liberation day

Remember “I alone can fix it”? Donald Trump, who made that laughable statement in his 2016 convention acceptance speech, is now testing the theory in Washington.

Trump and his party have been threatening a D.C. takeover for years and made it part of the Republican platform last year. But it was all just empty talk and random uppercase words until a former staffer at the Department of Government Efficiency was reportedly attacked in an attempted carjacking in the wee hours of Aug. 3 in a busy area of bars and restaurants.

It doesn’t matter at all to Trump that D.C.’s violent crime rate fell to a 30-year low last year and is down another 26% so far this year compared with 2024, or that a police report suggests police saw the incident and intervened. This particular victim — a teenage Elon Musk protégé and notorious DOGE operative — gave this particular president the “emergency” he needed to declare a “public safety emergency.”

Of course, he called it “a historic action to rescue our nation’s capital from crime, bloodshed, bedlam and squalor and worse.” He has federalized the city’s Metropolitan Police Department and deployed 800 members of its National Guard (to start). Over the weekend he sent 450 federal police officers from 18 agencies to patrol the city.

It’s the second time this year that Trump has played the National Guard card to show who’s boss. He sent 4,000 Guard troops and 700 Marines to Los Angeles in June, over the objections of Gov. Gavin Newsom and Mayor Karen Bass, ostensibly to restore order amid immigration raids. But the move sparked new tensions, protests and at least one surreal foray by armed, masked agents into a park where children were attending summer camp. It also drew a legal challenge from Newsom, which is unfolding in court this week.

There will be no similar lawsuit in D.C., where I’ve lived for decades. That’s because the U.S. president controls our National Guard. The hard truth is that though Wyoming and Vermont each have fewer people than D.C.’s 700,000-plus residents, D.C. is not a state. It’s still in a semi-colonial status, with a mayor and city council whose actions can be nullified by Congress, and with no voting representation in that Congress.

In fact, Congress accidentally slashed $1.1 billion from D.C.’s budget — our own money, not federal dollars! — in its cost-cutting frenzy last spring. A promised fix never came, forcing cuts that affect public safety and much else. And yet the city’s crime rate has continued to fall.

Compared with California, an economic juggernaut of more than 39 million people located thousands of miles from Washington, D.C. is a minuscule and all too convenient target for an executive aiming to prove his manhood, show off to autocrats in other countries or create headlines to distract from news he doesn’t like.

I could go off on Trump for his lies, overreach and disrespect for D.C. and its right to govern itself. Or the various Republicans who have imposed conservative policies on D.C. for years and now are trying to repeal its home rule law.

But what really enrages me is the lack of Democratic nerve — or even bravado — that has left D.C. so vulnerable to Trump and conservative-run Congresses. Where was the modern-day Lyndon Johnson (the “master of the Senate,” in Robert Caro’s phrase) in 2021, to whip support in the narrowly Democratic Senate after the House passed a D.C. statehood bill for the second year in a row?

Trump has no mastery beyond bullying and bribery — but those tactics are working fine with Congress, corporations, law firms, academia and sovereign nations across the globe. As former House Speaker Newt Gingrich put it last week: “You have this rock standing in the middle of history called Donald Trump. And he’s saying: ‘Do you want to do it my way, or do you want to be crushed? I prefer you do it my way, but if you have to be crushed, that’s OK.’ ”

Gingrich correctly characterized most responses to Trump as “You know, I’ve always wanted to be part of the team,” and added: “If he can sustain this, he’s moving into a league that, other than Washington and Lincoln, nobody has gotten to the level of energy, drive and effectiveness that we see with Trump.”

Unfortunately, Trump is aiming to speed-raze what Washington and Lincoln built. (He keeps claiming it’s “Liberation Day” for D.C., but the last “Liberation Day” — his April 2 tariff announcements — tanked the stock market.) The only conceivable antidote is to elect a mad-as-hell Democratic Congress in 2026 and, in 2028, an arm-twisting, strong-arming, terror-inspiring Democratic president who’s in a hurry to get things done. Someone who’s forceful, persuasive and resolved to use the power they have while they have it.

The top priorities, beyond reversing as much institutional and constitutional damage as possible, should be structural: Supreme Court term limits and ethics rules with teeth, a national gerrymandering ban, a sensible and uniform national voter ID policy, and minimum national standards for early voting and mail voting — to protect the will of the people and the republic itself.

Equally important, make D.C. the state of Douglass Commonwealth, named after the abolitionist Frederick Douglass rather than the colonizing Christopher Columbus. Rural America has wielded disproportionate power since the late 1800s, when Republicans added sparsely populated states and permanently skewed the Senate. Two new D.C. senators would help correct that imbalance.

The problem is that the next president, or even the next Congress, might arrive too late for D.C. Trump has already begun the federal takeover he has threatened so often for so many years. He took over the Kennedy Center. He took over Congress. We should have expected we’d be next.

Back in March, Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) proposed that D.C. seek temporary sanctuary with Maryland, which ceded most of the land to create the capital in the first place. “You’d definitely be safer,” he said he told Mayor Muriel Bowser.

That offer, joke or not, practical or not, is looking increasingly inviting by the day.

Jill Lawrence is a writer and author of “The Art of the Political Deal: How Congress Beat the Odds and Broke Through Gridlock.” @jilldlawrence.bsky.social

GENEVA — Switzerland’s president and other top officials were traveling to Washington on Tuesday in a hastily arranged trip aimed at striking a deal with the Trump administration over steep U.S. tariffs that have cast a pall over Swiss industries like chocolates, machinery and watchmaking.

President Karin Keller-Sutter was leading the delegation after last week’s announcement that exports of Swiss goods to the U.S. will face a whopping 39% percent tariff starting Thursday.

That is over two-and-a-half times higher than the rate on European Union goods exported to the U.S. and nearly four times higher than on British exports to the U.S. Many Swiss companies in industries including watchmaking and chocolates have expressed concern about the issue.

It’s also more than the 31% that Switzerland had been set to face when President Trump announced his “Liberation Day” tariffs on products from dozens of countries in early April.

The Swiss government said the trip was “to facilitate meetings with the U.S. authorities at short notice and hold talks with a view to improving the tariff situation for Switzerland.”

Keller-Sutter, who also serves as Switzerland’s finance minister, has faced criticism in Swiss media over a last-ditch call with Trump before a U.S. deadline on tariffs expired Aug. 1. She was leading a team that included Economy Minister Guy Parmelin.

In an interview with CNBC on Tuesday, Trump alluded to the call, saying “the woman was nice, but she didn’t want to listen” and that he had told her: “We have a $41 billion deficit with you, Madame … and you want to pay 1% tariffs.”

“I said, ‘you’re not going to pay 1%,’” he added.

It was not immediately clear where that $41 billion figure came from. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the United States ran a $38.3 billion trade imbalance on goods last year with Switzerland.

Swiss officials have argued that American goods face virtually zero tariffs in Switzerland, and the Swiss government says the wealthy Alpine country is the sixth-biggest foreign investor in the United States and the leading investor in research and development.

Ivan Slatkine, the head of the Federation of Romandie Enterprises, which regroups companies in French-speaking Switzerland, told Le Temps newspaper that 39% tariffs amounted to a “hammer blow for the entire Swiss economy.” Some Swiss companies — like high-end watchmakers with little direct competition — might face less impact, but others in airplane parts, machines and mid-level watchmaking would be hit, he said.

“For all the companies that depend on the American market, it’s really bad news — in particular compared to rivals in the European Union, whose exports are taxed only at 15%,” he was quoted Tuesday as saying.

The trip comes a day after Switzerland’s executive branch, the Federal Council, held an extraordinary meeting and said it was “keen to pursue talks with the United States on the tariff situation,” the government statement Tuesday said.

After consulting with Swiss businesses, the council said it had developed “new approaches for its discussions” with U.S. officials and was looking ahead to continued negotiations.

“Switzerland enters this new phase ready to present a more attractive offer, taking U.S. concerns into account and seeking to ease the current tariff situation,” a council statement said Monday.

Under the U.S. announcements Friday, Swiss companies will now have one of the steepest export duties — only Laos, Myanmar and Syria had higher figures, at 40-41%.

Keaten writes for the Associated Press.

WASHINGTON — President Trump’s decision to hike tariffs once again on some of America’s largest trading partners rattled markets on Monday, dashing hopes on Wall Street that the White House would cut any significant trade deals, as it had promised, by the middle of this week.

In a series of letters sent to foreign leaders, and promptly posted by the president to his social media platform, Trump said the new rates amount to the cost of doing business with “the extraordinary Economy of the United States, The Number One Market in the World, by far.” Under the new policy, Japan, South Korea, Malaysia and Kazakhstan will face 25% import duties starting Aug. 1, while goods from Laos and Myanmar will face a 40% tariff, according to the letters.

South Africa’s president also received a letter, stating goods from the country imported to the United States would face duties of 30%.

Markets recoiled at the news, with the Dow Jones industrial average dropping 1.4%, the Nasdaq falling 1.2% and the Standard & Poor’s 500 sinking 1.2%.

The move essentially returns U.S. tariff rates on those countries to those Trump first announced on April 2, on what he called Liberation Day, but that he ultimately abandoned over widespread Wall Street panic that began spooking the bond market.

Trump hit pause on the crisis by announcing a 90-day suspension of the higher tariff rates, a period set to expire Wednesday. But the White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, said Monday that Trump would extend the deadline to the end of the month.

Several senior officials in the Trump administration had promised a slew of trade deals would follow the April episode — “we’re going to run 90 deals in 90 days,” said Peter Navarro, the president’s top trade advisor. Yet the administration has failed to secure a single detailed trade deal, instead announcing three frameworks of understanding with the United Kingdom, China and Vietnam.

“The president is taking a very deliberate approach to correcting this wrong of many decades, of many past presidents — I think he should be commended for the time and the effort that he’s putting into this,” Leavitt told reporters at a press briefing.

“The fact that he has announced a framework with China, a trade deal with the U.K., a trade deal with Vietnam and many others to come in just six months is truly historic, and it’s a testament to this president and his trade team,” she added.

In his letters to foreign leaders, Trump warned that any effort by their governments to retaliate would be met with escalation.

“If for any reason you decide to raise your Tariffs, then, whatever the number you choose to raise them by, will be added onto the 25% that we charge,” he wrote.

Leavitt said more letters would be sent in the coming days. She also stated that additional trade deals could be announced soon. “We are close,” she said.

Scott Bessent, the Treasury secretary, told CNBC in an interview that his inbox was “full last night with a lot of new offers” for trade deals ahead of the now-defunct Wednesday deadline.

“We’ve had a lot of people change their tune in terms of negotiations,” Bessent said. “So it’s going to be a busy couple of days.”

The stock market reaction to Trump’s Liberation Day tariffs, which hiked rates on countries all around the world, was an historic rout, eviscerating trillions of dollars in value, with the Standard & Poor’s index bleeding 12% in just four days.

Markets recovered within weeks, after Trump reversed course, with the S&P hitting a record high on July 3.

President Trump’s tariff strategy has been thrown into turmoil after a U.S. court issued a rare rebuke blocking many of the import taxes he has threatened and imposed on other countries.

In a ruling issued late Wednesday, a three-judge panel for the U.S. Court of International Trade declared that the Trump administration had wrongly invoked a 1977 law in imposing his “Liberation Day” tariffs on dozens of countries and they were therefore illegal. It also extended that ruling to previous tariffs levied on Canada, Mexico and China over the security of the U.S. border and trafficking in fentanyl.

The Trump administration immediately said it would appeal, putting the fate of the tariffs in the hands of an appellate court and potentially the Supreme Court. The ruling doesn’t affect Trump’s first-term levies on many imports from China or sectoral duties planned or already imposed on goods including steel, which are based on a different legal foundation that the Trump administration may now be forced to make more use of to pursue its tariff campaign.

It’s unclear just how fast Wednesday’s ruling will go into effect, with the court giving the government up to 10 days to carry out the necessary administrative moves to remove the tariffs. But if the decision holds, it would in a matter of days eliminate new 30% U.S. tariffs on imports from China, 25% tariffs on goods from Canada and Mexico and 10% duties on most other goods entering the U.S.

Those tariffs and the prospect of retaliatory ones have been seen as a significant drag on U.S. and global growth and eliminating them — even temporarily — would improve prospects for the world’s major economies.

There is uncertainty over whether the ruling represents a permanent setback to Trump’s push to reshape global trade or a mere impediment. Trump and his supporters have attacked judges as biased and his administration has been accused of failing to fully comply with other court orders, raising questions over whether it will do so this time.

A White House spokesperson dismissed the ruling as one made by “unelected judges” who should not have the power “to decide how to properly address a national emergency.” Trump has invoked national emergencies ranging from the U.S. trade deficit to overdose deaths to justify many of his tariffs.

“Foreign countries’ nonreciprocal treatment of the Unites States has fueled America’s historic and persistent trade deficits,” White House spokesman Kush Desai said in a statement. “These deficits have created a national emergency that has decimated American communities, left our workers behind, and weakened our defense industrial base — facts that the court did not dispute.”

If the ruling isn’t reversed or ignored, one of the consequences could be greater fiscal concerns at a time when bond markets are questioning the trajectory of the U.S.’s mounting debt load. The Trump administration has been citing increased tariff revenues as a way to offset tax cuts in his “one big, beautiful bill” now before Congress, which is estimated to cost $3.8 trillion over the next decade.

U.S. importers paid a record $16.5 billion in tariffs in April and Trump’s aides have said they expected that to rise in the coming months.

Major trading partners including China, the European Union, India, and Japan that are in negotiations with the Trump’s administration must now decide whether to press ahead in efforts to secure deals or slow walk talks on the bet they now have a stronger hand.

Deal doubts

Also thrown into doubt would be the outlines for a trade deal that Trump reached with the UK earlier in May. That potential pact calls for the imposition of a 10% U.S. tariff on all imports from the UK that would be null and void if Wednesday’s decision endures.

“I don’t know why any country would want to engage in negotiations to get out of tariffs that have now been declared illegal,” said Jennifer Hillman, a Georgetown Law School professor and former WTO judge and general counsel for the U.S. Trade Representative. “It’s a very definitive decision that the reciprocal worldwide tariffs are simply illegal.”

Hillman and other legal experts pointed out that Trump has other legal authorities he can draw on. But none would give him as broad powers as those he invoked under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, or IEEPA.

A provision of the 1974 trade act gives presidents the power to impose tariffs of up to 15% for up to 150 days, though only in the event a balance of payments crisis, which Trump may not want to declare given the current nervous state of bond markets, Hillman said.

Trump could also invoke other authorities to impose tariffs on individual sectors or countries, as he did in his first term. In recent months, he has already used national security powers to impose duties on imported steel, aluminum and cars and launched seven other investigations pertaining to things like pharmaceuticals, lumber and critical minerals.

“The Trump administration’s toolbox won’t be completely empty,” Dmitry Grozoubinski, director of ExplainTrade and author of the book “Why Politicians Lie About Trade” said in an interview on Bloomberg Television. But as for IEEPA, “if they comply with this ruling that takes that toy out of the toy box.”

More uncertainty

Wednesday’s ruling came in two parallel cases brought by a conservative group on behalf of a small business and U.S. states controlled by Democrats.

“This ruling reaffirms that the President must act within the bounds of the law, and it protects American businesses and consumers from the destabilizing effects of volatile, unilaterally imposed tariffs,” said Jeffrey Schwab, senior counsel for the conservative Liberty Justice Center, which brought one of the cases.

For many other businesses, it brought the prospect of yet another sharp turn in U.S. tariff policies and more short-term questions and headaches.

Southern California-based Freight Right Global Logistics has several shipments on the water now for clients all over the U.S., carrying goods largely from China. Those containers are filled with everything from toys to robots, and it’s very uncertain what the tariff burden will be for those shipments when they land, said Freight Right Chief Executive Robert Khachatryan.

Khachatryan fielded questions Wednesday evening from his clients on potential refunds, which tariffs will be removed, and what would be the effective dates.

“We are working hard to answer customers questions but the reality is that there is not enough information out there yet,” he said. “Tomorrow we’re going to be all over the place figuring out what this means in practice.”

Donnan, Larson and Curtis write for Bloomberg News.