NATIONAL REVIEW
MAR 14, 2025 |
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◼ Technically, they're "tariffs" only if they come from the Washington, D.C., region of America. Otherwise, they're just sparkling taxes.
◼ President Trump's scattershot tariff plans (some recent ones include doubling the rate on Canadian metal only to walk it back later the same day, and an all-caps announcement threatening a 200 percent levy on European alcohol) have, predictably, rattled global markets. U.S. stocks have been underperforming European stocks since Trump's election. Last summer, he was fond of saying that Biden was bad for the stock market. Really, the president has little to do with the stock market—unless he makes himself the center of attention by threatening to upend by the stroke of his pen every international business relationship in the world's largest economy. Rather than being the result of an underhanded scheme by "globalists," as Trump has suggested, the stock market's consistent wariness (not the intraday fluctuations) is an important signal, because it's a price signal. Real people are moving real money around. They stand to lose it if they're wrong. That means a lot more than any pundit's commentary. If markets expected Trump's tariff plans to have the long-term effects he claims, they would be rallying.
◼ The Trump administration spent the early part of the week patting itself on the back for strong-arming the Ukrainian government into agreeing to a proposal for a 30-day cease-fire. After all that effort, Vladimir Putin and his regime dismissed the proposal. "It would be nothing more than a temporary breather for the Ukrainian military," Putin's foreign-policy adviser, Yuri Ushakov, said. Along the way, the Trump administration has conceded to Russia that Ukraine will not enter NATO, that U.S. forces will not participate in any postwar peacekeeping force, and that the U.S. will stop seizing the assets of Russian oligarchs. The administration has refused to state that Russia started the war by invading Ukraine. Trump and his team temporarily halted aid and intelligence-sharing with Ukraine, and Trump has denounced Volodymyr Zelensky as a dictator while refusing to use that term to describe Putin. In return, Russia has conceded . . . nothing, even ruling out the acceptance of European forces as postwar peacekeepers. The Trump team's entire strategy has been to offer ever bigger carrots to Moscow and to threaten ever bigger sticks against the Ukrainians. Besides being morally inverted, this approach is going nowhere because of predictable Russian intransigence.
◼ Trump would like to talk to Russia and China about "denuclearization." Reducing the big three's nuclear stockpiles might make us safer. Eliminating them altogether, however, would be a serious mistake. The main reason that the U.S. and the Soviet Union never (formally) came to blows during the Cold War was that both knew a first strike would not be a knockout blow. Moreover, the way the two blocs worked meant that their lesser members (except the U.K., France, and China) did not go nuclear. America's allies felt no need, and it was never an option for the USSR's satrapies. Keeping nuclear weapons in very few hands helped stave off Armageddon. But now that Trump's behavior has raised grave doubts about that American umbrella, U.S. allies are looking for a plan B. Britain already offers NATO members a nuclear guarantee, and France may follow suit. That might satisfy some of our allies, but others, including those outside NATO, will start making separate arrangements. Ham-fisted "denuclearization" could cause nuclear proliferation.
◼ Immigration agents arrested Syrian-born Mahmoud Khalil, who claims Palestinian ancestry and has been a prominent figure in still-ongoing post–October 7 agitation at Columbia University, where Khalil earned a graduate degree in December. He is a green card holder and entered the U.S. on a student visa after attending the American University in Lebanon. While there, he reportedly worked at both the British embassy and for the United Nations Relief and Work Agency for Palestine Refugees, a notorious bastion of Hamas support (whose funding has been cut off by Trump). Khalil is married to an American citizen, which likely explains his upward adjustment of status to lawful permanent resident alien (LPR). He was living with his wife, who is pregnant, in Columbia-owned housing at the time of his arrest. Supporters frame his deportation case as a violation of First Amendment free speech and association rights. The campus agitation, however, included lawlessness, including occupation and vandalism of buildings and harassment of Jewish students. Khalil has been portrayed as one of the "mediators" in "negotiations" with Columbia's administration—a euphemism for functioning as a conduit of extortionate demands. He is challenging his deportation in court. The administration is relying on an immigration law that vests in the secretary of state authority to expel aliens—even LPRs—upon judging that their activities could adversely affect U.S. foreign policy. Legal judgment remains, but it is already easy to judge that Khalil has not comported himself as an aspiring U.S. citizen ought.
◼ Ronald Reagan remarked in 1964 that "a government bureau is the nearest thing to eternal life we'll ever see on this earth." President Trump is bent on disproving that, aiming to dismantle the federal Department of Education. So far, so good: We should never have established such a department (a 1979 creation of the Carter administration), and Republicans since Reagan's first term have been vowing to tear it up by the roots. It doesn't teach a single child, and it doesn't run any useful program that could not be absorbed by other departments. Eliminating a cabinet department would send a salutary message that it is, in fact, possible to disprove Reagan's adage. But the job is far from done. Trump is proposing to act by an executive order, the terms of which have yet to be released, but layoffs at the department already face a lawsuit by Democratic attorneys general in 20 states and the District of Columbia. Without the approval of Congress, he can trim the department's workforce, but he can't abolish the department or abandon its functions. While the legal status of executive impoundment has not fully been settled, it would also be difficult for him to refuse to spend its budget. In any event, Trump isn't actually proposing to eliminate the department's functions or stop the flow of education grants or student lending. Which raises the question of what, other than some staff reductions and a symbolic victory, Trump will accomplish even if he can run the gauntlet of the courts. |
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◼ "I hear America singing, the varied carols I hear." We go from Whitman to a news headline: "Republicans advised to avoid in-person town halls after confrontations over layoffs go viral." Here is another one: "House Republicans hit the brakes on town halls after blowback over Trump's cuts." There could be good reason to avoid town halls, or to exit them early (as some House members and senators have). As a rule, however, elected officials should face the music, and explain their positions as well as they can—whatever those positions are.
◼ After a federal judge blocked the Trump administration's effort to stop $2 billion in foreign-aid spending, Justice Amy Coney Barrett joined with Chief Justice John Roberts and all three Democratic-appointed justices to leave that order in place. The decision provoked a fiery and warranted dissent from Justice Samuel Alito, as well as some bitter complaints about Barrett from the right-leaning commentariat. It is understandable that conservatives might be nervous about the Supreme Court. For good reason, the names "Stevens," "Souter," "Kennedy," and "O'Connor" echo eerily in the originalist mind. But while she was wrong in this particular case, there is no evidence that Barrett is at risk of joining their ranks. She concurred in Dobbs, the case that overturned Roe; in Students for Fair Admissions, Inc., the case that barred affirmative action; and in Bruen, the case that expanded the protections of the Second Amendment. More important than those outcomes is how she did so. Unlike the judicial nomads of the past, Barrett has a transparent and well-considered approach to the law that explains her actions even when she disappoints. In the case that prompted the criticisms, she was likely motivated by her mistrust of the shadow docket and her dislike of big cases built atop disputed facts. To conclude from this that Barrett was "a mistake"—or, worse, "a DEI hire"—is absurd. Judges are not supposed to play for a team. |
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◼ Elon Musk is never doing only one thing. His involvement in running the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE)—while formally claiming not to be in charge of anything—has him in the fray on multiple fronts. A cabinet meeting, with Musk in attendance, was Donald Trump's effort at two contradictory goals. On the one hand, Trump reasserted his own control over both DOGE and the cabinet and offered his legal team some cover in arguing that Musk is just an adviser who need not be Senate-confirmed under the appointments clause. On the other hand, having Musk attend a cabinet meeting is not the best way to show that he's not a senior official, and Musk reportedly gave as good as he got in confronting Secretary of State Marco Rubio over not moving fast enough to fire people on his recommendation. Meanwhile, Musk ill-advisedly called Senator Mark Kelly a "traitor" for visiting Ukraine and supporting its war effort, a stupid potshot that elevated the bland Arizonan's profile with Democrats when he fought back. Lest we think such calumnies are one-sided, this followed the New York Times publishing a column on Musk, a naturalized citizen, entitled "Elon Musk Is South African. We Shouldn't Forget It." Tesla is caught in the cross fire as a cultural symbol: Kelly says he's selling his, Sean Hannity says he's buying one, Trump showcased the car on the South Lawn of the White House, the Democrats' official Twitter feed insulted the Cybertruck as an "ugly ass truck," and a series of incidents of protesters setting people's Teslas on fire led to Trump threatening terrorism charges. Musk's status as a lightning rod may draw ire away from Trump, but it may end poorly for some of his many ventures and causes.
◼ It was big news when Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said something positive about a vaccine. He has spent much of his career attacking vaccines, even relying on research that had already been exposed as fraudulent. "There's no vaccine that is, you know, safe and effective," he said as recently as 2023. So it was good to see him respond to an already deadly measles outbreak centered in Texas by writing (albeit with some hedging) that "vaccines not only protect individual children from measles, but also contribute to community immunity." He returned to his prior mode in a recent interview with Sean Hannity. There Kennedy waxed nostalgic about how, when he was a kid, everybody got measles, protecting the survivors for life against the disease—a form of immunization that he seems to find preferable to receiving a vaccine. Kennedy remains a dangerous man in a powerful job, and senators were foolish to vote for him based on assurances that he has recanted a lifetime of crankery.
◼ "It's difficult to shed any tears about the fall of an evil dictator. But our hopes for a new Syria will be tempered by trepidation," we wrote after the regime of Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad fell in December. The world had plenty of good reasons to be wary of the Islamist group—Hay'at Tahrir al-Sham, or HTS—that forced Assad's ouster and of the new acting president, Ahmed al-Sharaa, formerly known by his nom de guerre, Abu Mohammed al-Jolani. But for three months, al-Sharaa said the right things and the Syrians appeared to be getting some things right. Indeed, the U.S. government saw a handful of areas for potential cooperation with the nascent government—mostly intelligence-sharing to prevent ISIS attacks. Then the long-simmering sectarian tensions in Syria exploded last weekend. In the coastal region of Latakia, the Alawite sect's heartland, the security forces of the new government clashed with fighters loyal to Assad. The fighting spilled into Homs and Tartus, neighboring provinces, reportedly killing hundreds of civilians. When the streets are filled with blood and bodies, the United States and other Western governments won't be eager to lift sanctions and will eye al-Sharaa warily, even if the killings weren't authorized by the new government. The Syrian people deserve a chance to build a better future for their children. But horrors like those of this past weekend make it exceptionally hard to trust the new regime.
◼ Lincoln Díaz-Balart was a member of the U.S. House from 1993 to 2011. He was a Republican from Miami. He hadn't always been a Republican—or from Miami. He was a Democrat until the mid-1980s. He admired Ronald Reagan and he especially admired his ambassador to the United Nations, Jeane Kirkpatrick. Díaz-Balart saw the world as she did. She switched her registration from Democrat to Republican in 1985, and so did he. He was born in Havana in 1954 into a prominent political family. The family would become prominent in Miami, too. Lincoln's brother Mario was elected to the House in 2002 and still serves there. During his own tenure, Lincoln placed an emphasis on Cuban affairs. "How can you do otherwise," he once said, "if you know what's going on?" He did all he could to draw attention to Cuban political prisoners, and he implored the U.S. media not to ignore them. He is a hero to dissidents on the island. The dictatorship outlives him, for he has died at 70. But the dictatorship, too, will die someday, and Lincoln Díaz-Balart put his life to splendid use. R.I.P. |
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19 West 44th Street, Ste. 1701
New York, NY, 10036 |
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