Skyline Happenings

Commentary by Heather Cox Richardson

By the end of 2024, inflation in the U.S., which had soared in the aftermath of the Covid-19 lockdowns, was almost back to the Federal Reserve’s goal of 2%. Even so, during the 2024 presidential campaign, candidate Donald Trump promised he would bring prices down on Day One, beginning with energy prices, thanks to new high tariffs, business deregulation, and tax cuts.

It was a year ago today, just ten days after President Donald Trump’s “Liberation Day” tariff announcement, that Trump’s senior counselor for trade and manufacturing Peter Navarro told the Fox News Channel that “90 [trade] deals in 90 days is possible. The boss is going to be the chief negotiator. Nothing’s done without him looking very carefully at it—he has such a fine attention to detail.”

Trump’s “Liberation Day” tore up the free trade principles on which leaders after World War II based the international order that promoted stability and prosperity. In their place, Trump first declared an emergency to take the power to manage tariffs away from Congress, then used that power to elicit favorable treatment for his own businesses or bribes from those who needed the tariffs on their products lowered.

The Supreme Court declared those tariffs unconstitutional on February 20, and later that day Trump claimed the right to impose tariffs under Section 122 of the Trade Act of 1974, which authorizes tariffs to address “large and serious balance-of-payments deficits.” Trump was the first to use this law, and his use of it has already been challenged.

In the meantime, the administration has not begun the process of refunding the approximately $175 billion owed to the importers who paid the illegal tariffs, but says it will begin that process on April 20. Democrats have introduced bills to refund the costs of the tariffs passed on to consumers. The money from illegal tariffs is accumulating about $23 million a day in interest, to be paid for by taxpayers.

In mid-March, Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell noted that inflation was rising. He explained that “some big chunk of that, between a half and three-quarters ​is actually tariffs, so we’re looking for progress on that” once Trump’s tariffs move through the system.

Statistics released by the Labor Department on Friday showed that Trump’s war with Iran has pushed inflation to 3.3%. That’s the fastest rate of growth in almost two years, tripling the 0.3% rate in February, when inflation was 2.4%. Gasoline prices rose 21.2%, a record.

Economist Heather Long told Alicia Wallace of CNN: “It’s going to get a lot worse before there’s any relief. Even if the war on Iran ends in two weeks, and there’s magically an agreement, inflation will continue to rise for months to come.” She continued: “We haven’t seen it come through with food yet, in airfares—those are clearly going to go higher—and in transit costs. It’s just a matter of time.” She added: “We almost forget the tariffs, because we’re all paying attention to the gas, but it’s a good reminder that part of the issue here is we’re piling on top of what was already rising.”

Those energy costs are going to continue to skyrocket until the Strait of Hormuz, through which about 20% of the world’s oil is transported, reopens for traffic. After strikes from both the U.S. and Israel costing the lives of 13 U.S. service members and countless Iranian and Lebanese civilians, and more than $1 billion a day, Iran has closed the strait for all but a few vessels from favored nations. In negotiating to reopen the strait, the U.S. is demanding terms that are significantly weaker than the ones Iran agreed to in 2015 during negotiation with the Barack Obama administration.

The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) between Iran and the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council—China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States, together with Germany and the European Union—took 20 months to hash out. The agreement constrained Iran’s nuclear program in exchange for a relaxation of sanctions that would let Iran recover about $100 billion of assets frozen in overseas banks.

Yesterday Vice President J.D. Vance, Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, and Trump’s special envoy for the Middle East Steve Witkoff were in Islamabad, Pakistan, to negotiate with Iran. According to Vance, their goal was to get Iran to stop its quest for a nuclear weapon, although both Kushner and Witkoff have deep financial ties to the Middle East and have been openly courting investments there during negotiations. And yet these leaders of the U.S. delegation, who have no experience in diplomacy, announced after only 21 hours that they could not reach an agreement and were leaving.

At just about the same moment Vance, Kushner, and Witkoff left the negotiations, Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio were watching an Ultimate Fighting Championship match in Miami. Earlier, Trump had said to reporters that he didn’t care if the team in Islamabad reached an agreement. “We win, regardless,” he said. “We’ve defeated them militarily.” The fact that the president had the U.S. secretary of state with him at a UFC event while talks were breaking down in Islamabad showed Trump’s disdain for the State Department, as well as his attempt to play Vance and Rubio off against each other as each vies for Trump’s endorsement as the inheritor of MAGA.

Today Trump announced that the U.S. military will blockade the Strait of Hormuz, sending the price of oil surging.

It is unclear what the president hopes to accomplish by blockading the strait. He told Maria Bartiromo of the Fox News Channel his new policy is “called ‘all in and all out.’ There’ll be a time when we’ll have ’em all come in, and all come out, but it won’t be a percentage. It won’t be a friend of yours, like, a country that’s your ally or a country that’s your friend; it’s all or nothing. And that’ll be, uh, that won’t be in too long a distance. No, we’re, uh, just bringing the ships up. We got a lot of ships, so we’re bringing them up. We think that numerous countries are gonna be helping us with this also, but we’re putting on a complete blockade. We’re not gonna let Iran make money on selling oil to people that they like and not people that they don’t like, or whatever it is. It’s gonna be all or none, and that’s the way it is, and it’ll be, you saw what we did with Venezuela. It’ll be something very similar to that, but at a higher level.”

U.S. Central Command, overseeing the U.S. military operation in Iran, announced today that it would “begin implementing a blockade of all maritime traffic entering and exiting Iranian ports on April 13…in accordance with the President’s proclamation.”

Trump’s promise to voters that he would lower prices, along with his crusade against immigrants, attacks on education and the courts, and vow to resurrect a patriarchy in which white Christian men would dominate women and people of color, was closely patterned on the “illiberal democracy” of Viktor Orbán in Hungary. MAGA Republicans embraced Orbán as the leader of a movement to replace democracy with an authoritarianism that empowered the far right.

MAGA Republicans invited Orbán to speak at the Conservative Political Action Conference, and media figure Tucker Carlson interviewed him in Hungary. His destruction of democracy in Hungary provided the blueprint for Project 2025, with Heritage Foundation president Kevin Roberts building close ties to Orbán’s institutions.

But Orbán’s vows to reinstate traditional values in Hungary produced higher prices and profound corruption. His corruption as well as his evident attempts to make Hungary subordinate to Russia’s president Vladimir Putin infuriated Hungarians, whose hatred for Russia runs deep, especially after that affinity was recently revealed to be actual promises to be “at your service” “in any matter where I can be of assistance.”

Although Orbán’s political party has skewed governance in Hungary to make it hard for him to lose at the polls, as well as censoring the media, Hungarians turned out today in record numbers—77% of registered voters—and gave Orbán’s opposition party more than two thirds of the seats in the parliament, a supermajority that will let the opposition undo some of the changes Orbán’s party made to cement their power. Orbán’s defeat means that the parliament will name opposition leader Péter Magyar, a former Orbán loyalist, as prime minister.

“We have done it,” Magyar told a crowd after Orbán conceded. “We have liberated Hungary and have taken back our country.” European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen posted on social media: “Hungary has chosen Europe. Europe has always chosen Hungary. A country reclaims its European path. The Union grows stronger.”

Along with other right-wing leaders, both Trump and Vance had worked for Orbán’s victory in the election, with Vance actually traveling to Hungary to urge voters to turn out for Orbán’s party. Orbán’s defeat is a major blow to the MAGA belief that the right-wing forces opposing liberal democracy are the vanguard of an unstoppable movement blessed by God.

Trump responded to Orbán’s defeat with a long screed attacking Pope Leo XIV, who has spoken out against the religious justification for wars, a statement widely interpreted as commentary on the Trump administration’s claim that the war in Iran is a holy war. “God does not bless any conflict,” the Pope posted on Friday. “Anyone who is a disciple of Christ, the Prince of Peace, is never on the side of those who once wielded the sword and today drop bombs.”

Trump tonight posted on social media, in part: “I don’t want a Pope who criticizes the President of the United States because I’m doing exactly what I was elected, IN A LANDSLIDE, to do, setting Record Low Numbers in Crime, and creating the Greatest Stock Market in History.” Trump suggested the Pope was elevated to the papacy only “because he was an American, and they thought that would be the best way to deal with President Donald J. Trump. If I wasn’t in the White House, Leo wouldn’t be in the Vatican.” He wrote “Leo should get his act together as Pope, use Common Sense, stop catering to the Radical Left, and focus on being a Great Pope, not a Politician.”

Today is Orthodox Easter, and about 45 minutes after attacking the Pope, Trump posted an image of himself in the place of Jesus, apparently healing a sick man in a bed, surrounded by a soldier, a nurse, a woman praying, and an older man. Behind him are the Statue of Liberty, the Lincoln Memorial, and a giant American flag, while in the sky are two eagles, three fighter jets, soldiers, and what seems to be a monster.

Amid popular revulsion at what people are calling heresy and blasphemy, former U.S. representative Marjorie Taylor Greene wrote: “It’s more than blasphemy. It’s an Antichrist spirit.”

A minute after posting the image of himself as Jesus, Trump posted an image of a Trump tower on the moon.