Move over, Smoot and Hawley. President Trump has anointed himself America’s greatest protectionist, and he’s launching a global trade war to prove it.

On Wednesday, Trump slapped a minimum 10 percent tariff on all imports, plus additional “reciprocal” tariffs on 60 other countries that have the temerity to sell us things we want to buy. He dubbed it “Liberation Day” to mark the freeing of Americans from the supposedly oppressive burden of trading with others.

Steeped in nostalgia for America’s industrial heyday, Trump imagines he can unilaterally restructure the world’s economy. The president can sign all the executive orders he pleases, but he can’t throw history into reverse or repeal basic economics.

Keep reading in The Hill.

Centre-left governments around the world are facing challenging re-elections as populist right-wing candidates and political parties make ground with a discontented electorate. This article draws on research for a project I direct on centre-left renewal at the Progressive Policy Institute (PPI), offering some preliminary insights into the forces at play in the recent presidential election in the United States and learning points for the Labour government in the United Kingdom. The research finds that the Democrats lost the presidential election largely owing to the loss of working class voters amongst the ethnically White, Hispanic and Black American population, who turned away from a Democratic Party they felt was not offering the country the change of direction they were seeking. In particular, the failure of former President Biden’s extensive economic programme to win support amongst the voters it was aimed at holds important lessons for centre-left parties aiming to replicate similar approaches.

Read the full essay.

Last month’s federal election in Germany, which took place at a moment of significant global tension, has attracted international attention. What the new German government, under the leadership of Chancellor Frederich Merz, says and does now on Ukraine, and on the changing relationship between the United States and its oldest allies, will have immediate and long-term repercussions for the global geopolitical picture. Merz’s early comments that Europe will have to have “independence” from the U.S. as the Trump administration increasingly abandons its historic allies, and his willingness to loosen Germany’s “debt brake” to fund ramping up defense spending, have made headlines over the world.

The election was also significant because of the electoral swing from left to right, a result that has important insights for the global center-left, including U.S. Democrats, at this critical juncture as they continue to suffer declines with working-class voters.

Read more in The Liberal Patriot.

President Trump is off to a manic start, carpet bombing Washington with executive orders of dubious legality, firing hundreds of thousands of federal workers and souring relations with America’s neighbors and allies.

I get that Trump was elected to shake up a status quo that working-class voters believe stacks the odds against them. But Rep. Al Green (D-Texas) was right: Trump has no mandate to inflict ruinous trade wars on America’s friends, disable the federal government rather than reform it and throw Ukraine to the Russian wolves.

Green’s protest got him ejected from the president’s stemwinder in Congress Tuesday night, during which Trump served up his usual smorgasbord of self-congratulatory fantasies to rapt Republicans and dejected Democrats.

We shouldn’t forget that half the country didn’t vote for Trump and endorses neither his brazen power grabs nor his embrace of old ideas — high trade barriers and isolationism — that failed our country badly in the past. At 45 percent, Trump’s personal approval rating is the lowest for any newly elected president since he set the record low of 44 percent in 2017.

Republicans no doubt are thrilled their hero is “owning the libs.” But what matters now is whether Trump can deliver tangible benefits to the swing voters who put him narrowly over the top — independents, moderate Republicans and Democratic defectors, especially noncollege Blacks and Latinos.

Continue reading in The Hill.

For almost a half century, Republican presidents consistently attacked racial preference programs rhetorically but did little to roll them back. That was true of Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, George W. Bush, and even Donald Trump in his first term. Trump’s second term is different. The new administration has unleashed a flurry of executive orders and a “Dear Colleague Letter” upending racial preferences and associated trainings and bureaucracies that constitute modern diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs.

How should Democrats respond? Championing existing DEI programs, some of which are completely indefensible, is a political trap that must be avoided. At the same time, Donald Trump has overreached by attacking not only racial preferences (which are unpopular) but also race-neutral efforts, such as class-based affirmative action programs to promote racial diversity (which are broadly supported).

To thread the needle, Democrats would be smart to jettison unpopular and divisive DEI programs in favor of something better—a policy of “integration, equal opportunity, and belonging” that restores the original values of the civil rights movement including judging people based on merit, not race, emphasizing what we have common across racial divides, and championing free speech and dialogue rather than indoctrination.

Such a policy would embrace racial integration without racial preferences—which is precisely what the public wants.

Keep reading in The Liberal Patriot.

As President Trump and Congressional Republicans use their slim majorities to try to foist a radical regime change on America, Democrats need to reckon with why they’re watching helplessly from the sidelines.

Having lost control of both the White House and Congress, and with Republicans marching in lockstep, there is little they can do to stop Trump’s drive to monopolize political power and rule by diktat. Only the courts are putting speed bumps in his way.

Democrats, yoked to the status quo, are extraordinarily unpopular. Less than a third of Americans view the party favorably, while 57 percent disapprove. Independents are even more likely to express negative views. During the Biden years, Republicans also erased the Democrats’ longstanding advantage in party registration.

Progressive activists nonetheless are pressuring party leaders to make a show of resisting the Trump-Elon Musk blitzkrieg on the federal government. This is tricky: Democrats are duty-bound to speak out against Trump’s unconstitutional usurpation of legislative power. But they must also avoid falling into the trap of defending a federal bureaucracy most Americans believe is badly broken.

Keep reading in The Hill.

In just three weeks, President Trump has set an all-too-familiar tone for his White House sequel: chaotic, dishonest, bullying and contemptuous of the rule of law.

Only it’s worse this time because Trump erroneously believes his narrow victory last November — he won the popular vote by just 1.5 percent — has given him a mandate to rule the U.S. by decree.

He’s lashing out madly in every direction — threatening our neighbors with massive tariffs, bullying small countries like Denmark and Panama whose territory he covets, proposing to depopulate and take over Gaza and settling scores with the very government he heads, which he imagines to be his worst enemy.

Americans are witnessing a naked power grab that would shred the Constitution’s checks and balances, rob Congress of its most important powers, neuter the courts and create the imperial presidency that Richard Nixon dreamt of long ago.

Keep reading in The Hill.

One thing all Americans should be able to agree on is that our government (and how it operates) leaves a lot to be desired.

Unfortunately, Elon Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) seem ready to bring the same kind of arbitrary and ego-driven reforms that cut the value of Twitter (now X) by 80%, to the federal government. As its name implies, DOGE is supposed to focus on improving efficiency. But instead of presenting reforms to streamline government sensibly, Musk’s initial forays are mostly focused on political retribution and a desire to gut the federal workforce no matter the cost to efficiency, expertise, and security.

For too long both Republicans and Democrats have shied away from the hard choices needed to reform the federal government. If President Trump and Musk continue on their current path, another window of opportunity will have been tossed away. Fortunately, there is time to halt the madness, and instead adopt a reform agenda that draws on successful government reform initiatives—like the first Hoover Commission (1947 to 1949) and the Clinton-Gore reinventing government (REGO) policies—that offer a clear roadmap on how to save taxpayers dollars and enhance government performance.

Read more in Forbes.