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      in US Politics

      John Oliver on Trump’s businesses: ‘Always operating at maximum greed’

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      On the final episode of Last Week Tonight before the 2024 election, John Oliver provided one final reason not to vote for Donald Trump: his many dubious businesses, which could guide his actions if elected president again. “We’ve talked all year about the many good reasons not to vote for him: his mass deportation plans, his shaping of the courts, Project 2025, everything he said or did before his presidency, everything he said or did during his presidency, everything he said or did after his presidency and the fact that it should be unconstitutional to have a vice-president named JD,” said Oliver.But when it comes to making money as a former president, “Trump is in a category all his own”, he added.Since leaving office, Trump’s hotels have announced deals in Saudi Arabia, Dubai and Vietnam. He’s hawked official Trump coins, a Trump-branded Bible, the “never surrender” high-top sneakers and “the ugliest watch I have ever seen in my life”, said Oliver. “It makes your wrist look like it’s having a midlife crisis. It looks like it was made by melting down King Charles.“The fact Trump is willing to slap his name on random products is nothing new. It’s always been part of his MO,” he continued. “But the scope of his business ventures has actually escalated sharply,” which makes sense – since leaving office, Trump has racked up millions in legal expenses and has multiple judgments worth hundreds of millions against him. “Does nearly half a billion in penalties hanging over his head make the greediest man to ever live even greedier?” Oliver wondered. “Maybe, maybe not. After all, Trump is always operating at maximum greed, the same way the ocean is always operating at maximum wet.“But it does mean that he is a little more desperate,” Oliver continued, because if Trump’s appeals fail and he doesn’t come up with the money, courts could order his assets – including his beloved Mar-a-Lago resort – seized and sold. The incentive is to make more money than even, and if he wins the election, “he’s got some troubling new ways to do that”, said Oliver.Oliver recapped the guardrails during Trump’s first term which, unfortunately, weren’t so much legal guardrails as “norms that could be ignored”. Trump wasn’t required to release his tax returns or put his assets in a blind trust, so he didn’t. “If Trump is not required to do something, he’s not doing it,” Oliver noted. “It’s why he doesn’t say he lost the last election, or hug his children, or bother to learn the fucking dance moves to YMCA – for the love of God, move your arms above your shoulders, you human pot roast.”Trump instead put his assets into a revocable trust that he could access any time, run by his sons Eric and Don Jr as well as the company CFO, Allen Weisselberg, who has gone to jail twice for lying under oath and dodging taxes.Trump also blew past whatever laws did exist over presidential finances. The emoluments clause of the US constitution forbids the president from accepting money or gifts of any kind from foreign governments unless he obtains consent of Congress to do so, but his businesses made $7.8m from 20 foreign governments during his time in office. The top spenders were China, Saudi Arabia and Qatar.“In any other universe, ‘president accepts money from foreign governments’ would be immediately disqualifying,” said Oliver. “Unfortunately, we live in this universe, where a candidate for president has been criminally indicted four times and convicted of 34 felony counts thus far, his running mate sees women as walking incubators and Reba McEntire still hasn’t done Hot Ones. This is not the ideal timeline!”Trump’s financial violations during his presidency were the subject of several lawsuits, but he left office before they were settled, leading the supreme court to dismiss the matter as moot in January 2021. “Basically, he ran out the clock,” said Oliver. “So there is no evidence to suggest that Trump won’t carry on his personal enrichment during a second term.”And he has more avenues to do so, if elected again. Since leaving office, Trump launched Trump Media & Technology Group, whose flagship product is Truth Social, or as Oliver called it, “the Maga version of Twitter, a phrase that is now totally redundant”. The company is now Trump’s highest-valued financial holding by far, though that does not reflect the lackluster performance of Truth Social, which is the 1,174th most popular website in the US. But because presidents are not bound by federal conflict of interest law, Trump could use the office of the president to artificially boost the stock to his personal enrichment. American companies seeking to curry favor could buy ads on the platform and foreign governments looking to do the same could buy shares of the company.Public companies are still subject to some regulation; his ventures into crypto, on the other hand, are not. In the past two years, Trump has launched his own branded NFTs (non-fungible tokens), which have made him at least $7.2m off what Oliver declared “worthless pieces of shit”.The Trump family has also launched a vague crypto-focused company called World Liberty Financial with Trump as its “chief crypto advocate”. The company “intends to build a platform that will allow users to trade, borrow and lend cryptocurrencies”, according to its “Gold Paper”.If Trump wins, it’s expected that he will directly influence regulations – or lack thereof – of crypto companies, which one expert described as “conflict of interest 101”. “This is obviously extremely dangerous, but especially in a place that’s so new,” said Oliver. With crypto, Oliver summarized, Trump would not only be exploiting loopholes, but creating the loopholes in real time.“It was clear before Trump was elected that he’d use the presidency to enrich himself,” Oliver noted. “But in a second term, the landscape is very different. We’re no longer talking about a tacky Florida country club that CEOs or foreign officials can visit for special access to the president. It’s two new companies in branches of technology that we’re still trying to figure out how to regulate, that could expose him to new levels of risk and provide avenues for people to funnel money to him and influence him.“None of this is the biggest reason not to vote for him,” he concluded. “But it’s another good one to put alongside the many, many others.” More

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      in US Politics

      If the US is heading for a soft landing, why do people feel so hard up?

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      The last few months have been filled with great news, according to US economists. Inflation is a hair’s breadth from pre-pandemic levels, unemployment is close to a 50-year low. The stock market keeps hitting record highs. The Federal Reserve cut interest rates last month, the first time since 2020. Some economists have gone so far as to say that the economy we’re living in is one of the best seen in decades.And yet, as the US heads to the polls, many Americans believe the economy stinks. It’s a disconnect that could ultimately decide who takes the White House.Paul Spehar, 62, a maintenance technician based in Daytona Beach, Florida, has seen reports that the economy is doing well but has only seen his savings chip away. His car insurance tripled over the last three years, and he had to take on $2,000 in debt to pay for the copay of a recent surgery. When Spehar retires, he will have to rely solely on Social Security.“The system doesn’t work for people like me,” Spehar said.It’s a common sentiment. In a Harris Poll conducted exclusively for the Guardian in September, nearly 50% of Americans believed that the country is experiencing a recession. Over 60% believed that inflation is increasing, and 50% believed that unemployment is increasing too. Even those who may know what the economists are saying don’t feel great: 73% said it’s hard to feel good about any positive economic news when they feel financially squeezed each month.As election day draws closer, and voters consistently say that the economy is their number one issue, the stakes of understanding why voters feel so blue has never been higher. So why do economists and everyday Americans seem to live in two different realities? The answer may come down to how they view inflation.For economists, inflation is a “nominal thing”, said Stefanie Stantcheva, an economist at Harvard. In other words, for economists, inflation is a measure – an important measure, especially for the Federal Reserve, which is tasked with adjusting monetary to control inflation. But for everyday Americans, inflation is a lived experience.“[Lived experiences] teach us a lot, and they show us that people are suffering a lot from inflation, perhaps more than the baseline numbers say,” Stantcheva said. “I think it’s very important to not just look at that number and say ‘Oh, but this is what CPI [the consumer price index, a broad measure of inflation] says.’… People have a different experience from that, and those experiences should be taken seriously.”That “nominal” number elicits feelings of anger, fear, anxiety and stress – along with a sense of inequality and injustice, when people are asked open-ended questions about how inflation makes them feel, said Stantcheva.People “think that wages are not keeping pace with prices at all, and so their standards of living are eroding,” Stantcheva said. “Inflation affects us as consumers, as workers, as asset holders, and also emotionally. And we see that lots of people, especially lower-income ones.”Inflation peaked in the summer of 2022 at 9.1% – the highest it had been since the early ’80s. It would take over two years for inflation to get back to levels under 3%. The Federal Reserve started ratcheting up interest rates, making the cost of borrowing money more expensive, to tackle rising prices. It has worked, but for many, the economic data and the reality of lived experiences have diverged.For economists, it seems likely that the Federal Reserve pulled off what they call a “soft-landing” – a rare feat where inflation goes down, but the unemployment rate remains relatively low. The opposite, a “hard-landing” – which many economists had forecast – would have meant that unemployment would go up as inflation goes down, triggering a recession.But for many Americans, this is anything but a soft-landing.Inflation coming down doesn’t mean prices have come down, which would be deflation, something economic theory says would actually be a bad sign for the economy. So prices have and will remain elevated. Food prices, for example, went up 25% between 2019 and 2023, according to the US Department of Agriculture.The impact of higher interest rates has also taken time to ripple through the economy, so in addition to inflation, Americans are also still getting hit with high interest rates. As prices increased, so did the cost of buying a home, getting a loan for a car and the rates on credit card bills.What economists call a soft-landing “is diametrically opposed to ordinary Americans, who see themselves in the middle of turbulence”, said John Gerzema, CEO of Harris Poll.While economists – and the Biden administration – celebrate low unemployment, it’s harder for everyday Americans to appreciate the good news even if they still have their jobs.“Unemployment is highly personal when it happens to you,” Gerzema said. But for most people, unemployment is not a big factor in their lives. “But inflation is personal and persistent. Every week it’s changing your benchmark.”MaryKate, 25, who requested she be identified by only her first name for fear of professional repercussions, said that she is still living at home with her parents because rent has been too expensive. When she graduated from college in 2021, it took her a year to find a full-time job with benefits, and saving up to move out has been hard. She recently got financing for a new car, which she uses to commute to work.“I didn’t intend to be at home for this long,” MaryKate said. “It’s hindering my personal growth.”MaryKate said she thinks about how her parents were able to move up from the lower middle-class to a middle-class during their life, and doesn’t feel like the mobility they experienced is possible for her.“At least in my family, that was kind of always the thought, that the next generation does better than the previous one,” she said. “I don’t know if that’s necessarily going to be the case for me.”It’s a sentiment that many Americans share. In the September Harris/Guardian poll, 42% of Americans said they are not financially better off today than their parents were at their age.The one thing that Donald Trump and Kamala Harris seem to agree on is that inflation has hurt Americans, and they are acting accordingly. It’s why Trump proposed ending taxes on tips at a rally in Las Vegas and Harris has shifted her emphasis away from Bidenomics – investing in infrastructure, boosting the US chip industry – to putting housing costs and crackdowns on price gouging at the center of her economic proposals.Gerzema says these kinds of policies are “personally relevant appeals” that focus on the granular “pixels” of the economy, not the overall picture. Purchasing power, personal sentiment on job security, student loans, the price of gas – are all pixels that make up the picture of a person’s individual economy.“I think the pixels just become so incredibly important because when you look at those, you really start to understand a different picture,” Gerzema said.Both presidential candidates seem to understand that much of the election hinges on these emotions. This week, voters will choose who they think has understood them best. More

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      in US Politics

      ‘No social life, no plans, no savings’: Americans aren’t reaping benefits of booming US economy

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      Experts seem to agree the US economy has been on the upswing in 2024. A wave of new jobs, robust consumer spending, lower interest rates, falling inflation, impressive levels of business investment and record Wall Street highs has made the US economy “the envy of the world”.But many Americans appear to feel very little of that.Jim White, 62, an aquaculture specialist from North Carolina, said he has “given up [on] going out”.“I’ll never own a home. A new car is unthinkable,” he said. “The economy is slowly making the rich richer. Everyone else is sinking.”White is among dozens of people from all over the US who shared with the Guardian how they feel about the economy.While some expressed general optimism about stabilizing levels of inflation and reported doing well economically, scores said inflation continued to be financially crippling, with their incomes not even remotely keeping up with soaring costs for housing, food, childcare, insurance, healthcare, fuel, subscriptions and entertainment.Few seemed impressed by months of positive headlines about slowing inflation: “It’s not as if prices have come down, they’ve just stopped rising as obscenely as before,” as one woman in her 70s from Arizona, who still works part-time, put it. “Am I supposed to be happy about that?”“It’s more manageable, but prices are still too high for our wages compared to pre-pandemic,” said a 36-year-old woman from Salt Lake City who works as a research associate.Even those who felt the economy was doing very well complained of the exorbitantly high cost of living.The economy, 40-year-old Roxanne Oesch from Missouri said, felt “remarkably strong”.“Good jobs are available, interest rates are down and will come down further, and inflation has flattened out. It seems like there is a lot of good news.”But simultaneously, she added, “most people still cannot enjoy the same level of financial security they had pre-pandemic”.Alongside various young people who expressed dismay about their economic outlook were dozens of pensioners and people surviving on social security, for whom the new lower interest rates are bad news. “Interest on savings is dropping, [which is] challenging for retirees on fixed incomes,” said retired 71-year-old Paul Ames from Bellport, New York.“The US is doing a lot better than other developed economies. Gas is still way cheaper than Europe,” said Toni, a retired woman from North Florida, who was among various respondents who felt very positive about the economy because they held stock market investments that had been making healthy gains in recent months.“Things are good. The stock market has done well this year. Inflation isn’t having much impact.”“It’s great,” said 69-year-old Timothy Crowley, from Honolulu. “Investment income rising. This is the best economy on earth.”Respondents from places including New York City, Miami and Milwaukee pointed to rising levels of homelessness in their communities and felt that the US economic trickle-down model was broken.Views on who was responsible for America’s economic shortcomings were split: while some blamed the Biden administration for triggering soaring levels of inflation and rising asset prices through unprecedented interventions to keep the economy afloat during the pandemic, others blamed the previous Trump administration and the larger structural economic system propped up by Wall Street and the Republicans.Alex, a married father of two in his mid-30s from rural North Carolina, said he retrained as a welder during the pandemic, thanks to financial government assistance, but he quickly felt exploited in his new line of work.“I welded in two factories, each making millions in profits every year, and never made it off of government assistance, including food stamps and Medicaid. I’m back in school now and succumbing to the student loan vampires, to try and make it work,” he said.Alex said he has turned his back on Republicans, partly because of his economic concerns.Recent eye-wateringly high levels of inflation “were 25-percent caused by circa 15 years of quantitative easing, and 75-percent [caused] by corporate greed. I have completely abandoned the Republican party because they just refuse to rein in these economic monsters”.White, the aquaculture specialist from North Carolina, also said that he became a swing voter because of the economy.He will “vote a straight blue ticket until they turn their backs on Trump and the religious authoritarians”, White said. “I’m retiring this year and believe Trump’s tax breaks for the rich have already endangered my social security. He’s also a threat to my healthcare.”Among the respondents who expressed high levels of hopelessness were various college-educated people with established professional careers, such as architects, lawyers, engineers and medics, who said they were worried about financial insecurity, had recently been priced out of their longstanding communities or had been unable to save for retirement.“It’s horrific,” said 34-year-old Julia, a marketing professional from Washington. “It shouldn’t cost this much for basic necessities. I can’t do anything but work and go to the gym now,” she said, a remark that was echoed by many. “No social life, no plans, no savings.”“‘The US economy’ is not a meaningful or useful concept for most Americans,” said Karena Youtz, 54, a bookkeeper from Idaho. “Inflation is horrible. Around 40% of people in Idaho were fully employed and still unable to afford the cost of living here in 2019. I have no idea what that figure is now, but it’s probably much higher.”Melissa, retired, from northern California, who is disabled, reported struggling to get by on her social security payments.“Everything is too expensive, my rent keeps rising faster than my social security benefits and food prices are too high. Medical services in my rural area are far too few and far too substandard,” Melissa said.“The economy is doing fine and dandy. It’s the citizens of this country that are suffering.” More

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      in US Politics

      Yes, Bidenomics is working here in Pennsylvania. But it might not be enough to win the White House | JoJo Burgess

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      Where I come from, “the economy” isn’t just about lines on a graph or numbers on a screen. It’s about how much money people have in their pockets and how much their groceries cost. It’s about how many shops are shuttered on their high street and whether they can afford to make the rent.In Pennsylvania, when voters go to the polls next week, the economy will be weighing very heavily on their minds. Our state will probably decide who becomes the next president of the US, and how we vote will also be a test of Joe Biden’s policies. The economy is one of the top issues for voters in our state. Many of them will be asking: am I in a better place now, compared with where I was four years ago?I come from a family of steelworkers near Pittsburgh. My father was a steelworker in the city, and so is my son. I’m also a rep for United Steelworkers, one of the largest unions in our country. As you can imagine, the most important issue in town right now is the steel deal. The Japanese steelmaker Nippon has been trying to buy US Steel for the past year, and though the company has promised to honour US Steel’s agreement with our union, we have many reasons to be doubtful.Not only is steel integral to our national security, raising questions about foreign takeovers, but there’s nothing to stop the company from cutting union jobs a few years down the line. The CEO of US Steel stands to walk away with $70m (£54m) if the deal completes. It’s the same pattern that repeats again and again: the money stays at the top, while people at the bottom are forgotten about.I’m glad that Kamala Harris has committed to blocking the sale. And I’m glad that the Biden administration has questioned the value of takeovers like these. Look at the Chips Act, or the Inflation Reduction Act: both were about spurring investment in our economy and building up productive capacity in the US.For too long, globalisation has meant a race to the bottom, with firms outsourcing labour and offshoring production to the places where it’s cheapest. Most employees have been working harder but getting paid less: from 1973 to 2013, the hourly wage for a typical worker rose just 9%, while productivity increased by 74%. No wonder so many people are exhausted and struggling to keep their heads above water.Here’s the thing: Donald Trump says he gets it, but he doesn’t. He talks about inflation killing our country under Biden, but he never says that record corporate profits are one of the drivers of inflation. He talks about the housing crisis, but then he blames the lack of affordable housing on immigrants. He is a master at spinning simple answers to complex problems, but he has no real solutions.I think most people are smarter than Trump gives them credit for. Most people have a sense that the reason daily life has become so expensive isn’t just because of the war in Ukraine or supply-chain bottlenecks. It’s because corporations got greedy, and started using inflation as cover to raise prices. If I can sell you a cup of water for $10, why would I drop the price to $7? The Democrat Pennsylvania senator Bob Casey has been campaigning explicitly on “greedflation”.It feels as though the message is cutting through, but I know plenty of steelworkers will still vote Trump, though almost all the unions have backed Harris. Where I live is rust belt territory. It’s a place that once boomed on coal, steel and cars. It’s a place that struggled to reinvent itself after the decline of the manufacturing industries, and lost a lot of jobs.View image in fullscreenSince the pandemic, we’ve been suffering. I live in Washington, a town south of Pittsburgh, where I’m also the local mayor. I’ve seen how the shift towards working from home has damaged some of our small businesses, and how our healthcare workers suffered from Covid-19.But I can also see the positives that “Bidenomics” has brought to our community, and I’m hoping these will cut through. One of the biggest complaints I hear now from residents is: “Why is there so much construction? We can’t cross the road!” Thanks to a huge boost in federal spending, with the Inflation Reduction Act earmarking billions of dollars to support infrastructure projects, there are many more cranes than there used to be.I always say, that’s infrastructure money working for us. When the Fern Hollow bridge collapsed in Pittsburgh, it was rebuilt in record time. Pennsylvania is particularly well placed to benefit from federal investment because it’s the second largest producer of energy in the US after Texas, and we need that climate spending if we’re going to transition to a clean energy economy. I’m just hoping that other voters feel the same way.

      JoJo Burgess is a steelworker in Pennsylvania and a member of the United Steelworkers union. He is also the mayor of Washington, Pennsylvania

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      in US Politics

      Opinion polls have Harris and Trump locked in a tight race. ‘Gambling polls’ say otherwise

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      Most gamblers might want to sit out the US election. It’s too close to call with Kamala Harris and Donald Trump neck and neck, according to official polls. But the former president’s campaign has latched on to signs he says prove he’s actually “leading”.In a close race, Trump and his allies claim some “gambling polls”, as he described them last week, put him significantly ahead of Harris. “Like, 65 to 35, or something like that.”The irony of touting an apparent lead in betting markets at a Believers and Ballots campaign event in Georgia aimed at Christian voters was not lost on Trump. “But nobody here gambles,” he continued. “Does anybody here gamble? No, no, no, no. Great Christians don’t gamble, do they? Oh no.”The “gambling polls” Trump cited are forecasts generated by several election betting platforms, which put his chances of regaining the White House markedly ahead of his Democratic rival’s. With many questioning the accuracy of political polling, supporters including Elon Musk, have started to claim such estimates are more accurate.As of Wednesday, Polymarket, one leading service, put Trump’s chances of winning back the presidency at about 67%, with Harris at 33%. Another, Kalshi, put Trump at 62% and Harris at 38%.And while Trump’s audience last Tuesday was not interested in gambling on the result of the presidential election, many others appear to be getting involved. High-profile legal battles, promotion by the likes of Musk and Trump, and growing media coverage, have helped propel the activity into the spotlight as the campaign gathered steam.Interest around betting on this election is “orders of magnitude larger” than previous ballots, according to Thomas Gruca, a professor of marketing at the University of Iowa, and director of Iowa Electronic Markets, an election-focused futures market first established in 1988.America’s gambling boom, led by the legalization of sports betting, “has increased the number of people who like to throw away their money on things they don’t understand”, said Gruca. “People think, ‘I picked the Raiders-Jets game, therefore, I can pick a president.’”He also pointed to opinion polling errors at previous elections, and how many polls this time around suggest the contest is extremely tight. “I haven’t looked at the polls in the last 15 minutes, so I don’t know who’s winning. In previous years there was a lot of clarity.”In the magazines and newspapers section of Apple’s iPhone store, Polymarket has reigned supreme in the top spot, leaving the New York Times, Wall Street Journal and, yes, the Guardian, in its wake. Another platform, Kalshi, has likewise surged up the store’s chart of financial apps.“I don’t think it’s a coincidence that these markets have been becoming more popular as trust in the media has been declining,” said Harry Crane, a professor of statistics at Rutgers University. “The public wants information and is looking for sources of information it can trust.”

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      Should you have turned to, say, Polymarket, on Wednesday and bet on Trump, you would receive $1 for every 67 cents you wagered if he wins the election. If you bet on Harris, on the same platform, on the same day, you would receive $1 for every 33 cents wagered if she wins.These bets are bids on political futures contracts. Buying a contract drives its price – or the perceived probability of it happening – higher.This ecosystem spans far beyond the race for the White House. Other markets on Kalshi include the margin of victory in the Senate, which state will have the closest presidential election result and what the Federal Reserve will do with interest rates two days after the election.View image in fullscreenBut how reliable are the headline figures? “I think you should take them seriously,” said Grant Ferguson, political scientist at Texas Christian University. “The people who bet on these markets largely think they know more than the average person as to how things are going.”Leading platforms put Hillary Clinton ahead on election day in 2016 (she did win the popular vote if not the presidency), and Joe Biden in the lead in 2020, “but by less than the polling, in both cases”, said Ferguson. 2024 will be the biggest test of these predictions so far.“Broadly these markets are actually quite efficient – particularly they’re quite good at things that are 50:50, 60:40,” said Eric Zitzewitz, professor of economics at Dartmouth College. “In the sort of circumstance we’re in right now … I take that pretty seriously.”Provided a market is run “efficiently, or with good rules, the prices before the event happens will reflect what the smart people think, and not just random people”, suggested Gruca.The Iowa Electronic Markets allows participants to bet up to $500 on a given contract, and PredictIt, run out of Victoria University in Wellington, New Zealand, has a $850 limit. But other platforms do not have such tight restrictions, and big bets may have moved the odds in Trump’s favor.Polymarket, which did not respond to requests for an interview, confirmed last week that one person – a French national – was behind four accounts which had placed bets on Trump worth around $28m, but insisted to the New York Times this was “based on personal views”, rather than an attempt to manipulate the market.“Without limits,” said Gruca, “you can have prices move away from what they should be.”If one person tries to tilt the odds toward their favored candidate, those betting would quickly back the other if their odds slipped too low, Ferguson suggested. “Does it probably happen? Yeah,” he said. “But I’m not real worried about it.”There is a small, but significant, difference in the question at the heart of election surveys, and election bets. While poll respondents are indicating which candidate they want to win, those gambling on the contest are saying who they think will. Veterans of the space like to say that polling participants focus on their heart, and bettors use their head.The betting markets “are asking the more relevant question”, argued Crane. “The polling information is in the markets. The people who are in the markets know what the polls are, but they have other information.”Regulators are not happy. The Commodity Futures Trading Commission, which fined Polymarket $1.4m in 2022 and ordered it to exclude US users as part of a settlement, has tried to shut down PredictIt and Kalshi.But Kalshi was recently cleared to take US bets on election outcomes, when a federal appeals court ruled that the CFTC had failed to show how the agency or public interest would be harmed by its event contracts.While the CFTC is appealing, the legal breakthrough appears to have set the stage for a further increase in bets placed on who will prevail in the presidential campaign – by both individual betters, and large institutions. Polymarket is also scrutinizing activity on its platform to ensure users are outside the US, amid reports of domestic usage.“The markets are only as smart as the people trading in them,” said Gruca. “If you are dumb as a rock and have a lot of money, you can move the markets in whatever direction you want by simply moving money.” More

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      in UK Politics

      Tax calculator: See how Rachel Reeves’ Budget will affect you

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      Your support helps us to tell the storyThis election is still a dead heat, according to most polls. In a fight with such wafer-thin margins, we need reporters on the ground talking to the people Trump and Harris are courting. Your support allows us to keep sending journalists to the story.The Independent is trusted by 27 million Americans from across the entire political spectrum every month. Unlike many other quality news outlets, we choose not to lock you out of our reporting and analysis with paywalls. But quality journalism must still be paid for.Help us keep bring these critical stories to light. Your support makes all the difference.CloseRead moreCloseRachel Reeves has unveiled huge tax hikes of £40bn in her Budget as Labour bids to fix the nation’s finances.Key policies include a hike in employers’ national insurance contributions, a rise in stamp duty for second homes and a freeze on fuel duty.Capital gains tax will also rise – to 18 per cent for the lower rate and 24 for the higher – while the chancellor also unveiled a reform of inheritance tax.After months spent warning the public of “tough choices” ahead, Ms Reeves promised to “invest, invest, invest” in order to “fix public services” and announced a £22.6bn increase in the day-to-day NHS health budget.But Tory criticisms were echoed by independent expert Paul Johnson of the Institue for Fiscal Studies, who said Ms Reeves had taken a “huge gamble”.Follow our live blog on the budget by clicking here.The Independent’s Budget calculator, created by tax advisory firm Blick Rothenberg, below will help you to determine whether you are better or worse off following Wednesday’s statement.Enter a few details such as how much you earn, whether you are single, if you are in a couple or have a family to see how your finances will be affected. More

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      in US Politics

      To defeat Trump, Harris must talk more about the economy | Robert Reich

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      I don’t know about you, but I’m feeling more anxious about the outcome of the upcoming election. I’m still nauseously optimistic, but the nausea is growing.I’m as skeptical of polls as any of you, but when all of them show the same thing – that Kamala Harris’s campaign stalled several weeks ago, yet Donald Trump’s continues to surge – it’s important to take the polls seriously.The US vice-president will give her closing message to the American people on Tuesday at a rally on the Ellipse on the Washington mall.Over the last several weeks she’s focused on a woman’s right over her body and the rights of all Americans to a democracy. Obviously, Trump threatens both.Tuesday night, though, she needs to respond forcefully to the one issue that continues to be highest on the minds of most Americans – the economy.She must tell Americans simply and clearly why they continue to have such a hard time despite all the economic indicators to the contrary. It’s because of the power of large corporations and a handful of wealthy individuals to siphon off most economic gains for themselves.Most Americans are outraged that they continue to struggle economically at the same time as billionaires are pulling in ever more wealth. Most know they’re paying too much for housing, gas, groceries and the medicines they need. They also know that a major cause is the market power of big corporations.They want someone who’ll stand up to big corporations and the politicians in Washington who serve them.They want a president who’ll be on their side. A president who will crack down on price-gouging, who will bust up the monopolies and restore competition, who will fight to cap prescription drug costs, who will get big money out of politics and stop the legalized bribery that rigs the market for the rich and who will make sure corporations pay their fair share and end tax breaks for billionaire crooks.A president who will put working families first – before big corporations and the wealthy.Harris needs to say she will be this president.Her policy proposals suggest this. She’s committed to strong antitrust enforcement – cracking down on mergers and acquisitions that give big food corporations the power to jack up food and grocery prices, prosecuting price-fixing and banning price gouging. She needs to remind voters of this.She also says she’ll raise taxes on the rich, provide $25,000 in down-payment assistance to help Americans buy their first home, restore the expanded child tax credit to $3,600 to help more than 100 million working Americans, and implement a new $6,000 tax cut to help families pay for the high costs of a child’s first year of life.All should be parts of her speech this Tuesday about why she will be the champion of working people.She wants to raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour, make stock buybacks more expensive and expand Medicare to cover home healthcare – paid for with savings from the expansion of Medicare price negotiations with drug manufacturers.She needs to frame all of this as a response to the power of big corporations and the wealthy – and say in no uncertain terms that she’s on the side of the people, not the powerful.If she fails to do this in her closing argument, Trump’s demagogic response will be the only one the public hears – that average working people are struggling because of undocumented workers and the “enemy within”, including Democrats, socialists, Marxists and the “deep state”.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionHarris should fit her message about democracy inside this economic message. If our democracy weren’t dominated by the rich and big corporations, fewer of the economy’s gains would be siphoned off to them. Average working people would have better pay, more secure jobs, and be able to afford homes, food, fuel, medicine, childcare and eldercare.A large portion of the public no longer thinks American democracy is working. According to a new New York Times/Siena College poll, only 45% believe our democracy does a good job representing ordinary people. An astounding 62% say the government is mostly working to benefit itself and elites rather than the common good.In her closing argument, Harris should commit herself to reversing this, so the government works for the common good.Harris started her campaign in July and early August by emphasizing these themes about the economy and democracy. But in more recent weeks, she’s focused on Trump’s threat to democracy. Her campaign seems to have decided that she can draw additional voters from moderate Republican suburban women upset by Trump’s role in fomenting the attack on the US Capitol.That’s why she’s been campaigning with Liz Cheney, and gathering Republican officials as supporters. And why she has chosen to give her closing message on the Ellipse – where Trump summoned his followers to march on the Capitol on 6 January 2021.But when she shifted gears to Trump’s attacks on democracy, Harris’s campaign stalled. I think that’s because Americans continue to focus on the economy and want an answer to why they continue to struggle economically.If Trump gives them an answer – although baseless and demagogic – but Harris does not, he may sail to victory on 5 November.Hence, in her closing message she must talk clearly and frankly about the misallocation of economic power in America – lodged with big corporations and the wealthy instead of average Americans – and her commitment to rectify this.

      Robert Reich, a former US secretary of labor, is a professor of public policy at the University of California, Berkeley, and the author of Saving Capitalism: For the Many, Not the Few and The Common Good. His newest book, The System: Who Rigged It, How We Fix It, is out now. He is a Guardian US columnist. His newsletter is at robertreich.substack.com More

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      ‘Zombie-like’: the US trade agreement that still haunts Democrats

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      More than 30 years have passed since President Bill Clinton persuaded Congress to ratify the North American Free Trade Agreement (Nafta) and yet the trade agreement still infuriates many voters and hangs over Kamala Harris’s – and the Democrats’ – chances in this year’s elections.Zombie-like, Nafta just keeps coming back, decades after many Democrats believe it should have died. At the Republican convention, Donald Trump attacked Nafta, calling it “the worst trade agreement ever”. In speech after speech, Nafta is a topic Trump turns to as he seeks to woo the voters in the pivotal blue-collar communities of Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin – many of whom remain angry about the job losses it caused.There were early warning signs. “A lot of people were saying Nafta was going to be a disaster economically,” said David Bonior, a former Democratic congressman from Michigan who led the congressional fight to defeat Clinton’s push for Nafta. “I could see it was going to be a disaster politically, too.”Nafta acted like a slow-motion poison for Democrats. After Congress ratified it in 1993, year by year more factories closed and more jobs disappeared as manufacturers moved operations to Mexico to take advantage of that country’s lower wages. The Economic Policy Institute, a progressive thinktank, estimates that the US lost 682,000 jobs due to Nafta, which largely eliminated tariffs between the US, Mexico and Canada.“It’s a lingering issue in Michigan,” said Ron Bieber, president of the Michigan AFL-CIO, the US’s largest federation of unions. “Everyone knows someone here in Michigan who lost their job due to Nafta. The door was cracked open to outsourcing before Nafta, but Nafta threw the door open after it was passed.”JJ Jewell, who works at a Ford axle plant in Sterling Heights, Michigan, was born two years before Nafta was ratified. The trade pact has been part of the background of his life, he says. Jewell said he often discussed trade problems with other auto workers, even when they didn’t directly discuss Nafta. “It’s an issue,” he said. “Nafta helped expedite the loss of jobs from our country to a country where wages are cheaper. I have friends, family members, neighbors who lost their jobs as a direct result of Nafta. It still affects things decades later.”While Trump talks tough on trade and protecting factory jobs, Jewell said that Trump, while president, fell badly short in his vows to bring back manufacturing jobs. “It’s empty promises,” he said.Liz Shuler, the president of the AFL-CIO, the country’s main labor federation, agreed, saying that Trump’s tough words on trade have done little for workers. “This is an example of Trump’s rhetoric not matching reality,” Shuler said. “He talks a good game, but there’s no action to back it up. When he had the ability to make a difference, when he was president, he went to different places and pretended to be a savior, and you followed up and you saw that those plants closed and jobs were moved to Mexico. He did nothing to fix it.”Seeing all the lingering discontent about Nafta, many Democrats say it’s unfair for Trump and others to blame their party for the agreement. The idea for Nafta arose under Ronald Reagan, they say, and George HW Bush negotiated the deal, both Republicans. More Republicans in Congress voted to ratify Nafta than Democrats. The vast majority of Senate Republicans also voted for it, while most Democratic senators voted against ratification.Still, Bonior said that Clinton and his administration “get the blame because their top guy was for it”, he said. “Clinton was instrumental in making it happen.”Many workers who lost jobs due to Nafta were able to find other jobs, said Bonior, but their pay was 20% less on average. “Lifestyles were enormously downgraded in my district,” said Bonior, who served as House majority whip. “Clinton bought into Nafta, but a lot of working-class people saw that as a betrayal.”On Nafta, Clinton won strong backing from economists and corporate America. Brushing aside labor’s warnings that Nafta would speed the loss of jobs to Mexico, nearly 300 economists on the right and the left, including several Nobel Prize winners, signed a pro-Nafta letter, saying: “The assertions that Nafta will spur an exodus of US jobs to Mexico are without basis.”Many economists argued that Nafta would increase the number of manufacturing jobs in the US because the nation had a higher-skilled, more productive workforce than Mexico and would thus, in theory, gain factory jobs in an expanded free-trade zone. Pro-Nafta forces also argued that the closer economic integration of the US, Mexico and Canada would create a North American powerhouse to counter China’s fast-growing economic power.Jeff Faux, a former president of the Economic Policy Institute, said many economists failed to realize something important that was happening when Nafta was negotiated: “The US was losing its manufacturing base. It was deindustrializing.”Faux, one of the most outspoken economists against Nafta, said Clinton embraced Nafta because he was eager to present himself as a different type of Democrat and “was trying to ingratiate himself with the business community”. “Clinton saw Nafta as an opportunity to present himself as not just another liberal Democrat,” Faux said. “It was the beginning of the notion that came to dominate the Democratic party that its future is not in working people, that it’s in professionals, in women, in minorities and various ethnic groups. They wanted to put together a new coalition, and labor would be a thing of the past.”Michael Podhorzer, a former AFL-CIO political director, said many blue-collar workers remain angry about Nafta because it was such a departure from President Franklin Roosevelt’s emphatically pro-worker Democratic party. Podhorzer said: “Nafta is the catchall for a series of things that Democrats did that showed they had a greater concern for business interests and a kind of insensitivity to the consequences that accelerating deindustrialization would have on people’s lives.”Trump was shrewd to seize on Nafta, he said: “It’s a way for him to sort of wave a flag, but it doesn’t actually mean he’s on the workers’ side. It channels pretty effectively the frustration that many Americans feel in seeing their jobs go offshore or to Mexico or seeing their communities hollowed out or seeing fewer economics prospects for their kids.”In the view of many labor leaders and workers, the Democrats doubled down on misguided trade policy when Clinton successfully pushed Congress in 2000 to approve normal trade relations with China. That move encouraged many US corporations to outsource operations to lower-wage China, with one study finding that the country lost 2m jobs, including 985,000 factory jobs, because of the normalized trade relations with China. The number of factories in the US also declined by 45,000 from 1997 to 2008, with many workers blaming Nafta and the China trade deal.What’s more, many unions faulted Barack Obama for pushing for another free trade agreement: the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), a pact with 12 Pacific Rim countries. TPP’s supporters said the deal would increase US exports and build a powerful economic bloc to counter China. TPP was signed in 2016 under Obama’s presidency, but soon after Trump became president, he withdrew the US from TPP, preventing it from taking force.“Obama wasn’t great shakes on trade either,” Bonior said. “A lot of working people said they had enough. They decided we’re not going to be with the Democrats any more, and Trump came along and filled the void. That was very smart for Trump to do.”In a 2016 campaign appearance in Pittsburgh, Trump made a major speech on trade that denounced Nafta and cited several Economic Policy Institute studies that criticized the trade pact. Lawrence Mishel, who was the institute’s president at the time, said: “Trump never really explained what he would do about Nafta or trade. He ended his speech with a call for deregulation and tax cuts for the rich, which was far more pro-Chamber of Commerce than pro-worker.”While Joe Biden voted to ratify Nafta when he was a senator, labor leaders say the president’s current pro-worker stance on trade shows that he recognizes his Nafta vote was a mistake. For Bonior, it might be too little too late.“Biden has been very good on working-class issues. Biden is trying to make up for his vote on Nafta,” Bonior said. “But a lot of working-class people are turned off so much to the Democrats that they’re not hearing of the things Biden and Harris have done for them. They’re not listening. They’re gone. I don’t know if we’ll ever get them back.“They’re to some degree mesmerized by Trump even though Trump has never been for working people,” Bonior continued. “Those plants he said he would restore – he never did any of that.”Many union leaders slam Trump for a speech he gave in Youngstown in which he told thousands of workers that he would bring back all the factory jobs that Ohio had lost. “They’re all coming back,” he said. They didn’t. And when General Motors closed its huge assembly plant in nearby Lordstown, Ohio, in 2019, Trump did little to stop the plant closing or bring back the lost jobs.“He said all those jobs would be coming back, and then he did nothing,” said Shawn Fain, president of the United Auto Workers (UAW). “The auto industry abandoned Lordstown, and Trump did nothing.”When Trump was running for president in 2016, he vowed to renegotiate Nafta, and he followed through, reaching a new United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) in 2018. Labor leaders had attacked Nafta not only for encouraging companies to move factory jobs to Mexico and but also for failing to effectively protect Mexican workers whose employers had violated their right to unionize or other rights.Union leaders agree that USMCA created a stronger mechanism to crack down on labor violations by Mexican companies, although the Trump administration negotiated that improved enforcement mechanism only after the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, and House Democrats demanded that Trump go further in the negotiations. But under USMCA, often called “Nafta 2.0”, US companies have continued moving manufacturing operations to Mexico.Even though USMCA made only minor changes to Nafta, Trump called it, “the best trade deal ever made”. For her part, Harris was one of 10 senators to vote against USMCA, saying it didn’t improve Nafta sufficiently.Faux said many workers applaud Trump on trade because “he did something” about it by renegotiating Nafta, while “the Democrats did nothing”.Labor leaders have differing views of USMCA. David McCall, president of the Pittsburgh-based United Steelworkers, said: “I think Nafta 2.0 was helpful. It’s gotten some better labor protections.”But the UAW’s Fain was merciless in attacking USMCA. “I like to call it Trump’s Nafta,” Fain said. “Trump’s Nafta only made problems worse. Trump’s Nafta only gave the billionaires more profits. Trump’s Nafta only killed more American jobs. Trump’s Nafta only shipped more work to Mexico.”Both Harris and Trump say they will renegotiate USMCA if elected. Trump also says he will protect factory jobs by imposing a 20% tariff on all imports, but the Steelworkers’ McCall says that’s a terrible idea. “I don’t think the solution to the problem is to have tariffs for the sake of having tariffs,” McCall said. “That’s protection. I think trade is a good thing. It’s an economic stimulator.” He said the US should use tariffs not in a blunderbuss way, but to “punish cheaters or countries that dump their various products”.McCall said the Biden-Harris administration had had a far better strategy for protecting factory jobs. “It’s the first time in generations that we’ve had an industrial policy in this country,” he said, praising three important laws passed under Biden: the infrastructure law, the green energy law and the Chips Act to encourage semiconductor production. McCall said those laws, along with Biden’s targeted tariffs “against countries that cheat”, give the US “an opportunity to be the most productive producers of many products”.While many blue-collar workers like Trump’s views on trade, McCall said: “He’s not a friend of unions or labor. For Trump it’s all about him, not about the person that’s working on the job: the steelworker, the electrical worker, the teamster or the UAW member.” More