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WASHINGTON, June 3-- U.S. scholars and business groups have questioned the legality of President Donald Trump's authority to impose tariffs on imports of Mexican goods due to immigration concerns. Trump said on Thursday that he would impose a 5-percent tariff on all imported Mexican goods beginning June 10 so as to pressure the country to halt undocumented migrants crossing the border, and will gradually increase tariffs until the problem is remedied. The uNPRecedented move, citing the president's authority under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) of 1977, immediately drew wide-ranging criticism from politicians, scholars and business leaders across the country. "Trade policy and border security are separate issues," Republican senator Chuck Grassley, chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, said Thursday in a statement. "This is a misuse of presidential tariff authority and counter to congressional intent." Jennifer Hillman, a professor of practice at the Georgetown Law Center, believed that the U.S. president could impose tariffs only in cases where Congress has "clearly delegated" the power to do so. "I don't read IEEPA as a clear delegation of power to impose tariffs. Probably why no President has ever used IEEPA to impose tariffs," Hillman wrote on Twitter. Edward Alden, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, said the purpose of IEEPA was to give the president tools to impose economic sanctions on America's enemies and adversaries in the face of "unusual and extraordinary threats." | 
