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| 60.7 | | The University of Michigan's index of consumer sentiment for June—higher than expected and up from 52.2 in May. The initial shock of Trump's aggressive tariffs has worn off for consumers, particularly given the on-again, off-again nature of the White House's trade war, economists say. | |
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"It would be the best thing to happen to Miami and Palm Beach since Covid." | | —Real-estate investor Danny Fishman, referring to the possibility that Zohran Mamdani is elected New York City mayor in November. Since the socialist's surprise victory in this week's Democratic primary, on a platform that includes freezing some rents, developers and landlords are panicking and even thinking of leaving town. | |
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| Much of the world's attention was focused on The Hague earlier this week as NATO allies and key partners met to address the bloc's current challenges and further strengthen its defense. The headline? Alliance members pledged to more than double their defense spending as Trump insisted—and the U.S. will stay in NATO. Brussels Bureau Chief Dan Michaels covered the historic two-day meeting. I spoke to him about Trump's evolving perspective on NATO, the Iran-Israel cease-fire's importance to Europe and how a single letter led him to a career in journalism. Write to him at Dan.Michaels@wsj.com. | |
| Why was this NATO summit significant? | |
| This was the first meeting of NATO's 32 national leaders since Trump—a longtime critic of the alliance and its other members—returned to office. In January, Trump said NATO's other members should more than double their military investments to make up for years of underspending and what he has called freeloading on America's security umbrella. To the surprise of just about everyone around NATO, the Europeans and Canada have pretty much agreed to do what Trump advocated. They're doing it partly out of fear that failing to heed his wishes could prompt him to pull the U.S. from NATO. But Europe is also very afraid of Russia, which is waging a war nearby in Ukraine and is widely seen as a mortal danger to Europe. | |
| How is Trump's relationship with NATO? | |
| It has been strained, but maybe that's changing now. Until recently, he accused other members of fleecing the U.S. by getting free defense while spending on cushy social programs and developing a trade surplus with America. He upended a NATO summit in 2018 by obliquely threatening to pull out of the alliance. He has repeatedly cast doubt on NATO's fundamental premise that an armed attack on one member constitutes an attack on all of them. But at the end of this summit, he said he was leaving Europe "a little bit different" in perspective. His summit headline was that NATO is "not a rip-off" because Europeans are stepping up. He left in a good mood. | |
| What significance did the U.S.-brokered Iran-Israel cease-fire have at the summit? | |
| First, it's important to remember that Europeans have tried very hard for a long time to stop Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons. But they did this only through diplomacy. Europeans have also criticized what Israel is doing in Gaza. Fighting in the Mideast unnerves Europe, which fears another wave of refugees, like in 2015. So a cease-fire is welcomed. To a lot of Europeans, the cease-fire shows what Trump can achieve if he wants to—and they wish he would do the same thing about Russia's invasion of Ukraine. They also hope that a stop to fighting in Iran will let leaders return to focusing on ending the war in Ukraine. | |
| You've lived in Europe for decades. Did you always want to be a foreign correspondent? | |
| I went to Poland in 1991 as a consultant on its economic transformation from communism. I hadn't planned to be a reporter, but a letter I wrote about what was going on in Russia and China—where I had also spent time—turned into an op-ed piece published in a few U.S. newspapers. Soon I was writing more and discovered that being a foreign correspondent is a really rewarding way to help people back home wrap their heads around what's happening in distant places. | |
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 | | PHOTO: TONJE THILESEN FOR WSJ; MAKEUP BY KAROL RODRIGUEZ | | |
| As salon prices rise and recession fears grow, women are increasingly attempting DIY beauty treatments to save money. It's not always pretty, doctors say. | |
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