The Wall Street Journal’s conservative editorial board delivered a one-two punch over President Donald Trump’s “tariff blunder” – and the White House’s creative spin of the fallout – as Friday brought the second straight day of steep market losses.
The stinging criticism came hours after White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt continued to insist that “the economy is starting to roar” as she touted a better-than-expected March jobs report.
But Leavitt’s glowing outlook comes with a caveat, according to the Journal’s board, which made clear for readers in a Friday opinion piece: “Trump owns the economy now.”
“Ms. Leavitt needs to please her boss, but yikes. Someone should tell her the March jobs estimate was made before Mr. Trump’s tariff barrage,” the editorial board wrote.
“The real message from the jobs report is that the labor market and economy were in good shape in March,” it added. “That’s not necessarily good news for Mr. Trump if both now hit the skids after the President launched his trade war with the world. The President may try to blame Joe Biden or someone else, but the public knows it’s the Trump economy now.”
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The Journal’s board went on to tell readers that a Truth Social post in which Trump urged Fed Chairman Jerome Powell “to cut Interest Rates” suggests “he may be more worried than he admits about the impact of his tariffs on growth.”
“He purports not to care about the markets these days, but you can bet he’s paying attention to them. The two-day decline of 10.5% in the S&P 500 since his Wednesday afternoon announcement isn’t a vote of confidence in Mr. Trump’s tariffs or policy judgment," the board wrote Friday.
The situation unleashed by Trump’s “liberation day” tariff announcement this week left the board struggling to make sense of the president’s economic policy.
“What did he expect?” the editors who comprise the outlet's conservative board asked of China slapping its own retaliatory tariff of 34% on U.S. exports.
“Trade wars are easy to start, but they can be hard to stop once the retaliation gets rolling,” the board concluded. “Mr. Trump started this war, and he owns whatever happens next to prices, jobs and economic growth.”