EDITORIAL: Trump should forget trade wars and focus instead on his judicial nominees

President Donald Trump eagerly took credit as the stock market soared to new heights during his first year in office — and, indeed, his tax and regulatory policies were a boon to the economy.

In that same vein, however, Mr. Trump can’t escape responsibility for the relationship between his protectionist rhetoric and Wall Street’s recent jitters. Over the weekend, the president ripped Amazon and threatened to scrap NAFTA. On Monday, the markets responded predictably, with the Dow falling nearly 459 points.

When the White House announced steel tariffs a few weeks back, stocks took a similar tumble. The Dow hit an all-time closing high of 26,616.71 on Jan. 26. Since then, as the president has downplayed the advantages of free trade and vowed to impose additional duties on imports, it has been a model of volatility and now sits at around 23,600.

Perhaps Mr. Trump should channel his energy into more productive realms rather than work to sabotage his administration’s economic progress in the name of fighting misguided trade battles that harm U.S. workers and consumers.

One of those realms would be the judiciary. The president has so far made great strides in promoting judges to the federal bench who have a strong fealty to the Constitution and its respect for individual liberty and limited government. This is making Democrats quite nervous.

Last week, The New York Times reported that this approach “has shaped what could be one of Trump’s most enduring legacies.” The paper noted that progressives are shocked that the president is demanding that his nominees adhere to a “legal doctrine that challenges the broad power federal agencies have to interpret laws and enforce regulations, often without being subject to judicial oversight.”

Oh, the humanity!

The Times acknowledges that “litmus tests” for judicial candidates have long been the norm for both Democratic and Republican presidents. But such standards become alarming to progressive elites when the GOP holds the White House. “Trump is really giving practical effect to a theoretical concept,” said U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal, a Connecticut Democrat, “let’s cut the administrative power, let’s shut down the deep state.”

It’s well past time somebody in Washington seriously challenged the notion that Congress should be free to bestow legislative power on unelected bureaucrats, allowing them to run the nation unfettered by voter oversight or many constitutional restrictions. If Mr. Trump seeks to nominate judges who would be hostile to this dangerous trend, that’s a legacy worth striving to achieve.

But there’s much more work to be done. Mr. Trump has 54 judicial nominees pending, according to federal data, and there are 149 current vacancies. Mr. Trump should resist the urge to tank the financial markets through ill-considered anti-trade rhetoric and instead focus on filling the scores of open judgeships with men and women willing to cast a skeptical eye on the administrative state.