Excerpts from recent editorials in the United States and abroad:

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July 11

The Washington Post says the costs of Trump's tariffs have become more clear

To many Americans, President Donald Trump’s tariffs might seem costless. That’s because it takes time for them to ripple through the economy. This was the week that the tariff illusion began to evaporate, with new data suggesting that American businesses are starting to feel the pain.

Sure, Trump calmed some nerves by extending a July 9 deadline for countries to seek trade deals with the United States or face steep tariffs on their goods. (They now have until Aug. 1 to come to the table.) But Trump’s announcement did not relieve the blanket 10 percent tariff he had already imposed or specific U.S. levies on goods such as steel. On Thursday, the president suggested to NBC’s Kristen Welker that he will raise this universal tariff rate to 15 or 20 percent, even as he dismissed comments from the CEO of toymaker Hasbro that tariffs’ delayed effects could raise industry prices later this year.

Just the existing baseline tariffs represent a huge shift in American trade policy, and data released this month suggest that they’re starting to take a toll on the economy. Costs for imported “inputs” — goods that American businesses use to make finished products — are a leading indicator of consumer price hikes to come, and they are soaring. These are the raw materials, parts and components that companies assemble into cars, homes and refrigerators.

On average, prices for imported steel and aluminum increased almost 30 percent between January and May. Roughly half of all aluminum and a quarter of all steel in the United States is imported. Prices for other inputs, including textiles, leather, and rubber and plastics, have also increased substantially.

So, rather than protecting American businesses, Trump appears to be hurting them — particularly those in the auto industry and other sectors that rely heavily on inputs from abroad. Trump this week also announced a 50 percent tariff on copper, which will worsen the problem.

In response to higher input costs, some businesses might choose to raise prices for consumer goods. Others, unable to attract buyers at higher price points, might need to shrink their margins and sacrifice profits. Companies that have neither option might have to scale back or go out of business.

Because American businesses pay import prices at the border, before goods are manufactured or sold, it takes time for those cost increases to work their way through the supply chain and show up in the consumer price index.

Data on input prices, though, forewarns what economists call “cost-push” inflation, whereby rising production costs eventually lead to higher prices for shoppers. The effects wouldn’t be small, either. One estimate suggests that, for a firm that imports 15 percent of its inputs, a 10 percent tariff increase, such as the one Trump has imposed, would push the price for consumers up 3 percent.

America is seeing the first signs of this. The Manheim Used Vehicle Value Index — which measures the prices that dealers pay for used cars before they hit retail lots — in June recorded its largest annual increase in nearly three years, according to figures released Tuesday. Like the import data, the Manheim index moves ahead of consumer prices, offering an early look at inflation in the auto market.

Even worse for businesses than rising costs is high economic uncertainty. Because Trump keeps changing course, businesses can’t predict what their input costs will be in the future. It’s hard to know whether to open a factory, launch a new product line or switch suppliers when costs could double — or fall by half — next month.

As a result, businesses are already pulling back. In the first quarter of 2025, private fixed investment — the amount that companies spend on buildings, equipment and intellectual property — grew at a 7.6 percent annualized rate. In the second quarter, the Atlanta Federal Reserve expects investment to shrink by 1 percent.

Reversing all the Trump tariffs would be the best course. But the president appears unlikely to change his unorthodox views on trade barriers, which have been a consistent feature of his policy agenda. He also appears determined to use the threat of much higher levies to compel other countries to offer the United States trade concessions. Yet the costs promise to increase from here, at which point the politics of protectionism might shift.

Even if Trump refuses to ease off the tariffs he has already imposed, he needs to pick numbers and stick with them. A stable, predictable trade policy — even one that includes somewhat higher tariffs — would allow companies to budget, invest and grow. Otherwise, they will be forced either to wait or, worse, to scale back — and the entire economy will suffer.

ONLINE: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2025/07/11/trump-tariffs-trade-business-investment/

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July 10

The Wall Street Journal wonders what is next with Trump, Iran

The aftermath of the 12-day war with Iran looks mixed more than two weeks later. Iran’s nuclear program was badly damaged and likely set back for years. But the Ayatollah’s government isn’t admitting defeat and shows no signs of dropping its revolutionary or nuclear designs. That puts into focus the next policy question for the U.S.: Will Mr. Trump’s cease-fire give way to diplomacy that deepens the achievements of the war, or will it put those achievements at risk?

Iran is still talking tough and rejecting Mr. Trump’s demands, even after bailing out of the fight with Israel and failing to respond in any serious way to the U.S. strikes. In a video message released several days after the U.S. bombing, a frail-looking Ayatollah Ali Khamenei claimed that the U.S. had to intervene to rescue Israel, and that Iran had “dealt America a slap in the face.”

Mr. Trump didn’t take kindly to the Ayatollah’s revisionist history, which he corrected on Truth Social. The President added that “Iran has to get back into the World Order flow, or things will only get worse for them.”

But there’s no sign Iran will surrender the remains of its enrichment program. Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said after the war, “Our people have endured sanctions for this, and a war was imposed on our nation over this issue. No one in Iran will abandon this technology.”

More ominously, Iran has driven out United Nations weapons inspectors, who left the country last week. It may drop out of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. This will make it impossible for inspectors to make a ground-level estimate of the damage done and track or collect any nuclear material that remains.

Iran isn’t hankering for normal relations with the West either. Senior regime clerics have called for Mr. Trump’s execution. Iran’s regime proclaims death to America and Israel, and it wages its forever war accordingly. Meanwhile, evidence is building that Tehran has escalated its terror campaign at home, with arrests and executions of opponents and minorities.

What’s the U.S. policy to grapple with all of this? White House envoy Steve Witkoff said a meeting with Mr. Araghchi will take place in the next week or so. Iran’s Foreign Minister has been stalling, but a senior White House official tells us Iran wants sanctions relief as well as U.S. help with a civilian nuclear program.

“We have a very big ask” in return, the U.S. official says. It starts with removing whatever nuclear material and enrichment infrastructure remains, and continues with hard limits on Iran’s missile program and an end to its support for regional terrorism. The return of inspectors and on-demand searches is essential.

To extract concessions, Mr. Witkoff will need the full pressure arsenal. That should include public and other support for the Iranian people. Especially helpful would be so-called snap-back U.N. sanctions that were part of the 2015 nuclear deal. These would restore international bans on Iranian enrichment and nuclear-capable missiles. They’d also bar other states from helping Iran on those fronts.

The U.S. will also have to enforce its sanctions against Iran’s oil exports. Iran’s oil output is now at a seven-year high, per U.S. Energy Department data. That’s the regime’s main source of financing. Will it be put in danger?

The successful Israel-U.S. military operation has the regime more vulnerable than at any time since the Islamic revolution. Now is the moment to capitalize for a safer Middle East.

ONLINE: https://www.wsj.com/opinion/iran-tries-to-talk-its-way-out-of-defeat-national-security-foreign-policy-e7039c63?mod=editorials_article_pos9

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July 13

The Guardian says BRICS — a potential post-Western order — is growing up

The Brics summit in Brazil last week revealed a loose alliance of emerging powers becoming more complex – and perhaps more consequential. For Brics, heft matters. It now counts 11 member states – including Indonesia, which joined this year – representing half the world’s population and 40% of the global economy, outpacing the G7 by $20tn.

Yet its size hides its contradictions. The grouping’s call for more inclusive global institutions sounds welcome, but there is a preponderance of autocracies within its own ranks. Brics is right that international law should be upheld in Middle Eastern conflicts. But it climbs down from its moral pedestal by condemning Ukraine’s strikes on Russian infrastructure – while staying silent on Moscow’s relentless attacks on civilians.

The acronym “Bric” – Brazil, Russia, India and China (South Africa wouldn’t join until 2010) – began as a Wall Street bet on rising powers challenging the west. But what defines Brics today is a subtler, more strategic ambition: to insulate themselves from Washington’s gravitational pull while cooperating to build a joint hi-tech industrial base. There are things that the Brics get right. Financial global institutions such as the International Monetary Fund are in need of reform; the rich world has failed to honour climate finance promises. The group’s understandable response in the face of inaction is to create its own development bank to promote a form of green industrialisation.

A pre-summit agreement on a formal collective Brics stance on funding climate action will help. Rapid growth in renewable energy means fossil fuels now account for less than half of the bloc’s total electricity generation. Given the climate emergency, such progress can only be welcome. Brics member states now lead in green tech and boast booming consumer markets – offering both the tools and the scale to drive industrial growth.

The postwar order stood on three pillars: US dominance, hydrocarbons and open trade. Today, all three are cracking, largely because of the US itself. Many Brics nations have little to gain from backing oil when the world’s biggest producer is the US. Donald Trump’s threat of higher import duties on the bloc’s members speaks to the US turn against global trade. By placing tariffs on Brazil over its internal politics, Mr Trump turns economic diplomacy into personal vendetta – and highlights how the rules-based order is unravelling.

This moment presents both a challenge and an opening. Tariffed in the west, Chinese firms pivot to Brics. So the United Arab Emirates cashes in – winning local production and tech transfers from Beijing that the west won’t permit. Brics’ vision of smart, clean growth fits the gaps in the global order. But it isn’t united: Russia’s green potential is buried under its fossil fuel policy. Saudi Arabia hedges – flirting with Brics while clinging to the US, with deals in the balance. Most of the group’s member states are nervous that a powerful China could tower over the rest. Strikingly, however, its leader, Xi Jinping, did not attend this summit.

The Brics nations can still close ranks. Their most technical yet revealing move is to start building financial “ plumbing ” to bypass western systems. The group isn’t ditching the dollar – but its members know what exclusion feels like: India had credit denied after the 2008 crash; Iranian banks have been sanctioned since 2012. The bloc’s success will depend not just on ambition, but on the capacity to coordinate across national interests.

ONLINE: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/jul/13/the-guardian-view-on-brics-growing-up-a-new-bloc-seeks-autonomy-and-eyes-a-post-western-order

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July 9

The St. Louis Post-Dispatch says Trump's cuts didn't cause flood deaths. Yet.

As the Trump administration continues aggressively dismantling urgent functions of government, it’s important that critics of that dangerous project keep their criticism grounded in facts, lest they undermine their own credibility.

It’s with that in mind that this must be stated plainly: There is currently no evidence — none — that the administration’s moves to gut weather and climate science funding had any specific role in the tragic flash-flood deaths still being counted up in Texas.

Efforts by some, including prominent Democrats in Congress, to draw a line between the White House’s defunding of weather preparedness and the more than 100 Texas deaths invites the kind of debunking and backlash that can silence more legitimate criticism of the administration going forward. The fable of the boy who cried wolf is instructive here.

But here’s what people often forget regarding that fable: In the end, there really was a wolf. Part of the reason the administration’s anti-science funding cuts aren’t the culprit here is because they haven’t yet been fully implemented. Once they are, they likely will cost lives, as extreme weather events like this occur more frequently and the federal government is less equipped to respond.

In that sense, the Texas deaths aren’t a smoking gun in the present tragedy but rather a cautionary tale about the future. That’s why Congress must confront the anti-science sabotage in which this president is so fully engaged.

The freak rainstorm that caused the Guadalupe River in central Texas to rise more than 25 feet in less than an hour swept away at least 108 lives as of the latest count Tuesday morning, with almost two-dozen more still missing. Roughly a quarter of the victims were from an all-girls’ Christian summer camp that was hit by the flooding.

Seizing on the fact that the administration has ordered severe funding and staffing cuts at the the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the National Weather Service (NWS) and other weather-related federal offices, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and a few other Democrats have called for investigations into whether those cuts contributed to the flood’s deadly element of surprise.

“Disgusting!” responded one administration official to that suggestion.

Spare us the faux outrage. President Donald Trump has routinely politicized (and lied about) natural disasters from the California wildfires to tornadoes and hurricanes to the COVID pandemic, to the point of threatening to withhold federal aid from Democrat-run states whose citizens were suffering. This particular White House has less standing than any in modern history to lecture anyone about responsibility, empathy or humanity in the wake of tragedies.

Still, Schumer & Co. appear to have jumped the gun on this one. While there are staffing shortages at the NWS and related entities as part of Trump’s downsizing, all indications are that, given the unpredictability and severity of the flood, the federal systems worked as well as they reasonably could have.

This time.

But what happens with the next such event, once Trump’s staffing and funding cuts are fully implemented?

While the administration has already started pushing out staff at weather-related offices, the biggest cuts are yet to come. In the next budget year, for example, NOAA is slated to lose almost one-third of its budget, including the complete elimination of its primary research branch and the defunding of new aircraft that aid in studying weather patterns.

The Pentagon recently announced it will no longer share satellite data that scientists use to track hurricanes. The NWS (which is part of NOAA) will see a reduction in weather balloon launches, impeding a key tool in data-gathering for forecasts. NWS, NOAA and other offices that have already seen deep staffing cuts will see more under the next budget.

In addition to those cuts to short-term weather preparedness, the administration’s deep hostility toward research into the well-established fact of human-caused climate change threatens to hobble efforts at long-term mitigation of hurricanes, tornadoes and, yes, flash flooding.

While there’s no way to know for certain if climate change contributed directly to last week’s Texas flood, flash flooding generally has become far more common in recent years due to higher average temperatures globally (warmer air holds more moisture). A new Washington Post analysis of NWS data found 145 flood-related deaths in 2024, against a 25-year average of just 85 per year.

No serious scientists today dispute that humanity is contributing to global warming. Yet the Trump administration has moved at every turn to nix federal involvement in studying and addressing the phenomenon, most recently by taking down key websites that had been used to gather and convey public information on climate change.

Again: There’s no evidence that the tragedy that has befallen Texas wouldn’t have done so, and taken just as many lives, absent all of this anti-science obstinance from this administration. This time.

But the more this president is allowed to systematically dismantle weather and climate science at the federal level, the more likely it is that blame for future deaths from flooding (and hurricanes and tornadoes and wildfires) will be legitimately laid at this White House’s doorstep.

ONLINE: https://www.stltoday.com/opinion/editorial/article_2c954ecb-7c79-4224-bcb1-339ad37d163e.html

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July 11

The Dallas Morning News says now is the time for more, not less, storm data

For more than 40 years, the Department of Defense has operated satellites that collect information about atmospheric and oceanic conditions. The microwave frequencies from the DOD satellites provide data that is processed by a group within the Navy and shared with scientists and weather forecasters who use it for different purposes, including for real-time hurricane forecasting.

The Department of Defense announced that it would discontinue sharing the data “no later than July 31,” according to a statement by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, or NOAA. The DOD will stop providing the data “to mitigate a significant cybersecurity risk,” NOAA’s announcement said.

We don’t know the full extent of that risk. But we do know that DOD satellite data is important for visualizing the three-dimensional structure of storms as they intensify or change course. Anita Rapp, associate professor of atmospheric sciences at Texas A&M University, explained that microwave instruments provide insight into a storm’s internal structure, data that traditional satellite imagery can’t capture.

Erica Grow Cei, a National Weather Service spokesperson, said the information shared by the Department of Defense is just one tool in the National Weather Services’ forecasting toolbelt. The National Weather Service relies on various satellite systems and other tools like hurricane hunter aircraft, weather balloons and observations on the ground for forecasting, Cei said.

But Rapp told us that, with the loss of the data from the DOD satellites, there will be a loss of resolution of the information in space and time. There will be fewer microwave satellites providing fewer observations, which could risk missing key developments like the location of the center of a storm or the intensification of a storm. This could lead to less reliable forecasts.

As extreme weather events like Tropical Storm Barry — which contributed to the devastating flooding in the Texas Hill Country — become more frequent, this data contributes to giving forecasters the most current and accurate information.

It’s troubling that with peak hurricane season from mid-August through September on the horizon, this data that is used regularly for forecasting will no longer be available.

In moments like these, we should be demanding more information, not less. We need more tools to monitor developing storms, more data to guide evacuation decisions and more resources to help forecasters warn communities.

If there are security concerns with sharing this data, there should be ways to work to overcome or address the risks rather than deciding not to share the information altogether.

The situation is made worse by staffing shortages at National Weather Service offices across Texas. With meteorologist positions unfilled, forecasters are already stretched thin. Taking away a key data source now only makes it harder to track storms and warn communities in time.

ONLINE: https://www.dallasnews.com/opinion/editorials/2025/07/11/now-is-the-time-for-more-storm-data-not-less/

News from © The Associated Press, 2025