Domestic Politics Archive

In a month spent celebrating supposed trade triumphs, the White House quietly conceded that some of President Donald Trump’s tariffs, on imports of steel and aluminum, were in fact failing to achieve their stated aim of boosting American production. But instead of rolling the tariffs back, Trump issued new ones. Late on a recent Friday night, a time when all presidents try to bury bad news, the White House released a proclamation in which Trump ordered new tariffs on nails, wire, car bumpers and certain other metal-based products because increased imports of those “derivative” products were “undermin[ing] the purpose” of […]

BELFAST, Northern Ireland—The two main political parties in Northern Ireland announced a deal last month to restore the region’s power-sharing government, which had ceased to function three years ago. Within 24 hours of the announcement of the deal on Jan. 10, which was brokered by the British and Irish governments, Northern Ireland’s institutions of devolved government were back up and running. Yet while many in Belfast are breathing a sigh of relief, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s recent Brexit deal has created a host of new problems for the region that the reopened Northern Ireland Assembly will need to confront. […]

LIMA, Peru—When Martin Vizcarra stepped up from the vice presidency to replace the disgraced Pedro Pablo Kuczynski as president of Peru in March 2018, the odds appeared stacked against him. An austere, accidental leader whose tiny political party, Peruvians for Change, controlled a fast-disintegrating congressional bloc, Vizcarra immediately came under heavy fire from the hard-right Popular Force party, led by Keiko Fujimori, which had seized on a bribery scandal to force Kuczynski to resign. After three months of attempting to appease the Fujimoristas—and seeing his approval ratings plummet—Vizcarra launched a make-or-break campaign against Peru’s rampant corruption, and by implication Popular […]