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      in UK Politics

      Voters like the UK-US reaching a trade deal – they just don’t think Trump will follow it

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      Across the board, Americans and Britons agree that a free-trade agreement between the United States and the United Kingdom is a good idea, but far fewer are confident that President Donald Trump will abide by whatever deal he strikes. On Thursday, Trump and Prime Minister Keir Starmer announced that the two countries agreed to increase access for U.S. agricultural exports while lowering some levies against the U.K., in the first deal since Trump launched his global trade war. But polling from last month indicates that details of an agreement are less of a concern to adults in the U.S. or U.K. – instead, most people are wary of Trump’s unpredictability.While 78 percent of U.S. adults support a free-trade agreement in principle, only 44 percent believe Trump will abide by the terms of an agreement, a Politico and Public First poll conducted last month found. Fewer than half of US and UK adults trust that President Donald Trump will abide by trade deal terms More

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      in US Politics

      The desperate search for a father disappeared by Trump to El Salvador: ‘We don’t know anything’

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      The last time Joregelis Barrios heard from her brother Jerce, the call had lasted just one minute.Immigration officials had moved Jerce from the detention center in southern California where he had been for six months to another one in Texas. He sounded worried, as if he had been crying. He told his sister he might be transferred somewhere else soon.No one has heard from him since.Within hours of that call, Jerce was forced on a plane to El Salvador and booked into the country’s most notorious prison: the Centro de Confinamiento del Terrorismo (Cecot). He was one of more than 260 men that Donald Trump’s administration had accused of terrorism and gang membership. His sister thought she recognized him in the videos shared by the Salvadorian government, among the crowd of deportees with shaved heads and white prison uniforms, being frogmarched to their cells by guards in ski masks. Then CBS News published a leaked list of the deportees’ names, confirming her worst worries.“It was a shock,” said Joregelis. “Jerce has always avoided trouble.”Jerce, a 36-year-old professional soccer player and father of two, had come to the US last year to seek asylum, after fleeing political violence and repression in Venezuela.An immigration hearing to review his case was scheduled for 17 April, just weeks after he was abruptly exiled to El Salvador.“He was so optimistic, up till the last day we spoke,” said Mariyin Araujo, Jerce’s ex-partner and the co-parent of his two daughters, Isabella and six-year-old Carla.“He believed the laws there in the US were the best, that it would all work out soon,” she said. “How far did that get him?”Barrios was flown to Cecot on 15 March. For the past two months, his family has been obsessively scanning news updates and social media posts for any sign that he is still alive and healthy. They have been closely monitoring the court cases challenging Trump’s invocation of the wartime powers of the Alien Enemies Act against the Venezuela-based gang known as Tren de Aragua, to exile immigrants – most of whom have no criminal history – to one of the most notorious prisons in the world. And they have been wondering what, if anything, they can do for Jerce.In Machiques, a small town near Venezuela’s border with Colombia, locals have painted a mural in Jerce’s honor. His old soccer club, Perijaneros FC, started a campaign demanding his release – and children from the local soccer school held a prayer circle for him. “We have created TikToks about him, we have organized protests, we held vigils,” said Araujo.“We have looked for so many ways to be his voice at this moment, when he is unable to speak,” she said.But as the weeks pass, she said, she is increasingly unsure what more she can do. The Trump administration has doubled down on its right to send immigrants to Cecot, despite a federal judge’s order barring it from doing so.To justify these extraordinary deportations, both Trump and El Salvador’s president, Nayib Bukele, have publicly insisted that the men sent to Cecot are the worst of the worst gang members. To mark Trump’s first 100 days in office, his Department of Homeland Security (DHS) released a list of “Noteworthy individuals deported or prevented from entering the US” – and characterized Jerce as “a member of the vicious Tren de Aragua gang” who “has tattoos that are consistent with those indicating membership” in the gang.Jerce’s family and lawyer say the only evidence DHS has shared so far is that he has a tattoo on his arm of a soccer ball with a crown on top – a tribute to his favorite soccer team, Real Madrid. His other tattoos include the names of his parents, siblings and daughters.“My brother is not a criminal,” Joregelis said. “They took him away without any proof. They took him because he’s Venezuelan, because he had tattoos, and because he is Black.”She’s still haunted by the strange sense of finality in his last call. He had asked after his daughters, and whether his Isabella had been eating well. “I told him she had just had some plátano,” Jorgelis said. “And then he said to me: ‘I love you.’ He said to tell our mom to take care.”Araujo has struggled to explain to her daughters why their father hasn’t been calling them regularly. She lives in Mexico City with Carla, her six-year-old. Isabella, three, is in Venezuela with Jorgelis.Carla, especially, has started asking a lot of questions. “Recently, she said to me: ‘Mom, Dad hasn’t called me, Mom. Could it be that he no longer loves me?’” Araujo said. “So I had to tell her a little bit about what had happened.”Now Carla cries constantly, Araujo said. She misses her father, she misses his scrambled eggs, she misses watching him play soccer. She keeps asking if he is being treated well in detention, if he is eating well. “It’s too difficult,” Araujo said. “From a young age, kids learn that if you do something bad, you go to jail. And now she keeps asking how come her dad is in jail, he’s not a bad person. And I don’t know how to explain. I don’t know how to tell her there is no logical explanation.”Jerce had been in detention of some sort ever since he set foot inside the US.Last year, he had used the now defunct CBP One app to request an appointment with immigration officials at the border. After more than four months of waiting in Mexico, agents determined that he had a credible case for asylum – but decided to detain him in a maximum-security detention center in San Ysidro, California, while he awaited his hearing.“Jerce didn’t tell us much about what it was like there, because he didn’t want us to worry,” said Jorgelis. “The only thing he did say was, why did he have to be Black? I believe he faced a lot of racism there.”When he first arrived at the border, immigration officials had alleged he might be a gang member based on his tattoos and on social media posts in which he was making the hand gesture commonly used to signify “I love you” in sign language, or “rock and roll”.His lawyer, Linette Tobin, submitted evidence proving that he had no criminal record in Venezuela, and that his hand gesture was benign. She also obtained a declaration from his tattoo artists affirming that his ink was a tribute to the Spanish soccer team and not to a gang. Officials agreed to move him out of maximum security shortly thereafter, in the fall of last year. “I thought that was a tacit admission, an acknowledgement that he’s not a gang member,” Tobin said.When officials moved him to a detention center in Texas, Tobin worried that transfer would complicate his asylum proceedings. Since she is based in California, she wasn’t sure whether she’d be able to continue to represent him in Texas.Jerce had been worried when Tobin last spoke to him on the phone, in March, but she had reassured him that he still had a strong case for asylum. Now, the US government has petitioned to dismiss Jerce’s asylum case, she said, “on the basis that – would you believe it – he’s not here in the US”.“I mean, he’d love to be here if he could!” she said.Other than ensuring that his case remains open, Tobin said she’s not sure what more she can do for her client. After the ACLU sued Donald Trump over his unilateral use of the Alien Enemies Act to remove alleged members from the US without legal process, the supreme court ruled that detainees subject to deportation must be given an opportunity to challenge their removals.But the highest court’s ruling leaves uncertain what people like Jerce, who are already stuck in Salvadorian prison, are supposed to do now. As that case moves forward, Tobin hopes the ACLU will be able to successfully challenge all the deportations.But in a separate case over the expulsion of Kilmar Ábrego García, whom the administration admitted was sent to Cecot in error, the supreme court asked the administration to facilitate Ábrego García’s return to the US – and the administration said it couldn’t, and wouldn’t.In his last calls with his family, Jerce told them he’d be out of detention soon – that it would all be better soon. Once he was granted asylum, he said, he would try to join a soccer league in the US and start earning some money. He had promised Carla he’d buy her a TV soon.Now, Araujo said: “I don’t even know if he is alive. We don’t know anything. The last thing we saw was a video of them, and after that video many speculations, but nothing is certain.” More

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      in US Politics

      Handshakes, friendship and ‘never, never, never, never, never’: five takeaways from Carney-Trump meeting

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      Perhaps no world leader can ever be completely sure how an encounter with Donald Trump will play out, but Canada’s Mark Carney had grounds to be especially wary before heading to the White House for his first post-election meeting with the US president.For months now, Trump has waged a campaign of diplomatic and commercial intimidation against his northern neighbour, launching a trade war and belittling Carney’s predecessor Justin Trudeau.Shortly before the briefing, the US leader once again took to social media to post a debunked figure that the US is “subsidizing Canada by $200 Billion Dollars a year” and to complain the country was receiving “FREE Military Protection”.But from the moment the pair shook hands, it was clear the tone of the meeting would be remarkably cordial, with Trump praising Carney as “a very talented person” and Carney describing Trump as a “transformational” president.The mood grew less relaxed as Trump again falsely claimed that the US was “subsidizing” Canada and repeated his calls for Canada to become the 51st state.Here are five takeaways from Tuesday’s meeting:1. Canada is not for saleCarney used the meeting to tell Trump to his face what he’s told Canadians ever since he became prime minister: the country isn’t for sale.When asked by reporters about his proposal for Canada to become the 51st state of the USA, Trump seemed to walk back the idea, conceding “it takes two to tango”. But he then said Canada would get a “massive tax cut” if it became an American state.Trump said it would be “beautiful” to merge the two countries, saying the prospect “would really be a wonderful marriage”.Carney, drawing on Trump’s pride in real estate dealings, reminded the president that in the industry, “there are some places that are never for sale”.“That’s true,” said Trump.“Having met with the owners of Canada over the course of the campaign … it’s not for sale,” said Carney. “Won’t be for sale, ever.”Later in the meeting, Trump brought up the idea again, telling Carney and the assembled media: “I say, never say never.”“Never, never, never, never, never,” Carney appeared to say quietly.2. Tariffs remain – for nowOne major task for Carney and his team is to better understand the rationale – if there is one – behind the tariffs on Canadian goods, and to find any possible off-ramps. Carney set the bar low before the meeting, suggesting he didn’t anticipate any big announcements from the first gathering of the two leaders.Near the end of the meeting, Trump was asked whether there was anything Carney or the Canadian delegation could offer for tariffs to be removed.“No,” he said, adding that it’s “just the way it is”.The prime minister was likely to use the working lunch to nonetheless chip away at the American position in search of common ground.In Canada, the tariffs have led to a broad boycott by consumers of US-made products.“Usually those things don’t last very long,” Trump said. “We have great things, great product. The kind of product we sell, nobody else can sell. Including military. We make the best military equipment in the world. And Canada buys our military equipment, which we appreciate.”3. Both sides predict a revised trade dealThe country’s trade relationship came up during the meeting, with Trump signalling he was interested in renegotiating key aspects of the free-trade US-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA), calling the prior deal, Nafta, the “worst in the history of the world”.The current pact governing free trade across the continent is due for renewal next year.“We’re going to be starting to possibly renegotiate that,” Trump said, “if it’s even necessary. I don’t know that it’s necessary any more.”Trump refused to answer questions on which specific provisions of the deal he wanted to renegotiate, telling reporters the leaders were “dealing more with concepts right now”. But later, he repeated claims that the United States didn’t need Canadian exporters, including for Canadian cars, steel or energy. “We want to do it ourselves,” he said.Carney pushed back on Trump’s characterization of the current deal, including the use of tariffs by American officials, but agreed the existing deal was a “framework” for future talks and a “bigger discussion”.“We are the largest client of the United States, in the totality of all the goods,” he said.In a nod to the importance of the trade relationship between the two nations, both sides brought their most senior officials. Attending for the Canadians were some of the country’s top trade and diplomatic officials, including international trade minister Dominic LeBlanc, foreign affairs minister Mélanie Joly, public safety minister David McGuinty and Canada’s ambassador to the US, Kirsten Hillman.On the American side, Trump had JD Vance, secretary of state Marco Rubio, secretary of commerce Howard Lutnick and US trade representative Jamieson Greer.4. Trump just wants to be lovedWhen asked by reporters what the biggest concession Canada could offer might be, Trump said “friendship”.The cordial and positive tone between the leaders likely comes as a relief to Canadian officials, who prepared for numerous scenarios – including a dressing-down akin to the treatment of the Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy.Instead, the initial minutes of the meeting involved a shower of mutual praise between the leaders.After the Liberal party’s federal election victory last week, Trump congratulated Carney for one of the “greatest political comebacks of all time”, and described the prime minister’s visit “an honour” for the White House. Trump added he had great “respect” for Carney.Carney returned the compliments, calling Trump a “transformational president” with a strong focus on the economy, security and American workers.It marked a sharp departure from the frosty and strained relationship with Carney’s predecessor Justin Trudeau, whom Trump once described as “two-faced” – and who in turn described the US trade war as “dumb”.Given that much of US foreign policy appears to depend on whether Trump favours a world leader, that change in tone may bode well for Canada.5. Bad blood lingersTrump used part of the meeting to attack various political actors, including Trudeau and the former finance minister Chrystia Freeland, who led the Canadian delegation in previous negotiations of the continental free-trade pact.“I didn’t like his predecessor,” Trump said to Carney, once again derisively calling Trudeau “governor”.He then singled out Freeland, saying: “She was terrible. Actually, she was a terrible person, and she really hurt that deal very badly because she tried to take advantage of the deal and she didn’t get away with it.”In late January, Freeland used Trump’s dislike of her as a key component of her failed bid for leadership of the Liberal party – a race she eventually lost to Carney. More

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      in US Politics

      Identity of second man illegally deported to El Salvador prison revealed

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      The identity of a second man illegally deported from the US by the Trump administration in defiance of a court order and now in detention in El Salvador has been revealed.Daniel Lozano-Camargo, a 20-year-old Venezuelan, was deported to El Salvador’s notorious Cecot terrorism confinement facility in March under the White House’s invocation of the Alien Enemies Act, Politico reported.His deportation came after authorities declared him, along with about 240 other men, to be a member of Tren de Aragua, a Venezuelan gang that the US government has defined as a terrorist organization. Lozano-Camargo’s family members deny that he has gang affiliations.Politico revealed Lozano-Camargo’s identity after a Maryland judge last month ruled that the Trump administration had improperly removed him in violation of a 2024 legal settlement that forbade immigration authorities from deporting him while his application for asylum was pending.The judge, Stephanie Gallagher, who was appointed to the bench by Trump, ordered officials to “facilitate” Lozano-Camargo’s return to the US. So far, the administration has not complied.He is reported to have entered the US in 2022 as an asylum seeker, initially spending time in a facility for underage migrants until he turned 18.According to Politico, he was subsequently twice arrested for possession of cocaine, most recently last November, and was sentenced in January to 120 days in prison. It was from there that he was transferred to the custody of the Immigration, Customs and Enforcement authority (Ice), which filed an application for his detention, claiming that he was in the country illegally.In her ruling, Gallagher agreed with immigrant rights advocates that Lozano-Camargo should not have been deported until his asylum application was resolved. While withholding his identity by referring to him only by a pseudonym, “Cristian”, she said he was “fleeing danger and threats in Venezuela”.Politico said Lozano-Camargo’s identity was disclosed in metadata embedded in government court filings.A justice department court filing released on Monday disputed the judge’s assessment, saying he belonged to “a violent terrorist gang”, thus disqualifying him from asylum in the US. Bringing him back to the US “would no longer serve any legal or practical purpose”, justice department lawyers wrote.Gallagher was due to further rule on the matter in a Baltimore court on Tuesday.Lozano-Camargo’s case resembles that of Kilmar Ábrego García, a Maryland resident who was deported to El Salvador in March despite a previous court order issued in 2019 establishing that he had protected status because he was at risk of violence if he was returned to the country of his origin. Ábrego García is Salvadorian by birth. The US government, which has claimed that he is a member of the MS-13 gang – something Ábrego García denies – admitted that he had been deported by mistake but has defied court orders to return him to the US.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionÁbrego García was removed from the US on the same set of flights as Lozano-Camargo but has been transferred from Cecot to another facility because of the international publicity surrounding his case.Lozano-Camargo’s family has tried to draw attention to his plight in social media posts. His mother, Daniela, has proclaimed his innocence in a tearful Facebook video.Possessing a valid work permit, he is said to have been living in Houston and washing cars for a living before his detention.His deportation was among those highlighted by the Guardian in March, amid speculation that he was one of hundreds of Venezuelans singled out for removal on the basis of their tattoos, which authorities claimed identified them as members of Tren de Aragua.Lozano-Camargo is said to have several tattoos, including one bearing the name of his father – who died when he was a child. Critics say Tren de Aragua members do not use tattoos to advertise their membership of the gang. More

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      in US Politics

      Does Nayib Bukele’s campaign against democracy give a blueprint for Trump?

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      “I have no doubt the government are watching,” said Ingrid Escobar, an activist lawyer who has proved a thorn in the side of El Salvador’s authorities. “There are cars that follow me – I have them identified.”Since president Nayib Bukele launched a sweeping crackdown on gangs, Escobar has advocated for the tens of thousands locked up without due process. She points to a photo of Geovanni Aguirre, a childhood friend and trade unionist who worked in San Salvador’s mayor’s office. He disappeared into the prison system in 2022.“The threat is real,” said Escobar. “There are activists and unionists in prison. There are others with arrest orders out for them. Yes, we are afraid.”This is the dark side of the “Bukele model”, which extols an ultra hardline approach to crime spearheaded by a populist leader – but also entails an assault on civil society and democratic institutions, and the accumulation of near absolute power. All with soaring approval ratings.It has made Bukele, 43, the envy of populist authoritarians worldwide, including many in and around the Trump administration. “President Nayib Bukele saved El Salvador,” TV host Tucker Carlson gushed after interviewing him. “He may have the blueprint for saving the world.”But El Salvador’s embattled civil society and independent press – the only counterweights to Bukele’s power that remain – warn the regime may yet take a still darker turn.View image in fullscreen“Bukele still benefits from his popularity, but El Salvador could go the way of Nicaragua, where public opinion has swung against the regime,” said Pedro Cabezas, an environmental defender. “And then it comes down to military control.”Fears that Donald Trump might take cues from Bukele spiked last month when he deported more than 200 migrants to Cecot, El Salvador’s mega-prison, and then defied the supremecourt when it ordered that his administration “facilitate” the return of one of them, Kilmar Ábrego García.For Salvadorians, this was reminiscent of Bukele’s actions back in 2020, when he defied a supreme court ruling to stop detaining people for violating quarantine during the pandemic.Some now see this is a turning point.Over the following years Bukele went on to march the army into the legislature to intimidate lawmakers; fire judges who opposed him; modify the electoral system in his favour; and start a state of exception, suspending Salvadorian’s constitutional rights, which shows no sign of ending.Bukele followed the authoritarian playbook – with great success. Last year Salvadorians voted to give him an unconstitutional second consecutive term.All of this has to be seen in the context of what life was like under the MS-13 and Barrio 18 gangs, said Amparo Marroquín, a professor at the Central American University. “The levels of violence were brutal, especially in the poorer neighbourhoods. It paralysed the social life of the country.”By locking up 85,000 people without due process, many of whom likely have nothing to do with the gangs, Bukele provided a brutal solution. The gangs’ territorial control was broken, homicides fell, and many Salvadorians enjoyed a kind of freedom they had not experienced for years.On the outskirts of San Salvador, one taxi driver pointed to the side of the road. “The gangs dumped bodies here like it was nothing,” he said. “Sometimes in pieces, over hundreds of metres.”“It used to be that every time you left home you ran the risk of being robbed or even killed,” he said. “The president changed that.”Bukele has ridden this wave of relief, with approval ratings consistently around 80% – even if this figure masks an undercurrent of fear.“Around the same number say they would be afraid to express an opinion that was not aligned with the president,” said Noah Bullock, executive director of Cristosal, a human rights organisation. “And nobody in this country has any doubt that the government can do whatever it wants to whoever it wants.”One veteran of El Salvador’s civil war, who asked not to be named, said he lost a teenage son to a gang shooting in 2010, and that he had been happy to see the gangs brought low.View image in fullscreen“But now the soldiers bother us. I don’t feel safe, I don’t know how to explain it,” he said, searching for the words. “It’s like there are more gangsters with credentials in their hands.”Now the only counterweights to Bukele’s power that remain are civil society organisations and the independent press – and he is turning the screws on both.Bukele has portrayed both as political enemies working against him and the Salvadorian people, and the message has been faithfully amplified by his media machine.“Bukele is like an antenna,” said Cabezas, the environmental defender. “Then there are the repeater antennae: the ministries, the legislative, all the institutions of the state. And then comes the army of trolls.”At the same time, Bukele pressures civil society through regulations, audits and exemplary persecution, such as in the case of five environmental defenders who were at the forefront of El Salvador’s campaign to ban metal mining – which Bukele recently overturned.“These leaders are known at the national and even international level,” said Cabezas. “Now, imagine you are someone who doesn’t have that kind of profile, and you see the state persecuting them. You’d wonder what they would do to you.”Cristosal found that 86% of civil society organisations in El Salvador now self-censor to avoid reprisals.Meanwhile journalists are subject to harassment and targeted with spyware.“It has become normalised for security forces to demand journalists’ phones in the streets, to threaten them with arrest, or even hold them for a time,” said Sergio Arauz, president of El Salvador’s association of journalists.Trump’s freezing of USAID, which supported 11 media outlets in El Salvador, and various civil society organisations, was a gift to Bukele.View image in fullscreenYet the government stops short of all-out repression – and journalists continue to produce damaging investigations into corruption and the negotiations Bukele’s government held with the gangs.“I think Bukele understands that there is an international cost if he attacks journalists too much, and the question is whether he is willing to pay that cost,” said Marroquín.“When you cross that line, there is no going back,” added Marroquín.When Bukele was in the Oval Office last month, denying that he could return the wrongly deported Ábrego García, Trump was sat next to him, visibly admiring the spin and aggressive handling of the press.“Sometimes they say that we imprisoned thousands,” said Bukele, as he defended his mass incarceration spree. “I like to say that we actually liberated millions.”Trump smiled and asked: “Who gave him that line? Do you think I can use that?”To what extent Trump wants to emulate the “Bukele model” is an open question, but it’s far from clear Bukele’s methods would work in the US, which both lacks a social crisis of the gravity of El Salvador’s gangs and still has a range of formal checks on Trump’s power, from the independent judiciary to the federal system.“American democracy is more resilient – but Americans should not take it for granted,” said Juan Pappier of Human Rights Watch. “Bukele managed to destroy the Salvadoran democracy in two or three years. And putting institutions back to together is a daunting task.” More

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      in US Politics

      Trump says he ‘doesn’t rule out’ using military force to control Greenland

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      Donald Trump would not rule out using military force to gain control of Greenland, the world’s largest island and an autonomous territory within Denmark, a fellow Nato member with the US.Since taking office, the US president has repeatedly expressed the idea of US expansion into Greenland, triggering widespread condemnation and unease both on the island itself and in the global diplomatic community. Greenland is seen as strategically important both for defense and as a future source of mineral wealth.In an interview on NBC’s Meet The Press on Sunday, Trump was asked whether he would rule out using force against the territory.“I don’t rule it out. I don’t say I’m going to do it, but I don’t rule out anything. No, not there. We need Greenland very badly. Greenland is a very small amount of people, which we’ll take care of, and we’ll cherish them, and all of that. But we need that for international security,” Trump said.The exchange came as part of wide-ranging interview following Trump’s first 100-days in office last week and he was also asked about the idea of using military force against Canada – an idea once unthinkable but now a subject of speculation amid Trump’s repeated assertion he would like to make Canada the US’s 51st state.“It’s highly unlikely. I don’t see it with Canada. I just don’t see it, I have to be honest with you,” Trump said.Trump said he had spoke with Canada’s new prime minister, Mark Carney, and confirmed that the pair had not spoken about making his country part of the US.But he said they could discuss the topic when Carney visits Washington DC “this week or next week”. Carney, along with around 90% of Canadians, oppose the idea of folding Canada into the US. But Trump said he was open to a discussion.“I’ll always talk about that. You know why? We subsidize Canada to the tune of $200bn a year,” Trump said. “We don’t need their cars. In fact, we don’t want their cars. We don’t need their energy. We don’t even want their energy. We have more than they do. We don’t want their lumber. We have great lumber. All I have to do is free it up from the environmental lunatics.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionTrump said that if “Canada was part of the US it wouldn’t cost us. It would be great … it would be a cherished state. And, if you look at our map, if you look at the geography – I’m a real estate guy at heart. When I look down at that without that artificial line that was drawn with a ruler many years ago – was just an artificial line, goes straight across. You don’t even realize.”“What a beautiful country it would be,” he added.A poll published last month found that 68% of Americans believe Trump is serious about the US trying to take over Greenland, and 53% think Trump is serious when he talks about the US trying to take control of Canada.But the survey, commissioned by ABC News found that respondents didn’t think either annexation would be a good idea. About 86% said they opposed the US trying to take control of Canada, and 76% opposed trying to take control of Greenland. More

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      in US Politics

      Geography has given the US unrivaled security. Trump is destroying it | Gil Barndollar and Rajan Menon

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      The secret to American power and pre-eminence was best summed up more than a century ago.America, observed Jean Jules Jusserand, France’s ambassador to the United States during the first world war, “is blessed among the nations”. To the north and south were friendly and militarily weak neighbors; “on the east, fish, and the west, fish”. The United States was and is both a continental power and, in strategic terms, an island – with all the security those gifts of geography provide. No world power has ever been as fortunate. This unique physical security is the real American exceptionalism.Americans take this providential geography for granted: their country’s wars are always away games, and their neighbors are trading partners and weekend getaway destinations, not rivals or enemies. The ability of the United States to project power around the globe depends on technology and logistics, but it rests ultimately on the foundation of secure borders and friendly neighbors. But that may not be the case much longer. In threatening war with both Canada and Mexico, Donald Trump is obliterating America’s greatest strategic advantage.In normal times, one would be hard-pressed to find a pair of friendlier nations than the United States and Canada. Canadians and Americans share a common language (aside from the Québécois), sports leagues, $683bn in trade, and the world’s longest undefended border, more than 5,000 miles (8,000km) long. Americans and Canadians have fought side by side in both world wars, as well as in Korea and Afghanistan.Trump’s coveting of Canada is easy to mock and dismiss. Since returning to office in January, he has said repeatedly that he wants to make Canada the 51st state and taken to calling former Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau “Governor Trudeau.” In what could be a satire of the post-9/11 ambitions of some American neoconservatives, Trump called the border with Canada “an artificial line” that “makes no sense”.But Canadians aren’t laughing. Living next door to a superpower that has fought multiple wars over the last 20 years and now practices a post-truth politics, they are angry and rattled.Liquor stores in Canada have pulled American-made alcohol from their shelves. The singing of the Star-Spangled Banner during hockey and basketball games has provoked boos from the stands. Airline travel from Canada to the United States has cratered, with ticket sales dropping 70%. Trudeau, not knowing he was on a hot mic, told his ministerial colleagues that Trump’s territorial avarice was “a real thing” and that they should not dismiss it as typical Trumpian bluster. Mark Carney, Trudeau’s successor, warned Canadians that the longtime partnership with the US, “based on deepening integration of our economies and tight security and military cooperation, is over”.Earlier this year, Pierre Poilievre, the Conservative party’s candidate in Canada’s national elections, enjoyed a huge lead in the polls and seemed destined to become the next prime minister. But Canadians’ dislike of Trump apparently helped Carney, a political newcomer and the Liberal party’s candidate (despite Trump’s criticism of Poilievre in a Fox News interview, perhaps because Poilievre, reacting to his falling poll numbers, pivoted to criticizing the American president). Carney’s poll numbers surged, Poilievre’s plunged, and this week, Carney won the election – but he’s not about to preside over Canada’s annexation. By Carney’s account, in conversations, Trump has brought up his vision of Canada as the United States’ 51st state, something Carney has dismissed outright.Americans are apt to find the idea of a security threat from Canada ridiculous. Some of Trump’s antipathy to Canada rests on its paltry defense spending, less than 1.5% of GDP, making Canada one of Nato’s laggards. But Canadian capabilities are critical for the defense of the American homeland. Canadian long- and short-range radars provide the bulk of the North Warning System (NWS), which guards against airplanes and missiles entering North America via the North Pole. A Canadian withdrawal from the jointly run NWS would diminish the United States’ capacity for strategic defense and deterrence. While such a move by Canada would normally be unthinkable, if it fears invasion, as it has reason to do now, it may take steps that have hitherto been beyond the realm of possibility.If Trump’s actions against Canada boggle the mind, his stance toward Mexico is more explicable, albeit far more dangerous. Trump came down that golden escalator at Trump Tower in June 2015 and announced his first presidential bid with a diatribe against Mexican immigrants. In the decade since, the Republican party has come to view Mexican drug cartels, if not the Mexican state itself, as a major threat to the United States, even as Mexico has displaced China to become the US’s largest trading partner.With Trump back in power, the reality is starting to match the rhetoric. Active-duty US troops are now on the southern border and Mexican drug cartels have been officially labeled as foreign terrorist groups, providing the legal pretext for the president to order US soldiers to enter Mexican territory and destroy them. US surveillance drones are monitoring fentanyl labs in Mexico – by mutual agreement – but the Mexican president, Claudia Sheinbaum, has ruled out their being used to strike drug cartels, something US officials have reportedly discussed.Although Trump issued an executive order on the first day of his second term, declaring an emergency on the US-Mexican border, the active duty troops he has deployed there aren’t currently engaged in law enforcement, which US law prohibits, only providing logistical support to Customs and Border Protection. But were Trump to invoke the 1807 Insurrection Act at some point, that could change and the military could begin apprehending and detaining Mexican migrants.Any unilateral US military intervention in Mexico would be reckless. With some of the US’s largest cities just a few hours from the border, the cartels would have ample opportunities for retaliation, which in turn would provoke American escalation. Civilian deaths caused by US military strikes could unleash major domestic strife in Mexico, a country of 130 million people, to the point of creating a tidal wave of refugees. US geography shielded it from most of the consequences of its disastrous post-9/11 wars in the greater Middle East. But US luck would finally run out if Trump tried to rerun a version of the “war on terror” across the southern border.With wars raging in Europe and the Middle East and Trump toying with unprecedented tariffs on many US partners and allies, the fallout from Trump’s “America first” policies seem to be primarily in Europe and Asia. But the most gratuitous and serious threats to American security and prosperity lie closer to home.Barely three months into his second term, Donald Trump has damaged, perhaps even irrevocably, relationships with his country’s two neighbors and largest trading partners. Few US presidents have committed greater strategic malpractice. None have done it with such speed. If the president wants to identify something he has achieved that none of his modern-day predecessors have, this feat would certainly qualify.

      Gil Barndollar is a non-resident fellow at the Defense Priorities Foundation. Rajan Menon is Spitzer professor emeritus of international relations at the Powell School, City College of New York, and a senior research scholar at the Saltzman Institute at Columbia University. More

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      This hockey town in Michigan has deep ties to Canada. Then came Trump’s tariffs

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      There are few entities that embody the close, fraternal ties between the US and Canada quite like the Saginaw Spirit junior ice hockey team.In a place whose fortunes have been more down than up in recent decades, the Dow Event Center hockey arena in Saginaw, Michigan, comes alive with more than 5,000 fans once these young stars take to the ice. A huge banner depicting the players adorns the main street into the city.Nearly all the players, aged 16 to 20, come from Canada, and stay with local Saginaw families during the regular playing season, which runs from September to April.“They are family, almost literally,” says Jimmy Greene, the Spirit’s vice-president of marketing and community relations, “because players come over here and stay with American families. It’s more than just sport.”One of the top prospects of this year’s National Hockey League entry draft is forward Michael Misa, the Spirit’s 18-year-old Canadian captain. Last year, the Saginaw Spirit won the Memorial Cup of the Ontario Hockey League for the first time. In the season that recently finished, the Spirit played 28 times on Canadian soil.So the fallout from Donald Trump’s tariffs regime on Canadian goods has been felt more keenly in Saginaw than most other communities – as has the fight over the Canadian election, with the US president’s jibes over Canada becoming the US’s 51st state looming over the contest amid a fierce backlash against such comments.“We’ve had this relationship for decades and all of a sudden, in the last couple of months, it’s been uprooted,” says Greene.“Of course, you’re going to be concerned because you just don’t know [what will happen next]. At some point, it’s going to end up costing us. I just don’t know what extent and by how much.”As the largest city in the northern half of Michigan located within a short drive of three Canadian border crossings, Saginaw has closer ties to Canada than perhaps any other community of its size. Canadian companies own close to 4,000 acres (1,600 hectares) of farmland in the county, and last year, Saginaw established its first sister-city ties with a Canadian counterpart.What’s more, it is a key political bellwether and manufacturing county that helped push Donald Trump over the line in last November’s presidential election, but today the community faces uncertainty around the trade war with Canada.Michigan, with its vast automotive manufacturing industry, is set to be affected by Trump’s trade battle with Canada more than perhaps any other US state.After Trump announced 25% tariffs on Canadian vehicles and parts – with some exemptions – Ottawa responded with its own 25% tariff on certain US automotive products. Canada says the tariffs are unjustified, but on 23 April Trump warned that the tariff figures could go up.While Trump has claimed the US doesn’t need goods produced by its northern neighbor, Canada buys more American products than any other country, at $356bn worth of purchases. Nearly 40% of Michigan’s exported goods go to Canada. In 2023, $1.7bn worth of goods made in the Saginaw metropolitan area were exported, one of the highest amounts for any Michigan city, with much of that sent to Canada.Nexteer Automotive employs around 5,000 people in Saginaw while Means Industries, an automotive parts company headquartered in the city, also has a base in London, Ontario. Repeated calls and emails sent by the Guardian to Saginaw’s chamber of commerce seeking information on specific local industries potentially affected by the tariffs were not responded to.‘Sport right now triumphs over politics’Saginaw is no stranger to economic ups and downs.On a recent Friday afternoon, the downtown area is almost dead. Despite the recent success of the hockey team, there isn’t a sports bar for blocks in any direction as most of Saginaw’s commercial activity is now concentrated around miles of strip malls north of downtown.For Brad Pyscher, an officer at a correctional facility and former union president who, on a recent Saturday afternoon, is manning the Saginaw county Republican party office in one of these strip malls, the tariffs on Canada were something of a shock.“People are concerned, and they hope this works itself out,” he says. “The shock and awe [of the tariffs] really took everyone by surprise.”The 54-year-old says he had voted independent all his life before backing Democrat Barack Obama, and then Trump for president in 2016.“The thing with Trump, whether you like him or don’t like him, there’s transparency,” he says. “I’m drawn to him because he is not a politician.”But Pyscher concedes that Trump could have negotiated with Canada before “hitting them with that shock and awe. I think it’s on purpose, to let the world know he can do it,” he says.“[With] Canada, it should have been negotiated a bit better, a lot better. I’m expecting the deals with Canada to come soon, and we can all put this behind us.”Trump has said one of his main motivations for issuing tariffs on Canada was to stop the flow of illicit drugs into the US. However, reports indicate the opposite may be happening. Last month, $11m worth of cocaine was seized at the Port Huron border crossing, 80 miles (130km) east of Saginaw – on its way into Canada. In December, around 1,000lb (450kg) of cocaine were also seized in a semi-truck attempting to enter Ontario from the same border crossing.Back in the world of ice hockey, Greene of Saginaw Spirit says he feels most people he interacts with have been able to park their political feelings, starting with the organization’s Canadian players, who have been essential to the team’s recent success.“I think we all made a concerted effort, while not to keep [the players] dumb and naive, we did enough to make them feel comfortable in our environment and away from the political stuff. We kept them in a mindset of sport,” he says.But Greene also realizes the strained ties with Canada fueled by the White House’s policies are a very real dynamic.“I’m not immune to the idea that at some point Canada had some hostile feelings towards us, but people have, until this point, been able to park the politics away from sport. I think sport right now triumphs over politics,” he says.“Because we play in Canada, and [because of] the tariffs. I’m more concerned about how they feel about us. Our feelings towards Canada have been and always will be favorable and friendly. I’m concerned not just because of the economic tariffs, but because of the emotions that come from that. I’d be foolish to pretend otherwise.”Saginaw residents are hoping the kind of fraternal ties that were on display across the city last May, when hundreds of Canadian hockey fans from as far away as Saskatchewan descended on the region for the Memorial Cup, won’t become a thing of the past.“Everybody’s been super friendly. You guys have been incredible hosts,” one Canadian hockey fan who drove 11 hours from Quebec for the tournament told local media. More