Since returning to the White House in January, President Donald Trump has overturned decades of U.S. trade policy – building a wall of tariffs around what used to be a wide open economy. His double-digit taxes on imports from almost every country have disrupted global commerce and strained the budgets of consumers and businesses worldwide.

TEHRAN, Iran (AP) – Iran seized a foreign oil tanker as it traveled the strategic Strait of Hormuz, state media said Friday. Mojtaba Ghahramani, a provincial chief of the justice department, said the oil tanker was carrying some 4 million liters, or 25,000 barrels, of smuggled fuel when the Revolutionary Guard naval forces seized the vessel, the official IRNA news agency reported.

Excerpts from recent editorials in the United States and abroad:

TOKYO (AP) – Japan’s Cabinet on Friday approved a record defense budget plan exceeding 9 trillion yen ($58 billion) for the coming year, aiming to fortify its strike-back capability and coastal defense with cruise missiles and unmanned arsenals as tensions rise in the region.

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) – South Korea’s government said it plans to end its waning foreign adoptions of Korean children, while United Nations investigators voiced “serious concern” over what they described as Seoul’s failure to ensure truth-finding and reparations for widespread human rights violations tied to decades of mass overseas adoptions.

BEIJING (AP) – Beijing imposed sanctions on Friday against 20 U.S. defense-related companies and 10 executives, a week after Washington annoucned large-scale arms sales to Taiwan.

BANGKOK (AP) – Thailand and Cambodia were engaged in combat along their border on Friday, even as the two countries held talks to try to put an end to armed clashes that erupted in early December, breaking a ceasefire that had been reached five months earlier.

IDLIB, Syria (AP) – A bombing at a mosque in the Syrian city of Homs during Friday prayers killed at least eight people and wounded 18 others, authorities said, as long-standing sectarian, ethnic and political fault lines continue to destabilize the country, even as large-scale fighting has subsided.