Editorial Roundup: United States
Excerpts from recent editorials in the United States and abroad:
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Dec. 2
The Washington Post on Joe Biden's pardon of Hunter Biden
President-elect Donald Trump is selecting radical MAGA loyalists for top national security positions, signaling his intention to upend the professionalism and independence of institutions that wield some of the federal government’s most awesome powers. Political opponents, journalists and others could be victims. And President Joe Biden just gave him cover.
To be clear: Mr. Biden had an unquestionable legal right to pardon his son Hunter. But in so doing on Sunday, he maligned the Justice Department and invited Mr. Trump to draw equivalence between the Hunter Biden pardon and any future moves Mr. Trump might take against the impartial administration of justice. He risks deepening many Americans’ suspicion that the justice system is two-tiered, justifying Mr. Trump’s drive to reshape it — or, because turnabout is fair play, to use it to benefit his own side.
Mr. Biden, of course, argues that pardoning his son strikes a blow for fairness in law enforcement. His statement on the pardon — in which he uses the words, “I believe in the justice system, but …” — claims that “no reasonable person” could “reach any other conclusion than Hunter was singled out only because he is my son.” Yet such considerations were apparently not so compelling when he pledged previously not to pardon Hunter. And his son clearly broke the law. A federal jury of Hunter Biden’s peers found him guilty of three firearm-related felonies in Delaware. Hunter also pleaded guilty to tax evasion charges that carry a penalty of up to 17 years in prison. The gun charges, essentially that the younger Mr. Biden lied on a purchase application form when he denied using drugs, is particularly hard to ignore. Such laws, however rarely enforced, are on the books to help keep firearms out of the hands of those who might pose a danger to themselves or others.
By implication, Mr. Biden casually impugns investigators at the IRS and the FBI, career prosecutors, Attorney General Merrick Garland and a federal judge in Delaware. Before Mr. Garland became attorney general, Mr. Biden himself chose to keep David C. Weiss as U.S. attorney for Delaware so as not to interfere with Mr. Weiss’s ongoing investigation of the president’s son. In his statement, Mr. Biden complains that a plea deal fell apart in court last summer. In fact, the judge did her job by questioning its irregular structure — highly favorable to Hunter Biden — and the degree to which the defendant believed it would immunize him from future prosecution for unrelated crimes.
The president’s sweeping pardon covered any and all federal crimes his son might have committed over the past 10 years, including those that have not been charged, without going through the traditional Justice Department process. This covers potential illegal behavior by Hunter Biden going back to 2014, six years before Mr. Biden became president.
Mr. Biden rushed out this pardon on Sunday night to short-circuit the sentencing process in both cases in the coming weeks. This averts a meaningful part of the accountability process, in which judges would have decided whether Hunter Biden deserved to serve time in prison. Justice Department guidelines say a pardon shouldn’t be issued until five years after a sentence is served. That was the case when Bill Clinton pardoned Roger Clinton after the president’s brother had served time for cocaine trafficking.
Yes, Mr. Trump egregiously misused the pardon power during his first term, granting clemency to Stephen K. Bannon, Roger Stone, Michael Flynn and Charles Kushner, his son-in-law’s father, whom he just tapped to be ambassador to France. These sent the message that Mr. Trump will get his cronies off the hook, at the risk of encouraging further unlawful behavior. Yet, no matter the distinctions that one can draw between these cases and Hunter Biden’s, the president — and the Democrats — are the ones trying to defend the system; they damage their worthy cause if they are seen to be exploiting it for their own gain.
Any Democrat who refuses this week to condemn Mr. Biden’s pardon will have less credibility to criticize Mr. Trump, his meddling at the Justice Department and his choices for key positions in that agency. No one should be surprised if Mr. Trump invokes the Hunter Biden pardon to justify clemency for many more of his allies, potentially including Jan. 6 insurrectionists. With this one intemperate, selfish act, the president has undermined, in hindsight, the lofty rationales he offered for seeking the presidency four years ago and indelibly marred the final chapter of his political career.
ONLINE: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2024/12/02/biden-pardon-hunter-selfish-lies/
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Dec. 1
The Wall Street Journal on the GOP's slim majority in the House
Republicans boasting about their great election mandate may want to hold the euphoria. As the final results trickle in from the late state of California, the GOP looks set to have the narrowest House majority in more than a century.
In the latest race to be called, Republican Rep. Michelle Steel lost her Orange County seat, while Rep. John Duarte now trails his Democratic challenger in his Fresno-area district. If Mr. Duarte loses, Republicans would hold nine of 52 House seats in the Golden State. The Democratic gerrymander in California, plus those in New York (19-7 Democratic to GOP seats), Illinois (14-3) and Massachusetts (9-0), mean four states will deliver 85 of the Democratic total of 215 seats. The GOP could have as few as 220.
One message is that while voters rejected the Biden-Harris Administration, their support for Republicans is provisional. The GOP did better in the Senate, gaining a three-seat edge. But they narrowly lost winnable seats in Wisconsin, Michigan and Nevada despite fielding strong candidates.
Another message is that the GOP has about a year to get anything done. The party is likely to lose the House in 2026, if midterm history is any guide, and the partisan Senate map is challenging. The GOP had better pass legislation it wants in 2025 before Member attention turns to political survival in 2026.
This will require House Republicans in particular to stick together as they haven’t in years. Matt Gaetz will be out of Congress, saints be praised, but other performance artists are still around to blow things up and blame everyone else. Perhaps Donald Trump can keep them in line behind Speaker Mike Johnson. But factionalism will mean the end of a functioning majority and guaranteed defeat in 2026.
ONLINE: https://www.wsj.com/opinion/the-gop-barely-won-the-house-9d5e1bb5?mod=editorials_article_pos1
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Dec. 2
The St. Louis Post-Dispatch on Donald Trump's proposed tariffs war
It’s telling that virtually the only positive spin economists of every political persuasion are putting on Donald Trump’s latest vow to ignite a global tariff war is the possibility that he doesn’t actually mean it. This is one instance in which Trump’s well-established tendency to say things he knows aren’t true is America’s best hope of avoiding a self-inflicted national economic injury.
It’s beyond ironic that Trump — whose recent election to a second term was helped immeasurably, maybe decisively, by high inflation under Joe Biden’s presidency — has made aggressive tariffs a centerpiece of his economic agenda. Those fees on imported foreign goods will inevitably be passed onto American consumers in the form of higher prices. They might also hurt America’s manufacturing sector, as Missouri in particular learned from Trump’s first-term tariff-mania.
Trump promised throughout this year’s presidential campaign to hit global friends and foes alike with high new tariffs as a misguided lever to protect American jobs. But even many of his supporters dismissed it as typical Trumpian bluster designed to make him sound tough on the campaign trail.
What happened last week cannot be so easily shrugged off. Trump announced on his Truth Social platform that he will, immediately upon taking office on Jan. 20, hit Mexico and Canada each with 25% tariffs, and another 10% on top of existing tariffs against China.
He linked the Mexico and Canada tariffs specifically to immigration and drug trafficking: “This Tariff will remain in effect until such time as Drugs, in particular Fentanyl, and all Illegal Aliens stop this Invasion of our Country!”
Trump is basing a radical policy announcement against America’s two biggest trading partners on the utter fabrication that illegal immigrants are “bringing Crime and Drugs at levels never seen before.”
He’s also mischaracterizing the very real fentanyl crisis as being tied to immigration. In fact, more than 85% of people sentenced for cross-border trafficking of fentanyl in 2023 were U.S. citizens, according to a study by KFF. As aptly laid out last week by the Wall Street Journal’s staunchly conservative editorial board, “Mr. Trump is threatening the countries, including two neighbors and allies, with economic harm if they don’t help him solve a domestic U.S. problem.”
Reasonably structured tariffs have a legitimate place in trade policy, but Trump’s view of them as clubs to be swung around indiscriminately at trading partners ignores some crucial complexities.
First, tariffs are by definition a tax on American consumers. Trump spent much of this year’s campaign publicly insisting that targeted countries would have to pay his promised tariffs, indicating he either doesn’t understand how tariffs work or (more likely) was assuming his audiences don’t.
In fact, tariffs are paid by U.S. importers, which then pass the cost on in the form of higher prices for goods — as consumers discovered during Trump’s first term. Among his trade policies were targeted tariffs on imported washing machines, which was meant to bolster U.S. manufacturing but which primarily just drove up prices across the entire U.S. market.
Trump’s planned tariffs against Mexico and Canada would do even more damage to Americans’ pocketbooks. Together, those two countries provide roughly one-third of all the fruits and vegetables sold in the U.S. Those produce prices would rise immediately as importers pass the tariffs on to American distributors and grocers. Meanwhile, tariffs on Canadian petroleum could drive up U.S. gas pump prices by as much as 75 cents a gallon by some estimates.
And that’s before even getting into the impact that likely retaliatory tariffs from those countries would have on foreign sales of American goods. Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum immediately threatened such retaliation after Trump’s announcement last week.
Even under a best-case scenario in which Trump is merely threatening tariffs as a bargaining chip on trade and other issues, the threat alone is typically reckless. U.S. automobile manufacturers are especially jittery about the possibility of new tariffs, since that industry’s supply chain crosses national borders repeatedly with the making of virtually every car. No wonder General Motors’ shares plummeted last week after Trump’s announcement.
Since most major manufacturing today involves supply chains that span national borders, even policies that spur U.S. manufacturing can also hurt it. Missouri saw that firsthand during Trump’s first term, when the Noranda Aluminum plant, in the Bootheel, was initially aided by tariffs on foreign competition — only to see those same tariffs spur major shifts in the global aluminum supply chain that ended up devastating the Missouri company’s sales.
As it happens, Missouri has two Republican senators and a half-dozen House members who, to one degree or another, have Trump’s ear or the ears of those around him. Should he go through with this reckless tariff binge, and those members of Congress do nothing to oppose it, let no one forget that abrogation of duty when local prices rise and jobs are lost.
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Dec. 1
The Dallas Morning News on the relationship between Mexico's new president, Claudia Sheinbaum, and Trump
With the uncertainty that a new Trump administration will bring and the relative inexperience of the new Mexican president, Americans should keep a close eye on the relationship with our strongest economic ally in the region. Immigration, drug policy and trade are the variables at play, and Mexico’s Claudia Sheinbaum needs to show more than tell.
On a personal level, it is unlikely that President-elect Donald Trump will have the “buddy-to-buddy ” relationship he had with former Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador. While Trump and López Obrador were ideological opposites, they had a shared understanding of populist appeal.
Sheinbaum is different. Both her style and technocratic background foretell a more distant rapport. But that doesn’t mean there can’t be meaningful cooperation.
What has Mexicans worried most is not Trump’s immigration policy but the future of the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement. Under a review clause in the USMCA that is coming up in July 2026, countries can confirm if they want to continue or exit the agreement.
China has been taking advantage of the free trade agreement, with several Chinese companies relocating to northern Mexico, and many Mexican-made products are backed by Chinese capital. Recently, Sheinbaum announced a plan to substitute Chinese parts with locally made ones, an important gesture that indicates Mexico’s intent to balance U.S. interests with its own.
However, some recent reforms in Mexico that will eliminate certain regulatory and oversight agencies have the U.S. and Canada concerned, since these agencies ensured fair play in the trade relationship.
Just this week, Trump announced 25% tariffs for Mexican products with his intent to crack down on illegal immigration and drug trafficking. In a pointed but measured letter, Sheinbaum warned the president-elect that tariffs can be answered with tariffs, endangering both countries’ economies.
“President Trump, migration and drug consumption in the United States cannot be addressed through threats or tariffs,” Sheinbaun wrote. “For every tariff, there will be a response in kind, until we put at risk our shared enterprises.”
The letter indicates that Sheinbaum intends to be direct with Trump, an approach that comes with its own risks. The economies of both nations are deeply entwined, but Mexico has more to lose.
Meanwhile, Trump is keenly focused on reducing illegal border crossings and pressuring Mexico to do more.
Immigration numbers have been trending down in the last year, and Mexico’s efforts had much to do with this. A containment campaign to bus and fly non-Mexican immigrants to southern Mexico has been successful, and analysts believe that these policies, which were the result of pressure from the Biden administration, will only harden under Trump.
In the illegal drug trade, there is much room for improvement. Sheinbaum needs to distance herself from the appeasement policy her predecessor had with the cartels, but she will be walking a tightrope. On the campaign trail, Trump promised military action against the Mexican drug cartels, a bridge America should not cross.
After Sheinbaum’s letter, the two leaders had a phone conversation, which is a sign of progress. However, they differed on what was said, and it remains to be seen whether Sheinbaum can diplomatically navigate a tricky dynamic with Trump.
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Dec. 1
The Guardian on the threat of a Cold War revival
Five years ago, the collapse of a landmark cold war arms treaty opened a Pandora’s box, unleashing missile-shaped furies that have struck Ukraine. The 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty ended when the US withdrew, citing Russian violations dating back to 2014 under Vladimir Putin. While abandoning the treaty aligned with the first Trump administration’s broader opposition to arms control, continuing to pressure Mr Putin into compliance would have been the wiser course.
Targeting Kyiv’s forces are the hypersonic Oreshnik missile and the ballistic Iskander missile. Both can carry a nuclear warhead and would have been barred under the INF treaty. These weapons signal an alarming return to cold war-style tit-for‑tat posturing, with great powers ramping up their military capabilities. Their use highlights Moscow’s accelerated missile development. But it also raises questions about the implications of a nuclear-tipped Oreshnik missile – capable of striking European capitals within 12 to 16 minutes – for Nato security.
The deployment of such missiles exposes the risks of abandoning arms control. The cold war INF treaty, banning ground-launched ballistic and cruise missiles with ranges of between 500km and 5,500km, curbed nuclear escalation in Europe. Its lapse, as the UN warned, removed “an invaluable brake on nuclear war”. History offers lessons. In 1983, US plans to station such missiles in Europe – including Britain – sparked mass protests. Tensions peaked that year during the “ Able Archer ” drill, misread by Moscow as nuclear war preparation. Alarmed, Ronald Reagan eased fears, leading to the INF treaty and broader arms reductions.
Unlike Mr Reagan, the US president-elect lacks interest in such statesmanship. Mr Putin, more insecure than his Soviet predecessors, embraces brinkmanship, recently lowering Russia’s threshold for nuclear use. Under Barack Obama, arms control advanced with Russia’s then leader Dmitry Medvedev, who signed the New Start treaty limiting deployed strategic nuclear warheads. But Mr Putin’s 2012 return to power froze progress on a follow-up deal.
One reason for American indifference to preserving the INF treaty was its irrelevance to China, which was not a signatory and had developed intermediate-range missiles. This may also explain why the Biden administration maintained Mr Trump’s approach, investing significantly in nuclear arms. This shift freed the US to develop weapons aimed at defending Taiwan from a potential Chinese invasion. In Europe, the US also announced plans to deploy long-range weapons in Germany by 2026, followed swiftly by continental powers unveiling plans for “deep-fire” capabilities.
The looming end of the New Start treaty in 2026 demands urgent cooperation between Moscow and Washington to prevent an arms race. Despite the US president-elect’s apparent rapport with Mr Putin, deep-rooted mistrust poses significant hurdles to new arms control talks. To avoid repeating history’s mistakes, western leaders should prioritise negotiations with both Russia and China. A nuclear weapons build-up, with its heightened risks of accidents and catastrophic conflict, is an existential threat of unparalleled immediacy. Without swift action, unchecked competition will overshadow any strategic gains from military posturing.
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