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      Will Trump’s ‘Liberation Day’ be the start of a trade war – or another climbdown?

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      Donald Trump won back the White House with a promise to transform the US economy. Millions of Americans, struggling with higher prices and bigger bills, elected a president who pledged to revive his country’s industrial heartlands – and leave the rest of the world to pick up the bill.On Wednesday – a day dubbed Liberation Day by the president and his aides – Trump has vowed to pull the trigger and impose an historic barrage of tariffs on goods from overseas he claims will fund an extraordinary revival.Ten weeks after obtaining power, Trump has said he will raise tariffs on all products from countries that charge tariffs on US exports; hit goods from Canada and Mexico with sweeping duties; introduce steep tariffs on foreign cars, computer chips and drugs; and target countries importing oil from Venezuela with duties on their US exports.This is “the big one”, according to the president. Business leaders and economists are certainly worried about the scale of his trade strategy, which the Tax Foundation already estimates could knock US gross domestic product (GDP) by roughly 0.7% and cost about 500,000 US jobs.“The escalating tariffs are a body blow to the global trading system,” said Eswar Prasad, professor of trade policy at Cornell University, and a former official at the International Monetary Fund.Wherever you stand, a move on this scale would constitute a radical shake-up – and set the stage for a fundamental overhaul of the US economy. And yet, even as he ramped up the rhetoric, Trump has appeared to tread carefully.“I will immediately begin the overhaul of our trade system to protect American workers and families,” the president declared at his inauguration in January. “Instead of taxing our citizens to enrich other countries, we will tariff and tax foreign countries to enrich our citizens.”While the threats were immediate, the action was not.Take Canada and Mexico. The administration has adopted a strikingly hardline stance against the US’s largest and nearest trading partners, but its imposition of blanket tariffs has been hit by a dizzying array of shifting deadlines, delays and reversals.An initial pledge to impose tariffs from “day one” shifted, without explanation, to February. When February rolled around, a last-ditch deal kicked the can to March. When the tariffs were finally imposed, it was a little over 24 hours before carmakers were granted a temporary exemption, and 48 hours before all goods covered by an existing trade deal between the US, Mexico and Canada were spared for another month.All the while, Trump and his most senior officials have slowly, but surely, accepted the risks they are raising in pursuit of the rewards they have vowed to obtain.“Tariffs don’t cause inflation,” the president claimed in January. OK, prices “could go up somewhat short term”, he conceded in February. “There’ll be a little disturbance,” he added in March, stressing that he was alright with that.The US treasury secretary, Scott Bessent, acknowledged earlier this month that there may well be a “one-time price adjustment” as a result of Trump’s tariffs. “Access to cheap goods is not the essence of the American dream,” he argued.While Trump predicts that slapping high US tariffs on foreign goods will prompt an influx of international companies to make products inside the US, rather than out, companies and investors worldwide are already struggling to keep up with his administration’s erratic trade policymaking.So far, since his return to office, Trump has hiked tariffs on Chinese exports to the US and raised tariffs on foreign steel and aluminium to 25%.The average US tariff rate has already shot up from 2.5% to 8.4% this year, the highest level since 1946, according to the Tax Foundation.Alex Durante, its senior economist, said the country is “inching towards” the kind of tariffs last seen since the 1930s, when the Smoot-Hawley bill, among the most decried pieces of legislation in US history, introduced tariffs on thousands of goods.“With each tariff action we’re rapidly approaching a universal tariff that would be damaging to the economy,” said Durante. “Behind the scenes, I think there is probably some concern, even among some of [Trump’s] staff, that they’re rapidly approaching the point of no return.”As his administration grappled with the fallout from the inadvertent inclusion of a journalist in a group chat about secret military plans last week, the president summoned reporters to the Oval Office to pre-announce tariffs on foreign cars. “This is very exciting,” he told them.The excitement is far from universal. Prasad, at Cornell, said: “We are shifting to a world where a commonly accepted set of rules is being displaced by unilateral actions that ostensibly promote a fair trading system, but will instead create volatility and uncertainty, inhibiting the free flow of goods and financial capital across national borders.”The car tariffs would be “a hurricane-like headwind to foreign (and many US) automakers”, said Dan Ives, an analyst at Wedbush Securities, who suggested they would push up prices by as much as $10,000 in the US. “We continue to believe this is some form of negotiation and these tariffs could change by the week,” he added, “although this initial 25% tariff on autos from outside the US is almost an untenable head-scratching number for the US consumer”.Such action is also widely expected to prompt retaliation – with US exporters in the firing line.While a spokesperson for the European Commission stressed it was too early to detail the European Union’s response to actions “still not implemented” by the US, they added: “I can assure you that it will be timely, that it will be robust, that it will be well calibrated and that it will achieve the intended impact.”Trump is watching closely. As countries and markets hit by new US tariffs consider how to hit back, the president publicly warned the EU and Canada that he would hit them with “far larger” duties if they worked together on their response.Some doubt whether the federal government has enough capacity to execute the trade onslaught which Trump has said is coming. “I simply just don’t think that [the US Trade Representative] right now has enough staff to even figure out how to implement some of these tariffs,” said Durante.But after myriad false starts and much fluctuation, the lingering question – despite all the shots, warnings and vows – is not how far Trump can take his trade wars, but how far he will.The president is, at heart, a salesman. In business, he sold real estate – with mixed success. In television, and then politics, he sold stories – with extreme success.Millions of Americans bought the image he constructed on The Apprentice of himself as a phenomenally successful entrepreneur. Millions more bought his promise on the campaign trail to share this phenomenal success with the rest of the nation.Trump is no longer selling a promise, but his strategy to deliver it. He won the White House twice by using stories, sometimes unbound by truth, to bend perceptions, break norms and build support. But rhetoric – however bold, and brash – can’t change reality.The president says unleashing a wave of tariffs, and triggering an abrupt surge in costs in the US and across the world, would cause just a “little disturbance”.Should Wednesday’s action prove as drastic as billed, businesses and consumers may struggle to reconcile this description with what they encounter.Liberation Day is the moniker coined by this administration. Liability Day might prove more apt. More

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      Ministers brace for more Trump tariffs as UK races to agree US trade deal

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      Ministers believe Britain will be hit by more tariffs when Donald Trump unveils his latest round of trade barriers on Wednesday as part of what the US president is calling “liberation day”.On Sunday night, Keir Starmer spoke with Trump in what Downing Street described as part of “productive negotiations” towards a deal. A No 10 spokesperson said both men had agreed talks between the two sides would “continue at pace this week”, adding: “They agreed to stay in touch in the coming days.”Senior members of the government have been engaged in intense negotiations over recent weeks as they race to agree a trade deal with the US, which could avoid the UK being included in the package of measures.The stakes are high for the British government – forecasters have said a 20 percentage point increase on tariffs on UK goods and services would cut the size of the British economy by 1% and force the chancellor, Rachel Reeves, into tax rises this autumn.Officials now fear, however, they will not have agreed the deal in time, sources have told the Guardian, and are resigned to being hit by whatever Trump announces on 2 April.But ministers will continue negotiating after that date, hoping they can avoid a damaging hit to UK economic growth by agreeing a deal to reduce tariffs once they have already been promised.One Whitehall official told the Guardian: “We have been working hard behind the scenes for a while on an economic deal, and that work continues. But we don’t see Wednesday as a hard and fast deadline.”Another said: “If we don’t get a deal by Wednesday it won’t be the end of the world. The main thing is to make sure we get enough from the US to make a deal worth signing.”Trump has said he will unveil what he says are “reciprocal” tariffs on trading partners around the world on Wednesday. Last week, the US president announced he would introduce a 25% tariff on car imports to the US on 2 April, which would hit British carmakers such as Bentley and Aston Martin.But just days ahead of the larger announcement, even White House officials say they have little sense of which tariffs the president intends to levy, on which countries and by how much.British negotiators, led by the business secretary, Jonathan Reynolds, have been talking to their US counterparts for weeks to agree a technology-focused trade deal, which they hope would also exempt the UK from the heaviest of Trump’s tariffs. Downing Street officials are closely involved in the talks, including the prime minister’s head of international economic affairs, Michael Ellam, and his business adviser Varun Chandra.In an indication of how far the British government is willing to go to sign the deal, ministers have offered to drop the UK digital services tax (DST). The DST is a levy on the revenues of the world’s largest technology companies – almost all of which are US-based – which is forecast to raise £1.1bn by the end of the decade.British officials are increasingly gloomy, however, about the prospect of getting the deal done in the next three days, albeit while still hoping it could come together at the last minute.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“This is an unpredictable situation and an unpredictable administration,” said one. “We’re having to plan for every scenario.”If the Trump administration does include the UK in its announcement on Wednesday, Britain is unlikely to reciprocate with its own tariffs, according to people familiar with the government’s thinking. Doing so would imperil the chances of signing a deal in the future, they added.One said: “Everything is on the table. But unlike other trading partners such as the EU, our approach will be to keep a cool head and keep talking. We know British industry does not want a trade war.”However, this approach has come in for criticism in recent days. Kim Darroch, the former British ambassador to the US, told the Observer on Sunday: “[UK ministers] need to be wary of giving Trump wins; tariffs are his all-purpose forcing mechanism and he’ll use them again and again if he sees them working.”Others believe ministers have little choice but to keep negotiating. Crawford Faulkner, who stepped down in January as the UK’s lead trade negotiator, said on Sunday Britain should be “prepared to negotiate” on the DST and other issues.He told Times Radio: “There is no reason why the United Kingdom could not, across the board, have liberalisation in goods, and as much of services as is feasible, with the United States.” More

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      Advertising giant WPP cuts diversity references from annual report

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      The British advertising giant WPP has become the latest company to cut the phrase “diversity, equity and inclusion” from its annual report as the policies come under attack from the Trump administration.The agency, which counts the US as by far its largest market, boasts the storied “Madison Avenue” agencies J Walter Thompson, Ogilvy and Grey among its top brands.In WPP’s annual report, which was released on Friday, the chief executive, Mark Read, told shareholders that “much has changed over the last year” due to political events.“In today’s complex world, a pressing question for brands and organisations is whether to engage on social issues in a more contested public arena, and how to navigate the expectations of different audiences with competing views on sensitive topics,” he wrote.The same document axed all references of “diversity, equity and inclusion”, “DE&I” and “DEI”. The policy attracted 20 mentions in the previous year’s report. The earlier document mentioned three times that the company was seen as a “diversity leader”.The omissions, which were first reported by the Sunday Times, included changes to how the company reports on measuring top executives’ non-financial performance, which contributes to the size of their short-term bonuses. In the new report, the phrasing has switched to “people and culture”.WPP declined to comment on whether the new wording was a response to anti-DEI policy moves by the Trump administration. The company said that, while the phrasing in its annual report had changed, the way in which executives’ short-term bonuses are calculated was unaltered.Within his first few days in office, Donald Trump instructed US government agencies to shut down their DEI programmes and federal employees working in diversity offices were immediately put on paid leave.Trump signed two executive orders targeting DEI programmes within the federal government. The first executive order largely scrapped the DEI efforts that took place under Joe Biden, who had ordered all federal agencies to come up with equity plans.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionA second executive order effectively ended any DEI activities within the federal government. This order overturned a handful of executive orders from past presidents, including one from Lyndon B Johnson that was signed during the civil rights era that required federal contractors to adopt equal opportunity measures.The Financial Times recently reported that more than 200 US companies have removed references to “diversity, equity and inclusion” from their annual reports since Trump’s election. More

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      FCC to investigate Disney and ABC over potential violation in diversity practices

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      The US’s top media regulator on Friday said it was opening an investigation into the diversity practices of Walt Disney and its ABC unit, saying they may violate equal employment opportunity regulations.Brendan Carr, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) chair, wrote to the Disney CEO, Robert Iger, in a letter dated on Thursday that the company’s diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) efforts may not have complied with FCC regulations and that changes by the company may not go far enough.“For decades, Disney focused on churning out box office and programming successes,” Carr wrote in the letter. “But then something changed. Disney has now been embroiled in rounds of controversy surrounding its DEI policies.“I want to ensure that Disney ends any and all discriminatory initiatives in substance, not just name,” Carr wrote.He has sent letters to Comcast and Verizon announcing similar investigations into diversity practices.Disney has come into conflict with Republicans in recent years. In 2023 the Florida governor, Ron DeSantis, clashed with Disney over its opposition to the state’s so-called “don’t say gay” law and rightwingers have attacked the company for being “woke” – most recently for the casting of Rachel Zegler, an American actor of Colombian descent, in the titular role of its Snow White reboot.“We are reviewing the Federal Communications Commission’s letter, and we look forward to engaging with the commission to answer its questions,” a Disney spokesperson said.Disney recently revised its executive compensation policies to remove diversity and inclusion as a performance metric, adding a new standard called “talent strategy”, aimed at upholding the company’s values.Carr said the FCC’s enforcement bureau would be engaging with Disney “to obtain an accounting of Disney and ABC’s DEI programs, policies, and practices”.Carr, who was designed chair by Donald Trump on 20 January, has been aggressively investigating media companies.In December, ABC News agreed to give $15m to Trump’s future presidential library to settle a lawsuit over comments that anchor George Stephanopoulos made on air involving the civil case brought against Trump by the writer E Jean Carroll.Days after Carr took over as chair, the FCC reinstated complaints about the 60 Minutes interview with Harris, as well as complaints about how ABC News moderated the pre-election TV debate between then president Joe Biden and Trump.It also reinstated complaints against Comcast’s NBC for allowing Harris to appear on Saturday Night Live shortly before the election.Trump has sued CBS for $20bn, claiming that 60 Minutes deceptively edited the interview in order to interfere in the November presidential election, which he won.Reuters contributed reporting More

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      US allies worldwide decry Trump’s car tariffs and threaten retaliation

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      Governments from Tokyo to Berlin and Ottawa to Paris have voiced sharp criticism of Donald Trump’s sweeping tariffs on car imports, with several of the US’s staunchest long-term allies threatening retaliatory action.Trump announced on Wednesday that he would impose a 25% tariff on cars and car parts shipped to the US from 3 April in a move experts have predicted is likely to depress production, drive up prices and fuel a global trade war.The US imported almost $475bn (£367bn) worth of cars last year, mostly from Mexico, Japan, South Korea, Canada and Germany. European carmakers alone sold more than 750,000 vehicles to American drivers.France’s president, Emmanuel Macron, said on Thursday he had told his US counterpart that tariffs were not a good idea. They “disrupt value chains, create an inflationary effect and destroy jobs. So it’s not good for the US or European economies,” he said.Paris would work with the European Commission on a response intended to get Trump to reconsider, he said. Officials in Berlin also stressed that the commission would defend free trade as the foundation of the EU’s prosperity.Germany’s chancellor, Olaf Scholz, bluntly described Trump’s decision as wrong, and said Washington appeared to have “chosen a path at whose end lie only losers, since tariffs and isolation hurt prosperity, for everyone”.France’s finance minister, Eric Lombard, called the US president’s plan “very bad news” and said the EU would be forced to raise its own tariffs. His German counterpart, Robert Habeck, promised a “firm EU response”. “We will not take this lying down,” he said.Poland’s prime minister, Donald Tusk, said Europe would approach the US with common sense but “not on our knees”. Good transatlantic relations are “a strategic matter” and must survive more than one prime minister and one president, he said.The European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, described the move as “bad for businesses, worse for consumers” because “tariffs are taxes”. She said the bloc would continue to seek negotiated solutions while protecting its economic interests.The British prime minister, Keir Starmer, said the tariffs were “very concerning” and that his government would be “pragmatic and clear-eyed” in response. The UK “does not want a trade war, but it’s important we keep all options on the table”, he said.His Canadian counterpart, Mark Carney, said on social media: “We will get through this crisis, and we will build a stronger, more resilient economy.”Carney later told a press conference that his administration would wait until next week to respond to the new US threat of tariffs, and that nothing was off the table regarding possible countermeasures.He would, he added, speak to provincial premiers and business leaders on Friday to discuss a coordinated response.“It doesn’t make sense when there’s a series of US initiatives that are going to come in relatively rapid succession to respond to each of them. We’re going to know a lot more in a week, and we will respond then,” he said.One option for Canada is to impose excise duties on exports of oil, potash and other commodities. “Nothing is off the table to defend our workers and our country,” said Carney, who added that the old economic and security relationship between Canada and the US was over.South Korea said it would put in place a full emergency response to Trump’s proposed measures by April.China’s foreign ministry said the US approach violated World Trade Organization rules and was “not conducive to solving its own problems”. Its spokesperson, Guo Jiakun, said: “No country’s development and prosperity are achieved by imposing tariffs.”The Japanese prime minister, Shigeru Ishiba, said Tokyo was putting “all options on the table”. Japan “makes the largest amount of investment to the US, so we wonder if it makes sense for [Washington] to apply uniform tariffs to all countries”, he said.Reuters and Agence-France Presse contributed to this report More

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      US wine importers and bars nervously wait for tariff decision: ‘It’s a sad situation’

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      As the threat of exorbitant US tariffs on European alcohol imports looms, a warehouse in the French port city of Le Havre awaits a delivery of more than 1,000 cases of wine from a dozen boutique wineries across the country.Under normal circumstances, Randall Bush, the founder of Loci Wine in Chicago, would have already arranged with his European partners to gather these wines in Le Havre, the last stop before they are loaded into containers and shipped across the Atlantic. But these wines won’t be arriving stateside anytime soon.After the Trump administration threatened on 13 March to impose 200% tariffs on alcoholic products from Europe, many US importers like Bush have halted all outgoing shipments from Europe.The 1,100 cases of his wine, from family-owned producers in his company’s modest European portfolio, have already been paid for. But due to the tariff threat, they will remain stranded at their respective domaines at least until 2 April when the Trump administration is expected to reveal a “reciprocal tariff number” for each of its global trading partners.The newfound uncertainty around tariffs has many restaurant owners, beverage directors, liquor distributors and wine importers on edge in recent weeks. The only certainty among the trade professionals interviewed is that a 200% tariff would be catastrophic for the wine and spirits industry globally. And while most believe the actual number will end up much lower, everyone agrees that even modest tariffs would send shock waves throughout the entire food and beverage ecosystem, weakening distribution channels and further driving up already astronomical prices.“What scares me is how these hypothetical tariffs would affect [the many] European-themed restaurants like French bistros, Italian trattorias and German beer halls,” said Richard Hanauer, wine director and partner with Lettuce Entertain You. The Chicago-based group owns, manages and licenses more than 130 restaurants and 60 brands in a dozen different states and Washington DC. Hanauer predicts that concept-driven eateries that rely on European products would have to source wine and spirits from other regions because “the consumer is not going to accept the markup”.Even though Trump has been known to walk back dubious claims about tariffs before, the wine and spirits industry is taking this recent threat very seriously. Most American importers, such as Loci’s Bush, are adhering to the US Wine Trade Alliance’s (USWTA) guidance issued in mid-March warning its members to cease wine shipments from Europe. Without guarantees that any potential tariffs would come with a notice period or exemptions for wines shipped prior to their announcement, the organization had no choice but to advise its constituents to halt all EU wine shipments.“Once the wine is on the water, we have no power,” said Bush. “We’re billed by our shippers as soon as the wine arrives.”Tariffs are import taxes incurred by the importer and paid as a percentage of the value of the freight at the point of entry upon delivery. Since shipments from Europe can often take up to six to eight weeks to arrive, firms like Loci face the predicament of not knowing how much they will owe to take delivery of their products when they reach US ports.“We’ve had many US importers tell us that even a 50% unplanned tariff could bankrupt their businesses, so we felt we had no choice,” said Benjamin Aneff, president of the USWTA, of the organization’s injunction. “It’s a sad situation. These are mostly small, family-owned businesses.”Europe’s wineries can also ill afford to be dragged into a trade war with the United States. According to the International Trade Center, the US comprises almost 20% of the EU’s total wine exports, accounting for a total of $14.1bn (€13.1bn) of exported beverage, spirit and vinegar products from the EU in 2024.Many independent importers still recall Trump levying $7.5bn of tariffs on exports from the EU during his first presidency, which included 25% duties on Scotch whiskey, Italian cheeses, certain French wines and other goods. These retaliatory measures, which took effect in October 2019, resulted from a years-long trade dispute between the US and the EU over airline subsidies.“We were hit with duties in late 2019. But we negotiated with a lot of our suppliers, so we were able to stave off any significant price increases,” said André Tamers, the founder of De Maison Selections, a fine-wine importer with a large portfolio of French and Spanish wines and spirits. But because the Covid-19 pandemic hit shortly thereafter, Tamers admitted, it was difficult to gauge the impact of the first round of Trump tariffs. The Biden administration eventually rescinded the measures in June 2021.To pre-empt any potentially disastrous news on the tariff front, many restaurants and bars are ramping up inventory purchases to the extent that their budgets allow. “We made some large commitments for rosé season,” said Grant Reynolds, co-founder of Parcelle, which has an online wine shop as well as two bars and a bricks-and-mortar retail outlet in Manhattan. “To whatever we can reasonably afford, we’ve decided to secure those commitments sooner than later so that we can better weather the storm.”The same is true for many cocktail-focused bars around the country, which are looking to shore up supplies of popular spirits that could end up a victim of tariffs, including allocated scotches and rare cognacs.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“If it becomes very apparent that these tariffs are going to go live, we could be looking at dropping close to $100,000 on inventory just to insulate ourselves because it will save us so much money over the next six months,” said Deke Dunne, beverage director of Washington DC’s award-winning cocktail bar Allegory. “It will have to be a game-time decision, though, because the last thing I want to do is to buy up a lot of inventory I don’t need.” Hanauer said that he’s seen some vendors offering wine buyers heavy discounts and incentives to stockpile cases of European products to prepare for the possibility of onerous tariffs.One bar owner feeling a little less panic compared with his industry counterparts is Fred Beebe, co-owner of Post Haste, a sustainability-minded cocktail bar in Philadelphia. Since it opened in 2023, Post Haste eschews imported spirits of any kind; the bar is stocked exclusively with US products from east of the Mississippi River. “We always thought it would be advantageous to have our producers close to us for environmental reasons and to support the local economy,” said Beebe, “but we didn’t necessarily think that it would also benefit from fluctuations in distribution or global economic policy.”Instead of serving popular European liquor brands such as Grey Goose vodka or Hendrick’s gin, the bar highlights local craft distillers such as Maggie’s Farm in Pittsburgh, which produces a domestic rum made from Louisiana sugar cane. After the recent tariff threats, Beebe says, the decision to rely on local products has turned out to be fortuitous. “I feel really bad for anyone who is running an agave-based program, a tequila or mezcal bar,” said Beebe. “They must be worried constantly about whether the price of all of their products are going to go up by 25% to 50%.”On the importing side, there is agreement that this is an inopportune moment for the wine industry to face new headwinds. Wine consumption has steadily declined in the United States in recent years as gen Z and millennial consumers are turning to cannabis, hard seltzers and spirits such as tequila, or simply embracing sobriety in greater numbers.“Unfortunately, the reality is that wine consumption was already down before this compared to what it was five years ago,” said Reynolds. “This obviously doesn’t help that. So, with more tariffs, you would start to see a greater shift of behaviors away from drinking wine.”But despite slumping sales and the impending tariff threats, niche importers like Tamers say they have little choice but to stay the course. “You leave yourself vulnerable, but if you don’t buy wine, then you don’t have any wine to sell. So, it’s a double-edged sword,” he said. “Our customers are still asking for these products, so there’s not much else we can do.”Aneff hopes that commonsense negotiations will lead to both parties divorcing alcohol tariffs from other trade disputes over aluminum, steel and digital services.“I do have some hope for a potential sectoral agreement on wine, and perhaps spirits, which would benefit domestic producers and huge numbers of small businesses on both sides of the Atlantic,” he said. “I can’t think of anything that would bring more joy to people’s glasses than ensuring free trade on wine.” More

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      Doge shutters federal workplace mediator agency after Trump order

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      The Elon Musk-run “department of government efficiency” (Doge) in effect shuttered a 79-year-old federal agency that mediates labor disputes on Wednesday – saving an estimated 0.0014% of the federal budget.The Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service (FMCS), an independent federal agency that works to prevent and resolve work stoppages and disputes in the public and private sector, has shut down most of its services and placed employees on administrative leave with firings to follow.“The administration released an executive order a week and a half ago naming FMCS as one of the agencies to be shuttered, but other than our agency denying it and making a few adjustments, we didn’t hear anything further,” said Jefferson Dedrick, a commissioner at FMCS. “Earlier today our mid-level managers informed each of the commissioners that effective at close of business, we would be put on admin leave with a RIF [reduction in force] letter to follow.”The agency provided mediation for several high-profile strikes, including the Boeing strike last fall.“Doge basically decided to eliminate all but a few people from the agency. We don’t know the final count but maybe a dozen left out of an agency that had almost 200 employees through last year,” said a FMCS employee who requested to remain anonymous for fear of retaliation. “It is shocking as the agency does not regulate and has always been non-controversial. Even Republicans have always seen the value of an agency that saves the economy far more money in reduced work stoppages in the private sector than the agency spends. It is also a blow to the use of more efficient dispute resolution by federal agencies who have used our services for non-labor disputes. That program has now been entirely abolished.”They noted the cuts were drastic to the point where the agency, in most cases, can no longer be effective and noted it will worsen and prolong labor strikes and lockouts.The FMCS was established by Congress in 1947. Its shuttering comes in the wake of Donald Trump’s executive order, signed on 14 March, to dismantle seven federal agencies, including FMCS.Dedrick added in a LinkedIn post on the dismantling of the agency: “Annually, FMCS saves the US Economy over $500 million by protecting household earnings, safeguarding company revenues and services, and ensuring the continuity of the robust commerce that promotes and underlines our national prosperity.”He noted this savings is achieved with fewer than 150 mediators around the US, accounting for less than 0.0014% of the federal budget.FMCS was contacted for comment. More

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      Trump’s shuttering of global media agency endangers reporters, staff say

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      Foreign workers at US government-backed media outlets being cut by the Trump administration say they face deportation to their home countries, where some risk imprisonment or death at the hands of authoritarian governments.Earlier this month, the Trump administration moved to defund the US Agency for Global Media (USAGM), an independent federal agency that oversees the Voice of America (VoA), the US’s largest and oldest international broadcaster, and provides grants to Radio Free Asia, Radio Free Europe and other news agencies. Staff have been placed on administrative leave and contractors have been fired. The agency had around 3,500 employees with an annual budget of $886m in 2024.“We have many coworkers in different services, several of whom came here and sought asylum visas. If their own government knew they worked for RFA [Radio Free Asia] and they went back to their own country, their lives would be at risk,” Jaewoo Park, a journalist for RFA, who was placed on administrative leave along with all of his coworkers, told the Guardian.“Authoritarian governments have praised what Trump is doing right now,” Park said. “In Burma, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, there were people who fought for freedom and democracy, and they came to work at RFA. It’s very risky for them. Their lives are in danger if Radio Free Asia doesn’t exist.”Chinese and Russian state media have praised the cuts of the news agencies, with a Russian broadcaster calling the cuts a “holiday” for Russian state media outlets.The shuttering of the agency was unexpected and has caused chaos for Park and others. “My wife is 28 weeks pregnant and we’re very concerned because I might go back to South Korea because I’m on a working visa. My wife is almost due and we just bought a home last year,” he added. “It’s very concerning and depressing.”But the impact of the decision will be felt globally, said Park. He cited Radio Free Asia’s broadcasts to North Korea which, he noted, defectors from North Korea have cited as an important source of independent news.“We know North Korea is a very oppressed country. They cannot hear anything other than the government press,” he said.Workers at Voice of America have also pointed out the risks and dangers posed to some employees on visas who may have to return to their home countries now their positions are in jeopardy.Two contributors for VoA are currently imprisoned in Myanmar and Vietnam and four contributors to Radio Free Asia are currently imprisoned in Vietnam. Russia, Belarus and Azerbaijan also reportedly have journalists affiliated with the news agencies currently imprisoned.“Dozens of VoA staffers in Washington are on J-1 visas [non-immigrant visas meant to encourage cultural exchange], and if they lose them, they may have to return to countries whose governments have a record of jailing critics,” wrote Liam Scott in the Columbia Journalism Review, a VoA journalist who was notified their contract would be terminated on 31 March. “Two Russian contractors on J-1 visas who are set to be officially terminated at the end of March are considered at significant risk of being imprisoned if they return to Russia, according to a VoA staffer with knowledge of the situation.”Stanislav Aseyev, a Ukrainian journalist, shared in a post on X that he was tortured for writing for Radio Liberty after being told it was an “enemy” of Russia.“Now, the ‘enemy of Russia’ is being destroyed by America itself, and my torture seems doubly in vain,” he wrote.A VOA employee who requested to remain anonymous for fear of retaliation, told the Guardian: “Screwing over the people who worked for them and helped them, reminds me of what happened to Afghan interpreters.” Following the US withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021, Afghan interpreters for the US military were left behind, stranded and in danger while trying to obtain special visas to escape to the US.“It would be an even bigger shame if people that sacrificed for our country were thrown under the bus. It’s a tremendous own goal in terms of US foreign policy and US national interests,” they said.Federal workers, journalists and labor unions filed a lawsuit last week against the US Agency for Global Media over the shuttering of the agency by the Trump administration, seeking immediate relief to reverse it.Donald Trump issued an executive order to defund the US Agency for Global Media, on 14 March. Kari Lake, a former TV anchor, formally joined Voice of America as special adviser in late February 2025.Lake lost the 2022 election for governor of Arizona and a 2024 US Senate race in Arizona as the Republican nominee. She claimed the 2020 presidential election was stolen from Trump and filed lawsuits claiming her 2022 election bid was also stolen from her. Those lawsuits were dismissed and her lawyers were recently ordered by a federal court to pay $122,000 in legal fees to Maricopa County for the “frivolous” lawsuits.Lake claimed in a press release that the agency was “not salvageable” and accused it of “massive national security violations, including spies and terrorist sympathizers and/or supporters infiltrating the agency”.The US state department and US Agency for Global Media did not respond to multiple requests for comment.Asked about the visa and immigration statuses for workers at the news agencies during a press briefing on 21 March, state department spokesperson Tammy Bruce said: “I have the question out to the secretary. It’s something that I’m following up with as well. He’s a busy guy.” More