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Donald Trump's second term continues to spring surprises, and dominate the media.
In a major blow to Trump's "Liberation Day" announcement, the New York-based Court of International Trade has found that the US president had overstepped his authority by imposing the tariffs. Not to be outdone, or overruled, Trump lodged an appeal and questioned the authority of the three judges of the court.
If it wasn't already difficult to guess what the eventual outcome of Trump's gyrations would be, now it's even more confusing. Trump loves disrupting the status quo, but he also hates losing.
On that basis, you'd have to say that he's had a disappointing week. On Thursday, he requested a meeting with Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell for the first time in his second term. Trump has previously described Powell as both a "fool" and a "major loser" and that the "end of his term can't come soon enough," ignoring the fact that he appointed him during his previous term in the first place.
If Trump was looking for some wins, in this case getting Jerome to drop rates, he wouldn't have liked the Fed's statement released after the meeting: "Chair Powell did not discuss his expectations for monetary policy, except to stress that the path of policy will depend entirely on incoming economic information and what that means for the outlook." In other words, "You do your job, I'll do mine, which (by the way) you gave me."
Earlier in the week, King Charles III opened the Canadian Parliament and delivered a speech which was widely considered to be a rejection of Trump's wish to absorb Canada into the US as the 51st State. Although the speech was written by the new Canadian PM's office, and protocol demands that the monarch has to follow what's in it, you'd have to imagine it wouldn't have pleased the Donald greatly.
However, it might make for an interesting exchange over a cup of tea and cucumber sandwiches when he visits Buckingham Palace in September.
Elsewhere, Trump's not kicking as many goals as he'd hoped either. Apart from the media picking up on the TACO tag (Trump Always Chickens Out) given to him by Anthony Scaramucci (also a brief White House appointee during Trump's first term), it's now become known as the "TACO trade" on Wall Street. What Trump also hates is either being ignored, or even worse, ridiculed, although on the latter, you'd imagine he'd be getting used to that by now.
Sadly, Trump's foreign policy efforts aren't up to his pre-election rhetoric either, with the Ukraine war seeming no closer to a resolution after promising 53 times to end the fighting within a day of being elected, which he now claims was a claim made "in jest." Yesterday he couldn't say when that might be, but he's set Putin a two-week deadline - or else. Hopefully, Putin hasn't heard about TACO, but we suspect he already knows how to get the better of Trump.
And let's not even mention Trump's efforts on Palestine.
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