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      The Theories Behind the Trump Shock

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      There are two related theories of what Donald Trump’s dramatic revision of the global trade system is intended to accomplish.First, the goal is to revitalize American manufacturing, our capacity to build at home and export to the world. The global free trade system that took shape in the late 20th century served the American empire and American G.D.P. but at the expense of America’s earlier role as a manufacturing powerhouse — and because manufacturing jobs were such an important source of blue-collar male employment, at the expense of the working-class social fabric.Meanwhile, over time, our manufacturing base didn’t just move overseas, it moved into the territory of our greatest rival, the People’s Republic of China. So rebuilding industry in America has two potential benefits even if it sacrifices some of the efficiencies offered by global trade. Factory jobs fill a particular socioeconomic niche that’s been filled instead by drugs, decline, despair. And having a real manufacturing base is essential if we’re going to be locked into great power competition for decades to come.Under this theory, though, it would seem like tariffs would be most effectively deployed against China, countries in China’s immediate economic orbit, and developing countries that are natural zones for outsourcing. But the Trump administration has deployed them generally, against peer economies and allies. The policy seems much more sweeping than the goal, the potential damage to both growth and basic international comity too large to justify the upside.Which is where the second argument comes in — that this policy is about fiscal deficits, not just trade deficits and manufacturing. The same global system that made America a net importer also enabled us to borrow immense sums, but we are reaching the point where that borrowing cannot be sustained, where interest rates on the debt will crush our policymaking capacities even if there isn’t an overall flight from the dollar.Here tariffs serve several purposes. Most straightforwardly they generate revenue without striking the kind of grand bargain on Medicare and taxes that the two parties are just too polarized to make. (The only way a Republican president can preside over tax increases is to implement them unilaterally while insisting that they will fall mostly on foreigners.)We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Trump’s Tariffs: How the Math Affects Over 100 Countries

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      <!–> [–><!–>President Trump's new tariffs on more than 100 countries used the same simple formula to calculate the rate for each of them.–><!–> –><!–> [–><!–>The formula’s central value is the trade deficit, the difference between imports and exports between each country and the United States, for the year 2024.–><!–> –> <!–> –><!–> [–><!–> –> <!–> […] More

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      Judge Permanently Bars N.I.H. From Limiting Medical Research Funding

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      A federal judge permanently barred the Trump administration on Friday from limiting funding from the National Institutes of Health that supports research at universities and academic medical centers, restoring billions of dollars in grant money but setting up an almost certain appeal.The ruling by Judge Angel Kelley, of the Federal District Court in Massachusetts, made an earlier temporary order by her permanent and was one of the first final decisions in the barrage of lawsuits against the Trump administration. But it came about in an unusual way: The government asked the court to enter that very verdict earlier on Friday so it could move ahead with an appeal.The decision nonetheless was an initial win for a diverse assortment of institutions that conduct medical research. After the Trump administration announced the policy change in February, scores of research hospitals and universities issued dire warnings that the proposal threatened to kneecap American scientific prowess and innovation, estimating that the change could force those institutions to collectively cover a nearly $4 billion shortfall.Under the Trump administration’s plan, the National Institutes of Health could cap the funding it provides to cover the “indirect costs” of research — for things like maintenance of buildings, utilities and support staff — at 15 percent in the grants it hands out. Historically, when the agency awarded grants, it could allocate close to 50 percent in some cases to cover the indirect costs associated with a given study.The Trump administration said it had conceived of the policy as a way of freeing up more federal dollars to pay for research directly — covering scientists’ salaries or buying necessary equipment — as opposed to the many tangential costs that hospitals and laboratories incur in maintaining their facilities and other overhead expenses.But critics described that reasoning as disingenuous, as the changes the administration had proposed would paradoxically force institutions to cover the bill, and most likely shed staff and scale down research projects in the process.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      New York Warns Trump It Will Not Comply With Public School D.E.I. Order

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      The New York State Education Department on Friday issued a defiant response to the Trump administration’s threats to pull federal funding from public schools over certain diversity, equity and inclusion programs, a remarkable departure from the conciliatory approach of other institutions in recent weeks.Daniel Morton-Bentley, the deputy commissioner for legal affairs at the state education agency in New York, wrote in a letter to federal education officials that “we understand that the current administration seeks to censor anything it deems ‘diversity, equity & inclusion.’”“But there are no federal or state laws prohibiting the principles of D.E.I.,” Mr. Morton-Bentley wrote, adding that the federal government has not defined what practices it believes violate civil rights protections.The stern letter was sent one day after the federal government issued a memo to education officials across the nation, asking them to confirm the elimination of all programs it argues unfairly promote diversity, equity and inclusion. Title I funding for schools with high percentages of low-income students was at risk pending compliance, federal officials said.New York’s stance differed from the muted and often deferential responses across academia and other major institutions to the Trump administration’s threats. Some universities have quietly scrubbed diversity websites and canceled events to comply with executive orders — and to avoid the ire of the White House.A divide emerged last spring as the presidents of several universities, including Harvard and Columbia, adopted cautious responses when confronted by House Republicans at congressional hearings regarding antisemitism. In contrast, K-12 leaders, including David C. Banks, chancellor of New York City’s public schools at the time, took a combative approach.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Trump Weighs In on Marine Le Pen Conviction

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      “FREE MARINE LE PEN!”With this blunt call, a strange one in that the French far-right leader is walking the streets of Paris, President Trump has waded into the politics of an ally, condemning her conviction this week on embezzlement charges and her disqualification from running for public office.The conviction was “another example of European Leftists using Lawfare to silence Free Speech,” Mr. Trump wrote on Truth Social. Elon Musk, his billionaire aide, drove home the point: “Free Le Pen!” Mr. Musk echoed on his social media platform X.More than an extraordinary American intervention in French politics, the statements ignored the overwhelming evidence arrayed against Ms. Le Pen, who was convicted of helping orchestrate over many years a system to divert European taxpayers’ money illicitly to offset the acute financial difficulties of her National Rally party in France.Instead, for the American president and his team, as well as an angry chorus of Le Pen supporters at home, her case has become part of a vigorous campaign to undermine the separation of powers and the rule of law, which have been portrayed by Vice President JD Vance as no more than a means to stifle the far right and to quash democracy in the name of saving it.Ms. Le Pen last year. She became the face of France’s far right after taking over the party from her father, Jean-Marie Le Pen.Mauricio Lima for The New York TimesMs. Le Pen will speak at a big National Rally demonstration Sunday in Paris under the banner “Let’s Save Democracy!” The National Rally was founded in 1972 as the National Front, an antisemitic party of fascist roots, by her father, Jean-Marie Le Pen. It was long seen as a direct threat to the democratic rule of the Fifth Republic, before Ms. Le Pen embarked on a makeover.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Meet the 23-Year-Old Student Who Raised $25 Million in Democratic Losses

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      A law student in Florida has a lucrative side gig: fund-raising consultant. His firm earns a 25 percent cut of “profit” from donations, and critics have begun to pile up after two special elections.After the Democratic candidates in Florida’s special elections burned through millions and millions of dollars on the way to double-digit losses this week, some Democrats are asking where that money deluge came from — and where it all went.The answer to both questions is, in part, a 23-year-old law student and dungeon master — in Dungeons & Dragons — with a lucrative side gig.In between classes and fantasy play, Jackson McMillan is also the chief executive of Key Lime Strategies, a small fund-raising firm in Florida that scored big when it landed as clients the two Democratic nominees in the Florida congressional elections, Josh Weil and Gay Valimont. Mr. McMillan said they had combined to raise $25 million.“We’ve built a juggernaut,” he said in an interview.Along the way, Mr. McMillan has piled up critics far beyond his years. Much of the focus is on his unusual fee structure, which one top party official excoriated in a cease-and-desist letter as “exorbitant.” His firm received a 25 percent cut of “true profits” — the proceeds after fund-raising expenses — for both special elections.Mr. McMillan is unapologetic.“A lot of the people who are critiquing me online are mad that it wasn’t them,” he said of raising so much money, which he said put a scare into Republicans and injected real money into long-neglected corners of a rightward-drifting state.One secret ingredient to his firm’s success, Mr. McMillan explained, is Dungeons & Dragons.“All the senior fund-raising strategists at my firm — myself, Ryan — we’re dungeon masters,” he said of his college friend and the firm’s chief operating officer, Ryan Eliason. “We run Dungeons & Dragons games. So we weave narratives and tales. It’s like our biggest hobby. We basically tell a really compelling story. And that’s what sets us apart from — that and a lot of technical analysis — is what sets us apart from some of our competitors.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Federal Worker Unions Sue to Block Trump From Stripping Bargaining Rights

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      A group of federal employee unions filed a lawsuit seeking to stop the Trump administration’s efforts to strip union representation from about one million federal workers, arguing that President Trump had exceeded his constitutional authority and violated the unions’ rights.The complaint, filed late Thursday night in federal court in Oakland, Calif., is the latest development in the unions’ escalating battle with the administration over its attempts to slash the federal work force and roll back the protections afforded to the civil service employees. Unions representing government workers have repeatedly sued over the efforts to cut jobs and dismantle offices and agencies, winning at least temporary reprieves in some of those cases.Last week, Mr. Trump signed an executive order designating employees of about two dozen agencies as central to “national security missions,” a move explicitly designed to exclude them from federal unions, which the administration said were “hostile” to his agenda.The executive order was accompanied by a lawsuit in federal court in Texas, filed by the administration, which seeks to allow agencies to cancel collective bargaining agreements, which would strip the employees of union protection and the unions of millions of dollars in dues.Officials at the American Federation of Government Employees, the largest federal union, which filed the countersuit on Friday, said the president’s move was among the most aggressive they had seen out of the White House so far, one that threatened collective bargaining rights across the work force. The A.F.G.E. alone represents 800,000 workers.The lawsuit called the order an act of retaliation against the union for pushing back against “both his agenda to decimate the federal work force and his broader agenda to fundamentally restructure the federal government through expansive and unprecedented exercises of executive authority.”Since January, unions have filed an array of lawsuits challenging an array of executive orders and actions, including the February firing of some 25,000 probational employees.The administration said the move to eliminate union representation was necessary to protect national security and advance Mr. Trump’s agenda. More

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      Trump Administration Sends Harvard a List of Demands to Protect Federal Funds

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      The Trump administration sent Harvard a list of demands on Thursday that would have to be met to end a government review of $9 billion the school receives in federal funding.The government announced the review earlier this week, which threatened to cancel all or some of the money as part of its campaign against what it views as unchecked antisemitism on campuses.The conditions largely follow the playbook the Trump administration used to force Columbia University to comply with its demands last month, after canceling $400 million of that school’s federal grants and contracts. In both instances, the government asked Harvard and Columbia to impose bans, with few exemptions, on masking.Pro-Palestinian students often used masks during protests against the war in Gaza to obscure their identities after many said they were harassed online when their personal information was revealed.The Trump administration also pressured the universities to intensify efforts to hold student groups “accountable,” cease admissions practices based on race, color or national origin and revamp policies on campus protests.Harvard would also be required to “commit to full cooperation” with the Department of Homeland Security, the agency that enforces immigration policies, including deportations.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More