Free Republic

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...

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....

Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL), once a rising star in the Republican Party, is staring down a pair of decisions in 2026 and 2028 regarding his family’s political future that could both run afoul of fellow Floridian President Donald Trump. Despite a disastrous 2024 presidential campaign, DeSantis, a popular governor, is a rumored candidate for a 2028 run, setting up a likely showdown with Vice President JD Vance. However, the term-limited Florida governor also faces more tensions with Trump if his wife, Casey DeSantis, challenges a Trump-backed congressman in 2026 to succeed him in the governor’s mansion. “DeSantis’s strong conservative record...

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...

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:...

The need for stability and experience should eliminate the young MAGA-in-a-hurry types like Sen. J.D. Vance or Members of the House. As the GOP convention nears, and voters focus on the election, the race remains closer than it should be given Mr. Biden’s infirmities. Swing voters still worry about Mr. Trump and the possibility of four more years of turmoil. The former President can help his campaign, and the country, by projecting stability and calm. We know many readers will think this is impossible, and maybe it is. Yet he showed admirable restraint after the debate last week, letting Democrats...

Former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson’s Tuesday testimony ought to ring the death knell for former President Donald Trump’s political career. Trump is unfit to be anywhere near power ever again. Hutchinson’s resume alone should establish her credibility. The 25-year-old had already worked at the highest levels of conservative Republican politics, including in the offices of Sen. Ted Cruz (TX) and House Minority Whip Steve Scalise (LA), before becoming a top aide for former Trump chief of staff Mark Meadows. In short, Hutchinson was a conservative Trumpist true believer and a tremendously credible one at that. She did not overstate...

Nobody should, any longer, pretend that Joe Biden is fit to lead this nation.Joe Biden has badly, visibly bungled America’s withdrawal from Afghanistan. He has compounded the problem with his sluggish and dishonest public statements. This has gone so badly that even people and institutions that are normally sympathetic to Biden and his party have noticed. American allies have been appalled, and vocal about it. What is slowly dawning on people is that Biden’s critics were right about him all along. Not since James Buchanan has America had a president who came so prepared by experience for the job, yet...

Two days ago, the New York Times’s Maggie Haberman reported that Donald Trump “has been telling a number of people he’s in contact with that he expects he will get reinstated by August.” In response, many figures on the right inserted their fingers into their ears and started screaming about fake news. Instead, they should have listened — because Haberman’s reporting was correct. I can attest, from speaking to an array of different sources, that Donald Trump does indeed believe quite genuinely that he — along with former senators David Perdue and Martha McSally — will be “reinstated” to office...

Art Laffer Spouting Nonsense on 9-9-9 Josh Barro October 19, 2011 I guess somebody had to try to defend Herman Cain’s 9-9-9 plan. Art Laffer does so in today’s Wall Street Journal, but his defense is really embarrassing.First, Laffer describes the business tax component of 9-9-9 as a 9 percent tax on “net business profits.” This is false. Cain’s business tax, as described by his campaign, applies to “Gross income less all purchases from other U.S. located businesses, all capital investment, and net exports.” Because wages and salaries are not deductible, this is a tax on much more than just...

LAS VEGAS – After months of diversions — sideshow candidates, Hamlet acts and straw polls — Tuesday night’s sizzling Republican presidential showdown boiled the nomination fight down to its essentials: a deeply personal, ideological and smashmouth contest between two rivals with almost nothing in common.

Via Greg Hengler and Guy Benson, if this answer doesn’t destroy him, nothing will. I get the sense watching it that he’s so unsure of how to answer this exceedingly easy question that he defaults to Netanyahu’s position on the assumption that prisoner swaps must always be the wise, statesmanlike, conservative thing to do. The alternative, that he knows what he’s talking about yet is still sincerely inclined to release the guy who planned 9/11 plus dozens upon dozens of other jihadi fanatics in exchange for one G.I., is even worse. I’d bet 95 percent of people asked on the...

Whatever questions come flying at Herman Cain at Tuesday’s night Republican debate in Las Vegas, there is one big one he has to answer: Are you serious? It is a measure of Cain’s success that anyone would care to ask. For much of this year Cain seemed to be enjoying his role as political novelty act — an entertaining sideshow at debates, and even an occasional presence on the early-state campaign trail — when he wasn’t otherwise occupied with speeches, television appearances and book-tour publicity. But now that Cain, buoyed by bulging poll numbers, is demanding to be viewed as...

David Axlerod took a swing at Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain Monday, saying that he thought Cain’s 9-9-9 proposal would hurt the poor and the middle class. The senior Obama adviser called Cain an “intruiging personality” on “Morning Joe,” but took a shot at the Republican candidate’s tax proposal, saying, “I think his plan deserves scrunity … I don’t think it’s good for most Americans.” “I think you’ve got to add the 9-9-9 up, get to 27 percent, and that’s probably what poor and middle-class people will end up paying once the thing is implemented,” Axlerod said. Despite the attention...

"Cain was supposed to attend the dedication of the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial on Sunday. I like many people watched it -- was moved by it -- but he failed to attend," MSNBC host Martin Bashir said on his show today. "Now there’s been some surprise at his absence. But being honest, isn’t this consistent for a man who really doesn't want to be overtly associated with African-Americans?"