Excerpts from recent editorials in the United States and abroad:

___

Feb. 15

The Washington Post on Trump, tariffs and the trade deficit

The prevailing dislike for imports among America’s political class has an old and bipartisan pedigree. At least since the Carter administration — the last time the country’s broad balance of trade was in the black — members of both parties have bemoaned the country’s persistent trade deficit as evidence of some deep national weakness.

President Donald Trump has set himself the task of finally closing it. He is unleashing tariffs — for starters, on steel, aluminum and Chinese goods — to end the “ unfair and unbalanced trade ” that allows rivals such as China to enjoy a surplus while the United States bleeds red ink.

Like his predecessors, however, Trump will fail. His tariffs might leave a trail of economic carnage around the world, but close the trade deficit they will not. The trouble is, the trade deficit doesn’t mean what the president thinks it does. And tariffs don’t do what he expects them to do.

If only someone could explain this to him.

They might start by pointing to the “current account,” the record that offers the broadest picture of the trade balance. It includes imports, exports and things like cross-border transfers of interest payments on U.S. bonds held by foreigners and foreign bonds held by Americans. Since 1981, the United States has run a deficit in this account nonstop. But this is not because trade somehow became “unfair” when Ronald Reagan took office.

The core insight is that a country’s current account deficit must always be financed by the rest of the world. If what the United States earns from its exports is not enough to pay for all of its imports, then it must tap foreign money to cover the shortfall. Who provides this cash? The countries that earn more from their exports than what they need to pay for their imports. They have surpluses to lend or invest overseas. The world’s surpluses and deficits thus cancel each other out.

This implies that the mirror image of the string of deficits run by the United States is a pile of foreign money flowing into the country year after year. This puts would-be “deficit closers” in a spot, because a zero deficit would also mean zero net foreign financing into U.S. stocks, bonds, factories and so on.

This is a fixed reality, not a theory that poses a cause and an effect. It does not rely on assumptions about the behavior of importers and exporters or the performance of other variables. The current account deficit equals foreigners’ net purchases of U.S. assets minus Americans’ purchases of foreign assets.

When the U.S. current account flipped from a small surplus in 1981 to a deficit in 1987 equal to 3.3 percent of the nation’s gross domestic product, it wasn’t because our trading partners suddenly turned deviously mercantilistic. It was because they gave the United States a lot of money. It would have been nicer, of course, had the money not simply come in to plug a budget deficit that has been expanding pretty much ever since, but instead to finance productive investments. But that wasn’t America’s trade partners’ call.

And the United States didn’t do badly. Even as the current account deficit swelled during Reagan’s presidency, employment blossomed. The share of employed prime-age adults — those 25 to 54 years old — rose more than five percentage points, to 79.6 percent. Over the next four years, under President George H.W. Bush, the deficit shrank, but so did the share of people with jobs.

ONLINE: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2025/02/14/trump-trade-deficit-tariff/

___

Feb. 13

The New York Times says Trump is challenging the courts to plan to expand executive authority

The U.S. Constitution established three branches of government, designed to balance power — and serve as checks on one another. That constitutional order suddenly appears more vulnerable than it has in generations. President Trump is trying to expand his authority beyond the bounds of the law while reducing the ability of the other branches to check his excesses. It’s worth remembering why undoing this system of governance would be so dangerous to American democracy and why it’s vital that Congress, the courts and the public resist such an outcome.

Among legal scholars, the term “constitutional crisis” usually refers to a conflict among the branches of government that cannot be resolved through the rules set out in the Constitution and the system of checks and balances at its heart.

Say, a president who openly disregards the 22nd Amendment’s two-term limit and asserts a right to remain in office indefinitely.

But there’s no need to get ahead of ourselves. Right now, in February 2025, only weeks into President Trump’s second term, he and his top associates are stress-testing the Constitution, and the nation, to a degree not seen since the Civil War.

A partial list would include flouting the express requirements of multiple federal laws, as though Congress were an advisory board and not a coequal branch of government. It would include feeding entire agencies into the “wood chipper” (their words), an intentionally gory metaphor for the firing of thousands of civil servants without the legally mandated congressional approval. It would include giving an unelected “special government employee” access to the private financial information of millions of Americans, in violation of the law. And it would include issuing an executive order that purports to erase one of the foundational provisions of the Constitution on Mr. Trump’s say-so.

There is also reason to fear that powers that solely rest with the president, and therefore don’t raise direct constitutional concerns, are being abused in ways that weaken the constitutional order. His mass pardon of Jan. 6 rioters, for instance, is technically legal, but it both celebrates and gives license to anyone who wishes to engage in violence to keep Mr. Trump in power.

Any one of these acts sets off major alarms. Taken as a whole, they are a frontal assault on the laws and norms that underpin American government — by the very people who are meant to execute the law.

So are we in a constitutional crisis yet?

The most useful way to answer that question is to focus less on discrete events and more on the process, in which one branch pushes the limits of its authority and then the others push back. When those in power understand that their first obligation is to the Constitution and the American people, this process can be normal, even healthy.

When they don’t — well, that’s what we are watching play out.

Voters gave Mr. Trump a Republican-controlled Congress, and those lawmakers are within their right to try to pass the president’s agenda through the legislative process. That doesn’t relieve either chamber of its constitutional responsibility to the American people to serve as a check on the power of the president.

With virtually no exception, Republican leaders in Congress have made clear through their inaction that as long as they and Mr. Trump hold power — until January 2027, at least — they will stay out of his way. One reason, however, that Mr. Trump is using executive orders so often is that many of his plans would find resistance from Congress because of the Republicans’ slim majorities and the Senate’s 60-vote filibuster threshold.

While it may seem that the Republican leaders in Congress are free to abdicate their power to the president if they choose, that is not the case. As the sole branch granted lawmaking authority, they can repeal a law only by passing another one — not by failing to complain when a president chooses not to follow the ones he doesn’t like. That ensures that every law passed has the support of a majority of members elected to represent this diverse, divided country.

The United States Agency for International Development, for example, is funded through the congressional appropriations process. Would the current Congress vote to cut that funding? Perhaps. But at the very least, the House speaker and Senate majority leader should be putting the question up for a vote.

And Congress plays another important role: When the president or his administration is believed to have broken the law, it’s up to Congress to investigate and, when appropriate, use its censure powers. There is no sign that lawmakers plan to hold Mr. Trump accountable in this manner.

The willingness of Republican congressional leadership to watch passively as its own rights and responsibilities as a coequal branch of government are undermined leaves only one other branch actively checking the excesses of this overreaching presidency: the federal courts, where nearly all intragovernmental disputes eventually wind up.

The courts exist to define the bounds of the Constitution and the laws and to tell the other branches when they have strayed past those bounds. They also tend to slow everything down — frustrating, perhaps, for those who are impatient to wield their power or who wish to see justice done quickly — but that deliberation is essential to the rule of law and due process. So far, the federal courts have done their job, blocking several of Mr. Trump’s more brazenly illegal moves, including his executive order ending the 14th Amendment’s guarantee of birthright citizenship. He has already refused to comply at least once: A Rhode Island judge ruled on Monday that the president has defied a federal court order to release billions of dollars in federal grants. This is a dangerous trial balloon that Mr. Trump is daring someone to pop.

It’s fine for presidents to disagree, even strongly, with court rulings. That’s part of America’s evolving constitutional conversation, and it can lead to important changes. But the way to handle such disagreements is through the appeals process or passing legislation or even an amendment. “That’s how the rule of law works,” one federal judge said last week in blocking Mr. Trump’s birthright citizenship order.

In short, change needs to happen through the established channels of litigation in, and obedience to, the courts. Chief Justice John Roberts emphasized this last December, when he warned of the dangers of disobeying court rulings. “Every administration suffers defeats in the court system,” he wrote, but until recently people didn’t dare ignore decisions they didn’t like. Now we live with “the specter of open disregard for federal court rulings.”

He did not name Mr. Trump, but it was clear whom he was talking about. Of course, Chief Justice Roberts and his colleagues made their jobs harder with their 2024 decision in Trump v. United States, which granted astonishingly broad presidential immunity — a decision that emboldened Mr. Trump and his allies to see how far he can expand his powers without resistance.

Some may argue that defying a lower court order is not as serious as defying a final ruling of the Supreme Court. The complication is that the judiciary depends on the executive branch to enforce its orders. When the executive branch is the defendant, as it is in these cases, and refuses to follow a court order, who can compel it to do so? This is the predicament Mr. Trump and his allies have put the nation in.

However it may play out, the refusal to obey a Supreme Court ruling — from which there is no appeal — would be the moment that America’s constitutional order completely fails. That is a clear red line separating countries that operate under the rule of law from those that do not. If he crosses it, Mr. Trump will have created the precise scenario the nation’s founders fought a war and established an entirely new government to avoid. And if that happens, no part of society can remain silent.

There is disagreement among even legal scholars about whether the country is all the way to a constitutional crisis yet. Regardless, the statements from the White House and the unwillingness of Republican leaders in Congress to even consider acting as a check should be taken as a flashing warning sign. If we have learned anything from the past decade of living with Donald Trump, it’s that when he tells you about what he will do with power, believe him.

ONLINE: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/13/opinion/trump-constitutional-crisis.html

___

Feb. 16

The Wall Street Journal on Trump and our European allies

European allies knew their relationship with the second Trump Administration would be challenging. Even so, the shocks they’ve received from Washington in recent days constitute a crisis. The warning, more or less: Shape up or the Americans are shipping out.

Start with the Ukraine war. This is the largest military conflict on European soil since 1945, and the Continent’s leaders recognize the stakes for their security. But Mr. Trump’s message is that the U.S. doesn’t care what Europeans think about how the war should be resolved.

Mr. Trump spoke on the phone to Russian President Vladimir Putin last week about ending the conflict, a development that caught Europe by surprise. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced, also without consulting allies, that Ukraine shouldn’t expect to regain territory lost during Russia’s first incursion in 2014. Asked at a conference whether Europeans would play a role in peace talks, Mr. Trump’s Ukraine envoy Keith Kellogg said “that is not going to happen.”

These are slaps to North Atlantic Treaty Organization allies whose security is threatened by Mr. Putin’s imperial ambitions and that have contributed cash and equipment toward Ukraine’s defense. The insults also recognize reality, however. Too many European governments, especially the largest, have been too slow and stingy in providing support to Kyiv either for lack of strategic conviction or decades of spending on welfare instead of their militaries.

The Trump Administration appears unwilling to let Europe leverage its noisy but dilatory contributions to the Ukraine war into a seat at the negotiating table. Much of Mr. Trump’s approach to peace talks is all wrong for America’s own interests, including Mr. Hegseth’s hint that the U.S. could agree with the Kremlin to reduce American troop numbers in Europe. But Europe has chosen to put itself in the position of taking others’ decisions about its security rather than making its own.

Which is what we take to be Team Trump’s bigger theme in Europe last week. At a summit on artificial intelligence in Paris, Vice President JD Vance offered a bracing warning that Europe will leave itself behind in the next industrial revolution if it overregulates today’s frontier technology. Europeans aren’t accustomed to being told so bluntly by U.S. officials that Europe is impoverishing itself with its dirigisme, but someone had to say it.

Then in Munich Mr. Vance delivered a more surprising rebuke when he asserted that Europe’s biggest security danger is “the threat from within.” He cited a political culture that aggressively tamps down on dissent, often in the name of combating “misinformation” or other ills such as racism, as mainstream politicians worry their power will be eroded by insurgent parties of the right and left. The subtext is that if Europeans expect Americans to defend Europe for the sake of democracy, Europe needs to be recognizably democratic.

These interventions have triggered howls across Europe, sometimes with reason: German politicians have cause to be aggrieved at Mr. Vance for expressing veiled sympathy for the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party a week before an election. It was a mistake, since he undermined center-right Friedrich Merz, who’s likely to be the next chancellor and is much more pro-American than the AfD.

Yet in general Europeans are glumly conceding the Trump team has a point, at least on Ukraine and defense matters. French President Emmanuel Macron is convening an emergency summit of key European leaders this week to discuss their approach to Ukraine talks. They should heed Mr. Kellogg’s exhortation that the way for Europe to play a role is “coming up with concrete proposals, ideas, ramp up (defense) spending.”

On the latter point, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer said this weekend he’d overrule his own chancellor of the exchequer and insist defense spending rise to 2.5% of GDP, rather than the Treasury’s preferred 2.3% goal. Yet military leaders think more is needed, and even this goal has no deadline and will involve messy politicking in an economy that’s barely growing and when the government finances are a mess. Hence Mr. Vance’s exhortations about the importance of economic growth.

A U.S. withdrawal from Europe would be a historic mistake, and damaging to American interests. But after last week Europe is on notice that Mr. Trump may be willing to leave the Continent to its own devices. Europe needs to act accordingly, and an economic revival and greater investment in its own defense are essential and urgent.

ONLINE: https://www.wsj.com/opinion/the-trump-shock-comes-to-europe-war-defense-spending-ukraine-national-security-2bf22e18?mod=editorials_article_pos1

___

Feb. 13

The Guardian says Ukraine should be included in deciding its own future

Ukraine and its European allies braced for the worst when Donald Trump won a second term. But the scale of his surrender to Russian aggression has still shocked them. On Wednesday, Vladimir Putin’s nearly three years of isolation by the west was broken by his 90-minute, “highly productive” conversation with Mr Trump. Joe Biden called the Russian president a murderous dictator; Mr Trump praised Mr Putin’s mounting aggression towards Ukraine as “genius”, days before the full-scale invasion of 2022. Now, two great powers plan negotiations – without regard for Ukraine, Europe or even Mr Trump’s own Ukraine envoy.

Forget territorial integrity. The US defence secretary, Pete Hegseth, described a return to Ukraine’s pre-2014 borders as “unrealistic” and “an illusory goal”. Forget Ukrainian membership of Nato: “I don’t think it’s practical … I’m OK with that,” Mr Trump declared. Forget US support: it will be up to European countries and others to provide any deterrent force, the US defence secretary made clear. European security is no longer the primary focus for the US, added Mr Hegseth – and that was the toned-down version.

Mr Trump had already aired the notion that Ukraine “may be Russian some day”. Now he is not even feigning interest in Kyiv’s views. Mr Trump presumably believes that when the US turns off the tap, Ukraine and Europe will be forced to acquiesce in whatever he and Mr Putin have cooked up. Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, told the Guardian this week that “security guarantees without America are not real security guarantees”. Mr Trump has not only sidelined Mr Zelenskyy but further undermined him by pushing Russia’s narrative that elections must be on the way.

Whatever Ukraine says in public, it understood that Nato membership was never imminent and surely anticipated some territorial concessions, however bitter after so much sacrifice. But Mr Trump has given way to Russian demands before even reaching the negotiating table. This sounds more like the art of surrender than the art of the deal. Mr Putin, however, is in no rush. The last thing he wants is Nato members’ forces on the ground in Ukraine. Dragging out talks might allow funding for Kyiv to dry up and domestic grumbling in Ukraine to morph into political instability, while Russia makes further battlefield advances.

The failure of Mr Trump’s talks with North Korea’s Kim Jong-un showed how his rhetoric can run up against reality. Some have suggested that his self-regard will prevent him from settling for a deal in which Russia too obviously prevails. Perhaps he may yet latch on to a different exit if someone can find one that appeals to his vanity. Yet whatever the outcome, Mr Trump will surely declare it a triumph.

For Ukraine, and others in the region, this is an existential war. For others – including the US – this has been about containing and degrading a hostile power, notwithstanding the sincere sympathy and grand statements about defending democracy. It is not only Ukraine that now hears the bell tolling. Despite fears that European domestic politics are tending away from staunch support for Kyiv, Thursday’s forceful responses to the US from European nations, including Britain, are welcome. They are right to insist that they, like Ukraine, must be part of any negotiations, to state their commitment to its sovereignty and territorial integrity, and to stress their willingness to enhance support. Mr Trump is abandoning Ukraine. Others would be both wrong and reckless to follow suit.

ONLINE: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/feb/13/the-guardian-view-on-trump-and-putin-ukraines-future-must-not-be-decided-without-it

___

Feb. 13

The Boston Globe says cuts to NIH funding would be devastating to scientific research

President Trump last Friday slashed billions from scientific research grants — effective Monday.

Trump has taken issue with the way the National Institutes of Health funds “indirect costs” through research grants. It’s a topic ripe for Congress, with input from scientific researchers, to reconsider. But the president’s slash-and-burn approach threatens ongoing research and precludes reasoned discussion of how best to allocate money.

Many Massachusetts institutions would be seriously harmed by these cuts — along with the important scientific and medical research they are conducting.

Three lawsuits have been filed, and a judge paused the cuts. The Trump administration should withdraw its order, then study the issue and make recommendations to Congress.

The NIH — like most organizations funding scientific research — pays for the direct cost of research, like researchers’ salaries, and indirect costs, like space, equipment, utilities, and administration. In fiscal 2023, NIH distributed $35 billion in grants, including $9 billion for indirect costs.

Most private foundations award between 10 percent and 15 percent of total research expenses as indirect costs. The NIH averages between 27 percent and 28 percent of total research expenses, but some institutions get 50 percent or 60 percent.

The amounts given to each institution are negotiated between the institution and government auditors, based on institutional costs. Rates are higher in states with high costs of living or at universities with more sophisticated equipment. A 2013 Government Accountability Office report found that 10 percent of universities that got NIH funding received 70 percent of “indirect cost” funds.

Trump’s order would impose an across-the-board rate of 15 percent, effective immediately. Researchers working on a multiyear grant would see their grant shrink for the remaining years. This would save NIH around $4 billion a year.

In Massachusetts, 219 organizations received $3.46 billion in NIH funding in fiscal 2024, of which approximately $1 billion was for indirect costs, according to a lawsuit filed by Massachusetts Attorney General Andrea Campbell and 21 other attorneys general. NIH’s list of currently funded studies demonstrates their scope: A Boston University study on the prevalence of tuberculosis; a Harvard Medical School study on DNA-related factors that can lead to infertility; and a Brigham and Women’s Hospital study on rheumatoid arthritis are among the hundreds of projects.

According to the attorneys general’s lawsuit, UMass Chan Medical School gets approximately $200 million in NIH grant funding annually and would lose $40 million to $50 million a year.

According to a separate lawsuit filed by universities and their trade associations, Brandeis University got $37 million last year and would lose $7.5 million annually. MIT, which got $156 million last year, would lose $35 million.

Michael Rosbash, a Nobel Prize-winning biology professor at Brandeis University who uses NIH funding to study circadian rhythms, said institutions “are completely dependent on indirect costs to keep the lights on, the heat on, collect the trash, deal with chemical waste, and have deliveries of supplies.”

The reasoning provided in NIH’s memo for cutting rates is that private foundations offer less and universities still accept those grants. Additionally, indirect costs are “difficult for NIH to oversee” because they don’t directly relate to a project.

But researchers say they need to find other methods to subsidize research funded by private foundations, and NIH grants are coveted because they fully reimburse costs.

There is certainly room for discussion about whether the amounts NIH pays are warranted and whether there should be less variability between institutions. It’s not fair if some universities get enough to pay for building construction or scientist salaries and others don’t. There also may be a need for more oversight. A 2016 GAO report said the agencies involved in indirect cost rate-setting need to improve internal controls to avoid waste, fraud, and abuse. It is certainly within the government’s purview to ensure rates are set in a way that accurately reflects costs.

But that should be done through a thought-out process, which gives research institutions time to plan.

As Rosbash put it, Trump’s approach is about “revolution not evolution,” which isn’t how businesses with budgets can operate.

Cuts also require the involvement of Congress, which allocates NIH funding. In fact, when Trump tried to cut indirect research costs in 2017, to 10 percent, Congress rejected that, with the Senate Appropriations Committee writing, “The Administration’s proposal would radically change the nature of the Federal Government’s relationship with the research community, abandoning the Government’s long-established responsibility for underwriting much of the Nation’s research infrastructure, and jeopardizing biomedical research nationwide.”

That is exactly what Trump is doing now.

ONLINE: https://www.bostonglobe.com/2025/02/13/opinion/nih-funding-cuts-trump/

News from © The Associated Press, 2025