In today’s newsletter, our economics columnist John Cassidy argues that Donald Trump’s tariff threats are just the opening salvos in a wider trade war. But, first, how reporting on an architectural folly in Manhattan sparked a love for leaning towers everywhere. Plus:
Eric LachReporting from New York City
1 Seaport, a.k.a. 161 Maiden Lane—a six-hundred-and-seventy-foot, half-built luxury condo skyscraper in lower Manhattan—has been tilted at least three inches to the north since 2018. The stalled tower is not in danger of collapsing, but its slight lean has toppled whatever delicate balance of ambition, greed, engineering, and insanity it takes to build high-end residential properties in New York City today. Lawsuit upon lawsuit has been filed in connection with the project, and while I was reporting the story, for this week’s issue, I came to think of it as a giant, real-life version of the Spiderman-pointing-at-Spiderman meme. I also started to think of the partially completed tower as a metaphor for America, a giant structure with foundation flaws and a lot of arguments about who is to blame, what a fix might look like, and who would pay for it.
Leaning towers are one of those problems, like bed bugs, or aging, that modern societies think they’ve solved, or surpassed, despite all the evidence to the contrary. In the article, I dip into the rich history of leaning structures, from the Tower of Pisa to the Leaning Temple of Huma, in India, and Big Pants, the CCTV tower, in Beijing, one of many buildings around the world built in recent years with a purposeful lean. These structures are all around us. The prosaically named Wikipedia page “List of leaning towers” is part of my favorite genre of Wikipedia entry, like the pages “List of micronations” or “List of inventors killed by their own invention,” cataloguing a phenomenon that no encyclopedia before it likely had the time or inclination to note. I could stare at images of leaning towers all day. Some look sad, some look funny, some even look wrathful. Don’t miss the Kiipsaare lighthouse, a tilting tower off the coast of Estonia, or the Leaning Tower of Britten, a roadside attraction in Groom, Texas. Don’t miss any of them, really. Read “The Leaning Tower of New York” »
Further reading: for more on ill-fated skyscrapers, revisit Joseph Morgenstern’s remarkable story about the engineer who discovered flaws in the supports he’d designed for a high rise—and blew the whistle on himself.
To the relief of Wall Street, the President has agreed to pause his tariffs against Mexico and Canada, but John Cassidy argues in a new column that Donald Trump remains as determined as ever to upend the international trading order and sow volatility. “The message of the past few days,” Cassidy writes, “is that investors—and everybody else—had better get used to it.” Read the column »
A handful of Democratic lawmakers are expressing their frustration with the way that progressives talk about the country’s challenges. But, as Emma Green reports, “though they may have strong objections to the ideological culture of the left, they’re also uncomfortable with Trump’s program to destroy it from the right.” Read the story »
P.S. It’s February. It’s still too dark. For many, it’s still too cold. And it’s only Tuesday. So make yourself some soup. Helen Rosner’s Roberto—with sausage, tomatoes, beans, kale—went mega-viral in the winter before the pandemic, and it remains as tasty and trusty as ever. 🍲
Ian Crouch contributed to this edition.
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