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This morning, President Donald Trump used the standard diplomatic channel—his Truth Social account—to announce retaliation against Canada for Ontario’s new electricity tariffs, which were themselves retaliatory.

“I have instructed my Secretary of Commerce to add an ADDITIONAL 25% Tariff, to 50%, on all STEEL and ALUMINUM COMING INTO THE UNITED STATES FROM CANADA, ONE OF THE HIGHEST TARIFFING NATIONS ANYWHERE IN THE WORLD. This will go into effect TOMORROW MORNING, March 12th,” Trump wrote. The rest of the message is much stranger, again promising the annexation of Canada: “The artificial line of separation drawn many years ago will finally disappear, and we will have the safest and most beautiful Nation anywhere in the World.”

Earlier this evening, Ontario’s premier, Doug Ford, pulled back the electricity tariffs after securing a meeting with U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, and the White House dropped its threat. Ford likely recognized that no matter how belligerent a stance Trump takes, he can be easily induced to change his mind.

Consider what’s happened with tariffs over the past 45 days. On February 1, Trump announced 25 percent tariffs on both Canada and Mexico, to take effect on February 4. On February 3, he announced a one-month pause in implementation. On February 26, he said he might not actually impose the tariffs until April 2; the next day, he said they’d start on March 4. On March 2, Lutnick suggested that the tariff situation was “fluid.” On March 4, the tariffs went into effect after all.

Confused yet? We’re just getting started. That afternoon, with stock markets reacting poorly, Lutnick suggested that the tariffs might be rolled back the next day. Indeed, on March 5, Trump announced that he was suspending parts of the tariffs related to auto manufacturing until April. And then, on March 6, he suspended all of the tariffs until April. Trump once told us that trade wars are “easy to win.” Now he seems unsure about how to fight one, or whether he even wants to.

If the defining feeling of the start of the first Trump administration was chaos, its equivalent in this term is whiplash. The president and his aides have been changing their minds and positions at nauseating speed.

Many of the reversals seem to come down to Trump’s caprices. On February 19, he called Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky “a dictator.” About a week later, he disavowed that. “Did I say that? I can't believe I said that,” he told reporters. “I think the president and I actually have had a very good relationship.” The next day, Trump berated Zelensky in the Oval Office, sent him packing, and began cutting off military help to Ukraine. This afternoon, the U.S. restarted military and financial aid once again.

Another leading cause of whiplash is Bureaucrat in Chief Elon Musk’s U.S. DOGE Service. Last week, the General Services Administration put up a list of more than 400 buildings that the cost-cutting crew had deemed inessential for government operations. The inventory included some eye-raising entries, including the Robert F. Kennedy building—headquarters of the Justice Department—and the main offices of the Labor Department and the FBI, but also some peculiar ones, such as steam tunnels underneath Washington, D.C. (One imagines that the wrong buyer could cause a great deal of mayhem with those.) Within hours, more than 100 entries had been removed from the list; by the next day, it was gone entirely, replaced by a “coming soon” message—though not before revealing a semi-secret CIA facility.

DOGE and other efforts to slash the federal workforce keep overstepping and requiring reversals. In some cases, officials seem to be discovering that the things Trump wants are either impracticable or too politically toxic to effect. Musk posted on X that if federal workers didn’t respond to an email, it would be tantamount to their resignation. Then the threat was removed. Then Musk sent another email. Thousands of federal workers have been laid off, only to be called back to work. Some workers who accepted a buyout offer were then fired; others had the offer rescinded. Musk tittered over canceling and then uncanceling Ebola-prevention programs, though some officials dispute that they were actually uncanceled. The administration planned to shut down the coronavirus-test-distribution program, then ultimately suspended but did not end it; it killed but then resuscitated a health program for 9/11 survivors.

Trump isn’t just going back on specifics. Some of his core campaign propositions are also looking shaky. Despite campaigning on the deleterious effects of inflation, he now says that it’s not a top priority. He promised booming wealth for Americans; now he can’t rule out a recession and is warning that people will need to endure some pain (for what higher purpose, he hasn’t made clear). And even though Trump has long said that he won’t cut Medicare or Social Security, Musk is now targeting them and calling Social Security a Ponzi scheme.

This kind of vacillation creates an obvious credibility problem for the president and his administration. As I wrote during Trump’s first presidency, foreign leaders quickly concluded that he was a pushover, easily convinced by flattering words. Trump practically always folded in a negotiation. This history, combined with his mercurial moods, mean that counterparts don’t assume they can take him at his word. In the case of Canada, Trump seems to have come out with the worst possible outcome: Canadian leaders believe he’s deadly serious about annexing the country, a quixotic goal, but they have no reason to take his bluster about tariffs, which he can actually impose, all that seriously.

The situation might be even more dangerous if observers took Trump at his word. His dithering has given markets the jitters, but the economic impacts might be more dire if traders acted as though they expected him to follow through on all of his tariff threats. (After he said this past weekend that a recession is possible, markets plunged. Did investors believe he had some secret plan up his sleeve until then?)

Uncertainty is bad for markets, but the problem is larger than that. One of the most fundamental roles of the state is to create a sense of consistency and stability for society. That provides the conditions for flourishing of all kinds: economic, artistic, cultural, scientific. Trump is both seeking to seize more power for himself and refusing to exercise it in a way that allows the nation to flourish.

Today, my colleague Adam Serwer wrote about the detention of Mahmoud Khalil, a leader of pro-Palestinian protests at Columbia University who has not been charged, much less convicted, of any crime. This, too, calls into question the stability of the rule of law—specifically, the long-standing fact that the First Amendment and due process apply to legal permanent residents. (Last month, I wrote that Trump’s actions were showing that his commitment to free speech was bogus. He seems determined to prove me right.) The first months of the Trump presidency have been whiplash-inducing, but in the long term, the failure to set and follow consistent rules threatens national pain much worse than a sore neck.

Related:

Mahmoud Khali’s detention is a trial run. The free-speech phonies

Here are three new stories from The Atlantic:

His daughter was America’s first measles death in a decade. ICE isn’t delivering the mass deportation Trump wants. The only question Trump asks himself

Today’s News

Ukraine has agreed to an immediate 30-day cease-fire if Russia accepts the plan proposed by the United States. Ontario suspended its 25 percent electricity surcharge for some U.S. states after Donald Trump threatened a 50 percent tariff on steel and aluminum for Canada. The former Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte, who started a widespread crackdown on drugs, was arrested on an International Criminal Court warrant for crimes against humanity.

Dispatches

Work in Progress: “The chaos emanating from Washington comes at a time when the economy is already slowing,” Annie Lowrey writes. Maybe don’t invite a recession in.

Explore all of our newsletters here.

Evening Read

Illustration by The Atlantic. Sources: Kent Nishimura / Bloomberg / Getty; Andrew Caballero-Reynolds / AFP / Getty.

Anti-Semitism Is Just a Pretext

By Jonathan Chait

The [Trump] administration is threatening more arrests of foreign-born campus activists, and more funding cuts, all supposedly to contain anti-Semitism, at the same time that it is elevating anti-Semites to newfound prominence and legitimacy. Donald Trump opposes left-wing anti-Semitism because it is left-wing, not because it is anti-Semitic. And his campaign to supposedly stamp it out on campus is a pretext for an authoritarian power grab.

Read the full article.

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P.S.

On my evening to-do list once I finish this newsletter: Pick up my copy of my colleague Olga Khazan’s Me, but Better at my local bookstore. In 2022, she wrote one of my favorite Atlantic stories ever about her three-month attempt to change her own personality. In the book, which is out today, she goes deeper. Olga is a very funny writer and great at sorting through and explaining complicated science, but for me, what makes her such an outstanding journalist is her ability to see and question a lot of the things that most people take for granted. I feel safe guessing that her research didn’t change that part of her personality.

— David

Stephanie Bai contributed to this newsletter.

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The wonder of the American supermarket is the way it exists outside of seasons. Stroll into any major grocery store on a dreary winter day, and you’ll find a bounty of fresh summer fruits and vegetables waiting for you: avocados, tomatoes, berries, bell peppers, cucumbers, squash, and green beans. The American supermarket does not, however, exist outside of economics. These fruits and vegetables are largely grown in Mexico, meaning they are roped up in President Donald Trump’s trade war. Last week, he enacted 25 percent tariffs on imports from Canada and Mexico; two days later, he backtracked, suspending most of the tariffs until April 2. (His 20 percent tariff on products from China remains in effect.) Presuming that the president follows through, expect lots of goods to get more expensive: tequila, lumber, that $11 handheld vacuum you bought from Temu on a whim. But perhaps the most direct way that Americans feel the tariffs will be at the grocery store.

Nearly 60 percent of the fresh fruit in the United States is imported, as is more than one-third of the country’s fresh vegetables. Most of that travels in from Mexico, but Canada also plays a part in America’s food supply. Twenty percent of the country’s vegetables, by value, come from our neighbor to the north. For all the debate around what people should eat, one thing pretty much everyone agrees on is that fruits and veggies are good for you. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., on a campaign to “Make America healthy again,” has promoted numerous dangerous ideas about the American diet—but he’s right that Americans aren’t eating enough greens. The tariffs will worsen the problem. “People are going to immediately eat less fruits and vegetables, and will more likely rely on processed foods,” Mariana Chilton, a public-health professor at Drexel University and the author of The Painful Truth About Hunger in America, told me. A direct consequence of Trump’s tariffs could be pushing Americans to eat worse than they already do.

Ideally, tariffs could be offset by growing more produce in the U.S. That is precisely what Trump calls for as part of his “America First” agenda. But as The Atlantic’s Yasmin Tayag wrote last month, doing so would require an overhaul of the food system: “More land would have to be dedicated to growing fruits, vegetables, and nuts, and less of it to grains and sweeteners. It would also mean addressing labor shortages, increasing the number of farmers, finding suitable land, and building new infrastructure to process and ship each new crop.”

So how much more expensive will produce get? The tariffs apply to the value of a product at the border, not the retail price, so it’s not as simple as just slapping on a 25 percent surcharge on avocados. Over the course of the next year or so, if the tariffs take effect, the Budget Lab at Yale projects a 2.9 percent increase on fruits and vegetables. “These sound like small numbers,” Ernie Tedeschi, the lab’s economic director, told me. “These are not small numbers.” It’s the equivalent of “two years’ worth of fresh-food inflation in one fell swoop.” And that 2.9 percent increase is an average, meaning it encompasses all produce prices—including fruits and vegetables grown in the U.S. If you’re a big tomato eater and you like a side of green beans, the tariffs are going to especially hurt.

The Budget Lab expects a 1.7 percent bump on food prices overall. But this, too, wouldn’t be evenly distributed. On the opposite end of the cost spectrum, packaged foods would be among those least affected. They are made with imported fruits and vegetables, some of which may be coming from Mexico and Canada, but the overall amount tends to be negligible. (There just isn’t that much tomato on a frozen pizza.) “There might be other things that those food companies may be importing,” David Ortega, a food economist at Michigan State, told me, such as packaging. But “the pressure there is going to be a lot lower than in the actual fresh produce.”

In other words, Twinkies may get a little more expensive, while tomatoes may get a lot more expensive.   That’s going to make it harder for people to eat healthy, Sarah Bowen, a sociologist at North Carolina State University, told me. In her research interviewing moms about their food choices, “one of the things that came up again and again was that people wanted to buy healthier food, and especially fresh fruit, but they couldn’t afford it,” she told me. “We asked moms, ‘If you had more money to spend on food, what would you buy?’ And by far the most common answer was fresh fruit, specifically strawberries, grapes, things that kids like.” Even if you can swing it, there is a point where the discerning—or even vaguely price-conscious—consumer hits a limit and thinks, You know what, no. “It’s clear that people are already very worried about food prices,” Bowen said.

Of course, these changes will happen only at the margins. Lots of people might still buy an avocado that costs an extra 50 cents. And tariffs could have a perverse and uncomfortable upside, Caitlin Daniel, a researcher at Harvard, told me. Among the first purchases to go when budgets get tight is food that “people want to cut anyway,” she said—salty snacks, cookies, soda. That would be a limited victory. “In general, you’re probably going to see a decline in consumption of fresh produce, and that’s not good,” she said. The millions of Americans who already don’t eat enough vegetables will have even more of a reason not to do so. Even before the tariffs, fresh fruits and vegetables made up only “roughly a tenth” of the average middle-class grocery budget, Tedeschi said, drawing on the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Consumer Expenditure Survey data.

The solace is that Americans still have plenty of ways to cut their broccoli costs. “There’s some latitude for substitution,” Daniel said. Instead of buying fresh, people might buy canned or frozen options “with really no change in diet quality,” she said. America grows tons of other fruits and vegetables; most of the country’s spinach, for example, is already grown domestically.

Price alone cannot explain why Americans eat the way they do. But the tariffs could underscore just how fundamental it is for understanding the country’s diet. Daniel has found in her research that people go to great lengths to continue eating fresh produce even when cash-strapped. “Whether people cinch up at the level of trying to buy from cheaper retailers,” she said, “going in on more couponing, shopping at multiple stores in search of deals—all of these things are going to contribute to what the ultimate impact on health is.” Tariffs or no tariffs, telling people what to eat is less effective than ensuring that they’re actually able to buy it. For an administration that wants to “Make America healthy again,” raising the prices of fruits and vegetables might not be the place to start.

The federal government has provided no evidence that Mahmoud Khalil has committed a criminal offense, and yet on Saturday night, he was taken by agents of the state from his home and renditioned to a detention facility where neither his pregnant wife nor his lawyer have had access to him.

Khalil, a legal permanent resident of the United States and Palestinian activist who helped lead the protests at Columbia University over the Israel-Hamas war last spring, seems to have been disappeared by the U.S. government because of his political views. Khalil was among the students urging the university to cut financial and educational ties with Israel. (Unlike with other categories of immigrants, revoking the status of legal permanent residents generally requires evidence of wrongdoing.)

Yesterday, President Donald Trump announced that Immigration and Customs Enforcement had “proudly apprehended” Khalil, describing him as a “Radical Foreign Pro-Hamas Student.” A Department of Homeland Security spokesperson described Khalil as having “led activities aligned to Hamas.” There is, notably, not even a hint of an allegation of criminal behavior in that description. They do not accuse him of being a member of, fighting for, or providing material support to any terrorist group, all of which are prosecutable crimes. The phrasing aligned to implies that if Trump-administration officials think the views of a green-card holder are unacceptable, they can deprive him of his freedom. How does one even prove they are not “aligned” with Hamas, a subjective and arbitrary judgment that could be thrown at anyone deemed too critical of the Israeli government?

Government officials have told reporters that Khalil’s green card was revoked under a provision of the Immigration and Nationality Act that authorizes the secretary of state to expel an “alien whose presence or activities in the United States the Secretary of State has reasonable ground to believe would have potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences for the United States.”

Trump supporters have a remarkable ability to coalesce around whatever explanation they are told to repeat, so the arguments defending the detention are likely to orient around this justification. The idea that Khalil’s views might have “serious adverse foreign policy consequences” for the United States is an obvious pretext for expelling him—and a message to others who might hold or express similar beliefs. Trumpists simply do not approve of his politics and have therefore resorted to using the power of the state to deport him. Trump has styled himself a champion of free speech, but this is what Trumpists mean by “free speech”: You can say what Trumpists want you to say or you can be punished.

[David A. Graham: The free-speech phonies]

Trump has announced as much, declaring that the administration would not tolerate “pro-terrorist, anti-Semitic, anti-American activity.” That is an admission that Khalil’s arrest is not about consequences for American foreign policy but about punishing speech. The administration is using the power of the state to silence people who express political views that Trump dislikes. And it is worth noting that Trumpists define any criticism of Trump as “anti-American.”

Due process is a cornerstone of democracy and the rule of law. Without it, anyone can be arbitrarily deprived of life or liberty. Leaders who aspire to absolute power always begin by demonizing groups that lack the political power to resist, and that might be awkward for the political opposition to defend. They say someone is a criminal, and they dare you to defend the rights of criminals. They say someone is a deviant, and they dare you to defend the rights of deviants. They call someone a terrorist, and they dare you to defend the rights of terrorists. And if you believe none of these apply to you, another category might be “traitor,” the label that Trump and his advisers, including the far-right billionaire Elon Musk, like to give to anyone who opposes them.

Trump’s assault on basic First Amendment principles may begin with Khalil, but it will not end with him. Trump’s ultimate target is anyone he finds useful to target. Trump and his advisers simply hope the public is foolish or shortsighted enough to believe that if they are not criminals, or deviants, or terrorists, or foreigners, or traitors, then they have no reason to worry. Eventually no one will have any rights that the state need respect, because the public will have sacrificed them in the name of punishing people it was told did not deserve them.

The Trump administration began its drive for absolute power by ignoring congressional appropriations of foreign aid, which are laws. It calculated that Americans would be callous enough not to care about the catastrophic loss of human life abroad and that the absence of backlash would enable the administration to set a precedent for defying duly passed laws without consequence. Trump began his assault on antidiscrimination law with a vicious campaign against trans people—but has already broadened that campaign into a sweeping attempt at a great resegregation of American life. The detention of Mahmoud Khalil begins a dangerous new phase, in which the Trump administration will attempt to assert an authority to deprive people of due process based on their political views.

The Anti-Defamation League, a pale shadow of its former self, enthusiastically endorsed Khalil’s detainment absent due process, saying it “appreciated” the Trump administration’s “bold set of efforts to counter campus anti-semitism” by “holding alleged perpetrators responsible for their actions.” Although the statement includes the caveat that “any deportation action or revocation of a Green Card or visa must be undertaken in alignment with required due process protections,” praising the Trump administration for arresting Khalil absent any such process makes clear that the question of Khalil’s guilt is an afterthought. One source of legal authority that the administration appears to be citing is the 1952 McCarran-Walter Act, whose co-sponsor Senator Patrick McCarran believed that Jews were “subversive rats that need to be kept out” of the country. If there is one obvious lesson of Jewish history, it is that when governments persecute people based on their political views and ethnic background, it is unlikely to end well for Jews. The ADL learned different lessons from that history, I suppose.

This sort of reaction, where a self-styled civil-rights organization endorses depriving people of their basic rights of speech and due process because they find the target unsympathetic, is what the Trumpists are counting on. Trumpists are counting on as many people as possible shutting off their conscience, because the administration has picked a target it hopes few will defend. They are counting on the public deciding that free speech and due process are optional for this category of people or that one, and that they will be safe, as they have done nothing wrong. The Trump administration wishes to lull people into this complacency until it is too late to react.

This kind of arrogance has a poor track record historically. Despots are always in need of powerful enemies to justify an insatiable drive for absolute power. Where none exist, they will invent them. Mass graves across the world are full of those who believed they had nothing to fear.

This is what is important: It does not matter if you approve of Khalil’s views. It does not matter if you support the Israelis or the Palestinians. It does not matter if you are a liberal or a conservative. It does not even matter if you voted for Trump or Kamala Harris. If the state can deprive an individual of his freedom just because of his politics, which is what appears to have happened here, then no one is safe. You may believe that Khalil does not deserve free speech or due process. But if he does not have them, then neither do you. Neither do I.