University of Miami Law School University of Miami School of Law Institutional Repository Articles Faculty and Deans 2020 Trade's Security Exceptionalism Kathleen Claussen Follow this and additional works at: https://repository.law.miami.edu/fac_articles Part of the International Trade Law Commons, and the National Security Law Commons ARTICLE Trade's Security Exceptionalism Kathleen Claussen- Abstract. At the core of U.S. trade law is an under-studied structural dichotomy. On the one hand, well-established statutory authorities enable the President to eliminate trade barriers through negotiations with U.S. trading partners. On the other hand, different, lesser-known authorities allow the President to erect trade barriers on an exceptional basis where necessary for U.S. economic security. Rather than thinking of free trade as a source of or tool for economic security as political theorists long have, our law codifies these authorities as though they are in contrast to one another-allowing departures from the free trade norm when security so demands. Further, the two categories of authorities suffer from a mismatch in what I call "trade delegation disciplines": While Congress kept tight controls on the President's free trade negotiations, it abandoned controls on the exceptional, security-driven authorities, empowering the executive to handle U.S. trade interests in an unbridled way that our nation's Founders feared. This Article is the first to identify how trade law has exceptionalized security. It develops an original typology of the categories of congressional delegations that constitute our exceptional trade apparatus. This structural account delivers both positive and normative payoffs. Apart from explaining the institutional terrain, identifying the dichotomy challenges the traditional assumption that all executive departures from the prevailing Associate Professor, University of Miami School of Law, and Senior Fellow, Institute of International Economic Law, Georgetown University Law Center. For valuable feedback on earlier iterations of this Article, I am particularly grateful to Harlan Cohen, MJ Durkee, Jean Galbraith, Tim Meyer, Andres Sawicki, and Pierre-Hugues Verdier. Thanks also to Rosa Brooks, Bill Burke-White, Elena Chachko, Joe Conti, Caroline Mala Corbin, Cosette Creamer, Mark Drumbl, James Gathii, Monica Hakimi, Rebecca Hamilton, Ben Heath, Duncan Hollis, Rebecca Ingber, Andrew Lang, Simon Lester, Mark Pollack, Steve Ratner, Anthea Roberts, Victoria Sahani, Steve Schnably, Greg Shaffer, Beth Simmons, Barry Sullivan, Chris Whytock, Mark Wu, Ingrid Wuerth, David Zaring, and other participants from workshops at the Cato Institute Program on Geoeconomics, the Fordham International Law Journal Symposium, the Law and Society Association Annual Meeting, Loyola University Chicago School of Law, Ohio State University Moritz College of Law's Economic Nationalism Program, the University of Miami School of Law, the University of Michigan School of Law Junior Scholars Program, the University of Pennsylvania Perry World House, and Vanderbilt Law School's International Law Symposium for their generous and helpful comments. Finally, I am grateful to the members of the Stanford Law Review editorial team, especially Sarah Dohan, for their thoughtful and supportive engagement, my research assistants, Arin J. Kim and Philip Stekol, and the Miami Law librarians for their very useful contributions. 1097 Trade's Security Exceptionalism 72 STAN. L. REV. 1097 (2020) free trade norm are illegal and illegitimate. The historical record demonstrates that, surprisingly, security exceptionalism in U.S. trade law is the product of misunderstood statutes that have been unmoored from their original purposes. Finally, although the exceptions may be difficult to undo or to correct, this analysis shows that trade law has space for a wide array of innovative and nontraditional disciplines that could serve to limit the damage that exceptionalizing security has caused. A review of those options likewise provides certain lessons for the limitations of the nondelegation doctrine and separation of powers. 1098 Trade's Security Exceptionalism 72 STAN. L. REV. 1097 (2020) Table of Contents In troduction ......................................................................................................................................................... 1100 . Our Trade Law Architecture ............................................................................................................ 1108 A. The Codification of Free Trade ............................................................................................ 1109 B. Emergencies and Exceptions.................................................................................................. 1115 1. Hard security exceptions ................................................................................................ 1117 2. Soft security exceptions .................................................................................................. 1122 C. Divergence in Delegation Disciplines...............................................................................1126 II. Assessing Exceptionalism in Theory and in Practice....................1131 A. The Efficacy of Exceptionalism: Possible Theories...................................................1133 B. Risks and Shortcomings............................................................................................................ 1136 C. Inconsistent Antecedents.......................................................................................................... 1138 D. The Exceptions' Unexpected Origins and Inverted Purposes.............................1142 III. Implications, Alternatives, and Extensions..............................................................................1149 A. Lessons for Trade Law and Literature..............................................................................1149 B. Revisionist Futures ...................................................................................................................... 1153 1. Substantive recoupling .................................................................................................... 1153 2. Trade's innovative delegation disciplines.............................................................1156 C . B ey on d T rade .................................................................................................................................. 1160 C on clu sion1............................................................................................................................................................. 1163 1099 Trade's Security Exceptionalism 72 STAN. L. REV. 1097 (2020) Introduction The conventional view on trade law in the United States is that it comprises a set of delegations from Congress to the President that facilitate international cooperation in favor of economic liberalization. 1 This Article argues that this account is incomplete. In fact, our trade law is riddled with underused and under-studied exceptions. Whereas the literature has focused on shared powers to negotiate and implement free trade agreements, this research shows that U.S. trade law is a substantially mixed bag of delegations. That bag contains not just authorities to break down barriers to trade but also, surprisingly, authorities to put up barriers in certain circumstances. The latter delegations are now being rediscovered, and they all have one thing in common-they all purport to empower the President to put up those barriers in the interest of U.S. economic security.2 This Article provides the first comprehensive study of what I term "trade's security exceptionalism"-and with some urgency.3 As recent events have 1. See, e.g., CATHLEEN D. CIMINO-ISAACS ET AL., CONG. RESEARCH SERv., R45148, U.S. TRADE POLICY PRIMER: FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS 27 (2019) (describing how U.S. trade policy is premised on the delegation of certain powers to the President to negotiate trade agreements). In fact, most international trade law textbooks today focus precisely on what their titles suggest: the international framework where the rules of economic liberalization are enacted and played out. Few spend considerable time on U.S. trade statutes, except as they are relevant to international agreements. See, e.g., JOOST H.B. PAUWELYN ET AL., INTERNATIONAL TRADE LAW, at xi-xxi (3d ed. 2016) (noting in the table of contents the United States as one of a handful of case studies). 2. I discuss my choice and use of the term "economic security" below at text accompanying notes 70-72. 3. Scholars from other areas of law, particularly foreign relations law, have developed ideas about exceptionalism from which this Article draws inspiration, but I use the term differently. As elaborated below at text accompanying note 22, I am not claiming as a central point that trade is exceptional within foreign affairs or that its reliance on exceptions makes it exceptional. Rather, this Article seeks to elaborate on the unexpected function that trade's overlooked exceptions have played in shaping trade policy. This clarification is important given the diverse usages of "exceptions" and "exceptionalism" in the foreign affairs literature. See, e.g., Curtis A. Bradley, Breard, Our Dualist Constitution, and the Internationalist Conception, 51 STAN. L. REV. 529, 539 n.51 (1999) (defining foreign affairs exceptionalism as "the view that the usual constitutional restraints on the