The Wall Street Journal Twists the Knife After Trump Tariff Retreat: ‘The Biggest Threat to the World Economy’
(Photo by Rich Graessle/Icon Sportswire) (Icon Sportswire via AP Images)
The Wall Street Journal slammed President Donald Trump’s trade policy in a scathing editorial celebrating his partial retreat on Wednesday.
“President Trump says trade wars are easy to win. Investors think otherwise, and on Wednesday Mr. Trump decided maybe investors are right,” began the Journal under the headline: “Trump Blinks on Tariffs, Again, for Now.”
“Markets celebrated with a stock-market rally on hope that perhaps Mr. Trump isn’t entirely oblivious to the damage he’s causing. The rout in dollar assets reversed, at least somewhat, and the rise in the benchmark 10-year Treasury yield eased,” continued the editorial board. “It would be hard to find better evidence that markets believe the biggest threat to the world economy is Mr. Trump’s tariffs.”
The Journal continued:
Who knows what Mr. Trump really intends, and it isn’t clear he even knows. He’s still fixated on erasing the U.S. trade deficit with nearly every individual nation, which makes no sense given the differences in economies. His 90-day pause means the tariffs could come back with a vengeance if he doesn’t like the concessions countries offer.
For businesses, this means more uncertainty, which means continuing delays in capital investment crucial for growth. Consumers will still feel pain because companies price inventory on replacement cost, not average cost, so tariffs are already hitting prices.
“Never bet against America, it’s said, and normally global investors don’t want to. It’s a sign of the magnitude of Mr. Trump’s tariff mistake that he’s goading them into doing so,” it concluded. “He needs a policy reversal, not a pause.”
The influential, Murdoch-owned newspaper was not the only right-wing news source to react to the tariff pause in such a fashion. A wide variety of conservatives expressed their exasperation on Wednesday afternoon, and National Review also published an editorial on Wednesday in which it lambasted the president for continuing “to burn political capital on this tariff plan that his own administration can’t even get straight.”
