The conservative editorial board of the Wall Street Journal took its criticism of Donald Trump to new heights on Thursday when it ripped apart several aspects of his sweeping set of new tariffs – and offered the president a reality check.
The scathing rebuke centered around Trump’s defense that his aggressive tariff strategy would come with only “a little disturbance.”
“The ‘disturbance’ might not be as little as he imagines,” the board warned Thursday in an opinion piece as it reminded readers that the stock market suffered its worst day in five years. “Mr. Trump's tariffs are the biggest policy shock to the world trading system since Richard Nixon blew up Bretton Woods in 1971. As with that decision, Mr. Trump is acting with little understanding about the damage his tariffs will cause.”
With the effective U.S. tariff rate now higher than after Smoot-Hawley, according to the Journal's board, “markets around the world spent Thursday absorbing the historic magnitude of Mr. Trump’s tax on commerce.”
And it was just getting started.
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The conservative board continued its takedown of the MAGA leader by slamming the White House’s “bizarre, slapdash” manner in which it calculated the tariff rates on individual countries.
“None of these trade provisions empowers Mr. Trump to impose tariffs on all imports from all countries based on an arbitrary formula,” the board wrote.
It also warned that Trump’s tariff policy is no more legal than former President Joe Biden’s student loan forgiveness package, which is still entangled in the courts after Republicans gleefully ripped it to shreds.
“There is also the not-so-small matter of the rule of law,” the board wrote Thursday. “Mr. Trump justifies his tariffs by declaring a national emergency under the 1977 International Emergency Economic Powers Act. No previous President has used that law to impose tariffs.”
The entire situation left the board to conclude: “Someone should sue to block his abuse of power.”