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The House of Representatives just gave Ukraine the best news it has had for a year

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12 months ago

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JUST ONE WEEK ago, hope looked fanciful. President Joe Biden’s pitch to spend $100bn on aid for America’s allies under threat—Israel, Taiwan and especially Ukraine—had languished in Congress for six months since it was proposed in October 2023. The dithering had consequences. Ukrainian soldiers, forced to ration ammunition, are being pummelled by Russians with an artillery advantage of five to one.  America’s senior general in Europe warned that they would soon be outgunned by a margin of ten to one. Bill Burns, the CIA director, warned on April 18th that, without any more aid, “there is a very real risk that the Ukrainians could lose on the battlefield by the end of 2024.”

The man needed to see the necessary national-security budget bill through, Mike Johnson, the Republican speaker of the House, seemed unfit for the task. Thrust into the role from relative obscurity six months ago after his loud, isolationist colleagues defenestrated their previous leader, Kevin McCarthy, Mr Johnson lacked leadership experience. He had only a razor-thin parliamentary majority, had voted repeatedly against Ukraine funding himself and faced the threat of regicide from his own side if he changed his mind. For months he seemed paralysed and indecisive. And yet on April 20th, under Mr Johnson’s leadership, the House of Representatives met the moment, passing the budget bill through extraordinary parliamentary manoeuvring with large, bipartisan majorities in defiance of the isolationist faction of the Republican Party. Even though a majority of his own party voted against additional aid for Ukraine, Mr Johnson secured its passage with unanimous Democratic support. The isolationists managed to delay America’s support for its allies for six months, but ultimately could not defeat it.

Mr Johnson’s courage— what even his Democratic opponents have described as his Churchillian moment, may have come about for three reasons. First, Mr Johnson became haunted by the briefings he received as one of the congressional leaders in the Gang of Eight, who can receive highly classified intelligence. “I really do believe the intel and the briefings that we’ve gotten,” he said in recent remarks to the press. “I believe that Xi [Jinping] and Vladimir Putin and Iran really are an axis of evil.”

Second, Mr Johnson seemed to realise that his turn in power was destined to be brief, regardless of his actions. Marjorie Taylor Greene, an irrepressibly isolationist Republican congresswoman who seems to believe that Mr Putin is fighting on the side of Christianity against Ukraine, filed a “motion to vacate” (or sack) Mr Johnson after he passed a bill to keep the federal government open with Democratic votes. The speaker could have laboured in fear of such a threat or, as he daringly did, strike a bargain with Democrats to support him in exchange for bringing up the foreign-aid bill.

Third, Mr Johnson may have cleverly secured the tacit blessing of Donald Trump by paying a flattering visit to Mar-a-Lago last weekend. It did not hurt that one of Mr Trump’s ideas, of labelling economic aid to Ukraine’s government as a loan instead of a grant, was incorporated. Rather than urge his fellow Republicans to vote against the bill, Mr Trump only griped that Ukraine’s survival “should be much more important to Europe than to us but it is also important to us!”

The House was the last significant hurdle. Chuck Schumer, the Democratic Senate majority leader, expects to hold a vote on the combined package on Tuesday. Because the Senate overwhelmingly passed a very similar aid package in late February, it should do so again. Mr Biden is certain to sign it into law.

The consequences for Ukraine will be nearly immediate, preventing serious setbacks on the battlefield in the near term and undercutting Russia’s long-term belief that its war economy—it is devoting at least 6% of GDP to defence—is an unstoppable juggernaut. America is planning to send $61bn to Ukraine in total. The vast majority of that will be spent on lethal aid by replenishing American military stockpiles, allowing more to be given away, and procuring new weapons and ammunition from American arms firms. The first priority is desperately needed shells. An American three-star general has already been assigned the job of organising arms deliveries, subject to the vote. The Pentagon should be able to start getting shells to Ukraine within two weeks, reckons Michael Kofman of the Carnegie Endowment, a think-tank, and can supply enough to last for a year or so. Larger weapons systems will take much longer to ship; some still need to be ordered, let alone manufactured. The hope is that it will be enough to fend off a larger-scale Russian offensive that Kyrylo Budanov, the head of Ukraine’s military-intelligence service, has said he expects in June.

Ukraine has other looming problems, though. Its stock of air-defence interceptor missiles, fired from a mix of American, European and Soviet-era launchers, has dwindled. Russian attack jets have recently been providing close air support to troops with seemingly little risk of being shot down. America’s Patriot missile-defence systems are in high demand elsewhere, including Israel, and production is low. At the same time, Russia is deploying effective new weapons. On April 11th it successfully launched an attack on a thermal power station in Kyiv using a Kh-69 stealth cruise missile that eluded a Patriot interceptor. Even with enough kit, Ukraine confronts a serious manpower disadvantage compared with Russia. This month Volodymyr Zelensky, Ukraine’s president, reduced the age for conscription to the armed forces to 25 despite the considerable unpopularity of that measure.

Although the provisions for Ukraine are the most important, the other bits passed by the House are consequential, too. Progressive Democrats strenuously objected to the $16bn in military aid for Israel, because of the dire humanitarian conditions in Gaza. Much of this spending would replenish defensive weapons like those used by Israel’s Iron Dome, but it also provides billions for new offensive weapons. American authorities would be given the ability to seize $5bn in Russian sovereign assets that have been frozen since the start of the war and transfer them to Ukraine to help defray the cost of defending itself. Riding along with the bill is a hotly debated law that would force the sale of TikTok, a time-sucking app, to a non-Chinese owner within the next year.

Seeing all of this through will be the legacy-defining achievement of Mr Johnson. Ukraine will get the ammunition and weapons systems (including, perhaps, more long-range ATACMS) that it needs to weather a Russian offensive—at least until the next president is sworn in next year. Many feared that a Trump victory would force Ukraine to accept either defeat or a huge territorial loss in 2025. Without congressional action, though, that might have happened even while Mr Biden remained president. Mr Johnson’s reward for defying members of his own party is unlikely to be more power—some are already speculating that his speakership might be over within a matter of weeks. “I could make a selfish decision and do something that’s different but I’m doing here what I believe to be the right thing,” he said this week. “History judges us for what we do.” ■

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Economics

U.S. tariff rates under Trump will be higher than the Smoot-Hawley levels from Great Depression era

Published

4 hours ago

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April 3, 2025

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U.S. President Donald Trump holds a chart next to U.S. Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick as Trump delivers remarks on tariffs in the Rose Garden at the White House in Washington, D.C., on April 2, 2025.

Carlos Barria | Reuters

The tariff policy outlined by President Donald Trump on Wednesday appears set to raise the level of U.S. import duties to the highest in more than 100 years.

The U.S. introduced a baseline 10% tariff on imports, but also steep country-by-country rates on some major trading partners, including China. The country-by-country rates appear to be related to the trade deficit the U.S. has with each trading partner.

Sarah Bianchi, Evercore ISI chief strategist of international political affairs and public policy, said in a note to clients late Wednesday that the new policies put the effective tariff rate above the level of around 20% set by 1930’s Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act, which is often cited by economists as a contributing factor to the Great Depression.

“A very tough and more bearish announcement that pushes the overall U.S. weighted average tariff rate to 24%, the highest in over 100 years – and likely headed to as high as 27% once anticipated 232s are complete,” Bianchi wrote. The “232s” is a reference to some sector-specific tariffs that could be added soon.

JPMorgan’s chief U.S. economist Michael Feroli came up with similar results when his team crunched the numbers.

“By our calculations this takes the average effective tariff rate from what had been prior to today’s announcement around 10% to just over 23%. … A White House official mentioned that other section 232 tariffs (e.g. chips, pharma, critical minerals) are still in the works, so the average effective rate could go even higher. Moreover, the executive order states that retaliation by US trading partners could result in even higher US tariffs,” Feroli said in a note to clients.

More downside risk for the economy going forward, says Apollo Global's Torsten Slok

An estimate from Fitch Ratings was in the same range, with a report saying the tariff rate would hit its highest level since 1909.

Trump referenced the Smoot-Hawley Act in his Rose Garden remarks on Wednesday. The president said the issue was not the tariffs imposed in 1930 but the previous decision to remove the higher tariffs that existed earlier in the 20th century.

“It would have never happened if they had stayed with the tariff policy. It would have been a much different story. They tried to bring back tariffs to save our country, but it was gone. It was gone. It was too late,” Trump said.

The full economic impact of the new tariffs will likely depend on how long they are in place and if other countries retaliate. Trump and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent have indicated that the country-by-country tariffs could come down if those trade partners change their policies.

JPMorgan global economist Nora Szentivanyi warned that Trump’s tariffs were likely to push the U.S. and global economy into a recession this year if they are sustained.

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Economics

The Federal Reserve is not likely to rescue markets and economy from tariff turmoil anytime soon

Published

6 hours ago

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April 3, 2025

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U.S. Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell and U.S. President Donald Trump.

Craig Hudson | Evelyn Hockstein | Reuters

Now that President Donald Trump has set out his landmark tariff plans, the Federal Reserve finds itself in a potential policy box to choose between fighting inflation, boosting growth — or simply avoiding the fray and letting events take their course without intervention.

Should the president hold fast to his tougher-than-expected trade policy, there’s a material risk of at least near-term costs, namely the potential for higher prices and a slowdown in growth that could turn into a recession.

For the Fed, that presents a potential no-win situation.

The central bank is tasked with using its policy levers to ensure full employment and low prices, the so-called dual mandate of which policymakers speak. If tariffs present challenges to both, choosing whether to ease to support growth or tighten to fight inflation won’t be easy, as each courts its own peril.

“The problem for the Fed is that they’re going to have to be very reactive,” said Jonathan Pingle, chief U.S. economist at UBS. “They’re going to be watching prices rise, which might make them hesitant to respond to any growth weakness that materializes. I think it’s certainly going to make it very hard for them to be preemptive.”

Under normal conditions, the Fed likes to get ahead of things.

If it sees leading gauges of unemployment perk up, the Fed will cut interest rates to ease financial conditions and give companies more incentive to hire. If it sniffs out a coming rise in inflation, it can raise rates to dampen demand and bring down prices.

So what happens when both things occur at the same time?

Risks to waiting

The Fed hasn’t had to answer that question since the early 1980s, when then-Chair Paul Volcker, faced with such stagflation, chose to uphold the inflation side of the mandate and hike rates dramatically, tilting the economy into a recession.

In the current case, the choice will be tough, particularly coming on the heels of how the Jerome Powell-led central bank was flat-footed when prices started rising in 2021 and he and his colleagues dismissed the move as “transitory.” The word has been resurrected to describe the Fed’s general view on tariff-induced price increases.

“They do risk getting caught offsides with the potential magnitude of this kind of price increase, not unlike what happened in 2022 where, they might might feel the need to respond,” Pingle said. “In order for them to respond to weakening growth, they’re really going to have to wait until the growth does weaken and makes the case for them to move.”

To be sure, the Trump administration sees the tariffs as pro-growth and anti-inflation, though officials have acknowledged the potential for some bumpiness ahead.

“It’s time to change the rules and make the rules be stacked fairly with the United States of America,” Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick told CNBC in a Thursday interview. ” We need to stop supporting the rest of the world and start supporting American workers.”

However, that could take some time as even Lutnick acknowledged that the administration is seeking a “re-ordering” of the global economic landscape.

Like many other Wall Street economists, Pingle spent the time since Trump announced the new tariffs Wednesday adapting forecasts for the potential impact.

Bracing for inflation and flat growth

The general consensus is that unless the duties are negotiated lower, they will take prospects for economic growth down to near-zero or perhaps even into recession, while putting core inflation in 2025 north of 3% and, according to some forecasts, as high as 5%. With the Fed targeting inflation at 2%, that’s a wide miss for its own policy objective.

“With price stability still not fully achieved, and tariffs threatening to push prices higher, policymakers may not be able to provide as much monetary support as the growth picture requires, and could even bind them from cutting rates at all,” wrote Seema Shah, chief global strategist at Principal Asset Management.

Traders, however, ramped up their bets that the Fed will act to boost growth rather than fight inflation.

As is often the reaction during a market wipeout like Thursday’s, the market raised the implied odds that the Fed will cut aggressively this year, going so far as to put the equivalent of four quarter-percentage-point reductions in play, according to the CME Group’s FedWatch tracker of futures pricing.

Shah, however, noted that “the path to easing has become narrower and more uncertain.”

Fed officials certainly haven’t provided any fodder for the notion of rate cuts anytime soon.

In a speech Thursday, Vice Chair Philip Jefferson stuck to the Fed’s recent script, insisting “there is no need to be in a hurry to make further policy rate adjustments. The current policy stance is well positioned to deal with the risks and uncertainties that we face in pursuing both sides of our dual mandate.”

Taking the cautious tone a step further, Governor Adriana Kugler said Wednesday afternoon — at the same time Trump was delivering his tariff presentation in the Rose Garden — that she expects the Fed to stay put until things clear up.

“I will support maintaining the current policy rate for as long as these upside risks to inflation continue, while economic activity and employment remain stable,” Kugler said, adding she “strongly supported” the decision in March to keep the Fed’s benchmark rate unchanged.

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Economics

Layoff announcements surge to the most since the pandemic as Musk’s DOGE slices Federal labor force

Published

15 hours ago

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April 3, 2025

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Employees of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) hug each other as they queue outside the Mary E. Switzer Memorial Building, after it was reported that the Trump administration fired staff at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and at the Food and Drug Administration, as it embarked on its plan to cut 10,000 jobs at HHS, in Washington, D.C., U.S., April 1, 2025. 

Kevin Lamarque | Reuters

A surge in federal government job cuts contributed to a near record-setting pace for announced layoffs in March, exceeded only by when the country shut down in 2020 for the Covid pandemic, according to a report Thursday from job placement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas.

Furloughs in the federal government totaled 216,215 for the month, part of a total 275,240 reductions overall in the labor force. Some 280,253 layoffs across 27 agencies in the past two months have been linked to the Elon Musk-led Department of Government Efficiency and its efforts to pare down the federal workforce.

The monthly total was surpassed only by April and May of 2020 in the early days of the pandemic when employers announced combined reductions of more than 1 million, according to Challenger records going back to 1989.

“Job cut announcements were dominated last month by Department of Government Efficiency [DOGE] plans to eliminate positions in the federal government,” said Andrew Challenger, senior vice president and workplace expert at the firm. “It would have otherwise been a fairly quiet month for layoffs.”

However, DOGE has continued to cut aggressively across the government.

Various reports have indicated that the Veterans Affairs department could lose 80,000 jobs, the IRS is in line for some 18,000 reductions and Treasury is expected to drop a “substantial” level of workers as well, according to a court filing.

The year to date tally for federal government announced layoffs represents a 672% increase from the same period in 2024, according to Challenger.

To be sure, the outsized layoff plans haven’t made their way into other jobs data.

Weekly unemployment claims have held in a fairly tight range since President Donald Trump took office. Payroll growth has slowed a bit from its pace in 2024 but is still positive, while job openings have receded but only to around their pre-pandemic levels.

However, the Washington, D.C. area has been hit particularly hard by the announced layoffs, which have totaled 278,711 year to date for the city, according to the report.

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