Today marks the end of the sixty-day negotiating period set forth in the memorandum of understanding the Trump administration signed with Iran. By now, we were supposed to have agreements on the status of the Strait of Hormuz and Iran’s nuclear program. And we do! We can all agree that the Trump administration doesn’t know what to do about either problem. Happy Monday.

Join Mark Hertling and Ben Parker for Command Post today at 10:30 a.m. EDT on Substack and YouTube.

The Other War We Aren’t Winning

by Andrew Egger

I am not, as a rule, a big-time media critic. Journalism’s a tough job in a dying industry, and writing about writing can get a little navel-gazy—life’s too short!

Still, sometimes in life our principles are tested. So it was this weekend, when I found myself unable to stop thinking about a remarkable new Politico article: “TACO No More: How Trump Won On Tariffs.”

The headline alone was fascinating. Until I read it, I personally had been unaware not only how Trump had won on tariffs, but that he had won on them at all. I had been laboring under the delusion that Trump’s tariffs were actually treating us pretty badly: slowing economic growth, pushing up prices, annihilating small businesses, failing to deliver the resurgence of manufacturing that Trump promised. Plus they’ve been losing in court: The Supreme Court crushed his “Liberation Day” tariffs as unconstitutional this year, forcing Trump both to refund billions in collected tariffs and to scramble to reconstitute his tariff regime on other statutory pretexts.

I’d even been harboring suspicions that the tariffs were a major political loser: Only 33 percent of Americans approve of Trump’s trade and tariff policies, with nearly 59 percent disapproving, per the Silver Bulletin polling average on the question. Americans have soured on tariffs so much that even the most tariff-friendly Democrats are starting to run against them: A recent ad for Ohio’s Sherrod Brown quotes a local farmer saying that Sen. Jon Husted “supports the tariffs which have driven the prices down which we can sell our crops.”

In what sense, then, does Politico argue that Trump “won” on tariffs? Simple: Last year, many worried that his tariffs would actually crash the global economy, and so far, they haven’t:

After all, for all his swerves and concessions, the president has not abandoned a global trade war that has fueled inflation or a stalemated conflict with Iran that has rattled oil markets.

And financial markets have become pretty zen about all of it. . . . tariffs, which have upended supply chains, raised costs for businesses and fueled tension with foreign allies and adversaries alike? These days, they mostly just warrant a shrug from investors.

Trump often gets graded on a curve, but this is just grade inflation. What other president has been lucky enough to find their major economic policies graded on a scale of “if it didn’t spark a once-in-a-century depression, it’s a win”?

There are two major reasons why Trump’s tariffs have “merely” resulted in slow-motion economic damage rather than spectacular market disaster. One is simple: Trump himself backed away from the most self-evidently insane ones. In April 2025, we were staring down the barrel of tariffs on China that would have forced a total decoupling between the two economies. The resulting bond-market panic spooked Trump into reversal and gave us the concept of the TACO trade; he hasn’t dared reach for anything like the same level of tariffs since. To call his remaining tariffs a “win” simply because they weren’t as disastrous as the ones originally proposed is ridiculous—why should we praise someone for hitting us in the face with a hammer just because it feels better when he stops?

The other major factor is that the effects of Trump’s trade wars have been partially obscured by the bigger economic story of the past two years: the economic sugar rush of our artificial intelligence boom and the corresponding mammoth data center buildout. Ironically, as Bloomberg News noted this month, that buildout has been taking place on a different trade-policy planet than the rest of the economy: “The deep-pocketed tech firms racing to build data centers have largely gotten a pass” from Trump’s tariffs while importing hundreds of billions of dollars worth of AI infrastructure. “In effect, they’ve been protected from Trump’s protectionism.”

And at the same time, Trump’s other economic calamity—the Iran war—has been so self-evidently counterproductive that it distracts attention from his other economic blunders.

If Trump’s trade philosophy worked, then allowing giant economic drivers like AI manufacturing to short-circuit his tariffs would be a policy disaster. Instead, Trump has quietly let this status quo continue, both as a favor to the tech megadonors in his political coalition and to avoid interfering with the only thing driving the stock market into the stratosphere.

In Trump’s gimmicky, art-of-the-deal-addled mind, all this might add up to a “win.” Apparently, there’s even a Politico writer out there who’d agree. Fortunately, convincing the public will be a much taller order.

AROUND THE BULWARK

• Canceling Military Exercises Hurts Us, Not Our Enemies... Since President Trump all but gutted the U.S.–South Korean maneuvers, MARK HERTLING asks if American forces in Korea will still be ready to “fight tonight.”

• ‘Negotiations’ Aren’t the Answer in Iran or Ukraine... “Gentlemen may cry, ‘Peace, peace!’ But there is no peace”, writes BRYNN TANNEHILL.

• Trump’s New AG Just Made a Stunning Admission on Meet the Press… WILL SALETAN takes on Kristen Welker’s Meet the Press interview with Todd Blanche, arguing that Blanche’s evasions on Justice Department independence, Trump’s influence over prosecutions, January 6th pardons, and a proposed compensation fund expose him as a loyalist ready to do the president’s bidding.

• Frank Kendall and the Weapons of Tomorrow… On Shield of the Republic, ERIC EDELMAN and ELIOT COHEN discuss the administration’s stripping former Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall of his security clearance for innocuous comments about Trump’s new Qatari-donated Air Force One.