Wall Street Journal Board Urges Potential Trump Impeachment
Yikes…
In a column published late Friday, a member of the Wall Street Journal editorial board claimed it would be “desirable” to subject Donald Trump to a third impeachment.
According to longtime columnist Holman W. Jenkins Jr., Trump’s on-again, off-again tariff threats almost makes it appear he wants to be impeached, with Jenkins writing, “A future Trump impeachment seemed all but guaranteed by last Wednesday morning. It seems only slightly less likely now. It may even be desirable to restore America’s standing with creditors and trade partners.”
Read more from the report:
As he sees it, the president’s last great achievement was being re-elected in 2024, and the damage he has been creating since then belies his promise of a “golden age,” so an impeachment is “already ion the cards.”
“No consensus or even significant coalition exists for trying to force into existence a new American ‘golden age’ with tariffs, which anyway is like asking a chicken to give birth to a lioness. He invented this mission out of his own confused intuition,” he accused.
Noting that conservative historian Niall Ferguson labeled Trump’s trade policy going “full retard,” he contributed, “I go with ‘neurotic’ for the word’s wider applicability to any leader who, lacking a clear bead on his times, fabricates a gratuitously ambitious mission to meet his misguided sense of importance.”
“Nobody in Mr. Trump’s orbit actually shares his belief in the magical efficacy of tariffs because it makes sense only in a world that doesn’t exist, where other countries don’t retaliate,” he pointed out before concluding, “The founders never anticipated today’s instantly responsive trillion-dollar financial markets. And yet these markets neatly adumbrate the founders’ scheme of checks and balances, also known as feedback. Mr. Trump, still sane enough to appreciate what’s good for Mr. Trump, listened this week to their feedback.”
President Donald Trump vowed on Sunday that nobody was getting “off the hook” for unfair trade balances and tariff barriers, which other countries have used against the U.S.
The Trump administration announced Friday that it was exempting imported smartphones, laptops and other electronics from reciprocal tariffs, but the president wanted to clear a few things up.
“There was no Tariff ‘exception’ announced on Friday,” Trump said in a post on X on Sunday. “These products are subject to the existing 20% Fentanyl Tariffs, and they are just moving to a different Tariff ‘bucket.’ The Fake News knows this, but refuses to report it. We are taking a look at Semiconductors and the WHOLE ELECTRONICS SUPPLY CHAIN in the upcoming National Security Tariff Investigations.
Customs and Border Protection issued new guidance on reciprocal tariff negotiations late Friday, noting the exemption of those goods from Trump’s April 2 executive order that declared a national emergency due to non-reciprocal trade practices and structural imbalances in the global trading system. Subsequent executive orders ramped up tariffs on China to 125%.
The updated guidance, which cites a presidential memorandum issued Friday, excluded the products from Trump’s 125% China tariff and his baseline 10% global tariff on some countries. They apply to goods that left a warehouse as of April 5.
Products included in the exemption are things like hard drives, computer processors, solar cells, semiconductor manufacturing equipment, flat-panel TV displays and memory chips.
But in light of the easing of tariffs on electronics, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said Sunday the exemption would be temporary.
“They’re exempt from the reciprocal tariffs, but they’re included in the semiconductor tariffs, which are coming in probably a month or two,” Lutnick told ABC’s “This Week” on Sunday.
Lutnick’s comments Sunday made clear that more changes were on the horizon.
