The global response to Trump's tariffs.

I’m Isaac Saul, and this is Tangle: an independent, nonpartisan, subscriber-supported politics newsletter that summarizes the best arguments from across the political spectrum on the news of the day — then “my take.”

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Today's read: 14 minutes.

Two big recent editions.

On Sunday, Isaac and Ari sat down with Kmele Foster, the host of The Fifth Column podcast, to talk about tariffs, DOGE, and the horrors of consuming war reporting. We made the typically members-only podcast free for everyone, and you can listen here.

In a members-only Friday edition, Isaac wrote about the importance of due process — even for people who may not be American citizens. The post has driven nearly 400 comments (many of them positive!) and a slew of reader emails. You can read his argument here, which includes a free preview for non-members.

Quick hits.

1. A federal judge ordered the Department of Homeland Security to return Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia to the United States after the Trump administration acknowledged that he had been mistakenly deported to El Salvador. (The order)
2. The Supreme Court ruled 5-4 that the Trump administration can proceed in its cancelation of roughly $65 million in federal teacher-training grants. (The ruling)
3. The Senate voted 51-48 to approve a budget blueprint, which will allow the chamber to pass the eventual budget with a simple majority vote through the budget reconciliation process. The measure now goes to the House, which is expected to consider it next week. (The vote)
4. President Donald Trump issued a 75-day extension to the deadline for the social media app TikTok to sell its U.S. operations or be banned. (The extension)
5. The U.S. economy added 228,000 jobs in March, exceeding economists’ expectations. Additionally, the unemployment rate rose to 4.2% from 4.1% in February. (The numbers)

Today's topic.

The response to Trump’s tariffs. President Donald Trump’s decision to implement a baseline 10% tariff on all U.S. trading partners and additional, individualized tariffs on dozens of countries has prompted a range of responses from Republicans, Democrats, heads of state, and business leaders across impacted industries. With the individualized duties set to take effect on April 9, some countries have promised retaliatory countermeasures, while others have reportedly begun attempting to negotiate with the Trump administration (the administration has said that it will not postpone the start date). Meanwhile, steep drops in major indexes following the tariff announcement have continued into Monday morning trading. 

We covered Wednesday’s tariffs announcement here. 

On Sunday, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick told CBS News that the administration was not open to negotiation with other countries about the duties. “The tariffs are coming. [President Trump] announced that, and he wasn't kidding,” Lutnick said. Meanwhile, President Trump posted on Truth Social that the immediate term “won’t be easy, but the end result will be historic,” framing the move as an “economic revolution” to revitalize American jobs and industries. 

Many Republican lawmakers remain aligned with the president. Rep. Byron Donalds (R-FL) said the tariffs, coupled with new tax policy and regulatory reductions, would be a “boon” to America, while Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) said his constituents were “absolutely thrilled” with the tariffs and saw them as a means to get “a fair deal for our products.” However, several Republicans have publicly questioned the tariffs strategy. Most notably, Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) co-introduced legislation with Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-WA) on Thursday that would mandate congressional approval for new tariffs and empower Congress to end any tariff at any time.  

Meanwhile, Democrats have been uniformly critical of the tariffs. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) called them “a tax hike on the American people,” and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) warned that the tariffs could usher in a recession. Additionally, on Wednesday, Senate Democrats (with support from four Republicans) passed a resolution sponsored by Sen. Tim Kaine (D-VA) to repeal the emergency declaration Trump used to place tariffs on Canada. However, the resolution is unlikely to be taken up by the Republican-controlled House. 

Foreign leaders have also criticized the tariffs, and the European Union is reportedly planning to approve a set of retaliatory tariffs on up to $28 billion of U.S. imports. On Friday, China announced it would levy a 34% tax on all U.S. imports — the same rate that Trump recently announced for Chinese imports. Additionally, Israel, Taiwan, Cambodia, and Vietnam pledged or enacted cuts to their tariff rates on the U.S. According to Commerce Secretary Lutnick, roughly 50 countries have reached out to the Trump administration to discuss the tariffs, though Lutnick maintained that the U.S. would not negotiate at this time. 

Major companies in industries like banking, air travel, aerospace and agriculture experienced significant losses on Thursday and Friday, while Apple, Microsoft, Nvidia, Alphabet, Amazon, Meta, and Tesla lost a combined $1.8 trillion in market value over the same span. On Thursday, U.S. markets had their largest one-day decline since 2020, with the S&P 500 falling 4.8%. The markets opened further down on Monday morning, with the S&P 500 showing 3.5% in losses, the Dow Jones down 3.2%, and the Nasdaq dropping another 3.7%.

Today, we’ll explore reactions to the latest on the tariffs from the right and left, followed by my take.

What the right is saying.

• The right remains mixed on the implications of the tariffs, though many argue the left and the media are misunderstanding Trump’s strategy.
• Some say Trump’s execution of the tariffs may undercut his end goal. 
• Others praise the policy but say the administration should communicate its rationale more effectively. 

In Fox News, Tanvi Ratna wrote about “what Trump is really up to with high-stakes tariff gambit.”

“When most people hear ‘tariffs,’ they think about price hikes and trade wars. But the Trump administration’s latest tariff rollout is not merely a knee-jerk protectionist move—it is part of a far broader strategy. What is actually in play here is a high-stakes effort to build up leverage and resources to manage America’s debt, reset its industrial base, and renegotiate its standing in the global order,” Ratna said. “In 2025, the U.S. government must refinance $9.2 trillion in maturing debt. Some $6.5 trillion of that comes due by June… According to Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, each basis-point (one one-hundredth of a percent) drop in interest rates saves the government roughly $1 billion per year.”

“By introducing sweeping tariffs, the administration is creating precisely the kind of economic uncertainty that drives investors toward safer assets such as long-term U.S. Treasuries. When markets are spooked, capital exits risk and equity assets (as we see with the stock market collapse) and piles into safe assets, primarily the 10-year U.S. treasury bond. That demand pushes yields lower… Some have called it a ‘detox’ for the overheated financial system. And it appears to be working,” Ratna wrote. “Tariffs serve as the ignition switch. By making imports more expensive, they create space for American producers to step back in. The objective is not to punish trade partners—it is to make domestic industry viable again.”

In The New York Post, Isaac Schorr suggested “Trump’s tariffs may not deliver the American ‘golden age’ he’s promised.”

“Even the most ardent free traders can see value in the U.S. responding in kind when governments implement protectionist policies that make it harder for American goods to be sold abroad. That Israel dropped its tariffs on US products in anticipation of ‘Liberation Day’ is evidence enough that there’s merit to these tit-for-tat strategies,” Schorr said. “Unfortunately, the program [Trump] unveiled in the Rose Garden this week failed to deliver such a thoughtful vision… As countless economists, business leaders, and other experts have observed, the rates at which Trump has proposed taxing imports are, in most cases, far higher than those at which most other countries are taxing American exports.”

“As with those meager NATO budget contributions, Trump believes America is being played and only he — and he alone — can redraw the rules of engagement. Liberation Day reflects the President’s penchant for full-scale assaults as opening salvos — yet with reasonable room for revisions later on (note his latest TikTok extension on Friday),” Schorr wrote. “Leverage is the real goal here, and to gain it, Trump must convince trading partners to actually accept what he has made so apparent: That he genuinely believes tariffs are an economic panacea — and will need significant concessions not to move forward with them.”

In Understanding America, Oren Cass explored the strategy behind the tariffs.

“Trump’s focus on trade deficits and the need for balanced trade indicate a focus on proportionality rather than outright reciprocity. Reciprocal tariffs designed simply to mirror foreign tariff rates would have had little relationship to the problem he was targeting, and countries could have evaded them simply by dropping their own formal tariffs to zero and relying on other forms of trade distortion,” Cass said. “ If what Trump cares about is trade imbalances, and he wants to use tariffs to force other countries to reduce those imbalances, what makes sense is to scale the tariff to the size of the imbalance. This is what he did.”

“If this is correct, the Trump administration needs to do a few things: 1. Communicate the goals and rationales much more clearly. The American people, markets, and allies all need to understand what is happening,” Cass wrote. “2. Legislate the permanent elements. The credibility, stability, and legality of the permanent tariffs would all be greatly improved if Congress codified them… Finally, Liberation Day needs to be the start of a much larger program of reindustrialization, not a one-and-done action that effectively leaves the troops stranded on a narrow beachhead.”

What the left is saying.

• The left continues to oppose the tariffs, and many say Congress should rein in President Trump. 
• Some say the administration is offering contradictory reasoning for the move.
• Others note the tariffs’ positive reception among the working class but suggest Trump’s strategy won’t improve their situation. 

The Boston Globe editorial board argued “Congress should rein in Trump’s tariff obsession.”

“Presidents can’t just impose taxes because they want to. They need to get permission from Congress… Tariffs on foreign goods, as every American with a 401(k) learned over the past 24 hours, are an unfortunate exception to that rule,” the board wrote. “That needs to change. Tariffs may sometimes be warranted. But given their enormous economic impact – markets plummeted Thursday, and manufacturers immediately began making layoffs – presidents shouldn’t have the power to just impose them on a whim.”

“There are sometimes justifications for tariffs — to protect an industry vital to national security, for instance, or in response to egregiously unfair trade practices by other countries. But in every case they represent a trade-off between the interests of domestic consumers and domestic manufacturers, and such balancing acts should be considered carefully,” the board said. “Given the impact tariffs can have on Americans’ 401(k)s, consumer prices, and job security — and the clear evidence that this president is using those tariffs heedlessly – Congress should have a say, just as it does in most other economic policies with this much economic importance.”

In The Atlantic, Jonathan Chait said “Trump has already botched his own bad tariff plan.”

“Donald Trump had a plan. It was not a good plan, or even a plausible one. But it was, at least, a coherent plan: By imposing large trade barriers on the entire world, he would create an incentive for American business to manufacture and grow all the goods the country previously imported,” Chait wrote. “The key to making it work was to convince businesses that the new arrangement is durable. Nobody is going to invest in building new factories in the United States to create goods that until last week could be imported more cheaply unless they’re certain that the tariffs making the domestic version more competitive will stay in place.”

“Trump’s aides grasped this dynamic… But not everybody got the idea… Asked by reporters whether he planned to negotiate the tariff rates, the president said, ‘The tariffs give us great power to negotiate. They always have,’” Chait said. “However, there is a principle at work here called ‘No backsies.’ Once you’ve said you might negotiate the tariffs, nobody is going to believe you when you change your mind and say you’ll never negotiate… To be sure, signaling openness to negotiation on tariffs is also a plan. But it’s a very different plan than attracting massive investment into domestic production.”

In Jacobin, Andrew Elrod wrote “tariffs aren’t enough to protect good auto jobs.”

“The president’s approach to the auto industry offers an opportunity to clarify the goals of US trade policy. To understand what is really in the interests of working people, we have to separate the president’s political whims from the changing contours of global capitalism,” Elrod said. “For politicians and auto executives, at stake is whether the US auto industry will be an appendage of a global market, or a North American continental market, or a national market… But for the 12 million workers in US manufacturing, the question is whether it is possible, under this administration and in this moment of twenty-first-century capitalism, to create a pro-worker, pro-union trade policy.”

“The Trump administration’s focus on tariffs obscures the nature of this problem. Despite the accumulated traumas of waves of partial restructuring, the US auto industry has spent most of the last sixteen years growing. When jobs last peaked, in spring 2023, there were more than one million workers producing motor vehicles and their parts inside the nation’s borders. Yet most of this growth is in nonunion jobs,” Elrod wrote. “Whether Trump’s tariffs game will lead to a further growth of jobs ultimately depends on the level of demand in the economy — on whether people are buying cars. But it’s not difficult to understand why his call for change has been received with enthusiasm among many autoworkers.”

My take.

Reminder: "My take" is a section where I give myself space to share my own personal opinion. If you have feedback, criticism or compliments, don't unsubscribe. Write in by replying to this email, or leave a comment.

• Trump is showing no signs of backing off from exactly what he said he’d do for almost two years.
• It’s very easy to project your own worldview onto Trump, but the president simply wants to reduce trade deficits.
• Trump’s reasoning is absurd and the initial market reaction has been scary, but there’s no real way of knowing what comes next.

One of the most remarkable things I’ve observed about President Trump is how so many people project their own values onto him, assuming he holds them, too.

Few things have illustrated this idea as much as Wednesday’s earth-moving tariff announcement. It has been fascinating to watch billionaire Wall Street guys like Bill Ackman suddenly realize that they do not view this issue the same way Trump does. 

“I don’t think this was foreseeable,” Ackman said on X last night in his most public break with the president to date. “I assumed economic rationality would be paramount. My bad.”

It’s worth recalling here that Trump spent an entire campaign season (about a year and a half) promising the biggest, broadest, most historic tariffs one could imagine. He spent his entire first term pushing for major tariffs on allies and adversaries alike. He spent his entire career as a real estate developer advocating for more tariffs. Kamala Harris, his opponent, warned Americans that Trump was going to institute major tariffs and cause a recession. Saying Trump’s tariffs were not “foreseeable” is completely detached from these realities.

Jason Calacanis, another wealthy technocrat who has recently become a political analyst, insisted that Trump would fold this week because he wouldn’t be able to stomach the stock market sell-off. Instead, Trump spent the weekend golfing, hosting a million-dollar-a-plate fundraising dinner, deploying his top trade advisor Peter Navarro to the Sunday shows to stress this strategy is not a negotiation tactic, and telling reporters himself that he won’t back down from the tariffs.

I understand why people project their own wants and worldviews onto Trump — I’m guilty of it, too. I agree with a good deal of Trump’s stated motivation (that other countries often “take advantage of” the United States on trade, and that our middle class has been decimated over the last 40 years), but Trump hasn’t been communicating a coherent end goal, making it easy to project a plan onto the president that looks or sounds like my beliefs.

Last week, I referenced economists Oren Cass, Stephen Miran, and Bob Lighthizer to explain the potential upside of Trump’s tariff approach. Each has spent years writing about the complex relationships between trade, government revenue, manufacturing, the offshoring of jobs, consumerism and interest rates, sharing theories about how broad tariffs could be part of a plan to better position ourselves in all of these areas. I read their writing and then articulated where I agreed and disagreed, tying it all back to “Trump’s plan.”

And then Trump was interviewed, and he explained a very simple and also absurd view: He believes “a deficit is a loss” and therefore wants to be “even” or have trade surpluses with every country. 

It’s worth pausing here to explain how nonsensical Trump’s actual position is. The United States is the richest nation on earth with the most prolific consumers in the world. In most cases, that makes us net buyers of other countries’ products, but in some cases countries want more of our own exports. For instance, we lump our trade policies towards Germany and the Netherlands into one broad policy on the European Union, but we have a trade deficit with Germany and a trade surplus with the Netherlands. Why? As a Council on Foreign Relations primer explains, we love German cars and machinery, and the Netherlands loves American medical equipment and pharmaceuticals. Dynamiting this free, beneficial exchange with Germany to make it look like the relationship we have with a different country — as Trump apparently wants to do — doesn't make any sense. 

Now — for the first time in Trump’s second term — I’m starting to see some genuine cracks in the president’s support. Republicans and Democrats in both chambers of Congress have proposed bills to take away Trump’s tariff powers. Hours after Trump said “we are not gonna lose a trillion dollars for the privilege of buying pencils from China,” Elon Musk shared a famous clip of Milton Friedman explaining how free trade allows pencils to be made in the first place, the first real break I’ve seen him make from the president. Prominent conservative writers like Richard Hanania are now saying they regret voting for Trump. Even Alex Berenson, the Covid-vaccine skeptic who skyrocketed to fame by criticizing Biden, has said Republicans would be right to impeach Biden if he had done what Trump is doing now.

Others, like Batya Ungar-Sargon, are doubling down. They suggest that the reaction to the tariffs is only a “rich person” problem, and that Trump is the first president to put American workers above Wall Street. I find this suggestion ridiculous. Even if most market wealth is held by the richest Americans, 62% of U.S. adults own stocks. Tens of millions of middle-class Americans have 401ks and stock portfolios that contain their life savings or that they rely on to make ends meet or retire — including members of my own family. 

More to the point: A cohesive industrial policy would be good for American workers, but a major stock market crash and recession would not. Obviously. Tens of millions of American workers are in the services industry that could be crushed by these tariffs. If you manage a business that involves importing parts for construction, you are also headed for very big trouble. There has to be an off-ramp or a fleshed-out plan for success — and there has to be a way to navigate the storm that’s coming. But I don’t get the sense we have that right now. 

As I’ve said already, it will be impossible to judge the outcome here in a matter of days or weeks; it will really take months and years. Criticizing the risks of this strategy is easy (and also my job), but it could still end up as The Greatest Economic Trick Of All Time. If you really want to be intellectually honest, you have to acknowledge the possibility (however slim) that Trump’s tariff gambit induces better trade deals, raises billions or trillions in tariff revenue, refinances our debt, and helps us confront China on trade.

Still, to help manage the immediate pain and uncertainty, the administration ought to set some parameters: What do success and failure look like? What deals are we hunting with adversaries in global trade? How much manufacturing investment do we want to bring home? How much tariff revenue do we want to raise? Despite the lack of answers to these questions, I hope this is all part of some larger plan to refinance the debt and invite better trade deals — but I also know that is me projecting my wants onto this administration again. Contrary to my hope, a good deal of reporting indicates that Trump’s economic team spent months working on individualized tariff plans for different countries before he instead opted for a simple, broad formula to apply to all of them. 

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has said over 50 countries have already approached him to make tariff deals. If true, this is good news, as successful negotiations could help us avoid a worst-case economic downturn. But simultaneously, the administration has insisted they aren’t going to negotiate, and Axios reported on internal frustration within the administration over the lack of structure to even conduct such negotiations. This constitutes a pattern: We’ve seen it with the Department of Government Efficiency, with deportations, and now with tariffs. Trump could be approaching popular ideas like efficiency reforms or reworking trade policies with fleshed-out plans, but instead all the signals out of the White House show them shooting from the hip and trying to figure the mess out as it happens.

I don’t know what will happen now. As I was writing today’s newsletter, the 10-year treasury yield started rising and bonds began collapsing — a complete reversal of what was happening last week (which was supposed to allow the Federal Reserve to lower interest rates). Then an X account claimed that Trump economic advisor Kevin Hassett said the president was considering a 90-day pause on tariffs, and the stock market rallied. Then it dropped again when nobody could figure out where that quote had come from. A lot of people still think Trump will blink as the market continues to collapse, but I’m not so sure — Trump seems confident and unperturbed, and we know he is surrounded by yes men. 

Republicans in Congress could stop this at any moment if they wanted — but that would require defying the president en masse. Meanwhile, Trump’s base and the “heterodox” thinkers who support him unflinchingly believe this is another moment where The Experts are hyperventilating and will be wrong again.

The annoying truth, though, is that the consensus is usually the consensus because it’s accurate. If The Experts are right here — which I have an increasingly hard time doubting — we are headed for an economic storm I’m not sure people have totally prepared for.  

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Your questions, answered.

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Under the radar.

Following last week’s layoffs at the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), in which approximately 10,000 jobs were cut, Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said that he planned to rehire 20% of the fired employees. “Personnel that should not have been cut were cut — we’re reinstating them, and that was always the plan,” Kennedy said on Thursday. However, an anonymous source familiar with the administration’s plans now says there is no plan to rehire any workers, adding to uncertainty about the agency’s future as its remaining employees navigate the transition. “It’s been very difficult for people to understand and emotionally process,” Erik Svendsen, the recently laid off head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Division of Environmental Health Science and Practice, said. Politico has the story.

Numbers.

• $2.9 trillion. The projected amount of revenue, without accounting for retaliatory tariffs, that President Trump’s tariffs will raise over the next decade, according to an analysis by the Tax Foundation. 
• –0.7%. The projected reduction in U.S. gross domestic product over the next decade as a result of the tariffs. 
• 2.5%. The average U.S. tariff rate on imports in 2024. 
• $330 billion. The value of U.S. exports affected by retaliatory tariffs issued or announced by China, Canada and the European Union, as of April 4. 
• 16.5%. The average U.S. tariff rate on imports after Trump’s tariffs take effect. 
• –8.4%. The decline in Europe’s Stoxx 600 index last week, its worst week in five years. 
• –7.8%. The decline in Japan's Nikkei 225 index on Monday. 
• 44% and 52%. The percentage of registered U.S. voters who approve and disapprove, respectively, of President Trump’s handling of the economy, according to a March/April Wall Street Journal poll.

The extras.

• One year ago today we had just released a Friday edition on the people behind the scenes at Tangle.
• The most clicked link in Thursday’s newsletter was Val Kilmer’s highlights as Doc Holiday in Tombstone.
• Nothing to do with politics: One of the biggest Wayne Gretzky records fell on Sunday: Alexander Ovechkin passed The Great One for most career goals in NHL history.
• Thursday’s survey: 5,203 readers answered our survey on President Trump’s tariffs with 86% opposing them. “I am concerned that it will hurt folks who are already struggling with the economy: seniors, economically challenged; others. All of these changes at once seem to have the economy reeling, so much uncertainty. Uncertainty is not good for families, seniors or businesses,” one respondent said.

Have a nice day.

Police work has been linked to high levels of stress, poor sleep, and mental illness. So when Officer Ashley Carson rescued a bunny while patrolling, the Yuba City Police Department decided to adopt him, bringing him onto the team as a wellness officer. Sporting his “Police K9” blue vest, Percy works tirelessly to reduce officer stress and promote a positive, healthy work environment for the officers. Nice News has the story (and pictures).

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