U.S. Tariffs Imperil Asian Alliances

From the The Morning Dispatch on The Dispatch

Happy Monday! The votes are in: A hearty congratulations to Gus, the lab/golden retriever mix who is our inaugural Dispawtcher of the Year! As his owner Andrew told us last year: “Gus is a 75 pound lap dog who loves to snuggle with anyone who will let him. He generally likes other dogs but loves their owners. Big fan of scrambled eggs so we also have to make enough for Gus or else he gets angsty.”

And well done to TanyaB, who created the most accurate bracket. We’ll be in touch about your prizes!

Quick Hits: Today’s Top Stories 

• South Korea’s eight-member Constitutional Court unanimously voted to remove President Yoon Suk Yeol from office on Friday, four months after his short-lived declaration of martial law in December. The high court’s decision to formally dismiss Yoon followed the parliament’s move to impeach him in the wake of the political crisis. Thousands of pro- and anti-Yoon protesters gathered in Seoul ahead of the ruling, during which the court’s acting chief, Moon Hyung-bae, accused the president of violating the constitution. Prime Minister Han Duck-soo—South Korea’s acting president—promised to uphold national security and the transition of power going into the next presidential election, which must be held by June 3.

• Russia launched a missile attack on Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s home city of Kryvyi Rih on Friday, killing at least 20 people, including nine children. “Every missile, every drone strike proves Russia wants only war,” Zelensky said of the deadly bombardment, which came amid U.S. President Donald Trump’s push for ceasefire negotiations between the two sides. Also on Friday, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the U.S. would “know soon enough, in a matter of weeks, not months, whether Russia is serious about peace or not,” adding that Ukraine has signaled its willingness to enter into a full ceasefire.

• More than 100 chemical weapons sites likely remain in Syria following the December overthrow of the country’s longtime dictator, Bashar al-Assad, according to the the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons. The group, whose findings were first reported by the New York Times, noted that the weapons may include the sarin nerve agent, as well as chlorine and mustard gas. It’s unclear whether the sites have been secured by the country’s newly installed President Ahmed al-Sharaa, the former head of an al-Qaeda offshoot who has since sought to distance himself from the terrorist group. Last month, the new Syrian government vowed to locate and destroy any remaining chemical weapons stockpiles.

• China announced plans on Friday to impose 34 percent retaliatory tariffs on all goods from the United States. The new duties, which came in response to President Trump’s sweeping tariffs rollout last week, are set to take effect on Thursday. In a statement announcing the countermeasures, the country’s State Council Tariff Commission accused the U.S. of running afoul of international trade rules and undermining China’s “legitimate rights and interests.”

• U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis ruled Sunday that the Trump administration must return Kilmar Abrego Garcia—a Salvadoran visa holder who was deported to an El Salvador mega prison last month due to an “administrative error”—to the United States within three days. “They put him there, they can bring him back,” Abrego Garcia’s lawyer argued in response to immigration authorities’ claim that the U.S. now lacks the legal authority to order the Maryland resident’s return. The Trump administration has accused Abrego Garcia of being a member of the MS-13 gang, an allegation he and his lawyer dispute. Meanwhile, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told Xinis she should contact Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele “because we are unaware of the judge having jurisdiction or authority over the country of El Salvador.”

• President Trump on Friday pushed back the deadline for TikTok’s Chinese parent company, ByteDance, to either divest from the streaming app or face a ban in the United States, giving TikTok another 75 days to find an American buyer. In January, Trump suspended the enforcement of a bipartisan law seeking to force ByteDance into a qualified divestiture amid national security concerns. Announcing the extension on Truth Social, Trump said he is “working with TikTok and China” to reach a deal regarding the fate of the platform, whose prospective buyers include Amazon, Oracle, and Blackstone.

• President Trump has fired Gen. Timothy Haugh, the head of the National Security Agency and U.S. Cyber Command, multiple outlets reported Thursday night. The move—which coincided with Trump’s dismissal of six members of the National Security Council—reportedly came at the behest of MAGA activist Laura Loomer, who visited the Oval Office last week. In a post on X, Loomer said that Haugh had “no place” serving in the Trump administration because he had been selected by Gen. Mark Milley, the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

• A second child—an unvaccinated 8-year-old girl in Lubbock, West Texas—has died after contracting the measles, health officials said Saturday. As of Saturday, there were 642 confirmed cases of the highly contagious virus, including 499 in Texas alone. At least 74 people have been hospitalized with the measles, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. visited Seminole, Texas—the heavily Mennonite city at the center of the ongoing outbreak—to attend the child’s funeral on Sunday. “The most effective way to prevent the spread of measles is the MMR [measles, mumps, and rubella] vaccine,” he wrote on X.

• The Supreme Court ruled 5-4 on Friday in favor of allowing the Trump administration to temporarily suspend the disbursement of $65 million in teacher training grants to states while the litigation process plays out, with Chief Justice John Roberts joining the three liberal justices in dissent. The court’s order came in response to the administration’s emergency requests that the justices overturn lower court rulings barring it from pausing the funding, which the government says is used to promote diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives. The court reasoned that the states “have the financial wherewithal to keep their programs running” while the case is pending. If they win the case, “they can recover any wrongfully withheld funds” through further litigation.

• The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Friday that U.S. employers added 228,000 jobs in March—up from 117,000 in February and exceeding economists’ expectations. The unemployment rate rose slightly from 4.1 percent to 4.2 percent, while the labor force participation rate ticked up from 62.4 to 62.5 percent. Average hourly earnings—a measure the Federal Reserve is watching closely in its fight against inflation—rose 0.3 percent month-over-month in March, and 3.8 percent year-over-year. Those figures were 0.3 and 4 percent in February, respectively.

• Theodore McCarrick—the former archbishop of Washington, D.C., who was defrocked by Pope Francis in 2019 after evidence emerged that he had sexually abused adults and children—died Thursday at the age of 94. In 2021, McCarrick became the highest-ranking Catholic cleric in the United States to face criminal charges for sexual abuse, after an investigation by the Vatican turned up evidence that he had risen through the ranks of the church despite decades of sexual misconduct allegations. The charges were later dismissed after a Massachusetts judge determined that McCarrick, who suffered from dementia, was incompetent to stand trial.

Eyes on the Indo-Pacific

During his first trip to Japan last week, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth vowed to bolster U.S. alliances in the face of growing “Communist Chinese military aggression” in the Indo-Pacific. “The U.S. is moving fast, as you know, to reestablish deterrence in this region and around the world.”

But days later, President Donald Trump unveiled a slew of tariffs on nearly every country in the world—and America’s Asian allies are among the hardest hit. Analysts are now warning that the trade war—which includes new levies on Japan, Vietnam, South Korea, India, and other key partners—risks undermining the administration’s regional strategy at a moment of heightened tension.

“I would call the approach to the Indo-Pacific so far incoherent,” David Sacks, a fellow for Asia studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, told TMD. “It’s the notion that we can beat up on our allies and partners economically and that they will still do what we want to do with them on security.”

And the U.S. reliance on its regional allies is only likely to grow, not taper, in the face of an increasingly aggressive Beijing. China began a series of live-fire exercises off the coast of Taiwan last week, deploying air, naval, and ground assets around the island. According to the military, the two-day drills tested its forces’ “integrated joint operations capabilities” and involved “precision strikes on simulated targets of key ports and energy facilities.” But they were also a show of force: “Troops of the theater command remain on high alert at all times, and will continue to strengthen combat readiness with intensive training, resolutely thwarting any separatist activities seeking ‘Taiwan independence.’”

The dramatic escalation followed Hegseth’s high-level meetings in Japan and the Philippines, during which he reassured allies in the region of Washington’s “ironclad” commitment to “sustaining robust, ready and credible deterrence in the Indo-Pacific, including across the Taiwan Strait.” In concert with the secretary’s trip, the U.S. military conducted naval drills in the South China Sea with the two Asian allies, both of whom have a vested interest in working with the U.S. to counter China’s aggressive posturing in the region.

Beijing has a long history of trying to stake its claim to disputed islands in the South China Sea, including using fishing boats to swarm the areas off the coast of the Philippines. And friction between Communist China and postwar Japan dates back even further. “America and Japan stand firmly together in the face of aggressive and coercive actions by the Communist Chinese,” Hegseth said at a joint press conference with his Japanese counterpart.

The gesture of friendship came with material commitments. Hegseth announced plans to turn the U.S. military command in Japan into a “war-fighting headquarters.” As part of the initiative, the two countries will expedite plans to jointly develop and produce weapons, including air-to-air and surface-to-air missiles. Japan currently hosts some 50,000 American troops.

In many ways, Hegseth’s Asia visit signaled a continuation of the Biden administration’s regional strategy, which focused on bolstering existing alliances and encouraging U.S. partners to work together. “I think Secretary Hegseth has highlighted, in both some of the remarks he’s made at the Pentagon as well as on his recent trip to Asia, elements of continuity, especially regarding the strength of the alliances with the Philippines, with Japan, [and] Korea,” Patrick Cronin, the Asia-Pacific security chair at Hudson Institute, told TMD. “These are elements of continuity and very much sort of hard to distinguish from previous administrations.”

But Hegseth’s visit also comes as the Trump administration is signaling a broader retreat from the global leadership role the United States has historically filled. In a memo distributed throughout the Pentagon last month and obtained by the Washington Post, Hegseth said the military would prioritize the prevention of a Chinese invasion of Taiwan over all other threats, “assuming risk” in Europe and other theaters while pressuring American partners to take on the responsibility of deterring Russia, North Korea, and Iran.

“I think that the Trump administration views the tradeoffs between Europe and the Indo-Pacific in a starker light than the Biden administration,” Sacks said. “I think what they want to do is that they want to continue to build the U.S.-Japan alliance, the U.S.-Philippines alliance, they want to continue to deepen security cooperation with Taiwan. I think those are all top of the list for the Trump administration.”

“But again,” Sacks added, “the notion that you can do all of that while hammering these countries and causing them severe economic pain and distress is hard for me to see.” Trump’s sweeping “Liberation Day” tariffs included a 46 percent duty on goods from Vietnam and 32 percent on Taiwanese imports, potentially undercutting U.S. efforts to bolster its Indo-Pacific alliances. Chinese officials said last week the country would coordinate its response to the new levies with South Korea and Japan—two key American partners.

“There are critics who would say this is highly incoherent. At a minimum, though, you would say it’s inchoate—it’s not fully formed. Or, thirdly, if it is fully formed, it’s not fully revealed,” Cronin said. “We don’t know which of these levels we should be reading this, and that’s the biggest takeaway that our allies and partners are worried about, which is that it is uncertain and potentially unpredictable.”

But in some ways, the economic tension between the U.S. and the Indo-Pacific is part of a larger trend. “The direction that we’ve been going in for the last decade plus has been that we are the security provider of choice in the Indo-Pacific, but we are not the economic partner,” Sacks said. In 2017, Trump withdrew the U.S. from the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a proposed free-trade agreement between 12 Pacific Rim countries responsible for some 40 percent of the world’s trade. In the aftermath, some countries in the region formed their own trade agreement—the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership—while others have joined the China-backed Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership.

“There’s a lot of economic integration that’s occurring in the region without the United States present,” Sacks said. “We don’t have any free-trade negotiations open with our allies or partners in the region. We’re not deepening those relationships.”

And these latest duties aren’t doing those relationships any favors. Take Vietnam, for example. During his first term, Trump hit Chinese goods with a series of tariffs that ultimately prompted the flight of businesses to Vietnam. Now, Hanoi is among the countries hardest hit by the so-called “reciprocal” tariffs, which could push it into Beijing’s orbit. “It’s a fanciful notion that basically you can put tariffs of 30-plus percent on Taiwan, on Vietnam, on Cambodia, big tariffs on India, big tariffs on Japan, but somehow we expect that they’re not going to seek alternatives,” Sacks said. “I think it’s a fantasy land.”

But Taiwan, especially, is in a precarious position. Amid the omnipresent threat of a Chinese invasion, signs of a wobbly relationship with the U.S. could spark doubts about whether Washington would come to its aid. “As China ramps up the pressure, psychologically and physically, against Taiwan, and as the United States introduces more uncertainty and ambiguity into this relationship, those doubts are bound to grow,” Cronin said. The Trump administration spoke with Taiwan’s national security advisor Joseph Wu via secret channels late last week to “clarify and hopefully affirm that those commitments are very strong,” Cronin noted.

Taiwan is trying to stay on good terms with the Trump administration—Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, the world’s largest manufacturer of semiconductors, pledged on Friday to invest $100 billion in United States production over the coming years. But, despite signs of a still-firm relationship between the U.S. and Taiwan, it’s unclear how the U.S. will respond in the face of a military confrontation. And it’s less clear after the Trump administration imposed on Taiwan some of the highest tariffs in Asia.

“If tested, will the United States under the Trump administration hold its ground? And that’s a fair question,” Cronin said. “Nobody has the answer to that.”

Today’s Must-Read

Motherhood Can’t Be Maximized 

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Many mothers have, at some point or another, had the experience of mentioning to someone that they have children—and then watching that person begin to scan the room for someone else to talk to. I’ve experienced this, and, anecdotally, so have most of my friends. There are some childless people who simply think that having children is irrational or harmful to the environment. But often, it’s subtler than that: Most people don’t think that motherhood is “bad.” They just consider it to be low status.

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Worth Your Time

• Writing for City Journal, Neetu Arnold profiled Mike Miles, Houston’s recently appointed superintendent who’s looking to traditional methods to improve his district’s academic performance. “Under Miles’s leadership, student performance is turning around. Federal data released in 2025 show that Houston stopped the pandemic-era learning loss in both reading and math—an astonishing achievement among urban school districts. For the 2023–2024 school year, Houston schools with the poorest students saw the largest single-year improvements in district history on state exams. The nonprofit Children at Risk also found in its annual survey that Houston ISD schools with disadvantaged student bodies showed significant improvement since Miles’s takeover,” she wrote. “What’s behind these success stories? Not the latest trendy educational interventions. Rather, as Miles has said, he is engaging in ‘comprehensive reforms done all at one time’ through the district’s New Education System (NES). Under Miles, the district now categorizes the worst-performing schools—130 currently fall under this designation—as NES schools, which then receive intensive reforms to their curricular and institutional practices.”

Presented Without Comment

Politico: Ukrainian Refugees Mistakenly Told They Must Leave U.S. in Email Mix-Up

Ukrainians living in the U.S legally received an email in error on Friday from the Department of Homeland Security, telling them that their parole status had been revoked and that they must self-deport, according to a Trump administration official.

…

As of yet, the U.S. has not terminated the temporary parole status granted to 240,000 Ukrainians who fled the war under President Joe Biden, said Tricia McLaughlin, a DHS spokesperson.

Also Presented Without Comment

Bloomberg: Nuclear Bomb Staffers on Energy Agency’s 8,500-Job ‘Non-Essential’ List

The U.S. Energy Department has identified 8,500 jobs as “non-essential” — including positions that oversee the nation’s stockpile of nuclear weapons — as it prepares to cut employees in response to a mandate from Elon Musk’s government efficiency team.

Those “non-essential” roles account for about half of the department’s 17,500 positions and could be targeted in upcoming layoffs, according to a document seen by Bloomberg News. The list includes positions across the department, including the National Nuclear Security Administration.

In the Zeitgeist

Ferris Bueller’s Day Off is an American classic, of course. But it’s also strikingly prescient, as we were recently reminded.

Let Us Know

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