Attention to the Unseen

The Wall Street Journal editorial board says: President Trump wanted a trade war with the world, and Americans are getting it, good and hard. Stock prices continued to decline on Tuesday amid the latest Canada-U.S. tariff tit-for-tat. By the end of the day the two sides were talking about a temporary truce, but who knows which side of the tariff bed Mr. Trump will wake up on Wednesday? North Americans awakened Monday to the news that Ontario premier Doug Ford…

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Politico reports: Americans have flipped their views on President Donald Trump’s handling of the economy since the end of his first term, according to new polling, amid a brewing trade war with America’s neighbors and stock market decline. When asked about how Trump is handling the economy, 56 percent of adults said they disapprove and 44 said they approved, according to a CNN/SSRS poll released Wednesday morning. Throughout his first term, Americans had generally held a positive view of the…

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Reuters reports: President Donald Trump’s tariffs have spooked investors, with fears of an economic downturn driving a stock market sell-off that has wiped out $4 trillion from the S&P 500’s peak last month, when Wall Street was cheering much of Trump’s agenda. A barrage of new Trump policies has increased uncertainty for businesses, consumers and investors, notably back-and-forth tariff moves against major trading partners like Canada, Mexico and China. “We’ve seen clearly a big sentiment shift,” said Ayako Yoshioka, senior…

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Bloomberg reports: As Donald Trump took the oath of office on Jan. 20, he was flanked by some of the world’s wealthiest people. The billionaires present that day — including Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg — had never been richer, flush with big gains from frothy stock markets. Seven weeks later, it’s a different story. The start of Trump’s second term has delivered a stunning reversal for many of those billionaires sitting behind Trump in the Capitol Rotunda,…

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The Associated Press reports: With his flurry of tariffs, government layoffs and spending freezes, there are growing worries President Donald Trump may be doing more to harm the U.S. economy than to fix it. The labor market remains healthy with a 4.1% unemployment rate and 151,000 jobs added in February, and Trump likes to point to investment commitments by Apple and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company to show that he’s delivering results. But Friday’s employment report also found that the number…

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Adam Bonica writes: The billionaire revolt against Harris’s endorsement of a proposed 25% minimum tax on unrealized gains for fortunes exceeding $100 million perfectly illustrates how this single issue overrides all other political considerations for the ultra-wealthy. Marc Andreessen warned the proposal would “kill startups and venture capital” and even “kill the California tax base,” calling it “insane” and something that would “single-handedly crush the economy.” Elon Musk similarly railed against it, tweeting, “Eventually, they run out of other people’s…

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Eric Levitz writes: Donald Trump just imposed a 25 percent tariff on virtually all goods produced by America’s two largest trading partners — Canada and Mexico. He simultaneously established a 20 percent across-the-board tariff on Chinese goods. As a result, America’s average tariff level is now higher than at any time since the 1940s. Meanwhile, China and Canada immediately retaliated against Trump’s duties, with the former imposing a 15 percent tariff on American agricultural products and the latter putting a 25 percent tariff on $30 billion of…

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The Wall Street Journal reports: The world economy could face a crash similar to the Great Depression of the 1930s unless the U.S. rows back on its plans to impose steep tariffs on imports, a senior official at the International Chamber of Commerce warned. “Our deep concern is that this could be the start of a downward spiral that puts us in 1930s trade-war territory,” said Andrew Wilson, deputy secretary-general of the ICC, which promotes global business and trade. High…

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Ambrose Evans-Pritchard writes: Donald Trump’s assault on the US federal government and the world’s interlinked manufacturing system have together reached an economic tipping point. “It seems almost unavoidable that we are headed for a deep, deep recession,” said Jesse Rothstein, Berkeley professor and former chief economist at the US labour department. Once the pace of job losses crosses a critical line, the multiplier effects can snowball suddenly. Prof Rothstein said monthly non-farm payrolls – the barometer of US economic health…

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The Wall Street Journal reports: Many Americans are pinching pennies, exhausted by high prices and stubborn inflation. The well-off are spending with abandon. The top 10% of earners—households making about $250,000 a year or more—are splurging on everything from vacations to designer handbags, buoyed by big gains in stocks, real estate and other assets. Those consumers now account for 49.7% of all spending, a record in data going back to 1989, according to an analysis by Moody’s Analytics. Three decades…

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  Jess Bidgood writes: The music was booming. The ballroom was packed. And Elon Musk was onstage, waving a chain saw in the air. I had already seen other surreal sights at the Conservative Political Action Conference — a man with a cat on his shoulder, freshly pardoned Proud Boys roaming around — but it was clear that this would be one of the indelible images of the annual MAGA confab. Musk roared — or was he just making a…

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The South China Morning Post reported in November: China and the European Union should address their disagreements and form a united front against a “triumphant” Donald Trump, said a former chief of the World Trade Organization, calling the incoming US president a threat to global trade. The assessment from Pascal Lamy – director general of the Geneva-based multilateral trade organisation between 2005 and 2013 – comes as worries mount over the future of globalisation after the US presidential election last…

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Reuters reports: Days after U.S. President Donald Trump ended duty-free entry for cheap Chinese goods entering the U.S., his administration put the order on hold after more than a million packages piled up at New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport. It was the result of a rushed, confusing policy change that proved unworkable on short notice. Government officials are now scrambling to implement the order in a way that won’t cripple America’s hyper-efficient import system. Trump’s executive order took…

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David Dayen writes: It hasn’t gotten much attention, but one of Elon Musk’s major DOGE initiatives is a massive fire sale of federal office space. Despite forcing federal employees back to the office by abolishing telework programs, Musk and company want to unload a large number of unused properties and recoup that money for the budget, a process that could expand if worker purges continue. That theoretical win-win, however, will soon come into contact with the realities of commercial real…

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Graham Steele and Emily DiVito write: Elon Musk’s unprecedented access to the US Treasury’s payment system deserves the public outcry that it has received. As former Treasury officials, we fear the situation is even more dire than it might appear. Musk’s recent actions, days after the Office of Management and Budget’s government funding pause that a federal judge quickly blocked, suggest a big and broad vision for a dramatically consolidated and politicized Treasury. This could have widespread effects on our…

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