How the Supreme Court undermined one of Trump’s superpowers

Good morning and welcome to White House Watch. Let’s dive into:

• Trump loses his trade superpower

• Donald Trump says Iran ceasefire is on ‘life support’

• The Iran war is ripping across the US economy

The president, who calls himself “tariff man”, is looking for ways to recover from a wounding US Supreme Court ruling. But Congress is restive and voters are unhappy, my colleague Aime Williams writes today in a fresh Big Read on Trump’s beleaguered trade wars.

By ruling against his “liberation day” tariff announcements for overstepping his authority, the Supreme Court has undermined what in many ways was Trump’s superpower — his preferred means of pressuring other countries into bending to his will.

“The president has lost something important to him, which is the ability to threaten tariffs on a Friday and impose them on a Monday,” explained Michael Smart, managing director at Rock Creek Global Advisors, an advisory firm in Washington.

But it hasn’t stopped there. Another US court compounded Trump’s misery last week by slapping down the 10 per cent global tariffs he announced in February to replace the duties thrown out by the Supreme Court.

And in Congress, lawmakers from Trump’s own party are getting increasingly restless and anxious about an unpopular tariff regime, as midterm elections approach.

All of this leaves Trump with far less of the room for manoeuvre he seeks on the world stage, as he heads to China today.

The latest headlines

What we’re hearing

The US ceasefire with Iran — which both sides have repeatedly violated in clashes over ship traffic in the Strait of Hormuz — is now on “massive life support”, according to Trump.

The president is sounding increasingly negative about his efforts to end the war he started with Iran, and Trump could seek help from China, the top buyer of Iranian oil, when he meets Chinese President Xi Jinping in Beijing this week.

Not only is the ceasefire close to falling apart, but Iran’s latest counterproposal for a peace deal was so “unacceptable” and “stupid” that Trump “didn’t even finish reading it”, he told reporters in the Oval Office on Monday.

The war is, meanwhile, ripping across the US economy at a cost of hundreds of billions of dollars in lost output, hindered by soaring fuel prices, rising borrowing costs and supply-chain snags.

Economists predict the price tag to US taxpayers will far exceed the $25bn estimated by the Trump administration.

“It might not be felt immediately — you can patch something up for a while. But the scale of this financially is such that you can’t cover it up forever,” said Linda Bilmes, a Harvard professor and expert on the cost of US conflicts.

Viewpoints