The Wall Street Journal’s conservative editorial board bashed President Donald Trump’s opening months in office in a bruising editorial for what it called reckless policies and self-inflicted wounds threatening his presidency.
On the eve of Trump’s 100th day in office, the Journal’s group of editors told readers in a sharply worded editorial on Monday that Trump’s second term is already in trouble thanks to a series of self-inflicted economic and foreign policy missteps.
“Presidential second terms are rarely successful, and on the evidence of his first 100 days Donald Trump’s won’t be different,” the Journal’s board wrote. “The President needs a major reset if he wants to rescue his final years from the economic and foreign-policy shocks he has unleashed.”
While the conservative board did shower some praise on Trump, who they said was undoubtedly showed “energy" and "ambition,” it found plenty to criticize the MAGA leader for, including his “needless excess,” which it warned could undermine even his popular initiatives.
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“Harvard and other universities need to change, but trying to dictate their curriculum and faculty choices is an intrusion on free speech and risks defeat in court. His deportation of criminals is worthwhile, but denying due process and toying with the courts will sour the effort.”
But the Journal’s editorial board saved its most biting rebuke for Trump’s auto tariffs, which it bluntly warned “could sink his presidency.”
“Mr. Trump was elected to control inflation and raise real incomes, but tariffs do the opposite,” they wrote, adding that his tariffs are “the largest economic policy shock since Richard Nixon blew up Bretton Woods in 1971.”
The board also slammed Trump’s foreign policy moves as “a work in progress,” citing Iran, China and the Russian-Ukraine conflict. But it was the state of the economy in this country that they kept returning to on Monday.
“Voters re-elected Mr. Trump in part because they remembered fondly his first-term economy,” the board concluded. “This term he is indulging his trade and foreign-policy obsessions, and the early results are negative. He’ll fail unless he heeds the warnings.”
