Philippa Kaur

It had the hallmarks of a reality TV cliffhanger. Until recently, many people had never even heard of tariffs. Now, there’s been rolling live international coverage of so-called “Liberation Day”, as US President Donald Trump laid out tariffs to be imposed on countries around the world.

Just hours ago, Trump announced all imports to the United States will be subject to a new “baseline” 10% tariff. This is an additional tax charged by US Customs and Border Protection when products cross the border.

The baseline tariff is expected to take effect from April 5, and then higher reciprocal tariffs on individual countries from April 9. That leaves no time for businesses to adjust their supply chains.

What might the next “episode” hold for the rest of the world? We can expect many countries to retaliate, bringing in tariffs and trade penalties of their own. That comes with risks.

Tariffs on the whole world

Vietnam will be among the hardest hit by reciprocal measures, with a 46% tariff. China, South Korea and Japan will also feel the brunt of the newest announcement – all subject to new tariffs of between 24% and 34%. The European Union is subject to 20%.

Many countries had already vowed to retaliate.

In a recent speech, the president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, said “all instruments are on the table”. She also stressed that the single market is the “safe harbour” for EU members.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen has vowed to retaliate against US tariffs.
Ronald Wittek/EPA

Canada was apparently spared from the baseline 10% tariff. But it still has to contend with previously announced 25% tariffs on the automotive and other sectors.

Canada’s new prime minister, Mark Carney, has said “nothing is off the table” in terms of retaliation.

Major tariffs on Asia

The 34% new tariff on China will be on top of the 20% tariff previously imposed, bringing the total to 54%.

That’s a further aggravation to already fractious relations between the world’s two largest economies.

Vietnam is especially reliant on the US market, and has been trying to negotiate its way through tariff threats. This has included unprecedented agreements to accept deported Vietnamese citizens from the US.

Until this point, Vietnam had benefited from tensions between the US and China. These new enormous tariffs will have large ripple effects through not only Vietnam, but also less economically developed Cambodia (49% tariff) and Myanmar (44% tariff).

Vietnam has been hit with a tariff of 46%.
Luong Thai Linh/EPA

Is it worth fighting back?

Vulnerable countries may not have the leverage to fight back. It is hard to imagine what leverage Cambodia or Myanmar could have against the US, given the disparity in resources.

Other countries consider it is not worth the fight. For example, Australia is rightly questioning whether a tit-for-tat strategy is effective, or will just ramp up the problem further.

One country that has flown under the radar is Russia. Two-way trade with Russia is small, and subject to sanctions. But US media have reported Trump would like to expand the trading relationship in the future.

A nightmare for the US Postal Service

Some of the interesting impacts of Trump’s announcements relate to what trade experts call the “de minimis” rule: usually, if you make a small purchase online, you don’t pay import taxes when the item arrives in your country.

Trump closed this loophole for goods from China in February, but then paused it days later. On April 2, Trump signed an executive order to again close the loophole, which will be effective May 2.

Duties will apply to goods from China that were previously exempt, below the “de minimis” amount of US$800. Those sent through the international postal network will face a rate of either 30% of their value or a charge of $25 per item (increasing to $50 in June).

This won’t just be a nightmare for online shoppers. Some 100,000 small parcels arrive in the US every hour, many from China.

These charges will now have to be collected on many more packages, in coordination with US Customs and Border Protection.

Trump has signed an executive order ending de minimis exemptions on goods from China.
Nati Harnik/AP

Boycotts and retaliation

We can also expect consumer backlash to increase worldwide, too. Canada’s “elbows up” movement is one template.

Consumers around the world are already choosing to redirect their spending away from US products, expressing their anger at the Trump administration’s stance on trade, diversity equity and inclusion (DEI) policies, environmental protection, gender rights and more.

Consumers should be careful about jumping on the bandwagon without doing their homework, though. Boycotting a US fast food outlet might make you feel better (and frankly may be better for your health), but that’s also going to impact the local franchise owner.

Hating Americans en masse is also not productive – many US citizens are themselves deeply upset at what is happening.

Claiming victory while consumers pay more

Watch out for the impending claim of victory – one of Trump’s mantras popularised in the recent movie, The Apprentice.

The US trade deficit rocketed after Trump’s previous tariff announcements this year, as importers scrambled to stockpile supplies before price increases.

This cannot happen this time, because the tariffs come into effect in just three days.

In the short term, the monthly trade deficit will decline if imports return to normal, which will give Trump a chance to claim the policies are working – even if it’s just a rebound effect.

But these tariffs will harm rather than help ordinary Americans. Everyday purchases like clothes (made in places like Vietnam, Cambodia and China) could soon cost a lot more than they used to – with a $20 t-shirt going up to nearly $30, not including US sales taxes.

As this reality TV-style trade drama continues to unfold, the world should prepare for more episodes, more cliffhangers, and more uncertainty.

This article has been updated to clarify specific details about US tariff announcements, and details on changes to the de minimis exemption. More

During Donald Trump’s first term as president, the United States lurched from the absurdity of his lies to the use of his office for personal financial gain, his schoolyard insults and his utter contempt for critics. His term ended with his irresponsible and dangerous incitement of the assault on the Capitol building on Jan. 6, 2021.

This time around, Trump is replying on outdated tools — tariffs, small government, territorial expansion and nationalism — to solve modern problems of globalization, wealth disparities, the decline of manufacturing jobs and exploitative capitalism.

On April 2, he announced a baseline tariff of 10 per cent on all countries that import goods to the U.S., including Canada. Canada has also been hit with a 25 per cent levy on Canadian-made automobiles.

The Trump administration’s current use of 19th-century tools to solve 20th-century problems that are wholly inappropriate for the 21st century threatens to take America back to the 19th century. This is an incredibly dangerous road for the U.S to take.

The rise of the nation state

The 19th century was marked by the rise of the nation-state — a single political entity united by geography, culture and language.

This was, in many respects, the result of the rapidly industrializing world shifting away from monarchical rule and mercantile economics toward limited democratic rule and free-market capitalism.

It was a time of tariffs, small government, territorial expansion and nationalism. It was also a time of mass migration from Europe to North America, where rampant nativism, colonialism and unchecked and exploitative capitalism shaped the landscape.

The 19th century was a time of mass migration to the North America. A Ukrainian immigrant family harvesting in 1918.
(National Archives of Canada/Wlidus)

The prevailing belief at the time was that nation-states should use tariffs, adopt isolationist policies to cut off the outside world and seize territory where possible. These measures, it was thought, would foster national unity and allow capitalism to thrive by letting the “invisible hand” of the marketplace work its magic.

Protective tariffs promised to grow domestic industries, but the economic benefits were not evenly distributed. Wealth disparities grew wider as millions of immigrants arrived on North American shores, only to find deplorable living conditions in the cities and hardscrabble farmland out in the country.

Some newcomers prospered, of course, but they tended to be those who arrived with money already in their pockets. And they fast learned how to exploit the lack of state-directed regulation, patches of corruption amid rapid western expansion and growing nativism and poverty to their own benefit.

Many of the 20th century’s problems flowed from these 19th-century trends.

The economic fallout of tariffs

Following the financial Panic of 1873 and its ensuing economic depression in both Europe and North America, nation-states unleashed tariffs to protect their domestic economies. It was the wrong strategy to pursue, as it slowed trade even more by limiting the free flow of goods and capital. Money, as is now well-known, needs to move to grow.

Working families chafed at the lack of labour protections like bargaining rights, health and safety measures, unemployment insurance and sick benefits. In response, they formed unions and initiated waves of strikes throughout the western industrialized world.

Western North American farmers were furious that tariffs forced them to buy on protected markets while selling on unprotected ones subject to international market prices. They organized, too, by forming farmer co-operatives and backing movements like the Granger movement, populism and progressivism to protect their interests.

Nation-states, warmed by rising nationalist fires, formed military-defence alliances across Europe and its colonial and former colonial holdings, including Canada. In 1914, these alliances led to the First World War, a global and industrial war the likes of which the world had never seen.

The Great Depression

By the 1930s, unrestricted and largely unregulated capitalism, together with astonishing wealth disparities and monopolistic tendencies, plunged the world into the decade-long Great Depression.

Many governments’ initial response was to impose tariffs once again, and just as in 1873, they only made the problem worse. The simultaneous rise of fascism, which was largely nationalism run amok, brought the world to war again at the end of the decade, to devastating consequence.

People stand in line for their portions of a federal surplus of potatoes and cabbages in Cleveland in 1938.
(AP Photo)

The post-war years saw a concerted international effort at using the nation-state to regulate domestic economies by investing in social services and programs and to rein in runaway capital when its excesses threatened stability.

International bodies like the World Bank, the United Nations and the International Court of Justice were created to promote peace and stability. This new approach wasn’t always successful in its goals, but so far the world hasn’t seen any global hot wars or massive economic depressions.

The end of history

In 1992, historian Frances Fukuyama infamously declared that the world had reached “the end of history.”

He didn’t mean that time stopped, of course. Instead, he was arguing that the liberal nation-state represented “the end-point of mankind’s ideological evolution and the universalization of western liberal democracy as the final form of human government.”

In his view, the western industrialized world had reached the pinnacle of successful governance and unlimited prosperity.

Yet, even as western liberal democracy was congratulating itself on its own success, these same nation-states, in conjunction with large corporations, were seeking out lower labour costs and greater profit in the developing world.

The result was a hollowing-out of North America’s industrial heartlands, along with rampant exploitation of vulnerable labour in places like Asia, South Asia and South Central America. Once mighty American cities declined. Wages failed to keep up with inflation. Farm debt soared.

This is where the Trump administration re-enters the story — tapping into the frustration and disillusionment of frustrated Americans by promising to restore a “golden age” that never was.

Trump’s 19th-century playbook

Despite his promises, Trump’s tariffs are unlikely to bring manufacturing jobs back to the U.S. As history has shown, tariffs do not revive industries that are already gone; instead, they will only make Americans pay more for the things they need.

A return to small government won’t “make America great again,” either. Instead, it risks repeating the 19th-century pattern of making the rich richer and gutting the very social programs millions of people rely on. The Trump administration’s massive and ongoing cuts to the Social Security Administration are already well under way.

Trump’s rhetoric about territorial expansion, including threats to annex Greenland and Canada, won’t make the U.S. more secure. It will just exacerbate the sort of international tensions the world saw in 1914 and 1939.

And with limited resources left to exploit, it’s becoming harder for capital to sustain itself, even as it seeks to wrest whatever is left from our planet, the realities of environmental catastrophe be damned.

Nationalism, meanwhile, won’t foster a sense of national unity. It will only deepen existing divisions based on race and class. And if history is any guide, the consequences could be even more dire this time around, even pushing the world toward a global conflict unlike anything seen before. More

Aleksandr Dugin, sometimes referred to as “Putin’s brain” because of his ideological influence on Russian politics, endorsed the policies of Donald Trump in a CNN interview aired on March 30. Dugin said Trump’s America has a lot more in common with Putin’s Russia than most people think, adding: “Trumpists and the followers of Trump will understand much better what Russia is, who Putin is and the motivations of our politics.”

Dugin made his name by espousing Russian nationalist and traditionalist – including antisemitic – themes, and publishing extensively on the centrality of Russia in world civilisation. So, this endorsement should be a warning of the disruptive nature of the Trump White House. It implies that Dugin believes Trump’s policies support Russian interests.

Dugin began his career as an anti-communist activist in the 1980s. This was less because of an ideological antipathy for communism than his rejection of the internationalism that the Communist Party of the Soviet Union espoused. He also criticised the party for breaking from traditional – especially religious – values.

Dugin proposes what he calls a “fourth political theory”. The first three, he claims, are Marxism, fascism and liberalism – all of which he thinks contain elements of error, especially their rejection of tradition and the subordination of culture to scientific thought.

Dugin’s fourth political theory takes pieces from all three and discards the elements with which Dugin disagrees, especially the dwindling importance of traditional family and culture. The culmination is a melange of ideas that sometimes appear Marxist and sometimes fascist, but which always centre on the criticality of traditional Russian culture.

His founding philosophy is traditionalism, which he views as a strength of Russia. Thus, he has become a strong supporter of the country’s president, Vladimir Putin, who emphasises traditional Russian values. Dugin and Putin align in their criticism of liberalist anti-religious individualism, which they claim destroys the values and culture on which society is based.

Dugin has value for Putin because he advances the president’s objectives. Putin’s security goals are in part founded on the principle that political unity is strength and political division is weakness. If Russia can maintain political unity by whatever means necessary, it retains its perception of strength. And if a state opposed to Russia is divided internally, it can be portrayed as weak.

The Russian government claims complete political unity inside Russia. Its spokespeople reinforce that claim by declaring, for example, the Russian electorate was so unified behind Putin that the 2024 Russian presidential election could have been skipped as an unnecessary expense. They also push a strained claim that the Russian population is unanimously behind the Ukraine war.

Dugin energises voters behind Putin, basing his support on the philosophy of Russian greatness and cultural superiority, and the perception of Russian unity. His influence has been felt throughout the Russian government and society. He publishes prolifically, and lectures at universities and government agencies about the harms of western liberalism. He also served as an advisor to Sergey Naryshkin, currently director of the Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) of the Russian Federation.

Dugin’s views support an expansionist Russia, especially in the direction of Ukraine. He questions the existence of Ukraine and promotes Russia’s war there wholeheartedly. But his support for the war led to an attempt on his life. On August 20 2022, a bomb exploded in a car owned by Dugin, killing his daughter, Darya, who was driving it back from a festival of Russian traditional art.

Dugin speaking at a memorial for his daughter Daria, who was killed by a car bomb in August 2022.
AP Photo/Dmitry Serebryakov

Divide and conquer

Russia applies the same principle of “unity equals strength” to its adversaries, but in reverse. Many Russian political thinkers try to emphasise political divisions in unfriendly states. They work hard to broaden existing disagreements and support disruptive political parties and groups.

Such operations give the Russian government the ability to denigrate the foreign powers that Russia considers adversaries by making them look weak in the eyes of their own people – and more importantly, in the eyes of the Russian population.

Dugin lays a philosophical foundation for foreign parties that oppose the European Union and western liberalism, and that disrupt political unity. His views have been adopted by far-right political groups such as the German National Democratic Party, the British National Party, Golden Dawn in Greece, Jobbik in Hungary, and the National Front in France.

Dugin’s interview in which he endorsed Trump’s policies is likely to have been directly authorised by the Kremlin. He pushes a Kremlin-sponsored endorsement of Trump’s divisive – and thus weakening – effect on US politics.

But Dugin’s extreme Russian nationalist rhetoric at times clashes with Putin’s attempts to include all peoples of Russia in a strong unified state, rather than only ethnic Russians. As it is a multi-ethnic state, Russian ethnic nationalism can obstruct Putin’s attempts at portraying strength through unity. The label “Putin’s brain” is only accurate sometimes.

The Russian government uses Dugin when he is useful and separates itself from him when his extremism is inconvenient. Dugin is a tool who says many of the right things and facilitates Kremlin goals. His endorsement of Trump should be seen in its context: Russia attempting to strengthen itself at the expense of the US. More

U.S. District Judge James Boasberg on March 27, 2025, ordered top Trump administration officials to preserve records of their messages sent on the messaging app Signal from March 11 to March 15 following a transparency watchdog group’s lawsuit alleging that the officials have violated the Federal Records Act.

This marked the latest development since The Atlantic on March 24 published a Signal chat among Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and other national security officials discussing specific plans to attack Houthi militants in Yemen. Jeffrey Goldberg, the editor in chief at The Atlantic, was mistakenly included in the chat and wrote about what he saw.

Trump administration officials have shared contrasting accounts about whether they were discussing sensitive war information on Signal – but maintain that they did not share classified information.

Senator Roger Wicker, the Republican chair of the Senate Arms Services committee, and Senator Jack Reed, the top Democrat chairing the committee, on March 27 requested an investigation into how the Trump officials used Signal to discuss military strikes.

Amy Lieberman, a politics and society editor, spoke with national security scholar Dakota Rudesill to better understand what constitutes classified information and how the government typically handles its most closely kept secrets.

Democratic representatives share text messages on March 26, 2025, sent by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to other top Trump administration officials.
Kayla Bartowski/Getty Images

How are government officials supposed to communicate about classified information?

The first way someone with the proper clearance can communicate about classified information is in person. They can talk about secret things in what is called a sensitive compartmented information facility, or SCIF. This means a secure place, often with a big, heavy door and a lock on it, where security officials have swept the area for bugs and no one can easily eavesdrop. People who are in SCIFs usually have to leave their cell phones outside of the room, and then they can talk freely about secret information. A SCIF can be a particular room, or a floor of a building, or even an entire building.

Second, there is print communication: written documents with classification markings, which have to be handled in really particular ways, like in a safe location, and can be transported between SCIFs in secure containers.

Third, intelligence agencies, the White House and the Department of Defense also all have secure electronic systems. These include visual teleconferences, which are similar to a Zoom call and are secure for discussing highly classified information, as well as secure email systems and secure phones.

Many people with clearances have what is called “high side” email, which is shorthand lingo for classified email and messaging. Many people with security clearance would have two work hard drives and two computers. One of them is “low side,” where there is access to unclassified official email, documents and the internet.

All of these methods of secure communication can be clunky and take more time than people in our smartphone age are used to. That is the cost of protecting the nation’s secrets. My sense is the Trump administration officials wanted to move fast and turned to Signal, a commercial app that promises encryption. Signal is generally considered secure but is not perfect. There is abundant public evidence that Signal is not totally secure and indeed has been penetrated by Russian intelligence.

Can something be declassified after the information has been shared?

Yes. The president can classify and declassify at will via oral or written instruction.

The president’s constitutional powers include removing classification controls after information has been released or leaked. Trump could at any point declassify the information shared on Signal. Several of the Cabinet-level officials on that Signal chat also have expansive delegated powers over classification.

Even so, Trump’s national security Cabinet would have presumably still violated the law. For example, by putting national defense information inappropriately on an insecure app and not checking to verify the clearances of everyone on the chat and thereby allowing a reporter to be present, one could reasonably conclude that the team was showing “gross negligence,” running afoul of the Espionage Act.

The Espionage Act, enacted in 1917, criminalizes unauthorized retention and dissemination of sensitive information that could undermine the national security of the U.S. or help a foreign country.

Was the information shared on Signal likely classified?

Looking at the Signal message transcript that The Atlantic shared, it seems like at least four things were all but surely classified.

The most obvious was the details that Secretary of Defense Hegseth provided on the strike plans. These include the precise times that planes were taking off, what kind and when the bombs would fall. Recent reports have quoted defense officials confirming that this information at the time was classified.

Second, the chat revealed that the president gave a green light for secret strikes at a Situation Room meeting.

Third, there is the mere fact of these top officials deciding whether and when to execute attacks authorized by the president.

And fourth, according to media reports, the chat included the name of an intelligence officer whose position may have been secret.

The Trump administration says that there was no classified information in the chat. But several analysts have noted that defies belief. The exception would be a prior decision to declassify, but we have no evidence of that.

FBI Director Kash Patel, left, Tulsi Gabbard, director of National Intelligence, and CIA Director John Ratcliffe testify during a House Select Intelligence Committee hearing in Washington, D.C., on March 26, 2025.
Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images

What other issues does this bring to mind?

First, we don’t know whether the Trump officials carefully thought about it before they set up this chat on Signal, which the Pentagon has warned government officials against using because of hacking concerns.

Second, even if the officials did make a focused decision to use Signal, what is the wisdom of that? I find it really, really hard to imagine that was a prudent decision when we think about how insecure this app is. There is also the fact that Steve Witkoff, Trump’s envoy to Ukraine and the Middle East, was party to the chat while he was in Russia. We do not know for sure if he had a device running Signal on him personally while he was in Russia, but in any event he would have been under intense Russian surveillance.

A broader issue is how the Trump administration is enforcing the law is a giant question mark. Usually, the law both authorizes the U.S. government to do things, and also says it cannot do things. Law enables and limits everyone, including the president. However, Trump wrongly claims that he is the final authority on the law, and so far the Justice Department only seems to be enforcing the law against people outside of the administration.

So does the law limit the Trump administration in any practical sense? Right now it is not clear – and there is abundant reason to be concerned about that from a rule of law standpoint. More

It seems Britain has one key inducement to offer US President Donald Trump: a state visit hosted by King Charles.

One can only imagine what the king thinks of this, but he will undoubtedly maintain a stiff upper lip and preside over several lavish dinners.

Following reports of this offer, which would make Trump the only US president to be twice hosted by a British monarch, stories surfaced that the US might become an associate member of the Commonwealth.

Read more:
The king has a tricky diplomatic role to play in inviting Trump for a state visit

There has been no official confirmation of this, but the story has been floated in several British newspapers.

What is the Commonwealth?

The Commonwealth came into existence as a means of retaining links with former British colonies, so there is a certain historical justification for the idea.

Almost all of Britain’s former colonies are now members of the Commonwealth of Nations, with Ireland and the US notable exceptions.

The Commonwealth is an organisation that ties together 56 countries, including a few in Africa that have been admitted despite not having been British colonies.

Of the 56, only a minority recognise the British king as their head of state, a point local monarchists are reluctant to acknowledge.

Indeed, some members of the Commonwealth, such as Malaysia, Brunei and Tonga, have their own hereditary monarchs.

In theory, all members are democratic, and several, such as Fiji, have at times been suspended from membership for failing on this count.

Whatever doubts we might have about the state of US democracy, it is hard to argue the US would fail to meet a bar that allows continued membership to states such as Pakistan and Zimbabwe.

The Commonwealth is largely seen as less important than other international groupings, and its heads of government meetings are often skipped by leaders of the most significant members.

Other than turning up to the Commonwealth Games, few recent Australian prime ministers have paid it much attention, compared to our membership of the G20 or the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC).

Nonetheless, the Commonwealth does include a remarkable range of countries ranging from significant states such as India, Canada and South Africa to the many island states of the Pacific and the Caribbean.

While its work is largely unreported, it does provide a range of international assistance and linkages that otherwise would be out of reach for its smaller and poorer members.

Why is Trump interested in joining?

Trump, it can be assumed, has no interest in the Commonwealth as a means of better working with states such as Namibia and Belize.

The attraction seems to be linked to his strange reverence for royalty and a fundamental misunderstanding of the role of the British sovereign.

King Charles is head of the Commonwealth through agreement of its members, probably in recognition of the extraordinary commitment his mother showed as the Commonwealth developed out of the old British Empire. Indeed, she clashed several times with her British ministers because of her loyalty to the Commonwealth.

But unlike the king’s British – and Australian – crown, this is not a position that belongs automatically to the British monarch.

So, while inviting Trump to Windsor Castle may be the gift of UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer, admission to the Commonwealth would require the agreement of all its members.

Given Trump’s demands to acquire Canada and to punish South Africa for recent land expropriation law, it is hard to imagine unanimous enthusiasm.

Read more:
Donald Trump is picking fights with leaders around the world. What exactly is his foreign policy approach?

Most member states are cautious about being too closely linked to either the US or China, although Australia might end up the last true believer in US alliances. Others, such as Ghana and Pakistan, depend considerably on Chinese aid.

In a world dominated by increasingly autocratic leaders, a middle power like Australia needs as wide a range of friends as possible. Most of us have only a vague sense of what the Commonwealth entails.

Like all international institutions, the Commonwealth often seems more concerned with grand statements than actual commitment.

But there is value in a global organisation whose members claim to be committed to:

democracy and democratic processes, including free and fair elections and representative legislatures; the rule of law and independence of the judiciary; good governance, including a well-trained public service and transparent public accounts; and protection of human rights, freedom of expression, and equality of opportunity.

Would Trump’s America meet those demands? More

In modern times, who was the first presidential candidate to have their campaign almost destroyed by a sex scandal?

The answer, surprisingly, is Jimmy Carter, probably the most pious of all recent presidents. In 1976, when ahead in the polls, Carter gave an interview to Playboy magazine. He said he had looked on a lot of women with lust, “committed adultery in [his] heart many times”, and he would not be condescending to someone who had “screwed” around.

Jimmy Carter greets Cher in 1976.
David F. Smith/AAP

Support among evangelical Christians immediately eroded. Prominent Christian evangelist Jerry Falwell said, “four months ago most of the people I know were pro-Carter. Today that has totally reversed.” Fortunately for Carter, after an intense week or so, the scandal faded.

Morality was much more explicitly an issue in the 1976 election than previously. It was the first election since the Watergate scandal had forced Richard Nixon to become the first president in American history to resign in 1974. It was also the year after America’s long and contentious war in Vietnam had finished in defeat, with many Americans feeling they had been lied to by presidents Nixon and Lyndon Johnson.

An ironic after-effect of Watergate was belated attention to President John F. Kennedy’s sex scandals. Until then, for many decades, American presidents’ private lives had been off limits. Franklin D. Roosevelt had two long-term lovers and his wife Eleanor probably had a live-in lesbian lover. Roosevelt used a wheelchair, due to polio-related paralysis. Yet of 35,000 photos of him, only two showed his wheelchair. Most of the American public were ignorant of his condition.

Neither Kennedy nor Johnson were probed during their presidencies. (One night on Johnson’s ranch a female aide was woken by a man standing at the foot of the bed: “Move over, this is your president.”)

John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson pictured in 1960.
Anonymous/AAP

One source of the new attention was a tragedy involving Senator Edward Kennedy. In July 1969, Kennedy drove his car off a bridge on Chappaquiddick Island, Massachusetts. He swam to safety but his companion, young staffer Mary Jo Kopechne, drowned. He immediately made many phone calls, but only called the police the next day. Many journalists knew of Kennedy’s affairs, drunkenness, tendency to speed and general recklessness, but nothing had been published.

A few years later, a decade after his death, President John F. Kennedy himself was in the public spotlight. After Watergate and defeat in Vietnam, a Senate committee under Frank Church was tasked to investigate American security agencies’ involvement in the assassination and attempted assassinations of foreign leaders. This revealed that Kennedy and Chicago Mafia boss, Sam Giancana, had the same mistress, Judith Campbell. Moreover, Giancana had been hired by the CIA in an assassination plot against Cuban president Fidel Castro.

Judith Campbell in 1960.
AAP

At first, Church, a Democrat and friend of the Kennedys, treated the revelations with as much discretion as he could. But a New York Times columnist, ex-Nixon speechwriter William Safire, waged a campaign that argued journalists were pro-Democrat and went softer on Democrat scandals than on Republican ones. It was the opening of the floodgates. Over many years, more and more revelations of Kennedy’s sexual exploits were revealed. Indeed his relentless promiscuity makes Bill Clinton look like a choirboy.

The next time a sex scandal figured prominently was the 1988 presidential contest. Gary Hart already had a reputation for “womanising”, and at one stage challenged journalists to follow him. Unfortunately for him, they did. He and a young woman, Donna Rice, spent a night aboard the inauspiciously named yacht Monkey Business. Hart went from Democratic front runner to ex-candidate in less than a week.

A Bush denial and ‘bimbo eruptions’

Bill Clinton’s 1992 election campaign brought a huge escalation in attention to a candidate’s private life. It was the first time a person had publicly claimed to have had an affair with a presidential candidate. Gennifer Flowers said she had had a 12-years-long affair with Clinton. Flowers admitted she had been paid more than US$100,000 to go public, and her account included many lurid details.

Gennifer Flowers in 1992.
Alex Brandon/AAP

Clinton denied the affair but his recall of events seemed uncharacteristically hazy. (And six years later, he would admit they had a sexual encounter.) He was greatly helped by the prominent role his wife Hillary played. They admitted without giving any specifics that there had been difficulties in their marriage but stressed how these were all in the past. Eventually, in the absence of new developments, the scandal ran out of steam.

Nevertheless, throughout the campaign, the Clinton team had a “bimbo eruption watch”, and although several claims arose and Clinton often seemed evasive, he won the election relatively easily.

Some Democrats in 1992 thought there had been a double standard with intense attention to Clinton’s sexual escapades contrasting with the lack of media attention to allegations of George H.W. Bush having had an affair, rumours that had been around since the early 1980s.

But the two were very different – there was no publicity-seeking by an ex-lover or admissions by the Bushes. When the rumours began to circulate in 1988, George Junior asked his father about them and then issued a short statement: “The answer to the Big A [ie adultery] question is NO”. Although his father was apparently angered by this public intervention, it effectively killed the issue.

President George H. Bush and president-elect Bill Clinton at the White House in November 1992.
Doug Mills/AAP

Likewise later there were rumours that the Republican candidate in 1996, Bob Dole, had had an affair, but it was a long time in the past, and received minimal coverage.

In 2008, it was known that John McCain, a war hero, and his wife lived largely separate lives. But his opponent Barack Obama did not seek to make it an issue, and again there was almost no coverage. While it is often argued that the media have salacious appetites for sex scandals, cases like these also show the media is reluctant to push allegations where there is not clear evidence, and no public interest or political dimension.

Nothing thus far had prepared anyone for the Monica Lewinsky scandal. Lewinsky had been an intern in the White House and had had consensual sexual relations with Clinton. She confided in a colleague, Linda Tripp, who then started taping their telephone calls.

Later Tripp gave the tapes to special prosecutor Kenneth Starr, who was investigating Whitewater property deals by the Clintons in Arkansas. He found no evidence of wrongdoing in that case, and now broadened his scope to include perjury, finding that Clinton had lied about his relations with Lewinsky. Thanks to Tripp’s tape and Starr’s investigations, the public were treated to details such as Lewinsky’s stained dress.

The story broke in early 1998 and the Zippergate scandal as it was dubbed, received intense news coverage for most of the year. Clinton gave a series of misleading denials, and eventually confessed. It led to an impeachment by the House of Representatives but the motion failed in the Senate, and Clinton survived.

A video of Monica Lewinsky being sworn in for her deposition at the Senate impeachment trial of President Clinton in 1999.
AAP

The scandal may have had an effect on the extremely close 2000 presidential election. The Democrat candidate Al Gore, who had been Clinton’s vice-president, sought to distance himself from the Clintons. Even after all that had happened, though, the Clintons were still fairly popular, and were an electoral asset Gore could have used more.

The two Obama elections were broadly scandal free, but this was the quiet before the storm.

How Trump rewrote conventional wisdom

Donald Trump has rewritten the conventional wisdom of American presidential sex scandals. Most importantly, Trump is the first president where sexual harassment and assault have been so central. Whereas Kennedy’s affairs, for instance, seem to have been overwhelmingly consensual, in a “hot mic” from 2005 (released during his 2016 presidential campaign), Trump was heard saying “when you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything […] Grab ‘em by the pussy.”

What became known as Pussygate looked as if it might sink Trump’s candidacy, but for a variety of reasons, not least the FBI’s public announcement that it was investigating more possible email offences by Clinton, eventually Trump triumphed.

The second notable feature of the Trump sex scandals is their sheer number. In October 2019, a book All the President’s Women: Donald Trump and the Making of a Predator by Barry Levine and Monique El-Faizy contained allegations by 43 women of sexual misconduct by Trump.

Trump is the first presidential candidate to be convicted in a civil court of sexual assault. The writer E. Jean Carroll testified – and a jury unanimously agreed – that Trump pushed her up against a wall and assaulted her.

Writer E. Jean Carroll in May 2023: a New York jury found Donald Trump liable for sexually abusing Carroll in 1996.
John Minchillo/AAP

Trump is also the first presidential candidate in modern times to be associated with paying hush money to cover up sexual relationships, most famously to Stormy Daniels and Karen McDougal, and also to a lift attendant in the Trump Tower.

Stormy Daniels departs the Supreme Court of the State of New York after testifying in the hush money trial of US President Donal Trump in May 2024.
Justin Lane/AAP

Finally – despite or because of all this – he is the first presidential candidate in modern times to directly accuse his opponents of immoral sexual behaviour. Speaking of his two female opponents, Hillary Clinton and Kamala Harris, he said, “Funny how blow jobs impacted both their careers differently”. His supporters had banners saying “Say No to the Hoe”. (Earlier in 2024 Trump and his supporters had been spreading the claim that Biden was “all jacked up” on drugs, and demanded a drug test before the first debate.)

Trump’s verbal attacks on women often have a particularly bitter edge, but they are part of the new coarseness and violence that mark his rhetoric from his predecessors, as are the vituperative personal attacks on whomever his opponent is – judge, prosecutor, journalist, bureaucrat or political opponent.

Trump’s shamelessness was on display days after the “Pussygate” revelations in 2016. For the second presidential debate, he wanted to have in his “family box” three women who had made accusations against Bill Clinton, and one who was sexually assaulted as a 12-year-old, with Hillary Clinton as the public defender representing the suspect. The idea was to throw Hillary off her stride and damage her performance. The debate organisers stopped the move. As a fallback an hour before the debate, Trump had a media conference with the four, attacking the Clintons.

Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump during the second presidential debate in 2016.
Rick T. Wilking/AAP

An evangelical about face

What a wondrous trajectory America’s white evangelical Christians have been on. In 1976, they were shocked that a candidate had lust in his heart. In 2024, around 80% of them voted for a serial sexual predator, a liar and fraudster.

At one rally, a donor told the crowd, “Donald J. Trump is the person that God has chosen.” The evangelicals have indeed shown Trump amazing grace.

One reason Trump was able to survive this surfeit of potential scandals is because of the much more polarised media environment now. Much of Trump’s base consume media such as Fox News, which is willing to ignore or downplay his outrages.

In addition, podcasts played a bigger role in 2024 than in any previous election, and some of these, such as Joe Rogan’s, have audiences that are overwhelmingly young males, perhaps helping Trump mobilise the “bro vote”. In 2000 against Biden, 41% of young men aged 18–29 voted for Trump; in 2024 against Harris, 49% did; an eight-point gain for Trump.

Recently, Trump joked with an audience:

you used to be able to say a young beautiful waitress but […] if you call a woman beautiful today, it is the end of your political career, so I will not do it.

In fact, his career shows the exact opposite. He has survived all sorts of moral transgressions, which earlier would have been politically fatal.

Given Trump’s invulnerability despite his multiple and serious transgressions, does this mark the end of presidential sexual scandals having a dramatic impact?

There has never been a direct, simple or logical relationship in political scandals between the seriousness of the alleged offence, the amount of media attention and the severity of the political consequences. However, we’re now post-Trump: what might a presidential sex scandal look like in 2028 and beyond? More

The second Donald Trump administration has already sent shockwaves through the political establishment on both sides of the Atlantic. Overseas, the focus has been on the administration’s apparent dismantling of the post-war international order and Trump’s apparent pivot away from America’s traditional allies towards a warmer relationship with Russia and Vladimir Putin. But within the United States itself, the greatest concerns are associated with administration actions that, for many, suggest a deliberate destruction of American democracy.

Such fears in the US are not isolated to the political elites, but are shared by citizens across the entire nation. But what is also emerging is a concerted assault on people’s ability to push back – or even complain – about some of the measures being introduced by Trump 2.0. This will inevitably result in what is often called a “chilling effect”, where it becomes too hard – or too dangerous – to voice dissent.

Many of Trump’s policies – the mass deportations, the wholesale sacking of public servants by Elon Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency (Doge), the decision to revoke birthright citizenship for the children of undocumented immigrants – have been challenged in the courts. The Trump administration is now embroiled in a range of legal challenges. It is here that Trump’s disdain for a legal system that has temporarily blocked the wishes of the president has emerged.

Chilling effect

Judicial decisions calling for the administration to reverse or pause some of these policies have been greeted by Trump and some of his senior colleagues (including Musk and the vice-president J.D.Vance), with noisy complaints at judicial interference in government. Even, in some cases, calls for the impeachment of judges who rule against the government.

Not only did the administration ignore the court’s ruling that suspended the forced expulsion of Venezuelans to El Salvador, some of whom were in the US legally, but Trump attacked the judge on social media calling him a corrupt “radical left lunatic” and called for his impeachment.

This stirred the chief justice of the Supreme Court, John Glover Roberts Jr., to intervene. He reminded the president that America doesn’t settle its disputes, saying that the “normal appellate review process exists for that purpose”. Later, Tom Homan, Trump’s chief adviser on immigration issues, told ABC News that the administration would abide by court rulings on the matter.

The pressure being brought to bear on America’s legal system has not stopped at the judiciary. Trump has recently targeted some of America’s biggest and most powerful law firms, seemingly for no other reason than their acting for clients who have opposed his administration.

On March 25, Trump signed an executive order targeting Jenner & Block, one of whose partners, Andrew Weissmann, worked with special prosecutor Robert Mueller on the investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election. The executive order calls for the firms to be blacklisted from government work and for their employees to have any security clearances removed, for them to be barred from any federal government contracts and refused access to federal government buildings. A death warrant for the firm in other words.

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This follows the news that the head of the prestigious law firm Paul Weiss, Brad Karp, had signed a deal with the White House committing to providing millions of dollars worth of pro-bono legal work for causes nominated by the president. He’s also agreed to stop using diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) policies, which had been faced with a similar fate.

Silencing dissent

This administration’s chilling effect has also extended to an attack on press freedom. Trump has expelled established news organisations from the Pentagon, curtailed access to press events for the esteemed Associated Press, and taken control of the White House press pool, sidelining major media outlets.

These actions mark a significant downgrading of press freedom in America. They are undermining the role of independent journalism in their key function of holding power to account. By restricting access and silencing critical voices, his administration has raised concerns over transparency and the free flow of information in the domestic media landscapes.

Dissent: student activists protest the arrest of Columbia university graduate and Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil.
EPA-EFE/Sarah Yenesel

Universities have traditionally been bastions of independent thought. We saw that with the massive protests against US policy towards Israel and Palestine which have roiled campuses during the conflict in Gaza. But universities are also seen by many in the administration as a hotbed of “woke” activism. Accordingly Trump 2.0 has fixed its sights on one of the most prominent US universities: Columbia.

Citing what it says is a repeated failure to protect students from antisemitic harassment, the administration cancelled US$400m (£310 million) of federal contracts with the university. Columbia caved in to the pressure moments before the administration’s deadline passed. It agreed to overhaul its disciplinary procedures and “review” its regional studies programmes, starting with those covering the Middle East.

Columbia’s academic staff are horrified. They are launching legal action against the government, alleging that “the Trump administration is coercing Columbia University to do its bidding and regulate speech and expression on campus”.

Democracy in peril

Why is this all so worrying? The legal system, the media and universities are the pillars of US democratic freedoms. The Trump administration’s undermining of these institutions is a blatant attempt to impose an authoritarian rule by bypassing any counterbalance to executive power. And the US Supreme Court has ruled that he is almost entirely immune from prosecution while doing it.

The checks and balances system of government in the US was designed to ensure that no single branch could dominate the political process. But partisan loyalty, and loyalty to Trump over the party, now outweighs constitutional responsibility for the majority of those within the Republican Party.

American democracy is under threat. Not from the external existential threats it faced over the past century such as communism and Islamic fundamentalism, but from within its own system. Those Americans who are terrified about this threat are trying to fight back, but Trump’s assault on dissent is so chilling that this is becoming increasingly dangerous. More

Heads of state are the symbolic leader of a country. Some of them, like King Charles III of the United Kingdom, carry out largely ceremonial roles these days. Others, like Saudi Arabian King Salman, are absolute monarchs and involved in governing the country’s day-to-day activities and policies. It also means that the Saudi monarch gets to do whatever he wants without much consequence from others.

In the United States, the president is both the head of state and head of government. The head of government works with legislators and meets with other world leaders to negotiate agreements and navigate conflicts, among other responsibilities.

Some presidents, like Jimmy Carter, got so bogged down in the specifics that the nighttime comedy show “Saturday Night Live” made fun of it in 1977. “SNL” spoofed Carter responding in extreme, mundane detail to a question about fixing a post office’s letter sorting machines.

As a political scientist who studies American presidents, I see that President Donald Trump loves the power and prestige that comes with being head of state, but does not seem to particularly enjoy the responsibility of being head of government.

Trump rarely talks about the often-tedious process of governing, and instead acts with governance by decree by signing a flurry of executive orders to avoid working with other parts of the government. He has also likened himself to a king, writing on Feb. 19, 2025, “Long Live the King!”

As much as Trump loves hosting sports teams and talking about paving over the White House’s rose garden in a remodeling project, he seems to begrudgingly accept the role of head of government.

President Donald Trump is driven around the track prior to the Daytona 500 in Daytona Beach, Fla., on Feb. 16, 2025.
Chris Graythen/Getty Images

‘You have to be thankful’

Trump revels in social events where he is heralded as the most important person in the room. On Feb. 9, 2025, Trump became the first sitting president to attend a Super Bowl. A week later, he attended the Daytona 500 at Daytona Beach, Florida, where his limousine led drivers in completing a ceremonial lap.

Trump’s preference for serving as head of state and not head of government was on full display during his now infamous Feb. 28, 2025, White House meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

In the televised Oval Office meeting, Trump repeatedly told Zelenskyy, “You have to be thankful.”

Trump was demanding deference from Zelenskyy to show his inferior and submissive position as a recipient of U.S. aid and military support. These are mannerisms of absolute kings, not elected officials.

Governing through executive orders

The beginning of Trump’s second term in office has been filled with announcements of changes – mostly through executive actions. The Trump administration has ordered the Pentagon to stop cyber operations against Russia and fired hundreds of employees at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The administration has also closed the Social Security Administration’s civil rights office and, among many other things, named the president chair of the Kennedy Center, a performance arts venue in Washington.

Trump has enacted policy changes almost exclusively through executive orders, instead of working with Congress on legislation.

Executive orders do not have to be negotiated with the legislative branch and can be written by a small team of advisers and approved by presidents. Within the first six weeks, Trump has signed more than 90 executive orders. By comparison, former President Joe Biden signed 162 executive orders during his four years in office.

Many of Trump’s executive orders are being challenged in court, and some have been found to likely not be constitutional.

More importantly, Trump’s successor can turn executive orders into confetti in an instant, simply with a signature. Trump himself has signed at least two executive orders that rescind over 60 previous executive orders, mostly signed by Biden.

The fact that Trump has removed almost all of Biden’s executive orders highlights how the orders can create change for a moment, or a few years. But when it comes to long-term policy change, congressional action is needed.

President Donald Trump signed a series of executive orders at the White House on March 6, 2025.
Alex Wong/Getty Images

Trump gets bored

Early in Trump’s first term in 2017, the administration planned themed weeks called “Made in America” and “American Heroes,” for example, to emphasize changes it intended to pursue.

Trump’s staff launched, stopped and then relaunched a themed infrastructure week seven times in 2019. This happened after Trump repeatedly derailed infrastructure events to focus on a more interesting event or topic, ranging from defending his comments that seemed to suggest support for white supremacists to discussing the reboot of Roseanne Barr’s sitcom.

In his second term, Trump has farmed out many head of government tasks to other people, notably billionaire Elon Musk, who is leading the new so-called Department of Government Efficiency. By mid-February 2025, Trump gave Musk, who holds the title of special government employee, oversight for hiring decisions at every governmental agency.

But as DOGE has initiated widespread cuts at different government agencies and offices in an effort to trim government waste, Musk has reportedly clashed with Trump’s cabinet members. This includes Secretary of State Marco Rubio, as well as other independent agencies funded by Congress.

Government agencies, funding recipients and others are pushing back against the cuts and at times are succeeding in getting court rulings that halt the dismissal of government workers, or reinstate other workers at their jobs.
Trump also seems to have abdicated most responsibility of bureaucracy to others by allowing Musk’s team unprecedented access to sensitive government programs and documents that include people’s personal information.

Absolute kings, queens, emperors and dictators are heads of state who demand obedience because they hold the nation in their grip.

Presidents from elected democracies may, as in the case of the U.S., have a ceremonial aspect to the job, but it is only a part of it. The people democratically elect American presidents to serve everyone and provide the best government possible. More