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Step one: Start a pointless, globe-encompassing trade war, rationalized solely by your own boneheaded innumeracy. Step two: Tank the markets. Step three: Pare the war back to a hot conflict with one of the United States’ most important trading partners and a warm conflict with every other country on Earth. Step four: Watch the market rebound and declare victory.
This is an edition of The Atlantic Daily, a newsletter that guides you through the biggest stories of the day, helps you discover new ideas, and recommends the best in culture. Sign up for it here.
For the past few days, investors, foreign leaders, and members of Congress have gradually gotten more and more frantic about the Trump administration’s huge tariffs. The White House, meanwhile, projected equanimity. “They feel like everything is going according to plan,” an adviser told Politico.
Sign up for Trump’s Return, a newsletter featuring coverage of the second Trump presidency.
Only yesterday, President Donald Trump was mocking Republicans nervous about his global trade war as “Panicans.” In a defiant speech to the National Republican Congressional Committee, he insisted, “This time I’m doing what I want to do with respect to the tariffs,” and that only he had the courage to defy “the globalists.
The looming possibility of slashing Medicaid spending and not extending ACA subsidies has prompted a legislative scramble from Sacramento to Annapolis.
As federal agencies face crippling cuts and are forced to cut essential services, President Trump has announced he will seek a $1 trillion budget for the Pentagon, a record-setting number that would mark the highest level of U.S. defense spending since World War II.
An immigration judge has announced she could rule as early as Friday on whether the Trump administration can continue to detain Mahmoud Khalil, the former Columbia University student protest leader incarcerated at an immigrant detention center in Louisiana. Khalil, a legal permanent resident of the United States, was seized by federal agents on March 8 and told his green card had been revoked.
He’s turning basic groceries into luxury items.
David Enrich joins to discuss his book on the legal war being waged on journalism.
They expose the fissures in society, between those who have a well-built home, an insurance policy, or somewhere else to go—and those who do not.
RFK Jr. also said he’s assembling a task force to focus on the issue.
The statement is a surprising turn for the health secretary and comes amid reports of a second child’s death.
The health department has no plan to mass reinstate employees it cut earlier this week.
The Waves also discusses the Riverside Church controversy and the case of Sarah Milov.
What we say matters, especially depending on whom we say it to.
The Waves also discusses the case against Jeffrey Epstein and Taffy Brodesser-Akner’s Fleishman Is in Trouble.
Recent polls showed Americans were wary of tariffs, even before the president launched his plan to realign the global trade order.
The president’s sweeping tariff plan has thrown markets into chaos and risks sparking a global trade war.
He also said he isn’t worried about stock market turbulence, following the worst week in the market in two years.
The normally bullish Trump over the weekend declined to rule out the possibility of a full-blown recession as his tariff policies threaten to spark a massive global trade war.
Global stocks continue to fall, and fears of a recession are growing, after Donald Trump rejected calls to scale back his order to institute sweeping tariffs on most of the world. The move will be especially perilous for small, heavily indebted countries in the Global South who face punitive tariffs, including rates of 49% for Cambodia, 37% for Bangladesh and 48% for Laos.
This is an edition of The Atlantic Daily, a newsletter that guides you through the biggest stories of the day, helps you discover new ideas, and recommends the best in culture. Sign up for it here.
Inscribed above the front entrance of the U.S. Supreme Court is a simple, four-word inscription: Equal justice under law. The phrase doesn’t require a great deal of explanation, but it does require fortification.
Last November, Republican Representative Troy Nehls of Texas told reporters that “if Donald Trump says tariffs work, tariffs work. Period. Because Donald Trump is really never wrong.” This expression of faith in the great leader is a precept of MAGA-ism. The pigs in Animal Farm had a similar way of thinking: “Comrade Napoleon is always right.
After the Trump administration inadvertently texted its war plans to this magazine’s editor in chief last month, people all over the world—including spies, fighter pilots, and foreign leaders—had to wonder if their secrets were safe with the United States government.
But the humiliating gaffes of Signalgate are only one measure of the Donald Trump team’s recklessness.
The tariff apocalypse is upon us. Should you buy an iPad?
Some people, it seems, have answered with a resounding yes. Bloomberg reported yesterday that at some Apple stores, “the atmosphere was like the busy holiday season.” Fearing that the price of electronics will increase as a result of President Donald Trump’s tariffs, people are rushing to purchase stuff. If the economy must collapse, at least let it do so after you have obtained a new tablet for $599 plus tax.
The president is foreshadowing deals with multiple trading partners in an apparent effort to quell economic anxiety and prove his tariff plan is working.
