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In a ruling heard ’round the world, the U.S. Court of International Trade on Wednesday blocked President Trump’s sweeping tariffs. This is an important moment for the rule of law as much as for the economy, proving again that America doesn’t have a king who can rule by decree. The Trump tariffs have created enormous costs and uncertainty, but now we know they’re illegal. As the three-judge panel explains in its detailed 52-page ruling, the President exceeded his emergency powers and bypassed discrete tariff authorities delegated to him by Congress. The ruling erases his April 2 tariffs as well as...

President Trump is unhappy with Vladimir Putin. The Russian isn’t heeding the President’s entreaties to stop the killing in Ukraine, and Mr. Trump is nonplussed. “I’ve always had a very good relationship with Vladimir Putin of Russia, but something has happened to him. He has gone absolutely CRAZY! He is needlessly killing a lot of people, and I’m not just talking about soldiers. Missiles and drones are being shot into Cities in Ukraine, for no reason whatsoever,” Mr. Trump posted on Truth Social. Separately, Mr. Trump told reporters: “I’m not happy with what Putin is doing. He’s killing a lot...

ISTANBUL—Diplomatic brinkmanship over U.S.-brokered efforts to efforts to end Russia’s war in Ukraine reached dizzying levels on Wednesday, with each side seeking to call the other’s bluff by demonstrating a desire for peace and casting the other as the obstacle to it. Ukraine’s president said he would be waiting in the Turkish capital, Ankara, on Thursday for Vladimir Putin, but the Russian president is sending a team of negotiators to Istanbul, and the Kremlin won’t say if he will be there. President Trump hasn’t ruled out the possibility of joining any talks in Turkey, and senior U.S. officials are headed...

Rarely has an economic policy been repudiated as soundly, and as quickly, as President Trump’s Liberation Day tariffs—and by Mr. Trump’s own hand. Witness the agreement Monday morning to scale back his punitive tariffs on China—his second major retreat in less than a week. This is a win for economic reality, and for American prosperity. Make that a partial win for reality. The Administration agreed to scrap most of the 145% tariff Mr. Trump imposed on Chinese goods on April 2 and later. What remains is his new 10% global base-line tariff, plus the separate 20% levy putatively tied to...

The House Ways and Means Committee will soon release the GOP’s first draft of the party’s tax proposals, and the irony is that the bill may be getting worse even as a good bill becomes more urgent. President Trump has pitched a tax-rate increase that even Democrats failed to pass, and parochial demands are shrinking the pro-growth value of the bill. Republicans seem to have forgotten the principles of sound tax policy, even the lessons of the successful 2017 reform. Most of the 26 GOP Members of Ways and Means weren’t in Congress in 2017. The intellectual capital of previous...

The Trump administration’s global tariffs face their first major legal test this week when a little-known Manhattan court considers one of the president’s most sweeping assertions of executive power. A three-judge panel at the Court of International Trade will hear arguments Tuesday on whether to halt the levies, which have unleashed a trade war with the world and threaten to upend the global economy. The federal court, which has nationwide jurisdiction over tariff and trade disputes, operates for the most part in obscurity, rarely garnering a mention in major publications and staying off the radar of most attorneys. “Most lawyers...

The United States has reportedly encouraged intelligence agencies to ramp up spying efforts in Greenland amid President Donald Trump repeatedly floating the idea of taking over the Arctic island.... The Wall Street Journal reported, citing two sources, that high-ranking officials working under Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Habbard sent a "collection of emphasis message" to the heads of various intelligence agencies last week. Intelligence agencies have been directed to learn more about the independence movement on the island and the general attitude of the Greenlanders towards American resource extraction, the Journal added. The agencies have been asked to use tools...

April was not the cruelest month for investors—although the tariffmageddon-obsessed naysayers may be smarting. Despite a month of wild swings and gloomy forecasts, U.S. stock markets ended April nearly flat, brushing off predictions that Trump’s trade policies would trigger a historic collapse. The S&P 500 finished the month down just 0.8 percent. The Dow dropped 2.1 percent, and the Nasdaq edged lower by 0.3 percent. That mild performance stood in stark contrast to a mid-April Wall Street Journal article that warned of a “Trump rout” and suggested the Dow was on track for its worst April since 1932. It wasn’t....

The U.S. economy contracted in the first three months of 2025, as businesses rushed to stock up on imports ahead of tariffs and consumers eased their pace of spending. The Commerce Department said U.S. gross domestic product—the value of all goods and services produced across the economy—fell at a seasonally and inflation adjusted 0.3% annual rate in the first quarter. That was the steepest decline since the first quarter of 2022. The reading fell short of the 0.4% growth that economists surveyed by The Wall Street Journal expected. The decline in GDP in the first quarter reflected front-running ahead of...

President Trump continues to walk back his original tariff assault, and markets are pleased. They rose again Wednesday after Mr. Trump said he won’t fire the Federal Reserve Chairman and is likely to retreat from his highest China tariffs. Is this Mr. Trump’s François Mitterrand moment? Readers of a certain age will recall how the French Socialist President swept into power in 1981 promising a far left agenda of government control over the private economy. The market reaction was brutal. Within a year he had put socialism on pause and by 1983 he had abandoned most of it. He went...

If the White House wanted a test of how firing Jerome Powell would go over in the markets, it succeeded on Monday. U.S. stocks and the dollar plunged while yields on long-term Treasurys climbed after President Trump renewed his attacks on the Federal Reserve Chairman. Monday was the first full trading day for markets to absorb National Economic Council director Kevin Hassett’s comments Friday that the White House is studying if Mr. Powell can legally be fired. On Monday Mr. Trump demanded again that Mr. Powell make “pre-emptive” interest rate cuts to avoid a slowdown. Cue the meltdown in stocks,...

A popular knock on this second Donald Trump term is that the president stocked his administration with nothing but saluting loyalists. Tell that to the staffers scheming to undercut his signature tax reform—by “managing” him into surrendering to the left’s favorite talking point. A (delighted) mainstream media several weeks ago started writing stories about a new Republican interest in raising taxes on “the rich”—namely hiking the top individual tax rate from 37% to 40%, higher than even under Barack Obama. These reports all come from anonymous White House officials, and always take care to insinuate Mr. Trump is “open” to...

They needed to get the president alone. On April 9, financial markets were going haywire. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick wanted President Trump to put a pause on his aggressive global tariff plan. But there was a big obstacle: Peter Navarro, Trump’s tariff-loving trade adviser, who was constantly hovering around the Oval Office. Navarro isn’t one to back down during policy debates and had stridently urged Trump to keep tariffs in place, even as corporate chieftains and other advisers urged him to relent. And Navarro had been regularly around the Oval Office since Trump’s “Liberation Day”...

Not since Herbert Hoover signed the Smoot-Hawley Tariff has a president chosen to disregard a larger body of informed opinion than President Trump did when he instituted his protectionist trade policy. Based on a series of verifiably false grievances—wages haven’t grown in 50 years, manufacturing has been hollowed out by imports, countries with trade surpluses are “ripping us off”—Mr. Trump used constitutionally questionable powers to abrogate congressionally approved trade agreements and undermine the world’s trading system. Markets convulsed in anticipation of the massive wealth annihilation that would accompany the shredding of global supply chains and a transition to a more...

President Trump is taking exception to the idea that his Administration is offering exceptions to his punishing tariffs. That’s the story after a confusing weekend that offers more lessons in the arbitrary nature of Trump trade policy. Late Friday his own Customs and Border Protection (CBP) department issued a notice listing products that will be exempt from Mr. Trump’s so-called reciprocal tariffs that can run as high as 145% on goods from China. The exclusions apply to smartphones, laptop computers, hard drives, computer processors, servers, memory chips, semiconductor manufacturing equipment, and other electronics. The CBP notice takes the tariff rate...

Tariffs are advertised in the name of helping American workers, but what do you know? They turn out to favor the powerful and politically connected. That’s the main message of President Trump’s decision to exempt smartphones and assorted electronic goods from his most onerous tariffs. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) late Friday issued a notice listing products that will be exempt from Mr. Trump’s so-called reciprocal tariffs that can run as high as 145% on goods from China. The exclusions apply to smartphones, laptop computers, hard drives, computer processors, servers, memory chips, semiconductor manufacturing equipment, and other electronics. The CBP...

Some thoughts on a climbdown for the ages. The reaction was widespread relief in America and the world. Americans want their country to be the world’s growth engine but not, as a former Reagan administration official put it, through policies “that risk the collapse of the global financial system.” Donald Trump scared people he hadn’t scared before. He didn’t use to scare his policy allies—small-business people, workers, retirees. He did this week. Fear dampens reflexive support. Politicians need reflexive support from the bottom of their base as a platform from which to move. The president weakened his position. It is...

Newly declassified documents show informant Stefan Halper was motivated in part by "monetary compensation" and was paid nearly $1.2 million from FBI over three decades. ********************************************************************** Akey FBI informant in the widely-debunked Russia collusion case was paid nearly $1.2 million over three decades, was motivated in part by "monetary compensation," and continued snitching even after agents concluded he told them an inaccurate story about future Trump National Security Advisor Mike Flynn, newly declassified documents show. The nearly 700 pages of once-secret documents, obtained by Just the News, were recently turned over by FBI Director Kash Patel to House Judiciary Committee...

President Trump finally blinked. It took a week for the plunge in the stock and bond markets—along with a sustained campaign by executives, lawmakers, lobbyists and foreign leaders—to prompt Trump to roll back for 90 days a major element of his sweeping tariff plan. The president said that the reaction to the tariffs was getting a bit “yippy”—like a nervous athlete unable to perform—and he relied on his instincts to change course as he watched the bond market tank and listened to business leaders including JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon express fears of a recession. The episode was classic Trump:...

President Trump says trade wars are easy to win. Investors think otherwise, and on Wednesday Mr. Trump decided maybe investors are right. After a flight from U.S. assets and a rout in the bond market, Mr. Trump announced a pause for 90 days on the worst of his “liberation” tariffs on most countries, China excepted. Markets celebrated with a stock-market rally on hope that perhaps Mr. Trump isn’t entirely oblivious to the damage he’s causing. The rout in dollar assets reversed, at least somewhat, and the rise in the benchmark 10-year Treasury yield eased. It would be hard to find...