
Johns Hopkins Economist Recommends Asia Build More Ties As Trump Even More ‘Tariff-Pilled' Than In First Administration
Courtesy of Henry Farrell
Henry Farrell
NEW YORK — Henry Farrell, 54, a professor at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, said in an interview with The Yomiuri Shimbun that U.S. President Donald Trump seems to have become more 'tariff-pilled,' and Asian countries should start to build many more ties in a world where the 'sponsor is becoming less predictable.'
The following excerpts from the interview have been edited for flow and clarity.
The Yomiuri Shimbun: What is your view of the Trump administration's tariff measures?
Henry Farrell: Obviously, he [Trump] is much more willing to use tariffs on a much grander scale than he was back in the first administration; the sheer scale of what has happened is … basically historically unprecedented. I think that he has become more convinced that tariffs obviously have much broader application than just trying to get the United States a better deal on trade. There's interest in using them for all sorts of other policy measures as well … some of which are traditional national security.
He appears to have gotten further 'tariff-pilled' than he was before, in [the] belief that traditional financial sanctions are a bad idea for the U.S. dollar.
Yomiuri: What do you think about the effects of these tariffs on the international order and how they will affect the United States?
Farrell: I think that the effects are pretty substantial. I think that a lot of this has to do with not just … the size of the tariffs, but the ways that the tariffs are being deployed.
There are negotiations that are happening, but it's not clear whether those negotiations are going to get anywhere … because there are some people in the administration, including sometimes Trump himself, who seem to think that tariffs are fundamentally a good thing. That is that they're not something that can be removed or added on. And furthermore, when people do talk about what the tariffs are there for, they often have wildly different reasons, and those reasons differ from day to day.
I think that from the point of view of U.S. international partners and indeed adversaries, thinking about the international system, what this says to them is that there isn't any coherent U.S. picture of what that international system ought to be anymore, except for some kind of a system in which everybody defers to Donald Trump, everybody defers to the United States.
We're in a situation where in some ways it is even worse, perhaps, than just sheer naked self-interest, because it's naked self-interest combined with a degree of whimsicality, which means that even if something looks to be in U.S. government interest, you have no idea of whether or not the U.S. government is going to shoot off its own foot. And this means that, in a sense, it becomes even more problematic, even more difficult to predict what your relations with this party are going to be like.
Yomiuri: Why was Japan the first country to negotiate directly with the United States following Trump's 90-day suspension of reciprocal tariffs?
Farrell: It appears to be more linked to his [Trump's] particular preferences and to any broader theory of how it might be strategically advantageous to negotiate with this partner ahead of that partner that doesn't.
There usually is a lot of discussion internally … Like every country, they're trying to maximize their negotiating leverage. So it might help to work with one country before another. This does not seem to be an administration like that.
If you're looking at this from the perspective of Vietnam, for example … Vietnam has, in some ways, tried to move closer to the United States over the last number of years than you might have expected, given both its history and its proximity to China. And clearly, from Vietnam's perspective, there is a certain amount of hedging going on, given the part of the world that it is in.
But Vietnam is faced with the question, if you are on the one hand … dealing with an extremely erratic country that doesn't seem to have your interests at heart. And if you're dealing on the other hand with a rather predictable country that also doesn't seem to have your interests at heart, sometimes it can make better sense to go with the more predictable country, because you have less chaos associated with it.
And especially given the really quite extraordinary amount of tariffs that were imposed upon Vietnam.
I think that the local questions that Japan has is whether some of the traditionally difficult relations it has had with neighbors, such as South Korea, may be less important in a world in which the two have a significant degree of common interest. If you're thinking about this from the point of view of exporting powers which have a significant reliance upon high technology of one sort or another, there's actually quite a lot in common in interest between Japan and South Korea and indeed, to that matter, Taiwan.
I do wonder whether, if you're in a world where your sponsor is becoming less predictable, you want to start building up a lot more informal ties very quickly, and figuring out what are the common areas that you can work together on, where you cannot necessarily rely upon the U.S. as much as you used to anymore, it is much more of an unknown quantity.
I think that Japan has … if you see an increased move by countries which are still, to some extent, committed to something like the previous trade regime, here you can think about the European Union. You can also think about Canada, perhaps Australia. If there are moves by these countries, as there appear to be, to try to build up a deeper set of ties among themselves, should Japan become more integrated into them, and to what, how might that negatively affect its relationship with the United States under the current administration.
Equally, it's not impossible that we're going to see a real economic substantial downturn happening in the United States as a result of what's happening.
And that could also really change the strategic situation for Japan quite quickly as well.
I really think we are in extremely chaotic times. It is extremely hard to predict what is going to happen in the world in three months, six months, nine months [or] a year. And it could be that Japan finds itself suddenly in a quite different position … although ambition suggests that there's a goal.
Henry Farrell
Farrell is a professor at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies. Born in Ireland, Farrell is an expert in the international political economy. The co-author of 'Underground Empire: How America Weaponized the World Economy,' Farrell has also contributed to U.S. and European media outlets such as The New York Times.
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Yomiuri Shimbun
an hour ago
- Yomiuri Shimbun
California Gov. Gavin Newsom Says Trump Is Stepping toward Authoritarianism
Joshua Lott/The Washington Post National Guard soldiers stand in front of a federal building as protests continue on Monday following raids by Immigration and Customs Enforcement. LOS ANGELES – The relationship between the leader of the United States and the country's most populous state reached a near-breaking point Monday, as President Donald Trump said that he thought California Gov. Gavin Newsom should be arrested, a claim that Newsom described as an unmistakable step toward authoritarianism. The back-and-forth came as Trump stepped up the military's presence on the streets of Los Angeles, against Newsom's will, as the two men traded recriminations. Trump repeatedly ridiculed Newsom, a Democrat, saying that he is 'grossly incompetent' and had done 'a terrible job.' Asked about a threat made by his border czar Tom Homan to arrest the governor, Trump said, 'I would do it if I were Tom.' 'I think it's great,' Trump added, without specifying any alleged criminal wrongdoing or charges. 'Gavin likes the publicity, but I think it would be a great thing.' 'That's an American president in 2025, threatening a political opponent who happens to be a sitting governor,' Newsom said in an interview Monday. 'That's not with precedent in modern times. That's what we see around the globe in authoritarian regimes.' Newsom's comments reflected a broader frustration for Democratic leaders, who have been unable to counter what they see as an escalation of Trump's antidemocratic actions in his emboldened second term. Newsom has tried all methods: He was a face of the resistance in the first term and a welcoming greeter during Trump's initial visit to California in his second term. All the while, he continued suing Trump, while keeping up a cordial back-channel relationship. On Monday, he sounded like he was at his end with Trump, calling him 'unrestrained' and 'unhinged.' 'Trump is a very different president than his first foray in office,' Newsom said Monday. 'You've seen that as it relates to how he has completely obliterated any oversight from Congress; how he seeks to obliterate oversight from the judicial branch by threatening impeachment of judges and running up to the edge as it relates to court orders.' The newest break in the historically tumultuous relationship between Newsom and Trump unfolded over a chaotic 72-hour period that began with raids by federal immigration officials in Los Angeles on Friday that led to the arrests of 44 people, including two people whom state officials believe to be minors. Trump, who had arrived at his golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey, for the weekend, left a message for Newsom on his cellphone Friday night. The two had spoken intermittently since Trump's inauguration, including during a meeting in the Oval Office in February as Newsom sought tens of billions of dollars in federal funding to help L.A. rebuild after the January wildfires. While they sparred publicly, their interactions in private during both Trump terms were more productive. On Friday, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrests had triggered protests, with the Los Angeles Police Department reporting that agitators had hurled chunks of concrete at law enforcement officers. The Democratic governor assumed that was why Trump was calling. He was hoping to reassure him when they spoke after 1:30 a.m. Eastern time that state and local officials had protests under control. But he could scarcely get in a word. Trump talked about trivial subjects, according to people familiar with the call who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss details of a private conversation. Newsom unsuccessfully tried to steer the president toward serious subjects, including reports that the administration was preparing to terminate California's federal funding. In an interview Monday, Newsom said Trump was 'gracious' but never warned that he was about to federalize the National Guard, as the president later claimed, and never asked about the law enforcement response to that night's protests. Risking complaints from some Democrats that he had been too accommodating, the California governor had been restrained in the months since inauguration, avoiding personal attacks. But by Sunday, when Newsom arrived in Los Angeles, crowds of protesters in the city's downtown had swelled to thousands. California Highway Patrol officers under Newsom's command were arresting people who had blocked the southbound lanes of the 101 Freeway, a major artery through the city, and throwing objects at local law enforcement officers as several Waymo vehicles were set on fire. The gripping and chaotic scene in a Democratic-run city was, in Newsom's view, the kind of made-for-television crisis that Trump had always hoped to manufacture. Newsom, who blamed Trump for the escalation, said Sunday on social media that Trump's actions had diverged into those of 'a dictator, not a President.' 'This is an act of recklessness that quite literally puts people's lives at risk,' Newsom said of Trump's decision to federalize the National Guard. From Trump's perspective, the situation in Los Angeles County had gotten out of control – leaving him no choice but to step in. A White House official briefed on the administration's response to the protests, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to comment publicly, said that the president had hoped that calling Newsom would compel him to take more aggressive law enforcement action – something Trump stressed in the phone call, the official insisted. Throughout Saturday, according to White House officials, the president and his advisers were being briefed about what was happening on the ground – and watching provocative images on social media and television. They saw images of agents with lacerations, and of rocks being thrown at law enforcement vehicles. By around 9 p.m., Trump had signed a memorandum authorizing the National Guard. That decision was announced in the early evening in Los Angeles, a time that a White House official said was designed to deter further protests that evening. 'You watch the same clips as I did. Cars burning all over the place, people rioting,' Trump said on Monday afternoon. He cast himself as the savior of the state, and said he had no choice but to intervene, mocking those who disagreed as 'politically correct.' 'If we didn't do the job, that place would be burning down, just like the houses burned down,' he said, comparing it to other protests like those in Minneapolis in the aftermath of George Floyd's killing. 'There's so many different places where we let it burn. We want to be politically correct. We want it to be nice. We want to be nice to the criminal. And what you're doing is destroying the fabric of our life in this country.' He said that he should be credited. 'And I think Gavin, in his own way, is probably happy I got involved,' Trump said. Later on Monday, a senior administration official said that about 700 active-duty U.S. Marines would be deployed from Camp Pendleton to Los Angeles on Monday night 'in light of increased threats to federal officers and federal buildings.' Newsom called the act 'un-American.' 'U.S. Marines have served honorably across multiple wars in defense of democracy. They are heroes,' Newsom wrote on X. 'They shouldn't be deployed on American soil facing their own countrymen to fulfill the deranged fantasy of a dictatorial President.' While Trump expressed support for arresting Newsom, he did not have an explanation for what crime he thinks the governor committed. 'I think his primary crime is running for governor, because he's done such a bad job,' he said. 'What he's done to that state is like what [Joe] Biden did to this country. And, that's pretty bad.' White House officials later suggested that Trump was serious about his threats to have Newsom arrested. 'No one, regardless of status as elected official is above the law,' a White House official said. 'If Gavin Newsom is obstructing federal law enforcement, he may face consequences.' The relationship between Newsom and Trump, never strong, has long seemed headed this way, according to observers. 'This is a symbiotic relationship right now,' said David Axelrod, a former adviser to Barack Obama, noting that both Trump and Newsom are 'improvisational politicians who are habitually trying to read the room.' 'But at the end of the day, Newsom clearly wants to run for president. And to be president, he has to be the Democratic nominee,' Axelrod said. 'And when this kind of provocation takes place – when the president of the United States is sending Marines to L.A. – yeah, you damn well better have something to say.' Newsom said he would have a hard time keeping up the cordiality. 'He just threatened my arrest. One would assume, or presume, that's the point of no return,' Newsom said. 'I'm constitutionally capable of working with people, even those that call for my arrest. So I remain resolved in that respect, as I remain resolved to have the backs of kids, whose lives are being threatened by his authoritarian tendencies.'


Yomiuri Shimbun
2 hours ago
- Yomiuri Shimbun
700 Marines Deployed to L.A. as Immigration Protests Continue
Joshua Lott/The Washington Post Protesters are seen outside the Metropolitan Detention Center on Monday in Los Angeles. The Pentagon on Monday ordered a battalion of 700 Marines to Los Angeles as protests of the Trump administration's immigration policies spilled into a fourth day, escalating a confrontation between the White House and the country's most populous state. The Marines, summoned from an infantry unit typically trained for overseas warfare, will assist more than 300 National Guard members that President Donald Trump deployed to the city over the weekend, the first wave of roughly 2,100 activated so far for the mission, according to the Defense Department. The deployments follow demonstrations against immigration raids that at times turned violent. The Marines, stationed east of Los Angeles in Twentynine Palms, had started moving out Monday afternoon, a defense official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss ongoing operations. This marks the first time in six decades an American president has ordered such a military intervention without the approval of a state's governor. State and local officials in California – a frequent target of Trump's ire – denounced the move as incendiary. 'This is unprecedented that the president is using the military against his own people in this way,' said Los Angeles City Council member Hugo Soto-Martínez, whose district adjacent to downtown encompasses a range of immigrant communities. Most protests have been peaceful, state and local officials have said, even as they spread to cities across the country. 'U.S. Marines have served honorably across multiple wars in defense of democracy. They are heroes,' California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) said on social media. 'They shouldn't be deployed on American soil facing their own countrymen to fulfill the deranged fantasy of a dictatorial President. This is un-American.' The Marines will deploy from a military base in Twentynine Palms, a three-hour drive east of Los Angeles in the Mojave Desert. They will focus on 'protecting federal personnel and federal property,' the Pentagon said in a statement, and they will partner with National Guard members who have been trained in crowd control and de-escalation. The mobilization is a significant move by the Pentagon. Typically, National Guard members, rather than active-duty troops such as the Marines, are mobilized for civil unrest missions at the behest of governors or the president. The Marines and Guard members under federal orders will serve in a support role and cannot participate in direct immigration or law enforcement operations. That would change if Trump invoked the Insurrection Act, which gives the president broader powers to conduct policing operations with troops under federal control. Troops being sent to Los Angeles are 'trained in de-escalation, crowd control, and standing rules for the use of force,' Northern Command, which oversees operations in North America, said in a statement. The activated units so far are drawn from combat units, not military police personnel, who specialize in civil disturbance response. The move was met with skepticism among some of the protesters in downtown Los Angeles on Monday. Amaris Leon, a 35-year-old lawyer from Sacramento, said he interpreted the deployment of Marines as an effort to set 'the military on civilians for exercising their First Amendment rights.' Trump is trying to rile people up, said Teri Merrick, a retired professor, 'so he can have an excuse to come in and stomp everybody down.' The protests began after a week of immigration raids in Southern California, which resulted in more than 100 arrests at workplaces that neighbors described as normally calm, including a doughnut shop and Home Depot stores. Demonstrators took to the streets in response, lighting the fuse that sparked days of widely broadcasted dust-ups. Portions of the 101 Freeway closed over the weekend when protesters clogged its southbound lanes, snarling already notorious traffic. Protesters hurled rocks at police cruisers, tear gas filled the air and phones captured videos of rioters torching self-driving vehicles, leading one robotaxi company to suspend part of its Los Angeles services. More than 50 protesters have been arrested, according to local law enforcement. The National Guard members had already improved the situation in Los Angeles, Trump said Monday. 'Thank goodness we sent out some wonderful National Guard – they really helped,' he said. 'A lot of problems that we're having out there, they were afraid to do anything. And we sent out the troops, and they've done a fantastic job.' But local officials said the deployment was unnecessary. The chaos from the protests was contained to 'a few streets downtown' that looked 'horrible,' Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass said on CNN. But there has not been, she added, 'citywide civil unrest.' California sued the Trump administration Monday over the deployment of California National Guard members to Los Angeles without Newsom's consent. The fallout from the protests appears to have deepened the political feud between Trump and Newsom, a potential 2028 Democratic hopeful. The Trump administration has been weighing the cancellation of California's federal funding, an unprecedented move that would decimate the state's budget. And Trump endorsed arresting Newsom on Monday after arriving on the South Lawn of the White House. 'I would do it if I were Tom,' Trump told reporters as he returned to the White House, referring to border czar Tom Homan. 'I think it's great. Gavin likes the publicity, but I think it would be a great thing.' Newsom responded minutes later in a social media post on X, calling it 'an unmistakable step toward authoritarianism.' 'The President of the United States just called for the arrest of a sitting Governor. This is a day I hoped I would never see in America. I don't care if you're a Democrat or a Republican this is a line we cannot cross as a nation – this is an unmistakable step toward authoritarianism,' he wrote. After a chaotic weekend, downtown Los Angeles residents woke to a jarring combination of calm streets and graffiti-marred buildings. Just outside the city's core, in the coffee-shop-studded neighborhood of Silver Lake, people casually walked dogs and sipped cortados as the workweek started. Yet the national spotlight remained glued to Hollywood's backyard, which was caught in the crosshairs of dueling political narratives: While right-leaning media looped videos of burning cars and street skirmishes, Democrats insisted that most protesters remained peaceful. Protests spread across the country after the Friday arrest of David Huerta, the 58-year-old head of the Service Employees International Union's California branch. Huerta was arrested after sitting in the path of federal agents targeting Los Angeles warehouse workers, and he now faces a felony conspiracy charge. The Service Employees International Union, which represents thousands of janitors, cooks, security guards and other service workers, organized rallies in more than a dozen states, with members and their supporters condemning immigration-enforcement tactics they cast as inhumane. Huerta was released from custody Monday on a $50,000 bond. Bill Essayli, the U.S. Attorney for the Central District of California, wrote in a post on X that Huerta had 'deliberately obstructed' federal agents who were executing a warrant. 'No one has the right to assault, obstruct, or interfere with federal authorities carrying out their duties,' Essayli wrote. Some Los Angeles residents are bracing for more protests. Christian Frizzell, owner of the downtown Redwood Bar, was trying to decide whether to close early Monday. They usually stay open until 2 a.m. But he noticed a nearby credit union had boarded up its windows in anticipation of more protests. Back in 2020, his bar was damaged during Black Lives Matter protests. Still, he wasn't sure if Marines were the best choice to protect his property. 'It seems like a large escalation,' he said of the coming deployment. 'I wish they would try to cool it down.'


Japan Today
2 hours ago
- Japan Today
Top U.S. universities raced to become global campuses. Under Trump, it's becoming a liability
By COLLIN BINKLEY Three decades ago, foreign students at Harvard University accounted for just 11% of the total student body. Today, they account for 26%. Like other prestigious U.S. universities, Harvard for years has been cashing in on its global cache to recruit the world's best students. Now, the booming international enrollment has left colleges vulnerable to a new line of attack from President Donald Trump. The president has begun to use his control over the nation's borders as leverage in his fight to reshape American higher education. Trump's latest salvo against Harvard uses a broad federal law to bar foreign students from entering the country to attend the campus in Cambridge, Massachusetts. His order applies only to Harvard, but it poses a threat to other universities his administration has targeted as hotbeds of liberalism in need of reform. It's rattling campuses under federal scrutiny, including Columbia University, where foreign students make up 40% of the campus. As the Trump administration stepped up reviews of new student visas last week, a group of Columbia faculty and alumni raised concerns over Trump's gatekeeping powers. 'Columbia's exposure to this 'stroke of pen' risk is uniquely high,' the Stand Columbia Society wrote in a newsletter. People from other countries made up about 6% of all college students in the U.S. in 2023, but they accounted for 27% of the eight schools in the Ivy League, according to an Associated Press analysis of Education Department data. Columbia's 40% was the largest concentration, followed by Harvard and Cornell at about 25%. Brown University had the smallest share at 20%. Other highly selective private universities have seen similar trends, including at Northeastern University and New York University, which each saw foreign enrollment double between 2013 and 2023. Growth at public universities has been more muted. Even at the 50 most selective public schools, foreign students account for about 11% of the student body. America's universities have been widening their doors to foreign students for decades, but the numbers shot upward starting around 2008, as Chinese students came to U.S. universities in rising numbers. It was part of a 'gold rush' in higher education, said William Brustein, who orchestrated the international expansion of several universities. 'Whether you were private or you were public, you had to be out in front in terms of being able to claim you were the most global university," said Brustein, who led efforts at Ohio State University and West Virginia University. The race was driven in part by economics, he said. Foreign students typically aren't eligible for financial aid, and at some schools they pay two or three times the tuition rate charged to U.S. students. Colleges also were eyeing global rankings that gave schools a boost if they recruited larger numbers of foreign students and scholars, he said. But the expansion wasn't equal across all types of colleges — public universities often face pressure from state lawmakers to limit foreign enrollment and keep more seats open for state residents. Private universities don't face that pressure, and many aggressively recruited foreign students as their numbers of U.S. students stayed flat. The college-going rate among American students has changed little for decades, and some have been turned off on college by the rising costs and student debt loads. Proponents of international exchange say foreign students pour billions of dollars into the U.S. economy, and many go on to support the nation's tech industry and other fields in need of skilled workers. Most international students study the STEM fields of science, technology, engineering and math. In the Ivy League, most international growth has been at the graduate level, while undergraduate numbers have seen more modest increases. Foreign graduate students make up more than half the students at Harvard's government and design schools, along with five of Columbia's schools. The Ivy League has been able to outpace other schools in large part because of its reputation, Brustein said. He recalls trips to China and India, where he spoke with families that could recite where each Ivy League school sat in world rankings. 'That was the golden calf for these families. They really thought, 'If we could just get into these schools, the rest of our lives would be on easy street,'' he said. Last week, Trump said he thought Harvard should cap its foreign students to about 15%. 'We have people who want to go to Harvard and other schools, they can't get in because we have foreign students there,' Trump said at a news conference. The university called Trump's latest action banning entry into the country to attend Harvard 'yet another illegal retaliatory step taken by the Administration in violation of Harvard's First Amendment rights.' In a lawsuit challenging the Trump administration's previous attempt to block international students at Harvard, the university said its foreign student population was the result of 'a painstaking, decades-long project' to attract the most qualified international students. Losing access to student visas would immediately harm the school's mission and reputation, it said. 'In our interconnected global economy," the school said, 'a university that cannot welcome students from all corners of the world is at a competitive disadvantage.' © Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.