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Outside The Beltway | The Reporters

Some Tariff Related Content

by | Apr 4, 2025 | National Review, Outside The Beltway

If things go as expected, later today, President Trump will be unilaterally enacting a huge regressive tax increase on the American public. I realize that some galaxy brains will claim that other countries pay for tariffs–not American citizens. This is, off course, utter bullshit. But you don’t need to take my word for it. Here is a noted economist on the topic:

Tariffs are taxes on imports which serve to raise the prices of those imports, and thus enable domestic producers to charge higher prices for competing products than they could in the face of cheaper foreign competition. . . .

Sometimes this approach is buttressed by claims that this or that foreign country is being “unfair” in its restrictions on imports from the United States. But the sad fact is that virtually all countries impose “unfair” restrictions on imports, usually in response to internal special interests. However, here as elsewhere, choices can only be made among alternatives actually available. Other countries’ restrictions deprive both them and us of some of the benefits of international trade. If we do the same in response, it will deprive both of us of still more benefits. If we let them “get away with it,” this will minimize the losses of both sides. [Source ]

That is a quote from Basic Economics: A Common Sense Guide to the Economy by famed conservative economist Thomas Sowell (who knew he wrote on more than the failures of academia and black culture). An earlier National Review article excerpted several portions of the work relevant to tariffs.

Now I realize that some readers must be thinking: “But something needs to be done with China, and therefore we should impose tariffs as a radical solution. The fact is we know what the economic impact of this will most likely be–because Trump has already done it. Again, I’ll go back to Sowell, this time from a Reason interview :

Thoughts on the Trump trade war?

Oh my gosh, an utter disaster. I happen to believe that the Smoot-Hawley tariffs had more to do with setting off the great depression of the ’30s than the stock market crash. Unemployment never reached double digits in any of the 12 months that followed the crash of October 1929, but it hit double digits within six months of passage of Smoot-Hawley, and stayed there for a decade.

What about the view by President Trump that other countries are ripping us off by running trade surpluses?

It’s pathetic. The very phrase “trade surpluses” gives half a story. There are countries that supply mainly goods, physical goods, and there are other things like services that other countries provide, and the United States gets a lot of money from providing services. To talk about one part of the trading and ignore the other part fails to understand that money is money no matter whether it’s from goods or services.

When you set off a trade war, like any other war, you have no idea how that’s going to end. You’re going to be blindsided by all kinds of consequences. You do not make America great again by raising the price to Americans, which is what a tariff does. [source ]

Then there’s always this guy, who also had strong thoughts on tariffs:

All this matters because, by most estimates, the tariffs that are about to be enacted will represent the largest peacetime tax increase in American history–to the tune of $600 billion a year on the American People. That is, unless you are Peter Navaro who claims that tariffs are actually a tax cut . It’s good to know that Professor Sowell would most likely fail one of the President’s current economic advisors. Estimates put the impact on average households as high as $3,400 :

In the analysis released by the policy research center this week, the group found that a 20-percent tariff on all imports would bring the average effective U.S. tariff rate to the highest since 1872 when stacked together with the other tariffs that have taken effect in recent months.

Researchers said the proposal would increase prices somewhere between 2.1 percent and 2.6 percent, depending on how other countries retaliate to Trump’s new tariffs and the Federal Reserve’s response.

“This is equivalent to a loss of purchasing power of $3,400-4,200 per household on average in 2024 dollars,” the group said. [source ]

That’s before we get to the other economic challenges these tariffs create. For that, I’ll turn to Rand Paul (one of the few Republicans willing to publicly admit that this is a tax increase that is being enacted without the Constitutionally required Congressional consent):

“I haven’t had a single business person or individual in my state come up to me and say the tariffs are a good idea,” says Paul. … “I have had people come up—farmers which are a big presence in our state—and say they export 20 to 25 percent of their products and this will hurt them,” says Paul. “They are still suffering from some of the tariffs and retaliation from 2018 and 2019, when the previous Trump administration did tariffs,” Paul said. “I have home builders and real estate brokers who say if the price of lumber goes up, if the price of steel goes up, the prices of homes will go up and we’ll sell less homes. I have the bourbon distillers coming to me, which is a big industry in my state, and they say due to the retaliation that Europe is placing on us and Canada is placing on our bourbon, we will export less bourbon. We have shippers in our state, people who ship internationally as well as across the U.S.” [source ]

Paul’s point about farmers is an important one, as during the last Trump Administration, the government had to “bail out ” farmers to help them survive the self-inflicted wounds of the last trade war. To my knowledge, there have been no budget provisions made for the current budget and tax plan working its way through Congress to create a similar fund proactively. That forward planning failure seems kind of important if we let history be our guide. That’s before we get to how the budget’s tax cuts are primarily based on shifting tax burdens onto these tariffs.

Extending the expiring 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA ) would decrease federal tax revenue by $4.5 trillion from 2025 through 2034. Long-run GDP would be 1.1 percent higher, offsetting $710 billion, or 16 percent , of the revenue losses. Long-run GNP (a measure of American incomes) would only rise by 0.4 percent, as some of the benefits of the tax cuts and larger economy go to foreigners in the form of higher interest payments on the debt. [Source ]

To me, at least, (not to mention most economists and trade experts) this has the makings of an unmitigated disaster for the country. And, unlike some things the President has done since being elected, this is a case where he promised to do this throughout the campaign. And frankly the rationalization that “we have to do something about our trade deficit and debt and at least this is something” is akin to a surgeon suggesting the best way to deal with brain cancer is just to remove the head altogether.

[Addendum] I forgot to mention that one tariff that the President has already announced is that he’s apparently putting a tariff on illegal Fentanyl. I’m not entirely sure how he plans to collect said tariffs, but it’s a bold plan.

Friday’s Forum

by | Apr 4, 2025 | Outside The Beltway

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‘The Economic Version of the Iraq War’

by | Apr 4, 2025 | Outside The Beltway, Politico

The Economist (“President Trump’s mindless tariffs will cause economic havoc“):

If you failed to spot America being “looted, pillaged, raped and plundered by nations near and far” or it being cruelly denied a “turn to prosper”, then congratulations: you have a firmer grip on reality than the president of the United States. It’s hard to know which is more unsettling: that the leader of the free world could spout complete drivel about its most successful and admired economy. Or the fact that on April 2nd, spurred on by his delusions, Donald Trump announced the biggest break in America’s trade policy in over a century—and committed the most profound, harmful and unnecessary economic error in the modern era.

Speaking in the Rose Garden of the White House, the president announced new “reciprocal” tariffs on almost all America’s trading partners. There will be levies of 34% on China, 27% on India, 24% on Japan and 20% on the European Union. Many small economies face swingeing rates; all targets face a tariff of at least 10%. Including existing duties, the total levy on China will now be 65%. Canada and Mexico were spared additional tariffs, and the new levies will not be added to industry-specific measures, such as a 25% tariff on cars, or a promised tariff on semiconductors. But America’s overall tariff rate will soar above its Depression-era level back to the 19th century.

Mr Trump called it one of the most important days in American history. He is almost right. His “Liberation Day” heralds America’s total abandonment of the world trading order and embrace of protectionism. The question for countries reeling from the president’s mindless vandalism is how to limit the damage.

Almost everything Mr Trump said this week—on history, economics and the technicalities of trade—was utterly deluded. His reading of history is upside down. He has long glorified the high-tariff, low-income-tax era of the late-19th century. In fact, the best scholarship shows that tariffs impeded the economy back then. He has now added the bizarre claim that lifting tariffs caused the Depression of the 1930s and that the Smoot-Hawley tariffs were too late to rescue the situation. The reality is that tariffs made the Depression much worse, just as they will harm all economies today. It was the painstaking rounds of trade talks in the subsequent 80 years that lowered tariffs and helped increase prosperity.

On economics Mr Trump’s assertions are flat-out nonsense. The president says tariffs are needed to close America’s trade deficit, which he sees as a transfer of wealth to foreigners. Yet as any of the president’s economists could have told him, this overall deficit arises because Americans choose to save less than their country invests—and, crucially, this long-running reality has not stopped its economy from outpacing the rest of the G7 for over three decades. There is no reason why his extra tariffs should eliminate the deficit. Insisting on balanced trade with every trading partner individually is bonkers—like suggesting that Texas would be richer if it insisted on balanced trade with each of the other 49 states, or asking a company to ensure that each of its suppliers is also a customer.

And Mr Trump’s grasp of the technicalities was pathetic. He suggested that the new tariffs were based on an assessment of a country’s tariffs against America, plus currency manipulation and other supposed distortions, such as value-added tax. But it looks as if officials set the tariffs using a formula that takes America’s bilateral trade deficit as a share of goods imported from each country and halves it—which is almost as random as taxing you on the number of vowels in your name.

This catalogue of foolishness will bring needless harm to America. Consumers will pay more and have less choice. Raising the price of parts for America’s manufacturers while relieving them of the discipline of foreign competition will make them flabby. As stockmarket futures tumbled, shares in Nike, which has factories in Vietnam (tariff: 46%) fell by 7%. Does Mr Trump really think Americans would be better off if only they sewed their own running shoes?

NYT (“‘It’s a Disaster’: Global Markets Slide After Trump Unveils Tariffs“):

Markets around the world tumbled on Thursday after President Trump announced across-the-board tariffs on America’s main trading partners, including the European Union and Japan.

Futures on the S&P 500, which allow investors to trade the index outside normal trading hours, slumped more than 3 percent. Asian and European stock markets fell sharply, with benchmark indexes dropping more than 3 percent in Japan, and nearly 2 percent in Hong Kong, South Korea, Germany and France.

The value of the U.S. dollar against a basket of other major currencies dropped more than 1 percent.

The slide came after Mr. Trump, speaking at a ceremony at the White House on Wednesday, announced a new 10 percent base line tariff on all imports as well as country-specific taxes on goods from a host of other countries. Those included an additional 34 percent tax on Chinese imports, on top of 20 percent in tariffs he recently put on China, and 20 percent on goods coming from the European Union and 24 percent on Japanese imports.

The market reaction suggested that the scale of the tariffs on Wednesday had come as a surprise, and there was confusion about how the figures had been derived.

“The numbers are shockingly high compared to what people were expecting and it is inexplicable in many ways,” said Peter Tchir, head of macro strategy at Academy Securities. “I think it’s a disaster.”

The Trump administration had modified its estimates of the tariffs imposed on the United States to include adjustments for what it deemed currency manipulation or even other taxes, with analysts questioning the analytical basis for doing so.

“Trump is going to war with countries on this,” said Andrew Brenner, head of international fixed income at National Alliance Securities. “It’s ridiculous. It shows no comprehension as to what he is doing to other countries. And it is going to hurt the U.S.”

Investors flocked to government debt as a haven. The yield on the 10-year U.S. Treasury bond, which moves inversely to prices, fell to 4.08 percent, the lowest since October.

POLITICO (“EU ‘prepared’ to retaliate against Trump’s 20 percent tariffs“):

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen on Thursday slammed U.S. President Donald Trump’s imposition of a 20 percent tariff on EU goods and vowed to retaliate, saying the bloc was “prepared to respond.”

Trump dumped the European Union on Wednesday into a group of 60 countries subject to higher “reciprocal” tariffs, along with China, India, Japan and Korea, while subjecting the rest of the world to 10 percent tariffs. It’s the biggest lurch into protectionism by America since the Great Depression of the 1930s.

Von der Leyen said Trump’s tariffs would have dire consequences for consumers and businesses that have prospered through trade with the United States since World War Two. The European Union, the world’s largest single market, must also defend itself against profound disruptions to global commerce that would result from Trump’s isolation of the United States.

“There seems to be no order in the disorder. No clear path through the complexity and chaos that is being created, as all U.S. trading partners will be hit,” she said in a televised statement.

[…]

She warned of the impact Trump’s dismantling of the global trade order will have on consumers and on businesses. “Millions of citizens will face higher grocery bills. Medication will cost more, as well as transportation. Inflation will go up,” she said. 

“The costs of doing business with the United States will drastically increase,” she stressed. 

James Fallows believes we’re “Launching the Economic Version of the Iraq War.” His post is long and only partly available without a subscription. But the takeaway is succinct:

I think this is a historically reckless moment in US economic policy. And even by Trump-era standards it’s a historically shameful moment for the Republican Party. Its leaders know that their alpha-figure is launching a dollars-and-Euros version of the Iraq war. And they stand by, grinning and clapping.

It’s possible that all of the experts are wrong. They may not be aware that trade wars are good, and easy to win .

A handful of Congressional Republicans seem to be hedging their bets on that score.

NYT (“Senate Votes to Rescind Some Trump Tariffs, With G.O.P. Support“):

The Senate on Wednesday approved a measure that would block some of the tariffs President Trump has imposed on Canada, with a handful of Republicans joining Democrats to pass a resolution that would halt levies set to take effect this week.

The measure is all but certain to stall in the House, where G.O.P. leaders have moved preemptively to shut down any move to end Mr. Trump’s tariffs. But Senate passage of the measure on a vote of 51 to 48 — just hours after Mr. Trump unveiled sweeping tariffs on more than 100 trading partners, including the European Union, China, Britain and India — sent a signal of bipartisan congressional opposition to the president’s trade war.

The resolution targets the emergency powers Mr. Trump invoked in February to impose sweeping tariffs on Canada, a move that has rattled markets and drawn bipartisan criticism from lawmakers concerned about the economic impact on their states and districts.

Mr. Trump imposed the tariffs in an executive order that cited the International Economic Emergency Powers Act, a Cold War-era law that has most often been used to impose sanctions on rogue states and human rights violators. His administration argued that unchecked drug trafficking from Canada constituted a dire threat to American national security and used it as justification to unilaterally impose 25 percent tariffs on America’s closest trading partner.

“The president has justified the imposition of these tariffs on, in my view, a made-up emergency,” said Senator Tim Kaine, Democrat of Virginia and the lead sponsor of the resolution. “The fentanyl emergency is from Mexico and China. It’s not from Canada.”

The resolution, cosponsored by two fellow Democrats, Senators Mark Warner of Virginia and Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, seeks to revoke the emergency declaration and, with it, Mr. Trump’s ability to enforce the tariffs set to go into effect on Wednesday.

Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky was the lone Republican sponsor of the resolution. But three other G.O.P. senators who have expressed unease about the potential economic consequences of Mr. Trump’s trade measures joined him in support: Susan Collins of Maine, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Mitch McConnell of Kentucky.

We shall see if economic calamity is enough to cause a handful of House Republicans to break ranks. I am not confident.

Tabby Wednesday

by | Apr 4, 2025 | Outside The Beltway, Reuters, The Atlantic

When Trump started a trade war with China in 2018, China switched its soybean purchasing from the United States to Brazil. By 2023, Brazil was exporting  twice as much as the United States. Trump compensated  farmers with lavish cash payouts. The leading study of these effects suggests  that soybean farmers may have received twice as much from the Trump farm bailout as they lost from the 2018 round of tariffs, because the Trump administration failed to consider that U.S. soybeans not exported to China were eventually sold elsewhere, albeit at lower prices. The richest farmers collected the greatest share of the windfall. The largest 10 percent of farms received an average of $85 an acre in payouts, according to a 2019 study  by the economists Eric Belasco and Vincent Smith for the American Enterprise Institute. The median-size farm received only $56 an acre. Altogether, farmers have been amply compensated in advance for the harm about to be done to them by the man most farming communities voted for.

See, that there is pure market capitalism at work! It also proves that global markets don’t exist and that tariffs lead to greater domestic production, lower prices for American consumers, and more revenue for the federal government!

The winning is almost unbearable!

A senior Waltz aide used the commercial email service for highly technical conversations with colleagues at other government agencies involving sensitive military positions and powerful weapons systems relating to an ongoing conflict, according to emails reviewed by The Post. While the NSC official used his Gmail account, his interagency colleagues used government-issued accounts, headers from the email correspondence show.

But her…oh hell, you know the drill.

Former Costa Rican President and Nobel Prize winner Oscar Arias said on Tuesday that the U.S. had revoked his visa to enter the country, weeks after he criticized U.S. President Donald Trump on social media saying he was behaving like “a Roman emperor.”

Arias, 84, was president between 1986 and 1990 and again between 2006 and 2010. A self-declared pacifist, he won the 1987 Nobel Peace Prize for his role in brokering peace during the Central American conflicts of the 1980s.

[…]

In February, Arias had on social media accused the current government of President Rodrigo Chaves of giving in to U.S. pressure, as the U.S. has sought to oppose China’s influence in the region and deported migrants from third countries into Central America.

“It has never been easy for a small country to disagree with the U.S. government, and even less so, when its president behaves like a Roman emperor, telling the rest of the world what to do,” he said on social media in February.

Well, sure, can’t have some Nobel Peace Prize winner calling out the president for acting like a dictator! It just forces him to act like a dictator!

Booker Breaks Thurmond’s Record

by | Apr 4, 2025 | Outside The Beltway

WaPo (“Cory Booker breaks modern record for longest speech from Senate floor“):

Sen. Cory Booker (D-New Jersey) broke a record Tuesday night for the longest U.S. Senate floor speech of the modern era, surpassing Sen. Strom Thurmond’s 1957 remarks inside the chamber that lasted 24 hours.

Booker began delivering remarks Monday evening, vowing to use his time to disrupt “the normal business of the United States Senate for as long as I am physically able” to protest President Donald Trump.

In his concluding remarks, Booker characterized the situation facing the country as “a moral moment.”

“It’s not left or right. It’s right or wrong. It’s getting into ‘good trouble,’” he added, referencing the inspiration for his marathon speech — John Lewis, the late Democratic congressman and civil rights leader.

Booker received loud applause when he yielded the floor after being at the lectern for 25 hours and 5 minutes.

The record-breaking speech by Booker, the first African American to serve as a U.S. senator for New Jersey, stands in stark contrast with Thurmond — who held the floor for more than a day in 1957 to stop the passage of the Civil Rights Act.

As he neared surpassing Thurmond’s record Tuesday night, Booker said, “I’m not here … because of [Thurmond’s] speech. I’m here despite his speech. I’m here because as powerful as he was, the people were more powerful.”

[…]

Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (New York) and more than two dozen other Democratic senators — along with Sen. Angus King of Maine, an independent who caucuses with Democrats — came to the floor to support Booker and ask him questions throughout Monday evening and into Tuesday, allowing him to rest his voice for a few moments.

“The enthusiasm of Democrats, the desire to fight back, couldn’t have been better exemplified than Cory Booker’s tour de force on the floor of the Senate,” Schumer told reporters Tuesday evening.

Booker’s speech came after Schumer, eight other Democratic senators  and King voted with nearly all Republicans last month to advance a Trump-backed spending bill.

Schumer defended his decision as necessary to prevent a government shutdown, which he argued would have been worse than backing a bill that included spending cuts that Democrats detested. But his decision infuriated House Democrats — who voted nearly unanimously to reject the bill — and liberal voters  who have called for their representatives to do more to stand up to Trump.

“I’ve been hearing from people all over my state, and indeed all over the nation, calling upon folks in Congress to do more, to do things that recognize the urgency, the crisis of the moment,” Booker said in a video posted on social media  Monday evening.

Some Democrats pointed to Booker as proof that they had heard voters’ message.

“Democrats are on the offense,” Sen. Amy Klobuchar (Minnesota), the No. 3 Senate Democrat, told reporters Tuesday afternoon. “Ask Cory Booker.”

The thing is, the speech is getting more attention for its length than its content. That Democrats oppose Trump’s agenda is, after all, not news. Nor is it obvious what delaying a Senate that is doing nothing from doing something was supposed to achieve.

Indeed, the NYT report (“Cory Booker Condemns Trump’s Policies in Longest Senate Speech on Record“) rightly notes that the speech technically wasn’t even a filibuster:

Unlike Mr. Thurmond’s speech, Mr. Booker’s was not a filibuster — a procedural tactic  that has been used to block legislation on many issues — because it did not come during a debate over a specific bill or nominee. But it did delay a planned vote on a Democratic-led bill to undo Mr. Trump’s tariffs on Canada.

I’m still dubious that Schumer made the right call in urging his caucus to vote with Republicans for a continuing resolution to keep the government open through the end of the fiscal year, but at least understood his argument for doing so. But that was as much leverage his party was going to have all year.

As to the feat itself, I find this more than slightly odd:

Mr. Booker, who for weeks had contemplated delivering a marathon floor speech, had long been bothered that Mr. Thurmond, a segregationist from South Carolina, held the record, according to Mr. Booker’s office. Mr. Thurmond had sustained himself by sipping orange juice and munching on bits of beef and pumpernickel; it was not clear if Mr. Booker had eaten anything on Tuesday, but two glasses of water rested on a desk in front of his lectern.

He had prepared for the speech by fasting for days, he told reporters on Tuesday night after his speech. Before he began on Monday, he had not had food since Friday or water since Sunday night. The approach took its toll, said Mr. Booker, a vegan and former Stanford football player who has chronicled his efforts to stay fit and eat healthy.

“Instead of figuring out how to go to the bathroom,” he said, “I ended up, I think, really unfortunately dehydrating myself.” During the speech, he recalled, he started to “really cramp up.”

I can only imagine.

Val Kilmer, 1959-2025

by | Apr 3, 2025 | Outside The Beltway, The New York Times

New York Times , “Val Kilmer, Film Star Who Played Batman and Jim Morrison, Dies at 65“

Val Kilmer, a homegrown Hollywood actor who tasted leading-man stardom as Jim Morrison and Batman, but whose protean gifts and elusive personality also made him a high-profile supporting player, died on Tuesday in Los Angeles. He was 65.

The cause was pneumonia, said his daughter, Mercedes Kilmer. Mr. Kilmer was diagnosed with throat cancer in 2014 and later recovered, she said.

Tall and handsome in a rock-star sort of way, Mr. Kilmer was in fact cast as a rocker a handful of times early in his career, when he seemed destined for blockbuster success. He made his feature debut in a slapstick Cold War spy-movie spoof, “Top Secret!” (1984), in which he starred as a crowd-pleasing, hip-shaking American singer in Berlin unwittingly involved in an East German plot to reunify the country.

He gave a vividly stylized performance as Morrison, the emblem of psychedelic sensuality, in Oliver Stone’s “The Doors” (1991), and he played the cameo role of Mentor — an advice-giving Elvis as imagined by the film’s antiheroic protagonist, played by Christian Slater — in “True Romance” (1993), a violent drug-chase caper written by Quentin Tarantino and directed by Tony Scott.

Mr. Kilmer had top billing (ahead of Sam Shepard) in “Thunderheart” (1992), playing an unseasoned F.B.I. agent investigating a murder on a South Dakota Indian reservation, and in “The Saint” (1997), a thriller about a debonair, resourceful thief playing cat-and-mouse with the Russian mob. Most famously, perhaps, between Michael Keaton and George Clooney he inhabited the title role (and the batsuit) in “Batman Forever” (1995), doing battle in Gotham City with Two-Face (Tommy Lee Jones) and the Riddler (Jim Carrey), though neither Mr. Kilmer nor the film were viewed as stellar representatives of the Batman franchise.

[…]

But by then another, perhaps more interesting, strain of Mr. Kilmer’s career had developed. In 1986, Mr. Scott cast him in his first big-budget film, “Top Gun” (1986), the testosterone-fueled adventure drama about Navy fighter pilots in training, in which Mr. Kilmer played the cool, cocky rival to the film’s star, Tom Cruise. It was a role that set a precedent for several of Mr. Kilmer’s other prominent appearances as a co-star or a member of a starry ensemble. He reprised it in a brief cameo in the film’s 2022 sequel, “Top Gun: Maverick.”

He played the urbane, profligate gunslinger Doc Holliday in “Tombstone” (1993), a bloody western, alongside Kurt Russell, Sam Elliott and Bill Paxton as Wyatt, Virgil and Morgan Earp. He was part of a robbery gang in “Heat” (1995), a contemporary urban “High Noon”-ish tale that was a vehicle for Robert De Niro as the mastermind of a heist and Al Pacino as the cop who chases him down. He was a co-star, billed beneath Michael Douglas, in “The Ghost and the Darkness” (1996), a period piece about lion hunting set in late 19th century Africa. In “Pollock” (2000), starring Ed Harris as the painter Jackson Pollock, he was a fellow artist, Willem de Kooning. He played Philip of Macedon, the father of Alexander the Great (Colin Farrell), in Oliver Stone’s grandiose epic “Alexander” (2004).

Throughout his career Mr. Kilmer often left an impression, with movie viewers as well as moviemakers, of unpredictability.

“Most actors recognize there’s something different in Val than meets the eye,” Mr. Stone said in a 2007 interview for a segment of the television series “Biography.” David Mamet, the playwright and screenwriter who directed Mr. Kilmer in the political thriller “Spartan” (2004), added, “What Val has as an actor is something that the really, really great actors have, which is they make everything sound like an improvisation.”

Variety , “Val Kilmer, Star of ‘Batman Forever,’ ‘Tombstone,’ Dies at 65“

Val Kilmer, who played Bruce Wayne in “Batman Forever,” channeled Jim Morrison in Oliver Stone‘s “The Doors” and starred as a tubercular Doc Holliday in “Tombstone,” died Tuesday in Los Angeles. His daughter Mercedes told The New York Times the cause was pneumonia. He was 65. He had been battling throat cancer for several years.

[…]

The baby-faced blonde actor had a solid run as a leading man with a volatile reputation in the ’80s and ’90s, starring in “Top Gun,” “Real Genius,” “Willow,” “Heat,” and “The Saint.” He returned briefly to screens in 2022’s “Top Gun: Maverick” although he could no longer speak due to his cancer.

In 2021, a documentary on his life, “Val,” was released. His son provided the actor’s voice and the film utilized hundreds of hours of video he had recorded over the years, giving a revealing look at the sets he worked on and showing the actor to be an introspective thinker with an artist’s soul.

[…]

One of his most memorable roles was playing the charismatic and doomed Morrison in Oliver Stone’s 1991 “The Doors.” Kilmer memorized the lyrics to all of Morrison’s songs before his audition, and he immersed himself in the role, wearing clothes similar to the singer’s for close to a year. Roger Ebert wrote of his turn as Jim Morrison, “The performance is the best thing in the movie — and since nearly every scene centers on Morrison, that is not small praise.”

After “Batman Forever,” New Line persuaded him to come on board the troubled production of “The Island of Dr. Moreau,” where Kilmer tangled with both the film’s star, Marlon Brando, and director John Frankenheimer. Frustrations on the production mounted when Brando refused to come to the set, and the documentary “Val” revealed a tense set where crew members grimly joked about Brando’s stand-in, named Norm.

Frankenheimer, the second director to work on completing the film, reportedly said, “There are two things I will never ever do in my whole life. The first is that I will never climb Mt. Everest. The second is that I will never work with Val Kilmer ever again.”

In the 1990s, Kilmer starred in Michael Apted’s Western “Thunderheart” and “The Real McCoy” and had a small but memorable role as an Elvis-like mentor in Tony Scott’s “True Romance.” His role as a sardonic Doc Holliday in “Tombstone” (1993) was one of his most beloved performances, and in 1995, he appeared in “Heat” alongside Al Pacino and Robert De Niro.

He went on to star in “The Ghost and the Darkness” and the forgettable remake “The Saint,” which he shot instead of returning as Batman in “Batman & Robin.” Kilmer implied he didn’t return as Batman because of scheduling issues, though Schumacher’s description of him as “psychotic” could have also been a factor.

BBC , “Val Kilmer: A brilliant, underrated and unpredictable film star“

Val Kilmer, who has died at the age of 65, was often underrated as an actor.

He had extraordinary range: excelling in comedies, westerns, crime dramas, musical biopics and action-adventures films alike.

And perhaps his best performance combined his skills as a stage actor with a fine singing voice, to bring to life 1960s-counterculture icon Jim Morrison, in Oliver Stone’s film The Doors.

Critic Roger Ebert wrote: “If there is an award for the most unsung leading man of his generation, Val Kilmer should get it.

“In movies as different as Real Genius, Top Gun, Top Secret!, he has shown a range of characters so convincing that it’s likely most people, even now, don’t realise they were looking at the same actor.”

[…]

Kilmer’s ambition was to study at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (Rada), in London, but his application was rejected because, at 17, he was a year below the minimum entry age.

Instead, Kilmer became the then youngest pupil to enrol at the Julliard School, in New York, one of the world’s most prestigious drama conservatories.

That his turn in the bat suit is in most of the headlines announcing his death would surely have amused him. I actually thought he was fine in the role (as was Clooney, for that matter), but the scripts were terrible.

I enjoyed his performance in pretty much every film of his I saw, but his turn as “Doc” Holliday in “Tombstone” was far and away my favorite. Despite being in a supporting role in an all-star cast (Kurt Russell, Powers Booth, Sam Alliot, Bill Paxton, Billy Bob Thornton, and Charlton Heston were among the others), he stole the movie.

Given how much critical praise he got over the years, I’d be hard hard-pressed to say that he was underrated. To the extent he was, it was likely because was played the “pretty boy” role in many of his early parts. I had no idea until this morning that he had trained at Juliard.