Free Republic

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...

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,...

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...

"BERLIN—President Trump’s embrace of Russia is causing Europeans to rethink their security and giving currency to an idea the U.S. has long sought to avoid: a nuclear-armed Germany. Friedrich Merz, who is poised to become Germany’s next chancellor, said Berlin should start talks about expanding the French and British nuclear deterrents to cover Europe, according to an interview the conservative politician did with the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung weekly. .... On the nuclear side, researchers and some politicians say Berlin’s fastest route to rebuilding a deterrent could be to replicate its arrangement with the U.S. This could see French nuclear bombers...

High-profile MAGA personalities applauded Friday as President Trump escalated his hostility toward Ukrainian President Volodomyr Zelensky. Mr. Trump wrote on social media that Mr. Zelensky “disrespected the United States in the cherished Oval Office” and “can come back when he is ready for Peace.” That followed a hostile meeting in which Mr. Trump and JD Vance berated and bullied Mr. Zelensky, with the vice president demanding: “Have you said thank you once?” In the days leading up to the meeting, Mr. Trump described Mr. Zelensky as a “dictator” and suggested that Ukraine started the war with Russia. Along with the...

Forgive us if we missed it, but we don’t recall Donald Trump campaigning to invade Panama and retake its famous canal. But there was the President-elect on the weekend, threatening our Central American ally with punishment if it doesn’t meet his demands. “Our Navy and commerce have been treated in a very unfair and injudicious way. The fees being charged by Panama are ridiculous, highly unfair, especially knowing the extraordinary generosity that has been bestowed to Panama—I say, very foolishly, by the United States,” Mr. Trump told a crowd in Phoenix. “This complete ripoff of our country will immediately stop.”...

WASHINGTON—In naming a set of unconventional nominees to run federal departments, Donald Trump this week also took steps to push for a broader goal: realigning the balance of power among Washington’s major institutions so that more authority flows from the White House. Trump has threatened to take steps that would undermine the Senate’s confirmation powers and Congress’s role in budgeting—the most essential powers of the two chambers. He has insisted that senators allow him to place some nominees directly in their jobs, bypassing the Senate’s public hearings and confirmation process. He has said he would move to impound—or decline to...

SENATE PROBE ON ELON BASED ON WSJ’S UNFOUNDED CLAIMS? A WSJ article alleging Elon held “regular conversations” with Putin is now driving a Senate investigation—but where’s the accountability for WSJ’s reporting? Despite relying solely on unnamed “current and former officials,” the piece quickly sparked backlash, with both Elon and the Kremlin slamming it as “absolutely false.” Now, Senators Jeanne Shaheen and Jack Reed are calling for a probe based on these unverified claims—so why isn’t WSJ facing scrutiny for publishing such an explosive story on shaky grounds? https://x.com/MarioNawfal/status/1857608109012783348?t=ns0BAkwpB0os0TDMCX-LeQ&s=19 Sources: Sky News, PBS