Trump Bars U.S. Travel for Citizens of 12 Countries

Summary

WSJ What’s News – Episode Summary: "Trump Bars U.S. Travel for Citizens of 12 Countries"
Release Date: June 5, 2025
Host: Luke Vargas | The Wall Street Journal

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1. President Trump Implements Sweeping Travel Ban

Overview:
In a significant move, President Donald Trump signed an executive order instituting a travel ban that prohibits citizens from twelve countries, predominantly in the Middle East and Africa, from entering the United States. This decision marks a continuation of Trump's stringent immigration policies and has substantial implications for international relations and domestic demographics.

Key Details:

• Affected Countries: The ban targets twelve nations, including Afghanistan, Iran, Yemen, and Haiti—the latter being the sole country in the Western Hemisphere under this ban.
• Justification: Trump defended the ban by citing a comprehensive State Department security review. He emphasized concerns over terrorism, visa security, and illegal immigration trends as primary reasons for the restriction.

Notable Quote:

"This travel ban is crucial for our national security and follows a thorough State Department review."
— President Donald Trump [01:01]

Expert Insight: Ben Dummett elaborated on the administration’s rationale, highlighting issues such as:

• Large-scale presence of terrorist organizations.
• Inadequate cooperation on visa security.
• Challenges in verifying traveler identities.
• Poor record-keeping of criminal histories.
• High rates of illegal visa overstays.

"Our analysis considered the large scale presence of terrorists and the inability to verify travelers' identities, among other critical factors."
— Ben Dummett [01:42]

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2. Expansion of Immigration Restrictions Affecting Harvard University

Overview:
In an unprecedented move, President Trump has suspended Harvard University from participation in the federal student visa program. This action effectively prevents foreign nationals, who constitute approximately 25% of Harvard's student body, from enrolling or maintaining their studies in the United States.

Implications:

• Harvard's Response: A representative from Harvard declared the suspension "illegal and a violation of the school's First Amendment rights," challenging the administration's authority in this matter.
• Authority Granted: Secretary of State Marco Rubio has been empowered to determine whether existing foreign students at Harvard should have their visas revoked.

Background:
This suspension follows a 2018 Supreme Court decision that upheld the legality of travel bans, allowing the administration to specify the reasons for including particular countries.

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3. Investigation into President Joe Biden’s Administration

Overview:
President Trump has ordered a probe into the Biden administration, scrutinizing whether President Biden and his team engaged in deceit regarding his cognitive abilities and unlawfully exercised presidential authority.

Focus Points:

• Auto Pen Usage: The investigation centers on the use of auto pens—devices that replicate signatures—for signing legal documents. While previous administrations have deemed auto pen-signed documents legally binding, Trump alleges misuse.

President Biden’s Response:

"Any suggestion that I didn't make all decisions during my presidency is ridiculous and false."
— President Joe Biden [04:24]

Trump’s Stance: Although Trump has utilized auto pens, he has minimized their significance, describing their use as limited to minor correspondence.

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4. Boeing Settles with the Justice Department Over 737 Max Crashes

Overview:
Boeing has reached a $1.1 billion settlement with the Justice Department to avoid prosecution related to two fatal crashes of its 737 Max jets. This agreement is part of Boeing’s efforts to address legal liabilities and restore trust in its aviation safety practices.

Settlement Details:

• Investment in Compliance: Boeing will invest over $400 million to enhance its compliance mechanisms, ensuring safer aircraft production.
• Compensation to Victims: Approximately $440 million will be allocated to the families of crash victims.
• Admission of Conspiracy: Boeing has admitted to obstructing the Federal Aviation Administration’s (FAA) oversight and certification processes, acknowledging that it misled the FAA about the safety features of the 737 Max.

Notable Quote:

"Boeing is critically admitting to a conspiracy to obstruct the FAA's monitoring of its systems and its certification mechanisms."
— Ben Katz [04:24]

Implications: By settling, Boeing avoids a trial that could have resulted in more severe penalties, including the potential loss of billions in government contracts annually.

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5. Global Inflation Concerns and Economic Outlook

Overview:
The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) has issued warnings about rising global inflation, projecting a near 4% inflation rate in the United States by the end of the year. This forecast is attributed largely to increasing trade protectionism, which is expected to exert upward pressure on prices.

Discussion Highlights:

• Current Data vs. Forecast: Despite the stable data currently showing only a slight uptick in the Federal Reserve's preferred consumer price index, the OECD warns of significant future inflationary pressures.
• Impact of Trade Protectionism: Increased tariffs and protectionist policies are identified as primary drivers of the anticipated inflation surge. As businesses deplete their stockpiles and begin purchasing at higher prices, these costs are expected to pass on to consumers.

Notable Quotes:

"Inflation expectations by households have moved up in some countries, particularly the United States, likely related to an increase in expected costs for imports."
— Paul Hannon [08:19]

"The OECD's warning is very specifically about the U.S.; if inflation in the biggest economy in the world doubles, the world's overall inflation rate is going to go up."
— Paul Hannon [08:47]

Economic Implications:

• Central Bank Policies: Central bankers face the challenge of maintaining restrictive monetary policies to curb inflation without stifling economic growth.
• Divergence in Monetary Strategies: While the European Central Bank is preparing for potential rate cuts, the U.S. Federal Reserve may need to sustain higher borrowing costs to manage inflation expectations.

Expert Insight: Paul Hannon elaborated on the delicate balance policymakers must maintain:

"Central bankers have to be very careful not to give people the impression that they're going to let this thing pass through. They’re going to keep borrowing costs as high as they think is necessary to make sure that inflation does not take off."
— Paul Hannon [09:49]

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6. Corporate Developments: Kimberly-Clark and Nintendo

A. Kimberly-Clark Nears Sale of International Kleenex and Tissue Businesses

Overview:
Kimberly-Clark is reportedly on the verge of selling its Kleenex and tissue businesses outside North America to Brazilian pulp producer Susano for approximately $3.5 billion. This strategic move aligns with Kimberly-Clark's efforts to streamline operations and focus on more profitable sectors.

Key Points:

• Reorganization Strategy: The sale complements Kimberly-Clark's 2024 reorganization into three operational units aimed at boosting shareholder value.
• Investment Plans: Concurrently, the company plans to invest $2 billion to expand its U.S. manufacturing capabilities over the next five years.

Notable Quote:

"This planned sale dovetails with our efforts to reorganize and focus on areas where we see the most growth potential."
— Ben Dummett [11:47]

B. Nintendo Launches Switch 2 Amid High Demand

Overview:
Nintendo has officially launched its highly anticipated Switch 2 console alongside the new game "Mario Kart World." The release has generated significant excitement among gamers worldwide, leading to a surge in pre-orders and stock performance.

Market Reaction:

• Stock Performance: Nintendo’s shares have surged approximately 30% year-to-date, buoyed by strong demand and optimistic earnings forecasts.
• Future Projections: The company anticipates that the Switch 2 will bolster its annual profits, capitalizing on the pent-up demand from a global gaming audience.

Notable Quote:

"Betting on pent-up demand for the console will significantly boost our earnings moving forward."
— Nintendo Executive [11:47]

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Conclusion

In this episode of WSJ What’s News, host Luke Vargas navigates through a series of impactful developments ranging from stringent immigration policies enacted by President Trump to significant corporate strategies by industry giants like Boeing, Kimberly-Clark, and Nintendo. Additionally, the episode delves into pressing economic concerns highlighted by the OECD's inflation forecasts, underscoring the complex interplay between policy decisions and global markets. Notable contributions from experts such as Ben Dummett, Ben Katz, and Paul Hannon provide deeper insights into these multifaceted issues, making this episode a comprehensive briefing on the day's most critical news.

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For more detailed insights and ongoing coverage, tune in to the next episode of WSJ What’s News.

Transcript

[Luke Vargas]

Isn't home where we all want to be? Reba here for realtor.com the Pro's number one most trusted app Finding a home is like dating. You're searching for the one with over 500,000 new listings every month. You can find the one today, download the realtor.com app cause you're nearly home. Make it real with realtor.com Pro's number one most trusted app based on August 2024 proprietary survey. Over 500,000 new listings every month based on average new for sale and rental listings. February 2024 through January 2025 President Trump signs a sweeping travel ban and takes fresh aim at Harvard's foreign students plus the tricky needle that central bankers have to thread as inflation concerns spike. But the data doesn't add up.

[Paul Hannon]

The question for central bankers is how quickly are those increases in inflation expectations going to translate into fresh demands for higher wages and then another round of price increases?

[Luke Vargas]

And gamers worldwide scramble to get their hands on Nintendo's new Switch 2 console. It's Thursday, June 5th. I'm Luke Vargas for the Wall Street Journal, and here is the AM Edition of what's news, the top headlines and business stories moving your world today. We begin with a trio of actions taken by the White House, starting with President Trump signing a travel ban preventing citizens from 12 countries from traveling to the U.S. the countries largely in the Middle east and Africa, and include Afghanistan, Iran and Yemen. Trump defended the move, saying it followed a State Department security review.

[Ben Dummett]

Their analysis considered are the large scale presence of terrorists, failure to cooperate on visa security, inability to verify travelers identities, inadequate record keeping of criminal histories, and persistently high rates of illegal visa overstays and other things.

[Luke Vargas]

Haiti is the only country in the Western Hemisphere to face a complete ban, which the White House justified on the basis of recent illegal immigration trends. Separately, citizens from seven further countries, including Cuba and Venezuela, are being barred from permanently immigrating to the US or applying for tourist or student visas. After years of litigation, the Supreme Court in 2018 upheld travel bans and enacted in Trump's first term so long as the administration could articulate why countries are included. Meanwhile, the president is ramping up his attack on Harvard, suspending the university from participating in the government's student visa program. That proclamation effectively bans foreign nationals, who account for around a quarter of its student population from attending and hands Secretary of State Marco Rubio the power to decide whether foreign students currently at Harvard should have their visas revoked. Last month, a federal judge blocked a prior effort to bar Harvard from enrolling foreign students, leading Trump in his latest order to invoke his executive authority to ban people whose entry would be detrimental to the U.S. a Harvard spokesman called the latest step illegal and a violation of the school's First Amendment rights. And President Trump has ordered an investigation into Joe Biden's actions as president and whether Biden's team conspired to deceive the public about his cognitive decline and unlawfully exercise presidential authority. The probe involves the use of auto pen machines programmed to imitate signatures and which are often used by presidents and other government officials to sign legal documents. Past administrations have said that auto pen signed documents are legally valid. In a statement, Biden said that he made all of the decisions during his presidency and quote, any suggestion that I didn't is ridiculous and false. Trump has used the auto pen as well, though he's played down those instances as dealing with minor correspondence. Boeing has reached an agreement with the Justice Department to avoid prosecution for two crashes of its 737 Max jets in exchange for paying $1.1 billion. Journal aviation reporter Ben Katz has more.

[Ben Katz]

This filing that we saw yesterday confirms details of a tentative agreement that was reached last month. Boeing is going to invest over 400 million in strengthening its compliance mechanisms to ensure that its aircraft are coming out its factories in a safe way. The company is being required to give around $440 million to the families of crash victims, and that comes on top of prior criminal penalties. Boeing is also critically admitting to a conspiracy to obstruct the FAA's monitoring of its systems and its certification mechanisms. That's really what has been at the crux of the 737 Max crisis, that Boeing had misled the FAA about the significance of safety features that it employed on its aircraft. The deal means that Boeing will avoid a trial them to avoid criminal prosecution, which effectively could have barred it from receiving billions in government contracts every year.

[Luke Vargas]

Coming up, as the European Central bank readies another potential rate cut, today we'll look at the global inflation outlook following OECD warnings that trade protectionism could send prices higher. That and more after the break.

[Ben Dummett]

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[Luke Vargas]

The OECD said this week that in spite of recent progress to battle back inflation around the world, higher inflation is back in the forecast, thanks in large part to trade protectionism, though that's not yet showing up in the data, as the Fed's preferred consumer price gauge ticked up just a tenth of a point last week. And this week across the Atlantic, Eurozone inflation fell below. Joining me with more is Paul Hannon, the economics editor at Dow Jones Newswires. Paul, that OECD report this week was kind of spooky, right? Warning of near 4% inflation in the US by the end of the year. Getting there would obviously require basically doubling current inflation. Are we in some sort of misleading lull then, before things are about to get a lot worse?

[Paul Hannon]

I think it depends where you are in the world. It depends on whether you're in a country that's raising tariffs or in a country that is being confronted with new tariffs. The OECD's warning was catched in a certain language to kind of generalize it, but it was very specifically targeted at the US and that's where they give the clear forecast of what the consequences are likely to be. And in future, if tariffs were to go up, for example, in the European Union, which has not yet retaliated to Trump, then that would be inflationary. So there are inflationary threats from protectionism. And to go back to the question of a lull, I mean, one of the reasons why you might not see that now yet is because there's been so much stockpiling, so much front running, and what businesses are doing is basically trying to flatten out the cost profile and buy things before the tariffs hit. So what you'd expect is that as those stockpiles run down and those goods are replaced, they will be buying at these new higher prices that incorporate the tariffs and, and they will get passed on to consumers. So you wouldn't expect to see a sort of instant hit to inflation from the hike in tariffs that we saw in April.

[Luke Vargas]

In terms of the inflation outlook, I want to play a quote from the Director General of the oecd, Matthias Corman. This was him earlier in the week.

[Paul Hannon]

Inflation expectations by households have moved up in some countries, particularly the United States, likely related to an increase in expected costs for imports. Higher inflationary pressures would require monetary policy to remain restrictive for longer raising borrowing costs and slowing economic activity.

[Luke Vargas]

Paul, inflation expectations in the US Are going up even though actual inflation rates remain relatively stable. Decode that for us.

[Paul Hannon]

The OECD's warning is very specifically about the U.S. it's about U.S. inflation doubling by the end of the year. Now, there are spillovers. If you've got, like a big rise in prices in a huge consumer market, like the US Prices around the world are maybe going to edge up a little, but the key thing is that those prices are being pushed up by a tax that's being imposed by the US Government. No one else is imposing that tax. So why should inflation pick up elsewhere? Corman is a diplomat, right? So he's not going to stand up and go like, it's just the US Here. He's going to make a general point. But mechanically, if inflation in the biggest economy in the world doubles from your initial estimate, then the world's overall inflation rate is going to go up without it necessarily going up anywhere else at all.

[Luke Vargas]

All right, so where does this leave policymakers then? I'm guessing it's not in an easy place, given the need to kind of prevent the widespread impression from sinking in that inflation is inevitable.

[Paul Hannon]

So I think what the OECD Secretary General is saying is that central bankers have to be very careful not to give people the impress that they're going to let this thing pass through. They're going to keep borrowing costs as high as they think is necessary to make sure that inflation does not take off. Again with the US There is a difficult situation here where the OECD is forecasting this very sharp slowdown in growth now to 1.6 this year with obvious threats to the jobs market. And that's one of the Fed's concerns. On the other hand, if it looks like it isn't confronting an expected rise in inflation seriously enough and later have to actually, God forbid, raise interest rates, you can imagine how well that would go down if the economy in general was kind of softening elsewhere. It's less of a challenge. The data points very much in Europe towards weaker economic growth and really inflation that's pretty well under control. So today we're very likely to see another rate cut from the European Central bank, its fourth interest rate cut since the Fed paused. It will do two more. So you've got one and a half points of divergence. Canada is probably going to go ahead next time out. The bank of England is going to keep on going. There are very few that aren't continuing to cut. They're just going to be doing it in a fairly careful way.

[Luke Vargas]

Paul Hannan is the economics editor for Dow Jones Newswires. As always, Paul, thank you so much for stopping by.

[Paul Hannon]

You're welcome, Luke.

[Luke Vargas]

We are exclusively reporting that Kimberly Clark is nearing a sale of its Kleenex and tissue businesses outside of North America to Brazilian pulp producer Susano for around $3.5 billion. Journal deals reporter Ben Dummett says the sale is part of an attempt by the maker of Scott toilet paper and Huggies diapers to focus on more profitable areas.

[Ben Dummett]

This planned sale basically would dovetail with Kimberly Cart's efforts in 2024 to reorganize its operation to three units. The new structure is meant to add fuel to its lagging share price, which stock has performed reasonably well this year, but the prior years it's underperformed. Kimberly Clark sold its tissue business in Australia last year and, you know, as part of its growth strategy, it has also said that it's going to be investing? 2 billion to expand its US manufacturing capabilities over the next five years.

[Luke Vargas]

The deal could be completed as soon as today, as long as the talks don't hit any last minute snags. And starting today, gaming fans around the world are lining up to get their hands on Nintendo's first new console in eight years. That's a trailer for the Switch 2 and the new game Mario Kart World. After facing anger from fans in April when comes to it delayed pre orders over tariff concerns, the Japanese company is now guiding for higher annual profit. Betting pent up demand for the console will boost earnings. Its shares are up around 30% so far this year. And that's it for what's news for this Thursday morning. Additional sound in this episode was from Reuters. Today's show was produced by Daniel Bach and Kate Bullivant. Our supervising producer is Sandra Kilhoff and I'm Luke Vargas for the Wall Street Journal. We will be back tonight with a new show and until then, thanks for listening.