part of an effort to assist Haiti in the recovery of assets illegally diverted by
its former government. That statute provided
The President shall exercise the authorities granted by section 203 of the International
Emergency Economic Powers Act [50 USC 1702] to assist the Government of Haiti in its
efforts to recover, through legal proceedings, assets which the Government of Haiti alleges
were stolen by former president-for-life Jean Claude Duvalier and other individuals
associated with the Duvalier regime. This subsection shall be deemed to satisfy the
requirements of section 202 of that Act. [50 USC 1701]173
In directing the President to use IEEPA, Congress waived the requirement that he declare a
national emergency (and none was declared).174
Subsequent legislation has followed this general pattern, with slight variations in language and
specificity.175 The following is an example of current legislative language that has appeared in
several recent statutes:
169 Executive Order 13219 of June 26, 2001, “Blocking Property of Persons Who Threaten International Stabilization
Efforts in the Western Balkans,” 66 Federal Register 34777, June 29, 2001, emphasis added.
170 See, for example, Executive Order 13224; Executive Order 13396.
171 Nicaragua Human Rights and Anticorruption Act of 2018, P.L. 115-335 (December 20, 2018), 132 Stat. 5019.
172 Ibid.
173 Special Foreign Assistance Act of 1986, P.L. 99-529 (October 24, 1986), 100 Stat. 3010.
174 Ibid.
175 See, for example, National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 1993, P.L. 102-484 (October 23, 1992), 106
(continued...)
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(a) IN GENERAL.—The President shall impose the sanctions described in subsection (b)
with respect to—
...
(b) SANCTIONS DESCRIBED.—
(1) IN GENERAL.—The sanctions described in this subsection are the following:
(A) ASSET BLOCKING.—The exercise of all powers granted to the President
by the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (50 U.S.C. 1701 et seq.)
to the extent necessary to block and prohibit all transactions in all property and
interests in property of a person determined by the President to be subject to
subsection (a) if such property and interests in property are in the United States,
come within the United States, or are or come within the possession or control of
a United States person.
...
(2) PENALTIES.—A person that violates, attempts to violate, conspires to violate, or
causes a violation of paragraph (1)(A) or any regulation, license, or order issued to
carry out paragraph (1)(A) shall be subject to the penalties set forth in subsections (b)
and (c) of section 206 of the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (50
U.S.C. 1705) to the same extent as a person that commits an unlawful act described in
subsection (a) of that section.176
Congress has also expressed, retroactively, its approval of unilateral presidential invocations of
IEEPA in the context of a national emergency. In the Countering Iran’s Destabilizing Activities
Act of 2017, for example, Congress declared, “It is the sense of Congress that the Secretary of the
Treasury and the Secretary of State should continue to implement Executive Order No. 13382.”177
Presidents have also used IEEPA in an effort to preempt or influence parallel congressional
activity. On September 9, 1985, President Reagan, finding “that the policies and actions of the
Stat. 2315; Iran and Libya Sanctions Act of 1996, P.L. 104-1172 (August 5, 1996), 110 Stat. 1541; Strom Thurmond
National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 1999, P.L. 105-261 (October 17, 1998), 112 Stat. 1920; Victims of
Trafficking and Violence Protection Act of 2000, P.L. 106-386 (October 28, 2000), 114 Stat. 1464; Comprehensive
Peace in Sudan Act of 2004, P.L. 108-497 (December 23, 2004), 118 Stat. 4012; Darfur Peace and Accountability Act
of 2006, P.L. 109-344 (October 13, 2006), 120 Stat. 1869; Comprehensive Iran Sanctions, Accountability, and
Divestment Act of 2010, P.L. 111-195 (July 1, 2010), 124 Stat 1312; National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal
Year 2012, P.L. 112-81 (December 31, 2011), 125 Stat 1298; Iran Threat Reduction and Syria Human Rights Act of
2012, P.L. 112-158 (August 10, 2012), 126 Stat 1214 (makes some of the most extensive use of IEEPA); Russia and
Moldova Jackson-Vanik Repeal and Sergei Magnitsky Rule of Law Accountability Act of 2012, P.L. 112-208
(December 14, 2012), 126 Stat 1496; Carl Levin and Howard P. “Buck” McKeon National Defense Authorization Act
P.L. 113-291 (December 19, 2014), 128 Stat. 3293; Hizballah International Financing Prevention Amendments Act of
2018, P.L. 115-272 (October 25, 2018), 132 Stat. 4144.
176 Support for the Sovereignty, Integrity, Democracy, and Economic Stability of Ukraine Act of 2014, P.L. 113-95
(April 3, 2014), 128 Stat. 1088. Identical language can be found, for example, in: The Venezuela Defense of Human
Rights and Civil Society Act of 2014, P.L. 113-278 (December 18, 2014), 128 Stat. 3011; National Defense
Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2017, P.L. 114-328 (December 23, 2016), 130 Stat. 2000. Similar language can be
found, for example, in: the North Korea Sanctions and Policy Enhancement Act of 2016, P.L. 114-122 (February 18,
2016), 130 Stat. 93; the Countering America’s Adversaries through Sanctions Act (CAATSA), P.L. 115-44 (August 2,
2017), 130 Stat 886. Depending on the circumstance, Congress also includes a clause waiving the requirement to
declare a national emergency. See, for example, Hizballah International Financing Prevention Amendments Act of
2018, P.L. 115-272, §103, 132 Stat. 4144, 4148 (“(1) ASSET BLOCKING.—The exercise of all powers granted to the
President by the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (50 U.S.C. 1701 et seq.) (except that the requirements
of section 202 of such Act (50 U.S.C. 1701) shall not apply) to the extent necessary to block and prohibit all
transactions [ ... ].”).
177 CAATSA §104, codified at 22 U.S.C. §9403; Executive Order 13382 of June 28, 2005, “Blocking Property of
Weapons of Mass Destruction Proliferators and Their Supporters,” 70 Federal Register 38567, July 1, 2005.
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Government of South Africa constitute an unusual and extraordinary threat to the foreign policy
and economy of the United States,” declared a national emergency and limited transactions with
South Africa.178 The President declared the emergency despite the fact that legislation limiting
transactions with South Africa was quickly making its way through Congress.179 In remarks about
the declaration, President Reagan stated that he had been opposed to the bill contemplated by
Congress because unspecified provisions “would have harmed the very people [the U.S. was]
trying to help.”180 Nevertheless, members of the press at the time181 (and at least one scholar
since)182 noted that the limitations imposed by the executive order and the provisions in
legislation then winding its way through Congress were “substantially similar.”183
Current Uses of IEEPA
In general, IEEPA has served as an integral part of the international sanctions regime.184 The
President, either through a declaration of emergency or via statutory direction, has used IEEPA to
limit economic transactions in support of administrative and congressional national security and
foreign policy goals. Much of the action taken pursuant to IEEPA has involved blocking
transactions and freezing assets.
Once the President declares that a national emergency exists, he may use the authority in Section
203 of IEEPA (Grants of Authorities; 50 U.S.C. §1702) to investigate, regulate, or prohibit
imports, exports, foreign exchange transactions, transfers of credit, transfers of securities, or
payments, and may take other specified actions relating to property in which a foreign country or
person has interest—freezing assets, blocking property and interests in property, prohibiting U.S.
persons from entering into transactions related to frozen assets and blocked property.
Pursuant to Section 203, Presidents have, among other things,
•
•
prohibited transactions with and blocked property of those designated as
engaging in malicious cyber-enabled activities, including “interfering with or
undermining election processes or institutions;”185
prohibited transactions with and blocked property of those designated as illicit
narcotics traffickers, including foreign drug kingpins;186
178 Executive Order 12532.
179 H.R. 1460 (99th Cong.); See also Comprehensive Anti-Apartheid Act of 1986, P.L. 99-440 (October 2, 1986), 100
Stat. 1086.
180 Economic Sanctions Against South Africa, Remarks and a Question-and-Answer-Session with Reporters on Signing
E.O. 12532, September 9, 1985, 21 Weekly Comp. Pres. Doc. 1048, 1050.
181 See, for example, questions by Helen Thomas, United Press International, Ibid., 1050.
182 Carter, International Economic Sanctions, p. 201.
183 Ibid.
184 Ibid., ch. 9.
185 For example, Executive Order 13757 of December 28, 2016, “Taking Additional Steps to Address the National
Emergency With Respect to Significant Malicious Cyber-Enabled Activities,” 82 Federal Register 1, January 3, 2017;
See also Executive Order 13848 of September 12, 2018, “Imposing Certain Sanctions in the Event of Foreign
Interference in a United States Election,” 83 Federal Register 46843, September 14, 2018.
186 For example, Executive Order 12978 of October 21, 1995, “Blocking Assets and Prohibiting Transactions With
Significant Narcotics Traffickers,” 60 Federal Register 54579, October 24, 1995.
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•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
prohibited transactions with and blocked property of those designated as
engaging in human rights abuses or significant corruption;187
prohibited transactions related to illicit trade in rough diamonds;188
prohibited transactions with and blocked property of those designated as
Transnational Criminal Organizations;189
prohibited transactions with “those who disrupt the Middle East peace
process”;190
prohibited transactions related to offensive military overflights of certain
regions;191
prohibited transactions related to weapons of mass destruction, in coordination
with export controls authorized by the Arms Export Control Act and the Export
Administration Act of 1979, and in furtherance of efforts to deter the weapons
programs of specific countries (i.e., Iran, North Korea);192
prohibited transactions with those designated as “persons who commit, threaten
to commit, or support terrorism”;193
maintained the dual-use export control system at times when its then-underlying
authority, the Export Administration Act authority, had lapsed;194
blocked property of, and prohibited transactions with, those designated as
engaged in cyber activities that compromise critical infrastructures, including
election processes or the private sector’s trade secrets;195
blocked property of, and prohibited transactions with, those designated as
responsible for serious human rights abuse or engaged in corruption;196
prohibited transactions with those who pose “an undue risk of sabotage to or
subversion of the design, integrity, manufacturing, production, distribution,
187 For example, Executive Order 13818 of December 20, 2017, “Blocking the Property of Persons Involved in Serious
Human Rights Abuse or Corruption,” 82 Federal Register 60839, December 26, 2017.
188 For example, Executive Order 13194 of January 18, 2001, “Prohibiting the Importation of Rough Diamonds From
Sierra Leone,” 66 Federal Register 7389, January 23, 2001.
189 For example, Executive Order 13581 of July 24, 2011, “Blocking Property of Transnational Criminal
Organizations,” 76 Federal Register 44757, July 27, 2011.
190 For example, Executive Order 12947 of January 23, 1995, “Prohibiting Transactions With Terrorists Who Threaten
To Disrupt the Middle East Peace Process,” 60 Federal Register 5079, January 25, 1995.
191 For example, Executive Order 13400 of April 26, 2006, “Blocking Property of Persons in Connection With the
Conflict in Sudan’s Darfur Region,” 71 Federal Register 25483, April 26, 2006.
192 For example, Executive Order 12938 of November 14, 1994, “Proliferation of Weapons of Mass Destruction,” 59
Federal Register 59099, November 16, 1994.
193 For example, Executive Order 13224 of September 23, 2001, “Blocking Property and Prohibiting Transactions With
Persons Who Commit, Threaten To Commit, or Support Terrorism,” 66 Federal Register 49079, September 25, 2001.
194 For example, Executive Order 12923 of June 30, 1994, “Continuation of Export Control Regulations,” 59 Federal
Register 34551, July 5, 1994.
195 For example, Executive Order 13694 of April 1, 2015, “Blocking the Property of Certain Persons Engaging in
Significant Malicious Cyber-Enabled Activities,” 80 Federal Register 18077, April 2, 2015.
196 For example, Executive Order 13818 of December 20, 2017, “Blocking the Property of Persons Involved in Serious
Human Rights Abuse or Corruption,” 82 Federal Register 60839, December 26, 2017.
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•
installation, operation, or maintenance of information and communications
technology or services in the United States”;197 and
imposed tariffs on imported goods.198
No President has used IEEPA to enact a policy that was primarily domestic in effect. Some
scholars argue that the interconnectedness of the global economy means a President might be able
to use IEEPA to take an action that was primarily domestic in effect.199
Use of Assets Frozen under IEEPA
The ultimate disposition of assets frozen under IEEPA may serve as an important part of the
leverage economic sanctions provide to influence the behavior of foreign actors.200 The President
and Congress have each at times determined the fate of blocked assets to further foreign policy
goals.
Presidential Use of Foreign Assets Frozen under IEEPA
Presidents have used frozen assets as a bargaining tool during foreign policy crises and to bring a
resolution to such crises, at times by unfreezing the assets, returning them to the sanctioned entity,
or channeling them to a follow-on government. The following are some examples of how
Presidents have used blocked assets to resolve foreign policy issues.
President Carter invoked authority under IEEPA to impose trade sanctions against Iran, freezing
Iranian assets in the United States, in response to the hostage crisis in 1979.201 On January 19,
1981, the United States and Iran entered into a series of executive agreements brokered by
Algeria under which the hostages were freed and the frozen assets were distributed to various
entities.202 Of the blocked assets, the agreements directed $5.1 billion to repay outstanding U.S.
bank loans to Iran, $2.8 billion returned to Iran, $1 billion transferred into a security account in
the Hague to pay other U.S. claims against Iran as arbitrated by the Iran-U.S. Claims Tribunal
197 For example, Executive Order 13873 of May 15, 2019, “Securing the Information and Communications Technology
and Services Supply Chain,” 84 Federal Register 22689, May 17, 2019.
198 For example, Executive Order 14193 of February 1, 2025, “Imposing Duties To Address the Flow of Illicit Drugs
Across Our Northern Border,” 90 Federal Register 9113, February 7, 2025.
199 “The International Emergency Economic Powers Act,” p. 1111; Thronson, “Toward Comprehensive Reform of
America’s Emergency Law Regime,” pp. 757-758.
200 For example, Dames & Moore v. Regan, 453 U.S. 654, 673 (1981) (explaining that “[blocking] orders permit the
President to maintain the foreign assets at his disposal for use in negotiating the resolution of a declared national
emergency. The frozen assets serve as a ‘bargaining chip’ to be used by the President when dealing with a hostile
country”).
201 Executive Order 12170.
202 The Algiers Accords comprise the following five documents: The Declaration of the Government of the Democratic
and Popular Republic of Algeria, January 19, 1981, 81 Dep’t St. Bull., No. 2047 1, 1 (1981) [hereinafter “General
Declaration”], reprinted in 1 Iran-U.S. Cl. Trib. Rep. 3; The Declaration of the Government of the Democratic and
Popular Republic of Algeria Concerning the Settlement of Claims by the Government of the United States of America
and the Government of the Islamic Republic of Iran, January 19, 1981, 81 Dep’t St. Bull., No. 2047, at 3, reprinted in 1
Iran-U.S. Cl. Trib. Rep. 9; Undertakings of the Government of the United States of America and the Government of the
Islamic Republic of Iran with Respect to the Declaration of the Government of the Democratic and Popular Republic of
Algeria, 19 January 1981, 81 Dep’t St. Bull., No. 2047, at 4, reprinted in 1 Iran-U.S. Cl. Trib. Rep. 13; Escrow
Agreement Among the United States, Federal Reserve Bank of New York, Bank Markazi Iran, and the Banque
Centrale d’Algerie, January 20, 1981, 81 Dep’t St. Bull., No. 2047, at 6, reprinted in 1 Iran-U.S. Cl. Trib. Rep. 16; and
Technical Arrangement Between Banque Centrale d’Algerie and the Governor and Company of the Bank of England
and the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, January 20, 1981, 81 Dep’t St. Bull., No. 2047, at 14, reprinted in 1 IranU.S. Cl. Trib. Rep. 20 [hereinafter “Algiers Accords”].
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(IUSCT), and $2 billion remained blocked pending further agreement with Iran or decision of the
Tribunal. The United States also froze the assets of the former Shah’s estate along with those of
the Shah’s close relatives pending litigation in U.S. courts to ascertain Iran’s right to their return.
Iran’s litigation was unsuccessful, and none of the contested assets were returned to Iran.203
Presidents have also channeled frozen assets to opposition governments in cases where the United
States continued to recognize a previous government that had been removed by coup d’état or
otherwise replaced as the legitimate government of a country. For example, after Panamanian
President Eric Arturo Delvalle tried to dismiss de facto military ruler General Manuel Noriega
from his post as head of the Panamanian Defense Forces, which resulted in Delvalle’s own
dismissal by the Panamanian Legislative Assembly, President Reagan recognized Delvalle as the
legitimate head of government and instituted economic sanctions against the Noriega regime.204
As part of these sanctions, the Department of State, in February 1988, advised U.S. banks not to
disburse funds to the Noriega regime, and Delvalle obtained court orders permitting him access to
those funds.205 In April 1988, President Reagan issued Executive Order 12635, which “blocked
all property and interests in property of the Government of Panama that are in the United States ...
or that come within the possession or control of persons located within the United States.”206 In
June 1988, the Department of the Treasury issued regulations directing most payments from the
U.S. government owed to Panama and all payments owed “to Panama from the operation of the
Panama Canal Commission” to an escrow account established at the Federal Reserve Bank of
New York.207 One escrow account contained funds for the payment of operating expenses of the
Delvalle government.208 After the U.S. invasion of Panama ended in early 1990, President George
H.W. Bush lifted economic sanctions against the country209 and used some of the frozen funds to
repay debts owed by Panama to foreign creditors, with remaining funds turned over to the
successor government.210
The Obama and Trump Administrations took similar actions in response to the increasing
repression of Nicolás Maduro (2013-present) in Venezuela. President Barack Obama initially
froze Venezuelan government assets in 2015 under IEEPA and the Venezuela Defense of Human
Rights and Civil Society Act of 2014.211 In January 2019, the Trump Administration recognized
Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaidó as Venezuela’s interim president212 and permitted
203 Sean D. Murphy, “Contemporary Practice of the United States Relating to International Law,” American Journal of
International Law 94 (October 2000), p. 704 (explaining that “[a]ll of Iran’s lawsuits in U.S. courts [to recover the
Shah’s assets] were eventually dismissed, principally on grounds of forum non conveniens”).
204 GAO Review of Economic Sanctions Imposed Against Panama, GAO/T-NSIAD-89-44, 4-5 (July 26, 1989).
205 Ibid., 5.
206 Executive Order 12635 of April 8, 1988, “Prohibition on the Use of Federal Funds for the Acquisition of Certain
Real Property in the District of Columbia,” 53 Federal Register 12134, April 8, 1988.
207 GAO Report, supra note 159, at 5.
208 Ibid., 7.
209
Executive Order 12710 of April 5, 1990, “Termination of Emergency With Respect to Panama,” 55 Federal
Register 13099, April 6, 1990.
210 See 1989 Cong. Q. Almanac 607 (reporting that the Department of the Treasury had concluded “that the net amount
still due Panama, after ‘offsets, was about $200 million”).
211 Executive Order 13692 of March 8, 2015, “Blocking Property and Suspending Entry of Certain Persons
Contributing to the Situation in Venezuela,” 80 Federal Register 12747, March 11, 2015. For information about current
sanctions against Venezuela, see CRS In Focus IF10715, Venezuela: Overview of U.S. Sanctions Policy, by Clare
Ribando Seelke (2025).
212 President Donald J. Trump Supports the Venezuelan People’s Efforts to Restore Democracy in Their Country,
White House Fact Sheet January 29, 2019, https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/president-donald-j-trump(continued...)
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Guaidó access to the frozen Venezuelan government assets that were “held at the United States
Federal Reserve and other insured United States financial institutions.”213 The Trump
Administration also imposed additional sanctions under IEEPA to freeze the assets of the main
Venezuelan state-owned oil company, Petróleos de Venezuela (Pdvsa),214 which significantly
reduced funds available to the government of Nicolas Maduro.215 The Biden Administration
continued to recognize Guaidó’s interim government216 until its dissolution in December 2022,
and then recognized the National Assembly elected in 2014 as the “last remaining democratic
institution in Venezuela” even though most of its members are in exile.217
The Biden and Trump Administrations recognize Edmundo González Urrutia, winner of the July
2024 presidential elections, as the “rightful” President of Venezuela.218 Nevertheless, Nicolás
Maduro has remained in office and was inaugurated for a third term as president in January
2025.219 González Urrutía, in exile since September 2024, does not have direct access to
Venezuela assets in the United States.220 The National Assembly leaders elected in 2015
technically has access to the assets frozen in the United States, but any transactions involving
those assets require a license from OFAC.221 The opposition-controlled 2015 National Assembly
has sought to prevent the sale of one of Venezuela’s most valuable assets, CITGO, the U.S.
refining arm of PdVSA, for the payment of debts owed and appropriations carried out by the
Maduro government; no sale can occur unless OFAC grants a license for it to go forward.222
There is also precedent for using frozen foreign assets for purposes authorized by the U.N.
Security Council. After the first war with Iraq, President George H.W. Bush ordered the transfer
of frozen Iraqi assets derived from the sale of Iraqi petroleum held by U.S. banks to a holding
account in the Federal Reserve Bank of New York to fulfill “the rights and obligations of the
United States under U.N. Security Council Resolution No. 778.”223 The President cited a section
supports-venezuelan-peoples-efforts-restore-democracy-country/. For background of the situation in Venezuela, see
CRS Report R44841, Venezuela: Background and U.S. Relations, coordinated by Clare Ribando Seelke (2022).
213 Trump Supports the Venezuelan People’s Efforts.
214 Executive Order 13857 of January 25, 2019, “Taking Additional Steps To Address the National Emergency With
Respect to Venezuela,” 84 Federal Register 509, January 30, 2019; Treasury Sanctions Venezuela’s State-Owned Oil
Company Petroleos de Venezuela, S.A., U.S. Department of the Treasury (January 28, 2019), https://home.treasury.gov/
news/press-releases/sm594.
215 Marianna Parraga, “Venezuela’s oil exports sink to 17-year low, choked by U.S. sanctions,” Reuters, June 2, 2020,
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-venezuela-oil-exports/venezuelas-oil-exports-sink-to-17-year-low-choked-by-ussanctions-idUSKBN2392SG.
216 Press Statement, U.S. Department of State, U.S. Recognition of Venezuela’s 2015 National Assembly and Interim
President Guaidó, January 4, 2022, https://www.state.gov/u-s-recognition-of-venezuelas-2015-national-assembly-andinterim-president-guaido/.
217 Press Statement, U.S. Department of State, Venezuela’s Interim Government and the 2015 National Assembly,
January 3, 2023, https://www.state.gov/venezuelas-interim-government-and-the-2015-national-assembly/.
218 U.S. Department of State, “Secretary Rubio’s Call with the Rightful President of Venezuela González Urrutia and
Venezuelan Democratic Opposition Leader Machado,” January 22, 2025.
219 CRS In Focus IF10230, Venezuela: Political Crisis and U.S. Policy, by Clare Ribando Seelke.
220 CRS electronic correspondence with State Department, July 7, 2025.
221 Ibid.
222 Marianna Parraga, “Is Venezuela About to Lose Citgo, its Most Prized Foreign Asset,” Reuters, July 7, 2025.
223 Executive Order 12817 of October 21, 1992, “Transfer of Certain Iraqi Government Assets Held by Domestic
Banks,” 57 Federal Register 48433, October 23, 1992. President George H.W. Bush froze Iraqi assets under U.S.
jurisdiction pursuant to IEEPA in response to Iraq’s invasion and occupation of Kuwait Executive Order 12722 of
August 2, 1990, “Blocking Iraqi Government Property and Prohibiting Transactions With Iraq,” 55 Federal Register
31803, August 3, 1990.
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of the United Nations Participation Act (UNPA),224 as well as IEEPA, as authority to take the
action.225 The President ordered the transferred funds to be used to provide humanitarian relief
and to finance the United Nations Compensation Commission,226 which was established to
adjudicate claims against Iraq arising from the invasion.227 Other Iraqi assets remained frozen and
accumulated interest until the United States vested them in 2003 pursuant to IEEPA.228
In some cases, the United States has ended sanctions and returned frozen assets to successor
governments. For example, as a condition of releasing sanctions, the United States released
$237.6 million in frozen funds that had belonged to the Central Bank of the Socialist Federal
Republic of Yugoslavia to the central banks of the successor states in 2003.229 In 2002, the United
States released $217 million in frozen funds that had belonged to the Taliban to the Afghan
Interim Authority.230
As of the date of this report, the fate of the Afghan Central Bank (DaB) assets held in the United
States at the time of the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan in 2021 remains undecided. Some
victims—including survivors and family members—of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks
with judgments against the Taliban have obtained a writ of attachment with respect to the
assets.231 The Biden Administration subsequently blocked the funds pursuant to IEEPA232 and
filed a statement of interest233 asking the district court for permission to make half ($3.5 billion)
of the assets available for transfer under the OFAC license234 issued on behalf of the people of
Afghanistan to “to address significant humanitarian and economic concerns and to avoid further
regional instability and other conditions contrary to the foreign policy interests of the United
States.”235 The other half of the assets would remain blocked to avail the judgment plaintiffs of
the opportunity to make their case for entitlement to attach them in satisfaction of their
224 22 U.S.C. §287c (2018). The provision authorizes the President to give effect to U.N. Security Council resolutions
by “investigat[ing], regulat[ing], or prohibit[ing], in whole or in part, economic relations or rail, sea, air, postal,
telegraphic, radio, and other means of communication between any foreign country or any national thereof or any
person therein and the United States or any person subject to the jurisdiction thereof, or involving any property subject
to the jurisdiction of the United States.” The provision does not explicitly mention asset confiscation.
225 Executive Order 12817.
226 See Ronald J. Bettauer, “Establishment of the United Nations Compensation Commission: The U.S. Government
Perspective,” The United Nations Compensation Commission (Leiden: Brill, 1994), p. 35.
227 U.N. Security Council Resolution 687, ¶16 (April 8, 1991) (reaffirming that “Iraq ... is liable under international law
for any direct loss, damage, ... or injury to foreign Governments, nationals and corporations, as a result of Iraq’s
unlawful invasion and occupation of Kuwait”; U.N. Security Council Resolution 692 (May 20, 1991) (establishing the
United Nations Compensation Commission (UNCC) to administer a system to provide compensation for claims for
which Iraq is liable under paragraph 16 of S.C. Res. 687); U.N. Security Council Resolution 706 (August 15, 1991) and
U.N. Security Council Resolution 712 (September 19, 1991) (establishing an escrow account administered by the U.N.
Secretary General to fund the costs of the UNCC and other activities); U.N. Security Council Resolution 778 (October
2, 1992) (directing all States in possession of funds due to Iraq for the sale of petroleum and petroleum products to
transfer those funds to the U.N. escrow account).
228 See “USA PATRIOT Act Amendments to IEEPA.”
229 Foreign Regimes’ Assets, GAO-04-1006, 11 (September 2004).
230 Ibid., 12.
231 Havlish v. Bin Laden, No. 3-cv-09848 (S.D.N.Y. September 13, 2021).
232 Executive Order 14064 of February 11, 2022, “Protecting Certain Property of Da Afghanistan Bank for the Benefit
of the People of Afghanistan,” 87 Federal Register 8391, February 15, 2022.
233 United States Government Statement of Interest, Havlish v. Bin Laden, No. 3-cv-09848, ECF 563 (S.D.N.Y.
February 11, 2022) (hereinafter SOI).
234 OFAC License No. DABRESERVES-EO-2022-886895-1, https://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/21226931/ex-bofac-license.pdf.
235 Ibid., SOI.
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judgments. In the statement of interest, the Biden Administration did not take a position with
respect to the plaintiffs’ right to the assets, but set forth some legal considerations that seem to
militate against the judgment plaintiffs.236 In February 2023, the district court denied the
plaintiffs’ motion for post-judgment attachment of the DaB assets, holding that, “[p]ursuant to the
FSIA, TRIA, and the U.S. Constitution, the Taliban—not the former Islamic Republic of
Afghanistan or the Afghan people—must pay for the Taliban’s liability in the 9/11 Attacks.”237
The court found that recognizing the DaB as an “agency or instrumentality” of the Taliban would
require the court to recognize the Taliban as the government of Afghanistan, and that such
authority to recognize governments is entrusted solely to the President.238 Plaintiffs have appealed
to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit and the case remains pending.239 The court
heard oral arguments in October 2024.
Congressionally Mandated Use of Frozen Foreign Assets and Proceeds
of Sanctions
Congress appears to have intended that frozen assets may be used to settle a foreign country’s
debts and claims of U.S. nationals after the national emergency has terminated.240 As described
below, Congress has directed frozen assets be used, even during an ongoing national emergency,
to pay certain court judgments against foreign states, and has recently enacted a framework for
using Russian sovereign assets for reparations to Ukraine.
Compensation for U.S. Victims of Terrorism
The executive branch has historically resisted congressional efforts to vest foreign assets to pay
U.S. claimants without first obtaining a settlement agreement with the country in question.241
Congress has overcome such resistance in the case of foreign governments that have been
designated as “State Supporters of Terrorism.”242 U.S. nationals who are victims of state-
236 CRS In Focus IF12052, Afghanistan Central Bank Reserves, coordinated by Martin A. Weiss (2023).
237 In re Terrorist Attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, 657 F. Supp. 3d 311, 336 (S.D.N.Y. Feb. 21, 2023) (consolidated cases).
238 Ibid., 335.
239 John Does 1 Through 7 v. The Taliban, No. 23-263 (2d Cir. Mar. 1, 2023).
240 50 U.S.C. §1706(a) (authorizing the President to continue to block assets after the termination of a national
emergency if he “determines that the continuation of such prohibition with respect to that property is necessary on
account of claims involving such country or its nationals”).
241 Claims of U.S. citizens against foreign countries have historically been paid from liquidated frozen assets or
payments from the foreign country pursuant to international settlement agreements. See, generally, 22 U.S.C. §§16211645o (Settlement of International Claims) (outlining source of funding for claims programs.) Presidents have in the
past objected to congressional efforts to put frozen foreign assets directly under the control of courts and private
litigants, and exercised waivers to avoid making frozen assets subject to enforcement to satisfy judgments. See In re
Islamic Republic of Iran Terrorism Litig., 659 F. Supp. 2d 31, 125 (D.D.C. 2009) (“In terms of United States foreign
policy and national security objectives, one of the perverse outcomes of Congress’ legislative victories over the
Executive Branch [recounted in Part A of the court’s opinion] is that what limited resources might have served as a
bargaining chip that the President could have used in dealings with Iran are now subject to depletion as a result of the
TRIA.”). The court when on to describe “[t]hese frozen assets, once at the disposal of the President in his management
of foreign policy crises under the IEEPA and other authorities, [as being] now largely subject to the jurisdiction of the
Article III courts to be divided up among what few plaintiffs first lay claim to them in satisfaction of judgments under
[the terrorism exception to the FSIA]”). Ibid. For a description of executive branch objections to making frozen assets
available to litigants and the exercise of presidential waivers to preclude the eventuality, see CRS Report RL31258,
Suits Against Terrorist States by Victims of Terrorism, by Jennifer K. Elsea (2008).
242 Current states designated as sponsors of terrorism are Iran (1984), Cuba (2021), North Korea (2017) and Syria
(1979). See U.S. Department of State, State Sponsors of Terrorism, https://perma.cc/RVE8-W28E.
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supported terrorism involving designated states have been able to sue those countries for damages
under an exception to the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act (FSIA) since 1996.243
To facilitate the payment of judgments under the exception, Congress passed Section 117 of the
Treasury and General Government Appropriations Act, 1999,244 which further amended the FSIA
by allowing attachment and execution against state property with respect to which financial
transactions are prohibited or regulated under Section 5(b) TWEA, Section 620(a) of the Foreign
Assistance Act (authorizing the trade embargo against Cuba), Sections 202 and 203 of IEEPA, or
any orders, licenses or other authority issued under these statutes. Because of the Clinton
Administration’s continuing objections, however, Section 117 also gave the President authority to
“waive the requirements of this section in the interest of national security,” an authority President
Clinton promptly exercised in signing the statute into law.245
The Section 117 waiver authority protecting blocked foreign government assets from attachment
to satisfy terrorism judgments has continued in effect ever since, prompting Congress to take
other actions to make frozen assets available to judgment holders. Congress enacted Section 2002
of the Victims of Trafficking and Violence Protection Act of 2000 (VTVPA)246 to mandate the
payment from frozen Cuban assets of compensatory damages awarded against Cuba under the
FSIA terrorism exception on or prior to July 20, 2000.
The Department of the Treasury subsequently vested $96.7 million in funds generated from longdistance telephone services between the United States and Cuba in order to compensate claimants
in Alejandre v. Republic of Cuba, the lawsuit based on the 1996 downing of two unarmed U.S.
civilian airplanes by the Cuban air force.247 Another payment of more than $7 million was made
using vested Cuban assets to a Florida woman who had won a lawsuit against Cuba based on her
marriage to a Cuban spy.248
As unpaid judgments against designated state sponsors of terrorism continued to mount, Congress
enacted the Terrorism Risk Insurance Act (TRIA).249 Section 201 of TRIA overrode long-standing
objections by the executive branch to make the frozen assets of terrorist states available to satisfy
judgments for compensatory damages against such states (and organizations and persons) as
follows:
243 The so-called terrorism exception to the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act (FSIA) was originally codified at 28
U.S.C. §1605(a)(7), but an amended version is now codified at 28 U.S.C. §1605A (2018). See CRS Report RL31258,
Suits Against Terrorist States by Victims of Terrorism, by Jennifer K. Elsea (2008).
244 Omnibus Consolidated and Emergency Supplemental Appropriations Act, 1999, P.L. 105-277, Div. A, Title I, §117,
112 Stat. 2681-491 (1998), codified at 28 U.S.C. §1610(f)(1)(A) (2018).
245 Presidential Determination 99-1 (October 21, 1998), reprinted in 34 Weekly Comp. Pres. Doc. 2088 (October 26,
1998).
246 Victims of Trafficking and Violence Protection Act of 2000, P.L. 106-386, §2002, 114 Stat. 1541 (2000). Section
2002(b)(1) required the President to “vest and liquidate up to and not exceeding the amount of property of the
Government of Cuba and sanctioned entities in the United States or any commonwealth, territory, or possession thereof
that has been blocked pursuant to [TWEA or IEEPA]” to pay the compensatory damages portion of such judgments.
Judgments against Iran were paid from appropriated funds.
247 Alejandre v. Republic of Cuba, 996 F. Supp. 1239 (S.D. Fla. 1997) ($50 million in compensatory damages and
$137.7 million in punitive damages awarded to the families of three of the four persons who were killed when Cuban
aircraft shot down two Brothers to the Rescue planes in 1996). The payment represented compensatory damages,
judicially imposed sanctions, and interest.
248 Martinez v. Republic of Cuba, No. 13-1999-CA 018208 (Miami-Dade Co., Fla., Cir. Ct. 2001) (awarding $7.1
million in compensatory damages and $20 million in punitive damages).
249 Terrorism Risk Insurance Act of 2002, P.L. 107-297, 116 Stat. 2322 (2002), codified as amended at 28 U.S.C.
§1610 note.
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Notwithstanding any other provision of law, and except as provided in subsection (b), in
every case in which a person has obtained a judgment against a terrorist party on a claim
based upon an act of terrorism, or for which a terrorist party is not immune under section
1605A or 1605(a)(7) (as such section was in effect on January 27, 2008) of title 28, United
States Code, the blocked assets of that terrorist party (including the blocked assets of any
agency or instrumentality of that terrorist party) shall be subject to execution or attachment
in aid of execution in order to satisfy such judgment to the extent of any compensatory
damages for which such terrorist party has been adjudged liable. 250
Subsection (b) of Section 201 provided waiver authority “in the national security interest,” but
only with respect to frozen foreign government “property subject to the Vienna Convention on
Diplomatic Relations or the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations.” When Congress
amended the FSIA in 2008251 to revamp the terrorism exception, it provided that judgments
entered under the new exception could be satisfied out of the property of a foreign state
notwithstanding the fact that the property in question is regulated by the United States
government pursuant to TWEA or IEEPA.252 Congress has also crafted legislation on occasion
that makes specific assets available to satisfy specific judgments.253
Congress has also directed that the proceeds from certain sanctions violations be paid into a fund
for providing compensation to the former hostages of Iran and terrorist state judgment
creditors.254 To fund the program, Congress designated that certain real property and bank
250 Ibid. The term “blocked asset” is defined in §201(d) of TRIA to mean
(A) any asset seized or frozen by the United States under [TWEA or IEEPA]; and
(B) does not include property that—
(i) is subject to a license issued by the United States Government for final payment, transfer, or
disposition by or to a person subject to the jurisdiction of the United States in connection with a
transaction for which the issuance of such license has been specifically required by statute other
than [IEEPA] or the United Nations Participation Act of 1945 (22 U.S.C. 287 et seq.); or
(ii) in the case of property subject to the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations or the Vienna
Convention on Consular Relations, or that enjoys equivalent privileges and immunities under the
law of the United States, is being used exclusively for diplomatic or consular purposes.
The International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruled in March 2023, that the United States, acting pursuant to TRIA, violated
the now-defunct Treaty of Amity, Economic Relations, and Consular Rights, Iran-U.S., Aug. 15, 1955, U.S.T. 900, by
permitting judgment creditors, to enforce terrorism judgments against Iran through the attachment of assets of Iranian
agencies or instrumentalities who were not participants in the underlying lawsuit. The ICJ found the United States
unreasonably ignored those companies’ separate juridical status and deprived Iranian companies of the independent
legal personality conferred on them by such status. Certain Iranian Assets (Iran v. U.S.), Judgment, ¶ 159 (Mar. 30,
2023), https://icj-cij.org/sites/default/files/case-related/164/164-20230330-JUD-01-00-EN.pdf. The ICJ will decide the
amount of damages the United States owes to Iran at a later phase of the case. Ibid., ¶ 231.
251 National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2008, P.L. 110-181 §1083 (2008) (amending the Foreign
Sovereign Immunities Act).
252 28 U.S.C. §1610(g) (2018). It is unclear whether “regulated” property and “blocked asset” are meant to be
synonymous. The provision also overrides the separate juridical status ordinarily accorded to agencies and
instrumentalities of foreign states. Ibid. The ICJ determined that this provision violated the Treaty of Amity for the
same reason it found TRIA to be “unreasonable.” Certain Iranian Assets, ¶ 159.
253 Iran Threat Reduction and Syria Human Rights Act of 2012, P.L. 112-158, Title V, §502, 126 Stat. 1258 (2012);
National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2020, P.L. 116-92, div. A, Title XII, §1226, 133 Stat. 1645 (2019),
both codified at 22 USC §8772. The Supreme Court upheld this approach in Bank Markazi v. Peterson, 136 S. Ct. 1310
(2016). For an explanation of the case, see CRS Report R44967, Congress’s Power over Court Decisions: Jurisdiction
Stripping and the Rule of Klein, by Joanna R. Lampe (2024). In Certain Iranian Assets, the ICJ found that Bank
Markazi, as Iran’s central bank, was not a “company” entitled to favorable treatment under the Treaty of Amity, and the
ICJ did not have jurisdiction over the claim based on Peterson. Certain Iranian Assets ¶ 54.
254 See Justice for United States Victims of State Sponsored Terrorism Act, div. O, title IV of the Consolidated
(continued...)
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accounts owned by Iran and forfeited to the United States could go into the United States Victims
of State Sponsored Terrorism Fund (Fund), along with the sum of $1,025,000,000, representing
the amount paid to the United States pursuant to the June 27, 2014, plea agreement and settlement
between the United States and BNP Paribas for sanctions violations.255 The Fund is replenished
through criminal penalties and forfeitures for violations of IEEPA or TWEA-based regulations, or
any related civil or criminal conspiracy, scheme, or other federal offense related to doing business
or acting on behalf of a state sponsor of terrorism.256 Three-quarters of all civil penalties and
forfeitures relating to the same offenses are also deposited into the Fund.257 Unless renewed, the
Fund sunsets in 2039.258 One bill in the 119th Congress, the American Victims of Terrorism
Compensation Act (S. 706 and H.R. 1530), would direct approximately $1.912 billion
corresponding to revenue from the Binance Holdings Limited plea agreement259 into the Fund.260
The bill would also amend the funding scheme to increase the portion of proceeds from
qualifying civil forfeitures to be deposited into the Fund to 100 percent.261
Russian Central Bank Assets and Oligarch Assets
Russia’s 2022 large-scale invasion of Ukraine has led the executive branch to levy new sanctions
against Russia, in addition to sanctions imposed for other reasons.262 On April 24, 2024, President
Biden signed into law the Rebuilding Economic Prosperity and Opportunity (REPO) for
Ukrainians Act.263 The REPO for Ukrainians Act describes Russia as an aggressor state264 and
provides authority for the U.S. government to confiscate previously frozen Russian sovereign
assets subject to U.S. jurisdiction.265
The REPO for Ukrainians Act also establishes a framework for the transfer of such assets to
Ukraine for reconstruction assistance and compensation for damages caused by Russia’s invasion
of Ukraine.266 The act further states that it is the sense of Congress that “any effort by the United
States to c
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