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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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      Stock markets rise as Trump backtracks on high China tariffs and firing Fed chair

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      Stock markets have risen around the world after Donald Trump said his tariffs on China would come down “substantially” and he had “no intention” of firing the chair of the US central bank, Jerome Powell.Weeks of tough talk on trade from White House officials have rattled investors and Trump now appears to be softening his tone. The president told reporters in Washington on Tuesday he planned to be “very nice” to China in trade talks and that tariffs could drop in both countries if they could reach a deal, adding: “It will come down substantially, but it won’t be zero.”Overnight in Asia, Japan’s Nikkei rose by nearly 2%, Hong Kong’s Hang Seng was up 2.4% and the South Korean Kospi gained 1.6%.The rally spread to Europe in early trading on Wednesday, with the UK’s FTSE 100 index up 1.6%, while the Italian FTSE MIB rose by 1.1%. Germany’s Dax gained 2.6% and France’s Cac 2.1%.Meanwhile, US stocks opened on a high Wednesday morning, with the Dow rallying over 800 points, and the Nasdaq Composite up over 3%. The rally stalled in the afternoon but all the major stock markets managed to end the day higher.On Wednesday, the US treasury secretary, Scott Bessent, also took a softer, optimistic tone on China in remarks delivered at the Institute of International Finance in Washington DC, saying that China “knows it needs to change”.“If China is serious on less dependence on export-led manufacturing growth and rebalancing toward a domestic economy … let’s rebalance together,” Bessent said. “This is an incredible opportunity.”Bessent told investors in a private meeting on Tuesday that he expects a “de-escalation” of the trade war between China and the US in the “very near future”.“‘America First’ does not mean America alone. To the contrary, it is a call for deeper collaboration and mutual respect among trade partners,” Bessent said on Wednesday.Investor confidence also grew after Trump told reporters he would not fire Powell, the chair of the US Federal Reserve, reversing the previous day’s losses triggered by the president calling the central bank boss a “major loser”.The president has criticised the Fed chair repeatedly for refusing to cut interest rates and last week hinted that he believed he could dismiss Powell before his term as the head of the central bank comes to an end in May next year.Trump wrote on his social media platform, Truth Social, last week that Powell’s termination “could not come fast enough”, after the Fed chair raised concerns about the impact of trade tariffs on the American economy.However, the suggestion from the White House that the US central bank will remain independent helped stocks to rise on Wednesday, as well as the prospect of lower tariffs on Chinese imports to the US.The US dollar, which hit a three-year low on Tuesday before recovering, rose by 0.25% against a basket of major currencies.Oil prices also rose on Wednesday, with Brent crude rising above $68 (£51) a barrel amid hopes that lower tariffs will be less damaging to the global economy. The rise was also led by new US sanctions targeting Iranian liquefied petroleum gas and the crude oil shipping magnate Seyed Asadoollah Emamjomeh.Meanwhile, gold, which is traditionally viewed by investors as a safe haven asset during volatile periods, retreated from the new high of $3,500 (£2,620) an ounce it hit on Tuesday, to trade at about $3,307. More

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      From peppercorns to plastic forks: US businesses that rely on Chinese products reel from Trump tariffs

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      Chang Chang, a Sichuan restaurant in Washington DC, was already noticing that some of its business had dropped off after tens of thousands of federal workers living in the area lost their jobs. But the recent tariff rate hikes mark an even greater blow for the restaurant.Sichuan peppercorns, which create the signature numbing spice of the regional Chinese cuisine, along with other ingredients, face an at least 145% tariff after last week’s tit-for-tat trade battle between China and the United States. The steep rate is an existential threat for restaurants across the country that rely on specialty ingredients imported from China to craft the authentic flavors of their dishes, said operators who were blindsided.“We’re really worried,” said Jen Lin-Liu, the director of events for Chang Chang. The restaurant is part of the Peter Chang restaurant group that operates a dozen Sichuan restaurants across Washington, Virginia and Maryland.The restaurant group sources meats and vegetables from local farmers, including an Amish community in the Finger Lakes region that supplies its shiitake mushrooms and organic pork. Still, it is dependent on imported items such as fermented chili peppers and soy sauce, which give the dishes their unique taste.“Some of the products that we need just do not exist in the United States,” Lin-Liu said.The cost of other items is rising as well. “There are increases in any supply you can think of, from takeout boxes to printer paper to menu printing paper,” she said, adding that if the tariff rates stick, the price of a $20 dish may rise to $35 or $40.View image in fullscreenGeorge Chen, the chef who created Eight Tables, a fine-dining restaurant in San Francisco, said that while some of the items on his menu may be replaceable with options from Taiwan, it undermines the integrity he’s put into sourcing the unique ingredients for his dishes.“Replacements disrupt complex long-term relationships,” explained Chen. “It took me years to find the special spice vendors or the organic tea farmer in China from my many years living and working there.”Eight Tables is part of a larger marketplace called China Live, which includes a dining hall, a cold-drinks bar and a shop that sells wares including chopsticks, glass tea mugs and pots.“The area most concerning is our retail platform,” said Chen. For those items, “it’s not possible to re-order at the tariff rates”.For direct importers, like the Mala Market, an online shop, the tariffs on Chinese products threaten its entire business model. Sichuan peppercorns are popular on the site, but it also sells a number of items produced in their original region using traditional methods. The owner, Taylor Holliday, calls these “heritage products”, which include soy sauce handcrafted in Zhongba, fermented soybeans aged for three years in Sichuan and sesame paste stone-ground in Shandong.“These are products which have been made in that exact area for hundreds if not thousands of years,” said Holliday. “They have such a history, there’s no way these products can be made anywhere else.”While part of Holliday’s business supplies wholesale items to restaurants around the country, the majority of its orders are from home cooks.“A lot of our customers are people who have a cultural or emotional attachment to China,” Holliday said. “It’s more than just the food, it’s a cultural attachment to these products.”EMei, a Sichuan restaurant in Philadelphia, sources not only its peppercorns from China but also items such as chopsticks and plastic cutlery for takeout orders. Similar to many Chinese restaurants, delivery is a major part of the restaurant’s business.“So far, this is the main impact for us,” said Dan Tsao, the owner of EMei, who said the tariff hikes add about $1 to $1.50 to each delivery order.The tariffs may also create a supply issue for these items.“Importers are pausing more of their orders from China. They think 125% is crazy,” Tsao said.While the restaurant sources many of its ingredients from local farmers, it still relies on some imports from other countries. It orders broccoli from Mexico, shrimp from Ecuador and rice from Thailand. Rice is especially critical; the restaurant runs through a supply of about 200 pounds each night, Tsao said. Since Donald Trump’s “liberation day” announcement earlier this month, the price per pound has already risen more than 25%.View image in fullscreenThe frenetic nature of the tariff policy shifts has left owners and suppliers cautious about which steps to take and how to plan for the future.Tsao has plans to open two more restaurants later this year and has noticed some construction estimates for renovations rising. Most of the building materials come from China, too.“I’m hesitating now,” he said. The possibility of a recession while the prices of supplies and renovations keep going up may change his calculation. “There will be all these ripple effects on the system and there’s so much economic uncertainty,” he added.Holliday said she has one container of product already on the way from China that is scheduled to clear US customs in about five weeks, but will not raise prices until she is forced to.“I’m praying that something happens by then,” she said. But if it doesn’t, she’s resigned to paying the tariffs.“There’s no other way we can run our business,” she said. More

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      Peter Navarro: the economist who has outsmarted Elon Musk and has the ear of Donald Trump

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      Elon Musk called him “dumber than a sack of bricks” but, in the raw contest for political power, Peter Navarro has outsmarted the billionaire.The tumult in global trade shows that for now it is the 75-year-old economist, not Musk, who has Donald Trump’s ear in the Oval Office.Navarro is the US president’s chief trade adviser and the intellectual driving force behind the global tariffs and trade war with China. The chaos and uncertainty have been too strong even for Musk, the great disrupter, but Navarro’s silky mien still assures the US all is well.Even after the tech tycoon publicly compared him to a sack of bricks, and added that he was “truly a moron”, Navarro retained his composure. “I’ve been called worse,” he told NBC.That is true. Navarro has been called a charlatan and a criminal who risks driving the world economy off a cliff.It is a remarkable metamorphosis for a man who a decade ago was a little-known academic nearing retirement at the University of California, Irvine, a respected, stolid institution in Orange County.Then the professor’s hawkish views on China caught the eye of Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign and vaulted him to Washington, where he played key roles in economic policy, the Covid pandemic and the attempt to overturn the 2020 election, a vortex that landed him in jail – for contempt of Congress – only for him to re-emerge, more influential than ever, in Trump’s second administration.“This is the land of reinvention, both cosmetic and ideological, and he is part of that,” said John Pitney, a political scientist and author at Claremont McKenna College.Critics worry that Navarro is trying to reinvent economic rules and the postwar global order with improvisation and bluster that could trigger recession and backlash. For Trump, Navarro is the expert who can articulate a daring and necessary pivot to protectionism.Navarro’s early life, and career, suggested a different trajectory. The son of a musician and a secretary, he grew up on the east coast and obtained a master’s degree in public administration and then a PhD in economics from Harvard. His doctoral dissertation was not on trade but on corporations’ charity motives.He taught economics at San Diego universities and did research on public utilities before landing a tenure position as professor of economics and public policy at UCI in 1989. Tanned and svelte, he had the look of a glossy politician and ran as a Democrat for elected office, including for mayor of San Diego and Congress, but lost.In 2001 he switched to writing get-rich investing books such as If It’s Raining in Brazil, Buy Starbucks: The Investor’s Guide to Profiting from News and Other Market-Moving Events.In 2006 the professor took another swerve by publishing the first of a series of books, and accompanying documentaries, that assailed China as an insatiable menace that bullies, lies and cheats, especially on trade rules through currency manipulation, illegal export subsidies, intellectual property theft and polluting sweatshops.There is no evidence of causality but Navarro’s alarm coincided with California’s proliferating number of Chinese investors and students, notably at UCI, which prompted racially tinged nicknames such as the University of Chinese Immigrants and the University of Caucasian Isolation.Other economists also accused Beijing of unfair practices but Navarro’s radical critique put him on the fringe.In 2016 Trump reportedly instructed his son-in-law Jared Kushner to do research to bolster his views on China. Kushner found Navarro’s book, Death By China, on Amazon, and Navarro ended up advising the campaign.In an interview that year with the Guardian near his Laguna Beach home, Navarro endorsed Trump’s use of the word rape to characterise Beijing’s impact on the US. “It’s an apt description of the damage and carnage that China’s trade policies have wrought on the American economic heartland. What’s happening is rapacious.” He also endorsed Trump’s proposed 45% tariffs on Chinese goods, which he said would compel Beijing to back down. “We’re already in a trade war with China. The problem is we’ve not been fighting back. Trump, through tariffs, wants to call a truce.”Trump had few credentialed academics on his team so Navarro served a useful purpose, Pitney said. “He provided a degree of scholarly cover for what Trump was saying. That’s why he was brought into the administration.”Navarro’s standing in the White House survived the disclosure that his books cited a fictitious expert, Ron Vara, that is an anagram of Navarro. He sought to shrug off the deception by calling it an “inside joke” with himself and a “Hitchcockian writing device”.In Trump’s first administration, more mainstream economic advisers prevailed and there was no trade war. Even so, Navarro expanded his remit to public health during the pandemic, which afforded more opportunity to assail China, and established personal chemistry with the president that made him a survivor amid White House personnel flux.After his chief lost the 2020 election, Navarro promoted the theory that the election was rigged and sought to delay its certification. For rebuffing a congressional committee that investigated the January 2021 attack on the Capitol he was found guilty of criminal contempt and last year served four months in prison.Now back in the White House as Trump’s senior counsellor for trade and manufacturing, Navarro’s influence has been felt in tariffs, stock market volatility and grim economic warnings despite a pause in the most severe tariffs for 90 days.Navarro has a combative streak yet he chose to project indifference over Musk’s insults. “It’s no problem,” he told CNN. A White House spokesperson shrugged off the row: “Boys will be boys.” More

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      Why do Trump voters have no regrets? Because the people they hate are getting hurt more | Arwa Mahdawi

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      The stock market is plunging, prices are rising, federal workers are getting laid off, students are being snatched off the street by immigration agents. The US is many things at the moment, but stable is not one of them. So, amid all this turmoil, how are all the Donald Trump voters feeling? Has buyer’s remorse set in? Are they starting to wonder whether voting in a convicted felon as president – a man who has declared bankruptcy six times – might not have been the wisest move?Not according to the polls. Rather, the US appears to be a nation of Édith Piafs: they regret rien. I’m not saying that disillusioned Republicans don’t exist; do enough digging and you can certainly find a few. And journalists have been doing a lot of digging. During Trump’s first term, there was a steady stream of media pieces profiling the regretful Trump voter. The genre has remained popular through the first few months of Trump 2.0. But, according to a much-discussed segment by CNN senior data reporter Harry Enten this week, polling proves that the idea of “regretful” Trump voters is “more of a media creation than anything else”.“I hear all these stories, all these articles, all the Trump voters, they regret what they did back in 2024. I’m here to tell you, uh-uh. Very few of them regret what they did back in 2024,” Enten said on Wednesday.Enten was referencing a new poll from the University of Massachusetts Amherst which found that just 2% of Trump voters agreed with the statement “I regret my [2024] vote and would vote differently if I could”. That’s almost half the number (3.5%) of Trump voters who said the same thing in February 2017. Meanwhile, 74% of Trump voters said they feel very confident that they made the right choice.Of course, polls aren’t always reliable. Indeed, I’m going to be a little cruel and refer you back to an Enten segment from five days before the election, where the data guru looked at three 2024 polling trends that pointed to a potential victory for vice-president Kamala Harris. “If Harris wins the signs were clear as day,” he declared. In short: Mark Twain had the measure of polling when he said “there are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics”.Asking people whether they regret an important choice they just made is also a loaded question. It’s akin to asking them “are you a complete idiot?” So I would treat these particular polls with a dose of caution: just because people don’t actively admit to regretting their vote, it doesn’t mean that they’re not worried about the direction the country is headed in, or that they’re thrilled about Trump’s performance as president. On the contrary, Trump’s approval rating is dropping and a lot of people are worried about inflation and higher prices. Everyone is feeling some pain right now.In a hyper-polarised country, however, what seems to really matter to many voters isn’t how much pain they’re feeling themselves, but whether the other side is suffering more. I could cite various academic papers on the politics of resentment; I could surface endless statistics on the subject. But I think the best summation of Trumpism is a quote from a woman called Crystal Minton from back in 2019, which went viral after being included in a New York Times report. Minton lived in a Florida town that had been ravaged by the double whammy of a hurricane and a Trump administration-instigated government shutdown, and was suffering. “I voted for [Trump], and he’s the one who’s doing this,” Minton complained. “I thought he was going to do good things. He’s not hurting the people he needs to be hurting.”Right now, however, Trump is hurting the sort of people many of his voters seem to be interested in seeing get hurt. He’s an avenging angel, wreaking vengeance on the elite institutions, scapegoats and bogeymen that the Republican party has spent years blaming for the state of the US. He’s cut funding to all the Ivy League universities he’s called “woke” and declared out of touch with American values. He’s gone after transgender people. And he has rounded up immigrants and protesters, just as he promised he would do.Trump isn’t just doing every vindictive thing he told his supporters he was going to do: he’s trolling his detractors via nasty memes. He’s rubbing salt in their wounds. There has been what Marcus Maloney, a sociology professor at Coventry University in the UK, called a “4Chanification of American politics”. The White House Valentine’s Day post, for example, was a poem: “Roses are red, violets are blue, come here illegally, and we’ll deport you”. Cutesy font appeared above the floating heads of Trump and his border czar, Tom Homan. And a video last month posted by the White House showed a man being deported while Semisonic’s famous lyrics played in the background: “You don’t have to go home, but you can’t stay here.” The cruelty is very much the point.While Trump may be hurting all the people he said he’d be hurting, there’s plenty of pain to go around. There has been a lot of anger from some of Trump’s backers in Wall Street over the volatility that the president’s tariff policy has injected into the stock market. Some of his billionaire backers, such as the investor Bill Ackman, have been screaming bloody murder. But for a lot of Trump’s backers, the fluctuations of the stock market have no immediate effect on their lives. The top 10% of Americans hold 93% of all stocks. This is what happens when inequality reaches record levels: you get a group of people with nothing to lose, which means they have little to regret. You get people happy to burn the whole system down.None of this is to say that Trump voters are immune to remorse. With his tariff plan, he is just getting started. The president may be good at bluster, but even his most diehard supporter are going to realise quite quickly that food prices – which Trump promised to lower on the campaign trail – are not, in fact, going down. When the price of basic goods keep rising, there’s only so long you can keep feeding people obvious lies. Perhaps the Trumpers won’t get quite so much of a dopamine rush from “owning the libs” when they can’t afford to own anything else.

      Arwa Mahdawi is a Guardian columnist More

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      In a world full of wedgies, are you a wedger like Trump, or a wedgee like me? | Adrian Chiles

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      Sir Ed Davey has made more than one significant contribution to the tone of political discourse over the past year. Obviously, there’s all the surfing, rollercoasting, bungee jumping and so on. There’s also his use of the word “wedgie” in relation to trade tariffs. That’s some trick to pull off. Respect. Here’s what he said earlier this month: “Despite backing the US in every major conflict this century – and offering to water down our tax on US tech billionaires – we’ve been rewarded with the same tariffs as Iran. It’s like we’re meant to be grateful Trump gave our friends a black eye and left us with just a wedgie.”This was quoted on The World at One on BBC Radio 4, which involved the presenter Sarah Montague using the word wedgie, too. Something else I never thought I’d hear. Even over where I work on BBC Radio 5 Live, where we’re less squeamish about using the vernacular, Davey’s wedgie-bomb came as a bit of a shock. But we soon gathered ourselves enough to hatch a plan on where we should go with the idea. My editor suggested it may be profitable to consider how mankind – and I believe we are talking about a largely male pursuit – can be divided into wedgees and wedgers. That is, those who have been wedgied and those who have done the wedging.I should explain to those unfamiliar with this ghastly practice – one generally but not exclusively experienced in our schooldays – that a wedgie is when you come up behind someone and, unbidden, take hold of the elastic of their underpants and … Actually, let’s leave it at that. If you know, you know. If you don’t, be grateful.My editor – who is called Tom Green, by the way, if you want to complain about any of this on taste grounds – is, like me, very much a wedgee. It’s why we get on. The current president of the United States is plainly a wedger. I use the present tense there, not because I think President Trump is an active wedger, but because it’s not a label you can shed. Once a wedger, always a wedger. Our prime minister, equally obviously, is a wedgee, and this is greatly to his credit. His predecessor, Mr Sunak, is a wedgee too. Liz Truss? Let’s not go there. Boris Johnson? Most definitely a wedger.To be clear, not all wedgers are bad. Some of my best friends are wedgers. But it’s the rest of us who are on the side of the angels. Hard though it is to believe just now, it’s the wedgees who will inherit the Earth. More

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      California launches legal challenge against Trump’s ‘illegal’ tariffs

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      California is preparing to ask a court to block Donald Trump’s “illegal” tariffs, accusing the president of overstepping his authority and causing “immediate and irreparable harm” to the world’s fifth-largest economy.The lawsuit, to be filed in federal court on Wednesday by California’s governor, Gavin Newsom, and attorney general, Rob Bonta, is the most significant challenge yet to Trump’s flurry of on-again-off-again tariffs.In the complaint, California officials argue that the US constitution explicitly grants Congress the power to impose tariffs and that the president’s invocation of emergency powers to unilaterally escalate a global trade war, which has rattled stock markets and raised fears of recession, is unlawful.“No state is poised to lose more than the state of California,” Newsom said, formally unveiling the lawsuit during a press conference at an almond farm in the Central valley on Wednesday. “It’s a serious and sober moment, and I’d be … lying to you if I said it can be quickly undone.”Invoking a statute known as the International Emergency Economic Powers Act of 1977 (IEEPA), Trump has issued a series of declarations imposing, reversing, delaying, restarting and modifying tariffs on US trading partners.The complaint argues that the law does not give the US president the authority to impose tariffs without the consent of Congress. It asks the court to declare Trump’s tariff orders “unlawful and void” and to order the Department of Homeland Security and Customs and Border Protection to stop enforcing them.“The president is yet again acting as if he’s above the law. He isn’t,” Bonta said at the press conference on Wednesday, noting that it was the state’s 14th lawsuit against the Trump administration in less than 14 weeks. “Bottom line: Trump doesn’t have the singular power to radically upend the country’s economic landscape. That’s not how our democracy works.”Trump has said tariffs are necessary to ensure “fair trade”, protect American workers and turn the US into an “industrial powerhouse”.In a statement responding to the lawsuit, White House spokesman Kush Desai said the administration was “committed” to the president’s trade strategy. “Instead of focusing on California’s rampant crime, homelessness and unaffordability, Gavin Newsom is spending his time trying to block President Trump’s historic efforts to finally address the national emergency of our country’s persistent goods trade deficits,” he said.Newsom said his office had informed the White House in advance that it was bringing this lawsuit, but that the governor has not spoken to the president directly about it.Earlier this month, on what he called “liberation day”, the president imposed a sweeping 10% tariff on nearly all imported goods and higher tariffs for a host of countries, most of which he later paused for 90 days.A 25% tariff on imports from Canada and Mexico, the US’s largest trading partners, remains in effect, while Trump’s actions have provoked a trade war with China, its third-largest trading partner, subject to US tariffs of 145%.California, the US’s largest importer and second-largest exporter with an economy larger than most countries, relies heavily on trade with Mexico, Canada and China, the state’s top trading partners. The complaint says the economic consequences of Trump’s tariffs on the state will be “significant”.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionCalifornia is the first US state to bring a lawsuit against the Trump administration’s tariff policies. Earlier this week, a legal advocacy group filed a similar lawsuit on behalf of US businesses that import goods from countries targeted by the levies, asking the US court of international trade to block Trump’s tariffs.Newsom said said the economic consequences of the tariffs would be reflected in a revised budget proposal he will submit next month. “Across the spectrum, the impacts are off the charts.”“Regardless of all the scientific and engineering advances, farming is still hard work, and the weather makes every year a gamble,” said Christine Gemperle, who hosted the governor and attorney at her almond farm. “The last thing we need is more uncertainty and not knowing whether we can ride this one out.”California is the nation’s top agricultural exporter, shipping nuts, tomatoes, wine and rice around the world. California’s agricultural exports totalled nearly $24bn in 2022.After Trump’s announcement of across-the-board levies, Newsom said his administration would pursue new trade deals with international partners to exempt California from retaliatory tariffs. It also launched a campaign to encourage Canadian tourism to California, which has fallen dramatically in response to the Trump administration’s policies. Newsom called the effort a “sign of the times”.“We talk about own goals. We talk about stupidity,” he said of Trump’s pursuit of a global trade war. “This needs to be updated in the next Wikipedia or the next encyclopedia as a poster child for that.” More

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      ‘Shock to the system’: farmers hit by Trump’s tariffs and cuts say they need another bailout

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      Farmers across the United States say they could face financial ruin – unless there is a huge taxpayer-funded bailout to compensate for losses generated by Donald Trump’s sweeping cuts and chaotic tariffs.Small- and medium-sized farms were already struggling amid worsening climate shocks and volatile commodities markets, on top of being squeezed by large corporations that dominate the supply chain.In recent weeks, farmers in Texas and across the midwest have suffered millions of dollars of crop losses due to unprecedented heavy rainfall and flooding.The climate crisis-fueled extreme weather is compounded by the US president’s looming trade war and the administration targeting popular federal programs and staff, leaving farmers reeling and resigned to needing another bailout.“There’s a lot of uncertainty around and I hate to be used as a bargaining chip. I am definitely worried,” said Travis Johnson, who lost more than 1,000 acres of cotton, sorghum and corn after a year’s rain fell within 48 hours in the Rio Grande Valley (RGV) in southern Texas last month, turning parched fields into lakes.RGV farmers sell sorghum, wheat, corn and vegetables to Mexico among other crops, while buying fertilizer and equipment – and relying on Mexican farmhands for cheap labor. Mexico is the US’s largest trading partner, while China is the main buyer of American sorghum and cotton. All US products destined for China face a 125% tax thanks to Trump’s tariff war, and could cut farmers off from core markets.View image in fullscreen“I can see how some tariffs might help us compete with Mexico but are we really getting targeted by every other country or are we on the wrong side of this? We’ve already had two years of absolute disaster with falling prices and weather patterns … no farmer wants this but without a bailout this could be devastating and a lot more people could go under,” Johnson said.Rural counties rallied behind Trump in 2024, giving him a majority in all but 11 of the 444 farming-dependent counties last year, averaging 78% support, according to analysis by Investigate Midwest.Trump’s vote share rose among farming communities, despite his last trade war which required a $23bn taxpayer bailout for farmers in 2018-19.Yet anxiety is mounting among the agricultural base.First came widespread cuts to oversubscribed and chronically underfunded federal climate and conservation schemes designed to reduce costs and greenhouse gases, and improve yields and environmental health.Trump is also shuttering local food programs which provide farmers with stable domestic markets like public school districts and food banks, helping make farms more resilient to global economic shocks. The USAID, which purchased about $2bn every year in agricultural products particularly wheat, sorghum and lentils for humanitarian aid programs, has been dismantled.The loss in federal programs alone would have been tough to cope with, but then came the trade chaos. Trump’s tariff announcements began when most farmers already had spring crops in the ground – or at the very least had prepared the land and purchased inputs such as seeds and pesticides, making it impossible to switch to crops that could potentially find a market domestically.View image in fullscreenConsensus is growing among experts that the turmoil represents an opportunity for rival agriculture economies – and disaster for US farmers.“It’s all happening so fast and in the middle of the growing season, it’s a shock to the system that’s going to be tough for farmers, especially those growing commodities for export,” said Ben Lilliston, director of rural strategies and climate change at the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy (IATP). “Tariffs are not magical, they need to be used strategically as part of wider reforms to the domestic economic agenda.”“The volatility of the tariff policy decisions, with new tariffs frequently being announced, paused and placed will take a toll on the American agricultural industry,” writes economist Betty Resnick in an article for Farm Bureau, a right-leaning lobby group. “Without direct support from USDA or a farm bill with an updated safety net, farmers will almost certainly bear the brunt of these tariffs.”Ben Murray, senior researcher with the consumer advocacy group Food and Water Watch, said: “Without a bailout, we can only imagine how bad this will be for farmers and what an opportunity for Brazil – and this is all being done for a tax cut for the wealthy.”For decades now, US farmers have been heavily incentivized through the Farm Bill to grow commodity crops destined for export such as wheat, corn, soy, sorghum, rice and cotton, rather than produce for domestic consumption. The price of commodities is tied to the global market, even if sold domestically. Meanwhile US imports of fruits and vegetables mostly from Latin America have risen, now accounting for more than 50% of consumption, according to USDA data.This globalized agricultural system favors large and corporate-owned operations, as smaller farms struggle more with boom and bust prices, and access to government subsidies and other credit. The number of farms continues to decline, while the average size continues to rise. Market consolidation and corporate profits tend to surge in the agriculture industry after every economic shock including the Covid pandemic, Trump’s last trade war and the banking crisis.Biden implemented a range of modest, imperfect policies to try to ease the pain for smaller-scale farmers including a greater focus on anti-trust, local and regional food systems, and climate resilience – all of which are under attack by the Trump administration.The vast majority of a $19.5bn funding package by the Biden administration for evidence-based conservation practices that improve soil health, air quality and reduce the use of costly fertilizers, pesticides and water will not be honored. The 10-year fund allocated through the Inflation Reduction Act was an addendum to money ring-fenced in the Farm Bill for four oversubscribed programs, after years of pressure from farmers to expand access to the initiatives.Two Biden-era healthy eating schemes worth a combined $1bn to local farmers have been canceled: the Local Food Purchase Assistance (LFPA) program matching producers to food banks, and the Local Food for Schools Cooperative Agreement Program which helped public schools add healthy, locally grown produce on to lunch menus. (The USDA recently agreed to unfreeze funding for existing contracts.)View image in fullscreen“My farm will survive because we’ve been working with school districts for 20 years, but for others in our coalition the funding cliff is very real,” said Anna Knight, who owns an 80-acre citrus farm in southern California.Piling on further misery are mass layoffs within the USDA that were seemingly orchestrated by the billionaire Trump donor Elon Musk.More than 10% of USDA staff have already reportedly agreed to voluntary buyouts, with more expected in coming weeks. This is in addition to several thousand probationary employees who were laid off last month – a move which disproportionately hit local offices beefed up under the Biden administration, and is being challenged in the courts.USDA field offices play a crucial role in rural communities, the place where farmers go for tailor-made technical help from agencies including the National Resource Conservation Service (NRCS) and the Farm Service Agency (FSA) on the latest pest control and planting practices, conservation programs, loans and disaster assistance programs.“It makes no sense taking billions of dollars off the table for programs that improve long-term farm viability and resilience – and which farmers have been lining up for years for – and then spend billions bringing back farmers from financial collapse,” said Jesse Womack, policy expert at the National Sustainable Agricultural Coalition. “It’s looking really bleak with a lot of pain ahead for farmers.”A coalition of environmental and agricultural groups is suing the USDA after it purged an array of climate-related online resources including information on the NRCS website helping farmers access federal grants for conservation practices, and technical guidance on cutting emissions and strengthening resilience to extreme weather like floods and drought.Even if there is a bailout, getting the money to farmers in time to avoid bankruptcy will be much more complicated this time, according to Lilliston from IATP.“Another bailout seems inevitable but there are serious questions about how quickly it could be implemented with such a dysfunctional Congress, local USDA offices shuttered and fewer staff. It’s a very messy situation and farmers are already experiencing harm.”And in the medium and long term: “The US reputation has taken a huge hit. We can no longer be considered a reliable trading partner which is terrible for farmers,” added Lilliston.Even before the current mayhem, almost two-thirds of US rural bankers surveyed in March expected farmer income to decline in 2025, with farm equipment sales dropping for the 19th straight month, according to the latest Rural Mainstreet Economy survey by Creighton University. Grain and cotton prices have plummeted since 2022.View image in fullscreen“We were already in a precarious situation but now, unless there’s a bailout or this trade war is resolved by harvest time, it will be disastrous and a critical mass of farmers could go out of business,” said Adam Chappell, 46, a commodities farmer growing corn, cotton, soybean and rice in Arkansas, where dozens of local USDA staff have reportedly been furloughed or fired in recent weeks.Chappell’s town Cotton Plant was hit with 13in of rain in early April, causing crop losses for many farmers. Chappell’s fields survived the rain but he spent a nervous few weeks after the USDA froze all conservation funds, unsure whether the government would reimburse him, as agreed, for an upfront investment in cover crops and a compost operation. Eventually, after a backlash, the administration backtracked and agreed to honor existing contracts.“The weather is getting stranger and more challenging to deal with every year, while big monopoly corporations are allowed to manipulate the system and squeeze us at every part of the supply chain. Farmers like me lean heavily on the NRCS conservation programs to improve soil health and reduce input costs,” said Chappell. “The tariffs are like adding salt on the wound.”Despite last week’s partial U-turn, Trump’s ongoing and increasingly chaotic trade war risks causing irreparable harm to international markets for farmers, especially but not exclusively China, as well as pushing up the cost of agricultural imports such as pesticides, fertilizer and machinery.China is the US’s third biggest agricultural export market, worth $24.7bn in 2024, down 15% from 2023, as soybean, corn and sorghum sales fell amid rising competition from South America, according to USDA data. China’s top imports from the US are oilseeds and grains. US exports to China supported almost a million US jobs in 2022, according to the US-China Business Council, mostly around agriculture and livestock production.As of Friday, at least 15 agricultural department programs worth billions of dollars to American farmers and rural communities remain frozen, according to Politico, more than two months after they were halted for review to ensure compliance with Trump’s priorities opposing diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) efforts as well as his crackdown on climate change initiatives.This includes the Biden-era partnerships for climate-smart commodities (PCSC) program – a five-year $3.2bn real-life study into the effectiveness of conservation practices such as cover cropping and reduced tillage for commodity farms.“PSCS was about increasing our evidence base on climate benefits that also help commodity farmers improve soil health, air and water quality – and their bottom line,” said Omanjana Goswami, a scientist with the food and environment program at the Union of Concerned Scientists. “Abandoning this will come at a cost to American farms and the taxpayer.”On Monday, the agriculture secretary, Brooke Rollins, defended dismantling PSCS, claiming it amounted to a Biden-era “climate slush fund” of which less than half the money went to farmers.A spokesperson added: “The USDA has a variety of programs available to producers who have been impacted by recent disasters … [and] is currently building a framework to deliver over $20bn in congressionally appropriated funds to producers who suffered losses during the 2023/2024 crop year. With 16 robust nutrition programs in place, USDA remains focused on its core mission: strengthening food security, supporting agricultural markets, and ensuring access to nutritious food.”And some Trump supporters are keeping the faith.“There are some concerns out there but our farmers are willing to make sacrifices for long-term gains,” said Sid Miller, the Texas agriculture commissioner. “Tariffs are a temporary tool, they won’t be permanent, China needs our grains, they are prideful but will come around like last time.” More