By PAUL WISEMAN, Associated Press Economics Writer

WASHINGTON (AP) — U.S. economic growth will slow to 1.6% this year from 2.8% last year as President Donald Trump’s erratic trade wars disrupt global commerce, drive up costs and leave businesses and consumers paralyzed by uncertainty.

The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development forecast Tuesday that the U.S. economy — the world’s largest — will slow further to just 1.5% in 2026. Trump’s policies have raised average U.S. tariff rates from around 2.5% when he returned to the White House to 15.4%, highest since 1938, according to the OECD. Tariffs raise costs for consumers and American manufacturers that rely on imported raw materials and components.

World economic growth will slow to just 2.9% this year and stay there in 2026, according to the OECD’s forecast. It marks a substantial deceleration from growth of 3.3% global growth last year and 3.4% in 2023.

FILE – Shipping containers are seen ready for transport at the Guangzhou Port in the Nansha district in southern China’s Guangdong province, April 17, 2025. (AP Photo/Ng Han Guan, File)

The world economy has proven remarkably resilient in recent years, continuing to expand steadily — though unspectacularly — in the face of global shocks such as the COVID-19 pandemic and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

But global trade and the economic outlook have been clouded by Trump’s sweeping taxes on imports, the unpredictable way he’s rolled them out and the threat of retaliation from other countries.

Reversing decades of U.S. policy in favor of freer world trade, Trump has levied 10% taxes — tariffs — on imports from almost every country on earth along with specific duties on steel, aluminum and autos. He’s also threatened more import taxes, including a doubling of his tariffs on steel and aluminum to 50%.

Without mentioning Trump by name, OECD chief economist Álvaro Pereira wrote in a commentary that accompanied the forecast that “we have seen a significant increase in trade barriers as well as in economic and trade policy uncertainty. This sharp rise in uncertainty has negatively impacted business and consumer confidence and is set to hold back trade and investment.”

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Adding to the uncertainty over Trump’s trade wars: A federal court in New York last week blocked most of Trump’s tariffs, ruling that he’d overstepped his authority in imposing them. Then an appeals court allowed the Trump administration to continue collecting the taxes while appeals worked their way through the U.S. courts.

China — the world’s second-biggest economy — is forecast to see growth decelerate from 5% last year to 4.7% in 2025 and 4.3% in 2026. Chinese exporters will be hurt by Trump’s tariffs, hobbling an economy already weakened by the collapse of the nation’s real estate market. Some of the damage will be offset by help from the government: Beijing last month outlined plans to cut interest rates and encourage bank lending as well as allocating more money for factory upgrades and elder care, among other things.

The 20 countries that share the euro currency will collectively see economic growth pick up from 0.8% last year to 1% in 2025 and 1.2% next year, the OECD said, helped by interest rate cuts from the European Central Bank.

The Paris-based OECD, comprising 38 member countries, works to promote international trade and prosperity and issues periodic reports and analyses.

Last Thursday night, President Donald Trump turned on one of his most important allies.

A day after a three-judge panel from the U.S. Court of International Trade, which included a judge he appointed in his first term, rejected his use of the International Emergency Economic Powers Act of 1977 to grant him expansive tariff authority, Trump posted a rambling screed on Truth Social condemning the judiciary.

He posted his rant despite that the court’s decision was almost immediately stayed by a court of appeals while it considers the administration’s arguments. Even so, the initial ruling was too much for Trump; he had to unleash.

That’s not new. He’s been condemning judges who rule against him since before he first became president. This time, however, he went after Leonard Leo and the Federalist Society. The Federalist Society is easily the largest and most influential organization of conservative lawyers in the country (I was a member in law school), and Leo is long one of its key leaders.

Trump declared himself “so disappointed” in the Federalist Society because of its “bad advice” on judicial nominations. But he reserved his real venom for Leo, calling him a “sleazebag” and a “bad person who, in his own way, probably hates America.”

An image of former President James Madison is seen behind Leonard Leo, as he speaks at the National Lawyers Convention in Washington, in this Nov. 16, 2017 file photo. (AP Photo/Sait Serkan Gurbuz, file)

Leo helped Trump choose conservative lawyers and judges for both the judiciary and his administration. Trump’s decision in his first run for president to publish a Supreme Court short list stocked with leading lights of the Federalist Society helped him win over skeptical conservatives in 2016.

But there was a problem. The Federalist Society never capitulated to Trump. It’s a decentralized group, and its members are stubbornly independent. I’ve spoken to dozens of Federalist Society student groups, and they can vary wildly from school to school. One chapter can be reasonably Trump-friendly (but never, in my experience, fully MAGA), while another is mainly Never Trump.

For every John Eastman — a Federalist Society luminary who was prosecuted and suspended from practicing law in California after he helped Trump try to steal the 2020 election — there are multiple Federalist Society judges and lawyers who’ve ruled against him or resisted him in other ways.

The examples by now are almost too numerous to count. During his first term, Trump had a worse record at the Supreme Court — which had a Republican-nominated majority — than any previous modern president. When he challenged the outcome of the 2020 election, Federalist Society judges ruled against him time and again.

During Joe Biden’s term, the Supreme Court rejected several MAGA legal arguments, and during his second term so far, Trump is faring very poorly in federal court. According to an analysis by a political scientist at Stanford, Adam Bonica, as of May, Republican-appointed district judges ruled against Trump 72% of the time. That number is remarkably close to the 80% rate of losses before Democratic-appointed judges.

And the Supreme Court seems no more hospitable to Trump in his second term. It’s already unanimously ruled that deportees under the Alien Enemies Act are entitled to due process before deportation, it’s upheld a district court order requiring the Trump administration to facilitate Kilmar Abrego Garcia’s return, and recently it ruled 7-2 against the administration in still another Alien Enemies Act case, holding that the administration was still not providing sufficient due process to deportees.

Trump hasn’t always lost, of course. He won important rulings at the Supreme Court that expanded presidential immunity and kept him on the ballot in 2024, but there is still an immense difference between judicial conservatives and, say, congressional Republicans. Most judges have a spine. Most members of Congress do not.

Another way of putting it is that when there is a conflict between conservative legal principles and Trump’s demands, conservative judges almost always adhere to their principles. Members of Congress do not.

And don’t think for a moment that it’s a Republican member of Congress’ job to simply yield to Trump. Constitutionally, Congress is a superior branch of government to the presidency, and it is explicitly designed to check the president. As James Madison wrote in Federalist No. 51, “Ambition must be made to counteract ambition.”

Trump is baffled. At the beginning of his Truth rant, he refers back to the Court of International Trade and asks: “Where do these initial three Judges come from? How is it possible for them to have potentially done such damage to the United States of America? Is it purely a hatred of ‘TRUMP?’ What other reason could it be?”

Trump and I have something in common. We’ve both been thinking about why the judiciary has held firm when many other American institutions (especially conservative institutions) have collapsed. Why have a vast majority of conservative judges remained faithful to their legal philosophies when we’ve watched a vast majority of Republicans twist themselves into pretzels celebrating Trump for practices and policies they’d condemn in any other person or politician?

I come from the conservative legal movement, I have friends throughout the conservative legal movement (including many Trump-appointed judges), and I think I know the answer, or at least part of it.

The immense pressure that Trump puts on his perceived rivals and opponents exposes our core motivations, and the core motivations of federal judges are very different from the core motivations of members of Congress. Think of it as the difference between seeking the judgment of history over the judgment of the electorate, and to the extent that you seek approval, you place a higher priority on the respect of your peers than the applause of the crowd.

If you ask judges or members of Congress why they do what they do, you’ll likely get similar answers: They feel called to public service. But how do they measure their success? While politicians might respect the idea of the noble loser in theory, in practice that is not the path they take.

It’s become easy for politicians to rationalize their compliance. How many one-term senators or short-term members of the House have made a difference in American history? they ask. Look at all the Republican politicians who tried to stand against Trump and are now out of office. What did they accomplish?

To matter, they have to win, and winning can soon become the only thing that matters.

But in a court system built on precedents, not elections, it’s your decisions that measure your worth. Roger B. Taney was chief justice of the United States for 28 years, but when we hear his name one decision springs to mind — Dred Scott. He wrote the decision that stripped citizenship from Black Americans, rightly tarnishing his reputation forever.

If your decisions are the measure of your worth, then seeking the applause of the crowd can lead you down a dangerous path. Many parts of the Constitution are intentionally counter-majoritarian. They’re designed to protect both individual rights and our republican form of government from majoritarian mobs. “The people have spoken” can be the least convincing argument to federal judges — especially when he or she is interpreting the Bill of Rights.

Due process is rarely popular, for example. And popular speech doesn’t need legal protection. There aren’t many constituencies clamoring for the rights of criminal defendants, and when two sisters who were Jehovah’s Witnesses refused to pledge allegiance to the flag during the height of World War II, they faced punishment, not popular celebration. Yet the decision to protect their right not to speak is one of the Supreme Court’s finest moments.

I’m not naive. I know there can be a dark side to a culture of counter-majoritarian independence. At their worst, federal judges can be arrogant and imperious.

But even this stubborn pride is having a virtuous effect. Both professionalism and pride are working together to preserve our constitutional order. If you try to intimidate a judge, you’re often confirming to the judge the necessity of her or his ruling. And some judges take acts of intimidation as a kind of personal insult. They don’t become afraid. They just get mad.

We should be grateful for that anger. It’s stiffening their backs, not altering their reasoning. The combination of dedication to the rule of law and a kind of “How dare you?” stubbornness in the face of intimidation is resulting in one of the rarest spectacles in this miserable modern political era — one branch of government actually doing its job.

David French writes a column for the New York Times.

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Mohamed Ahmed had just dropped his youngest daughter at a program at the Hosmer Library in Minneapolis in 2016 when a car began speeding toward him on the sidewalk.

Ahmed jumped between two parked cars to avoid getting hit, but the driver smashed into the back of the rear parked car. The force crushed Ahmed’s left leg.

Mohamed Ahmed (Caroline Yang / Bush Foundation)

“I don’t know if they were texting or had been drinking alcohol or whatever, but somehow they ended up on the sidewalk,” said Ahmed, who lives in St. Paul. “I got my right leg out, but not my left.”

Ahmed, who emigrated from Somalia to the U.S. when he was 17, had his left leg amputated above the knee and now uses a high-tech, computerized knee called a “c-leg.”

Since his amputation, Ahmed has worked to ensure equitable access to prosthetic care for underserved communities, both in Minnesota and globally. He is a volunteer with the Protez Foundation, an Oakdale-based organization that provides free prosthetics for people who have lost limbs, especially as a result of wars, in underserved areas of the world, and Wiggle Your Toes, an organization dedicated to helping victims and families of victims who have experienced limb loss.

Ahmed is one of 29 new fellows chosen by the Bush Foundation for their work in Minnesota, North Dakota, South Dakota and the 23 Native nations that share the same geography. Each fellow will receive up to $150,000 to fund 12-to-24 months of study and reflection, often in other states or countries, with the goal of making them better leaders.

Ahmed plans to use his award to complete a master’s of science degree in orthotics and prosthetics from Concordia University in St. Paul, strengthen his policy and advocacy skills and expand his impact on disability justice and healthcare access. He particularly wants to help people in Somalia and Yemen, he said.

“Here, if you lose your leg, you can go to a clinic and get a prosthetic,” he said. “In third-world countries, if you lose your leg, you lose everything. You lose your livelihood, you lose your transportation. Everything is out of the window. I’ll be working to help those people remain independent – to be able to support their family; get kids back to school, adults back to work, and to support their community. So it’s a win-win situation for everybody.”

In total, seven of this year’s 29 Bush Fellows live or work in St. Paul or the east metro. The Bush Foundation, based in downtown St. Paul, chose them from among 1,000 applicants. Here’s more about them:

Georgia Fort

Georgia Fort (Caroline Yang / Bush Foundation)

Georgia Fort, a three-time Midwest Emmy Award-winning journalist from St. Paul, is working to reshape the media landscape to center community and representation. “Less than 3 percent of journalists in the state of Minnesota are Black,” she said. “I think it’s really important that our newsrooms reflect the diversity of the communities they serve, and that’s what I aim to accomplish.”

Fort, who grew up on St. Paul’s East Side, is the founder of BLCK Press and the Center for Broadcast Journalism in St. Paul. She left mainstream media eight years ago “to build platforms that elevate underreported stories and develop the next generation of Black and brown journalists,” she said.

Fort plans to use her fellowship to pursue a certificate in leadership at Harvard University and develop a personal wellness plan that will allow her “to continue building a journalism ecosystem that affirms community, develops talent, and ensures that all voices are seen and heard.”

Two years ago, Fort launched a weekly half-hour TV show, “Here’s The Truth with Georgia Fort,” on The CW Twin Cities. “We had a shoestring budget, and we made it happen, but the reality is, the transformation that we want to see on that side of our work is going to require more than just a 30-minute time slot once a week,” Fort said. “Journalism is a pillar of democracy, and in order for this region and this nation to move forward, we need more than just a 30-minute show. We need a network. And so how do we build that? I’m excited to have the next two years to really have the time and space to become the leader that will be required to bring forth that vision.”

James Garrett Jr.

James Garrett Jr. (Caroline Yang / Bush Foundation)

James Garrett Jr., of St. Paul, believes architecture should be used as a tool for equity, cultural expression, and community transformation. Many of the projects designed by his firm, 4RM+ULA, reflect the aspirations of underserved communities from North Minneapolis to the Rondo neighborhood of St. Paul.

For example, the Rondo Commemorative Plaza in St. Paul, which his firm designed, “commemorates the neighborhood that was there before (Interstate 94) was built,” he said. It includes a 30-foot illuminated sign that “is wrapped in art and says ‘Rondo,’ and it kind of claims that space. It says, ‘Hey, we’re still here. The community was devastated, but we’re still here.’”

“We’re really interested in community and understanding how best we can reflect the community values and identity and create an artwork that expresses those things, gives people that sense of pride and that sense of belonging and ownership to connections of place,” said Garrett, whose great-grandmother is believed to be the first Black person to purchase a home in Rondo. “A lot of times that’s missing in our underserved neighborhoods or lower-income communities. People don’t get to build new buildings; they just sort of inhabit the buildings that are left over from prior eras. Going into community and really pushing to be able to create spaces and places that actually speak to who people are and what they aspire to be in new and creative ways, that’s really our motivation.”

Garrett said he plans to use his fellowship to “deepen his exploration of sustainable, climate-responsive materials and methods of building construction and expand his network as a thought leader for inclusive design.”

Leya Hale

Leya Hale (Caroline Yang / Bush Foundation)

Leya Hale is “indigenizing filmmaking by rooting the creative process in Indigenous language, kinship and worldview,” Bush officials said.

Hale, a citizen of the Sisseton-Wahpeton Oyate and Dine Nations, is a multiple regional Emmy Award-winning documentary producer for Twin Cities PBS. She has earned national acclaim for films like “Bring Her Home” and “The People’s Protectors,” which uplift Indigenous stories and resilience.

Hale plans to use her fellowship to strengthen her Dakota language skills, expand her technical and narrative filmmaking skills, and build a global network of Indigenous creatives reshaping the future of media.

Hale lives in West St. Paul.

Carl Johnson

Carl Johnson (Caroline Yang / Bush Foundation)

Pastor Carl Johnson is transforming food access and economic opportunity on St. Paul’s East Side through faith-rooted leadership and community ownership.

Johnson, of St. Paul, founded the neighborhood’s first Black-owned “micro” grocery store and the George Washington Carver Cultural Center for Innovation, a hub for youth mentorship and cooperative business development.

The concept has been so successful that Johnson is working on starting other “micro” grocery stores across the Twin Cities, including the North End and downtown St. Paul. The stores, called Storehouse Grocers and Coffee Co-op, include a coffee shop.

Johnson plans to use his fellowship to complete his degree in entrepreneurship, pursue certification in cultural intelligence, and deepen his spiritual and cultural leadership through ancestral pilgrimage and learning Swahili.

“I plan to start in Kenya, in East Africa, where I have some DNA representation,” he said. “Then I will be going to Rwanda … to see what we call ‘a fully sustainable culture.’ They take one day out of the month, and the whole country cleans up the environment. I just thought, ‘Man, what would it look like to see someplace where everybody cleans up?’”

Marvis Kilgore

Marvis Kilgore (Caroline Yang / Bush Foundation)

Marvis Kilgore has an ambitious goal: Close the equity gap in education by increasing the presence and power of Black male educators.

Studies show that if Black male students have a Black male teacher before fifth grade, they’re more likely to graduate from high school and attend college, according to Kilgore. “How they think about themselves changes because they have someone in close proximity to them who can understand lived experience and take that lived experience and connect it in the classroom to create something more magical,” he said.

Kilgore is executive director of Code Savvy, a Minneapolis-based nonprofit offering computer science training programs to students and school districts focused on traditionally underserved student communities. He previously served as program director for Sirtify, a Normandale Community College program dedicated to recruiting Black men in K-12 teaching.

He said he plans to use his fellowship to “expand his leadership in educational equity, strengthen his policy expertise and explore how innovation and technology can drive systemic transformation in teacher preparation and retention,” he said.

“My plan is to really get out in the state of Minnesota to understand the reason why there is this huge equity gap in education,” said Kilgore, who lives on St. Paul’s East Side. “I know what the numbers say, but I want to hear from Black men across the state of Minnesota to understand their why. Data is great, but it doesn’t come with voice. I need to understand the voice of the people to be able to affect change in a more meaningful way and be a more effective voice of change and advocacy.”

Maychee Mua

Maychee Mua (Caroline Yang / Bush Foundation)

As a first-generation Hmong-Chinese-American and a parent of neurodivergent children, Maychee Mua helped establish Minnesota’s first autism Medicaid program for children under 21 and the state’s first cultural competency training for autism providers. Her advocacy expertise extends to housing, behavioral health and advocating for individuals who are deaf or hard of hearing.

Mua, of Cottage Grove, is “reimagining autism advocacy through a culturally attuned and healing-centered lens,” Bush officials said. “Her work dismantles barriers with empathy, cultural fluency and deep systems knowledge.”

Mua, the co-author of the Hmong children’s book “I Am a Hmong-American Child,” plans to use her fellowship to “reconnect with her cultural roots, design holistic healing frameworks and develop resources that bridge Southeast Asian traditions with Western systems of care.”

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Today is Tuesday, June 3, the 154th day of 2025. There are 211 days left in the year.

Today in history:

On June 3, 1943, an altercation between U.S. Navy sailors and young Mexican Americans on the streets of Los Angeles led to several days of clashes known as the Zoot Suit Riots, during which white mobs attacked Mexican Americans across the city, injuring more than 150.

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In 1844, the last confirmed specimens of the great auk were killed on Eldey island, near Iceland.

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In 1888, the poem “Casey at the Bat” by Ernest Lawrence Thayer was first published in the San Francisco Daily Examiner.

In 1935, the French liner SS Normandie set a record on its maiden voyage, arriving in New York after crossing the Atlantic in just four days.

In 1937, Edward, The Duke of Windsor, who had abdicated the British throne, married Wallis Simpson in a private ceremony in Monts, France.

In 1965, during the Gemini 4, spaceflight, astronaut Edward H. White became the first American to “walk” in space.

In 1989, Chinese army troops entered Beijing’s Tiananmen Square to begin a crackdown on student-led pro-democracy demonstrations.

In 2016, former heavyweight boxing champion Muhammad Ali, whose athletic feats and activism placed him among the most revered athletes of all time, died in Scottsdale, Arizona, at age 74.

In 2017, elite rock climber Alex Honnold became the first to climb solo to the top of the massive granite wall known as El Capitan in Yosemite National Park without ropes or safety gear.

Today’s Birthdays:

Former Cuban President Raúl Castro is 94.
Basketball Hall of Famer Billy Cunningham is 82.
Golf Hall of Famer Hale Irwin is 80.
Singer Suzi Quatro is 75.
Singer Deniece Williams is 75.
Former first lady Jill Biden is 74.
Olympic gymnastics gold medalist Peter Vidmar is 64.
Musician Kerry King (Slayer) is 61.
Broadcast journalist Anderson Cooper is 58.
Tennis player Rafael Nadal is 39.