Federal Reserve Chair Powell speaks after Fed unanimously votes to leave interest rates unchanged

Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman found himself particularly floored by a moment in President Donald Trump's address to Congress on Tuesday in which he made boasts about boosting auto manufacturing even as his tariffs on Canada and Mexico threaten to cripple auto supply chains.

Writing on his Substack page, Krugman explained how car production in the United States will be hampered by the tariffs on America's two biggest trading partners given the way that cars are assembled across all three countries.

"Automobile production, which is deeply integrated across our northern and southern borders — there really isn’t a U.S. auto industry, there’s a North American industry operating in all three countries — will be especially hard hit," he wrote. "I almost choked when Trump declared last night that 'we are going to have growth in the auto industry like nobody has ever seen.' Well, I guess we’ve never seen a large downturn in auto production outside a major recession, which is not to say that we won’t get a recession too."

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Taking stock of Trump's economic policies as a whole, including Tesla CEO Elon Musk's slash-and-burn approach to federal workers, Krugman argued that the United States right now is "trapped in a burning Tesla."

"If you don’t know this, the doors on Musk’s cars are designed to open electronically; if they have manual releases at all, they’re difficult to get at and use," he explained. "As a result, there have been multiple instances of people burning alive inside Teslas when the engines catch fire. Well, large parts of the U.S. economy and government appear to be on the verge of self-immolation. And given the combination of arrogance and ignorance shared by Musk and Trump, it’s hard to see how we get out."

President Donald Trump is rebuilding a key international constituency: Anti-Americans, one columnist wrote Monday.

Adrian Woolridge, global business columnist for Bloomberg, noted that anti-American sentiment is en vogue as Trump alienates international leaders.

Woolridge cited the March YouGov poll showing positive sentiment toward the U.S. has fallen 28 points since Trump was elected, and the columnist expects these numbers to continue falling.

"Trump embodies everything critics of the US have always warned about, multiplied several times over. Yankee arrogance? He and Vance, in the Oval Office, shamelessly bullied the leader of a nation victimized by the Russian president’s aggression. Yankee imperialism? Trump bragged to a cheering Congress that he will take over Greenland 'one way or another.' Yankee incompetence? His tariffs are destabilizing global stock markets and downgrading his own economy," wrote Woolridge.

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He noted that for centuries, the U.S. has aided anyone seeking to provide "stability and security" and to lead and spread democracy and "free-market capitalism."

"Those justifications are turning into dust," Woolridge wrote, lamenting that the U.S. is now the "source of global instability" with "erratic" swings.

"Under Trump, the US is groveling to the world’s biggest enemy of liberal democracy, Putin, and injecting massive instability into global markets," said Woolridge. If Trump continues on this path, the columnist predicted it'll only worsen for the U.S.

He also thinks that if Trump continues on his current course, anti-American sentiment will likely be "transformative" in Europe. Meanwhile, the columnist said, Trump's coattails will likely drag down populist politicians along with him.

Nigel Farage is one of the best examples, he said. The leader of Britain’s Reform Party is already pulling back on his attacks on Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky after a contentious Oval Office meeting. Now, Farage says Vice President J.D. Vance is "wrong, wrong, wrong" on British troops.

"Both the Labour and Conservative parties think Farage’s closeness to Trump could prove to be an electoral problem for Reform," he said.

In Canada, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was on a huge down-swing, and analysts assumed that the Conservatives were headed for an October victory in the upcoming election. "That's no longer a foregone conclusion," wrote Woolridge.

"The genie of anti-Americanism is now not only out of the bottle but doing immense damage to the country’s long-term interests," he closed.

Read the full column here.