# Trading with the Enemy Act The **Trading with the Enemy Act** (1917, codified at 50 U.S.C. § 4301 et seq.) is the ancestor of the modern sanctions system. Enacted for the First World War, it let the President regulate or prohibit transactions with enemy nations and their nationals; a 1933 amendment extended it to peacetime national emergencies, which is how Franklin Roosevelt closed the banks and how every president through the 1970s ran economic warfare without a declared war. Congress narrowed it in 1977: TWEA was confined to wartime, and the [[International Emergency Economic Powers Act]] was written to carry peacetime emergencies, subject to the [[National Emergencies Act]]. Programs already running under TWEA were grandfathered, and the Cuba embargo — renewed annually by presidential memorandum — remains its last active tenant. This is a stub — expand with the 1933 Emergency Banking Act amendment, the Cuba grandfather clause, and the 1977 legislative history. ## See Also - [[Sanctions Designation Pipeline]] · [[International Emergency Economic Powers Act]] - [[National Emergencies Act]] · [[Emergency Powers Crosswalk]]