Today, the GoodFellows ponder what will come next as US forces continue to collect in the Middle East and last-minute negotiations with Iran continue. Steven Davis speaks with a trade expert about where US tariffs actually stand, who bears the brunt of their cost, and the economic damage caused by the continued uncertainty. And Philip Zelikow explains why the new global 10–15 percent tariffs enacted by the Trump administration after earlier ones were struck down by the Supreme Court are also unlawful.
Iran
As his self-proclaimed 10-day window for dealing with Iran approaches its end, what are President Trump’s options? GoodFellows regulars Niall Ferguson, John Cochrane, and H.R. McMaster weigh the merits of a US military strike versus an interim diplomatic solution. They also probe the Epstein scandal’s impact on the British landscape and the Supreme Court’s ruling against the Trump administration’s use of emergency powers for tariff implementation. Later, in the “lightning round”: why US Secretary of State Marco Rubio was warmly received at the Munich Security Conference; the Pentagon’s desire to sever academic ties with Harvard University; Barack Obama’s suggesting that aliens exist; plus H.R.’s remembrance of film great Robert Duvall, aka Apocalypse Now’s Lt. Col. Bill “I Love the Smell of Napalm in the Morning” Kilgore. Watch or listen to the episode here.
The Economy
President Trump, having seen his justification for tariffs rejected by the US Supreme Court, is now relying on a different legal authority to renew his efforts to impose tariffs. That authority, writes Hoover senior fellow Philip Zelikow, will be found unlawful as well. The 1974 law Trump is citing to support his new 10–15 percent global tariffs is based on a “balance of payments” concept that the US government itself has officially judged to be obsolete, writes Zelikow. Written in the twilight of the Bretton Woods structure, “the Trade Act of 1974 was developed looking backward, as this system was transitioning from the old to the new.” Zelikow concludes that there are better authorities available to ensure national security, combat unfair trade, and construct a coherent trade strategy. Read about it in Freedom Frequency.
On the latest episode of Economics, Applied, Senior Fellow Steven J. Davis speaks with Brent Neiman, University of Chicago professor and former US Treasury Department official, about President Trump’s approach to tariff policy and the latest data on trade deficits. Brent’s research reveals that while tariffs are up in 2025, actual tariff rates are only half as high as headlines suggest. Davis and Neiman also discuss who pays Trump’s tariffs, how we know, the damage caused by uncertainty around tariffs, and the value of commitment in the conduct of trade policy. Watch or listen to the episode here.
US Defense
In the latest issue of Strategika, National Security Visiting Fellow Nadia Schadlow writes about how the modern battlefield, as seen in Ukraine, is becoming a cluttered field of devices, sensors, cameras, and cables. “They reveal a central (and now obvious) feature of contemporary war: cheaper and plentiful weapons like armed drones enable precision strike at scale, at relatively low cost, across both strategic and tactical levels of war,” she writes. So, Schadlow argues, old conversations about the impact of mass on the conduct of war, as well as the quality versus quantity debate, can now be explored through a whole new lens with autonomous systems. Today, mass in war means “the ability to field, replace, and adapt weapons rapidly as conditions change.” Read more here.
Determining America’s Role in the World
In the latest Policy Brief for the Hoover History Lab, Research and Teaching Fellow Ziyi Wang writes about what the future of the Black Sea should look like once the Russian invasion of Ukraine ends. She says the Black Sea must be strategically reprioritized after the war. Although the Montreux Convention has effectively limited escalation in that maritime theater, a potential ceasefire will expose the region’s enduring risks of volatility. Russian ambitions in the Black Sea will not fade after the war. Given the delicate diplomacy between Ankara and Moscow and the Black Sea’s central role in global trade and food security, safeguarding the region will require Western prioritization.Read more here.
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