The Free Press
It’s Thursday, April 10. This is The Front Page, your daily window into the world of The Free Press—and our take on the world at large.
Coming up: Will Trump strike a deal with Iran? Jay Solomon investigates. Naomi Schaefer Riley on the kids who really need the government’s protection. A Trump-voting soybean farmer desperate for the president to reconsider his tariffs on China. Niall Ferguson on whether the trade war could become a real war. Lloyd Blankfein on the market roller coaster. And much more.
But first, our lead story today:
This Isn’t Just a Trade War. It’s a Fight for the Twenty-First Century.
Donald Trump blinked. Yesterday the president pressed pause on his sweeping “retaliatory” tariffs on dozens of countries for 90 days.
The media “clearly missed” the “art of the deal,” said White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt of the move. A few hours later, Trump himself cut through the spin. “People were getting a little queasy,” Trump told reporters on Wednesday afternoon, referring to some ominous moves in the bond market on Tuesday evening.
The stock market rebounded on the news that the president was reversing a flagship economic policy, with the S&P 500 having its best day since 2008. The official White House account on X posted a photograph of Trump’s portrait, accompanied by the words “LET HIM COOK!”
Even with the pause, our new normal is still drastically different to the pre–Liberation Day picture: a universal 10 percent tariff is still in effect, plus—and here’s the most significant exception to the trade war ceasefire—China is facing even higher tariffs on its imports.
In the same post where Trump announced his dizzying reversal, he upped the ante on China, raising tariffs on all Chinese goods from 104 to 125 percent. “At some point, hopefully in the near future, China will realize that the days of ripping off the U.S.A., and other countries, is no longer sustainable or acceptable,” he said.
China, meanwhile, is not in the mood for negotiation. Earlier on Wednesday Beijing raised tariffs on U.S. goods to 84 percent, and has struck a defiant tone ever since Trump’s announcement last Wednesday. “China will fight to the end,” said China’s Commerce Ministry on Tuesday. (Read this unnerving report in The Wall Street Journal for a sense of what a fight might look like.)
The upshot? Ever since Trump’s first election, and particularly since the pandemic, there has been plenty of talk of the United States “decoupling” from China. But we could finally find out what that actually looks like.
Matt Pottinger and Liza Tobin were there at the start of this revolution, working on China policy in the White House during Trump’s first term. Today, writing for The Free Press, they explain why yesterday’s decision to single out China was a long time coming. One of them was there in the Oval Office five years ago when Trump said he wasn’t sure he could “do business” with China any more.
Now the president seems to have given up on any kind of grand bargain with Beijing—instead overseeing the divorce of the world’s two largest economies. But, as Matt and Liza explain, this fight is about so much more than trade. It is “nothing less than a contest for mastery of the twenty-first century.”
Read Matt Pottinger and Liza Tobin: “China and America Aren’t Just in a Trade War. It’s a Fight for the Twenty-First Century.”
Niall Ferguson: Could the Trade War Become a Real War?
For more on the big-picture consequences of Trump’s trade war, tune in to the latest episode of Honestly, featuring historian and Free Press columnist Niall Ferguson. Niall sees Trump’s tariffs not just as a salvo in a trade war, but as something much, much bigger. Liberation Day, he says, is nothing short of the unraveling of the American Empire—“a kind of wild decolonization project,” as he put it in a must-read essay earlier this week.
Where is this “wild” project headed? What happens when the world order, as we know it, begins to crumble? Who will win in a radically restructured global economy? And could a trade war become a real war?
Those are just some of the questions Niall tackles in this episode. If your head is spinning from a tumultuous seven days, you won’t want to miss it. To listen, hit play below, and be sure to follow Honestly on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. And click here for a transcript of the highlights of the conversation.
A Soybean Farmer (and Trump Voter) Appeals to the President
From the 30,000-foot view of U.S.-China relations to the view on the ground—and the perspective of Caleb Ragland, a soybean farmer from Magnolia, Kentucky. The steep tariffs imposed by China in the last week are a devastating blow to soybean farmers like Caleb—last year, 52 percent of U.S. soybean exports went to China.
Caleb comes from a line of farmers stretching back 200 years and serves as president of the American Soybean Association. He voted for Trump and is now urging the president to make a deal with China. “The current trade war with China is a gamble with American livelihoods, especially for farmers,” he writes.
Read his op-ed: “I’m a Soybean Farmer Who Voted for Trump. I’m Begging the President to End the Trade War.”
ICYMI: Wall Street Is Panicking. But Lloyd Blankfein Isn’t Sweating It. For more conversation on the economic turmoil, catch up on our latest livestream, in which Bari and Free Press publisher Dennis K. Berman spoke to former Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein.
The Art of the Iran Deal
From one major geopolitical contest to another: This weekend, U.S. Middle East special envoy Steve Witkoff will jet to Oman for “indirect” talks with Iranian foreign minister Abbas Araghchi over Tehran’s nuclear program. As Jay Solomon reports in The Free Press today, the push for a new Iran deal started with a letter from Donald Trump to Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
According to one Trump administration official briefed on the contents of the letter, the president offered Khamenei a two-month window in which to enter a serious negotiation—or the prospect of strikes on Iran’s nuclear sites. “By the end of May, we could either have serious talks with Iran or the possibility of military action,” said the official.
That’s just one detail from Jay’s look at the buildup to the Iran talks, and the vicious behind-the-scenes fight over the Trump administration’s Iran policy.
Read Jay Solomon’s story: “Will the U.S. Strike a Deal with Iran This Weekend?”
The Truth About Child Welfare in America
Last fall, we reported on the epidemic of overreaching government agencies falsely accusing good parents of neglecting their children. Brittany Patterson was arrested for child endangerment because her 10-year-old son, Soren, was spotted walking alone on a road a mile from their house. “Increasingly,” our piece noted, “parents all over the country are being punished for giving their kids a bit of leash.”
In response, we heard from Naomi Schaefer Riley, a writer and scholar who advocates for our society’s most vulnerable children. She has another story to tell, a story about the hundreds of thousands of children in this country whose parents put their lives in danger each year. Children like Gavin Peterson, 12; Jahmeik Modlin, 4; and Marcello Meadows, 10 months, who died because government agencies are discouraged from helping kids.
Read Naomi’s searing report.
The Trump administration froze more than $1 billion in funding for Cornell and $790 million for Northwestern this week as it investigated antisemitism on their respective campuses. But former U.S. special envoy to monitor and combat antisemitism Deborah Lipstadt recently said Trump has “weaponized” concerns of antisemitism to unfairly slash higher education funding. For more on Lipstadt’s battle to keep Jew-hate out of academia, read her piece, “Why I Won’t Teach at Columbia.”
The head of U.S. Space Command is urging the deployment of “weapons in space,” in an unprecedented call from the Pentagon for space-based defense technology. “We need them to deter a space conflict and to be successful if we end up in such a fight,” General Stephen Whiting said on Tuesday. One such weapon includes Trump’s prototype “Golden Dome” technology that would be able to neutralize ground missiles from outer space.
The Trump administration is threatening to axe hundreds of billions of dollars in contracts previously inked with 10 consulting firms, including Accenture and Deloitte, after they failed to find sufficient savings in a cost-cutting review. A General Services Administration official told the Financial Times that one firm initially found a measly $10 million in savings, while several others did not suggest any “immediate termination opportunities.”
Nearly three-quarters of Americans say they are bracing for price hikes on everyday purchases in light of Trump’s tariffs, according to a new Reuters/Ipsos poll. Meanwhile, 57 percent of poll respondents said they oppose the tariffs (including a quarter of Republicans), while 39 percent said they support them. Read River Page: “Working-Class Americans—Like My Family—Will Be Hit Hardest by Trump’s Tariffs.”
Over 5,000 illegal immigrants have elected to self-deport using the CBP One smartphone app over the last month, according to Department of Homeland Security data shared with Fox News. The rise in self-deportations comes in the wake of the Trump administration’s new messaging campaign intended to encourage illegal immigrants to leave the country willfully. The admin recently released a flyer: “Self-deportation is safe,” its message reads. “Leave on your own terms by picking your departure flight.”
A new Trump executive order is taking aim at disappointing showers. After years of complaining about how weak showers hamper the maintenance of his “gorgeous” and “perfect” hair, Trump has reversed conservation-minded water pressure restrictions set by the Obama and Biden administrations. “Americans pay for their own water and should be free to choose their showerheads without federal meddling,” a White House fact sheet said.
The US can no longer countenance China's malevolent agenda.
It is time to stand independently and re-industrialise.
Just one of the hundreds of examples is that China has weaponised NetZero. Our dopey politicians (and voters) have fallen for it because China was wise enough to offer politicians a conditional piece of the pie and concurrently weaponise social media to sell this "plausible fairytale".
Wake up world.
The Revolution started 50 years ago when then President Nixon courted China, expecting them to play by Western Rules. It is important to understand a culture, different from our own, well before entering into an agreement with them. China does not, and never has, played by our rules.
When the agreement came to manufacture in China, factories were closed in the South and Midwest. Millions of USA citizens were thrown out of work. In addition, Chinese students came to this country to steal our technologies and spy on us. You need to know whom you can trust.
Now the pendulum is swinging the other way. We need jobs back in the USA. We need the well made good quality products we have been known for in the past and will be known for again. We have done it before and can do it again. It is NOT economical to buy 3 cheap products for 3 times the price of one well made one. This happened to me and to many others.