It’s Thursday, May 1. This is The Front Page, your daily window into the world of The Free Press—and our take on the world at large. Today: Trump blames Biden for the economy. Harvard’s “disturbing” antisemitism report. Why Europe’s lights went out. Your letters to the editor. And much more.
But first: The case for escalating the trade war.
Whether you agree with President Donald Trump’s tariffs or not, it’s important to understand why many Americans who do business in China are fed up with how Beijing treats foreign competition. Some of the staunchest critics of tariffs that we publish in these pages, like Niall Ferguson, readily concede that we’ve never really had free trade with China because of how they openly flout the rules the rest of the developed world abides by.
We’ve covered tariffs a lot since Trump’s April 2 “Liberation Day” announcement, and many of the smartest people we know and publish—like Niall and Tyler Cowen—believe that they’ll cause a great deal of unnecessary hardship. Yesterday’s news that the U.S.
On Monday, Spain’s power grid went dark. Trains lurched to a halt. Planes were stuck on the runway. Within hours, the Spanish government declared a national emergency. The crisis was entirely avoidable, writes Emmet Penney, and is a warning about the risks of relying on renewable energy.
Harvard’s long-delayed antisemitism report was published this week, and it paints a grim picture of life on campus for Jewish students. Our Maya Sulkin combed through the “disturbing” findings.
“The elites were a disaster,” writes Christopher Rufo in response to Tyler Cowen’s
