Portside

The tariff story so far is that Trump announced extreme policies, insisted that he would persist no matter what, then beat an ignominious retreat. In other words, Trump is a typical bully, full of swagger, who runs away in the face of adversity.

Trump posted a message to his followers just before pausing the bulk of his tariffs. He may have accidentally confessed to insider trading and market manipulation on Truth Social.

Reader Comments: Trump Tariffs Tanked Economy; How Dems Can Win by Organizing From the County Up; Library Assn Sues To Stop Trump Cuts; New Resource - Black Federal Workers by State; Webinar-Labor and the Crisis Of Democracy; Cartoons and more....

The president is compelled to delay his tariffs. The Republican Congress failed to do it, so the markets did.

Manufacturing jobs alone didn’t build postwar prosperity — organized labor did. And Trump is killing it...

Trump rewards the real offshorers with trillions in tax cuts.

That was the week that was

Permanent tariffs are bad for the economy, but businesses can, for the most part, find a way to live with them. What business can’t deal with is a regime under which trade policy reflects the whims of a mad king.

Small tariffs create small problems. Big tariffs create huge ones. This round of tariffs may be 50 times as painful as the ones Donald Trump instituted in his first term. That means they are going to reshape your life in much more fundamental ways.