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      China’s top leaders pledge to oppose ‘unilateral bullying’ in global trade in veiled rebuke to Trump – US politics live

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      China’s top leaders pledged on Friday to step up support for the economy and oppose “unilateral bullying” in global trade, offering a veiled rebuke of hefty tariffs recently imposed by US president Donald Trump.The world’s two largest economies are engaged in a high-stakes tit-for-tat trade war that has spooked markets and spurred major manufacturers to reconsider supply chains.Since returning to the White House in January, Trump has slapped most trading partners with 10% tariffs. But China has received the worst, with many products from the country now facing a 145% tariff. Beijing has responded with new 125% tariffs of its own on US goods.A spokesperson for Beijing’s commerce ministry said on Thursday that “there are currently no economic and trade negotiations between China and the United States”. But hours later, asked about the state of negotiations with Beijing, Trump maintained: “We’ve been meeting with China.”Chinese financial news outlet Caijing reported on Friday that Beijing was considering the exemption of certain US semiconductor products from recent additional tariffs, citing sources familiar with the matter. Beijing’s commerce ministry did not immediately respond to an Agence France-Presse (AFP) request to confirm the reports.Meanwhile, the Hill reports that China cancelled 12,000 metric tons of US pork shipments, according to data from the US Department of Agriculture (USDA), with Bloomberg News reporting that this represents the biggest cancellation of pork orders since the Covid-19 pandemic.More on this story in a moment, but here are some other recent developments:

      US defense secretary Pete Hegseth had an unsecured internet connection set up in his Pentagon office so that he could bypass government security protocols and use the Signal messaging app on a personal computer.

      Donald Trump directed his attorney general to investigate the Democratic fundraising platform ActBlue based on an unsubstantiated rightwing claim.

      Federal judges blocked several aspects of Trump’s agenda that he has tried to enact through executive orders, which do not carry the force of law. One judge blocked his efforts to add a proof of citizenship requirement to the federal voter registration form, a change that voting rights advocates warned would have disfranchised millions of voters.

      Another judge ruled the Trump administration’s attempt to make federal funding to schools conditional on them eliminating any DEI policies erodes the “foundational principles” that separates the United States from totalitarian regimes.

      On immigration, a judge ordered the Trump administration to make “a good faith request” to the government of El Salvador to facilitate the return of a second man sent to a prison there back to the US, saying his deportation violated a court settlement. Another judge blocked the Trump administration from withholding federal funding from several so-called sanctuary jurisdictions that have declined to cooperate with the president’s hardline immigration crackdown.

      Trump issued a rare rebuke against Vladimir Putin, and said he has his own deadline for the Russia-Ukraine war. Trump said that he still thinks the Russian leader will listen to him.

      The Trump administration is loosening rules to help US automakers like Elon Musk’s Tesla develop self-driving cars so they can take on Chinese rivals. US companies developing self-driving cars will be allowed exemptions from certain federal safety rules for testing purposes, the transportation department said on Thursday.

      The Trump store is now selling “Trump 2028” hats to fans of the president, who is barred by the US constitution from serving a third term, despite the fact that a new poll from Reuters/Ipsos found that three-quarters of respondents said Trump should not even try to run.
      The US justice department says it did not fire a former pardon attorney, Liz Oyer, after she refused to recommend reinstating Mel Gibson’s gun rights.But in the latest episode of Politics America Weekly Oyer tells Jonathan Freedland a different story, one she believes points to a wider crackdown by the Trump administration on the rule of law in the US.You can listen to the podcast here:A US push to approve deep-sea mining in domestic and international waters “violates international law”, China warned on Friday, after a White House order to ramp up permits, reports Agence France-Presse (AFP).“The US authorisation … violates international law and harms the overall interests of the international community,” Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Guo Jiakun said.President Donald Trump on Thursday signed an executive order to “expedite the process for reviewing and issuing seabed mineral exploration licenses and commercial recovery permits in areas beyond national jurisdiction”.Private companies and governments have long considered the mineral and metal resources found in stretches of the ocean floor, but they have mostly held off while waiting for the International Seabed Authority (ISA) regulator to devise rules – a process that began in the 1990s.The US never ratified the agreements that empowered the Isa’s jurisdiction and is not a member of the UN-affiliated body, reports AFP.Trump’s order demands Washington become a “global leader” in seabed exploration and “counter China’s growing influence over seabed mineral resources”.Beijing, which has so far held off mining in international waters while awaiting Isa rules, warned Trump’s orders “once again expose the unilateral approach and hegemonic nature of the United States”.US peace envoy Steve Witkoff is in Moscow today for further talks with Russia, including president Vladimir Putin, on Donald Trump’s peace plan for Ukraine.Hoping to get results before Trump’s 100 days in the office next week, Witkoff will have to find a way to convey the sense of the president’s frustration with the Russian attack on Kyiv on Thursday, while hoping to make good progress as Washington tries to put pressure on Kyiv to agree to its proposal.During a gathering of the Chinese Communist party’s top decision-making body focused on economic work and attended by president Xi Jinping, leaders acknowledged that “the impact of external shocks is increasing”, reports Agence France-Presse (AFP), citing state news agency Xinhua.They also said they would seek to “work with the international community to actively uphold multilateralism and oppose unilateral bullying practices”, said Xinhua.Last year saw China achieve record exports, providing a key source of economic activity as domestic challenges in the property sector and deflationary pressure persisted.Friday’s politburo meeting “shows the government is ready to launch new policies when the economy is affected by the external shock”, Zhiwei Zhang, president and chief economist of Pinpoint Asset Management, wrote in a note, reports AFP.However, Zhang noted “it seems Beijing is not in a rush to launch a large stimulus at this stage”. “It takes time to monitor and evaluate the timing and the size of the trade shock,” he added.China’s top leaders pledged on Friday to step up support for the economy and oppose “unilateral bullying” in global trade, offering a veiled rebuke of hefty tariffs recently imposed by US president Donald Trump.The world’s two largest economies are engaged in a high-stakes tit-for-tat trade war that has spooked markets and spurred major manufacturers to reconsider supply chains.Since returning to the White House in January, Trump has slapped most trading partners with 10% tariffs. But China has received the worst, with many products from the country now facing a 145% tariff. Beijing has responded with new 125% tariffs of its own on US goods.A spokesperson for Beijing’s commerce ministry said on Thursday that “there are currently no economic and trade negotiations between China and the United States”. But hours later, asked about the state of negotiations with Beijing, Trump maintained: “We’ve been meeting with China.”Chinese financial news outlet Caijing reported on Friday that Beijing was considering the exemption of certain US semiconductor products from recent additional tariffs, citing sources familiar with the matter. Beijing’s commerce ministry did not immediately respond to an Agence France-Presse (AFP) request to confirm the reports.Meanwhile, the Hill reports that China cancelled 12,000 metric tons of US pork shipments, according to data from the US Department of Agriculture (USDA), with Bloomberg News reporting that this represents the biggest cancellation of pork orders since the Covid-19 pandemic.More on this story in a moment, but here are some other recent developments:

      US defense secretary Pete Hegseth had an unsecured internet connection set up in his Pentagon office so that he could bypass government security protocols and use the Signal messaging app on a personal computer.

      Donald Trump directed his attorney general to investigate the Democratic fundraising platform ActBlue based on an unsubstantiated rightwing claim.

      Federal judges blocked several aspects of Trump’s agenda that he has tried to enact through executive orders, which do not carry the force of law. One judge blocked his efforts to add a proof of citizenship requirement to the federal voter registration form, a change that voting rights advocates warned would have disfranchised millions of voters.

      Another judge ruled the Trump administration’s attempt to make federal funding to schools conditional on them eliminating any DEI policies erodes the “foundational principles” that separates the United States from totalitarian regimes.

      On immigration, a judge ordered the Trump administration to make “a good faith request” to the government of El Salvador to facilitate the return of a second man sent to a prison there back to the US, saying his deportation violated a court settlement. Another judge blocked the Trump administration from withholding federal funding from several so-called sanctuary jurisdictions that have declined to cooperate with the president’s hardline immigration crackdown.

      Trump issued a rare rebuke against Vladimir Putin, and said he has his own deadline for the Russia-Ukraine war. Trump said that he still thinks the Russian leader will listen to him.

      The Trump administration is loosening rules to help US automakers like Elon Musk’s Tesla develop self-driving cars so they can take on Chinese rivals. US companies developing self-driving cars will be allowed exemptions from certain federal safety rules for testing purposes, the transportation department said on Thursday.

      The Trump store is now selling “Trump 2028” hats to fans of the president, who is barred by the US constitution from serving a third term, despite the fact that a new poll from Reuters/Ipsos found that three-quarters of respondents said Trump should not even try to run. More

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      Bill Maher calls Larry David’s satire of his Trump dinner ‘kind of insulting to 6 million dead Jews’

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      Bill Maher has responded to Larry David’s satirical essay in the New York Times that compared Maher’s glowing account of having dinner with Donald Trump to dining with Adolf Hitler.Maher, a vocal critic of Trump in the past, had dinner with the US president and a group of his high-profile supporters, including their mutual friend Kid Rock, on 31 March. On an episode of his talkshow Real Time on 11 April, Maher described Trump as “gracious” and “much more self-aware than he lets on”, saying: “Everything I’ve ever not liked about him was – I swear to God – absent, at least on this night with this guy.”The New York Times then published a satirical piece written by the Curb Your Enthusiasm creator, a first-person account from a critic of Hitler who accepts a dinner invitation from the Führer and ends up deciding “we’re not that different, after all”.“I had been a vocal critic of his on the radio from the beginning, pretty much predicting everything he was going to do on the road to dictatorship,” David wrote.“But eventually I concluded that hate gets us nowhere. I knew I couldn’t change his views, but we need to talk to the other side – even if it has invaded and annexed other countries and committed unspeakable crimes against humanity.”Appearing on Piers Morgan’s talkshow Uncensored on Thursday, Maher said: “First of all, it’s kind of insulting to 6 million dead Jews … It’s an argument you kind of lost just to start it. Look, maybe it’s not completely logically fair, but Hitler has really kind of got to stay in his own place. He is the GOAT of evil.”Maher told Morgan he considered David a friend, and didn’t know about the piece until his publicist told him it had been published. “This wasn’t my favourite moment of our friendship,” he said.“Nobody has been harder, and more prescient, I must say, about Donald Trump than me. I don’t need to be lectured on who Donald Trump is. Just the fact that I met him in person didn’t change that. The fact that I reported honestly is not a sin either.”Maher told Morgan he didn’t want to “make this constantly personal with me and Larry”, saying: “We might be friends again.”“I can take a shot and I can also take it when people disagree with me. That’s not exactly the way I would’ve done it.“Again, the irony: let’s go back to what my original thing was. There’s got to be a better way than hurling insults and not talking to people. If I can talk to Trump, I can talk to Larry David too.” More

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      Trump can’t withhold funds from sanctuary cities, says federal judge

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      The Trump administration cannot deny federal funds to cities and counties that have passed laws preventing or limiting cooperation with US immigration officials, a federal judge ruled on Thursday.The US district judge William Orrick issued a temporary injunction sought by San Francisco, Santa Clara county and and more than a dozen other municipalities with “sanctuary” policies, and declared that portions of Donald Trump’s executive orders were unconstitutional.“The cities and counties have also demonstrated a likelihood of irreparable harm,” Orrick wrote in his order. “The threat to withhold funding causes them irreparable injury in the form of budgetary uncertainty, deprivation of constitutional rights, and undermining trust between the cities and counties and the communities they serve.”On his first day in office, the US president issued an order directing the attorney general and homeland security secretary to withhold federal funds from sanctuary jurisdictions as part of his administration’s crackdown on immigration. In another order, he directed the federal government to ensure funds to state and local governments don’t “abet so-called ‘sanctuary’ policies that seek to shield illegal aliens from deportation”.Meanwhile, on Thursday the US transportation department threatened states with the loss of federal funding if they do not comply with US immigration enforcement efforts.Under the judge’s order, the federal government is prohibited “from directly or indirectly taking any action to withhold, freeze, or condition federal funds”. The Trump administration must provide written notice of his order to all federal departments and agencies by Monday.The plaintiffs have argued the orders amounted to overreach and that the Trump administration was attempting to force cities to participate in its “reckless and illegal mass deportation efforts”.“The federal administration is illegally asserting power it does not have, as courts already determined during the first Trump Administration,” David Chiu, the San Francisco city attorney, said in a statement.“They want to commandeer local police officers as federal Ice agents, while strong-arming local officials with threats of withholding federal funds that support our police department, our efforts to address homelessness, and our public health system.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe federal government has not yet attempted to withhold specific amounts or lay out conditions on specific grants, and during a hearing on Wednesday attorneys for the justice department argued it was too soon for the judge to issue an injunction for that reason.Orrick, who was nominated by Barack Obama, said government lawyers made the same argument during Trump’s first term when the Republican issued a similar order.“Their well-founded fear of enforcement is even stronger than it was in 2017,” Orrick wrote. He pointed to the executive orders and directives from Pam Bondi, other federal agencies and justice department lawsuits filed against Chicago and New York.San Francisco successfully challenged the 2017 Trump order and the ninth US circuit court of appeals agreed with the lower court that Trump exceeded his authority when he signed an executive order threatening to cut funding for “sanctuary cities”.The cities and counties who sued to stop the administration’s most recent orders praised the judge’s decision.“At a time when we continue to see tremendous federal overreach, the court’s ruling affirms that local governments can serve their mission and maintain trust with the communities they care for,” said Tony LoPresti, counsel for Santa Clara county, in a statement.Associated Press contributed to this report More

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      Trump targets Democratic fundraising platform ActBlue with memorandum

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      The Republican president is taking aim at a Democratic fundraising platform, issuing a presidential memorandum to crack down on supposed foreign contributions to elections, an unsubstantiated claim from the right..Donald Trump announced the memo on Thursday, directing the attorney general to investigate, and report to the president, “concerning allegations regarding the use of online fundraising platforms to make ‘straw’ or ‘dummy’ contributions and to make foreign contributions to US political candidates and committees, all of which break the law”.ActBlue, the largest online donation platform on the left, has anticipated the presidential action. Its CEO and president, Regina Wallace-Jones, sent an email this week saying the organization expected an executive order targeting it, and that the threat of these investigations had “caused many in the ecosystem anxiety and distress”.“If we look past rumors and innuendo, here is what we know to be true: Nothing will deter or interrupt ActBlue’s mission and work to enable millions of Americans to participate in our democracy,” she wrote. “There is an ongoing and persistent effort to weaken the confidence of the American people in what’s possible. This is the next version of ‘the big lie.’”ActBlue is the main platform used to collect donations for Democratic candidates and causes. The move is among several actions the Trump administration has taken to “cripple the left”, the New York Times has reported, part of a “series of highly partisan official actions that, if successful, will threaten to hobble Democrats’ ability to compete in elections for years to come”.The memo comes amid ongoing unsubstantiated claims on the right about the fundraising platform. Elon Musk has tweeted about ActBlue multiple times since Trump took office. “Something stinks about ActBlue,” he said in one post.Republican lawmakers have called on the treasury department to investigate ActBlue. Representative Darrell Issa wrote to the treasury secretary, Scott Bessent, in March, saying the department should investigate whether ActBlue facilitated donations from “terror-linked organizations and non-profits”, based on reporting in rightwing media that the platform had cut ties with a Palestinian organization that advocates for divestment in Israel.Congressman Bryan Steil, the chair of the Committee on House Administration, requested documents from ActBlue in October “related to the platform’s donor verification policies and potential vulnerabilities that foreign actors may exploit to illegally participate in the US political process”. Those documents showed that the platform had updated its policies to automatically reject certain donations from gift cards and other avenues, Steil said.The organization has seen internal strife, the New York Times reported, leading to departures of senior officials. Republicans demanded more documents from ActBlue based on the departures, the paper reported.The attack on the fundraising platform comes as Democrats prepare efforts to win back majorities in Washington in the midterms. On Thursday, the Democratic National Committee announced a plan to revitalize state Democratic parties by sending monthly donations from the national party to the states, with more funding going to red states. More

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      Federal judge blocks Trump order that could disenfranchise millions of voters

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      A federal judge on Thursday blocked Donald Trump’s efforts to add a proof of citizenship requirement to the federal voter registration form, a change that voting rights advocates warned would have disenfranchised millions of voters.The president sought to unilaterally add the requirement in a 25 March executive orders. The Democratic party, as well as a slew of civil rights groups, challenged that order, arguing the president does not have the power to set the rules for federal elections.US district judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly of the federal district court in Washington, agreed with that argument on Thursday.“Our Constitution entrusts Congress and the States – not the President – with the authority to regulate federal elections,” she wrote in a 120-page opinion. “No statutory delegation of authority to the Executive Branch permits the President to short-circuit Congress’s deliberative process by executive order.”Kollar-Kotelly also blocked a portion of the executive order that required federal agencies to assess the citizenship of individuals applying to vote at a public assistance agency before they offered them a chance to vote.The order would have made it significantly harder to register to vote, even for eligible voters. Nearly 10% of eligible voters lack easy access to documents, such as a US passport or birth certificate, that would be required to prove their citizenship, a 2024 survey found.“No president has the authority to dictate our election systems and processes,” Danielle Lang, a voting rights attorney at watchdog group Campaign Legal Center, said in a statement. “The Constitution gives the states and Congress the express power to regulate our elections. We are happy to see that the Constitution’s core principle of separation of powers has been upheld in this instance, and we look forward to continuing our challenge so everyday Americans can make their voices heard without unnecessary barriers.”Republicans in the US House have passed a similar bill that would require proof of citizenship to vote, but it almost certainly will not pass in the US Senate. Several states have also passed statutes to require proof of citizenship to vote.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionKollar-Kotelly left in place, for now, portions of the order that instructed the Department of Homeland Security to share information with states and to work with the so-called “department of government efficiency” to find non-citizens on the rolls. She also left in place a portion of the order that sought to punish states that allow mail-in ballots to arrive after election day, saying the plaintiffs had not established legal harm. She left the door open to the challengers returning to court later to bring claims against those portions. More

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      The Republican anti-tax coalition is beginning to disintegrate | David Sirota, Arjun Singh, Ariella Markowitz and Natalie Bettendorf

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      “I am a gay woman who is moderately pro-choice – I know that there are some people in this room who don’t believe that my marriage should have been legal,” the rightwing impresario Bari Weiss told a Federalist Society gathering in 2023. “And that’s OK. Because we’re all Americans who want lower taxes.”The assembled conservatives guffawed at hearing the quiet part out loud: in this case, the admission that tax cuts for the rich have been the glue holding the US conservative movement together.And yet, less than two years after Weiss’s speech, the epoxy seems to be less sticky.In recent weeks, polls have shown Republican voters becoming far more skeptical of across-the-board tax reduction proposals. Reflecting that shift, GOP lawmakers are now trial-ballooning a proposal to increase some taxes on the wealthy. Some Maga voices are attempting to articulate a Republican-leaning, tax-cut version of Democrats’ traditional redistributionist rhetoric, arguing that higher taxes on millionaires should finance bigger tax cuts for the working class.All of this has the Washington swamp’s old-guard Republicans in a panic; one longtime anti-tax leader insisted that “there are traitors inside the Trump White House,” and another declared: “This is a potential crisis in the party – it sounds like Bernie Sanders economics.”So what happened? Why is the anti-tax argument losing its unifying power among Republicans?As the Lever’s new investigative audio series Tax Revolt details, the answer may lie in that movement’s key revelation a half-century ago.The Santa Claus theory of tax cutsIn the mid-1970s, the Republican party was adrift, demoralized and divided amid both the post-Watergate backlash and the Republican president Gerald Ford’s attempt to raise taxes in pursuit of halting inflation and plugging federal budget holes. A young journalist named Jude Wanniski had an epiphany when at a lunch meeting, he watched the economist Arthur Laffer draw a curve on a napkin to argue to the Ford staffers Dick Cheney and Don Rumsfeld that cutting taxes could raise companies’ revenues.Two years later, Wanniski penned a grand unifying “Santa Claus Theory”, arguing that Republicans had “continued to play Scrooge, carping against increased spending without ever offering the obvious alternative”: tax reduction.He concluded: “Republicans, traditionally the party of income growth, should be the Santa Claus of tax reduction,” offering it as a supposed gift to Americans – and understand that “the first rule of successful politics is Never Shoot Santa Claus.”It was a revelation for a new generation of conservatives seeking to create a sunnier, more optimistic image for the GOP in the wake of Barry Goldwater’s cranky campaign and Richard Nixon’s downfall. Younger, more telegenic Republican leaders such as Representative Jack Kemp passed the essay around to colleagues, urging them to reimagine tax cuts not solely as a means to demonize government, but also as a way to court the working class with promises of life-bettering benefits.The dual message of so-called “supply-side economics” soon found its Santa Claus in the anti-tax governor turned anti-tax president Ronald Reagan.“As government’s hunger for ever more revenues expanded, families saw taxes cut deeper and deeper into their paychecks,” Reagan said before signing federal legislation to cut the top marginal tax rate. “This tax bill is less a reform than a revolution. Millions of working poor will be dropped from the tax rolls altogether, and families will get a long-overdue break with lower rates.”High-income tax cuts became the Republican party’s economic policy priority – and depicting such gifts to the wealthy as a boon to the working class became the GOP’s political strategy. Indeed, Reagan, George W Bush and Donald Trump each championed tax cut legislation that delivered disproportionate benefits to the rich, and fueled an explosion of economic inequality – all while presenting their agenda as fight-for-the-little-guy populism.“I promised we would pass a massive tax cut for the everyday, working American families who are the backbone and the heartbeat of our country,” Trump said on the eve of signing his $1.9tn tax cut bill in 2017. “We’re just days away [from] keeping that promise and delivering a truly amazing victory for American families. We want to give you, the American people, a giant tax cut for Christmas.”This sales pitch became ubiquitous, and most political prognosticators assumed it would always be effective. But survey data suggests that most Americans have come to realize that while Tax Cut Santa Claus has been stashing big gifts under billionaires’ Christmas trees, he’s been leaving everyone else’s stockings empty.Whereas more than half of Americans approved of Reagan’s first major high-income tax cut proposal, only about a third of Americans approved of Bush’s similar tax proposal at the same time in his presidency. By the time Trump assumed office for his first term, less than a third of Americans supported his high-income tax cut initiative, knowing that such policies have failed to benefit them personally and failed to boost the macroeconomy.‘The times are totally different’Fast forward to Trump’s second term. In previous eras, a new Republican president delivering more tax cuts for the wealthy would be a foregone conclusion under Wanniski’s Santa Claus theory. But that political hypothesis is now buckling under the weight of Trump’s new $4.5tn proposal to extend his 2017 tax cuts.In its current form, the White House’s initiative would deliver more than half its benefits to the richest 10% of the country. Coupled with spending cuts and tariffs, Trump’s agenda would deliver a big income boost to the top 1%, while reducing the income of the bottom 80%, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.As Trump’s legislative agenda hits Congress, opposition to more high-income tax cuts is strong not just among Democrats and independents, but also among Republicans. Morning Consult reports that 70% of GOP voters believe “the wealthiest Americans should pay higher taxes” – a whopping eight-point jump from six years ago. Moreover, “roughly 7 in 10 voters, including 2 in 3 Republicans, support proposals to raise taxes on earners making more than $400,000.”Republican leaders are responding with the previously unthinkable: proposals to raise some taxes on the rich. Indeed, Trump reportedly floated the idea and some GOP lawmakers are considering creating a new top tax bracket.This has touched off an intraparty civil war. On one side are those who came of age in the Reagan and George W Bush epochs – Newt Gingrich, Sean Hannity, the former vice-president Mike Pence, Americans for Tax Reform’s Grover Norquist, the hedge-funder-turned-GOP senator Dave McCormick, and the Club for Growth’s Stephen Moore. This old guard believes Republicans can still get away with depicting billionaire giveaways as populism, and vilifying tax hikes on the rich.“It’s vicious and full of envy. It’s a dumb idea. It’s bad for the economy,” said Norquist, who spent the last quarter-century pressing Republicans to sign pledges to oppose all tax increases. “What happened when George Herbert Walker Bush raised the top rate? Let’s see, he lost the next election. We lost House and Senate seats and taxes went up and we had a recession.”On the other side are newfangled Maga voices – the former Mitt Romney staffer Oren Cass, Vice-President JD Vance, the former Trump strategist Steve Bannon, and reportedly Trump’s budget director, Russell Vought. They sense political peril in Republicans presenting themselves as populists while their party enriches billionaires and corporations.“We have to increase taxes on the wealthy,” Bannon said in December. This month he added that conservatives must prove “Republicans are not the country club Republicans”, which is “why it’s so important to not extend the tax cuts for the wealthy”.Of the old anti-tax crowd, Bannon added: “They’re arrogant and they refuse to look at the reality of the situation we’re in … The times are totally different.”‘Didn’t we already give them a break at the top?’Of course, we’ve been at these junctures before – moments when Republicans seemed to sense political vulnerability on taxes.In 1985, Reagan tried to deflect Democrats’ criticism of his tax policy by insisting: “There is one group of losers in our tax plan – those individuals and corporations who are not paying their fair share or, for that matter, any share. These abuses cannot be tolerated.”Similarly, George W Bush momentarily pushed back against conservative aides pressing him to champion yet another tax cut for the rich. “Didn’t we already give them a break at the top?” he reportedly asked.But the powerful anti-tax movement of those eras convinced both Republican presidents to plow forward. Reagan followed up his first tax cut by further reducing the top tax rate, and Bush’s sequel to his first tax cut was slashing taxes on corporate dividends.Trump could end up doing much the same. After all, ramming more tax cuts for the rich through Congress is the surest way for Trump to enrich himself, his family and the entire front row of his inauguration.But this time around, the long-term politics of taxes are in flux. Running the same tax play would show a Republican president siding with oligarchs against the preferences of his own party’s rank and file that no longer buys the Santa Claus theory.That’s a new and unpredictable dynamic – one that may finally begin weakening the anti-tax movement’s grip on power in the years ahead.

      David Sirota is the founder and editor-in-chief of the Lever, an investigative news outlet. Arjun Singh, Ariella Markowitz and Natalie Bettendorf are producers of the outlet’s weekly podcast Lever Time, which is releasing a new miniseries Tax Revolt, on the 50-year history of the anti-tax movement now culminating in the Trump tax cuts. More

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      Donald Trump threat to reimpose reciprocal tariffs within weeks reopens economic uncertainty – US politics live

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      Donald Trump again caused economic uncertainty as he declared that his administration would reimpose tariffs it paused on 9 April within “the next two, three weeks” where countries had not struck a deal with the US.Speaking at the White House, the US president said “In the end, I think what’s going to happen is, we’re going to have a great deals, and by the way, if we don’t have a deal with a company or a country, we’re going to set the tariff. I’d say over the next couple of weeks, wouldn’t you say? I think so. Over the next two, three weeks.”On 9 April Trump had “paused” the majority of tariffs he had set sweepingly on nearly every international US trade partner. His most recent pronouncement leaves importers and exporters unclear whether by the end of the next month they will be paying Trump’s new baseline 10% tariff, the tariff that was set on 9 April, or an entirely new figure.So far, several key parts of the global economic have resisted the pressure from the Trump administration to, as JD Vance put it while speaking in India earlier this week, “rebalance” international trade.The European Union has said it has no intentions of changing its rules on value added tax – a tax imposed on specific goods at the point of sale in EU countries – or on agricultural subsidies. China has shown no sign of bucking under the Trump decision to attempt to impose a 145% tariff on most goods originating there.On Wednesday a Chinese official said the US “should stop threatening and blackmailing China, and seek dialogue based on equality, respect and mutual benefit. To keep asking for a deal while exerting extreme pressure is not the right way to deal with China and simply will not work.”South Africa’s President Cyril Ramaphosa has said he talked about the war in Ukraine and the need to foster good bilateral relations with the US in his phone call with Donald Trump.“We both agreed that the war should be brought to an end as soon as possible to stop further unnecessary deaths… to meet soon to address various matters regarding US-South Africa relations,” Ramaphosa wrote in a post on X.Relations between the two countries are at a low point for many reasons. One of them is South Africa’s genocide case against Israel – Trump’s close ally – for its military conduct in the war on Gaza, which is being heard at the International Court of Justice (ICJ).Another is Trump’s belief that the white-minority Afrikaner community are being unjustly discriminated against in South Africa.Ramaphosa is meeting Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in Pretoria today as he tries to position himself as a peacemaker in the conflict between Russia and Ukraine.Donald Trump is planning to spare carmakers from some of his most onerous tariffs following intense lobbying by industry executives over recent weeks, according to a report in the Financial Times.Sources told the paper that the US president could exempt tariffs on car parts coming from China while also levying duties on imported steel and aluminum.The exemptions, however, would leave in place the 25% tariff Trump imposed on all imports of foreign-made cars.The 25% duty on foreign-imported car parts, which is due to take effect on 3 May, is also expected to continue, according to the FT.Trump’s move follows criticism of the levies by car industry executives who have echoed warnings that the tariffs would raise car prices in the US, dent profits of carmakers and parts suppliers, and disrupt the intertwined manufacturing operations across countries.John Elkann, the chair of Stellantis, the carmaker that owns the Fiat and Chrysler brands, warned that “American and European car industries are being put at risk” by Trump’s trade policy.Lauren Almeida is a Guardian business reporterThe value of Donald Trump’s meme coin jumped by more than 50% on Wednesday after its official website said the coin’s top 220 holders would be invited to a private gala dinner with the president on 22 May.The top 25 holders of the coin will also get “an ultra-exclusive VIP reception with the president”, as well as a “special tour”, the website said.Despite the sharp rise, the price of the president’s coin is still far below the peak it hit shortly before his inauguration in January, when it soared from about $6 to as high as $75. The launch of coins for Trump and his wife, Melania, have prompted experts to accuse the pair of “shameful” conflicts of interest.As Donald Trump’s 100 days in office approach, Human Rights Watch has issued a list of what it describes as 100 harmful actions taken by the administration, in what it calls “a relentless barrage of actions that violate, threaten, or undermine the human rights of people in the US and abroad”Tanya Greene, US program director, said “In just 100 days, the Trump administration has inflicted enormous damage to human rights in the US and around the world. We are deeply concerned that these attacks on fundamental freedoms will continue unabated.”Human Rights Watch said its compilation of harm from the first 100 days of the Trump administration included “attacks on free speech, the rights of asylum seekers and immigrants, health, environmental, and social protections, education, foreign aid and humanitarian assistance, and the rule of law.”Human Rights Watch is a New York-based international NGO that conducts research and advocacy on human rights.Donald Trump will mark his first 100 days in office next week with a rally in Michigan, his first since returning to the White House, press secretary Karoline Leavitt announced on social media.The rally will take place in Macomb County one day before Trump’s 100th day in office.Minnesota governor Tim Walz has accused US president Donald Trump of throwing the US economy into turmoil, and vowed to try to protect people in the state from the worst of the consequences.Delivering his annual state of the state speech, Associated Press reports that the man who had hoped to be vice-president in a Kamala Harris administration said:
      The president of the United States has chosen – chosen! – to throw our economy into turmoil. Global markets are teetering on the brink of collapse. Businesses across this country and here in Minnesota are already laying off employees by the thousands. Working people are paying more for basic goods. And if you haven’t checked your 401(k) lately, don’t do it. As governor, I will continue to do everything in my power to protect Minnesotans from getting hurt and continue to provide shelter from the storm for Minnesotans.
      Reuters reports that, in its regular daily briefing, China’s foreign ministry spokesperson has said China and the US have not held consultations or negotiations on tariffs.US Treasury secretary Scott Bessent said on Wednesday it could take between two and three years to restore normal trade with China, following reports that on Tuesday he told a private investment conference that a trade war with China was “unsustainable”.Bessent has been credited in some quarters with forcing Donald Trump to backtrack in the face of market reaction. In an analysis piece for the Wall Street Journal overnight, Meridith McGraw and Brian Schwartz wrote that “so far, the only force that has reliably prompted [Trump] to back down is Wall Street. They said:
      Both the president and White House officials argue that the sharp U-turns are all part of a long-term plan to force allies and adversaries alike to strike trade deals with the US. And they stress that Trump remains determined to follow through on his pledge to reset global trade.
      Trump’s current and former advisers said he watches the markets closely, and as an avid media consumer can’t avoid the dramatic ups and downs that have been displayed across television screens and on front pages for weeks.
      But Trump’s dual goals of driving market gains and reshoring American manufacturing through stiff tariffs are sometimes at odds.
      Donald Trump again caused economic uncertainty as he declared that his administration would reimpose tariffs it paused on 9 April within “the next two, three weeks” where countries had not struck a deal with the US.Speaking at the White House, the US president said “In the end, I think what’s going to happen is, we’re going to have a great deals, and by the way, if we don’t have a deal with a company or a country, we’re going to set the tariff. I’d say over the next couple of weeks, wouldn’t you say? I think so. Over the next two, three weeks.”On 9 April Trump had “paused” the majority of tariffs he had set sweepingly on nearly every international US trade partner. His most recent pronouncement leaves importers and exporters unclear whether by the end of the next month they will be paying Trump’s new baseline 10% tariff, the tariff that was set on 9 April, or an entirely new figure.So far, several key parts of the global economic have resisted the pressure from the Trump administration to, as JD Vance put it while speaking in India earlier this week, “rebalance” international trade.The European Union has said it has no intentions of changing its rules on value added tax – a tax imposed on specific goods at the point of sale in EU countries – or on agricultural subsidies. China has shown no sign of bucking under the Trump decision to attempt to impose a 145% tariff on most goods originating there.On Wednesday a Chinese official said the US “should stop threatening and blackmailing China, and seek dialogue based on equality, respect and mutual benefit. To keep asking for a deal while exerting extreme pressure is not the right way to deal with China and simply will not work.”Welcome to the Guardian’s ongoing rolling coverage of US politics and the second Donald Trump administration. Here are the headlines …

      Trump again spooked businesses with his yo-yoing tariff plans, saying at the White House that “if we don’t have a deal with a company or a country, we’re going to set the tariff … over the next two, three weeks”

      A dozen US states have sued the Trump administration in the US court of international trade in New York on Wednesday to stop its tariff policy, saying it is unlawful and has brought chaos to the American economy

      Trump signed executive orders on Wednesday targeting universities as his administration seeks to reshape higher-education institutions and continues to crack down on diversity and inclusion efforts

      Trump once again attacked Volodymyr Zelenskyy for refusing to agree to peace terms that Ukraine says amount to a surrender to Russia. Trump said Zelenskyy’s stance, refusing to permanently concede Crimea to its nuclear-armed neighbour Russia, who had invaded it in 2014, was “very harmful to the peace negotiations” More

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      Trump’s meme coin soars after he asks top 220 holders to dinner

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      The value of Donald Trump’s meme coin jumped by more than 50% on Wednesday after its official website said the coin’s top 220 holders would be invited to a private gala dinner with the president on 22 May.The top 25 holders of the coin would also get “an ultra-exclusive VIP reception with the president”, as well as a special tour, the website said.The coin, called $TRUMP, rose by more than 50% after the announcement to trade at about $14.70. It fell back slightly to $12.30 in early trading on Thursday, according to CoinMarketCap.Despite the sharp rise, the price of the president’s coin is far below the peak it hit shortly before his inauguration in January, when it soared from about $6 to $75. The launch of coins for Trump and his wife, Melania, have prompted experts to accuse the pair of “shameful” conflicts of interest.The sudden jump in Trump’s meme coin on Wednesday came as investors had been expecting the start of a process that allows more original investors and insiders to cash out their holdings. This “unlock” usually leads to a price fall but the coin’s X account said this would be delayed by 90 days.Meme coins are digital tokens inspired by trends such as viral moments and have no inherent utility. They typically fall in value after an initial strong rally.Last year, the “hawk tuah girl” Haliey Welch, made famous online by a viral video, launched a meme coin that was worth $490m in December but it quickly plummeted in value and is now worth just $2.9m.While Trump was sceptical of cryptocurrency in his first administration, he has since called himself the “crypto president” and promised to support growth in the sector.In March, he hired the venture capitalist David Sacks to act as an artificial intelligence and crypto tsar, as well as establishing a national stockpile of bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies.The Trumps have become actively involved in the cryptocurrency sector. The first lady also launched a meme coin in January, and last year the president and his three sons started a crypto platform called World Liberty Financial.Meanwhile, Trump Media and Technology Group, where the president is a majority shareholder, announced plans last month to work with the trading operation Crypto.com to provide investment products linked to crypto.This month the US justice department said it would disband a unit dedicated to investigating cryptocurrency-related fraud, as oversight in the digital assets sector began to loosen.The deputy attorney general, Todd Blanche, said the department would no longer pursue litigation or enforcement actions that had “the effect of superimposing regulatory frameworks on digital assets while President Trump’s actual regulators do this work outside the punitive criminal justice framework”.The deregulation has prompted influential congressional Democrats and watchdogs to warn about the growing risks to investors and the economy posed by multiple deregulatory crypto actions at federal agencies. More