A year has passed since President Donald Trump appeared in the White House Rose Garden to announce sweeping tariffs on US imports. “Liberation day” marked a dramatic turning point for the international economic system and its seemingly inexorable march towards lower trade barriers and global integration. The results have been remarkable.
The past year has also proved as disruptive to the discipline of economics and the overconfidence of its most prominent practitioners as it has been to supply chains. The folly of tariffs was among their most deeply held beliefs, hard-coded into their models, proudly professed in every interview. Tariffs, they insisted, would lead to sharply higher inflation and much slower growth, a likely recession and millions of jobs lost. They would prompt retaliation and lead to appreciation of the dollar, crippling exporters and leading to further deindustrialisation.
But none of this happened. The dollar weakened. Countries came to the table rather than retaliating and reached agreements favourable to the US. Inflation slowed, logging an increase in the price level of 2.4 per cent over the past 12 months, as compared to 2.8 per cent for the previous year. Real GDP growth accelerated, up an annualised 2.9 per cent over the last three quarters of 2025, as compared to 2.5 per cent in 2024.
Tellingly, the response from doomsayers has not been to admit error, but rather to argue that they would have expected strong economic performance given the president’s many revisions to the tariff policy. The retroactive tolerance for robust protectionism underscores the extent to which the old orthodoxy has collapsed and the window for new thinking opened.
The law, passed Monday by the Israeli parliament, tramples on the ideal that Israel long claimed to embody, of a nation committed to values forged by a history of persecution and mass crimes.
A single detail can sum up a shift. That was the case with the noose worn proudly, as an emblem, by some Israeli lawmakers on their clothing during the Knesset debate on the bill establishing the automatic application of the death penalty to Palestinians accused of murder committed in the context of “terrorist” actions. This bill was championed by the supremacist minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, who represents a political faction long banned in Israel due to its extremism. It was adopted on Monday, March 30, by a clear majority of 62 votes to 48. It received the support of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is the subject of an arrest warrant from the International Criminal Court for war crimes and crimes against humanity. An appeal has been filed before the Supreme Court.
The law states that any person causing the death of another “with the aim of harming an Israeli citizen or resident out of an intention to put an end to the existence of the State of Israel shall be sentenced to death or life imprisonment.” The death penalty will be the default penalty for Palestinians in the West Bank for acts deemed as terrorism by the military courts. The death penalty has existed in Israeli law since its founding, but has only been pronounced and carried out once, in 1962, against a Nazi war criminal for his central role in the Holocaust, Adolf Eichmann.
At a time when Israeli terrorism has spread in the occupied Palestinian territories – alarming even the army, which has regularly been complicit in increasingly uninhibited abuses and violence – the passage of this legislation represents a grave error and a betrayal. The discrimination it institutes isolates Israel from the countries with which it once identified. This law tramples the ideal Israel long claimed to represent: that of a nation mindful of values forged through a history of persecution and mass crimes.
A quarter-century ago, the rise of extrajudicial assassinations targeting Palestinians accused of violence fueled heated debates within Israeli society, both over the principle and the number of acceptable collateral victims resulting from these eliminations. The cycle of war triggered by the October 7, 2023, massacres carried out by Hamas, and the terrifying number of Palestinian civilians killed by strikes officially targeting armed militants, have shown that these debates are no longer taking place.
Israel is moving away from the state that long boasted of being the only democracy in the Middle East, forgetting that it has already subjected millions of Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank to the arbitrariness of occupation. The administrative detention of Palestinian men and women by the military authorities, without charge or trial, for an unknown and indefinitely renewable period, remains a prime example of this practice.
On the eve of the vote, Germany, France, Italy and the United Kingdom warned Israeli lawmakers against the “adoption of this bill,” which “would risk undermining Israel’s commitments with regards to democratic principles.” Their warning went unheeded and now leaves these countries facing a choice: to remain faithful to these principles, which obliges them to take action in response to this vote, or to accept their own powerlessness.
Editor: The reader has to explore the mind set of Bret Stephens! in his capacity as a fellow traveler of the Zionist Entity, so the circuitous route is an attempe to blind the reader to his actual alligence? Though that well worn path by now is very familier to his reader! These paragraphs denote that attempt. Though a wise elder is aware of his shtick! The first five quoted paragraphs gives the game away!
It’s understandable that America’s NATO allies — bullied, disparaged and threatened by President Trump — hardly want to lift a finger to help the United States and Israel in their war in Iran.
It’s understandable that congressional Democrats — barely briefed and entirely unconsulted — are skeptical of a war the president describes as a mere “excursion,” and seek a partisan windfall in a strategic failure.
It’s understandable that everyday Americans — having been told by Trump that Iran’s nuclear program had already been “obliterated” last June — wonder why they’re paying $4 a gallon to obliterate it once again.
Understandable but misguided. Even the most vociferous opponents of the war have a stake in a military result that leaves the regime in Tehran unable to terrorize its region, the world and, hopefully sooner than later, its own people.
Getting some of those opponents to see the point may be the intent behind Trump’s reported musing to his aides that he may be willing to end the war without using force to reopen the Strait of Hormuz. The president “decided that the U.S. should achieve its main goals of hobbling Iran’s navy and its missile stocks and wind down current hostilities while pressuring Tehran diplomatically to resume the free flow of trade,” The Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday. “If that fails, Washington would press allies in Europe and the Gulf to take the lead on reopening the strait.”
Editor: some selective quotations from this war mongeing advocacy are iluminating!
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Maybe Trump is bluffing, to get more international support to open the strait.
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Editor: The bellicose Stephens call out the Europeans as lacking both ‘will and nerve’ this is grade school invective!
The Europeans lack the means, the will and the nerve to challenge Iran if diplomacy failed — as it almost surely would. And the United States, despite being a net exporter of energy, would still feel the economic hit in a world in which the price of oil is essentially set globally.
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Editor: Stephens then becomes presecriptive is his shaming way:
A better strategy for the administration would be to board tankers carrying Iranian crude as they emerged from the strait and then deliver the seized oil to friendly ports, much as we did starting in December against Venezuela. The principle would be “all or nothing”: Either energy flows freely from the strait, unimpeded by Tehran, or it doesn’t flow at all.
…
But whatever the administration decides to do, what isn’t viable is for Americans and our allies to pretend that they can be indifferent to the outcome of the war. When someone like Boris Pistorius, the German defense minister, says, “This is not our war,” the appropriate response is: Are you serious?
…
“You may not be interested in war, but war is interested in you” is a line widely attributed to Leon Trotsky. If that’s the case — and history tells us it is — shouldn’t you be interested in winning it, too?
Editor: Stephens continues his prescritive path, yet his experience of actual political power, is any way shape or form is nil! In sum Stephens is a New York Times Zionist who in his final paragraph quotes Leon Trotsky to bait his readership!
Keir Starmer’s governing Labour Party suspended an ardent critic in a sign the UK prime minister is preparing to face down his internal rivals ahead of a possible leadership challenge.
Karl Turner, a 54 year-old Labour Member of Parliament who’s represented the Kingston upon Hull East district of northeastern England since 2010, was informed by government chief whip Jonathan Reynolds that he was having the Labour whip suspended on Tuesday, according to a person familiar with the matter. Turner himself posted on X that he hadn’t been informed.
The decision was taken in light of Turner’s recent conduct, the person said, without specifying any particular behavior. It would be reviewed at a later date, they said.
Turner has been one of Starmer’s most vocal Labour critics in recent weeks, campaigning in particular against a government plan to restrict jury trials. He told HuffPost UK this month that Starmer “undoubtedly” faced a leadership challenge if — as polls suggest — the party performs poorly in May’s local elections.
And just last week, Turner suggested Starmer’s former top aide, Morgan McSweeney, had faked the theft of his mobile phone in an attempt to avoid scrutiny over his conduct during a recent scandal over former UK ambassador to Washington Peter Mandelson’s links to disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein.
Removing the whip from Turner could suggest Starmer is preparing to take on his rivals by cracking down on internal critics. For months, speculation has swirled around Westminster that the premier could face an attempt to oust him after the local elections, when polls suggest the party will hemorrhage seats as well as losing control of the Welsh Parliament for the first time.
The move may, however, attract further criticism from sections of the Labour Party, which opposed previous suspensions of Labour MPs over the government’s plans on child benefits.
Editor: After his incarseration of dissenting British citizens, without the prospect bail or of a Jury Trial! What are Keir Starmer’spolitical chances?
The world risks plunging into recession as Donald Trump appears to have “lost control” of the Iran war, a City bank has warned.
Major economies face a “real risk of an inflationary recession” if the conflict in the Middle East drags on, according to Peel Hunt, which said it could not rule out higher rates.
Even a swift end to the conflict now would fail to end economic disruption for at least another two weeks, it warned.
The investment bank said a quick resolution to the war had become harder for the US president to achieve. This “increases the risk that the Strait of Hormuz remains blocked even once fighting ends”, it added.
Mr Trump was considering ending the war without a deal to reopen the waterway, according to the Wall Street Journal, despite its importance as a shipping route for a fifth of the world’s oil and gas exports.
On Tuesday, the US president told Britain and other countries to “go get your own oil” and to take the Strait of Hormuz for themselves to fix the energy crisis triggered by its closure.
Kallum Pickering, chief economist at Peel Hunt, said: “Donald Trump may have lost control of the situation, which makes a quick (unilateral) resolution harder and increases the risk that the Strait of Hormuz remains blocked even once fighting ends.”
He said the energy shock from the war “appears to be spreading from West to East – with shutdowns already in place in parts of Asia and Australia”.
“If Europe is next, this will amplify global recession fears,” he said.
Eurozone inflation jumped from 1.9pc to 2.5pc in March, its steepest rise since 2022, as energy prices surged by 4.9pc off the back of the Iran war, official figures released on Tuesday showed.
The consultancy Capital Economics the risks of a global recession would increase further in the event of attacks by Houthis on shipping in the Red Sea. The Iran backed group joined the war for the first time at the weekend as they fired rockets at Israel.
Mr Pickering warned: “If the war drags on, there is a real risk of an inflationary recession unfolding in major economies, with central banks struggling to ease policy until inflation risks fade. Rate hikes could not be ruled out.”
Sir Keir Starmer urged businesses to help the Government protect households from soaring prices on Monday. In a Downing Street meeting, he told bosses that “the Government can’t do it on its own”.
Editor: Blair is an itergral part of the Zionist Cadre! There is no doubt to his toxic loyalty to that entity! Reader pay careful attention to this companion article that posits an alterative view of the ambulance attack!
Reader also note that this article was first published by ‘The Free Press’ !
Headline: Iran ‘may have hired useful idiots’ for Jewish ambulance attack
Sub-headline: Police say the instigators could have mimicked a Russian model of attack which involves paying recruits with cryptocurrency
Three men were seen on CCTV walking towards an ambulance before it was set on fire
Police investigating the arson attack on Jewish ambulances in north London are examining whether it may have been directed by Iran using proxy operatives recruited online, sources said.
Investigators believe that those behind the attack may have followed a model used by Russia, recruiting so-called “useful idiots” through online criminal networks and paying them in cryptocurrency.
Iran has made use of proxies to launch attacks across Europe, including by Chechen and Turkish gangsters, and is also suspected of deploying Iranian expatriates to conduct surveillance on dissidents in the UK.
The claim of responsibility by a new Iran-supporting online group called Harakat Ashab al-Yamin al-Islamiya — the Islamic Movement of the People of the Right Hand — is also being taken seriously.
Detectives have not ruled out that the attack could have been conducted by far-right extremists or far-left anti-war activists, but sources say that the “leading hypothesis” is that it was directed by Iran.
One source said that investigators are focusing on tracking down the individuals who conducted the arson and added: “Until then, we will not know for sure what their motive was.”
It is understood the two British men, aged 45 and 47, who were arrested on Wednesday were not suspected of setting the fires. They were released on police bail on Thursday until April.
Four ambulances from Hatzola, a volunteer-led ambulance service operating in the Golders Green area of north London, were set on fire at about 1.35am on Monday.
Commander Helen Flanagan, the head of Counter Terrorism Policing London which is leading the investigation, said: “Although the two men have been released from police custody, there are strict bail conditions in place while we continue to investigate their suspected involvement in this incident.
“I can reassure the public that we will be closely monitoring these while we carry out further inquiries.
“We continue to work to try and identify all of those involved in this appalling attack and the investigation team is working around the clock to do this.
“I’d like to thank the public and particularly the local Jewish community in the area for their continued support and reiterate our appeal to anyone who might have information that could assist with the investigation to get in touch with us.”
An off-duty Metropolitan Police officer has been referred to the Department of Professional Standards after he was allegedly involved in an altercation with journalists reporting on the attack.
It was alleged that Special Constable David Soffer, 34, was filmed confronting an Al Jazeera camera crew on Monday. A crowd of locals and members of the Jewish community was near the police cordon when a team from the media group based in Qatar was surrounded. Residents told the film crew they were “terrorist sympathisers” and accused them of peddling “terrorist propaganda”.
Police officers advised a female reporter to leave for her own safety. A video of the incident shared on social media showed Soffer shouting at the camera crew to “go home” and calling a reporter a “donkey” and “dog” in English and Arabic.
The Metropolitan Police confirmed that an off-duty police officer was among the residents involved in the dispute and that it would be reviewing footage to determine whether “any offences were committed”. The force added: “Freedom of the press is important and journalists must be able to do their job without being subject to intimidation or harassment.”
Sub-headline: The Russian president has curtailed his schedule, and Moscow has virtually no cell service. The official explanation is about Ukrainian drones, but Putin is clearly spooked by the attacks on his old ally.
Trump’s war on Iran is having all kinds of unexpected ripple effects: In London, an Iran-linked group has taken responsibility for torching four Jewish charity ambulances, and two men were arrested for spying on the city’s Jewish community. The war has choked off the global supplies of helium, much of which is made in Qatar and is a critical component in manufacturing A.I. chips. Oil prices have gone haywire. (Okay, just kidding, all of that was totally predictable.) Meanwhile, in Russia, a different sort of political psychosis has taken hold.
Vladimir Putin is, according to the chatter, completely spooked by the U.S.-Israeli war against Russia’s old ally, particularly the reports that Israel targeted the ayatollah by hacking traffic cameras in Tehran. Earlier this month, the Russian president stopped going to the Kremlin and all his public events vanished from the calendar. Now, Moscow has virtually no cell service and it’s become impossible to message, call, or surf the web in large parts of the city. Even V.P.N.s have been affected: One friend told me he needed to try three different services to see the videos I was sending him.
The Kremlin has experimented with shutting off cell service in other, smaller cities, but to do this in the nation’s capital—a city of 13 million people, where so many of the country’s businesses are headquartered—is shocking. The official explanation is that Moscow is protecting itself from Ukrainian drones, but even pro-Kremlin propagandists are speculating that this has more to do with the war in Iran than the one in Ukraine. (One rumor, via the right-wing Tsargrad TV network, posits that the new ayatollah, Mojtaba Khamenei, is in Moscow for medical treatment after being wounded in an Israeli attack, though the Iranian government has denied this.)
Regardless, it’s clear that Putin—who has taken extreme measures to protect himself from everything from Covid infection to political assassination—is very concerned about his personal safety. The public and quite humiliating 2011 death of Muammar Qaddafi, another ally, made a huge impression on Putin, who is said to have repeatedly watched the footage of his final hours; in many ways, that event marked the beginning of his hard-right, revanchist turn. Now, Putin’s already sky-high paranoia appears to be kicking into still-higher gear.
Brussels Forum Session: Night Owl: The Future of Russia- Potential Scenarios and Their Implications for International Security
Julia Ioffe is a founding partner and Washington correspondent at Puck News. Previously, Ioffe was a US politics, national security, and foreign policy reporter for The Atlantic. Prior to 2017, she was a contributing writer at Politico magazine, where she covered the 2016 election, a contributor at Huffington Post’s Highline, and a columnist at Foreign Policy. She was a senior editor at The New Republic from 2012 to 2014, and a Moscow-based correspondent for Foreign Policy and the New Yorker. Ioffe has twice been a finalist for the Livingston Award : for a 2013 profile of Senator Rand Paul and a 2011 piece on Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny. In 2009, she received a Fulbright scholarship to live and work in Russia
The law, passed Monday by the Israeli parliament, tramples on the ideal that Israel long claimed to embody, of a nation committed to values forged by a history of persecution and mass crimes.
A single detail can sum up a shift. That was the case with the noose worn proudly, as an emblem, by some Israeli lawmakers on their clothing during the Knesset debate on the bill establishing the automatic application of the death penalty to Palestinians accused of murder committed in the context of “terrorist” actions. This bill was championed by the supremacist minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, who represents a political faction long banned in Israel due to its extremism. It was adopted on Monday, March 30, by a clear majority of 62 votes to 48. It received the support of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is the subject of an arrest warrant from the International Criminal Court for war crimes and crimes against humanity. An appeal has been filed before the Supreme Court.
The law states that any person causing the death of another “with the aim of harming an Israeli citizen or resident out of an intention to put an end to the existence of the State of Israel shall be sentenced to death or life imprisonment.” The death penalty will be the default penalty for Palestinians in the West Bank for acts deemed as terrorism by the military courts. The death penalty has existed in Israeli law since its founding, but has only been pronounced and carried out once, in 1962, against a Nazi war criminal for his central role in the Holocaust, Adolf Eichmann.
At a time when Israeli terrorism has spread in the occupied Palestinian territories – alarming even the army, which has regularly been complicit in increasingly uninhibited abuses and violence – the passage of this legislation represents a grave error and a betrayal. The discrimination it institutes isolates Israel from the countries with which it once identified. This law tramples the ideal Israel long claimed to represent: that of a nation mindful of values forged through a history of persecution and mass crimes.
A quarter-century ago, the rise of extrajudicial assassinations targeting Palestinians accused of violence fueled heated debates within Israeli society, both over the principle and the number of acceptable collateral victims resulting from these eliminations. The cycle of war triggered by the October 7, 2023, massacres carried out by Hamas, and the terrifying number of Palestinian civilians killed by strikes officially targeting armed militants, have shown that these debates are no longer taking place.
Israel is moving away from the state that long boasted of being the only democracy in the Middle East, forgetting that it has already subjected millions of Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank to the arbitrariness of occupation. The administrative detention of Palestinian men and women by the military authorities, without charge or trial, for an unknown and indefinitely renewable period, remains a prime example of this practice.
On the eve of the vote, Germany, France, Italy and the United Kingdom warned Israeli lawmakers against the “adoption of this bill,” which “would risk undermining Israel’s commitments with regards to democratic principles.” Their warning went unheeded and now leaves these countries facing a choice: to remain faithful to these principles, which obliges them to take action in response to this vote, or to accept their own powerlessness.
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