White House turbulence seeps into second Trump term

Published April 24, 2025 6:00am ET



Fissures within the Trump administration have started to form as rivalries over trade and even Defense Department operations bring the infighting of the president’s first term roaring back to life.

The White House was praised in the first few months of President Donald Trump’s second term for chief of staff Susie Wiles’s discipline over infighting, leaking, and chaos that plagued the first administration. But now, advisers have begun to turn on each other privately and publicly as the fallout from Trump’s decision to slap most U.S. trade partners with higher tariffs, then pause those tariffs, and battle China in a trade war has thrown the financial markets into a tailspin.

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