The conservative Wall Street Journal’s editorial board summed up President Donald Trump’s newly-imposed 25% tariffs on all goods from Mexico and Canada with a short but scathing headline.
“Trump Takes the Dumbest Tariff Plunge,” read the title of the newspaper’s withering opinion piece published Monday.
The board acknowledged it had “courted Mr. Trump’s ire by calling the Mexico and Canada levies the ‘dumbest’ in history.”
But it warned, “we may have understated the point.”
Trump “is whacking friends, not adversaries,” it cautioned, although it admitted that retaliation from Mexico and Canada that harms red states may force Trump to change tack “sooner than he imagines.”
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As the stock market plunged over the development, the Journal pointed out: “Unbridled Tariff Man was always going to be a big economic risk in a second term, and here we are.”
The newspaper has in recent weeks condemned Trump’s anti-Ukraine rhetoric amid its ongoing invasion by Russia, warned against the U.S. withdrawal from Europe and condemned the president’s moves to create a sovereign wealth fund.