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      Trump’s ‘liberation day’ tariffs: what’s at stake for UK and EU?

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      The EU and the UK are bracing for a damaging trade war with the US, as Donald Trump is expected to implement his threat to impose tariffs on imports from Europe.For weeks, he has named 2 April “liberation day”, with the unveiling of a tariff plan to reverse what he called “unfair practices that have been ripping off our country for decades”.What tariffs are expected?A 20% blanket tariff on nearly all imports to the US has been drafted by Trump’s aides.However, EU and UK leaders are concerned about the possibility of sectoral tariffs, as well as permanent levies he may impose to counter Europe’s VAT rates, which he considers a de facto tax.Trump, who once challenged the then German chancellor Angela Merkel for not ensuring there were more Chevrolets in Munich, has already announced tariffs on cars starting on 3 April.Will the UK be spared?The relative warmth Trump showed Keir Starmer in the Oval Office last month is unlikely to protect the UK, with tariffs expected on “all countries”. However, the UK has been racing to agree a deal, with the business secretary, Jonathan Reynolds, suggesting that if any country can secure a carve-out, Britain could.On Tuesday, Starmer said businesses did not want a tit-for-tat war. Instead of a “kneejerk” reaction, he would respond in a “calm and collected” manner.He hoped a trade deal, something that eluded a succession of UK governments over decades, would “mitigate” the impact of tariffs. The UK was this time seeking a much narrower “economic prosperity deal” rather than a more comprehensive “free trade agreement”.Although this would be far less expansive in scope, the hope is that it should be quicker to agree.Does Trump really hate Europe?European leaders were alarmed by the attacks on Europe by the vice-president, JD Vance, but Trump has been notably less visceral, confining his interests to defence and the trade imbalance.He has complained that the US was “ripped off by every country in the world” and that he was “not happy with the EU” as a place to do business. His exclusion of the EU in talks over Ukraine has ruptured the higher-level geopolitical transatlantic relationship.How will the EU react?Strongly. The EU has already announced a string of tariffs it plans to introduce on US imports targeting steel and aluminium in kind, as well as textiles, leather goods, home appliances, house tools, plastics and wood.Sources say it is also considering nuclear options, including tariffs on revenues generated in the EU by big tech firms and social media.This could be seen as highly provocative and would put Trump’s allies, such as Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos, in the crosshairs. It would also test the unity of the EU, with Ireland expected to argue against more punitive measures because of the dominance of the US tech sector in Dublin.The EU’s preference is to negotiate so it has decided to delay countermeasures to open a space for talks. Maroš Šefčovič, the European commissioner for trade and economic security, has already met the US commerce secretary, Howard Lutnick, and, although Šefčovič reportedly came home last week “empty handed”, he is operating the Brexit playbook, hoping to build a personal relationship that will provide credit in the bank when they get down to talks.Why not enter immediate negotiations?One EU official said there was no point negotiating with the US at this stage, saying it would be like arguing over rotten fish.“It is not very productive to now start negotiating about removing the tariffs,” the official said. “You put a stinking fish on the table, and then you start negotiating to remove that stinking fish, and then you say: ‘Wow, we have a great result: there’s no stinking fish on the table.’ That is not a very productive conversation.”Trade experts also say negotiations with the US would involve agreeing a strategy between 27 different member states, which could be tricky given the potential for splits between countries, as EU states negotiate trade deals as a unified bloc.What is Trump’s game plan?Trump has been obsessed with tariffs since the 1980s, when he railed against the Japanese buying up real restate in the US, an open economy, but with US investors unable to reciprocate in Tokyo.His goal is to reindustrialise the US and to repatriate jobs and taxes he thinks US companies should be paying at home rather than abroad. While currently at a 21% corporate tax rate, the US for a long time operated at a 35% corporate tax rate, pushing some of its biggest companies to push for lower taxes.To revive local industry, Trump wants to shorten the supply chain and make sure more components are manufactured locally.What does the data on trade show?The US is the largest importer of goods in the world, buying $3tn-worth of products in 2023. Its largest trade deficit is with China, from where it imports $279bn more than it exports, followed by the EU at $208bn.EU-US trade is worth €1.6tn but only three countries – Ireland, Germany and Italy – enjoy a surplus in goods trade.Germany’s trade surplus in goods was €57bn in 2023, according to official US data. In 2023, Germany sold €144bn-worth of goods to the US, of which €22bn was on cars. By contrast, the US sold €87bn-worth of goods to Germany, including €8.25bn-worth of cars.Ireland has the second-largest trade imbalance, a surplus of €50bn largely caused by the export of pharmaceuticals to the US from large US multinationals. But it has been consistently singled out by Trump and is seen as highly exposed.Italyhas a trade surplus of €41bn, selling about €65bn-worth of goods to the US. Packaged medicines and cars account for about €5bn and €4.66bn of all exports respectively.The UK has a more balanced relationship with the US. The US is Britain’s largest single-export market, worth £60.4bn in goods in 2023, accounting for 15.3% of the global total. The UK imported £57.9bn in goods from the US.How is business reacting?The US markets are spooked, with S&P 500 and Nasdaq closing March trade with their worst quarter performance since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022.The EU is presenting itself as a safe haven. “I do think investors at the moment are re-evaluating the EU and investing in the European Union. I think there’s a growing appreciation of the value of predictability and order on the global stage,” said Paschal Donohoe, Ireland’s finance minister.So far this year, the pan-European Stoxx 600 index has gained 6.4%, while the US S&P 500 index has lost 5% and had its worst quarter since 2022. More

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      Large majority of Europeans support retaliatory tariffs against US, poll finds

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      A large majority of western Europeans support retaliatory tariffs against the US, a survey has shown, if Donald Trump introduces sweeping import duties for major trading partners as expected this week.The US president appears likely to unleash a range of tariffs, varying from country to country, on Wednesday, which he has called Liberation Day. He also said last week that a 25% levy on cars shipped to the US would come into force the next day.Many European firms are likely to be hit hard. Some, including Germany’s car manufacturers and France’s luxury goods firms and wine, champagne and spirits makers, rely on exports to the US for up to 20% of their income.The EU has already pledged a “timely, robust and calibrated” response to Washington’s plans, which experts predict are likely to depress output, drive up prices and fuel a trade war. Global markets and the dollar fell on Monday after Trump crushed hopes that what he calls “reciprocal tariffs” – arguing that trading partners are cheating the US – would only target countries with the largest trade imbalances.A YouGov survey carried out in Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Sweden and the UK found that if the US tariffs went ahead, large majorities – ranging from 79% of respondents in Denmark to 56% in Italy – favoured retaliatory levies on US imports.In both Germany, where carmakers such as Porsche, BMW and Mercedes face a significant blow to their profits, and France, where US sales of wines and spirits are worth nearly €4bn (£3.4bn) a year, 68% of respondents backed retaliation.Respondents in all seven countries favoured a tit-for-tat response despite the damage they expected US tariffs to do to their national economies, with 75% of Germans saying they expected “a lot” or “a fair amount” of impact.That assessment was shared by 71% of respondents in Spain, 70% in France and Italy, 62% in Sweden, 60% in the UK and half of Danes questioned in the survey, which was carried out in the second and third weeks of March.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionOf the six EU countries polled, majorities of between 60% in Denmark and 76% in Spain thought US tariffs would have a significant impact on the bloc’s wider economy. That was the sentiment of 74% of German and 68% of French respondents.Trump, who was elected partly on a promise to restore US industry, has repeatedly complained that the EU has been “very unfair to us” when it comes to trade. He also said in February that the 27-nation bloc had been “formed to screw the United States”.Pluralities or majorities in all six EU countries surveyed, ranging from 67% in Denmark and 53% in Germany to 41% in France and 40% in Italy, said they did not agree with him, compared with only 7% to 18% who thought he was correct. More

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      Trump prepares to unveil reciprocal tariffs as markets brace amid trade war fears

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      As Donald Trump prepared to unveil a swathe of reciprocal tariffs, global markets braced and some Republican senators voiced their opposition to a strategy that critics warn risks a global trade war, provoking retaliation by major trading partners such as China, Canada and the European Union.The US president said on Monday he would be “very kind” to trading partners when he unveils further tariffs this week, potentially as early as Tuesday night.The Republican billionaire insists that reciprocal action is needed because the world’s biggest economy has been “ripped off by every country in the world”, promising “Liberation Day” for the US.He could also unveil more sector-specific levies.Asked for details, he told reporters on Monday: “You’re going to see in two days, which is maybe tomorrow night or probably Wednesday.”But he added: “We’re going to be very nice, relatively speaking, we’re going to be very kind.”Some Republican senators spoke out against Trump’s tariffs on Canada and are considering signing on their support for a resolution blocking them, CNN reported. Senator Susan Collins warned that tariffs on Canada would be particularly harmful to Maine and that she intended to vote for a resolution aimed at blocking tariffs against Canadian goods.Republican Senator Thom Tillis also said he was considering backing the resolution, adding: “We need to fight battles with our foes first and then try to figure out any inequalities with our friends second.”Already, China, South Korea and Japan agreed on Sunday to strengthen free trade between themselves, ahead of Trump’s expected tariff announcement.But Trump said on Monday he was not worried that his action would push allies toward Beijing, adding that a deal on TikTok could also be tied to China tariffs.White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters that the goal on Wednesday would be to announce “country-based tariffs”, although Trump remained committed to imposing separate sector-specific charges.The uncertainty has jolted markets, with key European and Asian indexes closing lower, although the Dow and broad-based S&P 500 eked out gains.Market nervousness intensified after Trump said on Sunday his tariffs would include “all countries”.The Wall Street Journal reported on Sunday that advisers have considered imposing global tariffs of up to 20%, to hit almost all US trading partners. Trump has remained vague, saying his tariffs would be “far more generous” than ones already levied against US products.Trump’s fixation on tariffs is fanning US recession fears. Goldman Sachs analysts raised their 12-month recession probability from 20% to 35%.This reflects a “lower growth forecast, falling confidence and statements from White House officials indicating willingness to tolerate economic pain”. Goldman Sachs also lifted its forecast for underlying inflation at the end of 2025.China and Canada have imposed counter-tariffs on US goods, while the EU unveiled its own measures to start mid-April. Other countermeasures could come after Wednesday.For now, the IMF chief, Kristalina Georgieva, said at a Reuters event on Monday that US tariffs were causing anxiety, although their global economic impact should not be dramatic.Ryan Sweet of Oxford Economics said to “expect the unexpected”, anticipating that Trump would “take aim at some of the largest offenders”.Besides reciprocal country tariffs, Trump could unveil additional sector-specific levies on the likes of pharmaceuticals and semiconductors. He earlier announced car tariffs to take effect on Thursday.Economists have expected the upcoming salvo could target the 15% of partners that have persistent trade imbalances with the US, a group that the US treasury secretary, Scott Bessent, has dubbed a “Dirty 15”.The US has some of its biggest goods deficits with China, the EU, Mexico, Vietnam, Taiwan, Japan, South Korea, Canada and India.US trade partners are rushing to minimise their exposure, with reports suggesting India may lower some duties.The European Central Bank president, Christine Lagarde, said on Monday that Europe should move towards economic independence, telling France Inter radio that Europe faces an “existential moment”.Separately, the British prime minister, Keir Starmer, spoke with Trump on “productive negotiations” towards a UK-US trade deal, while the German chancellor, Olaf Scholz, said the EU would respond firmly to Trump but was open to compromise.It was “entirely possible” for fresh tariffs to be swiftly reduced or put on hold, said Greta Peisch, a partner at law firm Wiley Rein.In February, Washington paused steep levies on Mexican and Canadian imports for a month as the North American neighbours pursued negotiations.With Agence France-Presse More

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

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

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      Vance’s posturing in Greenland was not just morally wrong. It was strategically disastrous | Timothy Snyder

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      No one would allow that he could not see these much-admired clothes; because, in doing so, he would have declared himself either a simpleton or unfit of his office.” – Hans Christian Andersen, The Emperor’s New Clothes
      Elon Musk and Donald Trump inherited a state with unprecedented power and functionality, and are taking it apart. They also inherited a set of alliances and relationships that underpinned the largest economy in world history. This too they are breaking.The American vice-president, JD Vance, visited a US base in Greenland for three hours on Friday, along with his wife. National security adviser Mike Waltz and his wife also went along. Fresh from using an unsafe social media platform to carry out an entirely unnecessary group chat in which they leaked sensitive data about an ongoing military attack to a reporter, and thereby allegedly breaking the law, Waltz and Vance perhaps hoped to change the subject by tagging along on a trip that was initially billed as Vance’s wife watching a dogsled race.The overall context was Trump’s persistent claim that America must take Greenland, which is an autonomous region of Denmark. The original plan had been that Usha Vance would visit Greenlanders, apparently on the logic that the second lady would be an effective animatrice of colonial subjection; but none of them wanted to see her, and Greenland’s businesses refused to serve as a backdrop to photo ops or even to serve the uninvited Americans. So, instead, the US couples made a very quick visit to Pituffik space base. (Pete Hegseth, another group chatter, stayed home; but his wife was in the news as well, as an unorthodox participant in sensitive military discussions.)At the base, in the far north of the island, the US visitors had pictures taken of themselves and ate lunch with servicemen and women. They treated the base as the backdrop to a press conference where they could say things they already thought; nothing was experienced, nothing was learned, nothing sensible was said. Vance, who never left the base, and has never before visited Greenland, was quite sure how Greenlanders should live. He made a political appeal to Greenlanders, none of whom was present, or anywhere near him. He claimed that Denmark was not protecting the security of Greenlanders in the Arctic, and that the US would. Greenland should therefore join the US.It takes some patience to unwind all of the nonsense here.The base at Pituffik (formerly Thule) only exists because Denmark permitted the US to build it at a sensitive time. It has served for decades as a central part of the US’s nuclear armoury and then as an early-warning system against Soviet and then Russian nuclear attack.When Vance says that Denmark is not protecting Greenland and the base, he is wishing away generations of cooperation, as well as the Nato alliance itself. Denmark was a founding member of Nato, and it is already the US’s job to defend Denmark and Greenland, just as it is Denmark’s job (as with other members) to defend them in return.Americans might chuckle at that idea, but such arrogance is unwarranted. We are the only ones ever to have invoked article 5, the mutual defence obligation of the Nato treaty, after 9/11; and our European allies did respond. Per capita, almost as many Danish soldiers were killed in the Afghan war as were American soldiers. Do we remember them? Thank them?The threat in the Arctic invoked by Vance is Russia; and of course defending against a Russian attack is the Nato mission. But right now the US is supporting Russia in its war against Ukraine. No one is doing more to contain the Russian threat than Ukraine. Indeed, Ukraine is in effect fulfilling the entire Nato mission, right now, by absorbing a huge Russian attack. But Vance opposes helping Ukraine, spreads Russian propaganda about Ukraine, and is best known for yelling at Ukraine’s president in the Oval Office. On the base, Vance blamed the killing in Ukraine on Joe Biden rather than on Vladimir Putin, which is grotesque. Vance claimed that there is now an energy ceasefire in place between Russia and Ukraine; in fact, Russia violated it immediately. Russia is now preparing a massive spring offensive against Ukraine; the response of Musk-Trump has been to ignore this larger reality completely while allowing Biden-era aid to Ukraine to come to an end. Denmark, meanwhile, has given more than four times as much aid to Ukraine, per capita, than the US.Greenland, Denmark and the US have been enmeshed in complex and effective security arrangements, touching on the gravest scenarios, for the better part of a century. Arctic security, an issue discovered by Trump and Vance very recently, was a preoccuption for decades during and after the cold war. There are fewer than 200 Americans at Pituffik now, where once there were 10,000; there is only that one US base on the island where once there were a dozen; but that is American policy, not Denmark’s fault.We really do have a problem taking responsibility. The US has fallen well behind its allies and its rivals in the Arctic, in part because members of Vance’s political party denied for decades the reality of global warming, which has made it hard for the US navy to persuade Congress of the need to commission icebreaker ships. The US only has two functional Arctic icebreakers; the Biden administration was intending to cooperate with Canada, which has some, and with Finland, which builds lots, in order to compete with Russia, which has the most. That common plan would have allowed the US to surpass Russia in icebreaking capacity. This is one of countless examples of how cooperation with Nato allies benefits the US. It is not clear what will happen with that arrangement now that Trump and Vance define Canada, like Denmark, as a rival or even as an enemy. Presumably it will break down, leaving Russia dominant.As with everything Musk-Trump does, however, the cui bono question about imperialism in Greenland is easy to answer: Russia benefits. Putin cannot contain his delight with US imperialism over Greenland. In generating artificial crises in relations with both Denmark and Canada, America’s two closest allies these last 80 years, the Trump people cut America loose from security gains and create a chaos in which Russia benefits.View image in fullscreenThe American imperialism directed towards Denmark and Canada is not just morally wrong. It is strategically disastrous. The US has nothing to gain from it, and much to lose. There is nothing that Americans cannot get from Denmark or Canada through alliance. The very existence of the base at Pituffik shows that. Within the atmosphere of friendship that has prevailed the last 80 years, all of the mineral resources of Canada and Greenland can be traded for on good terms, or for that matter explored by American companies. The only way to put all of this easy access in doubt was to follow the course that Musk-Trump have chosen: trade wars with Canada and Europe, and the threat of actual wars and annexations. Musk and Trump are creating the bloodily moronic situation in which the US will have to fight wars to get the things that, just a few weeks ago, were there for the asking. And, of course, wars rarely turn out the way one expects.Much effort is spent trying to extract a doctrine from all this. But there is none. It is just senselessness that benefits America’s enemies. Hans Christian Andersen told the unforgettable tale of the naked emperor. In Greenland, what we saw was American imperialism with no clothes. Naked and vain.As a parting shot, Vance told Greenlanders that life with the US would be better than with Denmark. Danish officials have been too diplomatic to answer directly the insults directed at them from their own territory during an uninvited visit by imperialist hotheads. Let me though just note a few possible replies, off the top of my head. The comparison between life in the US and life in Denmark is not just polemical. Musk-Trump treat Europe as though it were some decadent abyss, and propose that alliances with dictatorships would somehow be better. But Europe is not only home to our traditional allies; it is an enviable zone of democracy, wealth and prosperity with which it benefits us to have good relations, and from which we can sometimes learn.So consider. The US is 24th in the world in the happiness rankings. Not bad. But Denmark is No 2 (after Finland). On a scale of 1 to 100, Freedom House ranks Denmark 97 and the US 84 on freedom – and the US will drop a great deal this year. An American is about 10 times more likely to be incarcerated than a Dane. Danes have access to universal and essentially free healthcare; Americans spend a huge amount of money to be sick more often and to be treated worse when they are. Danes on average live four years longer than Americans. In Denmark, university education is free; the average balance owed by the tens of millions of Americans who hold student debt in the US is about $40,000. Danish parents share a year of paid parental leave. In the US, one parent might get 12 weeks of unpaid leave. Denmark has children’s story writer Hans Christian Andersen. The US has children’s story writer JD Vance. American children are about twice as likely as Danish children to die before the age of five.

      Timothy Snyder is the Richard C Levin professor of history at Yale University, and the chair in modern European history supported by the Temerty endowment for Ukrainian studies at the University of Toronto. His latest book is On Freedom. This post originally appeared on his Substack, Thinking About More

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      Donald Trump says he is ‘very angry’ with Vladimir Putin over Ukraine

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      Donald Trump has said he is “pissed off” with Vladimir Putin over his approach to a ceasefire in Ukraine and threatened to levy tariffs on Moscow’s oil exports if the Russian leader does not agree to a truce within a month.The US president indicated he would levy a 25% or 50% tariff that would affect countries buying Russian oil in a telephone interview with NBC News, during which he also threatened to bomb Iran and did not rule out using force in Greenland.“If Russia and I are unable to make a deal on stopping the bloodshed in Ukraine, and if I think it was Russia’s fault, which it might not be, but if I think it was Russia’s fault, I am going to put secondary tariffs on oil, on all oil coming out of Russia,” Trump said.“That would be that if you buy oil from Russia, you can’t do business in the United States. There will be a 25% tariff on all … on all oil, a 25 to 50-point tariff on all oil.”The abrupt change of direction came after Putin had tried to attack the legitimacy of Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Friday, Trump said. Appearing on Russian television, Putin had suggested Ukraine could be placed under a temporary UN-led government to organise fresh elections before negotiating a peace deal.Trump has previously called the Ukrainian president a dictator, but on Sunday he said: “I was very angry, pissed off” when Putin “started getting into Zelenskyy’s credibility, because that’s not going in the right location, you understand?”He said “new leadership means you’re not gonna have a deal for a long time, right” and that he wanted to exert pressure on the Kremlin, which has thrown up a string of questions about a peace settlement and only agreed to limited maritime and energy ceasefires so far.Trump repeated that “if a deal isn’t made, and if I think it was Russia’s fault, I’m going to put secondary sanctions on Russia”, but then indicated he would quickly back down if there was progress on a ceasefire.“The anger dissipates quickly” if Putin “does the right thing”, Trump said, adding that he expected to talk to his Russian counterpart this week.The US president also used the same short interview to tell Iran that if “they don’t make a deal” to curb their nuclear weapons programme, “there will be bombing. It will be bombing the likes of which they have never seen before”. Officials from both countries were engaged in negotiations, he added.He also mentioned fresh economic sanctions as an alternative. “There’s a chance that, if they don’t make a deal, that I will do secondary tariffs on them,” Trump said. “I am considering putting on secondary tariffs on Iran until such time as a deal is signed.”Secondary tariffs are a novel idea. The US introduced a 25% tariff last week on countries that buy crude oil and liquid fuels from Venezuela, the largest of which is China, after Trump accused the Latin American country of sending criminals and gang members into the US under the cover of migrants.Russian oil exports are already subject to a range of sanctions from the US, UK, EU and other G7 countries, leaving China and India as the two largest buyers, according to the International Energy Agency. What is not yet clear is whether the measures proposed would be effective once they come into force.Finland indicated it may have had a role in Trump’s intervention. A day before the interview, Trump spent time with his Finnish counterpart, Alexander Stubb, at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida. The two men had breakfast and lunch and played a round of golf on an unofficial visit, Stubb’s office said.“My message in the conversations I have with the president is that we need a ceasefire, and we need a deadline for the ceasefire, and then we need to pay a price for breaking a ceasefire,” Stubb told the Guardian.“So, number one, we need a ceasefire date, and I would prefer that to be Easter, say, 20 April, when President Trump has been in office for three months. If by then it’s not accepted or is broken by Russia, there needs to be consequences. And those consequences should be sanctions, maximum sanctions, and we continue the pressure up until the 20th and then we’ll see what happens.”During a previous interview with NBC on Saturday, Trump said: “We’ll get Greenland. Yeah, 100%” and argued that while there’s a “good possibility that we could do it without military force … I don’t take anything off the table.”During the election campaign, Trump had said that he could end the Ukraine war within 24 hours, comments he more recently claimed were “a little bit sarcastic”. That has proved elusive and his tactics to force Russia and Ukraine into agreeing a ceasefire have so far been focused on bullying and pressurising Kyiv.Trump and his vice-president, JD Vance, berated Zelenskyy at the Oval Office a month ago, which was followed by Washington cutting off intelligence and military aid. Kyiv then signed up to the principle of a 30-day ceasefire if the Kremlin would reciprocate in return for intelligence and aid being restored.Putin said earlier this month that although he was in favour of a ceasefire, “there are nuances” and any halt in fighting should “remove the root causes of this crisis”, a sweeping but vague demand.The Russian president and his allies have called for the demilitarisation of Ukraine, insisted that the presence of western troops as peacekeepers would be unacceptable and demanded the full annexation of four regions, three of which it only partially occupies.Two people were killed and 25 were injured in and around Ukraine’s second city, Kharkiv, in Russian attacks on Saturday night and Sunday morning. A military hospital was among the buildings struck. Ukraine’s general staff denounced what it said was a “deliberate, targeted shelling”, a rare acknowledgement of military casualties.Trump’s intervention follows a difficult week for the White House, during which senior administration officials were criticised for discussing attacks on Houthi rebels in Yemen on the Signal messaging app, which is not authorised by the Pentagon.The highly sensitive discussion, which included bombing plans, leaked because a journalist from the Atlantic magazine was mistakenly added to the chat by the US national security adviser, Mike Waltz. More

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      in Elections

      Orbital Rocket Crashes After First Launch From Continental Europe

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      The rocket, developed by Isar Aerospace, lifted off from Norway’s Andøya Space Center and crashed about 30 seconds later. The test flight was part of efforts to make Europe a center for private satellite launches.The engine shuddered to life around half past noon local time on Sunday, and with a guttural roar, the 92-foot-tall Spectrum rocket lifted slowly away from its launch tower, marking the first liftoff of its kind on the European continent.The rocket, launched by Isar Aerospace from within the Arctic Circle at a spaceport on the icy Norwegian island of Andøya, was the first orbital flight outside of Russia to leave continental Europe. About 30 seconds after the rocket cleared the launchpad, it pitched to the side and plummeted back to earth.But Daniel Metzler, the chief executive of Isar Aerospace, was upbeat. He said in a statement that the test flight had “met all our expectations, achieving a great success,” despite the crash.“We had a clean liftoff, 30 seconds of flight and even got to validate our Flight Termination System,” Mr. Metzler said. The rocket fell directly into the sea, the launchpad was not damaged, and no one was harmed when the spacecraft crashed, he added.The Andøya Spaceport could not immediately be reached for comment. Earlier, it had posted on social media saying that “crisis management” had been activated following the crash, and that it was collaborating with the emergency services and Isar Aerospace.The test flight was seven years in the making for Isar Aerospace, a German-based company founded in 2018 with a mission to make satellite launches more accessible from Europe. European companies have been pushing ahead in space technology and research, exploring the potential of the space sector for defense, security and geopolitics.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      in US Politics

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

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