Kristen Schwab

Rachel Siegel writes about the economy at The Washington Post.

Thanks, Rachel.

Thank you so much.

Wall Street today, disappointing GDP and inflation reports plus rising oil prices equals, well, I'm sure you can guess.

We'll have the details when we do the numbers.

Tariffs have taken a bit of a backseat for the last couple of weeks, given everything else happening right now.

But they're still very much a part of the economic picture.

The newest development, the Trump administration has launched trade practice investigations into dozens of countries.

The probes will look into everything from excess industrial capacity to whether countries are doing enough to combat forced labor.

The economies involved include allies like Canada, Mexico, the United Kingdom, and the EU.

And it's not a coincidence that this is happening after the Supreme Court struck down many of Trump's so-called Liberation Day tariffs in February.

Marketplace's Nova Safo takes it from here.

The Trump administration has made no secret of the fact that it wants to reimpose the tariffs the Supreme Court struck down.

And the trade investigations just launched.

It's the next part of a whack-a-mole strategy.

That's Ryan Young, senior economist at the Competitive Enterprise Institute.

That strategy?

Temporary tariffs for now, while the Trump administration looks for permanent ones under Sections 232 and 301 of two separate laws.

Section 232 requires a national security rationale, and Section 301, well, that requires a very vague definition of unfair trade practices.

The Office of the U.S.