Free Republic

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...

You do not have to wade far into the recently declassified Crossfire Hurricane documents to be shocked. I had only read three pages of the FBI’s December 19, 2016 interview with the DoJ’s Bruce Ohr before learning just how early in the game the FBI brass knew that the Steele dossier was worthless. In the way of background, on July 31, 2016, the FBI launched its counterintelligence operation into the Trump campaign, codenamed “Crossfire Hurricane.” FBI agent Peter Strzok was assigned to head it up. If the goal was to cripple Trump regardless of the evidence, Strzok was the man...

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...

Newly-declassified FBI documents shine new light on the FBI’s mishandling of its relationship with anti-Trump dossier author Christopher Steele, on the FBI’s double standards on defensive briefings given to Trump and Hillary Clinton, and other key elements of the debunked collusion saga. Just the News already revealed on Thursday that declassified documents show that Stefan Halper, a key FBI informant in the widely-debunked Russia collusion case, was paid nearly $1.2 million over three decades and was motivated in part by "monetary compensation" — and that he continued snitching for the bureau even after agents concluded he told them an inaccurate...

Before Elias was working to destroy our election system in America, he was a principal actor in the likely criminal Crossfire Hurricane scandal to impeach Trump. This week documents released by FBI Director Kash Patel revealed that ex-British spy Christopher Steele had been hired by the opposition research firm Fusion GPS to conduct his baseless anti-Trump research dossier, and Fusion GPS in turn had been hired by Clinton’s 2016 campaign by now ex-Perkins Coie lawyer Marc Elias. Marc Elias, Perkins Coie, and the Obama regime then ran with this bogus document to spy on then candidate and future president Trump....

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...

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...

DETROIT—If President Trump’s trade war has a physical battleground, it is Michigan, where companies and workers are already feeling the beginning of an onslaught that could blow a hole in the state’s economy. Nearly 20% of the economy is tied to the auto industry, which has become increasingly dependent on parts and vehicles from Canada, Mexico and China—imports Trump hit with steep tariffs in recent weeks. This trade has grown so large that Michigan ranks fifth in the nation by the size of its imports and exports, even though its total economy ranks 14th. Detroit’s automotive executives have shifted into...

Donald Trump has repeatedly said that his move to impose wide-ranging tariffs is based on the simple concept of reciprocity: The U.S. should put the same conditions on imports from other countries that they impose on our goods through tariffs and other trade barriers. But the tariff scheme he announced isn’t reciprocal and isn’t based on measuring foreign trade barriers. Instead, it simply measures bilateral trade deficits and comes up with tariff numbers from there. Those are two very different things, and could be one reason why global financial markets are reacting so badly. The upshot is that, in the...

President Trump unveiled his new “liberation day” tariffs on Wednesday, and they are another large step toward a new old era of trade protectionism. Assuming the policy sticks—and we hope it doesn’t—the effort amounts to an attempt to remake the U.S. economy and the world trading system. All details aren’t clear as we write this, but Mr. Trump’s tariffs look “reciprocal” in name only. First he’s hitting every nation in the world with a 10% “baseline” tariff to sell in the U.S. market. For those he calls “bad actors,” he’s adding up the country’s tariff rate on U.S. goods, plus...

Despite repeated messages of support by Trump, Waltz has lost sway with the president and the backing of senior aides within the White House, officials said, just as the administration struggles to broker peace deals and faces the threat of further war in the Middle East. For Trump, Waltz’s biggest sin wasn’t starting a Signal chat to coordinate strikes on the Houthis in Yemen, or even posting Israel-provided intelligence onto an unclassified network, it was having the Atlantic magazine’s editor in chief Jeffrey Goldberg’s number in his phone and inadvertently adding him to the conversation. Trump’s anger spilled over into...

The King of Canada wants President Trump to back off. Just don’t expect him to actually say that publicly. Britain’s King Charles III, who is also Canada’s head of state, is wrestling with an unprecedented diplomatic headache. The monarch wants to stand up for the largest country in his realm as Trump talks about turning it into the 51st U.S. state. At the same time he has to honor the British government’s desire that he keep Trump, who deeply admires the royal family, sweet. The result has been a master class in passive-aggressive pageantry from Buckingham Palace. Earlier this month,...

President Trump issued an executive order March 6 suspending any government work by the law firm of Perkins Coie and its contractors. He barred the firm’s employees from entering federal buildings, revoked its security clearances and ordered an investigation into the firm’s discrimination policies. Ouch. To no one’s surprise, a handy federal judge offered a lifeline last week to the law firm that cooked up part of the Russian collusion hoax for Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign in 2016. U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell, an appointee of President Obama, issued a temporary restraining order after the firm argued in federal court...

Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Tuesday that if Russia rejected the 30-day U.S.-brokered cease-fire that Ukraine had accepted, “we’ll unfortunately know what the impediment is to peace here.” We knew that before, but now we know even on Mr. Rubio’s terms, as the Kremlin on Thursday said nyet. President Trump’s envoy, Steven Witkoff, is visiting Moscow, and the Kremlin welcomed him with the back of its hand. Yuri Ushakov, a close adviser to Vladimir Putin, told Russian television that a cease-fire would be “nothing other than a temporary breather for Ukrainian soldiers.” He added, “our goal is long-term peaceful...

The Wall Street Journal has called for Donald Trump to be sued to prevent tariffs being imposed on Canada and Mexico. The newspaper's editorial board wrote in very blunt terms that Trump did not have the power to order the tariffs without Congressional approval. 'He's treating the North American economy as a personal plaything, as markets gyrate with each presidential whim,' the WSJ board wrote. 'It's doubtful Mr Trump even has the power to impose these tariffs, and we hope his afflatus gets a legal challenge.' The WSJ, published by Rupert Murdoch who also owns Fox News, is usually sympathetic...