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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: 15 minutes.

Tomorrow.

In tomorrow’s members-only Friday edition, Executive Editor Isaac Saul will be making the case for due process for anyone on American soil — and explaining how the recent deportation stories represent a genuine threat to American citizens.

Quick hits.

1. Israel’s Defense Minister Israel Katz announced that the country is expanding operations in Gaza as part of an offensive that aims to capture “extensive territory that will be added to the State of Israel’s security areas.” (The announcement) Separately, Russian President Vladimir Putin called up 160,000 men aged 18-30 to serve in the army, the country’s largest round of conscription since 2011. (The conscription)
2. A New York judge dismissed the corruption charges against Mayor Eric Adams (D) following the Justice Department’s move to end his case. However, the case was dismissed with prejudice, meaning it cannot be brought again at a later date. (The dismissal) Separately, Adams announced that he would not participate in the Democratic mayoral primary and seek reelection as an independent. (The announcement)
3. The Senate voted 52–45 to confirm Matthew Whitaker, who served as acting attorney general during President Trump’s first term, as U.S. ambassador to NATO. (The confirmation)
4. The Supreme Court heard arguments in a case brought by Planned Parenthood challenging a South Carolina law that blocks clinics that perform abortions from participating in Medicaid. (The case) Separately, the Supreme Court ruled unanimously that the Food and Drug Administration acted lawfully when it blocked two vaping companies from marketing fruity- and dessert-flavored liquids for their products. (The ruling)
5. Severe storms are impacting large parts of the central United States, with high winds, flash flooding, and tornadoes expected to continue through the week. (The storms)

Today's topic.

Tariffs. On Wednesday, President Donald Trump announced a 10% across-the-board tariff on all U.S. trading partners, as well as heightened rates on specific countries. The 10% baseline tariff is set to go into effect on April 5, while the individualized duties will begin on April 9. Additionally, a 25% levy on foreign-made automobiles went into effect at midnight on Thursday. In concert with the announcement, President Trump issued an executive order declaring a national emergency due to trading practices that posed “an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and economy of the United States.”

Refresher: Tariffs (or duties) are levies placed on foreign goods paid by domestic importers to Customs and Border Patrol at ports of entry. In February, President Trump announced 25% tariffs on Canadian and Mexican imports (and a lower 10% tax on Canadian energy imports) but delayed them for one month after the countries recommitted to existing promises to enhance security at their respective borders with the U.S. In March, the tariffs briefly went into effect but were paused again following discussions with Mexican and Canadian officials.

You can read our previous coverage of Trump’s tariffs .

President Trump called the announced tariffs “Liberation Day in America,” affirming his view that countries running a trade surplus with the U.S. were taking advantage of the country. During his remarks on Wednesday, Trump said, “Our country has been looted, pillaged, raped, plundered” by other nations. He added that the new tariffs, which he framed as “reciprocal,” would help revitalize U.S. manufacturing, cut taxes, and pay down the national debt.

Many countries — including the United Kingdom, Singapore, Argentina, United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia — will face only the baseline 10% duty. However, dozens of others — dubbed the “worst offenders” by the White House — will have higher rates. These higher rates include 20% tariffs on European Union (EU) imports, 34% on Chinese imports, 46% on Vietnamese imports, and 32% on Taiwanese imports. The White House said the individual rates were calculated based on the effective tariff rates imposed on the United States, including currency manipulation and trade barriers. In a statement on Wednesday, the United States Trade Representative shared that it calculated a country’s individualized rate by dividing its trade surplus with the U.S. by its total exports.

Canada and Mexico were not included in the list, but Trump said the countries will be subject to the previously announced 25% tariffs on imports. Other exceptions include energy imports and “other certain minerals that are not available in the United States.” Separately, Trump signed an executive order closing the “de minimis” provision for low-value imports from China, an enforcement exception that had previously allowed companies to avoid import taxes and customs inspections on any international shipment with a retail value of $800 or less.

Leaders across the EU criticized the tariffs and expressed concern about the ramifications of a trade war with the United States. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said Trump’s announcement was “a major blow” but that the EU was “prepared to respond.”

Today, we’ll explore arguments from the left and right on the latest round of tariffs. Then, my take.

What the left is saying.

• The left is staunchly opposed to Trump’s latest tariffs, calling them a recipe for economic disaster.
• Some say the principles undergirding Trump’s strategy are flawed.
• Others worry that the economy is headed for something worse than a recession.

In MSNBC, Heather Boushey argued “Trump’s ‘Liberation Day’ will only bring more chaos.”

“In his first term, President Trump claimed that he’d revitalize U.S. manufacturing, but he failed to do so; there’s no reason to believe that doubling down on the same, failed policies will do so now. There is a better way — and that comes with real federal investments into the American economy,” Boushey wrote. “President Trump is right to say that domestic manufacturing matters. Some goods are integral to national and economic security, so we all have an interest in ensuring reliable production within our borders or friendshored… Tariffs are one tool, but on their own they don’t deliver. After Trump put tariffs in place during his first term and gave tax cuts for the very wealthy, investment in the construction of new manufacturing facilities fell.”

Trump “thinks that capricious on-again/off-again tariffs will lead to investment and growth. But no one can plan sound investments amid this chaos. Further, he has no plan to improve domestic industry. The lack of even the concept of a plan is showing up in the data: already, there are indications that manufacturers have scaled back their intentions by $57 billion,” Boushey said. “And let’s be clear, all of this is a distraction from the fleecing of America by giving $4.6 trillion in tax cuts to the wealthiest and letting Elon Musk take a chainsaw to the U.S. government. These policies will not spur growth that benefits America’s working people.”

In The New Republic, Kate Aronoff said “Trump’s tariffs aren’t going to work how he thinks they will.”

“The theory goes like this: Tariffs will make Americans buy fewer imported goods. Domestic and foreign manufacturers will be incentivized to set up plants in the United States to avoid the tariffs, revitalizing the country’s manufacturing base and making its exports more competitive,” Aronoff wrote. “The evidence for all this is pretty thin, and it represents a strange brew of ideological tendencies. The Trump administration’s protectionist policies go against decades of ‘free trade’ orthodoxy about the promise of open borders and globalization, pushed for decades in the U.S. by neoliberal policymakers on either side of the aisle. Meanwhile, the administration’s vision for what happens after those tariffs go into effect… is pure neoliberal market utopia.”

“So far, this isn’t going very well. In March, the Institute for Supply Management’s ‘purchasing management index’—a monthly survey of corporate leaders indicating manufacturing performance—dropped 1.3 percentage points below February levels to 49 percent, indicating that manufacturing activity is contracting rather than growing,” Aronoff said. “The Trump administration isn’t poised to revive manufacturing so much as reward whatever companies and executives happen to cozy up to it and fund Republican campaigns. Life will get harder and more expensive in the process, with few upsides for the millions it’d like to kick off Medicaid and Social Security.”

In The Washington Post, Heather Long suggested “something worse could be coming for the economy than a recession.”

“President Donald Trump is pushing the economy to a breaking point with sweeping tariffs and rapid cuts to immigration and the federal workforce. There is growing fear of not just a recession but stagflation, a frightful situation — not seen in the United States since the 1970s — in which the economy contracts and people lose jobs but prices remain high,” Long wrote. “Normally, prices fall during recessions as demand dries up and retailers cut prices to try to lure people back. But Trump’s intention to put tariffs on almost all imports is spooking consumers and businesses. Americans now predict inflation will jump to 5 percent in a year.”

“Trump is adding to an already weakening situation with widespread tariffs that are expected to be among the biggest tax hike on Americans in years. The U.S. economy is propelled largely by the spending and splurges of the rich and upper middle class, and now even those consumers are showing signs of cracking,” Long said. “While this modest stagflation probably won’t be as severe as that seen in the 1970s, it would still be painful and difficult to stop. Trump is counting on an economic revival from tax cuts later this year, but Goldman Sachs says that is unlikely to be enough to offset the tariff blow.”

What the right is saying.

• The right spans a range of views on the tariff plan, though many say Trump is taking bold action to protect the country’s long-term economic health.
• Some criticize the move as a de facto tax hike on Americans.
• Others say the fear-mongering about the tariffs’ impact is overblown.

In Fox News, E.J. Antoni wrote “Trump's 'Liberation Day' will help create a new Golden Age for American workers.”

Trump’s reciprocal tariffs mark “the opening salvos in his fight to level the international playing field for American workers and businesses. It promises to be a tough battle, but Trump has indicated he’s willing to face short-term disruptions to restore American prosperity and create a new Golden Age,” Antoni said. “For decades, America lacked this kind of leadership. Presidents of both political parties were willing to participate in a kind of unilateral free trade. Foreign companies were given access to American consumer markets, but our exporters were denied that same access to foreign markets.”

“There are no winners in trade wars, but not everyone loses equally. While other nations have announced they will ratchet up their onerous trade barriers in retaliation of President Trump’s reciprocal tariffs, that will simply result in further reciprocal tariffs,” Antoni wrote. “Reciprocal tariffs are fundamentally not about protectionism but free trade. If other nations reduce or eliminate their tariffs and non-tariff barriers, we will too. Liberation Day means the beginning of getting America off the one-way street where other nations engage in protectionism at our expense.”

In The Dispatch, Jonah Goldberg asked “‘Liberation Day’ from what, exactly?”

“White House trade adviser Peter Navarro expects these tariffs to raise $600 billion annually. Nearly every serious economist across the ideological spectrum understands that American consumers would pay the bulk of that. Thus, if ‘successful,’ Trump would be imposing the largest, most regressive tax increase in history,” Goldberg said. “It would be regressive because the taxes would hit the poor and middle class much harder than the wealthy, because a larger share of their income goes toward basics like gas, food, and clothes.”

“Politically, the idea of deliberately making things—like, literally, all the things—more expensive, when you were elected in large part due to popular exhaustion with inflation, is so irrational it’s like the economic policy equivalent of a Dali painting,” Goldberg wrote. “Geopolitically, blowing up our alliances and the global economy in the name of ‘self-sufficiency’ is unfathomably idiotic. The more a country relies on tariffs to ‘protect’ its economy, the poorer it is. The more friendly trading partners a country has, the stronger it is.”

In The Daily Caller, David Blackmon said “Trump’s tariff strategy isn’t a big mystery.”

“What most tend to forget — or in many cases, simply ignore — about Donald Trump is that he is by his very nature a dealmaker. Using tools of leverage to negotiate deals is in his bones, and as President of the United States, he possesses more and stronger tools of leverage than any other human on the planet,” Blackmon wrote. “Trump’s political adversaries and U.S. trading partners ignore his basic negotiation strategy, which he has laid out in multiple books. That strategy involves staking out an unreasonable position that is far beyond the actual end result he wants to achieve to force his negotiating counterparty to move in his direction, and to modify his positioning until he reaches his desired outcome.”

“Trump and the U.S. holds almost all the real leverage in these international trading relationships, and, despite Liberal Party Prime Minister candidate Mark Carney’s strong rhetoric, Canada and its companies need access to the U.S. market far more than U.S. companies need access to the Canadian market,” Blackmon said. “The overall point is this: The world is not going to come to an end because of Trump’s tariff posturing. Supply chains aren’t going to shut down, energy costs aren’t going to suddenly go through the roof, the economy isn’t going to shed hundreds of thousands of jobs, and dogs and cats aren’t going to be living together.”

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.

• We’ve never seen anything like this in modern times, so I don’t know what happens next.
• I know that there are good reasons to criticize the existing global order, but I have a lot of questions about why Trump chose this approach.
• The biggest questions now are what the political and economic impacts are going to be.

Let me start with a bit of radical honesty: I have no idea what’s going to happen now. I’m not an economic journalist, an economist, a trade expert, nor a tariff expert, and our modern globalized world has never experienced any major power trying anything like this. So I just don’t know what is going to happen, and despite the confident predictions you may hear from some corners, I don’t think anyone does.

Most of the economists I trust and follow (regardless of their political orientation) are absolutely, 100% sure that President Trump is in the process of making a massive, term-defining mistake. They are predicting rampant inflation, a recession, and an era of economic disruption that is entirely of his making. They similarly predict that this tariff strategy will isolate us from our most important trading partners and push them into China’s sphere of influence, an outcome that would be antithetical to one of Trump’s core goals.

But I’ve heard some pretty compelling arguments in the opposite direction from some serious economists like Oren Cass or Stephen Miran. I recently listened to Bob Lighthizer, the former U.S. Trade Representative during Trump’s first term, get interviewed on Tucker Carlson’s podcast. Lighthizer made a number of strong points about the success of tariffs in Trump’s first term (despite mainstream skepticism) and the fact that Biden maintained many of those tariffs when he came into office. Perhaps most compellingly, Lighthizer starts by focusing on where decades of the trade practices Trump is targeting have gotten us.

He asks listeners to look at our hollowed-out working-class towns, at our shrinking middle class, at what life is like for the two thirds of our workers without college degrees, then ask themselves if our modern system of global trade is really working. I think starting from a position of challenging the status quo is essential and smart, and I’m open to the idea that our trade policies, founded on an obsession with growth and cheap goods, are hurting us.

If Trump’s goal is to reduce the barriers on American exports other countries have erected, he may well get a few wins. Israel, for instance, already agreed to lift all duties on U.S. imports in an effort to be exempted from new tariffs. Trump can already point to Apple, Johnson & Johnson, Eli Lilly, and Hyundai as major companies who have been talking about expanding their manufacturing operations in the United States. Yes, Trump’s belief that trade deficits represent us being taken advantage of is totally wrong, but it doesn’t make those potential gains any less real.

Another benchmark the administration could be hoping to achieve is to lower the yield on the 10-year Treasury note (T-note). That yield is the annualized return investors earn by holding a U.S. T-note with a 10-year maturity; if it is coming down, it is a sign investors are seeking safety from uncertain economic conditions. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent believes a lower yield will force the Federal Reserve to cut rates, which the administration wants. After the tariff announcements, the ten-year T-note yield fell — potentially the exact indicator Bessent was looking for.

Even if those goals amass into coherence, with no articulation of the administration’s long-term strategy on file, supporters are left offering haphazard, conflicting explanations. As The Atlantic’s Derek Thompson noted, some people in Trump’s orbit say the goal is to raise trillions in revenue and then ultimately get rid of income taxes. But other supporters have said the goal is to force other countries to remove their tariffs, creating an era of genuinely free trade. Some point to the administration's initial justification of national security, or increasing American manufacturing, or creating leverage over Mexico or Canada or Europe or China — or all of them all at once. For some people it’s all about fentanyl and the imports of Chinese goods. Again: With so many explanations, it’s impossible to nail down the intended objective or what success looks like.

I’m not trying to be critical for the sake of being critical; the entire situation genuinely raises a laundry list of questions about the administration’s plan. If the point is to force other countries into reciprocity and fair trade, then why did Trump move forward with a large tariff increase on Israel after it removed all its tariffs on us? If it’s to impose reciprocal tariffs, why is the Trump administration using a custom formula to levy these tariffs based on trade balances rather than tariff rates?

So, what is the endgame here? Many of these countries will have to rewrite their industrial policies before reworking their tariffs or trying to give the U.S. what it wants, which I think is a balanced trade deficit with individual countries but might just be equal tariff rates. How should small developing countries react? Some of the territories on the tariff list don’t even have inhabitants. It could take a country like Cambodia years to prepare before reducing its tariffs on the U.S. without cratering its own economy. Lesotho, an African country with a GDP smaller than that of most U.S. territories, just got hit with a 50% tariff rate because it’s a part of the South African Customs Union (SACU). How does Lesotho work its way out of these tariffs without South Africa? And why did South Africa get a lower tariff rate than Lesotho when both tax us equally?

Our treatment of Indonesia is another head scratcher. Indonesia has a high tax on coffee imports because it is a major exporter of coffee. Trump has slapped a 32% tax on coffee imports from Indonesia, even though the United States exports zero coffee to Indonesia. Where’s the reciprocity there?

We’ve levied massive tariffs on Cambodia and Vietnam now, too — potentially because a lot of countries have moved their operations out of China and into Cambodia or Vietnam to avoid the China-U.S. trade war that’s been ongoing for several years now. So what happens to those companies now? We import 98% of the clothing sold in the U.S. — primarily from Southeast Asia. Are we supposed to divert hundreds of thousands of Americans from higher-paying jobs to manufacture clothing, stand up those manufacturing plants, and start producing our own clothes? How does that help us?

How does this help us confront China? If they are a more open trading partner than we are, won’t we lose trading partners — and therefore political power — to them? What’s the plan there?

What is the explanation for the exceptions? Oil imports have been exempted from Trump’s tariffs, as have semiconductors (something we actually need to be re-shoring the production of). What are the administration’s explanations for making these exemptions if the impacts of the tariffs are supposed to be so uniformly strong? We don’t know, and they don’t say.

There are plenty of political questions, too. First, why didn’t Trump’s first-term dealmaking work out? Let’s not forget that we are mostly living in Trump’s trade world — the one he created in his first term by abandoning the Trans-Pacific Partnership, signing new trade deals, and levying new tariffs — most of which Biden did not change in any meaningful way. He called those deals the greatest in history; now he’s trumpeting broad tariffs by arguing they are all terrible deals.

Then there’s the question of how he’ll sell this to the country. The initial economic analysis on these tariffs is, well, not great. The Budget Lab predicts an average loss of $3,800 in purchasing power (in 2024 dollars) per household in 2025. JPMorgan’s chief economist said the impact of the tariffs could bring the economy “perilously close to slipping into a recession” this year. The S&P futures tanked, losing $1.3 trillion of market cap in four minutes. Trump is following through on his campaign promises with these tariffs, which provides some political cover. But he’s also been beating the drum of “short-term” pain for long-term gain.

How short? Six months? A year? His entire term? We don’t know and he doesn’t say — but his administration will be kneecapped in 2026 if the plan is to let Americans’ stock portfolios and retirement plans crater while he promises a golden age of manufacturing sometime in the undefined future.

Some people on the left, like Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT), have insisted that the tariffs are not an economic policy but a “tool to collapse our democracy.” Murphy claims what Trump really wants is a means to compel loyalty from every business leader and industry — to solicit donations, public support, and fealty in exchange for sanctions relief. I don’t doubt that Trump relishes the power or influence these tariffs may afford him, but I think Murphy is wrong.

For starters, I don’t think this plan is going to draw industry leaders to the president for favor. I think it is going to draw their ire, and probably cost Trump some support. More to the point, I think Trump’s fundamental belief that the United States is getting ripped off by globalism is much like his view on immigration: It is one of the few genuine ideological perspectives that he is rigid and consistent on. He’s had it since long before he was in office, and tariffs have always been a key part of the resolution in his mind. With only one term left, he seems to earnestly believe he can pursue them without facing real political consequences — and without inflicting too much economic damage on the American people.

It may well be six months or a year or several years until we get an answer, but we’re going to find out how true all of that really is.

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Under the radar.

The Trump administration has extended a second round of buyout offers to thousands of federal workers as part of its efforts to cull the federal workforce. The offer mirrors the terms of the first deal, sent in February, giving workers the choice to resign from their positions and be paid through September. Roughly 75,000 federal employees took the deal in its first round, and some are reportedly more receptive to the offer now. “It feels more structured and less chaotic than the first time,” one anonymous Agriculture Department employee said. “We’d work with our agency instead of responding to a mysterious OPM inbox, not knowing if the government would actually carry through on the agreement.” The Washington Post has the story.

Numbers.

• +34%. The additional tariff rate levied on imports from China in the Trump administration’s latest round of tariffs.
• 13.4%. Chinese imports as a share of total U.S. imports.
• +20%. The additional tariff rate levied on imports from the European Union.
• 18.5%. European Union imports as a share of total U.S. imports.
• $5.3 billion. The value of Chinese exports of low-value single packages exempt from import taxes in 2018, according to the Congressional Research Service.
• $66 billion. The value of Chinese exports of low-value single packages exempt from import taxes in 2023.
• 57% and 31%. The percentage of U.S. adults who agree and disagree, respectively, that President Trump’s moves to shake up the economy are too erratic, according to a March/April survey from Reuters/Ipsos.
• 25% and 90%. The percentage of Republicans and Democrats, respectively, who think President Trump’s moves to shake up the economy are too erratic.

The extras.

• One year ago today we wrote about RFK Jr. picking his running mate.
• The most clicked link in yesterday’s newsletter was Sen. Cory Booker’s (D-NJ) speech.
• Nothing to do with politics: To honor the passing of Val Kilmer, here are his best scenes as Doc Holiday in Tombstone.
• Yesterday’s survey: 2,601 readers responded to our survey on the special elections in Florida and Wisconsin with 59% calling the results mostly positive for Democrats. “I think the middle is generally unhappy with politicians and so gets pulled toward either single issue decisions or to vote to blunt the power of whichever party is ‘in charge.’ ‘Mandate’ powered legislating isn't seen as good,” one respondent said.

Have a nice day.

The home of Harriet Tubman’s father, Ben Ross, was discovered in Maryland in 2020. However, due to its location on a tidal wetland, rising sea levels threaten its preservation. State archaeologists took innovative action to ensure its accessibility, creating an interactive virtual museum with 3D models, photographs, and detailed information about the findings at the historical site. “The creation of the virtual museum is not just an effort to protect the artifacts, but also a way to ensure that the history of Ross, Tubman, and the region’s enslaved people is not lost,” Ella Jeffries wrote. Smithsonian Magazine has the story, and you can check out the free museum here.

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