| This week marked President Donald Trump’s 100 days in office. We learned that the U.S. economy shrank while he’s been in power, Canadian liberals were resurgent in an election that was all about standing up to Trump, and a majority of Americans in one poll say Trump is a “dangerous dictator.” Here’s what happened this week under Trump. Tariffs help shrink the U.S. economy for the first time since the pandemic We learned this week that the U.S. economy shrank since Trump came into office — one of the first signs of a recession — and economists I’ve talked to warn this could just be the beginning of tariff-inflicted pain on the economy. The Washington Post’s Abha Bhattarai reports that the slow down is primarily from people rushing to buy foreign cars and computers and other big-ticket items before tariffs kicked in. It meant that the U.S. imported twice as much as it exported in March, which slowed growth at home. And the tariffs haven’t really hit yet. Economists I’ve spoken to expect tariffs to noticeably raise prices at some point this summer, which could lead to empty store shelves. At the same time, businesses might have to lay off workers. Diane Swonk, chief economist with the global accounting firm KPMG, warned that this could lead to a nasty economic phenomenon known as stagflation: job losses combined with inflation. Though on Friday, we learned that employers added jobs in April. Michael Strain, an economist with the conservative-leaning American Enterprise Institute, predicted: “You’re going to see higher prices and a weaker labor market and a big hit to business investment spending,” Strain said. “And then things will continue to get worse.” Canadians rebuked Trump at the ballot box Rarely in modern times have Canadian politics and American politics become so intertwined. Just a couple of months ago, a right-wing Canadian politician who has declared war on “wokeism” was favored pretty heavily in the polls to be Canada’s next leader. But in elections this week, Canada’s liberals won big instead. The election was widely seen as a voter backlash against Trump’s perplexing tariffs on Canadian products and his even-more mystifying calls to annex Canada. More broadly, The Post reports, this election could mark a change in fortunes for populist, Trump-like politicians worldwide. Democrats are happy to read into this as a test case for American elections. Next year, control of Congress and many governors’ mansions are up for grabs. “It only took 100 days for you to convince Canadians that the far right has no place in America,” Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) posted on social media, talking about Trump’s second term. “Americans will say the same our next election.” (Though The Post’s Aaron Blake finds that early polls don’t point to big wins for Democrats next year — at least not yet.) Courts continue to rule against Trump on immigrant arrests and deportations While it builds the infrastructure for mass deportations, the Trump administration has focused its immigration crackdown on alleged gang members and international students. More than 1,000 international students have had their visas terminated by one count, and several have been arrested by masked agents on the street or in their homes. Most have not been charged with crimes, and free-speech experts tell me this is a “five-alarm fire” for the First Amendment. One such case the Trump administration lost this week: Columbia University student Mohsen Mahdawi, who was arrested in Vermont, was freed after two weeks in jail. The judge overseeing the case described this as a time when “legal residents — not charged with crimes or misconduct — are being arrested and threatened for stating their views on the political issues of the day.” More court battles loom over Trump’s swift deportations: There’s an ongoing legal fight over whether and how the Trump administration is facilitating the return from El Salvador of a wrongly deported man as the Supreme Court ordered. This week, Trump indicated he did have the authority to bring him back, but that the White House wouldn’t. And a federal judge ruled that the Trump administration can’t deport anyone in South Texas using the wartime Alien Enemies Act. Trump is historically unpopular at this point in his term Trump is the most unpopular American president this early in a term in 80 years. Just 39 percent of Americans approve of the job he’s doing so far, a new Washington Post-ABC News-Ipsos poll finds. Virtually every major aspect of his presidency so far is unpopular. Polls find that most Americans disapprove of his tariffs, the economy more broadly, his cuts to federal agencies, how he’s handling foreign relations, how much the president is governing by executive order, how Elon Musk is handling DOGE and even how Trump is handling immigration aside from the border — which has been his strongest issue for nearly a decade. Trump says his aggressive deportations will make America safer, that he’s cutting fraud in the government to make it run more smoothly and that tariffs will reorient manufacturing back home while bringing in extra money. But if any of that does come to fruition, experts in each field say it could take years to manifest. Right now, polls show a majority of America is skeptical about how he’s going about all this. Sixty percent of Americans say the country is on the wrong track, according to an NBC News-Survey Monkey poll. And a majority of Americans — 52 percent — say Trump is a “dangerous dictator who poses a threat to democracy, a new PRRI poll finds. “It’s only been 100 days into the Trump administration,” Melissa Deckman, head of PRRI, told Axios, “yet we’ve really seen a pushback among most Americans to the Trump agenda.” | 
