A Wall Street Journal columnist sharply criticized Trump for his “ill-founded trade war.”
A Wall Street Journal columnist considered a future impeachment proceeding against Trump after the president’s chaotic tariff announcement caused markets to plummet last week.
Holman W. Jenkins Jr., a columnist and editorial board member at The Journal, stated in a scathing editorial on Friday that President Donald Trump seemed to be seeking impeachment with his “ill-founded trade war.”
“A future Trump impeachment seemed almost certain last Wednesday morning,” Jenkins said, alluding to the day Trump paused his devastating tariffs following a historic stock market crash. “It seems only slightly less likely now. It might even be desirable to restore America’s standing with creditors and trade partners.”
Jenkins blasted the tariffs—ranging from 17 percent to as high as 50 percent for about 60 countries—calling them the product of Trump’s “own confused intuition.”
“Mr. Trump’s politics aren’t poll-based or policy-based. They aren’t strategic. They are ratings-based,” he wrote. “From the moment he appeared in 2015, he was a democratic accident waiting to happen for exactly this reason.”
Trump’s unveiling of his reciprocal tariffs on “Liberation Day” sent the stock market plummeting to its lowest level since March 2020, but the president downplayed the reaction, considering it a necessary step in treating “a patient”—in this case, the economy—that he deemed “very sick.”
“The founders never anticipated today’s instantly responsive trillion-dollar financial markets. And yet these markets neatly foreshadow the founders’ scheme of checks and balances, also known as feedback,” Jenkins analyzed.
“Mr. Trump, still lucid enough to appreciate what’s good for Mr. Trump, listened to their feedback this week. May he continue to do so,” he added.
The editorial board of The Journal, owned by conservative media mogul Rupert Murdoch, had previously described Trump’s “Liberation Day” as “Buy Another Yacht Day for the swamp.”
“Remaking the world economy has major consequences, and they may not all add up to what Mr. Trump advertises as a new ‘golden age,'” the editorial board concluded.