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      in US Politics

      Union leaders’ exit from DNC exposes ‘mind-boggling’ tensions inside Democratic party

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      As the Democratic party fights to rebuild from a devastating election defeat, the abrupt exit of the presidents of two of the nation’s largest labor unions from its top leadership board has exposed simmering tensions over the party’s direction.Randi Weingarten and Lee Saunders quit the Democratic National Committee, saying it isn’t doing enough to “open the gates” and win back the support of working-class voters. Ken Martin, the new DNC chair, and his allies told the Guardian that the party was focused on doing exactly that.Weingarten, president of the 1.8-million-member American Federation of Teachers, resigned after Martin did not renominate her to serve on the DNC’s important rules committee. In her resignation letter, Weingarten wrote that education, healthcare and public service workers were in “an existential battle” due to Donald Trump’s attacks and that she did not “want to be the one who keeps questioning why we are not enlarging our tent”.Saunders, the long-time president of the 1.3-million-member American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, also issued a critical statement. “These are new times. They deserve new strategies,” he said. “We must evolve to meet the urgency of the moment. This is not a time to close ranks or turn inward … It is our responsibility to open the gates [and] welcome others.”View image in fullscreenSeveral DNC officials asserted that the two departures were a “tempest in a teapot”, insisting that Martin is working to have the DNC welcome more people and battle against Trump. Weingarten and Saunders evidently felt sore that their candidate for DNC chair, Ben Wikler, the head of Wisconsin’s Democratic party, lost to Martin, the officials suggested.Steve Rosenthal, former political director of the AFL-CIO, the main US labor federation, said the resignations were an inarguable blow to the DNC.“When something like this becomes public, there’s clearly a spotlight on it,” he said. “Giving the longstanding leadership role that Randi and Lee have played in the Democratic party, and at a time when the party is trying to desperately improve its image with working-class voters and remake itself in a lot of ways, this is really unacceptable.”In an interview, Weingarten said she wished the DNC was conducting an all-out nationwide mobilization to defeat the Trump/GOP budget bill, which would throw an estimated 11 million Americans off health insurance, cut food stamps to millions of families and cause the federal debt to soar by over $3tn.DNC chair Martin told the Guardian that, under his leadership, the DNC was already doing what Weingarten and Saunders were calling for. “I’ve always called myself a pro-labor progressive,” Martin said, noting that he had been a union member and labor organizer. “My family grew up on programs that would be cut if Trump’s tax scam passes. Winning back the working class and stopping Trump from harming families is exactly where our focus is.”Martin added that in his nearly five months as DNC chair, the committee has held 130 town halls and launched an “aggressive war room” to take on Trump. “My first action as DNC chair was pledging to have strong labor voices at the table,” Martin said. “Our job is to win in 2025, 2026 and beyond.”But their resignation statements signal that Weingarten and Saunders have a very different view from Martin of what the DNC is doing on his watch. Several DNC officials said the pair might not be up to date with the DNC’s activities across the 50 states.Weingarten told the Guardian that Martin and the DNC are not showing nearly enough urgency in opposing the Trump/GOP budget bill. “The number one issue in the next two weeks is: how do we help fight the GOP budget bill that faces almost two-to-one public opposition,” she said, adding that the DNC should be going all out to help House and Senate Democrats torpedo the bill.“We can be the voice and be out there with stories about how the budget bill will hurt, and the DNC is a perfect place for doing that,” Weingarten said. “You got to win hearts and minds now, not in October 2026. That’s the kind of thing that we’ve been looking for since January. We have to be a party that wins on the ground.”Artie Blanco, a union activist and DNC vice-chair, said that under Martin, the DNC had been fighting hard against the budget bill.“There are over 16,000 Democratic volunteers making phone calls across the country in targeted congressional districts about the GOP budget, and how it will be devastating to working people,” Blanco said.Weingarten voiced dismay about not being renominated for the rules committee. “It was definitely a sign that my input was not sought any more and [not] appreciated,” she said, stressing that the AFT “will continue to be a leader in electing pro-public education, pro-working family candidates” and planned to be “especially engaged” in the 2025-26 elections.Jane Kleeb, president of the Association of State Democratic Committees, said that Weingarten’s and Saunders’s “claims that Ken and the DNC are not standing up for working people and not standing on the side of unions and union members is laughable”.“Ken has been on the front line to bring unions back to our party,” added Kleeb, who is also chair of the Nebraska Democratic party. “He has appointed more union leaders than any other [DNC] chair” – and put unions at the forefront while chair of the Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor party, before he assumed the DNC’s helm, she said.Stuart Appelbaum, the DNC’s labor chair, and president of the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union, took issue with the statements Weingarten and Saunders made about Martin.“I am thrilled that Ken Martin is prioritizing the importance of having labor at the table and has ensured that there is strong labor representation in every part of the DNC,” Appelbaum said. He added that Martin “understands that working people are the backbone of the party”.Michael Podhorzer, a political strategist and former AFL-CIO political director, said the Democratic party has for decades not focused enough on working-class voters. He said Democrats would have a tough battle winning back blue-collar voters. “The experience of many American working people is they feel left off the radar,” Podhorzer said.Democrats, Podhorzer noted, have suffered the greatest loss of support in communities that were “gutted” after the 2008-09 recession; from the signing of Nafta, a trade deal with Canada and Mexico; and from normalized trade relations with China. Nafta and normalized trade with China were ratified under President Clinton, a Democrat.Arlie Russell Hochschild, a sociologist who has studied Trump’s success in wooing working-class voters, said the decline of US labor unions over the past 50 years has necessarily meant that unions have less sway in the Democratic party.Rosenthal, the former AFL-CIO official and also a former DNC deputy political director, called on the DNC and Democrats to work far more closely with unions.“Among working-class voters, support for unions is through the roof, and the Democratic party and the Republican party have no credibility with working-class voters,” he said. “They don’t trust the parties, but they trust the labor movement. It’s incumbent on the party to build bridges and put the labor movement front and center in everything it does.”“From that standpoint,” he continued, the tension that led to Weingarten and Sauders quitting “is mind-boggling”. Several labor leaders said Martin should have done more to keep prominent and powerful union leaders like Weingarten and Saunders satisfied and on the DNC, even if they backed one of his opponents for DNC chair.Responding to Weingarten and Saunders’ concerns, Martin said: “The DNC and our partners are leading the fight against Trump’s budget bill, investing unprecedented dollars into states so Democrats can win elections from the ground up, and reaching out to voters in working-class districts.”Martin told the Guardian that he’s trying hard to build bridges with the broader labor movement, and increase its role in the DNC and in the Democrats’ efforts. “Winning back the working class and stopping Trump’s budget bill isn’t a political goal, it’s personal,” he said. “Labor runs through my family’s veins.” More

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      in US Politics

      ‘I’m scared to death to leave my house’: immigrants are disappearing from the streets – can US cities survive?

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      At Hector’s Mariscos restaurant in the heavily Latino and immigrant city of Santa Ana, California, sales of Mexican seafood have slid. Seven tables would normally be full, but diners sit at only two this Tuesday afternoon.“I haven’t seen it like this since Covid,” manager Lorena Marin said in Spanish as cumbia music played on loudspeakers. A US citizen, Marin even texted customers she was friendly with, encouraging them to come in.“No, I’m staying home,” a customer texted back. “It’s really screwed up out there with all of those immigration agents.”Increasing immigrant arrests in California have begun to gut-punch the economy and wallets of immigrant families and beyond. In some cases, immigrants with legal status and even US citizens have been swept into Donald Trump’s dragnet.The 2004 fantasy film A Day Without a Mexican – chronicling what would happen to California if Mexican immigrants disappeared – is fast becoming a reality, weeks without Mexicans and many other immigrants. The implications are stark for many, both economically and personally.“We are now seeing a very significant shift toward enforcement at labor sites where people are working,’ said Andrew Selee, president of the nonpartisan Migration Policy Institute. “Not a focus on people with criminal records, but a focus on people who are deeply integrated in the American economy.”In California, immigrant workers comprise bigger shares of certain industries than they do for the nation overall. Here, the foreign-born make up 62% of agriculture labor and 42% of construction workers, according to the American Immigration Council. About 85% of sewing machine operators in garment factories are foreign-born. Fully 40% of entrepreneurs are foreign-born.Nationally, about a quarter of workers are foreign-born in agriculture and construction, according to the American Immigration Council. More than half of drywall hangers, plasterers and stucco masons are foreign-born. And in science, technology, engineering and math – the so-called Stem fields – nearly a quarter of workers are foreign-born, said the council.The current enforcement trend, Selee said, will “lead to a strategy that will have big economic implications if they continue to go after people who are active in the labor force rather than those who have criminal records”.In both California and across an ageing nation, about half of the foreign-born are naturalized US citizens – a crucial defense in immigration raids and arrests.View image in fullscreenSelee said the current strategy was launched when “the Trump administration realized they weren’t getting large numbers by following traditional approaches to pursuing people who are priority targets for deportation”.Now the threat and chilling effect from immigration raids can be felt in disparate communities from Dallas to El Paso to rural Wisconsin – among migrants and, in some cases, the employers who hire them.In the small town of Waumandee in Wisconsin, dairy farmer John Rosenow said he can’t find US citizens who can withstand the rigors of dairy work.“Fact of the matter is if you want to eat or drink milk you are going to need immigrant workers,” he said.“Yes, we want to get rid of the people who are bad actors,” Rosenow said. “But the people I know, people who are working in the dairy farms, are just hard-working people, getting things done, doing jobs Americans don’t want to do.”In California’s San Joaquin valley, rancher and melon-grower Joe Del Bosque has heard reports of US agents chasing workers in the strawberry fields south of his operation.The San Joaquin valley, known as the food basket of the world, is heavily dependent upon foreign-born workers, especially at harvest time, Del Bosque said. He currently has 100 people working for him and that number will double as the harvest picks up in the coming weeks.“They’re going to disrupt the harvest and food chain. This will hurt the American consumer,” Del Bosque said. “These people are hard workers. They come to work, especially if they have families here or in Mexico.”In a surprise pivot late last week, Trump said there would be an easing of the crackdown in agriculture and the hospitality industries. The New York Times first reported that new guidance from a senior Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) official called for a “hold on worksite enforcement investigations/operations” in the agriculture sector and restaurants and hotels. The Ice guidance, issued in an email, also said agents were not to make arrests of “noncriminal collaterals”, a key point for those who note that many detained immigrants have had no criminal record. However, the Department of Homeland Security told staff it was reversing that guidance on Monday.Some business leaders and immigrants remain scared and confused.View image in fullscreenRaids, or the threat of them, are also taking an emotional toll on families and generating protests in Chicago, Seattle, Spokane, New York, San Antonio, Dallas and elsewhere. Bigger protests are expected in days to come.In El Paso, protesters flipped the White House script that undocumented immigrants were “criminals”. They waved mostly US flags and shouted “No justice, no peace. Shame on Ice.”Among the protesters was Alejandra, a US citizen and a junior at the University of Texas at El Paso. She asked for partial anonymity for fear of reprisal against her mixed-status family.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionShe said she took to this border city’s streets to honor the sacrifice of her grandparents who migrated from Ciudad Juárez. “All it takes is for you to look at who took that first step to bring you the life you have currently,” Alejandra said.In the Dallas area, a Guatemalan worker said he had been absent from construction sites for days.“There’s too much fear, too much to risk,” said Gustavo, 34, requesting his surname be withheld because he is undocumented. “I fear tomorrow, tonight. I may be deported, and who loses? My family back in Guatemala.”Tough immigration enforcement has been the top-polling issue for Trump. But favor may be slipping. A poll released this week by Quinnipiac University showed Trump had a 43% approval rating on immigration and a 54% disapproval rating. That poll was conducted between 5 and 9 June – after several days of protests.Meantime, back in Santa Ana, a city of about 316,000 in southern California, shop owner Alexa Vargas said foot traffic had slowed around her store, Vibes Boutique, with sales plummeting about 30% in recent days.On a recent day, the shop’s jeans and glitzy T-shirts remained un-browsed. Metered parking spots on the usually busy street sat empty. A fruit and snow cone vendor whom Vargas usually frequents had been missing for days.“It shouldn’t be this dead right now,” Vargas, 26, said on a Tuesday afternoon. “People are too scared to go out. Even if you’re a citizen but you look a certain way. Some people don’t want to risk it.”Reyna, a restaurant cook, told her boss she didn’t feel safe going to work after she heard about the immigration detentions at Home Depot stores in the city.The 40-year-old, who is in the US without legal status, said she fears becoming an Ice target. Current immigration laws and policies don’t provide a way to obtain legal status even though she’s been living in the US for more than 20 years.“I need to work but, honestly, I’m scared to death to leave my house,” she said.For now her life is on hold, Reyna said.She canceled a party for her son’s high school graduation. She no longer drives her younger children to summer school. She even stopped attending behavioral therapy sessions for her seven-year-old autistic son.Reyna said she can’t sleep. She suffers headaches every day.Early on Tuesday, she said, immigration agents in an unmarked vehicle swept up her husband’s 20-year-old nephew, who is a Mexican national without legal status. The scene unreeled across from her home.Her autistic son, a US-born citizen, has begged her to allow him to play on the front yard swing set.“No, honey. We can’t go outside,” Reyna told him.“Why?” he asked.“The police are taking people away,” she explained. “They are taking away people who were not born here.”This story was co-published with Puente News Collaborative, a bilingual non-profit newsroom, convener and funder dedicated to high-quality, fact-based news and information from the US-Mexico border. More

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      in UK Politics

      Energy bills could be cut by up to 25% for thousands of UK businesses

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      Electricity costs for thousands of businesses will be cut by scrapping green levies to help them compete with foreign rivals.The plan, which could cut bills by up to 25 per cent, forms a key part of Sir Keir Starmer’s 10-year industrial strategy which he hopes will address stuttering economic growth and transform the business landscape.The prime minister said the plan marks a “turning point for Britain’s economy” by supporting key industries where there is potential for growth.Manufacturers have warned “crippling” power costs are far higher for UK businesses than competitors overseas.Sir Keir Starmer, right, and climate change and Net Zero secretary Ed Miliband, left, visited Rocester last week More

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      in US Politics

      ‘This presidency is a brand-franchise’: Trump has taken the commercialization of politics to a new level

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      “I like thinking big. I always have. To me it’s very simple: if you’re going to be thinking anyway, you might as well think big.”Those were Donald Trump’s words to writer Tony Schwartz in the Art of the Deal. In his second term, Trump has been thinking big about making money. Since his reelection campaign began, Trump is estimated to have more than doubled his net worth to $5.4bn.A sizeable chunk of that cash has come from the launch of Trump-branded products. This week the Trump Organization entered the mobile phone business with a Trump-branded service that will include a “sleek gold” phone, which costs $499, that is “made in America”. Maybe?Never to miss a patriotic marketing moment, they launched Trump Mobile at Trump Tower in New York on the 10-year anniversary of their father’s announcement at the top of a gold escalator, to the sound of Neil Young’s Rockin’ in the Free World, that he would run for president. The premium tier of service would be dubbed the 47 Plan, priced at $47.45 a month.Donald Trump Jr said the brothers had partnered with “some of the greatest people in the industry to make sure that real Americans get true value from their mobile carriers”.“Celebrity” phone launches are hardly new. The launch announcement came days after the actor-hosts of the popular SmartLess podcast – Will Arnett, Jason Bateman and Sean Hayes – announced their own cut price phone plan, and more than two years since actor Ryan Reynolds profited from his stake in Mint Mobile, sold to T-Mobile for $1.35bn.So was Trump – or the Trumps – thinking big or just following a pattern of seemingly random licensing deals that renew concerns about the president’s business enterprises? After all, if Trump is really concerned about phone prices, he could – as president – push for legislative change.“There was a lot of dialog when Trump returned to power that we would see in this term a particularly interesting residency in the White House about how much money would be made,” says marketing-PR guru Mark Borkowski, “and this is a typical Trump side-hustle playing off Maga patriotism.”The blurred lines between business and politics, impacting how candidates are portrayed, policies are shaped and voters engage with the political process – commonly referred to as the commercialization of politics – may not be Trump’s to own exclusively, but he’s taken it to a new level.“It is troubling, and more than in jest, that this is now a political economy and he’s actually saying this presidency is a brand-franchise,” says Borkowski. “There is no separation between power and profit. He’s redrawn the boundaries between commerce and the office of the president, and he’s accelerated the notion of post-ethical politics.”The gold phone and patriotically-priced phone plan – “47” referring to Trump’s current term, and “45” referring to the previous – is only the latest ask of the Maga (Make America Great Again) faithful, otherwise known as ultra-Magas, to show their commitment in dollar terms.“The Trumps’ continued business expansion often serves to reinforce Trump’s political persona rather than distract from it. For Maga supporters, his business ventures are interpreted as proof of his self-made success and outsider status – both key pillars of his political brand,” says Zak Revskyi at the New York brand management consultancy Baden Bower.“These business moves don’t just coexist with his political identity – they actively feed into it. They help sustain the image of Trump as a results-oriented executive who blends capitalism with populism,” Revskyi adds.On Thursday, Bloomberg revealed that investment bank Dominari Holdings, where Donald Jr and Eric work as advisers, helped an obscure toymaker selling Smurf-branded tumblers, koala backpacks and plush sea turtles, pivot into crypto this week, sending its shares up more than 500%.The outlet noted that there was no sign in regulatory filings that Trump family members were involved in this or previous crypto-related transactions through the bank – which is based in Trump Tower – but noted that “the gain added to the windfalls of executives orbiting the president’s family”.Aside from the Trump’s well-publicized (and profitable) adventures in crypto – his ownership stake in World Liberty Financial produced $57,355,532 in income since it was launched last year – the family brand has upped by 20 its Trump-branded real-estate projects around the globe, calculated Citizens for Ethics, including an 80-storey skyscraper in Dubai, and plans for branded hotels in Riyadh and Jeddah, and a golf course in Qatar, to an estimated value of $10bn.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionA 234-page financial disclosure form released by the Office of Government Ethics this month showed 145 pages of stock and bond investments. The disclosure showed that 2024 was a very good year for royalty payments from products featuring his name and likeness.Among them, calculated NBC News, was $3m from a Save America coffee table book; $2.5m from Trump sneakers and fragrances; $2.8m from Trump watches; $1.3m from a Trump-endorsed Bible; and just over $1m each from “45” guitars and non-fungible token (NFT) sales. Most have at least some aspect of gold-coloring, according to a review of the “Golden Age of America” Trump collection.Many of the assets are held in a revocable trust overseen by Donald Jr, including more than 100,000 shares, or 53%, of Trump Media and Technology Group, the company that owns Truth Social, valued at 5.15bn, or held in partnerships that do not require divestment under conflict of interest laws.The business of selling the family name hums along despite, or because of, the on-the-fly dramas that envelope the White House from week to week.The White House claims that the president “has been the most transparent president in history in all respects, including when it comes to his finances”, noting that Trump handed over “his multibillion-dollar empire in order to serve our country, and he has sacrificed greatly”.The Trump phone, which analysts doubt can be “made in America”, as promotional materials assert, is merely an add-on to a thriving political-business operation.Democrats have found it hard to find a footing in calling out the interplay, in part because Trump’s predecessor, Joe Biden, was similarly accused of allowing a family business of influence peddling to evolve around him and issued a pre-emptive pardon of family members before he left office.“I don’t do it for the money. I’ve got enough, much more than I’ll ever need. I do it to do it,” Trump wrote in the opening lines of in the Art of the Deal, published in 1987. “Deals are my art form. Other people paint beautifully on canvas or write wonderful poetry. I like making deals, preferably big deals. That’s how I get my kicks.”But under Trump politics and business have become melded as never before.“It’s a new hyper-reality that exists in America,” says Borkowski. “It’s about turning political fandom into money, and he’s laughing all the way to the bank. He’s doing exactly what was expected. Nobody in Trump’s heartland sees this as damaging – it’s what they expect a deal-maker to do. The absurdity of everything Trump does is the point.” More

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      in UK Politics

      Starmer warned British jobs at risk without better trade deal from Trump

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      Keir Starmer has been warned that UK jobs are at risk without a better trade deal with Donald Trump that removes tariffs from the beleaguered steel industry. President Trump and the PM finally signed off a US-UK agreement to slash trade barriers on goods when they met at the G7 in Canada on Monday.But missing from the deal was the steel industry, which still faces levies of a whopping 25 per cent on goods entering the US. Industry experts and unions have now called for these to be scrapped as soon as possible, amid warnings they are a threat to jobs and livelihoods. But there are fears negotiations could drag on into the autumn after the transport secretary said work to get tariffs removed will continue in the coming “days, weeks and months”. Alasdair McDiarmid, assistant general secretary of the Community union, said it was “absolutely vital” to secure a deal on steel as quickly as possible.“Our steel producers and their US customers need an end to the current state of uncertainty to allow normal business to resume,” he said.“Crucially, we must see a full exemption for all UK steel exports to the US – without that guarantee some of our leading steel businesses could be left behind, with a threat to jobs and livelihoods.”Gareth Stace, Director-General, UK Steel said the sector should also benefit “imminently… from a tariff rate cut similar to that which the automotive and aerospace industries will enjoy in seven days.” The government said the two leaders had pledged to “make progress towards 0% tariffs on core steel products”, but the Chinese ownership of British Steel could be a sticking point, as an executive order signed by Mr Trump suggests the US wants assurances that the metal originates in the UK.President Trump left the summit earlier than expectedAfter signing it, the US President was asked whether steel tariffs would be eliminated, to which he replied: “We’re gonna let you have that information in a little while.”In April, parliament gave the government emergency powers to take control of British Steel and continue production after Chinese owners Jingye proposed shutting the Scunthorpe site’s two blast furnaces and other key steelmaking operations.But its future is still uncertain.The uncertainty comes as a £500 million five-year deal has been struck between Network Rail and British Steel, which Ms Alexander said was a “vote of confidence”.Workers at the British Steel site in Scunthorpe will make rail tracks (Danny Lawson/PA)British Steel is to supply 337,000 tonnes of rail track, with a further 80-90,000 tonnes to be provided by other European manufacturers.The Network Rail contract will start on July 1 and is set to provide the company with 80 per cent of its rail needs.Jingye, which bought British Steel in 2020, launched a consultation in March which it said would affect between 2,000 and 2,700 jobs, despite months of negotiations and a £500 million co-investment offer from the Government.The Scunthorpe plant has been producing steel for Britain’s railways since 1865.The Network Rail agreement is the first major public procurement since the Government’s emergency legislation was passed.Network Rail’s group director for railway business services Clive Berrington said: “We are committed to buying British where it makes economic sense to do so and British Steel remain extremely competitive in the provision of rail and will remain our main supplier in the years ahead.”Charlotte Brumpton-Childs, national officer at the GMB union, said it was a “crucial first step in securing the future of our steel industry” and urged ministers to make sure British Steel has a “constant flow of orders” from other infrastructure projects.No 10 said it wanted to implement a further deal to remove tariffs on steel “as soon as possible”. More

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      in US Politics

      ‘I have never seen such open corruption’: Trump’s crypto deals and loosening of rules shock observers

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      Cryptocurrency multibillionaire Justin Sun could barely contain his glee.Last month, Sun publicly flaunted a $100,000 Donald Trump-branded watch that he was awarded at a private dinner at Trump’s Virginia golf club. Sun had earned the recognition for buying $20m of the crypto memecoin $Trump, ranking him first among 220 purchasers of the token who received dinner invitations.Trump’s much-hyped 22 May dinner and a White House tour the next day for 25 leading memecoin buyers were devised to spur sales of $Trump and wound up raking in about $148m, much of it courtesy of anonymous and foreign buyers, for Trump and his partners.Memecoins are crypto tokens that are often based on online jokes but have no inherent value. They often prove risky investments as their prices can fluctuate wildly. The $Trump memecoin was launched days before Trump’s presidential inauguration, spurring a surge of buyers and yielding tens of millions of dollars for Trump and some partners.Trump’s private events on 22 May to reward the top purchasers of $Trump have sparked strong criticism of the president from ethics watchdogs, ex-prosecutors and scholars for exploiting his office for personal gain in unprecedented ways. But they fit in a broader pattern of how Trump has exploited the power and lure of his office to enrich himself and some top allies via cryptocurrencies.“Self-enrichment is exactly what the founders feared most in a leader – that’s why they put two separate prohibitions on self-benefit into the constitution,” said former federal prosecutor Paul Rosenzweig. “Trump’s profiting from his presidential memecoin is a textbook example of what the framers wanted to avoid.”Scholars, too, offer a harsh analysis of Trump’s crypto dealings.“I have never seen such open corruption in any modern government anywhere,” said Steven Levitsky, a professor of government at Harvard University and an expert on authoritarian regimes who co-authored the book How Democracies Die.Such ethical and legal qualms don’t seem to have fazed Trump or Sun. The pair forged their ties well before the dinner as Sun invested $75m in another Trump crypto enterprise, World Liberty Financial (WLF), that Trump and his two older sons launched last fall and in which they boast a 60% stake.The Chinese-born Sun’s political and financial fortunes, as well as those of other crypto tycoons, have improved markedly since Trump took office and moved fast to loosen regulations of cryptocurrency ventures at the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), the justice department and other agencies to upend Joe Biden’s policies.As the SEC has eased regulations and paused or ended 12 cases involving cryptocurrency fraud, three Sun crypto companies that were charged with fraud by an SEC lawsuit in 2023 had their cases paused in February by the agency, which cited the “public interest” and reportedly has held settlement talks.Trump’s and Sun’s mutually beneficial crypto dealings symbolize how the US president has boosted his paper wealth by an estimated billions of dollars since he returned to office, and worked diligently to slash regulations fulfilling his pledges to make the US the “crypto capital of the planet” and end the “war on crypto”.After the 22 May dinner, Sun posted: “Thank you @POTUS for your unwavering support of our industry!”Although Trump’s crypto ventures are less than a year old, the State Democracy Defenders Fund watchdog group has estimated that as of mid-March they are worth about $2.9bn.In late March, Reuters revealed that WLF had raised more than $500m in recent months and that the Trump family receives about 75% of crypto token sales.Trump’s pursuit of crypto riches and deregulation represents a big shift from his comments to Fox News in 2021, when he said that bitcoin, a very popular crypto currency, “seems like a scam”.View image in fullscreenIn July 2019, Trump posted that “Unregulated Crypto Assets can facilitate unlawful behavior, including drug trade”, and noted that their value was “highly volatile and based on thin air”.Now, Trump’s new pro-crypto policies have benefited big campaign donors who lead crypto firms as well as Elon Musk, the world’s richest person, who spent almost $300m to help elect Trump, and who boasts sizable crypto investments in bitcoin through his electric car firm Tesla and his other ventures. Though Trump and Musk have since fallen out, the mogul’s crypto fortunes seem to have improved due to the president’s deregulatory agenda.Trump’s special envoy to the Middle East, Steve Witkoff, is a real estate billionaire who helped found WLF, in which he has a stake; Trump’s two oldest sons, Eric and Don Jr, and Witkoff’s son Zach have played key roles promoting WLF in the Middle East and other places.Trump’s use of his Oval Office perch to increase his wealth through his burgeoning crypto businesses while his administration rapidly eases regulations is unprecedented and smacks of corruption, say scholars, many congressional Democrats and some Republicans.“To me, Trump’s crypto dealings seem pretty explicit,” Julian Zelizer, a Princeton University professor who focuses on political history, told the Guardian. “Policy decisions are being made regarding parts of the financial industry that are being done not to benefit the nation, but his own financial interests … It’s hard to imagine what he’s doing benefits the nation.”Rosenzweig stressed that “not only do Trump’s extravagant crypto ventures benefit him personally as his administration slashes crypto regulations and takes pro-crypto steps at the SEC; they also benefit his tech bro backers who will take full advantage of the end of regulatory enforcement”.In Congress, leading Democrats, including Richard Blumenthal, a senator from Connecticut, and Jamie Raskin, a representative from Maryland, in May announced separate inquiries by key panels in which they are ranking members into Trump’s crypto dealings, and attacked Trump for using his office to enrich himself via his crypto operations.“With his pay-for-access dinner, Trump put presidential access and influence on the auction block,” Blumenthal told the Guardian. “The scope and scale of Trump’s corruption is staggering – I’ll continue to demand answers.”Last month, too, the Democratic senator Jeff Merkley, from Oregon, and the Senate minority leader, Chuck Schumer, introduced the “end crypto corruption” bill, which 22 other Democrats have endorsed.“Trump’s crypto schemes are the Mount Everest of corruption,” Merkley told the Guardian. “We must ban Trump-style crypto corruption so all elected federal officials – including the president, vice-president and members of Congress – cannot profit from shady crypto practices,” which his bill would curtail.Some former congressional Republicans are also incensed by Trump’s blatant use of his presidency to peddle $Trump. “Nobody should be allowed to use their public positions while in office to enrich themselves,” said ex-Republican congressman Charlie Dent of Pennsylvania, who once chaired the House ethics panel. “A member of Congress would not be permitted to engage in the kind of memecoin activities which the president has been doing.”Trump and his family have dismissed critics concerns about the 22 May events and his other crypto ventures.Before the 22 May dinner, Trump’s press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, told reporters that the president would attend his crypto gala in his “personal time” and it was not a White House event, but declined to release names of the many anonymous and foreign attendees.To allay criticism, the Trump Organization said in January that Trump’s business interests, including his assets and investments, would be placed in a trust his children would manage and that the president wouldn’t be involved in decision-making or daily operations. Trump’s family also hired a lawyer as an ethics adviser.But those commitments have been dwarfed by Trump’s public embrace of his crypto ventures and strong deregulatory agenda. In March, for instance, Trump hosted the first-ever “crypto summit” at the White House, which drew a couple dozen industry bigwigs who heard Trump promise to end Biden’s “war on crypto”.Trump’s crypto critics worry that the president’s strong push for less industry regulation may create big problems: the crypto industry has been battered by some major scandals including ones involving North Korean hackers and has been plagued by concerns about industry’s lack of transparency and risks.For instance, a report last December by leading research firm Chainalysis found that North Korean hackers had stolen $1.34bn of cryptocurrency in 2024, a record total and double what they stole the year before.The report concluded that US and foreign analysts believe the stolen funds were diverted in North Korea to “finance its weapons of mass destruction and ballistic missile programs”.Other crypto fraud schemes in the US have spurred loud alarms.In an annual report last September, the FBI revealed that fraud related to crypto businesses soared in 2023 with Americans suffering $5.6bn in losses, a 45% jump from the previous year.Sam Bankman-Fried, who founded the now bankrupt FTX crypto exchange, was sentenced to 25 years in prison in March 2024 by a New York judge for bilking customers out of $8bn.Nonetheless, a justice department memo in April announced it was closing a national cryptocurrency enforcement team that was established in 2022, which had brought major crypto cases against North Korean hackers and other crypto criminals.The memo stressed that the justice department was not a “digital assets regulator” and tried to tar the Biden administration for a “reckless strategy of regulation by prosecution”. The memo stated that a pro-crypto Trump executive order in January spurred the justice department’s policy shift.Ex-prosecutors and ethics watchdogs worry increasingly that crypto scandals and conflicts of interest will worsen as the Trump administration moves fast to ease crypto oversight at the justice department, the SEC and other agencies.Some of WLF’s high-profile crypto deals have involved overseas crypto firms which have had recent regulatory and legal problems in the US, fueling new concerns, watchdogs and ex-prosecutors say.View image in fullscreenOne lucrative deal raised eyebrows when WLF was tapped to play a central role in a $2bn investment by Abu Dhabi financial fund MGX that is backed by the United Arab Emirates in the world’s largest crypto exchange, Binance.As part of the deal, the Abu Dhabi fund bought $2bn of a WLF stablecoin, dubbed USD1, to invest in Binance. Stablecoins are a popular type of cryptocurrency that are often pegged to the dollar.The WLF deal comes after Binance in 2023 pleaded guilty to violating US money-laundering laws and other violations and the justice department fined it a whopping $4bn.Furthermore, Binance’s ex-CEO and founder, Changpeng Zhao, pleaded guilty in the US to violating the Bank Secrecy Act and failing to maintain an effective anti-money-laundering program.Zhao, who still owns 90% of Binance, served a four-month jail term last year.WLF’s $2bn deal was announced at an Abu Dhabi crypto conference on 1 May that drew Eric Trump two weeks before Trump’s visit to the UAE capital, sparking concerns of foreign influence and ethics issues.Increasing WLF’s ties further with Binance, the crypto exchange announced on 22 May that it had begun listing the stablecoin for trading purposes. Binance got some good news at the end of May, too, when the SEC announced the dismissal of a civil lawsuit it filed in 2023 against the exchange for misleading investors about surveillance controls and trading irregularities.Paul Pelletier, a former acting chief of the justice department’s fraud section, noted that SEC moves back in February “to emasculate its crypto enforcement efforts sent crypto fraudsters a welcome mat of impunity”.He added: “The recent dismissal of the SEC’s lawsuit against Binance for mishandling customer funds, days after it began listing the Trump family’s cryptocurrency on its exchange, seemed to be the natural consequence of such enforcement laxity. Victims be damned.”Other agency deregulatory moves that favor crypto interests can boost Trump’s own enterprises and his allies, but pose potential risks for ordinary investors, say legal scholars.Columbia law professor Richard Briffault noted that as part of the Trump administration’s wide-ranging and risky crypto deregulatory agenda which can benefit Trump’s own crypto ventures, the Department of Labor in late May nixed a Biden-era “extreme care” warning about 401K plans investing in crypto.“[The labor department] has rescinded the red light from the Biden years for 401K retirement plans, which is another sign of the Trump administration’s embrace of crypto,” Briffault said.Briffault, an expert on government ethics, has told the Guardian more broadly that Trump’s crypto ventures and his 22 May memecoin bash are “unprecedented”.“I don’t think there’s been anything like this in American history,” he said. “Trump is marketing access to himself as a way to profit his memecoin. People are paying to meet Trump and he’s the regulator-in-chief. It’s doubly corrupt.”In late May, in a new crypto business twist, the Trump Media and Technology Group, the parent of Truth Social, said it had sealed a deal to raise $2.5bn to be used to buy bitcoin, creating a reserve of the cryptocurrency.Meanwhile, Trump’s stablecoin fortunes and those of many industry allies could get boosts soon from a Senate stablecoin bill, dubbed the “genius act”, that’s poised to pass the Senate on Tuesday but which critics have said loosens regulatory controls in dangerous ways unless amended with consumer protections and other safeguards.Senators Merkley and Elizabeth Warren, of Massachusetts, led unsuccessful efforts to amend the bill to thwart potential criminal abuses, protect consumers and prevent Trump from using his office to profit his crypto businesses.“The ‘genius act’ fails to prevent sanctions evasion and other illicit activity and lets big tech giants like Elon Musk’s X issue their own private money – all without the guardrails needed to keep Americans safe from scams, junk fees or another financial crash,” Warren told the Guardian.“Donald Trump has turned the presidency into a crypto cash machine,” Warren said. The Genius act, Warren stressed, should have “prohibited the President AND his family from profiting from any stablecoin project.”More broadly, Kedric Payne, the general counsel and ethics director at the Campaign Legal Center, said: “President Trump’s financial stakes in the crypto industry at the same time that he is determining how the government will regulate the industry is unprecedented in modern history. This is precisely the type of conflict of interest that ethics laws and norms are designed to stop.” More

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      Trump’s ‘revenge tax’ could threaten foreign investment into US, analysts say

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      Foreign investment into the US could be threatened by Donald Trump’s new “revenge” taxes, analysts have warned.A provision within the president’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act will allow the US to apply higher taxes on foreign individuals, businesses and investors connected to jurisdictions that impose “unfair foreign taxes” on US individuals and companies.Companies listed on the London Stock Exchange could choose to avoid the measure by redomiciling in New York.Section 899, as it is called, classes digital service taxes and “diverted profits taxes” as unfair, along with any taxes that target US entities. It would allow US authorities to impose an additional tax starting at 5% and increasing by five percentage points annually, up to 20%.Max Yoeli, a senior research fellow in the US and the Americas programme at Chatham House, says section 899 “threatens to further alienate foreign investors”.It could chill investment into the US by calling into question its “fundamental openness”, he added.The Italian bank UniCredit agrees that section 899 could further damage foreign investor sentiment towards US dollar-denominated assets. It could backfire on the US, it says, given the large amount of domestic assets held by foreigners.“The list of countries that would fall into this category is long and encompasses most European countries, including Italy and Germany,” UniCredit told clients, saying that foreign investors had more than doubled their holdings of US assets over the past decade.“Not only would this additional tax serve to finance corporate tax reductions, but it would also likely be used as a negotiating tool for the US in trade deals, especially as Republicans seem willing to withdraw from the global minimum tax framework.”View image in fullscreenUniCredit also fears the dollar’s safe haven status could be undermined if there are fresh tax disputes between the US and other countries.The One Big Beautiful Bill Act was passed by the US House of Representatives last month. The Senate is yet to approve the bill, with the White House setting a deadline of 4 July.George Saravelos, the global head of FX research at Deutsche Bank, warned last month that section 899 could allow the US administration to transform its trade war into a capital war by “explicitly using taxation on foreign holdings of US assets as leverage to further US economic goals”.UK companies could certainly fall foul of section 899, as Britain operates a digital services tax aimed at tech multinationals, and a diverted profits tax designed to clamp down on tax avoidance by multinationals.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionGoldman Sachs has calculated that UK corporates are “particularly exposed” to section 899, as roughly 30% of the revenues of companies listed on the FTSE 100 are generated in the US.However, as companies that are majority-owned by US shareholders are exempt, City bosses may consider moving their stock market listing to New York, to dodge section 899.“This ownership dynamic not only mitigates tax risk but also reinforces the strategic case for relisting in the US, where investor bases are deeper and more aligned with US revenue exposure,” the Goldman Sachs analysts said.According to Goldman, the large UK companies with the most significant exposure to the US, and who are not majority-owned by US investors, are the media group Pearson, the business services group Experian, the pest control business Rentokil and the pharmaceuticals manufacturer Hikma.Ashtead Group, Compass and Melrose also generate a large proportion of their sales stateside, but as they have majority US ownership they should be exempt from section 899.French companies could also be at risk, as Paris operates a digital services tax on the revenues that large tech companies generate in France. More

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      ‘Stay below the radar’: corporate America goes quiet after Trump’s return

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      From vast protests and all-caps social media posts to acrimonious legislative hearings and pugnacious White House statements, Washington has perhaps never been noisier. But since Donald Trump’s return to office, one corner of civil society has been almost eerily quiet.Those leading corporate America rapidly turned down the volume after the president’s re-election. Gone are the days of political and social interventions, highly publicized diversity initiatives and donations to important causes.For months, some of the most powerful firms in the world have nervously navigated a dangerous US political landscape, desperate to avoid the wrath of an administration as volatile as it is vocal.“CEOs like two things. They like consistency and predictability,” said Bill George, former chairman and CEO of Medtronic and serial board director. “They like to know where things are going. No one can figure out where this administration’s really going, because everything is transactional.”View image in fullscreen“Stay below the radar screen,” George has been advising senior executives across the US. “Do not get in a fight with this president.”Industry leaders from David Solomon of Goldman Sachs to Dara Khosrowshahi of Uber extoled the benefits of “Trump accounts” for babies this week. It was the latest example of knee-flexing that began on the patio of Mar-a-Lago in the aftermath of Trump’s victory last November.The genuflections have been backed by big money, with millions of dollars thrown into the president’s inaugural fund by companies and executives. That started to look like chump change before long. Amazon reportedly paid $40m for a documentary about Melania Trump. Apple announced plans to invest $500bn in the US.But those moves do not appear to have bought much favor. The White House accused Amazon of being “hostile and political” following a report (upon which the company later poured cold water) that it would start disclosing the impact of Trump’s tariffs on prices. And the president threatened Apple with vast tariffs.No CEO seemed closer to Trump than Elon Musk, the billionaire industrialist behind Tesla and SpaceX, who gave almost $300m to Republican campaigns last year, and worked in the administration for months. Their explosive fallout, days after Musk’s exit, prompted the president to threaten the cancellation of federal contracts and tax subsidies for Musk’s companies.View image in fullscreenThe pair’s rupture underlined why many executives are struggling to trust the president, according to Paul Argenti, professor of corporate communication at the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth. “The mercurial nature of this guy kind of just seeps in, and people start to realize they’re dealing with something that’s a bit more difficult.”His advice? “Proceed with extreme caution.”“Loyalty only goes one way with Trump,” said Dan Schwerin, co-founder of Evergreen Strategy Group, and former speechwriter for Hillary Clinton, who has previously worked with firms including Levi Strauss and Patagonia. “This is like doing business with the mafia: you’re not going to win, and you’re not going to be safe.”The standard playbook is clear: “You make a big splashy announcement: the details don’t matter, you don’t have to follow through, but you placate the White House,” said Schwerin. “That maybe buys you a little time and a little goodwill.“But history suggests that Trump will do whatever is best for Trump, and he will turn on you in an instant, if it’s better for him. And that is true for his friends, so it will certainly be true for a company that he has no loyalty to.”Extreme caution has become the name of the game – anything to avoid your company getting drawn into the crosshairs of this administration. But companies can’t just focus on the president: they have shareholders, customers and employees to answer to.View image in fullscreen“You can’t base everything on getting through the next four years,” said George. “Yeah, it’s going to be chaotic. Yes, it’s going to be challenging. But you better hold firm to your purpose and your values.”He pointed to retailer Target, where he served on the board for 12 years. “They were very, very big on differentiating themselves from Walmart, using diversity as the criteria – and particularly being, they called themselves, the most gay-friendly company in town.“And then [Target CEO] Brian Cornell, six days after the inauguration, abandoned all that,” said George. The chain faced a backlash – and boycotts – for abruptly announcing the rollback of diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives. Breaking his silence in an email to employees three months later, Cornell claimed: “We are still the Target you know and believe in.”Contrast this with Costco, another retailer, which in January faced a shareholder proposal against DEI efforts from a conservative thinktank. The firm’s board robustly defended its “commitment to an enterprise rooted in respect and inclusion” before the proposal was put to its investors for a vote.“They got a 98% vote to stay the course, to stay true to what they were,” said George. “And their customer base is very conservative. This is not like they have some liberal customer base.”Argenti believes the period of strategic silence by many companies, and knee-flexing to the White House, might be coming to a close following Musk’s messy exit. “We’re at an inflection point,” he said. “There’s going to period where people realize you’re damned if you do and damned if you don’t.”CEOs of companies counting the cost of Trump’s policies are “not going to suffer in silence”, he said. “You can’t win. It’s not like you can be secure in knowing if you follow this strategy, he’ll leave you alone.”View image in fullscreen“We are starting to see the pendulum swing back,” according to Schwerin, who claimed the administration’s erratic execution of tariffs had “opened some people’s eyes” that its policies were bad for business.“I think it’s crucial that we start to see a little more pushback. Better to have a backbone than to just bend the knee.”On controversial issues at the heart of political discourse, however, George does not expect much of a shift from CEOs. “It is radio silence, and I think you’ll see that continuing. There’s not much to be gained from speaking out today.”“Stick to your lane,” he has been counseling executives. “If you’re a banker, you can talk about the economy. If you’re an oil expert … talk to the energy industry. But you can’t speak ex-cathedra to everyone else.”“Only a handful” of business figures are deemed able to stand up and make bold public statements on any issue, according to George, who points to Jamie Dimon, the veteran JPMorgan Chase boss, and Warren Buffett, the longtime head of Berkshire Hathaway.“There are certain people who are really hard to take on. Jamie’s one,” he said. “If you were president of the United States, would you take on Warren Buffett?” More