Bloomberg Opinion

Trust in the dollar has been shaken in recent weeks. It’s not yet broken. In this febrile setting, firing Powell might finish the job — the mere threat of it was enough to force another leg down for the greenback in early Monday trading, says John Authers. Read his most recent installment of Points of Return: https://lnkd.in/eHEdjdbs

Pope Francis was the face of a gentler — if more financially competent — church. Howard Chua-Eoan ponders if a conclave will pick a different direction for the next pontiff. https://lnkd.in/ei8jNv8e

In coming to grips with the second term of President Donald Trump, many of us made the mistake of assuming — hoping? — that he was just “trash-talking” the world, like a boxer needling his opponents in the ring. That he didn’t really mean the outrageous things he said. Of course Trump would never annex Canada or Greenland — would he? Surely he wouldn’t blame Ukraine for being invaded and take Russia’s side at the United Nations — would he? And while he might brandish tariffs rhetorically, he wouldn’t declare economic war on the world — would he? More generally, once out of campaign mode, he won’t really abdicate America’s postwar role as leader and stabilizer of the international system. He’d never turn the US from a benevolent into a negligent, much less a malevolent, actor in the world. Or would he? Yes he would, and yes, as president he’s in full swing of doing all of these things and more. Barely 100 days into his second term, his MAGA fans can no longer gaslight his detractors into thinking that they’re taking Trump too literally or failing to savor the oratorical beauty of his “weaves.” Nor can his critics seek comfort in dismissing him as a trash-talker. Instead, concrete bureaucratic and administrative activity is accumulating and forming a pattern. And just as pessimists feared, the journey is heading toward isolationism, imperialism, caprice and entropy.... [Read the whole column. No paywall for a week with this link} Bloomberg Opinion https://bloom.bg/42OeMzw

Trump has Greenland exactly upside down. He has foreign policy exactly upside down. He has so much, from his own country to the world, upside down. Here's my column (no paywall for five days): https://bloom.bg/3GqntYU And here's a short teaser video. Bloomberg Opinion

President Trump’s tariff war is driving measures of policy uncertainty to records. That could come with a substantial cost, says Justin Fox. "By themselves, President Donald Trump’s tariff increases and the tariffs that other countries have imposed in retaliation don’t seem to be enough to drag the US economy into recession — a recent analysis by the Budget Lab at Yale put the economic cost for 2025 at 1.1% of US gross domestic product, which grew an inflation-adjusted 2.8% last year. But the continuing uncertainty about the timing and scale of the tariffs, along with questions about next year’s tax rates and the administration’s messy efforts to cut federal spending, are surely weighing on business investment and other economic indicators. Quantifying that weight is much harder than estimating the cost of a tariff, but measures of policy uncertainty offer a place to start." Read his piece for Bloomberg Opinion: https://lnkd.in/ePA-hec6

The Trump administration’s waves of massive cuts to funding at the National Institutes of Health are framed as a recasting of research priorities and a way to save taxpayer money. Another way to frame it is an exercise in massive waste. In terminating nearly 750 NIH grants over the past two months, the government dumped years of investment down the drain. The unceremonious end to those projects means we won’t know the answers to studies that intended to improve the health of Americans. Carolyn Silverman and I analyzed those grants and talked to scientists to understand what we're losing. Read more in my latest Bloomberg Opinion column (gift link!): https://lnkd.in/gGHnYyZa

The damage from Brexit remains unprecedented. Prime Minister Keir Starmer has more than enough moral and economic force at his disposal to declare that it’s best to rejoin the European Union, says Matt Winkler. Read why undoing Brexit begins with a break from tyranny: https://lnkd.in/e4fW5VhD

President Trump's Interior Secretary, Doug Burgum, has just ordered the 810MW Empire Wind 1 offshore wind project to down tools. It is a bombshell attack in a wider war. Burgum claims the Biden administration rushed approval for Empire, even though the initial leasing and operating plan were done during Trump's first term and the environmental impact statement process took more than two years to reach approval under Biden. Burgum has offered no details as yet. Given Trump's peculiar antipathy to wind-power, this looks like a negotiating tactic or part of a wider agenda. Trump is frustrated with New York's opposition to a new gas pipeline he wants in the northeast. Moreover, he has issued at least two executive orders seeking to impose his energy dominance agenda on blue states. The latest, on April 8, tasked the attorney general with attacking state climate laws - and suspending the license for a project already under construction looks like a symbolic adjunct to that. Having faced state-led resistance to his climate skepticism in his first term, Trump may be moving to suppress any such instincts this time around. Read about it here at Bloomberg Opinion https://lnkd.in/ezqGuDqi

John Authers brings out his charts to show you why the recession may have already started. Sign up for his free daily newsletter: https://lnkd.in/eGTAktu2

Britain and the EU have every incentive to strengthen their shared democracies with a shared economy. https://lnkd.in/eaz_Cetv