President Donald Trump is finally being battered by the consequences of his own disastrous policy choices, the Wall Street Journal editorial board wrote in a scathing analysis published on Wednesday evening — and the bubble that is the MAGA media sphere is losing its grip over the situation.
One of the nation's most prominent conservative opinion pages, the Journal's editorial board has grown increasingly frustrated with Trump in recent months as he has pushed draconian new tariffs that seek to shatter the international order on trade and risk the collapse of the stock market.
In the best-case scenario, the board wrote, Trump ought to be able to snap out of his worst impulses, much like former French President François Mitterrand.
"Readers of a certain age will recall how the French Socialist President swept into power in 1981 promising a far left agenda of government control over the private economy. The market reaction was brutal. Within a year he had put socialism on pause and by 1983 he had abandoned most of it. He went on to serve two terms," the board wrote.
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Already, Trump is starting to blink a bit, the editorial said.
"First he carved out space for Mexico and Canada from his reciprocal tariffs. Then he put his reciprocal tariffs on everyone except China on a 90-day pause. Then the Customs bureau gave exceptions to Apple, Nvidia and big electronics companies. Now comes word that Mr. Trump may substantially cut his 145% tariff rate on China."
He is listening to the concerns of members of his party and the CEOs of large multinational corporations critical to the economy.
"There couldn’t have been a clearer market test in the last three weeks about the economic damage these columns warned about, wrote the board, adding that "The MAGA media echo chamber that praised Mr. Trump’s tariffs as strategic genius looks foolish."
What remains to be seen, the board concluded, is whether Trump can go all the way and fully correct course.
"If the President is looking for political advice, he could do worse than check out the polling cited nearby by Mark Penn and Andrew Stein. It shows that the public largely opposes his tariffs, whose damage poses the single biggest threat to his Presidency," they wrote. "Better to heed the polls and the verdict of Adam Smith, and take the Mitterrand path to political survival."
