Editorial Roundup: United States

Excerpts from recent editorials in the United States and abroad:

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Dec. 12

The Wall Street Journal on Pete Hegseth's ''Zombie Reaganism''

You almost have to admire Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth taking the stage at the Ronald Reagan presidential library and immediately opening fire. ''Most who invoke Ronald Reagan's name today, especially self-styled Republican hawks, are not much like Ronald Reagan,'' he said. ''Donald Trump is the true and rightful heir of Ronald Reagan.'' Who says the Gipper is irrelevant in Republican politics?

Mr. Hegseth aimed to locate the Trump project in Reagan's mantra of peace through strength, and their slogans are the same. But the history of Reagan's success is worth recalling as Mr. Hegseth accuses others of besmirching the 40th President's legacy. Reagan rebuilt the U.S. military but also took political risk to negotiate with communists to win the Cold War, and Mr. Hegseth says President Trump is rerunning that playbook.

That doesn't get the Reagan history right. Reagan negotiated from strength because he first built up that strength, both military and economic. He deployed midrange nuclear missiles in Europe despite ferocious Soviet opposition. The Soviets tried to break the U.S. alliance with Europe, and they only turned to serious negotiating when they concluded they couldn't compete with the U.S.

Mr. Hegseth said the defense budget is going up. ''My kids and yours will someday talk about the Trump buildup,'' he said. We're ready to help the President make the case, and his one-time cash infusion in this year's Republican budget bill was a start. But now what? Mr. Trump's fiscal 2026 budget proposed a defense cut after inflation.

The defense secretary is right that Reagan hesitated to use military force abroad. But then Mr. Hegseth revived Reagan Defense Secretary Cap Weinberger's test for U.S. intervention abroad. That doctrine prescribes force only as a last resort for a vital interest, and only if it's popular, among other requirements. ''This is sound stuff,'' Mr. Hegseth said.

But Reagan and his Administration never fully accepted those tenets. Bill Safire, the conservative columnist, described the doctrine in the New York Times at the time as ''only the fun wars'' and a vow not to defend ourselves until the stakes are dire. As Safire put it: ''Our tradition has been to accept risks for a just cause.''

That point matters because you can't reduce Reaganism to ''out with utopian idealism, in with hard-nosed realism,'' as Mr. Hegseth averred. The Reagan grand strategy blended idealism with realism—naming an evil empire, while arming even unpalatable enemies of communism across the world.

The Chinese Communists may not be fomenting revolution abroad the way the Soviets did—for now—but their ambitions are still to become the pre-eminent global power, and Vladimir Putin is their junior partner. Mr. Trump casually said recently that Ukraine is losing its war, but Reagan would understand that Ukraine's defeat would be a loss for the West that makes the U.S. less secure.

Mr. Trump has made several policy choices worthy of Reagan, notably his Golden Dome homeland missile shield and enforcing his word that Iran can't have a nuclear weapon. Both Presidents evince a genuine hatred of nuclear weapons and the awful human cost of war. President Trump carries an instinct for U.S. primacy in the world, albeit without Reagan's decades of arguments about freedom and the virtues of free societies.

America's enemies are doubtless pleased that Mr. Hegseth is so focused on settling scores about the Iraq War and firing inside the GOP tent. But if there's a silver lining to his historical rewrite, it's that the Trump team understands that Reagan's legacy is important to embrace. Some in the MAGA coalition have dismissed this as ''Zombie Reaganism'' and claim that the U.S. would be better off if Pat Buchanan's isolationism had prevailed.

Don't believe it. The Administration is associating with Reagan because Republican voters still see themselves in his tradition and coalition. Mr. Trump knows who is the standard bearer for Republican electoral and strategic success. We wish his policies were as similar to Reagan's as his slogan.

ONLINE: https://www.wsj.com/opinion/pete-hegseths-zombie-reaganism-20d6129f?mod=editorials_article_pos10

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The St. Louis Post-Dispatch wonders what the necessity of Trump's farm bailouts means about his tariffs

Suppose someone randomly walks up to you, cuts you with a knife — and then offers you a bandage. You might accept the bandage, but would you be grateful about it?

Stretch the parable a little: Suppose the bandage wasn't nearly big enough for the wound?

Serious economists left, right and center have long warned that weaponizing tariffs is almost always self-defeating economic policy. Reasonable, stable tariffs have their place in trade relations, but President Donald Trump sometimes seems to be the only person in the country who thinks his unpredictable, pugilistic deployment of excessive taxes on foreign imports is good for America.

Among the strongest counter-arguments is Trump's own announcement last week that he's extending $12 billion in federal aid to America's struggling farmers.

Trump's spastic tariff attacks against America's biggest trading partners, and the resulting retaliatory tariffs and overseas market losses to U.S. exports, isn't the only reason America's farmers are hurting this year. But it's a big part of it.

Trump earlier this year imposed a 145% tariff on Chinese products. Not only did China impose retaliatory tariff hikes, but it shifted its agricultural buying to markets like Brazil and Argentina.

American farmers are thus squeezed from two sides: Trump's tariffs make it more expensive for them to buy the farm machinery and other items they need; and other nations' retaliatory tariffs and market shifts make it harder for them to sell their corn, soybeans and other crops overseas at prices that will even cover their costs.

The result has been an estimated total loss of as much as $44 billion by U.S. crop producers on this fall's harvest, as the Agricultural Risk Policy Center at North Dakota State University told multiple media outlets recently. This despite a record-high corn harvest this year and strong production numbers for other crops.

''We love our farmers,'' Trump said in announcing the $12 billion aid package at a White House event Monday. He has odd ways of showing it. In addition to the havoc his tariff policies are playing with farm expenses and crop prices, his immigration crackdown has made farm labor more scarce. And his freezing of foreign food aid — in addition to being damaging to America's global standing and unconscionably cruel to countless children — has deprived U.S. farmers of yet another major market for their crops.

''They didn't get into this business and they don't stay in the business to receive checks from the government,'' Mike Steenhoek, executive director of the Soy Transportation Coalition, told the Post-Dispatch's Hannah Wyman last week. ''It's a whole lot better just to be able to base your business on the fundamentals and actually sell to customers than be beneficiaries of the federal government.''

It remains astonishing that the leader of the world's largest economy has never appeared to grasp a simple economic fact: American tariffs aren't paid by the countries upon which they are levied. They are ultimately paid by American consumers, in the form of higher prices on imported goods and manufacturing materials. At the same time, the inevitable retaliatory tariffs from other countries hurt American manufacturers and farmers by making their exports more expensive overseas.

So the money Trump brags about collecting from other countries via tariffs is actually coming out of regular Americans' pockets every time they shop. Then he's using that money to (partly) offset the market losses that America's farmers have suffered as another result of his tariffs.

Here's an idea: Instead of this expensive Rube Goldberg contraption of a trade policy, how about keeping prices lower for American consumers by lowering our tariffs, which will simultaneously keep markets open for American farmers by eliminating the motive for other countries to impose retaliatory tariffs? Or does that make too much sense?

This arrangement is known as free trade. It's something Republicans used to support — just as they used to support agriculture via good trade policies rather than government bailouts.

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Dec. 12

The New York Times says the U.S. military need a culture shift

Bailey Baumbick knew she wanted to serve her country when she graduated from Notre Dame in 2021. Ms. Baumbick, a 26-year-old from Novi, Mich., didn't enlist in the military, however. She enrolled in business school at the University of California, Berkeley.

Ms. Baumbick is part of a growing community in the Bay Area that aims to bring high-tech dynamism to the lumbering world of the military. As social media companies and countless lifestyle start-ups have lost their luster in recent years, entrepreneurs have been drawn to defense tech by a mix of motivations: an influx of venture capital, a coolness factor and the start-up ethos, which Ms. Baumbick describes as ''the relentless pursuit of building things.''

In college Ms. Baumbick watched her father, a Ford Motor Company executive, lead the company's sprint to produce Covid-19 ventilators and personal protective equipment for front-line health care workers. ''I've never been more inspired by how private sector industry can have so much impact for public sector good,'' she said.

Ford's interventions during the Covid-19 pandemic hark back to a time when public-private partnerships were commonplace. During World War II, leaders of America's biggest companies, including Ford, halted business as usual to manufacture weapons for the war effort.

For much of the 20th century, the private and public sectors were tightly woven together. In 1980, nearly one in five Americans were veterans. By 2022, that figure had shrunk to one in 16. Through the 1980s, about 70 percent of the companies doing business with the Pentagon were also leaders in the broader U.S. economy. That's down to less than 10 percent today. The shift away from widespread American participation in national security has left the Department of Defense isolated from two of the country's great assets: its entrepreneurial spirit and technological expertise.

Recent changes in Silicon Valley are bringing down those walls. Venture capital is pouring money into defense tech; annual investment is up from $7 billion in 2015 to some $80 billion in 2025. The Pentagon needs to seize this opportunity, and find ways to accelerate its work with start-ups and skilled workers from the private sector. It should expand the definition of what it means to serve and provide more flexible options to those willing to step in.

The military will always need physically fit service members. But we are headed toward a future where software will play a bigger role in armed conflict than hardware, from unmanned drones and A.I.-driven targeting to highly engineered cyber weapons and space-based systems. These missions will be carried out by service members in temperature-controlled rooms rather than well armed troops braving the physical challenges of the front line.

America has the chance to reshape our armed forces for the conflicts ahead, and we have the rare good fortune of being able to do that in peacetime.

Elias Rosenfeld had been at Stanford for only a month and a half, but he already looked right at home at a recent job fair for students interested in pursuing defense tech, standing in a relaxed posture, wearing beaded bracelets and a sweater adorned with a single sunflower. Rather than use his time in Stanford's prestigious business school to build a fintech app or wellness brand, Mr. Rosenfeld has set his sights on helping to rebuild the industrial base on which America's military relies.

It's a crucial mission for a country that is getting outbuilt by China, and Mr. Rosenfeld brings a unique commitment to it. Born in Venezuela, he came to the United States at age 6 and draws his patriotism from that country's experience with tyranny and his Jewish heritage. ''Without a strong, resilient America, I might not be here today,'' Mr. Rosenfeld says. Working on industrial renewal, he says, is a way to ''start delivering as a country so folks feel more inclined and passionate to be more patriotic.''

Not on Mr. Rosenfeld's agenda: enlisting in the military. In an earlier era, he might have been tempted by a wider suite of options for service. In 1955 the U.S. government nearly doubled the maximum size of the military's ready reserve forces, from 1.5 million to 2.9 million, in part by giving young men the chance to spend six months in active duty training. Today the U.S. ready reserve numbers just over a million.

Other countries provide a model for strengthening the reserves. In Sweden, the military selects the top 5 percent or so of 18-year-olds eligible to serve in the active military for up to 15 months, followed by membership in the reserve for 10 years. The model is so effective that recruits compete for spots, and according to The Wall Street Journal, ''former conscripts are headhunted by the civil service and prized by tech companies.''

The best incentive for enlisting may have nothing to do with service, but the career opportunities that are promised after.

It was a foregone conclusion that Lee Kantowski would become an Army officer. One of his favorite high school teachers had served, and his hometown, Lawton, Okla., was a military town, a place where enlisting was commonplace. Mr. Kantowski attended West Point and, in the eight years after graduating, went on tours across the world. Now he's getting an M.B.A. at U.C. Berkeley, co-founded a defense tech club with Ms. Baumbick there and works part-time at a start-up building guidance devices that turn dumb bombs into smart ones.

The military needs recruits like Mr. Kantowski who want to support defense in and out of uniform. Already, nearly one million people who work for the Department of Defense are civilians, supplemented by a similar number of contractors who straddle public and private sectors. Both paths could be expanded.

A rotating-door approach carries some risk to military cohesion and readiness. The armed services are not just another job: Soldiers are asked to put themselves in danger's way, even outside combat zones. America still needs men and women who are willing to sign up for traditional tours of duty.

The Reserve Officers' Training Corps serves as the largest source of commissioned officers for the U.S. military. For more than five decades, R.O.T.C. has paid for students to pursue degree programs — accompanied by military drills and exercises — and then complete three to 10 years of required service after graduation. In 1960 alone, Stanford and M.I.T. each graduated about 100 R.O.T.C. members. Today, that figure is less than 20 combined. The Army has recently closed or reorganized programs at 84 campuses and may cut funding over the next decade.

Most military benefits have never been more appealing, with signing and retention bonuses, tax-free housing and food allowances, subsidized mortgages, low-cost health care, universal pre-K, tuition assistance and pensions. The Department of Defense and Congress need to find ways to bolster these benefits and their delivery, where service members often find gaps.

Standardizing post-service counseling and mentorship could help. Expanding job training programs like Skillbridge, which pairs transitioning service members with private sector internships, could also improve job prospects. JPMorgan has hired some 20,000 veterans across the country since creating an Office of Military & Veterans Affairs in 2011; it has also helped create a coalition of 300 companies dedicated to hiring vets.

When veterans land in promising companies — or start their own — it's not just good for them. It's also good for America. Rylan Hamilton and Austin Gray, two Navy veterans, started Blue Water Autonomy last year with the goal of building long-range drone ships that could help the military expand its maritime presence without the costs, risks and labor demands of deploying American sailors.

Mr. Gray, a former naval intelligence officer who worked in a drone factory in Ukraine, said Blue Water's vessels will one day do everything from ferrying cargo to carrying out intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance missions. This summer, the company raised $50 million to construct a fully autonomous ship stretching 150 feet long.

Before dawn on a Wednesday morning in October, military packs filled with supplies and American flags sat piled on a dewy field near the edge of Stanford University's campus. Some of the over 900 attendees at a conference on defense tech gathered around an active-duty soldier studying at the school. The glare of his head lamp broke through the darkness as he rallied the group of students, founders, veterans and investors for a ''sweat equity'' workout.

That attitude is a big change for the Bay Area, not just from the days of 1960s hippie sit-ins but also from the early days of the tech revolution, when Silicon Valley was seen as a bastion of government-wary coders and peaceniks. Now it's open for business with the Defense Department. ''The excitement is there, the concern is there, the passion is there and the knowledge is there,'' says Ms. Baumbick.

There are some risks to tying America's military more closely to the tech-heavy private sector. Companies don't always act in the country's national interest. Elon Musk infamously limited the Ukrainian military's access to its Starlink satellites, preventing them being used to help in a battle with Russian forces in 2022. Private companies are also easier for adversaries to penetrate and influence than the government.

Yet in order to prevent wars, or win them, we must learn to manage the risks of overlap between civilian and military spheres. The private sector's newly rekindled interest in the world of defense is a generational chance to build the military that Americans need.

ONLINE: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2025/12/12/opinion/editorials/us-military-recruitment-culture.html

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The Washington Post on Donald Trump's incoherent trade policy

Consider two statements of fact. First, the United States has a lead on artificial intelligence, but allowing the sale of advanced semiconductors could allow China, its biggest adversary, to catch up. Second, the U.S. has imported more goods than it has exported every year since 1976.

According to President Donald Trump, one of these items is no big deal and the other constitutes '' an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and economy of the United States.'' If English words meant what the dictionary says they mean, that would be Item No. 1. But this is politics, and Trump announced this week that he will allow the export of Nvidia's H200 chips to China.

If the government is setting trade policy based on national security considerations, as the administration insists it is, there's indisputably a stronger case for blocking advanced chip sales to China than for taxing Americans extra when they buy Canadian car parts, South Korean dishwashers or Swiss pharmaceuticals.

China has an edge in three elements key to controlling AI: the ability to generate electrical power, the number of engineers and its defense industrial base. But the U.S. maintains a lead for now because it has significantly more computational ability thanks to its high-quality chips. The Institute for Progress, a D.C. think tank, estimates that the U.S. advantage over China in AI compute next year will diminish from around 10 times to five times if they have H200 chips. China cannot manufacture enough AI semiconductors to meet domestic demand because the West has restricted the sale of the highest-end lithography machines needed to produce them.

The H200s are not Nvidia's most sophisticated chips, but they're still more advanced than anything currently on the Chinese market. The Trump administration still needs to formulate administrative rules and issue licenses to allow the purchases. It's unclear how many chips China will even allow to be sold because the government is eager to champion home-grown competitors to Nvidia, namely Huawei. Defenders of Trump's announcement argue that the chips won't get used for military applications because the Chinese government doesn't trust U.S.-made technology. But it's notoriously difficult to track what happens to technology once it's in China.

Even diehard free traders acknowledge the need for exceptions. No one thinks the U.S. should sell missiles to its enemies. But hawks on Capitol Hill argue that giving the last generation of chips to China is not meaningfully different from selling previous generations of fighter jets. The hawks may not be wrong. Yes, these chips are less advanced, but they still have a lot of firepower and can do a lot of damage when cobbled together. And China keeps showing a desire to use these tools against us: Anthropic recently alerted the public that it caught a Chinese state-sponsored group manipulating its Claude Code tool to execute cyberattacks.

Perhaps the export controls first imposed by the Biden administration were bad policy. Experts have been wrong before. But there are reasons to be skeptical of Trump prioritizing commerce over national security. He seems desperate for detente with China after Xi Jinping threatened to cut off rare-earth minerals. More important, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang is the charismatic founder of the world's most valuable company, and he's developed a rapport with the president. On top of that, Trump wants to tax the chip exports to China at 25 percent, which is prohibited by the Constitution.

Protectionists always want to stretch the national security rationale to include vast categories of goods, such as steel and aluminum. The president has expanded it to include all imports.

Protectionists imagine government officials laser-focused on the national interest. In reality, the most protectionist president in 100 years, overseeing an administration staffed with true believers, has invoked national security to put tariffs on toys, food and clothing while going out of his way to permit the export of high-end technology to China. At some point, it's the theory that's wrong.