🌏 Turning up the heat

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ByQuartz Staff

PublishedTuesday 6:00AM

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Image for article titled 🌏 Turning up the heat — Photo: Drew Angerer (Getty Images)

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Red, white, and blew it? President Trump’s economic approval ratings keep falling amid tariff and trade war turmoil, with almost half of the public expecting the economy to get worse in the next year.

Chairman of the Feud

Donald Trump’s feud with Jerome Powell has headed to the playground, with the president calling the Federal Reserve chair a “major loser” and “Mr. Too Late.” Trump’s comments come amid his continuing attacks on Powell for not lowering interest rates fast enough.

In a post on Truth Social, the president wrote that “‘preemptive cuts’ in interest rates are being called for by many” and said the economy will slow unless Powell slashes the rates. Trump’s post comes amid tariff turmoil — by early afternoon, the Dow plunged almost 1,100 points (or 2.7%), the Nasdaq was off 3.2%, the S&P 500 dropped 2.8%, gold surged to $3,425, and the dollar dropped to multiyear lows.

Trump’s attack adds more heat to an already tense dynamic between his administration and the Fed. Last week, Powell warned that Trump’s tariffs were “highly likely” to fuel inflation and suggested that the central bank would wait to cut rates. Trump responded on social media that the Fed chair was “always too late and wrong” about interest cut rates and should be fired.

The Fed operates independently of the government, but a White House official has said the administration was continuing to study whether it could fire Powell. (Ironically, Trump appointed Powell to lead the central bank during his first term.) Powell has reiterated that he doesn’t plan to resign and will serve in his role until his term is up in 2026. Quartz’s Catherine Arnst has more on Powell v. POTUS.

Search and Seize

Google is back in court this week as a federal judge decides what penalties to impose on the Silicon Valley giant for its illegal search monopoly.

The Justice Department said Monday in its opening statement that the best way forward was to break up the $1.9 trillion company and asked Judge Amit P. Mehta to force the company to sell Chrome, among other measures (including handing rivals some of Google’s data about what terms people search for and what websites they click on).

Google’s lawyers, meanwhile, said Mehta should narrow his focus to deals that the company makes with companies such as Apple, Mozilla, and Samsung that automatically make Google’s search engine the default.

Monday was the first day in the three-week trial; Mehta is expected to issue his final ruling by the end of this summer. But the stakes for Google are rising fast: the company was just found guilty of another monopoly in its ad business and is facing monopoly claims by the FTC in Japan. Quartz’s Shannon Carroll has more on Google’s Chrome — and punishment.