So the IEEPA tariffs are gone. Now a hodge podge of indefinitely-lived tariffs lives on, with uncertainty elevated.
Figure 1: EPU-trade (Baker-Bloom-Davis) (blue, left scale); Trade Policy Uncertainty (Caldara et al.) (red, right scale). Source: policyuncertainty.com, TPU Index.
Even if we are stuck with Section 122 tariffs for a 150 days, it’ll still be an open question whether Trump will try to reimplement, and if he does, will this be challenged in court. There’s also the question of reimbursements to work its way through the process. So… no respite there. However, Trump’s ability to thuggishly threaten country-by-country is constrained somewhat by the uniform tariff permitted by Section 122.
Larry Summers has been forced to walk the plank at Harvard:
https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2026/2/25/summers-retire-harvard-epstein/
There’s a witticism applied to both physics and economics – probably in other fields, as well – that progress is made one funeral at a time. I don’t know if the same applies to elite impunity, but Epstein, Wienstein, Andy, Mandelson, Gaetz, Summers, Ruemmler, Cuomo and who can keep up with how many more? have been buried now.
There’s this one guy, though, an adjudicated rapist, felon, accused child rapist, tax cheat, grifter, grafter, fellow teaveler, war criminal and windbag who just keeps going. It’s hard to see net progress against elite impunity while this one guy walks around free.
Off topic – climate change may be enormously more costly than has previously been estimated:
The Macroeconomic Impact of Climate Change: Global Versus Local Temperature
From the Abstract:
“This paper estimates that the macroeconomic damages from climate change are an order of magnitude larger than previously thought. Exploiting natural global temperature variability, we find that 1⁰C warming reduces world GDP by over 20% in the long run…Business-as-usual warming implies a present welfare loss of more than 30%, and a Social Cost of Carbon in excess of $1,200 per ton. These impacts suggest that unilateral decarbonization policy is cost-effective for large countries such as the United States.”
https://academic.oup.com/qje/advance-article-abstract/doi/10.1093/qje/qjag011/8490467?login=false
Really bad. We still won’t change anything.