After winning in last week’s election with a promise to push back against U.S. President Donald Trump’s trade and sovereignty threats, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney had his first high-stakes meeting with Trump at the White House on Tuesday.

In front of the cameras in the Oval Office, the two men appeared friendly, with no sign of the kind of animus seen during the now-infamous dustup between Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and the U.S. president in that same room back in February. But although Trump congratulated Carney on his victory and insisted that “regardless of anything, we’re going to be friends with Canada,” neither side appeared willing to make immediate concessions to improve the two countries’ rapidly deteriorating bilateral relations.

At the top of the agenda was the U.S. trade war on Canada. Since taking office, Trump has imposed a slew of tariffs on Canadian goods, including steel and aluminum. When asked by a reporter if there is anything that Carney can say today to change Trump’s mind, Trump remained absolute: “No. That’s the way it is.”

Among the most inflammatory statements of Tuesday’s Oval Office meeting, though, were the two leaders’ comments on Canadian sovereignty. Trump reiterated that he still wants to make Canada the 51st U.S. state. He stressed his history as a real estate developer, referred to the U.S.-Canada border as an “artificially drawn line,” and joked about his past behavior of referring to former Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau as “governor.”

In response, Carney doubled down on his opposition to Canadian statehood. “As you know from real estate, there are some places that are never for sale,” Carney told Trump, adding that Ottawa is “not for sale. It won’t be for sale, ever.”

“Never say never” was Trump’s response.

Nvidia’s hefty financial hit comes from a new Trump administration rule requiring the company to acquire a special license to sell its H20 chips in China, adding another hurdle in accessing one of the world’s biggest tech markets and the United States’ foremost competitor in the race for artificial intelligence.

The Trump administration has said that the new license requirement is intended to prevent the chips from being “used in, or diverted to, a supercomputer in China,” according to Nvidia’s filing. It’s the latest attempt by the United States to slow China’s AI development and preserve the United States’ advantage.

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U.S. President Donald Trump unveiled his budget proposal for the upcoming fiscal year in a letter to Congress on Friday, providing the clearest picture yet of what his administration will prioritize and putting some numbers on the large-scale slashing of the federal government that he has overseen. The budget aims to cut $163 billion in nondefense spending, a 22.6 percent reduction from current levels, the letter said. 

Trump’s “America First” agenda means that many of the biggest cuts impact U.S. foreign policy, particularly at the State Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID)—the latter of which Trump and his billionaire advisor Elon Musk all but gutted. At the same time, Trump is allocating more than $113 billion to the Defense Department and $43.8 billion for the Department of Homeland Security to bolster Trump’s border security proposals and controversial mass deportations. 

Defense spending overall would go up to $1.01 trillion, a 13 percent increase from 2025 levels.

The budget proposal—which you can read in full here—does not equal concrete policy and is still subject to approval (and adjustments) from Congress, but it serves as a key indicator of how Trump sees the United States’ role in the world. 

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Ever since U.S. President Donald Trump announced his “Liberation Day” tariffs on the rest of the world, there have been, according to the White House, lines of supplicants begging for trade deals. 

The list, even the short list, is long. At the top of it are India, Israel, Japan, South Korea, Vietnam, Britain, and maybe the European Union. These are the countries and economic blocs, some of them quite large, with which the Trump administration aims to reach agreements on all the irritants in trade relations in the next 60 or so days. There may be another 180-odd countries in the queue.

Many of them are jostling to get to the front of the line—Japan, for instance, seems to have line-jumped in front of India for the first deal, though long-standing issues such as trade in steel and autos may complicate even an accord with the United States’ main security partner in Asia.

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U.S. National Security Advisor Mike Waltz is set to leave his post, President Donald Trump announced on Thursday, marking the first high-profile cabinet reshuffle of the second Trump administration. Waltz’s deputy, Alex Wong, is also reportedly leaving.

In a post on Truth Social, Trump said that Secretary of State Marco Rubio would serve as acting national security advisor, in addition to his current duties. Trump also announced that he will nominate Waltz to be ambassador to the United Nations, which unlike the position of national security advisor requires Senate confirmation.

“From his time in uniform on the battlefield, in Congress and, as my National Security Advisor, Mike Waltz has worked hard to put our Nation’s Interests first. I know he will do the same in his new role,” Trump said.

GOP Rep. Elise Stefanik of New York was initially tapped for the U.N. ambassador role, but Trump withdrew her nomination over concerns about the Republican Party’s narrow majority in the House.

The news of Waltz’s departure as national security advisor comes a little over a month after he emerged at the center of the Signalgate scandal. In March, Waltz accidentally included a journalist in a Signal group chat with other top officials in which sensitive information on impending U.S. strikes in Yemen was discussed.

Waltz’s future in the new administration was immediately called into question as a result of Signalgate, despite the White House downplaying the significance of the controversy and maintaining that no classified information was shared—an assertion that national security veterans have treated with a great deal of skepticism. Signalgate remains a thorn in the administration’s side, with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth also facing ongoing scrutiny. The scandal is likely to come up in any confirmation hearing involving Waltz’s future.

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This could be the most volatile geopolitical moment in the Indo-Pacific since World War II. Extreme uncertainty surrounding the Trump administration’s policies is prompting U.S. allies and partners alike to explore the possibility of relying less on the United States and pivoting more toward China. U.S. President Donald Trump’s 90-day pause of the steep tariffs he placed on friend and foe alike is unlikely to have quelled regional concerns. But U.S. policy alone is not enough to produce a shift; Beijing will also have to capitalize on the emerging geopolitical inflection point if it wants to ensure a long-lasting shift toward a China-centric region.

Take Vietnam, the ultimate strategic hedger in the Indo-Pacific. It has been careful to balance relations with China and the United States, both of which it treats as a “comprehensive strategic partner”—the highest level of partnership Hanoi can offer. This month, Vietnam welcomed Chinese President Xi Jinping in Hanoi, where both sides pledged to elevate their partnership even higher. This was a deliberate message to the United States from Vietnam, which had just been hit with a 46 percent tariff rate, that the country has other options.

And Xi played the role of spoiler to a tee: Taking a clear swipe at Trump’s tariffs, he urged Vietnam to resist “unilateral bullying.” Xi also warned that “there are no winners in trade wars and tariff wars, and protectionism has no way out.” Rather than point out the irony of a Chinese leader lecturing about protectionism, Trump merely responded that China was probably trying to “screw” the United States. Xi went on to Malaysia and Cambodia—facing U.S. tariffs of 24 and 49 percent, respectively—to make a similar argument.

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The new U.S. ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee, posted a videotaped statement about U.S. policy on Gaza last week. In his familiar, avuncular tone, the former governor related how he had just rejected an appeal from Hanan Balkhy, a physician and senior World Health Organization official, to put more pressure on Israel to provide humanitarian assistance to the people of Gaza. Instead, Huckabee told Balkhy that we should focus on “putting the pressure where it really belongs”—on Hamas—to “give us the opportunity” to open up channels for humanitarian assistance.

No one can argue with the need to pressure Hamas, which is responsible for one of the most horrific massacres in recent times and so much human suffering since. But Huckabee’s message was also shockingly problematic: By linking U.S. support for humanitarian assistance in Gaza to the goal of Hamas’s capitulation, he was officially endorsing a policy of collective punishment that is inconsistent with U.S. and international law, offensive to American values, and counterproductive to Washington’s foreign-policy goals.

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The steep tariffs announced by U.S. President Donald Trump on April 2 rattled stock markets, redirected capital flows out of the dollar, and created doubt in the future attractiveness of the United States as a destination for investment. They also raised serious concerns that U.S. adversaries could double down on their efforts to displace the United States from the center of the global economic order.

The 90-day pause for most of the tariffs—except those against China—now gives the White House a golden opportunity to negotiate new trade and investment deals with friendly countries. These should go beyond the simple tariffs question and also make investment in the United States—especially in technology and manufacturing—easier and more attractive. The end goal should be to create a new alliance of capital that isolates China and other U.S. adversaries.

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“Nobody has ever seen anything like it,” U.S. President Donald Trump is fond of saying about his supercharged agenda of upending the U.S. government and intimidating his political enemies at home.

He may be right. But when it comes to the world stage, it’s also true that nobody has ever seen such an unprecedented display of weakness from a would-be strongman—and in just 100 days.

Whether the issue is national security or economics, in a short period of time, Trump has gone a long way toward unilaterally surrendering the United States’ dominant power and influence around the world—especially in Europe and the Indo-Pacific. The best evidence of this, perhaps, is the combined downward drift of stocks, bonds, and dollar value—something that rarely occurs—suggesting a broad retreat of investment from the United States.

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U.S. President Donald Trump has officially jump-started U.S. efforts to mine the seafloor, pitching the United States into the center of a contentious debate that has sparked fears of a race to the bottom in the world’s last untouched frontier. 

Trump last week signed an executive order that would fast-track efforts to exploit key minerals in both national and international waters, citing the defense of a “core national security and economic interest.” The explicitly named threat is China, which dominates many of the world’s critical mineral supply chains and has used that leverage to strike back against the Trump administration’s trade war. 

“We are heading toward a metal crisis right now with the trade issues with China,” said Alex Gilbert, the vice president of regulation at Zeno Power and a fellow at the Colorado School of Mines’ Payne Institute for Public Policy. Trump administration officials “see that deep-sea minerals are an area where they can potentially compete.” 

With this executive order, Trump is embracing a nascent industry that has engendered fierce clashes among mining companies, countries, scientists, and environmentalists. The Trump administration’s move amounts to a sharp break in U.S. policy that is certain to intensify legal, environmental, and financial uncertainties, all of which were already clouding the future of the industry.

“Deep-sea mining is a polarizing matter, and part of it is because we don’t really have a deep understanding of the environmental impact,” said Gracelin Baskaran, a critical minerals security expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). 

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Amid Trump’s sweeping claims of authority to slap tariffs on any country for whatever reason he chooses, it is easy to lose sight of what the law says: Tariffs are the responsibility of Congress, not the president. As the late trade scholar I. M. Destler put it, “[I]n no sphere of government policy can the primacy of the legislative branch be clearer: Congress reigns supreme on trade, unless and until it decides otherwise.” Unfortunately, giving up its authority over trade is exactly what Congress decided, beginning in the pre-Trump world. Decades of institutional self-flagellation on trade have left the 535-member Congress so weak that it cannot perform its core duties, even when the actions of the president are harming their constituents and will likely hurt their chances for reelection.

But trade also represents the best opportunity for Congress to find its voice. On the other issues where Trump is running roughshod over the U.S. Constitution—such as immigration and the destruction of federal agencies—the partisan divides are too deep. Republicans are cheering the president on both. But on trade, the divisions are less clear; until vanishingly recent times, Republicans were the party of free trade and Democrats the skeptics. Those old impulses remain, but the two parties are no longer cleaved ideologically on trade and may be able to find common ground against the most irresponsible of Trump’s tariffs.

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In 1965, the president of the United States believed in higher education. After defeating Sen. Barry Goldwater in a landslide victory, one of Lyndon Johnson’s central goals was to move legislation through Congress that would make it easier for Americans to afford the cost of attending a college or university. Johnson believed that providing everyone with the best possible education was as vital as social safety net programs.

In 2025, the times have changed. President Donald Trump has turned federal funding for higher education into a bludgeon.

He is attempting to drain universities of vital research funds that sustain scholarship on international problems such as Alzheimer’s and HIV/AIDS. His administration has imposed draconian terms on several major universities, insisting that it won’t negotiate over funding unless the schools accept dramatic expansions of federal control over departments, curricula, and admissions. Congressional Republicans are contemplating a massive endowment tax that would severely cut into the money select universities have available to finance their operations. More is certainly coming.

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The chaos that now emanates from the White House has already reshaped U.S. relationships with allies and foes alike, as well as perceptions of Washington on the global stage.

Trump has struck deals with Latin American nations to assist with immigration enforcement—most notably El Salvador, which has accepted hundreds of people deported from the United States into its prison system without due process. He has presented Ukraine with a “final offer” peace framework that includes tangible gains for a revanchist Russia. And his administration fired the first shot in a trade war with China, which faces a minimum tariff rate of 145 percent on most U.S.-bound goods.

As the 100-day mark approaches, we asked 10 FP columnists and contributors to assess the start of Trump’s second term—to make sense of all that has happened so far and what might come next. Read on for their responses, or click on an individual topic below.

—Audrey Wilson, managing editor

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So far, there has been relatively less churn within his administration’s top ranks compared to his first term in office, and a few key individuals have emerged as the main players shaping and executing his geopolitical priorities. There are also others who appeared set for influential roles in the early weeks of January but have effectively been sidelined.

There’s one name you might expect on this list whom we chose not to include: Elon Musk. The world’s wealthiest man parlayed nine-figure election campaign donations into an influential and near-omnipresent role in Trump’s administration, seeing him participate in phone calls with foreign leaders, hold high-level meetings at the Pentagon and National Security Agency, and even sit down face to face with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

Yet Musk’s sway over Washington’s global relationships has waned in recent weeks, ceding ground to the more domestic priorities of Musk’s unofficial Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) and an incessant stream of pro-MAGA posts on his social media platform, X. What’s more, Musk’s role as a “special government employee” has a 130-day timer that runs out in about a month, and Trump and Trumpworld have hinted that he may not stick around after that.

Aside from Musk, an honorable mention to National Security Advisor Mike Waltz. Waltz’s relative lack of influence thus far is notable, especially given the prominence of his predecessor, Jake Sullivan, but he isn’t on this list because we felt it was too early to definitively place him in either camp. He did play an unfortunately prominent role in Signalgate, as the cabinet member who added the Atlantic magazine’s editor in chief, Jeffrey Goldberg, to the chat, but the heat for that controversy has also now zeroed in on Hegseth.

With that said, here’s who we think has Trump’s trust to execute on his priorities—and who doesn’t.

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No one knows what the United States wants on trade—or even if there is any strategy at all. Tariffs are coming and going, and the views of U.S. President Donald Trump appear to be changing by the day as his officials struggle to offer even remotely plausible explanations for his unpredictable actions and sudden backtracking.

Amid all the chaos, one country seems to think that it knows the goal. On April 21, the Chinese Commerce Ministry warned other governments against striking any trade deals with the United States that damage Chinese interests. If Beijing’s assumption is correct that Trump’s strategy is to force other countries to decouple from China, then Washington’s approach is a risky one that could backfire in at least three ways.

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The rupture of the Israel-Hamas cease-fire agreement in March could spell the end of any prospect for a comprehensive agreement between Israelis and Palestinians—or it could mobilize efforts for such a deal. Everything hinges on U.S. President Donald Trump and what he chooses to do next.

A plan endorsed by Arab leaders in Cairo last month provides an approach for rebuilding Gaza without the displacement of its population and charts a path for a Palestinian-Israeli peace. Unaddressed, however, is how to get Hamas to agree to give up its arms.

Stabilizing the security situation in Gaza requires addressing such questions in an agreement between the two largest Palestinian political factions—Fatah, the ruling party of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and the Palestinian Authority, and Hamas. Because Israel aims to prevent the emergence of an independent Palestinian state, such an agreement will only be implementable if the United States supports it and uses its leverage to ensure that Israel doesn’t undermine it.

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The administration’s “move fast and break things” approach to foreign policy has been consistent only in its chaos. There have been rapid shifts in America’s approach to high-profile global conflicts: pivoting to negotiations with Russia, promoting a cease-fire in Gaza, and oscillating between threats of military action against Iran and offers of a newly negotiated nuclear deal.

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The United States has long had a clear message to its European allies: Do more!

Spend more on defense, shoulder more risk, accept more inconvenience, spurn Soviet and Russian natural gas, catch Kremlin spies, push back against communist-led trade unions, send European armed forces to fight in U.S. wars—the list was long. Europe’s contribution was never enough. Indeed, discontent about burden-sharing precedes the founding of NATO. At a 1949 Senate hearing on U.S. accession to the alliance, Secretary of State Dean Acheson was asked if this would mean “substantial numbers of troops over there.” He responded: “The answer to that question, senator, is a clear and absolute no!” The assumption at the bloc’s founding was that U.S. support was a bridge to European self-reliance.

Ten years later, President Dwight D. Eisenhower complained that self-reliance wasn’t happening. “Our forces were put there on a stop-gap emergency basis,” he said, according to a 1959 memo. “The Europeans now attempt to consider this deployment as a permanent and definite commitment.” He complained that allies were trying to make the United States a “sucker.” Every U.S. president since then has reiterated the complaint, none more than Donald Trump.

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The White House unveiled a sweeping plan on Tuesday to reorganize the U.S. State Department, in one of President Donald Trump’s most aggressive federal overhauls since taking office. The plan will cut 132 agency offices, eliminate around 700 jobs in Washington, and shutter programs dedicated to peace and democracy promotion.

“In its current form, the Department is bloated, bureaucratic, and unable to perform its essential diplomatic mission in this new era of great power competition,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced on X. “Region-specific functions will be streamlined to increase functionality. Redundant offices will also be removed, and non-statutory programs misaligned with America’s core national interests will cease to exist,” he added on Substack.

Rubio does not list what those core interests are beyond delivering on Trump’s “America First” agenda. In Trump’s second term so far, that agenda has included gutting the U.S. Agency for International Development, launching a global trade war, cracking down on immigration, and retreating from multilateral institutions. Another key administration priority has been eradicating diversity, equity, and inclusion programs and other initiatives perceived to be part of the “woke” liberal agenda, including the promotion of democracy and human rights abroad.

That last priority appears to have factored heavily into decisions about which State Department programs to cut. As part of the proposed reorganization, for instance, the Trump administration will eliminate the office of the Undersecretary of State for Civilian Security, Democracy, and Human Rights, which oversaw the so-called J programs. Rubio accused that office of having “provided a fertile environment for activists to redefine ‘human rights’ and ‘democracy’ and to pursue their projects at the taxpayer expense.” Some of the J programs appear to have been cut, while others have been moved to new offices.

Read more in today’s World Brief: Trump Team Unveils Massive State Department Overhaul.

Correction, April 23, 2025: A previous version of this article misstated which programs were being cut as part of the State Department reorganization. 

Traditionally, secretaries of state have played a role of great prominence in U.S. administrations. Although they are only fourth in the presidential order of succession, these officials often outshine vice presidents. One need only think of examples such as Henry Kissinger, James A. Baker, Hillary Clinton, or John Kerry to recall how influential and vocal public servants in this office can be.

Against this backdrop, current Secretary of State Marco Rubio cuts a particularly disappointing figure. As President Donald Trump’s second term takes on a clear authoritarian bent and disrupts long-standing U.S. relationships, one might have expected Rubio—who has a record of criticizing Trump and his foreign-policy stances—to be one of the rare “adults in the room,” as experienced officials such as John Kelly and James Mattis were called during Trump’s first term. Analysts sometimes credited these figures with slowing the president down through deliberate debate and reining in his impulsive extremes.

But during his first months in the job, Rubio has instead appeared as a diminished figure and slavish latter-day convert to the Trump worldview—even when it goes strongly against his own extensive record of foreign-policy positions.

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In the five weeks since the Trump administration stepped up attacks on the Iran-backed Houthis in Yemen, a few big problems have become apparent, underscoring just how hard it is for U.S. President Donald Trump to turn muscular rhetoric into real-world results.

The operation, famously debated in a Signal chat that mistakenly included a journalist, has failed so far to achieve either of its two stated goals: restoring freedom of navigation in the Red Sea and reestablishing deterrence. 

Shipping through the Red Sea and the adjacent Suez Canal remains as depressed as ever despite a more than $1 billion U.S. onslaught against the Houthis. And the militants remain as defiant as ever, warning over the weekend that Trump has waded into a “quagmire” and intensifying their own attacks on Israel and U.S. warships in the region.

There has also been a glaring lack of transparency about the operation, the biggest exercise of U.S. military power in Trump’s second term. The Defense Department does not hold briefings on the ongoing war, and U.S. Central Command, which oversees operations in the Middle East, merely posts snazzy videos of flight-deck operations on social media, accompanied by the hashtag “#HouthisAreTerrorists.”

More alarmingly, the tempo of U.S. operations, including around-the-clock strikes by two entire U.S. aircraft carrier strike groups, is burning through finite precision munitions that many defense experts say would be best husbanded for any future conflict with China. That’s especially important when it comes to the limited stock of stand-off, air-launched missiles that would be critical to any fight over Taiwan.

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The Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) continued to steamroll the administrative state in recent weeks as Social Security became the latest target of billionaire Elon Musk’s rampage. Around the country, field offices of the Social Security Administration have lost as much as 57 percent of their staff, according to a New York Times investigation. The 72 million Americans who rely on Social Security checks now face longer processing times and a website that keeps crashing.

As DOGE widens its reach, even the military seems to be vulnerable to cuts. In March, the Defense Department claimed to be “working hand-in-glove with DOGE” to “trim the fat.” The announcement followed a proposal from February to cut some $250 billion from the Pentagon’s budget over the next five years. But on April 7, Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth pledged that the next defense budget would be a record-setting $1 trillion. “[W]e’re very cost-conscious, but the military is something we have to build,” Trump said at a press event that day.

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Four Democratic U.S. lawmakers traveled to El Salvador on Monday to press for the release of wrongfully detained Maryland resident Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia. Reps. Robert Garcia of California, Maxwell Alejandro Frost of Florida, Yassamin Ansari of Arizona, and Maxine Dexter of Oregon met with U.S. Embassy staff and human rights activists in San Salvador to urge the Trump administration to abide by a U.S. Supreme Court ruling that ordered the White House to “facilitate” Abrego Garcia’s return.

“While Donald Trump continues to defy the Supreme Court, Kilmar Abrego Garcia is being held illegally in El Salvador after being wrongfully deported,” Garcia, the congressman, said. “That is why we’re here—to remind the American people that kidnapping immigrants and deporting them without due process is not how we do things in America.”

Abrego Garcia was transferred to El Salvador’s notorious Terrorism Confinement Center on March 15 along with more than 200 individuals accused of being members of Venezuelan gangs, including MS-13 and Tren de Aragua. The White House has since admitted that he was wrongfully deported due to an “administrative error.” However, Trump and Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele have refused to take any action to bring him back.

Last Thursday, Maryland Sen. Chris Van Hollen briefly met with Abrego Garcia in San Salvador after accusing local authorities of withholding information about his whereabouts and health. Van Hollen has since said that the backdrop of their meeting was staged to make it look as if Abrego Garcia was being treated well. On Sunday, the U.S. Justice Department filed an update saying that Abrego Garcia had been moved out of the mega-prison and to Centro Industrial detention facility in Santa Ana.

Read more in today’s World Brief: U.S. Democrats Travel to El Salvador to Demand Abrego Garcia’s Release.

U.S. President Donald Trump has built an entire economic agenda around a promise to revive the standing that American manufacturing once held in the 1940s and 1950s. Dismissing recent attention on green industry and semiconductors, the president is deploying a massive set of tariffs—on adversaries and allies alike—and promising workers that he will restore the country to where it was back in the 1940s and 1950s.

Before he sent the global economy into turmoil on his so-called “Liberation Day,” Trump promised that “April 2, 2025, will forever be remembered as the day American industry was reborn, the day America’s destiny was reclaimed, and the day that we began to make America wealthy again.”

Thus far, the rollout has not exactly worked that way. After more than a trillion dollars in wealth were destroyed within days, Trump ultimately backed away from his threats. Other than his levies on China, the president temporarily paused most of the high tariffs. He promised to revisit them after giving other countries time to negotiate deals. Making even more concessions, Trump then exempted smartphones, computers, and chips from the program.

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In the annals of overestimating one’s trade leverage and then inflicting own-goals, the Confederacy’s 1861 embargo on the exports of its one product—cotton—in the hopes of coercing foreign countries into supporting the nascent nation always held pride of place. Until this spring.

The United States, thanks to President Donald Trump’s trade wars, has already managed something similar, provoking widespread boycotts of U.S. goods in Canada and Europe, closing off some of the main export markets for U.S. farm goods, and, most recently, shutting the door for Boeing on one of the world’s fastest-growing aviation markets, China.

Beyond the inherent contradictions that underlie the ever-shifting rationales for Trump’s tariff policies—negotiated truces will lower tariffs, which will lower tariff revenues and undercut any reshoring of manufacturing, while permanent high tariffs make negotiations pointless—there is more to come, starting with the continued use of national security justifications to build bigger protectionist walls.

Trump already leaned on so-called Section 232 investigations to hike duties on steel and aluminum in his first term, and again in his second. He has also invoked national security to shield U.S. automakers from such threats as Canadian transmissions. He has announced Section 232 investigations into copper (a cornerstone of modern buildings and power systems) as well as timber and lumber, which are critical components in housing and construction. Given that the cost of housing remains a major public concern, that could backfire.

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As Steve Witkoff, U.S. President Donald Trump’s “envoy for everything,” sits down again with a top Iranian diplomat this weekend, he confronts one galactic diplomatic lift. In Rome, Witkoff will face off against Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, a skilled nuclear negotiator from a repressive authoritarian regime that has been badly weakened by Israel and is in no mood for dramatic concessions, let alone capitulation to Washington.

At home, Witkoff is surrounded by the president’s hard-line advisors—who don’t believe an agreement is possible—and an impatient, impulsive president who wants a quick deal and is threatening the use of force if he can’t get one. The first meeting, in which everyone seemed to abide by Emily Post’s guide to good table manners, will be unlikely to be repeated this coming weekend as the diplomatic bromides give way to much tougher positions.

Here are five politically inconvenient realities likely to govern the negotiations.

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The Department of Commerce on Monday filed a so-called Section 232 investigation into semiconductors and their impact on national security, providing three weeks for the public to comment before the potential imposition of tariffs.

Trump heralded the investigation in a post on his Truth Social account earlier in the day, insisting that tariff exceptions for smartphones, laptops, chips, and other electronic devices from China that his administration released late Friday night did not in fact constitute exceptions. “There was no Tariff ‘exception’ announced on Friday,” Trump wrote, contradicting his own administration’s characterization.

“We are taking a look at Semiconductors and the WHOLE ELECTRONICS SUPPLY CHAIN in the upcoming National Security Tariff Investigations,” he added, clarifying that electronics were still subject to a 20 percent tariff imposed on China shortly after his return to office for its role in the fentanyl trade. “What has been exposed is that we need to make products in the United States, and that we will not be held hostage by other Countries, especially hostile trading Nations like China, which will do everything within its power to disrespect the American People.”

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One of the leading U.S. experts on fascism is so unsettled by the political climate under President Donald Trump that he’s packing up and leaving the country. Jason Stanley, a philosophy professor at Yale University and the author of books including How Fascism Works: The Politics of Us and Them, has accepted a position at the University of Toronto’s Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy that will begin in the fall.

Stanley is not the only prominent Yale professor leaving the Ivy League university amid Trump 2.0. He’ll be joined at Munk by two colleagues, historians Timothy Snyder and Marci Shore, in one of many signs that the United States is in the midst of a Trump-induced brain drain as the new administration threatens university funding, among many other unfriendly steps toward the world of academia.

In a wide-ranging interview with Foreign Policy, Stanley, who has raised alarm bells about Trump’s authoritarian tendencies for years and unequivocally calls the president a fascist, discussed his reasons for leaving the United States and Trump’s controversial Monday meeting with Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele—who styles himself the “world’s coolest dictator”—among other topics.

During the Bukele meeting, which Stanley described as a “horrifying moment,” Trump again floated sending U.S. citizens to be imprisoned in the Central American country—which legal experts warn would likely be unconstitutional. This came as the Trump administration continues to defy a Supreme Court order to facilitate the return of a Maryland man, Kilmar Abrego Garcia, who was wrongly deported to El Salvador.

Though Stanley has faced some criticism over his impending exodus from the United States, he’s making no apologies as he continues to warn people against assuming they’re not at risk of being targeted in Trump’s America.

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One month has passed since U.S. President Donald Trump signed an executive order directing the virtual demolition of the U.S. Agency for Global Media (USAGM), which oversees congressionally funded but editorially independent news outlets such as Voice of America (VOA), Radio Free Asia, and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.

I spent the past nearly four years reporting on press freedom at VOA, where I documented threats facing journalists all over the world as well as in the United States. Now, it is my outlet that is targeted by a government—and my colleagues whose lives and livelihoods are endangered as a result.

At least 84 U.S.-based journalists worked at USAGM outlets on visas and could face deportation if they lose their jobs. A series of ongoing lawsuits has so far kept that from happening. The stakes are particularly high for at least 23 of the journalists, who are at risk of being arrested and imprisoned over their work if forced to return to their home countries, according to Reporters Without Borders.

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U.S. trading partners must have breathed a sigh of relief last week when President Donald Trump announced a 90-day pause on the imposition of tariff rates above 10 percent. However, along with Trump’s economic team, they are quickly realizing that the three-month reprieve, while welcome, is an incredibly short time to hammer out trade deals. Typically, U.S. officials spend at least six months—twice the length of time of the current pause—just to develop their negotiating positions in consultation with Congress and stakeholders. Actual negotiations usually span several years. But as we are learning, these are not normal times.

Countries around the world are scrambling to pull together the best teams and develop strategies, tactics, and substantive offers for a trade negotiation with the United States. The very first thing these countries need to consider is whether they want to push to be at the front of the negotiating queue, a potentially attractive option if they conclude that going early may lead to softer deals. Some may decide that they are better off hanging back and watching how others fare first. This would allow them the opportunity to at least gain a better sense of which negotiating topics (or sweeteners) are of the most importance to the White House and potentially to learn from others’ missteps in this new speed-negotiating world.

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U.S. President Donald Trump welcomed El Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele to the White House on Monday. Their meeting centered on bolstering migration cooperation, with Trump saying that he is open to sending U.S. citizens to prisons in El Salvador if they commit violent acts—though immigration experts say there is no legal way for the Trump administration to do so. “You gotta build about five more places,” Trump told Bukele, indicating that El Salvador’s current mega-prison will not be large enough for Trump’s plans.

Last month, Trump invoked the wartime 1798 Alien Enemies Act to send hundreds of migrants allegedly part of Venezuela’s Tren de Aragua gang to El Salvador, where they were then placed in the country’s notorious mega-prison, the Terrorism Confinement Center (CECOT). Since then, several deportation flights have occurred, with the latest carrying 10 alleged gang members to CECOT over the weekend.

U.S. District Judge James Boasberg initially ordered the White House to stop these flights, citing lack of transparency concerns. Human Rights Watch has condemned the administration’s actions, calling the flights “enforced disappearances and arbitrary detention” to a prison “known for its abusive conditions.”

When Trump was pressed on Monday about alleged human rights abuses at CECOT, he responded with: “I don’t see it. I don’t see that happening.” The U.S. president remains a close ally and admirer of Bukele, saying on Sunday that “I think he’s doing a fantastic job. He’s taking care of a lot of problems that we have.”

Read more in today’s World Brief: Trump Again Floats Deporting U.S. Citizens to El Salvador During Bukele Meeting.

The Trump administration has only just begun to fill its ranks with the political appointees who will flesh out the future of U.S. defense policy. One item sure to be on their agenda is a review of U.S. military deployments around the world, known in Pentagon-speak as a posture review. As part of this process, officials are likely to scrutinize the status of U.S. military forces in Europe.

U.S. President Donald Trump’s first-term policies—and early rhetoric during his second term—indicate that the U.S. military presence in Europe is likely to change fundamentally as a result of the posture review. Over the last 80 years, the United States has played a leading role in conventional defense and deterrence in Europe. But the Trump administration has made clear that Europeans should take on primary responsibility for defending the continent.

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China is not backing down. On Friday, Beijing announced plans to raise retaliatory tariffs on the United States from 84 percent to 125 percent, to go into effect on Saturday.

This marks the third massive countermeasure between the two superpowers in recent weeks, and it comes after U.S. President Donald Trump put a 90-day pause on new so-called reciprocal tariffs for all U.S. trading partners except China. (Other countries still face a universal 10 percent levy from the United States.)

The United States’ trade actions “will become a joke in the history of the world economy,” China’s Finance Ministry said in a statement on Friday. “However, if the U.S. insists on continuing to substantially infringe on China’s interests, China will resolutely counter and fight to the end.” China’s Commerce Ministry said it plans to file another lawsuit with the World Trade Organization against the Trump administration’s actions.

U.S. tariffs on China now total a minimum rate of 145 percent, including the increased 125 percent duty that Trump announced on Wednesday on top of the 20 percent levy that he issued near the start of his second term.

China’s tariffs on the United States, meanwhile, will affect key U.S. exports, such as soybeans, pharmaceuticals, and aircraft. Last week, China also suspended imports from some U.S. companies that sell sorghum, poultry, and bonemeal, and it placed more export controls on Chinese rare earths.

“There are no winners in a tariff war, and going against the world will only result in self-isolation,” Chinese President Xi Jinping said on Friday in his first public comments since the tit-for-tat escalation began.

Read more in today’s World Brief: China Retaliates With a 125 Percent Tariff on U.S. Goods

It is rare that we can watch the unfolding of a global economic downturn with such precision as we can today. With a 145 percent U.S. tariff on China and a 125 percent retaliatory levy by Beijing, the world’s largest bilateral trading relationship is effectively frozen. We have not even begun to see the consequences and knock-on effects, from the coming U.S. inflation shock to a potential reversal of China’s purchases of U.S. Treasury bonds. Other countries have gotten a 90-day reprieve after new U.S. rates as high as 50 percent briefly went into effect, but the threat of a worldwide convulsion remains. With every day that businesses and investors in the United States and elsewhere cannot plan their purchases and investments—or trust that Washington won’t flip-flop again—the cogs of the global economy move slower and slower.

How quickly things can spiral down became clear after U.S. President Donald Trump announced steep new tariffs on almost all U.S. imports on April 2. Trillions of dollars were wiped off the financial markets in a matter of days. As investors began to pull money out of the U.S. dollar and U.S. bonds, signals of financial contagion began flashing red. With neither Trump nor Chinese President Xi Jinping showing any inclination to back down, the risk of their confrontation metastasizing into a global economic conflagration is high.

U.S. economic history has a lot to say about how trade wars can set off something much, much worse. Since the beginning of the 19th century, the United States has suffered six economic depressions—which I define as six or more quarters of sustained economic contraction, although there is no standard definition. All but one were either directly caused or significantly worsened by tariffs and trade embargoes. As a historian who studies international trade, global commodities, and financial panics, I can assure you that Trump’s tariff policies will be devastating unless someone manages to stand up to him and make it stop.

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Emboldened by Columbia University’s recent capitulation to a series of sweeping government demands, U.S. President Donald Trump is weaponizing vast sums of federal funding against a growing number of universities. 

As of Friday morning, the Trump administration has now either frozen, canceled, or threatened more than hundreds of millions of dollars in federal funding to seven wealthy universities: Columbia, the University of Pennsylvania, Princeton, Harvard, Brown, Cornell, and Northwestern. To justify the moves, Trump officials have cited the universities’ policies for transgender athletes and alleged antisemitism and racial discrimination. 

With Columbia, Trump wielded $400 million in canceled federal funding to pressure administrators into surrendering to a raft of far-reaching government demands, and he is now reportedly considering pushing for federal oversight of the university. Trump now appears to be using that same playbook with the other institutions, most recently by issuing a long list of “critical reforms” to Harvard that the university must meet to continue receiving federal funding. 

The moves amount to an unmistakable incursion on academic freedom as Trump seeks to expel what he has called “anti-American insanity” from universities and reclaim “our once-great educational institutions from the radical left.” More could soon come, too. The Trump administration is investigating more than 50 institutions for alleged racial discrimination—an accusation that largely targets efforts by universities to promote diversity—and previously warned 60 universities of potential punishment from antisemitism probes.

Yet the ongoing campaign has sparked confusion about why institutions such as Columbia—which ranks among the world’s richest universities—aren’t using their fortunes to fight back. Columbia, for example, touts a nearly $15 billion endowment, assets that could theoretically cushion the blow of $400 million in pulled federal funding. Harvard has a whopping endowment of more than $50 billion. 

“Outsiders look at the dollar amounts and say, ‘You know, that’s a ton of money available, right? Why don’t they step up?” said Todd Ely, a professor at the University of Colorado Denver. “But the story gets a lot more complicated when you start digging into what endowments are.” 

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U.S. President Donald Trump’s latest trade moves are still top of mind for most foreign powers, global markets, and American consumers. While much of the world is breathing a sigh of relief over Trump’s decision on Wednesday to impose a 90-day pause on new, higher reciprocal tariffs targeting nearly 100 partners, one country is still in the doghouse. And U.S. investors are concerned.

The White House issued a statement on Thursday confirming that the three-month suspension will not affect China. Instead, Trump raised the minimum tariff rate on Beijing to 145 percent, effective immediately; this includes the 125 percent duty that Trump announced Wednesday as well the 20 percent levy that he issued near the start of his second term.

China has responded with its own set of retaliatory measures, including raising tariffs to 84 percent effective Thursday. And Beijing is reportedly also turning to other countries to help weather the storm, notably including those in the European Union.

“China is willing to work with the EU to jointly implement the important consensus reached by the leaders of China and the EU, strengthen communication and exchanges, and deepen China-EU trade, investment and industrial cooperation,” China’s Xinhua News Agency wrote on Thursday around several calls between high-level Chinese and European officials.

Not all countries are interested in boosting trade with Beijing, though. Australia and India have reportedly turned down Chinese calls for greater cooperation, and many South Asian nations have chosen the silent treatment for fear of potentially angering the White House. “Unlike China and some other global powers, most South Asian countries are too economically fragile to take retaliatory measures and risk an all-out trade war with the United States,” FP’s Michael Kugelman wrote in this week’s South Asia Brief.

Read more in today’s World Brief: U.S.-China Trade War Intensifies.

The one exception, of course, is China, which—we must now always emphasize, as of this writing—faces U.S. tariffs of roughly 150 percent, if one includes the standard tariffs on trading partners, the penal tariffs imposed during Trump’s first term and left in place by President Joe Biden, the 20 percent on fentanyl-related goods, and the duties announced on April 9.

Trump’s fans say this is a well-concealed plan to focus on Beijing; others may see the shift as a face-saving way to reframe a retreat after markets crashed and businesses went into shock. Either way, it seems hard for China to escape unscathed, unless Trump makes another sudden U-turn very soon. The United States still can impose a lot more pain, albeit at significant cost to itself, including financial sanctions and banning exchange students or travel altogether, and can offer benefits to other trading partners that join the campaign to isolate China. A China cut off from the global economy and society would face enormous economic, political, and geostrategic troubles.

Despite this danger, my sense is that the Chinese government believes it has no choice but to stand its ground and that its leaders will not submit to negotiations in which they are the only ones expected to make concessions. Moreover, my recent travels to China and elsewhere reveal a broader, modestly more positive reappraisal by Chinese and international audiences about the resilience and strengths of the Chinese system.

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Not long after China’s leader, Xi Jinping, rose to power in 2012, close observers grew puzzled at how readily he squandered many of the advantages that the country had accumulated over decades of low-friction diplomacy and world-beating economic growth.

Early in his rule, Xi stepped up aggressive moves to claim territorial rights over virtually the entire South China Sea. China also began to accelerate the modernization of its armed forces, rolling out new aircraft carriers and other military technology, and Xi alarmed neighbors with his exhortations to the military to prepare to not only fight, but also win, wars.

At home, Xi began a sweeping anti-corruption drive that quickly looked like a campaign to cow critics and potential rivals. Soon, the regime expanded this political offensive to further constrain speech, and then to bully and humiliate the heads of some of China’s most successful businesses, such as Alibaba, whose fast growth and innovation had helped power the country’s rise.

Many Chinese people justified authoritarianism by turning to the familiar argument that the concentration of power in a disciplined executive can get things done in ways that are not possible amid the palaver and chaos of democracy. For years, Chinese graduate students in my classes boasted about this systemic advantage, but that ended with the suffocating atmosphere of Xi’s crackdown and the alarming economic slowdown that came with it.

Suddenly, conversations turned to what political theorists call the “bad emperor” problem. As a new generation of young adults bemoaned the loss of an era of nearly certain opportunity, they began to see life under authoritarianism as a matter of sheer luck. In a blink, they realized, a seemingly enlightened dictator could be replaced by a rash and benighted despot. For those who experienced this pendulum swing, authoritarianism had a crucial disadvantage: Unlike in democracies, which can vote governments out, the people have no recourse but to ride out their bad fortune and hope for a better successor.

Yet this is not just a problem inherent to authoritarianism. In recent days, it has become increasingly obvious that the world’s oldest and most powerful democracy now faces the bad emperor dilemma.

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Some U.S. lawmakers remain determined to claw back some of the constitutional trade authority that Congress began handing the president 90 years ago, introducing a spate of bills and resolutions in both houses in an effort to curb U.S. President Donald Trump’s ability to single-handedly upend the U.S. and global economies.

Several Republican senators have joined their Democratic colleagues to try to restore some of the congressional authority over tariffs that is enshrined in the Constitution. 

“So the good news is that our colleagues are waking up to the fact that the president went too far and that we need to have a discussion,” said Democratic Sen. Maria Cantwell, who has seven Republican co-sponsors on her bill—introduced with Sen. Chuck Grassley—to allow Congress to review any tariff actions taken by the executive branch.

However, House Republicans are not breaking ranks with the White House, and the flurry of lower-chamber bills and resolutions meant to curb Trump’s tariffs has been stymied by Republican procedural gimmicks.

Since Trump, after taking office a second time, has ratcheted up his trade wars, there has been a bevy of congressional efforts targeting the national emergency that Trump invoked to levy tariffs on Canada, Mexico, and China; the national emergency he cited to put tariffs on nearly the whole world; his expansive use of national-security justifications to shield U.S. steel and aluminum producers; and even presidential authority to set tariffs at all. 

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In a Truth Social post on Wednesday, U.S. President Donald Trump paused the global trade war he launched last week, giving nearly every country a 90-day reprieve on the new, higher U.S. tariffs that had gone into effect just hours earlier. But one country was left out.

China, Trump said, would see its tariff rate shoot up to 125 percent, due to the “lack of respect that China has shown to the World’s Markets,” while all other countries received an amended 10 percent tariff rate. The new tariff hike on China is the third round in less than a week—a rapid escalation that experts say may take much longer to reverse.

As erratic as Trump’s decision-making has been, it doesn’t come as a surprise that Washington’s trade broadside has now narrowed, at least temporarily, to a U.S.-China trade war. Trump and his advisors have long identified China as the top offender in an unfair global trade system, dumping subsidized goods on the United States. And Chinese President Xi Jinping drew Trump’s ire as the only leader who dared to fire back with retaliatory tariffs in response to Trump’s tariffs announcement last Wednesday.

Walking back the trade war will prove challenging for two countries led by leaders with substantial egos and largely unchecked power. Over the past week, as the trade battle has ratcheted up day by day, both governments have tried to cast themselves as having the upper hand.

The Chinese Commerce Ministry said in multiple statements that it would not cave into U.S. “bullying.” Chinese state media and official statements signal that Beijing is prepared to weather the storm, even if it shaves points off its GDP growth this year against an already tepid economic backdrop.

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U.S. President Donald Trump’s new reciprocal tariffs went into effect at the stroke of midnight on Wednesday. However, within hours of urging Americans to “BE COOL! Everything is going to work out well,” Trump announced a pause on those same tariffs for every country except for China, upending weeks of trade policy and rallying global markets.

On Wednesday afternoon, Trump posted on Truth Social that he had authorized an immediate 90-day pause on the higher reciprocal tariffs and lowered them to 10 percent for nearly all affected countries during that time period. Trump said the suspension was due to dozens of nations seeking trade negotiations with the United States.

For China, however, Trump said he was raising the additional duties to 125 percent, up from 104 percent. Earlier Wednesday, Beijing had retaliated for the 104 percent measure with countertariffs that totaled 84 percent, beginning on Thursday. It is unclear whether China will match the latest tit for tat, as it has over the past week.

Speaking to reporters at the White House shortly after Trump’s announcement, U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent clarified that the lowered measures for all other countries will not affect other tariffs that the Trump administration has already imposed, such as steel and aluminum duties, or other levies that are still coming down the pipeline, such as on lumber and pharmaceuticals.

It seems that global markets’ reactions to the new tariffs in recent days may have convinced Trump to back off, at least for now. When asked Wednesday afternoon why he decided to pause them, he said, “I thought that people were jumping a little bit out of line. They were getting yippy, you know. They were getting a little bit yippy, a little bit afraid.”

Read more in today’s World Brief: Trump Abruptly Pauses Reciprocal Tariffs for 90 Days—Except on China.

The U.S.-China trade war has erupted into a full-scale tariff spiral, with triple-digit levies on Chinese products going into effect today and Washington showing no signs of slowing its assault. Confronted with this economic barrage, Beijing would ordinarily search for a quiet path back to détente through dialogue. But that path has all but vanished.

The reason is simple. For U.S. President Donald Trump, his pressure campaign isn’t a prelude to any negotiation—it is the strategy itself. Each tariff taunt feeds the next, leaving China with fewer options at every turn. Worse, Beijing’s political rigidity, deep insecurities, and defensive overreaction to Trump’s tariff announcements have seemingly slammed shut the very doors it quietly needs to reopen.

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The world is bracing for U.S. President Donald Trump’s sweeping tariffs to go into effect on Wednesday. Nearly all of the United States’ trading partners will be affected, from uninhabited islands to Washington’s biggest adversaries, and global stock markets are preparing for the potentially catastrophic effects the duties are expected to inflict on global supply chains.

U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said perhaps as many as 70 countries have requested negotiations with Trump to discuss reducing or eliminating the tariffs—with varying degrees of success. However, China stands out as the only major economy to counter Trump with its own retaliatory duties so far.

Last Friday, Beijing announced that it would match the 34 percent tariff rate that Trump imposed on China and hit the United States with a slew of other countermeasures. That defiance angered Trump. On Truth Social on Monday, he wrote that the United States would impose additional 50 percent tariffs on Beijing if it failed to repeal its 34 percent countertariffs by Tuesday.

The Chinese Commerce Ministry fired back, saying that “the U.S. threat to escalate tariffs is doubly erroneous” and that China would once again “take firm countermeasures to safeguard its legitimate rights and interests” in response. As of noon on Tuesday, with China not backing down, the White House announced that the new 50 percent tariff would go into effect on Wednesday.

That will bring the average tariff on Chinese imports to an astronomical 126 percent, with Trump himself having added 104 percent over four rounds of tariffs in just the past three months on top of tariffs that predated his second term.

Read more in today’s World Brief: China Remains Defiant in Face of New Trump Tariffs.

The Trump administration’s drastic foreign aid cuts and effort to dismantle the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) have had rapid, rippling consequences across the world.

Foreign Policy recently sat down with Charlotte Slente, secretary-general of the Danish Refugee Council, to discuss the far-reaching effects of Trump dramatically slashing foreign assistance.

As the new administration in Washington axes more and more lifesaving programs, Slente warned that “people will be dying.” In a world where the U.S. is no longer seen as a reliable partner, Slente also discussed where aid groups go from here.

Foreign Policy: Where has your work been hit hardest by [U.S. President Donald] Trump’s aid cuts?

Charlotte Slente: The Danish Refugee Council is active in around 40 countries around the world—primarily countries where we see large humanitarian crises and displacement crises, because we are a displacement-mandated organization, which means that we work on these great, big contracts. And among the 40 countries that we are present in, we’ve been hit in 22. It’s across the globe in different environments and a little bit random, depending on where the U.S. funding falls.

The U.S. was our second-biggest donor—20 percent of our income was from the U.S. We’ve been hit in many countries in Africa, we’ve been hit in Latin America, we’ve also been hit in Asia, and in Ukraine. It’s been quite a bumpy road.

FP: What has the immediate impact of these aid cuts been on the ground? What kind of damage has already been done?

CS: In Afghanistan, for instance, we were supporting drinking water for thousands and thousands of people in a number of provinces. That was cut down immediately. So the effect is that these people will not get access to safe drinking water in these provinces.

That can have fatal consequences.

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Take a seat in almost any introduction to international relations course at a U.S. university, and you’ll probably catch an opening lecture on the “Melian Dialogue” from Thucydides’s famed history of the Peloponnesian War. In it, the Athenians put a simple proposition to the people of neutral Melos: Surrender or face destruction. The weaker Melians make a series of arguments—about alliances, morality, and the gods—in hopes of changing the Athenians’ minds, but to no avail. In the end, the Melians choose to resist and meet their fate. From there, Thucydides draws his famous dictum: “The strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must.”

Thucydides is the intellectual godfather of the school of international relations theory known as realism. Realism holds that states are motivated purely by self-interest and that power matters above all else. In the college classroom, the Melian Dialogue raises a fundamental question about international relations: Does Thucydides describe how the world was in the past—or how it still is today?

The United States and its adversaries are running a new experiment on this question in real time, testing whether a foreign policy based strictly on self-interest and implemented almost exclusively through power politics is beneficial—or even feasible—in the modern era.

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U.S. President Donald Trump promised to bring down energy prices, and on that front at least, he has delivered.

Thanks to his trade war, crude oil prices have plunged. Benchmark prices in New York and London are down about 15 percent in the last few days, a drop that is matched only by the declines on Wall Street, in Asian stock markets, and in Tesla’s appeal. Crude oil went from the mid $70s a barrel when Trump was elected the second time to the upper $50s (briefly) on Monday. 

The good news, such as it is, is that cheaper oil is a win, as Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent gleefully said. Cheaper oil means cheaper gasoline. The bad news is that there may not be jobs to drive to.

Global markets have not responded kindly to Trump’s war on trade, and serious economists (and even investment bankers) worry about a recession. It might get worse: On Monday, Trump threatened China with additional 50 percent tariffs on top of the 34 percent tariff imposed last week, which itself came atop the 20 percent tariffs previously levied, in addition to all other tariffs, which are also still in effect.

Cheap oil is, in a reversal from decades past, bad news for the United States—and especially for some deeply Republican parts of the country, which have in the past decade and a half revolutionized the oil business and made the United States the greatest producer of oil and natural gas in the history of the world. The United States pumped about 13.2 million barrels of oil a day on average last year; Saudi Arabia isn’t even in the double digits at the moment.

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U.S. President Donald Trump is not backing down from his explosive tariffs. The sweeping duties, announced last Wednesday, have ignited fears of a global recession, as countries race to either negotiate with or retaliate against Washington and stock markets seesaw between quick surges and record-breaking lows.

On Monday, Trump threatened to take his trade war to yet new heights, writing on Truth Social that he will put additional 50 percent tariffs on China if Beijing does not remove its recently announced 34 percent retaliatory duties on the United States by Tuesday. He also threatened to terminate all requested talks with China. If Trump’s latest threat is enacted, it could bring the total average tariff on Chinese goods entering the United States to a whopping 126 percent.

Beijing declared the 34 percent countermeasure last Friday, which will go into effect on April 10 and be imposed on all U.S. imports, without carve-outs for certain products such as energy, as the White House has done.

Not all foreign leaders have taken the hard-and-fast approach. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen offered the United States “zero-for-zero tariffs for industrial goods” in a video post on Monday. “Europe is always ready for a good deal, so we keep it on the table,” she said. Several U.S. Republican lawmakers have urged Trump to seize the opportunity. “At some point, you have to take YES for an answer,” Sen. Ron Johnson posted on X.

Read more in today’s World Brief: Trump’s ‘Reciprocal Tariffs’ Roil Global Markets.

If you’re a regular reader of this column, you know that I often criticize what the United States is doing on the global stage. I thought George W. Bush’s presidency was a foreign-policy train wreck; Barack Obama’s eight years in office were a disappointment, Donald Trump’s first term a hot mess, and Joe Biden’s four years were tarnished by damaging strategic and moral lapses. Alas, it has taken Trump and his appointees less than three months to outdo them all for incompetent foreign-policy wingnuttery. And this would be true even if Signalgate had never occurred.

To be clear: I don’t think Trump is acting on behalf of a foreign power or that he consciously wants to make the United States less secure and less prosperous; he is just acting as if he were. One might say that he’s following this handy “Five-Step Guide to Screwing Up U.S. Foreign Policy.”

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The tariff announcement by U.S. President Donald Trump on April 2 has fueled intense discussions in capitals around the world on the best way to respond. Initial statements by foreign leaders and trade ministers have conveyed such feelings as surprise, regret, dismay, and betrayal. Not only did Trump’s tariffs go far beyond market expectations, but they also seem to have targeted U.S. partners and allies most acutely.

Countries must now formulate response plans based on their national interests while also taking into account factors such as overall relations with the United States, obligations under the World Trade Organization (WTO), shifting supply chains, areas of potential negotiating leverage, and fears of further U.S. retaliation.

China has moved quickly down the retaliation route. Other countries, such as Vietnam, have signaled the possibility of unilateral tariff cuts and a strong interest in negotiation. The European Union is also talking about the need to reach a fair deal while noting that it is prepared to retaliate should negotiations fail.

There is no one-size-fits-all approach for countries to respond to Trump’s tariffs. Instead, drawing on my nearly three decades as a negotiator in the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative, I can point to a menu of realistic options that countries can pursue in the short term, separately or in tandem.

Over the longer term, however, countries will need to give serious thought on how to make themselves less vulnerable to shifting policies.

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On Monday morning, U.S. President Donald Trump threatened to hit China with additional 50 percent tariffs starting Wednesday if it doesn’t withdraw its retaliatory tariffs by tomorrow. The move comes in response to Beijing’s decision last Friday to impose 34 percent tariffs on all U.S. imports, in response to Trump’s 34 percent “reciprocal tariffs” on Chinese goods. Beijing’s move was seen by trade experts as a hard-hitting response because its tariffs, unlike Trump’s, did not include any carve-outs for certain imports like energy.

Here is Trump’s full post on Truth Social:

“Yesterday, China issued Retaliatory Tariffs of 34%, on top of their already record setting Tariffs, Non-Monetary Tariffs, Illegal Subsidization of companies, and massive long term Currency Manipulation, despite my warning that any country that Retaliates against the U.S. by issuing additional Tariffs, above and beyond their already existing long term Tariff abuse of our Nation, will be immediately met with new and substantially higher Tariffs, over and above those initially set. Therefore, if China does not withdraw its 34% increase above their already long term trading abuses by tomorrow, April 8th, 2025, the United States will impose ADDITIONAL Tariffs on China of 50%, effective April 9th. Additionally, all talks with China concerning their requested meetings with us will be terminated! Negotiations with other countries, which have also requested meetings, will begin taking place immediately. Thank you for your attention to this matter!”

If Trump makes good on his threat, that would be the fourth time he has hit China with tariffs since taking office for his second term, and it could bring the total average tariff on Chinese goods to a staggering 126 percent.

In this fable of “good” vs. “evil,” the “good” forces of efficiency must chainsaw their way through the administrative state and the rules and processes that its “evil” bureaucrats hide behind. Even the political voices opposing Musk’s efficiency drive explicitly accept the goal, arguing that DOGE’s actions (for instance, firing inspectors general) are the wrong way to improve efficiency. On the centrality of “efficiency,” there is bipartisan support, even in these polarized times.

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“I can look into it,” Elon Musk posted on X on March 1. He was responding to a comedian named Terrence K. Williams who had written, “ELON MUSK!!! I’m begging you! Please ask President Trump to get rid of this ridiculous BOI rule that Biden Created It’s targeting conservatives and small businesses!” As part of the post, Williams claimed that he had received an email saying he needed to fill out a beneficial ownership report or be fined more than $500 per day and risk prison time.

The exchange seems to have been the impetus for a major change in U.S. anti-money laundering and countering the financing of terrorism (AML/CFT) policy. The shift has caused regulatory chaos, especially for small businesses in the United States.

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Democrats were elated with the outcome of the campaign to fill a seat on Wisconsin’s Supreme Court. Despite Elon Musk pumping $25 million into supporting Trump loyalist judge Brad Schimel, liberal Susan Crawford emerged victorious.

But the blow to Musk—and U.S. President Donald Trump—should not obscure the broader problem of how much money was spent on this race. According to the Brennan Center for Justice, this was the most expensive judicial race in American history, with spending totaling a whopping $100 million.

Nor were Democrats innocent bystanders. National liberal donors, including Illinois Gov. (and Hyatt hotel heir) JB Pritzker, spent millions as well to back Crawford’s successful campaign.

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U.S. President Donald Trump announced on April 4 that TikTok will get yet another reprieve in Washington. The news comes less than 24 hours before the deadline for the Chinese-owned social media app to find an American buyer or get banned in the United States.

“My Administration has been working very hard on a Deal to SAVE TIKTOK, and we have made tremendous progress,” Trump posted on Truth Social, adding that “more work” is needed to secure necessary approvals for the deal. “We do not want TikTok to ‘go dark.’”

Trump said his administration will continue to negotiate with the Chinese government, which has opposed a sale of TikTok by Chinese tech giant ByteDance. He also placed export restrictions on the video app’s recommendation algorithm. “We hope to continue working in Good Faith with China, who I understand are not very happy about our Reciprocal Tariffs,” he wrote, referencing his sweeping global trade duties announced earlier this week. “This proves that Tariffs are the most powerful Economic tool, and very important to our National Security!”

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As comedian Oliver Hardy might have said to U.S. President Donald Trump about his tariffs, “Here’s another nice mess you’ve gotten us into.” On the first full day of trading after his announcement, U.S. markets had their biggest rout since the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, as the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 1,679 points.

Now what?

If markets continue to tank and Trump’s poll numbers decline, it’s a good bet that he will look for a way to ease the pain. His comment that he “couldn’t care less” if auto prices rise because of tariffs? Don’t believe it. His responses to market pressure during his first-term trade war with China give some clues about the likely paths he would take if he decided to back down or if others challenged him—some more probable than others.

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Emma Ashford: Hey Matt, it’s never a dull time in U.S. foreign policy these days. President Donald Trump announced aggressive new tariffs this week on friends and foes alike, we’re sending forces to the Gulf to face off with Iran, and negotiations continue over the future of the war in Ukraine. And, of course, who can forget Signalgate, in which National Security Advisor Mike Waltz set up a group chat on Signal, accidentally added a journalist to it, and then proceeded to discuss airstrikes on Yemen with other senior Trump officials. It’s been quite a week.

Matt Kroenig: As usual, Emma, you’re being too restrained. Let’s start with the big news, which will also set us up for a good, substantive debate.

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As Washington’s top trading partners mull retaliatory measures against U.S. President Donald Trump’s expanding and increasingly aggressive trade war, American farmers are all but certain to be caught in the middle. 

On April 2, Trump unveiled the harshest U.S. tariffs in nearly a century on friends and foes alike. It was a stunning move that upended markets and sent shockwaves through the more than 180 countries and territories targeted. Starting on April 5, the White House will impose tariffs on much of the world, ranging from 10 percent to as much as 50 percent, with some of the steepest measures concentrated in Asia. China, for example, will now face an additional 34 percent tariff, effectively boosting the value of total average U.S. tariffs on the country to more than 70 percent. 

One of the big questions now looming is whether Washington’s top trading partners will target the U.S. agricultural sector when they strike back. Much of the concern revolves around Beijing, which is one of the world’s biggest importers of agricultural goods; in 2023, it was the top market for U.S. agricultural exports, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. 

“The real issue now will be how do countries like China respond, and some of the really big markets for agricultural commodities,” said Joseph Glauber, a former chief economist at the USDA who is now at the International Food Policy Research Institute.

China didn’t wait long to retaliate. Many of the U.S. agricultural sector’s worst fears were confirmed on April 4, when Beijing announced that it would match Trump’s policy with its own 34 percent tariffs on all imports from the United States—measures that will deal a crushing blow to American farmers.

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Many Latin American officials watched U.S. President Donald Trump’s tariff announcement on Wednesday with bewilderment. Trump plans to hit all countries with baseline 10 percent duties, but around 60 trade partners will face even higher rates. The Trump administration calculated the so-called reciprocal tariff rate based on the U.S. trade deficit with each country.

Countries that have tried to get close to Trump generally received no special treatment. Right-wing Argentine President Javier Milei has tilted his foreign policy toward the United States, even proposing a bilateral trade deal to Trump advisors. But Argentina was hit with the same tariff rate as Brazil, which has a left-leaning government and which Trump has criticized for protectionism.

The United States has a trade surplus with both Argentina and Brazil, so they each received the minimum 10 percent rate. Other large Latin American economies such as Chile, Colombia, and Peru also face 10 percent tariffs, lower than the new duties of upward of 20 percent and 30 percent that Washington slapped on major trading partners in Europe and Asia.

Read more in today’s Latin America Brief: What Trump’s Latest Tariffs Mean for Latin America

Trump said the United States has been “looted, pillaged, raped, and plundered” by “friend and foe alike” for “more than 50 years.” He declared, absurdly, that “none of our companies are allowed to go into other countries” even though U.S. goods and services exports exceeded $3 trillion in 2024 after steadily rising over the past two decades. Trump suggested, even more absurdly, that the Great Depression would never have happened had Washington not lifted its tariff policies more than 100 years ago.

And on Wednesday by reimposing stiff tariffs on just about every country, Trump declared that “jobs and factories will come roaring back” to foster a new “golden age,” and that “April 2, 2025, will forever be remembered as the day American industry was reborn.”

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For four generations now, the university has been central to the United States’ prosperity and power. Universities played a decisive role in helping the country win World War II—including the place where I teach, Columbia, which was integral in advancing the science involved in nuclear fission and the development of the atomic bomb.

Since then, universities have been the setting for the birth of the internet, as well as breakthroughs in pharmaceuticals, molecular biology, engineering, and computer science—to name a few of the sectors that have shaped what was once widely known as the American Century.

Universities have not just advanced the sciences. U.S. excellence in higher education has also been a prime magnet in attracting immigrants. Arguably more important than international students are the millions of parents who have come to the United States committed to hard work and sacrifice so that their children can climb the unique ladder of upward mobility that a U.S. degree has offered one generation after another.

Even that does not cover everything. As I suggested in a previous column, universities have been central to defining the United States in cultural terms: They have advanced notions of the rule of law, equality, and inclusiveness; worked as tireless engines of historical self-examination, holding a mirror up to society like no other U.S. institution; and fostered literature and cinema, among other arts.

Given these realities, the question of what U.S. President Donald Trump’s aims are in attacking the funding and independence of universities should be a matter of universal concern.

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It was just last week that U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth was touring the Indo-Pacific and pledging his support for U.S. allies in Asia. That was then. By Wednesday, the script had flipped, with President Donald Trump declaring economic war on some of those very same countries. 

“In many cases, the friend is worse than the foe in terms of trade,” Trump said as he unveiled sweeping “reciprocal” tariffs, which sent markets on a downward spiral. The announcement, dubbed “Liberation Day” by Trump, brings the United States back to tariff levels not seen since the early 1900s, with a baseline rate of 10 percent on all countries and rates reaching as high as 50 percent. Even though the move was telegraphed for months, the final tariffs were higher than anticipated, shocking investors and officials across the world.

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The sweeping tariffs announced by U.S. President Donald Trump on Wednesday have sent shockwaves through markets and capitals around the world—quite literally. The measures, which include a baseline of 10 percent tariffs on all imports into the United States, also extend to tiny, remote islands—from an overseas French territory near Canada to a group of uninhabited volcanic islands near Antarctica.

The Heard Island and McDonald Islands, an external territory of Australia, are home to mostly penguins, but they still face 10 percent U.S. tariff. Norfolk Island, another Australian territory with a population of roughly 2,100 people, is subject to a 29 percent tariff. “Nowhere on earth is safe,” Australian President Anthony Albanese said on Thursday.

Jan Mayen, a small Norwegian island in the Arctic, which is mostly inhabited by members of the Norwegian military and is not known to export any significant goods to the United States, is also subject to the 10 percent tariff.

Saint Pierre and Miquelon, an overseas French territory comprising eight islands off the coast of Newfoundland, was hit with a whopping 50 percent tariff. As of 2023, the territory’s total exports, mostly associated with the fishing industry, were valued at just $3.46 million.

The British Indian Ocean Territory, which includes Diego Garcia, the largest island in the Chagos archipelago and home to a joint U.S.-U.K. military base, was also on the list of countries and territories hit by the reciprocal tariffs. According to the CIA World Factbook, the United States imported 1 percent of Diego Garcia’s total exports in 2023.

Madagascar, the African island-nation known for its biodiversity and one of the poorest countries in the world, is also subject to 47 percent U.S. tariff.

U.S. and global markets of all stripes delivered their verdict on U.S. President Donald Trump’s sweeping new tariffs, and it is devastating: Investors hate the new barriers to trade almost as much as corporate supply chain managers do.

By nearly every metric—U.S. and global stock and bond markets, the value of the dollar, or the price of oil—investors seem to expect the impact of Trump’s new tariffs to be a drag on growth, a boost to inflation, and especially bad news on both fronts for the United States.

Trump’s decision to levy the biggest tariffs in more than a century on all U.S. trading partners has especially unsettled U.S. stock markets, formerly a bellwether for Trump. The blue-chip Dow Jones Industrial Average opened with a loss of 1,500 points, or 3.6 percent. The broader S&P 500 and the tech-focused Nasdaq indices also were darkly red, with early declines of about 4 percent and 5 percent, respectively.

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