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ON THE campaign trail, Donald Trump has been saying he would be a “dictator” on the first day of his second presidency. Mr Trump may be half-joking when he announces this plan to cheering throngs. But the Republican front-runner has a track record of swelling presidential power past its traditional limits, from declaring a national emergency to build a wall on the southern border, to withholding his financial records and White House communications related to the January 6th riot.
On February 6th Mr Trump’s latest pretension—that years after leaving office he is immune from criminal prosecution for actions he took as president—met with thorough rejection by a federal appeals court in Washington, DC. “Former President Trump has become citizen Trump,” the ruling read, “with all of the defences of any other criminal defendant.” The three-judge panel that dismantled Mr Trump’s case included two appointed by Joe Biden and a staunch conservative appointed by George H.W. Bush.
Mr Trump’s pitch for immunity stems from the federal case brought by Jack Smith, the special counsel, concerning the former president’s attempt to overturn the results of the 2020 election. The appeals-court hearing, which began on January 9th after a district-court judge also ruled that Mr Trump did not enjoy the “divine right of kings”, exposed the extraordinary nature of the argument. When asked whether, for example, a president who had a political rival assassinated by SEAL Team Six could face a legal reckoning after leaving office, Mr Trump’s lawyer answered no—unless Congress had impeached and convicted him first. The judges were unimpressed. Making former presidents wholly immune from criminal exposure, they wrote, would abrogate “the primary constitutional duty of the judicial branch to do justice in criminal prosecutions”.
Mr Trump’s lawyers had argued that presidents might be “chilled” into inaction if a blanket of immunity does not await them upon leaving office (a claim Mr Trump repeated after the ruling). And yet, wrote the judges, past presidents have always “understood themselves to be subject to impeachment and criminal liability”, so any purported chilling effect has been in place throughout American history.
Gerald Ford, for example, pardoned Richard Nixon after he resigned—which was necessary only because both men knew that Nixon faced criminal prosecution for his involvement in the Watergate scandal. And Bill Clinton “agreed to a five-year suspension of his law licence and a $25,000 fine” to avoid having criminal charges filed against him after his presidency. Even if some presidents were to temper their actions through fear of “vexatious litigation”, the court wrote, that risk is outweighed by the public interest in holding former chief executives responsible for criminal misdeeds.
After expediting the briefing and oral argument, the DC circuit took nearly a month to issue its ruling. That has delayed Mr Trump’s trial for election interference, originally due to begin on March 4th. Yet the 57-page decision—presented by a united front of ideologically diverse judges—may ultimately help get the trial started in time for a verdict before the presidential election in November.
One more tribunal could stand in the way, however. The DC circuit panel put its ruling on hold until February 12th to give Mr Trump time to request a stay, and ask for full review, by the Supreme Court. If the justices decline, the case will return to the district court and the trial could begin in the spring. But more likely, in a season rife with fraught election-year battles, is an accelerated trip to the Supreme Court.■
Stay on top of American politics with The US in brief, our daily newsletter with fast analysis of the most important electoral stories, and Checks and Balance, a weekly note from our Lexington columnist that examines the state of American democracy and the issues that matter to voters.■
Correction, February 7th 2024: An earlier version of this article mistakenly referred to Richard Nixon as Gerald Ford’s running mate. Sorry.
BERLIN, GERMANY – FEBRUARY 24: Robert Habeck, chancellor candidate of the German Greens Party, speaks to the media the day after German parliamentary elections on February 24, 2025 in Berlin, Germany. The Greens came in fourth place with 11.6% of the vote, down 2.9% from the previous election. (Photo by Sean Gallup/Getty Images)
Sean Gallup | Getty Images News | Getty Images
U.S. President Donald Trump will “buckle under pressure” and alter his tariff policies if Europe bands together, acting German economy minister Robert Habeck said Thursday.
“That is what I see, that Donald Trump will buckle under pressure, that he corrects his announcements under pressure, but the logical consequence is that he then also needs to feel the pressure,” he said during a press conference, according to a CNBC translation.
“And this pressure now needs to be unfolded, from Germany, from Europe in the alliance with other countries, and then we will see who is the stronger one in this arm wrestle,” Habeck said.
Elsewhere, outgoing German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said he believed the latest tariff decisions by Trump were “fundamentally wrong,” according to a CNBC translation.
The measures are an attack on the global trade order and will result in suffering for the global economy, Scholz said.
On Wednesday, Trump imposed 20% levies on the European Union, including on the bloc’s foremost economy Germany, as he signed a sweeping and aggressive “reciprocal tariff” policy.
Germany is widely regarded as one of the countries likely to be most impacted by Trump’s tariffs, given its heavy economic reliance on trade.
This is a developing story, please check back for updates.
THESE DAYS are dire and dour for Democrats. But April 1st brought a brief reprieve—and not because of jokes. That was the day that the most expensive judicial election in American history in the battleground state of Wisconsin ended in a decisive triumph for the left-leaning candidate. It had drawn $100m of spending, including an estimated $25m from Elon Musk who also, perhaps unhelpfully, personally campaigned in the state. The same day, two special elections in Florida for vacant congressional seats took place in safe Republican districts. Although they did not win, Democrats improved their margins by 17 and 20 percentage points compared with the general elections held just five months ago. Cory Booker, a Democratic senator from New Jersey, staged a one-man protest on the floor of the Senate, excoriating President Donald Trump’s administration for 25 hours straight—a stunt, to be sure, but one that demonstrated proof of life in a party that supporters worried had gone limp.
U.S. President Donald Trump speaks during a “Make America Wealthy Again” trade announcement event in the Rose Garden at the White House on April 2, 2025 in Washington, DC.
Chip Somodevilla | Getty Images
Markets have turned their sights on how U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration arrived at the figures behind the sweeping tariffs on U.S. imports declared Wednesday, which sent global financial markets tumbling and sparked concerns worldwide.
Trump and the White House shared a series of charts on social media detailing the tariff rates they say other countries impose on the U.S. Those purported rates include the countries’ “Currency Manipulation and Trade Barriers.”
An adjacent column shows the new U.S. tariff rates on each country, as well as the European Union.
Chart of reciprocal tariffs.
Courtesy: Donald Trump via Truth Social
Those rates are, in most cases, roughly half of what the Trump administration claims each country has “charged” the U.S. CNBC could not independently verify the U.S. administration’s data on these duties.
It didn’t take long for market observers to try and reverse engineer the formula — toconfusing results.Many, including journalist and author James Surowiecki, said the U.S. appeared to have divided the trade deficit by imports from a given country to arrive at tariff rates for individual countries.
Such methodology doesn’t necessarily align with the conventional approach to calculate tariffs and would imply the U.S. would have only looked at the trade deficit in goods and ignored trade in services.
“The formula is about trade imbalances with the U.S. rather than reciprocal tariffs in the sense of tariff level or non-tariff level distortions. This makes it very difficult for Asian, particularly the poorer Asian countries, to meet US demand to reduce tariffs in the short-term as the benchmark is buying more American goods than they export to the U.S., ” according to Trinh Nguyen, senior economist of emerging Asia at Natixis.
“Given that U.S. goods are much more expensive, and the purchasing power is lower for countries targeted with the highest levels of tariffs, such option is not optimal. Vietnam, for example, stands out in having the 4th largest trade surplus with the U.S., and has already lowered tariffs versus the U.S. ahead of tariff announcement without any reprieve,” Nguyen said.
The U.S. also appeared to have applied a 10% levy for regions where it is running a trade surplus.
The Office of the U.S. Trade Representative laid out its approach on its website, which appeared somewhat similar to what cyber sleuths had already figured out, barring a few differences.
The U.S.T.R. also included estimates for the elasticity of imports to import prices—in other words, how sensitive demand for foreign goods is to prices—and the passthrough of higher tariffs into higher prices of imported goods.
“While individually computing the trade deficit effects of tens of thousands of tariff, regulatory, tax and other policies in each country is complex, if not impossible, their combined effects can be proxied by computing the tariff level consistent with driving bilateral trade deficits to zero. If trade deficits are persistent because of tariff and non-tariff policies and fundamentals, then the tariff rate consistent with offsetting these policies and fundamentals is reciprocal and fair,” the website reads.
This screenshot of the U.S.T.R. webpage shows the methodology and formula that was used in greater detail:
A screenshot from the website of the Office of the United States Trade Representative.
Some analysts acknowledged that the U.S. government’s methodology could give it more wiggle room to reach an agreement.
“All I can say is that the opaqueness surrounding the tariff numbers may add some flexibility in making deals, but it could come at a cost to US credibility,” according to Rob Subbaraman, head of global macro research at Nomura.
— CNBC’s Kevin Breuninger contributed to this piece.