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Toronto Sun
22 minutes ago
- Toronto Sun
JONAH GOLDBERG: Why MAGA's ideologues can't always get what they want
U.S. President Donald Trump speaks to reporters in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, D.C., Wednesday, July 16, 2025. Photo by Anna Moneymaker / Getty Images MAGA has a problem, in the form of Donald Trump. Put simply: MAGA wants to define what MAGA (or 'America first') means, and Trump wants it to mean whatever he says at any given moment. This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. THIS CONTENT IS RESERVED FOR SUBSCRIBERS ONLY Subscribe now to read the latest news in your city and across Canada. Unlimited online access to articles from across Canada with one account. Get exclusive access to the Toronto Sun ePaper, an electronic replica of the print edition that you can share, download and comment on. Enjoy insights and behind-the-scenes analysis from our award-winning journalists. Support local journalists and the next generation of journalists. Daily puzzles including the New York Times Crossword. SUBSCRIBE TO UNLOCK MORE ARTICLES Subscribe now to read the latest news in your city and across Canada. Unlimited online access to articles from across Canada with one account. Get exclusive access to the Toronto Sun ePaper, an electronic replica of the print edition that you can share, download and comment on. Enjoy insights and behind-the-scenes analysis from our award-winning journalists. Support local journalists and the next generation of journalists. Daily puzzles including the New York Times Crossword. REGISTER / SIGN IN TO UNLOCK MORE ARTICLES Create an account or sign in to continue with your reading experience. Access articles from across Canada with one account. Share your thoughts and join the conversation in the comments. Enjoy additional articles per month. Get email updates from your favourite authors. THIS ARTICLE IS FREE TO READ REGISTER TO UNLOCK. Create an account or sign in to continue with your reading experience. Access articles from across Canada with one account Share your thoughts and join the conversation in the comments Enjoy additional articles per month Get email updates from your favourite authors Don't have an account? Create Account I should offer a little definitional clarity and political nuance. Make America Great Again means different things to different people. The Trump coalition is not monolithic, it contains factions that do not necessarily consider themselves to be MAGA. But as shorthand, MAGA is an identifiably distinct bloc on the right, and it's the dominant faction in the broader GOP coalition. Its internal diversity notwithstanding, it still has a worldview or ideology. And the MAGA faithful are increasingly frustrated by the fact that Trump doesn't always share, or prioritize, that ideology. They believed that if you could just 'let Trump be Trump' he would follow their conception of MAGA. In Ronald Reagan's first term, many movement conservatives were frustrated by what they perceived as the Gipper's drift toward centrism. They blamed moderates in the administration. 'Let Reagan be Reagan' became a rallying cry on the right. Your noon-hour look at what's happening in Toronto and beyond. By signing up you consent to receive the above newsletter from Postmedia Network Inc. Please try again This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. 'It's a piece of conventional wisdom on the new American right that Donald Trump struggled in his first term because he hired the wrong people — old-think Bush Republicans, figures like Rex Tillerson and Steven Mnuchin, who didn't have a populist bone in their bodies,' news website Semafor's Ben Smith offers in an astute analysis. As a result, Smith continues, 'Trump's most passionate supporters weren't going to make that mistake again. They created initiatives like American Moment, Project 2025, and others aimed at grooming and credentialing a cadre of MAGA appointees. When Trump took office, the America Firsters moved en masse into the Department of Defense. Big Tech avengers seized the antitrust apparatus. Conspiracy-minded podcasters took over the FBI. This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. 'And yet — just as Trump often ignored his conventional advisers in the first term, he's stunned loyalists by sweeping aside this carefully assembled apparat in 2025.' Trump said as much to the Atlantic magazine last month: 'I think I'm the one that decides' what 'America first' means. 'It turns out that personnel isn't policy,' the executive director of the American Conservative, Curt Mills, 'glumly' told Smith. The idea that 'personnel is policy' is another Reagan-era mantra; put Reaganites in important positions and you'll get Reaganite policies. Putting Trumpists in powerful positions doesn't yield the same results. Immigration hawks have been panicking over the president's suggestion that farm and hotel workers should be excluded from his deportation schemes. As Trump told Fox News, 'I'm on both sides of the thing.' Foreign policy 'restrainers' were beclowned by his support of Israel's strikes on Iran and his apparent about-face on helping Ukraine. This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. On China, Trump's been a hawk as promised, except when he hasn't, allowing Nvidia to sell chips to China, and ignoring the law by refusing to sell or shutter TikTok. Then there's the Jeffrey Epstein fiasco, which has bedeviled Trump for weeks. It's intensity and durability can best be explained by the fact that it divides those who define Trumpism as loyalty to Trump and those who believe that loyalty would be, must be rewarded by a cleansing of corrupt globalist elite — or something. In short, there is no 'Trumpism' that is an analogue to Reaganism. Reaganism is a philosophical approach. What defines Trump's reign is better understood as a psychological phenomenon both as an explanation of his behaviour and of his fans' cultish and performative loyalty. To the extent Trump has a philosophy it is to follow his instincts, which are most powerfully informed first by his own ego but also the dramaturgy of professional wrestling, reality TV and Norman Vincent Peale's prosperity gospel. This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. He's said many times that he considers unpredictability a virtue in itself, which by definition means he is going to disappoint anyone who expects philosophical coherence. When Trump was a bull in a china shop, the people most excited by the sound of breaking vases and dishware assumed there was a broader method to the madness. But now the same people are learning that Trump won't be saddled by his fans any more than he is by norms. This was always going to be the case (as I noted in 2017 ), but what adds to MAGA's frustration is that anyone can see and copy the bull-handling techniques that are most likely to work. Compliment him, call him 'daddy,' celebrate his genius and expertise, and you too can manipulate him with at least moderate success. Perhaps most significant, it's becoming clear that a movement defined by loyalty to a mercurial personality is bound to split apart once that personality leaves the stage — if not sooner. — Jonah Goldberg is editor-in-chief of The Dispatch and the host of The Remnant podcast. His Twitter handle is @JonahDispatch. Read More Toronto Blue Jays Columnists Canada Sunshine Girls Toronto & GTA
Globe and Mail
26 minutes ago
- Globe and Mail
Stocks in play: Bausch + Lomb Corporation
Today announced its second-quarter 2025 financial results. Revenue of $1.278 Billion. GAAP Net Loss of $62 Million. Bausch + Lomb Corporation shares are trading down $0.43 at $19.74.
Winnipeg Free Press
an hour ago
- Winnipeg Free Press
From Laos to Brazil, Trump's tariffs leave a lot of losers. But even the winners will pay a price
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump's tariff onslaught this week left a lot of losers – from small, poor countries like Laos and Algeria to wealthy U.S. trading partners like Canada and Switzerland. They're now facing especially hefty taxes – tariffs – on the products they export to the United States starting Aug. 7. The closest thing to winners may be the countries that caved to Trump's demands — and avoided even more pain. But it's unclear whether anyone will be able to claim victory in the long run — even the United States, the intended beneficiary of Trump's protectionist policies. 'In many respects, everybody's a loser here,'' said Barry Appleton, co-director of the Center for International Law at the New York Law School. Barely six months after he returned to the White House, Trump has demolished the old global economic order. Gone is one built on agreed-upon rules. In its place is a system in which Trump himself sets the rules, using America's enormous economic power to punish countries that won't agree to one-sided trade deals and extracting huge concessions from the ones that do. 'The biggest winner is Trump,' said Alan Wolff, a former U.S. trade official and deputy director-general at the World Trade Organization. 'He bet that he could get other countries to the table on the basis of threats, and he succeeded – dramatically.'' Everything goes back to what Trump calls 'Liberation Day'' – April 2 – when the president announced 'reciprocal'' taxes of up to 50% on imports from countries with which the United States ran trade deficits and 10% 'baseline'' taxes on almost everyone else. He invoked a 1977 law to declare the trade deficit a national emergency that justified his sweeping import taxes. That allowed him to bypass Congress, which traditionally has had authority over taxes, including tariffs — all of which is now being challenged in court. Winners will still pay higher tariffs than before Trump took office Trump retreated temporarily after his Liberation Day announcement triggered a rout in financial markets and suspended the reciprocal tariffs for 90 days to give countries a chance to negotiate. Eventually, some of them did, caving to Trump's demands to pay what four months ago would have seemed unthinkably high tariffs for the privilege of continuing to sell into the vast American market. The United Kingdom agreed to 10% tariffs on its exports to the United States — up from 1.3% before Trump amped up his trade war with the world. The U.S. demanded concessions even though it had run a trade surplus, not a deficit, with the UK for 19 straight years. The European Union and Japan accepted U.S. tariffs of 15%. Those are much higher than the low single-digit rates they paid last year — but lower than the tariffs he was threatening (30% on the EU and 25% on Japan). Also cutting deals with Trump and agreeing to hefty tariffs were Pakistan, South Korea, Vietnam, Indonesia and the Philippines. Even countries that saw their tariffs lowered from April without reaching a deal are still paying much higher tariffs than before Trump took office. Angola's tariff, for instance, dropped to 15% from 32% in April, but in 2022 it was less than 1.5%. And while Trump administration cut Taiwan's tariff to 20% from 32% in April, the pain will still be felt. '20% from the beginning has not been our goal, we hope that in further negotiations we will get a more beneficial and more reasonable tax rate,' Taiwan's president Lai Ching-te told reporters in Taipei Friday. Trump also agreed to reduce the tariff on the tiny southern African kingdom of Lesotho to 15% from the 50% he'd announced in April, but the damage may already have been done there. Bashing Brazil, clobbering Canada, shellacking the Swiss Countries that didn't knuckle under — and those that found other ways to incur Trump's wrath — got hit harder. Even some of the poor were not spared. Laos' annual economic output comes to $2,100 per person and Algeria's $5,600 — versus America's $75,000. Nonetheless, Laos got rocked with a 40% tariff and Algeria with a 30% levy. Trump slammed Brazil with a 50% import tax largely because he didn't like the way it was treating former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, who is facing trial for trying to lose his electoral defeat in 2022. Never mind that the U.S. has exported more to Brazil than it's imported every year since 2007. Trump's decision to plaster a 35% tariff on longstanding U.S. ally Canada was partly designed to threaten Ottawa for saying it would recognize a Palestinian state. Trump is a staunch supporter of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Switzerland was clobbered with a 39% import tax — even higher than the 31% Trump originally announced on April 2. 'The Swiss probably wish that they had camped in Washington' to make a deal, said Wolff, now senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics. 'They're clearly not at all happy.'' Fortunes may change if Trump's tariffs are upended in court. Five American businesses and 12 states are suing the president, arguing that his Liberation Day tariffs exceeded his authority under the 1977 law. In May, the U.S. Court of International Trade, a specialized court in New York, agreed and blocked the tariffs, although the government was allowed to continue collecting them while its appeal wend its way through the legal system, and may likely end up at the U.S. Supreme Court. In a hearing Thursday, the judges on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit sounded skeptical about Trump's justifications for the tariffs. 'If (the tariffs) get struck down, then maybe Brazil's a winner and not a loser,'' Appleton said. Paying more for knapsacks and video games Trump portrays his tariffs as a tax on foreign countries. But they are actually paid by import companies in the U.S. who try to pass along the cost to their customers via higher prices. True, tariffs can hurt other countries by forcing their exporters to cut prices and sacrifice profits — or risk losing market share in the United States. But economists at Goldman Sachs estimate that overseas exporters have absorbed just one-fifth of the rising costs from tariffs, while Americans and U.S. businesses have picked up the most of the tab. Walmart, Procter & Gamble, Ford, Best Buy, Adidas, Nike, Mattel and Stanley Black & Decker, have all hiked prices due to U.S. tariffs Monday Mornings The latest local business news and a lookahead to the coming week. 'This is a consumption tax, so it disproportionately affects those who have lower incomes,' Appleton said. 'Sneakers, knapsacks … your appliances are going to go up. Your TV and electronics are going to go up. Your video game devices, consoles are going to up because none of those are made in America.'' Trump's trade war has pushed the average U.S. tariff from 2.5% at the start of 2025 to 18.3% now, the highest since 1934, according to the Budget Lab at Yale University. And that will impose a $2,400 cost on the average household, the lab estimates. 'The U.S. consumer's a big loser,″ Wolff said. ____ AP Economics Writer Christopher Rugaber contributed to this story.
