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    Americans and US food banks brace for Trump cuts: ‘Battling hunger is no longer a priority’

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    Americans are bracing for the impact of the largest cuts to the government’s food assistance program for low-income people in US history that have begun to take effect as a result of Donald Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act.Effective 1 October, the beginning of fiscal year 2026, funding for Snap-Ed, part of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (Snap) that provided funding for food banks across the US, is being eliminated. The cuts are part of the sweeping spending bill Trump signed in July.A report this month by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities noted “some low-income families will see their food assistance terminated or cut substantially (or will be denied benefits) this fall, though most current participants will face cuts when their SNAP eligibility is next recertified,” with estimates that 4 million Americans in a typical month will lose some or all of their Snap benefits when the cuts are fully implemented.A Snap recipient in Camden county, New Jersey, who works as a cake decorator at a small business and requested to remain anonymous, said their Snap benefits were cut off in September without receiving a notice.“Snap was my way to finally not pay half to three-quarters of my paycheck on groceries. Now, I have nothing in my house regularly and it just feels like no one wants to help people any more,” they said. “I only got a little over $110 a month, but it helped tremendously.”They said it’s made it more difficult to work at a job they love, but that doesn’t pay enough.Jessica Griffin of Fort Smith, Arkansas, a mother of three, said she lost her job about five months ago and has struggled to find another, with her family relying on her husband’s income.After rent and utility bills, there isn’t much left over to buy groceries and she doesn’t have reliable transportation to get to food banks, she said.“I used to be able to buy $100 worth of groceries a week to feed a family of five, now even with one child out of the house $100 will only go a couple days,” she said. “The rent rates are so high now as well as groceries that families can barely afford to feed their kids and keep a roof over their heads at the same time. So it almost feels like we have two options, to either live in a house or live on the street and not starve.”View image in fullscreenFunding cuts to states, which will be expected to share costs of Snap for the first time as well as cover more administrative costs, are phased for fiscal years 2027 and 2028, but several provisions and changes to Snap are being implemented as states have to grapple with drastic costs shifted on to them from the federal government.“States don’t have enough administrative staff or capacity to handle this,” said Gina Plata-Nino, interim Snap director at the Food Research and Action Center. “I think we’re on a downward path. Polling and data is showing that one of the biggest obstacles that people are having in being able to eat is just how expensive food is at the moment. This is a direct result of tariffs and other policy choices that the administration has made. It’s something that everyone, regardless of income, can understand.”The looming Snap cuts come as food prices are still rising under the Trump administration and are expected to continue rising due to tariffs and labor shortages in the food industry due to Trump’s immigration policies.From January 2022 to August 2025, overall food cost in the US increased by about 17.8%, according the consumer price index, and has increased 2.0% since January 2025, when Trump took office. Trump’s tariffs are expected to drive further increases, with food prices set to rise 3.4% in the short term and stay 2.5% higher in the long run, according to the Yale Budget Lab.Food banks have been struggling across the US to keep up with demand and manage rising food prices, while bracing for further cuts, higher prices, and a surge in demand once Snap cuts begin taking effect.At a food bank in Charlottesville, Virginia, Jane Colony Mills, executive director of Loaves & Fishes, said the food bank has “experienced a 20% increase in the numbers of people coming for food assistance in 2025, likely driven not only by the cost of groceries in our community, but by the overall cost of living in Charlottesville and Albemarle area.”She noted their food supply has decreased as well, since they rely on food that stores cannot sell, and have also been affected by cuts at the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) to programs that support food banks. Colony Mills noted Snap cuts haven’t taken effect yet in Virginia, but local social service departments are bracing for those reductions or cancellations starting 1 October.“People who rely on these incremental supports will be struggling even more to provide food for their households each month,” she added.In Washington, the Thurston County Food Bank said they are bracing for significant cuts to Snap that will increase demand and make it more difficult to meet the current demand, let alone handle increases. They have already had to lay off staff positions funded by the Snap-Ed program that was cut by the Trump administration.“We have been told to brace for cuts that could be as much as 20% to 25% of the food we received in prior years. For us, 25% is $1m worth of food in 2024 prices, so with rising food costs, we can assume that is a gap of well over a million dollars,” said executive director of the Thurston County Food Bank.Ahead of the cuts to Snap and rising food prices, the Trump administration announced the cancellation of the annual hunger survey that measures food insecurity in the US and food researchers at the USDA were put on leave.USDA deferred comment to a press release, where they claimed “these redundant, costly, politicized, and extraneous studies do nothing more than fear monger.”The decision is viewed by anti-hunger advocates as an effort by the Trump administration to obfuscate the impacts of their cuts to Snap and other policies affecting food insecurity for Americans.“By cancelling the survey, USDA is sending a signal that tracking and battling hunger is no longer a priority,” Eric Mitchell, president of the Alliance to End Hunger, said in a statement. “It is further troubling that the decision comes amid predictions that hunger may increase in the coming months and years. Hunger will not disappear simply because it is no longer tracked.” More

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      Trump’s take on a court decision on tariffs is bonkers – even for him | Steven Greenhouse

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      Just hours after an appeals court ruled that it was illegal for Donald Trump to impose his unpopular across-the-board tariffs on dozens of countries, he posted a frantic, over-the-top rant that declared: “If allowed to stand, this Decision would literally destroy the United States of America.”So here the president of the United States was asserting that if the courts torpedoed his tariffs, then the US, the most powerful nation on earth, would be destroyed, would “literally” be kaput. Trump seemed to suggest that court rulings that blocked his beloved tariffs would have the destructive power of, say, 100 hydrogen bombs.Call me naive, but I never cease to be amazed when Trump says such egregiously false and ludicrous things. OK, I sometimes forget that he’s the guy who said that noise from wind turbines causes cancer. After narrowly winning the presidency a second time notwithstanding the 30,573 Trump lies, falsehoods and misleading claims in his first term, Trump evidently thinks he can say anything, no matter how false or foolish, and get away with it. As part of his tariff fight, Trump also blurted this absurdity: if the courts don’t uphold his tariffs, “we would become a Third World Nation.”Trump’s statement that ending tariffs will destroy the US is totally bonkers because the US became the world’s richest nation and has largely prospered for nearly 250 years (despite occasional slumps) before Trump imposed his “Liberation Day” tariffs in April. In the months before then, the US had solid GDP growth, low unemployment and declining inflation – the Economist magazine even called the US economy “the envy of the world”. But now Trump says that if the courts give a thumbs down to his favorite plaything – I mean weapon – to bang other countries over the head with, it would end the US. Even Ramesh Ponnuru, editor of the conservative National Review, called that “lunatic stuff”.The truth is that if the courts block Trump’s across-the-board tariffs, that would be good news for the US economy. It would prevent Trump’s tariffs from further pushing up inflation and slowing economic growth. By giving a thumbs down to Trump’s tariffs, the courts might be doing him a huge economic and political favor because his tariffs, and the inflation they are fueling, have been dragging his dismal approval ratings even lower.On 29 August, the US court of appeals for the federal circuit in Washington DC ruled that Trump overstepped his authority when he invoked the International Emergency Economic Powers Act to impose his Liberation Day tariffs. The court said that act doesn’t give presidents the authority to slap sweeping tariffs on other countries. Trump has appealed the ruling to the supreme court, which might rule on the tariffs this fall.The court of appeals repeatedly noted that the constitution gives Congress, not presidents, the power to impose tariffs. It further noted that the Emergency Act doesn’t mention the word “tariffs” even once among the tools the act authorizes presidents to use to deal with emergency trade problems. (That appellate ruling overturned the bulk of Trump’s tariffs: the blanket 10% to 50% tariffs on exports from more than 70 countries. The court didn’t rule on Trump’s product-specific tariffs on steel, aluminum and auto parts.)As part of his conniptions over the appeals court ruling, Trump also warned of fiscal disaster, complaining that the US would lose hundreds of billions of dollars if his tariffs were halted. But Trump conveniently forgets that it’s embattled US consumers who will be paying most of those hundreds of billions as they pay Trump’s tariffs, essentially import taxes on furniture, cars, coffee, electronics and other foreign goods.In using his hysterical language, Trump evidently had one audience in mind: the supreme court’s six conservative justices who have repeatedly ruled his way. Trump’s goal is evidently to scare the bejesus out of those justices – he hopes that by shrieking “You’ll Destroy the Country If You Rule Against Me,” that will persuade them to overturn the appellate court’s decision and uphold his tariffs. (The appellate court let the tariffs remain in force to allow time for appeal.)So far in his second term, Trump has a remarkable batting average with the supreme court’s six rightwing justices, who seem astonishingly subservient and supine vis-a-vis the most authoritarian, power-grabbing president in US history. The justices have used their emergency docket to grant Trump administration requests 18 times in a row, often vacating injunctions that lower courts put in place to stop what they saw as Trump’s rampant lawlessness. In repeatedly siding with Trump, the supreme court has scrapped lower court injunctions in several highly controversial cases, provisionally letting Trump fire the chair of the National Labor Relations Board, gut the federal Department of Education, and give Doge – with its staff of twentysomethings – access to the highly private social security information of hundreds of millions of Americans.Trump is no doubt worried that the supreme court, though submissive so far, will overturn his tariffs. Many conservative and libertarian scholars and lawyers oppose his tariffs as both harmful and illegal. Not only do they dislike the tariffs for pushing up inflation and disrupting global supply chains, but they see Trump’s tariffs as anti-free market and mucking up the US and world economies.When Trump announced his Liberation Day tariffs, he invoked a national emergency, saying the US trade deficit and other countries’ tariffs were urgent problems undermining the US economy. Admittedly the trade deficit and other countries’ tariffs are a problem, but in no way do they constitute a national emergency, especially since the US economy was seen as “the envy of the world” before Trump went hog wild with his tariffs. (There’s no denying that the flood of imports from China and other low-wage nations badly damaged many communities in America’s industrial heartland two and three decades ago.) Wouldn’t it be great if, in this tariff litigation, the supreme court stood up to Trump and issued a candid ruling that told him: “Sorry, Mr President, your supposed national emergency is hogwash, a pretext for you to pursue your destructive tariff obsession”?The supreme court’s justices shouldn’t let themselves be cowed, bullied or fooled by Trump’s talk that the nation will be destroyed if they nix his tariffs. Trump is like the boy who cried wolf, forever crying catastrophe if he doesn’t get his way. It’s time for the court and the nation to wise up to Trump’s lies, hype and shenanigans.Virtually every non-Trumpian economist agrees that Trump’s tariffs have hurt the US by increasing inflation, undermining GDP growth, creating huge headaches for corporations and seriously damaging the US’s relations with other nations. The justices shouldn’t buy Trump’s calamitous warnings that if they overturn his tariffs, the world will end.If the justices declare his tariffs illegal, it certainly won’t be a “disaster” for the US, as Trump has claimed. But it might be a disaster for Trump’s ego and for his dangerous dream of having an authoritarian presidency wholly unchecked by the other branches of government.If the supreme court rules against Trump’s tariffs, let’s hope that will serve as a much-needed first step to the court’s developing the backbone to rule many times more against Trump’s authoritarian and lawless actions.

      Steven Greenhouse is a journalist and author, focusing on labour and the workplace, as well as economic and legal issues More

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      As Trump’s tariff regime becomes clear, Americans may start to foot the bill

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      Burying the hatchet with Brussels, Donald Trump – flanked by the leader of the European Commission – hailed a bold new era of transatlantic relations, an ambitious economic pact, and declared: “This was a very big day for free and fair trade.”That was seven years ago. And then on Sunday, the US president – flanked by a different leader of the European Commission – hailed another new era of transatlantic relations, another economic pact and declared: “I think it’s the biggest deal ever made.”Trumpian hyperbole can typically be relied upon as long as he’s in the room, at the lectern or typing into Truth Social. What matters after that is the underlying detail – and we have very little, beyond a handful of big numbers designed to grab headlines.What we do know, as a result of this deal, is that European exports to the US will face a blanket 15% tariff: a tax expected, at least in part, to be passed along to US consumers. The price of key products shipped from the EU, from cars to medicine and wine, is about to come into sharp focus.This pact is not unique. Trump’s agreement with Japan also hits Japanese exports to the US with a 15% tariff. Most British exports to the US face a 10% tariff under his deal with the UK.A string of countries without such accords, including Brazil, Canada and South Korea, are set to face even higher US tariffs from Friday. The Trump administration currently has a blanket 10% levy in place for US imports, although the president threatened to raise this to “somewhere in the 15 to 20% range” earlier this week.Ignore, for a moment, the chaos and the noise. Put to one side the unpredictable stewardship of the world’s largest economy, and its ties with the world. And forget the many U-turns, pauses and reprieves which have followed bold pronouncements, again and again and again.If you, like many businesses in the US and across the world, are struggling to keep up, take a step back and look at a single number. Since Trump took office, the average effective US tariff rate on all goods from overseas has soared to its highest level in almost a century: 18.2%, according to the Budget Lab at Yale.Trump argues this extraordinary jump in tariffs will bring in trillions of dollars to the US federal government. On his watch, tariffs have so far brought in tens of billions of dollars more in revenue this year than at the same point in 2024.But who picks up the bill? The president and his allies have position this fundamental shift in economic policy as a historic move away from taxing Americans toward taxing the world. But in reality, everyone pays.Tariffs are typically paid at the border, by the importer of the product affected. If the tariff on that product suddenly goes from 0% to 15%, the importer – as you’d expected – will try to pass it on. Every company at every stage of the supply chain will quite literally try to pass the buck, as much as possible.And the very end of the chain, economists expect prices will ultimately rise for consumers. The Budget Lab at Yale estimates the short-term impact of Trump’s tariffs so far is a 1.8% rise in US prices: equivalent to an average income loss of $2,400 per US household.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionBig firms that have so far done their best to hold prices steady amid the blizzard of tariff uncertainty are now starting to warn of increases. Inflation, which Trump claims is very low in the US, picked up in June.The president appeared to reluctantly reckon with the reality that Americans may start to foot the bill for his tariffs before setting off for Scotland late last week.Asked about the prospect of using revenue from tariffs to distribute “rebate” checks to US consumers, Trump said: “We’re thinking about that, actually … We’re thinking about a rebate, because we have so much money coming in, from tariffs, that a little rebate for people of a certain income level might be very nice.”Given what inflation did to Joe Biden’s electoral fortunes, and Trump’s keen eye for populist policies, it’s hardly a stretch to imagine those cheques – signed by Donald J Trump – landing in bank accounts in time for the midterm elections next November.And such a move would, indeed, be very nice. Especially as it appears increasingly likely that, after this week, Americans will probably be paying more for almost everything. More

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      Trump says Fed chair would resign if asked and condemns him over interest rates

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      Donald Trump early on Thursday condemned the Federal Reserve chair, Jerome Powell, for not lowering US interest rates, and expressed a wish for him to be gone from his role.The US president lambasted Powell as “always too late and wrong” in a post on his Truth Social platform. Trump noted that the European Central Bank (ECB) was poised on Thursday to lower interest rates again, without mentioning that the body has been responding to the chaos caused by Trump’s initiatives on tariffs.Addressing reporters later in the day, Trump claimed Powell would resign if he asked him to. Powell himself has said that he would not resign if asked to do so by the president.Trump has been pressuring Powell to cut US interest rates for months, even though the central bank is independent of the administration in setting monetary policy and the White House typically does not publicly lobby the Federal Reserve.The ECB had been expected to cut interest rates for the seventh time this year in order to prop up economic growth, and then did so not long before US markets were due to open. Powell enraged Trump on Wednesday night by warning that the president’s sweeping tariffs could raise inflation. That would make the Fed even more hesitant to cut interest rates.Christine Lagarde, the ECB president, in explaining the reasons why it has – unlike the Fed – cut interest rates, said “the economic outlook is clouded by exceptional uncertainty” because of Trump’s tariffs, which constitute a negative demand shock.Lagarde was speaking after cutting the ECB’s main deposit rate by 25 basis points to 2.25%.Europe had been preparing another interest rate cut following the global financial turmoil caused by Trump’s tariffs push, in which he has gone back and forth on whether, when and how deeply to tax imports from other countries, and on which countries, since he returned to the White House for a second term.He retreated sharply earlier this month from his decision to impose tariffs worldwide, pausing most of the charges for 90 days, although most notably not on China, after markets plunged and US government bonds – traditionally seen as one of the world’s safest financial assets – had suffered a dramatic sell-off. Wall Street chiefs and other experts also forecast a heightened likelihood of recession. Economists polled by Reuters on Thursday put US recession odds at 45%.After insisting for days that he would hold firm on his aggressive trade strategy, unveiled in full on 2 April, which he dubbed “liberation day”, Trump announced on 9 April that all countries that had not retaliated against US tariffs would receive a reprieve – and only face a blanket US tariff of 10% – until July.Powell on Wednesday said the US economy was well-positioned but added that Trump’s tariffs were likely to cause “at least a temporary rise in inflation. The inflationary effects could also be more persistent.”He indicated that the prospect of sweeping tariffs on virtually every trade partner could put the Fed in the unenviable position of having to choose between tackling inflation and unemployment.The World Trade Organization, meanwhile, warned that Trump’s tariffs would send international trade into reverse this year, depressing global economic growth.The International Monetary Fund (IMF) managing director, Kristalina Georgieva, said the global outlook was also weakening in the face of the Trump tariff onslaught, adding central banks like the Federal Reserve needed to remain agile and credible.“Resilience is being tested again – by the reboot of the global trading system,” she said.Trump also said as part of his Truth Social post at daybreak on Thursday that “Powell’s termination cannot come fast enough”. He dubbed him, further in the post, “Too Late” and put forward the argument that prices were coming down, from oil to eggs.Trump nominated Powell to become Fed chair during his first term in the White House, in 2018, and Joe Biden renominated him during his term in the White House, in 2022. The US Senate confirms the chair and the US president cannot terminate the head of the Federal Reserve before the end of their four-year fixed stints. Powell is in place until next spring.The US central bank has held interest rates steady at 4.25% to 4.5% since the start of this year.Trump said in his post: “The ECB is expected to cut interest rates for the 7th time, and yet, “Too Late” Jerome Powell of the Fed, who is always TOO LATE AND WRONG, yesterday issued a report which was another, and typical, complete “mess!” Oil prices are down, groceries (even eggs!) are down, and the USA is getting RICH ON TARIFFS. Too Late should have lowered Interest Rates, like the ECB, long ago, but he should certainly lower them now. Powell’s termination cannot come fast enough!”The New York Fed president, John Williams, spoke to Fox Business on TV on Thursday and backed up Powell’s wariness on rates.“I don’t see any need to change the setting of the Fed funds rate any time soon … It’s really about collecting information, understanding better what’s happening in the economy during the rest of this year, understanding kind of how the uncertainty plays out,” Williams said.Meanwhile, Politico, citing unnamed sources, reported after Trump’s post that the treasury secretary, Scott Bessent, had been cautioning White House officials against any attempt to fire Powell, for which there is no tested mechanism, saying it would risk destabilizing financial markets.And there was a fresh alarm bell sounded on the risk of stagflation, in which high inflation combines with high unemployment amid stagnant economic growth.“A sudden crystallization of the threat to Fed independence would both intensify market stress and shift it in more of a stagflationary direction with a sharp increase in tail risk,” Krishna Guha, vice-chair of an arm of the financial advisory firm Evercore ISI, said in a note.Reuters contributed reporting More

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      Is Trump driving the US into a recession? – in charts

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      Prospects for the US economy have cooled significantly in a matter of months. After outperforming its international peers last year, warning lights are flashing on a dashboard of economic indicators as analysts warn that Donald Trump’s erratic approach is hitting the world’s largest economy.Fears of a US recession this year are growing, in what is being called a “Trumpcession”, amid a sharp decline in business and consumer confidence as the president threatens punitive import tariffs on US allies and enemies alike.Most economists reckon a recession – defined as two consecutive quarters of shrinking economic output – can be avoided. But it is clear there are storm clouds gathering within the president’s first 100 days back in the White House.GDPUS growth in gross domestic product (GDP) had outpaced international peers in recent years, and since the Covid pandemic in particular – helped by the Biden administration pumping billions of dollars into the economy through the Inflation Reduction Act. The former president did not get much credit, though, as voters felt the squeeze from the period of high inflation triggered by the pandemic and Russia’s war in Ukraine.This week, the Atlanta Federal Reserve’s GDPNow, which measures GDP economic growth in real time, suggested the US economy would contract at an annual rate of 2% in the first quarter. However, this widely followed indicator can be volatile, and it is heavily influenced by the US trade deficit, which soared in January.Trade balanceThe US goods trade gap surged to $153.3bn in January. This was driven by record import volumes, an increase of $36.2bn to $329.5bn in total, as US businesses rushed to bring shipments into the country to avoid potential tariffs.US gold importsA significant driver of the import rise was inbound shipments of “finished metal shapes”, which include bars of gold. The trend is also attributed to traders rushing to get ahead of potential US tariffs. A widening trade deficit would normally weigh on a country’s GDP, because imports are subtracted from the measurement. But because gold bought to sit in a vault is not consumed or used in production, it is excluded.This means the Atlanta Fed is likely to be overestimating the hit to first-quarter GDP. Still, there are other signs that the US economy is cooling.InflationTrump had promised to “bring prices down, starting on day one” and “cut energy costs in half within 12 months after taking office”.Official figures show the headline annual rate as measured by the consumer price index was 2.8% in February, after an unexpected rise to 3% in January from 2.9% in December. Energy costs are down by 0.2% on an annual basis.The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) said on Monday that Trump’s trade wars risked stoking inflation. It increased its US inflation forecast for 2025 to 2.8%, up from a previous estimate of 2.1% made in December.EmploymentThe US jobs market has boomed in recent years, and the unemployment rate dropped to 3.5% in early 2023, the lowest level since the year of the first moon landing in 1969. The rate has ticked higher in recent months, but remains historically low at 4.1%. This has been spurred by rapid growth in the numbers of jobs being added to the economy.Wage growth has also strengthened, and has remained above inflation since early 2023, helping households to rebuild some of their purchasing power lost during the recent rise in living costs.StocksThe US stock market has powered to record highs in recent years. Tech stocks and the “magnificent seven” – Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, Meta, Nvidia and Tesla – have led the charge in particular, buoyed up by investors betting on the growth of artificial intelligence.The Biden administration oversaw a strong stock market performance, helped by the economic recovery from the pandemic. However, Wall Street surged after Trump’s election victory in November, amid investor expectations for tax cuts that could increase company profits. Markets have been rattled in Trump’s first 100 days amid concerns over his erratic approach to the economy and the threat of tariffs hitting growth and stoking inflation.The US dollarThe US dollar had been rising sharply against other leading currencies, reflecting the strength of the economy and investor concerns that Trump’s policies could stoke inflation. Tariffs pushing up the price of imported goods, driving up inflation, could force the US Federal Reserve to hold back from cutting interest rates.With inflation having fallen back, the Fed cut its benchmark rate last year by a whole percentage point – from a range between 5.25% and 5% to between 4.25% and 4.5%. Higher inflation could limit its capacity for further rate cuts.A dramatically slowing economy could force the central bank to take action to lower borrowing costs. This has led to a pullback in the dollar in recent weeks.Washington has long held a “strong dollar” policy in the view that it supports the purchasing power of US consumers, helping to keep inflation low. The dollar is also used as the currency of choice for world trade and underpins the financial system. The US Treasury secretary, Scott Bessent, has said this approach is not changing. But Trump has argued that a weaker dollar would benefit US manufacturing by making exports cheaper for overseas buyers.Prices of inputs for manufactured productsBusiness surveys have shown a marked increase in input costs for US manufacturers, providing an early warning sign for growth and inflation. The price gauge on the Institute for Supply Management (ISM) manufacturing purchasing managers’ index (PMI) shows raw material costs rose sharply at the start of this year, in the first signs of supplier difficulties and discussions about who will pay for tariffs. The rise in input costs could dent US manufacturing output, and is likely to be passed on to consumers in the form of higher prices for finished goods.Consumer spendingUS consumer spending unexpectedly dropped in January for the first time in almost two years, with a fall of 0.2%, the biggest decrease in nearly four years. Cold temperatures in some parts of the country, as well as wildfires in California, were likely to have hit spending. However, some analysts warn consumer sentiment has taken a knock amid mounting concern over the strength of the economy. More

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      Trump can’t fulfil his promise to fix the economy, so he’s blaming workers instead

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      During his presidential campaign, Donald Trump never missed an opportunity to harp on inflation, promising that “on day one” he would “end inflation” and lower the costs of groceries, cars and other common goods.Well, it’s day 40, and inflation saw its largest increase in over a year. Blink and you might have missed that Trump and his fellow Republicans have largely abandoned their concerns about inflation to focus on government “waste”.While Trump hasn’t fulfilled his campaign promise, he is living up to his usual brand of politics: the blame game. And this blame, as usual, is rooted in generating anger against “undeserving” Americans.This time, the undeserving are federal workers and poor people who get nominal benefits from the federal government – like Snap, which administers food stamps, and Medicaid. To fix so-called waste, the president apparently has no choice but to crack down on spending (and enlist help from Elon Musk), an issue that barely registered in the public consciousness in the past 10 years but is somehow now a rampant problem, according to Trump.There are policy frameworks backing Trump and the GOP’s divisiveness, including the well-known Project 2025 and a lesser-known House proposal published in 2024, Fiscal Sanity to Save America, that centers government “waste” instead of corporate greed. And now, with Republicans controlling the House, Senate and presidency, Republicans have the power to act on cuts that will harm millions of Americans.Musk and Trump, of course, have already worked to cut thousands of federal workers’ jobs. And with the Trump-backed budget bill the House passed on Wednesday, including $800bn in likely cuts from Medicaid, Republicans are one step closer to bulldozing America’s already paltry social safety net.This isn’t just at the federal level. Republicans have been floating proposals in state governments that would restrict healthcare, housing and food benefits instead of making it easier to afford things.The party of “freedom” is endorsing government home visits to surveil “fraud” in all US states (according to page 43 of the GOP’s “Fiscal Sanity” plan). The party of “family values” is also turning its attention to school lunch and breakfast programs, which it claims are subject to “widespread” fraud and abuse (page 46). The party that wants to “make America healthy again” is floating restrictions to Medicaid that would make recipients work at least 80 hours a month, a proposal that wastes government time and money to verify work requirements and which would probably just deter people from getting healthcare, as a flailing GOP work requirement experiment in Georgia has shown.And as Trump touts himself as an anti-war president, his proposals belie the fact that much of these spending cuts will now be diverted to defense contracts and other military and border spending, not on improving the economic lives of everyday workers to whom he made sweeping campaign promises.Meanwhile, straightforward proposals to simply give people more money (which does have evidence of working), such as universal basic income, would be outright banned at the federal level under the GOP plan. So as the cost of living is primed to increase, Republicans have ready-made excuses to justify cutting billions of dollars from these programs, an exceptional sort of cruelty.Of course, no one wants to see public money being spent wastefully or fraudulently. But incessant focus on “waste” stems from faulty, selective evidence. According to reports from Musk’s own so-called “department of government efficiency”, nearly 40% of cancelled contracts to cut costs are expected to yield no savings. It also stems from something else that does have proven results: the utility of public outrage.Focusing on extreme examples and “undeserving” government beneficiaries animates America’s existing propensity for divisiveness, giving Trump and his party wide latitude to wreck the lives of millions of people who don’t engage in fraud, waste or abuse. When Reagan wanted tax cuts for the rich, we saw the “welfare queen” trope. When neoliberal Democrats and Republicans wanted to cut public housing at the federal and local level, we saw extreme stories about the criminality of people who lived there. We cannot waste the money of hard-working Americans on these “others”. It’s a narrative – often hinging on racism and sexism – that has great outcomes for America’s capitalist class and the politicians who support them.So instead of protesting against the rising cost of living or making demands for universal healthcare, federal job guarantees, increased labor rights, or Snap benefits for all, or cutting the bloated defense budget and increasing taxes on the super-rich to pay for the nominal social welfare benefits that other industrial countries have normalized, working-class Americans are engaging in petty debates about what kinds of groceries other working-class Americans should buy and deputizing themselves to root out “abuse” among other workers.Republicans redirecting blame towards people who are suffering in this economy under the guise of “waste” is a distraction. As inflation is poised to worsen under Trump, Americans would be wise to focus their anger more on the elected officials and billionaires who profit from their pain than on each other.

      Malaika Jabali is a 2024 New America fellow, journalist and author of It’s Not You, It’s Capitalism: Why It’s Time to Break Up and How to Move On More

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      The forgotten faces of Christmas in China | Letter

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      Reading “made in China” on his toys for the first time, my young Chinese nephew asked me innocently whether Santa was Chinese. Oddly, like Santa’s elves, toy assembly workers in China remain remote and faceless to most of us in the west. In Britain, most Asian migrants work backstage, too, kept in kitchens or workshops, taking the first and last train, earning low wages and hidden from our eyes. In many countries this Christmas, instead of being acknowledged for alleviating our cost of living crisis, those foreign workers will be vilified for stealing our jobs and threatened with tariffs whose consequences economists are still not certain about.It is always easier to blame people who remain invisible and voiceless. Although our world has never been so interconnected, and hence our nations so reliant on each other’s labour, Chinese society remains poorly understood. In the west, Chinese people remain enigmatic, the ever-silent and under-represented minority. When scrutinised, it is often with a political lens as well, maybe showing some cognitive bias.The question today should be how much value the free movement of products and people has brought to our nations and how to ensure that it keeps doing so in the future. As evidenced by world history, curiosity and interest towards foreign societies has often been an engine of progress. Christmas is a time to reach out and be thankful to one another: it is hoped that this spirit will continue to animate our politicians and societies in this coming year.Hugo WongAuthor of America’s Lost Chinese; London More

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      Trump wants you to believe that the US economy is doing terribly. It’s untrue | Steven Greenhouse

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      If Donald Trump wins next week’s election, it would be the first time in US history that a candidate wins based on such a huge lie – his falsehood that we have “the worst economy ever”. The former president’s big lie has distorted the views of millions of Americans, wrongly convincing many that the US economy is in bad shape.There’s no denying that many Americans are struggling economically and that inflation was painfully high back in 2022, but inflation is far lower now, and most economists agree that our economy is strong. The unemployment rate is low, inflation is way down, economic growth is solid, and job growth has been remarkably strong. Indeed, the country has added nearly 18m jobs – a record – under the Biden-Harris administration. Not only that, median household income has climbed to $80,610, higher than it was in Trump’s last year in office.“In the 35 years I’ve been an economist, I’ve rarely seen an economy performing as well as it is,” Mark Zandi, chief economist of Moody’s Analytics, said recently. “I’d give it an A+.” But the US public, still upset about the surge in inflation several years ago, sees things very differently: 62% say the economy is in bad shape, while just 38% say it’s in good shape, according to an October AP-NORC poll.The public holds this negative view even though there’s been very good news for blue-collar workers: the US has added more than 700,000 factory jobs under the Biden-Harris administration, far more than during Trump’s presidency, indeed more than under any president since the 1970s. There’s also been good news for small businesses – a record 19m new business applications have been filed under Biden. There’s also good news for the wealthy – the stock market has climbed to record levels, which is Wall Street’s way of saying the economy is in excellent shape. Let’s not forget that Trump warned that if Biden was elected president, the stock market would crash. Wrong again, Donald. Under Biden, the Dow Jones Industrial Average is 36% higher than when Trump left office, and the S&P 500 is 53% higher.Trump’s repeated claim that today’s economy is the worst ever shows either an appalling ignorance of history or an appalling contempt for the truth. The truth is that the economy was in far worse shape during Trump’s last year in office, when the unemployment rate soared to 14.8% during the pandemic, compared with 4.1% now. Moreover, there were many other times when the economy was in worse shape – it was worse during the 2008 recession under George W Bush, far worse during the 1980-81 and 1974-75 recessions, and catastrophically worse during the Great Depression of the 1930s. When Trump tells his Maga crowds that today’s economy is the worst ever, he’s taking everyone for an idiot.The US economy has grown the fastest among major industrial nations since the pandemic began. Our economy has grown twice as fast as Canada’s, three times as fast as France’s and Japan’s, and four times as fast as Britain’s. Under Biden, the average unemployment rate has been lower than under any president since Lyndon Johnson.If Harris loses to Trump, historians and economists will long debate why she lost while Ronald Reagan was re-elected in a landslide in 1984 even though unemployment was far higher back then (7.2% versus 4.1% today), inflation was higher (4% versus 2.4% today), and the Federal Reserve’s interest rates were far higher (10% versus 5% today). One thing working for Reagan was that GDP growth was strong in 1984.Don’t get me wrong, today’s economy has serious problems. Millions of Americans are struggling, but it’s wrong to blame Biden and Harris for that. I’ve been writing about America’s workers and economy for more than 40 years – from Reagan to Clinton to Trump to Biden – and under every president, millions of American have struggled economically. Trump makes believe that far more Americans are struggling now than ever before, but that’s just not true. Take this important statistic: 11.1% of Americans currently fall below the poverty line. That’s essentially the same percentage as under Trump and is only slightly above its lowest point in half a century.Many Americans say the economy is in poor shape mainly because of their lingering dismay about the high inflation from mid-2021 to mid-2023. But they may not know that wages have risen faster than inflation over the past two years and that real wages are higher than before the pandemic. Trump blames Biden and Harris for causing inflation, but they weren’t the cause. The two main causes were the pandemic’s closing factories and disrupting supply chains worldwide and Russia’s war against Ukraine, which increased energy and food prices. Americans complain that gas prices are higher, but that’s Vladimir Putin’s and Opec’s fault, not Biden’s or Harris’s. US oil production has hit record levels.Housing affordability remains a big problem. Not only have housing prices soared, but high interest rates – which are finally coming down – have made it far too difficult for many Americans to buy a house. Again, the housing squeeze is not Biden’s or Harris’s fault; it was caused by a huge slowdown in housing production that began during the 2008 recession.It’s unfortunate that Trump’s dishonesty and deceit too often make us focus on his lies rather on something far more important: the future, and what a second Trump term would mean for the country. Many economists warn of disaster if Trump wins. They warn that his plan to impose tariffs or taxes on all imported goods will send inflation soaring and ignite a dangerous trade war that could cause a recession and throw millions out of work. Economists also warn that Trump’s plans, including his plan to slash taxes on the wealthy and corporations, not only will increase the federal debt by a colossal $7.8tn, but could bankrupt the social security system and lead to a 33% across-the-board cut in social security benefits.No wonder 23 Nobel Prize-winning economists signed a recent letter calling Trump’s economic agenda “counterproductive” and warning that it “will lead to higher prices, larger deficits, and greater inequality”.In contrast to Trump, Kamala Harris has specific plans to improve the economy and help Americans cope with high prices. She has pledged to build 3m new housing units to help bring down housing prices. She also plans to give $25,000 in down payment assistance to first-time homebuyers. To help with the high cost of raising a family, she has called for creating a $3,600 tax credit per child and $6,000 for newborns. Recognizing how expensive caregiving needs can be, she wants to create a trailblazing Medicare at Home program to help pay for care for ageing parents.Nobel-winning economists said Harris’s economic agenda is “vastly superior” to Trump’s and “will improve our nation’s” employment opportunities, health, investment and fairness.American voters have a clear choice. They can choose Harris’s agenda, which promises a stronger, fairer economy, or Trump’s agenda, which will bring a worse, less stable economy with higher prices and less fairness.Unlike Trump, I’ll be honest and won’t claim that his economic agenda will bring the worst economy ever, even though his agenda looks plenty dangerous.

      Steven Greenhouse is a journalist and author, focusing on labour and the workplace More

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      Trump is falsely blaming Harris for high prices. His plans will cause huge inflation | Steven Greenhouse

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      As the presidential campaign enters the home stretch, one of Donald Trump’s most dishonest – and effective – attacks is that Kamala Harris is to blame for inflation.That attack makes no sense. Several things caused a surge in inflation, but the US vice-president wasn’t one of them. Blame inflation on the pandemic or on Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine, but don’t blame it on Harris. Blaming her for inflation makes as much sense as blaming her for the leak in your roof. In seeking to blame Harris for inflation, Trump is absurdly trying to turn her – a vice-president who, like other veeps, has very little power – into some all-powerful economic tsar who somehow controls everything from egg prices to gasoline prices.Any American who is truly concerned about inflation should be much more worried about Trump than about Harris. She is far more serious about fighting inflation and helping households cope with the high cost of living. What’s more, Trump’s plan to impose steep tariffs on all imported goods will significantly push up prices and hit consumers hard, especially less wealthy consumers.If Trump is elected and implements his tariffs and other plans, inflation will probably – and quickly – rise to an uncomfortable 6% to 9.3% per year (from the current 2.5%), according to a respected thinktank, with prices climbing a very painful 20% to 28% during Trump’s four years in office. That means there’s a good chance that inflation would rise more in a second Trump term than it has under Joe Biden. Not only that, economists say the higher prices caused by Trump’s tariffs will cost the typical American household from $2,600 to $3,900 a year. Ouch.Trump blames Harris for causing “the worst inflation in American history”. Comments like that insult everyone’s intelligence and show that Trump knows zilch about American history. Inflation was far worse in the years immediately after the second world war and far worse in the late 1970s and early 1980s.More absurdity: JD Vance recently blamed Harris for higher egg prices, even though we’ve been repeatedly told that bird flu and the loss of more than 100 million chickens were what caused egg prices to soar. (In fact, the not-always-truthful Vance embarrassed himself by blaming Harris for $4-a-dozen egg prices while he stood in front of egg cartons marked $2.99 for a dozen.)Instead of listening to Trump’s attacks about inflation, every American should be rejoicing that inflation has come way down – back to nearly 2%. If we look honestly at inflation, we see that two main factors fueled the spike in inflation back in 2021 and 2022. (Neither of those factors is named Kamala Harris.)The first factor was the pandemic, which closed thousands of factories worldwide and badly disrupted supply chains, causing prices of everything from furniture to cars to soar.The second factor was Putin’s war against Ukraine, which pushed up agricultural prices around the world because Ukraine is a major grain and fertilizer exporter. That war also caused oil and gas prices to soar because Russia is a huge energy exporter and the war disrupted energy exports.There was another important factor behind inflation. Many corporations took advantage of the situation by raising prices far higher than necessary. This “greedflation” jacked up corporate profits while hammering consumers. The Economic Policy Institute, a progressive thinktank, said these moves to boost corporate profits caused one-third of the growth in prices since the pandemic began.Under Biden, Congress enacted the American Rescue Plan, which gave an important boost to our pandemic-plagued economy and sent checks to millions of households to help them weather the pandemic. Thanks to that ambitious plan, the US under Biden has had far stronger economic growth than other G7 countries while also having the lowest average unemployment rate under any president since Lyndon Johnson. Indeed, the 16.2m jobs added under Biden are a record, far more than were added under any previous president in a four-year term.The American Rescue Plan was a huge success: the billions of dollars it put in people’s pockets contributed modestly to inflation, but far less than other factors did. Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Analytics, has said: “There’s a long list of reasons for the high inflation. At the top of the list is the pandemic and the Russian war … [the American Rescue Plan is] at the bottom of the list.”The truth is, the US economy is in good shape, even though many people are unhappy because prices are considerably higher than when the pandemic began. Many Americans fail to realize that wages have been rising faster than prices.As for what will happen to prices in the future, economists are far more worried about Trump than Harris. They fear that Trump’s promised tariffs will send prices shooting upwards and trigger a huge trade war that could drag the US economy into recession. Trump has talked up two economic policies: big tax cuts for the richest 1% and corporations and, second, steep tariffs – up to 20% on all imports, from TVs to shoes to bananas – and a 60% tariff on imports from China.Trump says foreign companies will pay for those tariffs even though economists keep saying he’s 100% wrong on that. American consumers will pay for those tariffs in the form of higher prices. Economists warn that a second Trump term will dangerously increase inflation through his tariffs, through his plans that will cause the budget deficit to soar, and through his threats to limit the Federal Reserve’s ability to reduce inflation. Sixteen Nobel-prize winning economists have warned that Trump’s policies “will reignite” inflation and have a “destabilizing effect” on our economy.Unlike Trump, Harris has serious plans to fight against higher prices. Seeing how housing prices have soared (largely because builders haven’t built enough homes since 2008), Harris has a bold plan to build 3m new housing units nationwide. She also wants to give a $25,000 down payment subsidy to first-time homebuyers.To battle high grocery prices, Harris has vowed to crack down on price-gouging by food suppliers and supermarket chains. She also wants the government to do more to reduce bloated prescription drug prices, in the same way Biden has chopped insulin prices to $35 a month for seniors.Recognizing how expensive it is to raise a family, Harris has called for creating an annual $3,600 tax credit per child and a $6,000 credit in a newborn’s first year. She is also pushing for a trailblazing measure: to subsidize childcare so that no family spends more than 7% of its income on childcare.Trump is once again attacking people for what he’s guilty of. He is falsely attacking Harris for causing inflation, while he is the one whose economic plans will cause inflation to climb skyward.

      Steven Greenhouse, a senior fellow at the Century Foundation, is an American labor and workplace journalist and writer More