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      Trump threatens additional 50% tariffs on China over retaliatory levies

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      Donald Trump has threatened to impose an additional 50% tariff on imports from China on Wednesday unless the country rescinds its retaliatory tariffs on the United States by Tuesday.The news comes on the third day of catastrophic market falls around the globe since Trump announced his trade war last Wednesday with tariffs on the US’s trading partners.As part of that move the White House announced it would impose a 34% tariff on Chinese imports. In response, Beijing announced a 34% tariff on US imports.In a statement on Truth Social on Monday morning, the US president said that China enacted the retaliatory tariffs despite his “warning that any country that Retaliates against the U.S. by issuing additional Tariffs” would be “immediately met with new and substantially higher Tariffs, over and above those initially set”.“If China does not withdraw its 34% increase above their already long term trading abuses by tomorrow, April 8th, 2025, the United States will impose ADDITIONAL Tariffs on China of 50%, effective April 9th,” Trump wrote.“Additionally, all talks with China concerning their requested meetings with us will be terminated!” he added. “Negotiations with other countries, which have also requested meetings, will begin taking place immediately.”China’s US embassy said on Monday it would not cave to pressure or threats over the additional 50% tariffs. “We have stressed more than once that pressuring or threatening China is not a right way to engage with us. China will firmly safeguard its legitimate rights and interests,” Liu Pengyu, an embassy spokesman, told Agence France-Presse.A senior White House official told ABC News that the increased tariffs on China would be on top of the 34% reciprocal tariff Trump announced last week and the 20% already in place.Trump’s new ultimatum to China marked the latest escalation from the White House and came as US stocks swung in and out of the red on Monday morning as a report circulated that Trump was going to pause the implementation of his sweeping tariffs for 90 days, but then was quickly dismissed by the White House as “fake news”.Not long after Trump threatened China with additional tariffs on Monday morning, he participated in a White House visit from the Los Angeles Dodgers to celebrate their World Series title. More

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      Mother and three kids released by Ice after protests from US ‘border czar’s’ hometown

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      A mother and her three children who were taken into custody by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) agents as part of a sweep in the tiny hometown of the Trump administration’s “border czar”, Tom Homan, have been released following days of outcry from community figures and protesters calling for their freedom.Over the weekend, about a thousand protesters marched outside of Homan’s home in a small New York village, calling for the release of the children and their mother after they were detained last month. The family has not been named or spoken out publicly.Jaime Cook, principal of the Sackets Harbor school district where the children reportedly attended class, wrote a letter to the community pleading for the students’ safe return.She described the children as having “no ties to criminal activity” and that they are “loved in their classrooms”.“We are in shock,” the letter reads. “And it is that shared shock that has unified our community in the call for our students’ release.”The family was taken into custody in a 27 March raid at a large dairy farm in the remote town that has a population of fewer than 1,500 in Jefferson county in north-western New York state, on Lake Ontario near the Canadian border. The target of the raid was reportedly a South African national charged with trafficking in child sexual abuse material, whom they apprehended, Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agents said.But authorities separately picked up and detained the family, as well as three other immigrants they said were without documentation. The family was moved to the Karnes county immigration processing center, a privately run detention facility in Texas, by 30 March.Cook’s letter said that the family had declared themselves to immigration judges, were attending court on their assigned dates and had been following the legal process.The release of the family was confirmed on Monday by local officials, school administrators, and the New York governor, Kathy Hochul.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionHochul said in a statement that she had direct confirmation from Homan that “this family – a third grader, two teenagers and their mother – are currently on their way back to Jefferson county. I cannot imagine the trauma these kids and their mom are feeling, and I pray they will be able to heal when they return home.”The protests were organized with the help of the Jefferson county committee of the Democratic Party. Corey Decillis, committee chair, told NBC News that protestors had seen these raids “occur right in the last 60 days across the country, but when it happens in your backyard, I think that’s what garners people’s attention.” More

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      Netanyahu discusses Gaza and tariffs with Trump at White House meeting

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      The Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, met with Donald Trump on Monday for the second time since the US president’s return to office, marking the first effort by a foreign leader to negotiate a deal after Trump announced sweeping tariffs last week.Speaking alongside Trump in the Oval Office, Netanyahu said Israel would eliminate the trade deficit with the US. “We intend to do it very quickly,” he told reporters, adding that he believed Israel could “serve as a model for many countries who ought to do the same”.Trump said the pair had a “great discussion” but did not indicate whether he would reduce the tariffs on Israeli goods. “Maybe not,” he said. “Don’t forget we help Israel a lot. We give Israel $4bn a year. That’s a lot.”Trump denied reports that he was considering a 90-day pause on his tariff rollout. “We’re not looking at that,” he told reporters. “We have many, many countries that are coming to negotiate deals with us, and there are going to be fair deals.”Trump also announced that the US and Iran were beginning talks on Tehran’s nuclear program. “We’re having direct talks with Iran, and they’ve started. It’ll go on Saturday. We have a very big meeting, and we’ll see what can happen,” he told reporters. He warned Tehran would be “in great danger” if the talks collapse.Netanyahu expressed a cautious support for US-Iran talks but insisted Tehran must not have nuclear weapons. “If it can be done diplomatically … I think that would be a good thing,” he said. “But whatever happens, we must make sure that Iran does not have nuclear weapons.”The comments came in the Oval Office after Trump and Netanyahu held private talks. The White House canceled a joint press conference that was scheduled to take place afterward, without offering an immediate explanation.Netanyahu, announcing the last-minute meeting on Sunday, said he was visiting at the invitation of Trump to speak about efforts to release Israeli hostages from Gaza, as well as new US tariffs.The meeting came after the Trump administration announced his trade war last Wednesday with tariffs on the US’s trading partners, including a 17% tariff on Israeli goods.The US is Israel’s closest ally and largest single trading partner. Israel had hoped to avoid the new tariffs by moving to cancel its remaining tariffs on US imports a day before Trump’s announcement.Before his meeting with Trump, Netanyahu met with the US special envoy to the Middle East, Steve Witkoff. He also met with the US commerce secretary, Howard Lutnick, and the US trade representative Jamieson Greer on Sunday night in Washington. The Israeli government described the latter meeting as “warm, friendly and productive”.During Netanyahu’s last visit in February, Trump shocked the world by proposing to take over the Gaza Strip, removing more than 2 million Palestinians and redeveloping the occupied territory as a “Riviera of the Middle East”, in effect endorsing the ethnic cleansing of the people of Gaza.Since then, Israel has resumed its bombardment in Gaza, collapsing nearly two months of ceasefire with Hamas that had been brokered by the US, Egypt and Qatar.Nearly 1,400 Palestinians have been killed in the renewed Israeli operations in Gaza, according to Palestinian health officials, taking the total death toll since the start of the war to more than 50,000. Israel has also halted all supplies of food, fuel and humanitarian aid into Gaza.Netanyahu’s visit to the US comes as he faces pressure at home to return to ceasefire negotiations and secure the release of the remaining hostages in Gaza.Netanyahu told reporters on Monday that he and Trump had discussed the US leader’s “bold” vision to move Palestinians from Gaza, and that he is working with the US on another deal to secure the release of additional hostages. “We’re working now on another deal, that we hope will succeed,” he said.Netanyahu also claimed that Israel is committed to “enabling the people of Gaza to freely make a choice to go wherever they want”. Last week, he said Israel was “seizing territory” and intended to “divide up” the Gaza Strip by building a new security corridor, inflaming fears that Israel intends to take permanent control of the strip when the war ends.Netanyahu arrived in Washington on Sunday night from Hungary, after a four-day official visit that marked the Israeli leader’s first visit to European soil since the international criminal court (ICC) issued an arrest warrant for him over allegations of war crimes in Gaza.Hungary’s prime minister, Viktor Orbán, made it clear he would defy the court to host Netanyahu, and announced that he would take Hungary out of the ICC because it had become “political”. The US is not a member of the court. More

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      Volatility grips global stock markets as Trump insists on tariff ‘medicine’

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      Extreme volatility plagued global stock markets on Monday, with Wall Street swinging in and out of the red as Donald Trump defied stark warnings that his global trade assault will wreak widespread economic damage, comparing new US tariffs to medicine.A renewed sell-off began in Asia, before hitting European equities and reaching the US. It was briefly reversed amid hopes of a reprieve, only for Trump to threaten China with more steep tariffs, intensifying pressure on the market.On Wall Street, the benchmark S&P 500 dropped by as much as 4.1% – entering bear market territory after falling more than 20% from its most recent peak, in February – before launching an extraordinary reversal to turn positive.While markets were fleetingly boosted after Kevin Hassett, director of the White House national economic council, signaled that Trump was open to considering a 90-day pause on tariffs for all countries but China, the relief did not last long.After hours of turbulent trading, the S&P closed down 0.2%. The Dow Jones industrial average finished down 0.9%.“We’re not looking at that,” Trump told reporters, when asked about the prospect of a pause. Pressed on whether the tariffs set the stage for negotiations with countries, or were permanent, he replied: “Well, it can both be true. There can be permanent tariffs, and there can also be negotiations.”The FTSE 100 closed down 4.38% in London at 7,702.08 – the lowest close in more than a year – after the Nikkei 225 slumped 7.8% in Tokyo. Other major European also ended the day sharply lower, including Germany’s DAX and France’s CAC which both fell more than 4%.Trump, who has previously used market rallies as a barometer of his success, tried to brush off the sell-off this weekend. “I don’t want anything to go down,” the US president said on Sunday. “But sometimes you have to take medicine to fix something.”He stood firm on Monday. “The United States has a chance to do something that should have been done DECADES AGO,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform. “Don’t be Weak! Don’t be Stupid!”As China prepares to retaliate, Trump threatened to further increase US tariffs on the country – an additional rate of 50% – if it hits back. All talks with Beijing over potential meetings have been “terminated”, he said.Major share indices have fallen dramatically since he unveiled his controversial plan to overhaul the US economy last week. The Trump administration imposed a blanket 10% tariff on imported goods this weekend, and is set to follow with higher tariffs on products from specific nations from Wednesday.While senior figures in corporate America have been reluctant to criticize Trump since his inauguration in January, a handful have started to sound the alarm in recent days.Larry Fink, CEO of the investment giant BlackRock, expressed concern on Monday over the threat of a downturn. “The economy is weakening as we speak,” he said at the Economic Club of New York, according to Bloomberg. “Most CEOs I talk to would say we are probably in a recession right now.”The JPMorgan Chase boss, Jamie Dimon, one of the most influential executives on Wall Street, warned that Trump’s tariff plan was “likely” to exacerbate inflation. “Whether or not the menu of tariffs causes a recession remains in question, but it will slow down growth,” he wrote in his annual letter to shareholders.Dimon added: “The quicker this issue is resolved, the better because some of the negative effects increase cumulatively over time and would be hard to reverse.”The billionaire fund manager Bill Ackman, who backed Trump’s campaign for the presidency, has also demanded the administration reconsider its plan. “We are heading for a self-induced, economic nuclear winter,” he wrote on X, formerly Twitter.Even Elon Musk, a close ally of Trump, currently leading the so-called “department of government efficiency” inside the government, appeared to break with the administration on the issue. Peter Navarro, Trump’s top trade adviser, “ain’t built shit”, Musk wrote on X, which he owns, this weekend.Navarro, for his part, insisted in a television interview on Monday morning that the stock market would find a bottom. Less than hour later, when New York opened for trading, the search continued.The technology-focused Nasdaq Composite started the day down 4.3%, before switching in and out of the red. It ended the day broadly flat, up by 0.1%. The VIX “fear index” of volatility rose as high as 60 for the first time since August.Oil prices also came under pressure, with Brent and WTI benchmarks stooping to their lowest levels in four years, as growing economic tensions between Washington and Beijing stoked fears that a global downturn would challenge demand.Sir Richard Branson, co-founder of Virgin Group, argued the “predictable and preventable” market chaos would have “catastrophic” implications for people in the US and around the world, and claimed companies were already going bankrupt as a result of the weaker dollar and higher costs.“This is the moment to own up to a colossal mistake and change course,” Branson wrote on X. “Otherwise, America will face ruin for years to come.” More

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      South Sudan says person at centre of US deportation row is from DRC

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      The government of South Sudan said on Monday that an individual at the centre of a deportation row with the US, which South Sudan refused to allow into the country at the weekend, is a citizen of neighbouring Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).South Sudan said the individual was a man named Makula Kintu, not Nimeiri Garang, as his paperwork claimed and had been using travel documents which were not his. “In accordance with our immigration protocols, we returned him to the sending country for further processing,” the foreign ministry spokesperson, Apuk Ayuel Mayen, said.Footage released by the authorities in South Sudan’s capital, Juba, showed a man speaking to immigration authorities at Juba international airport, saying he was born in North Kivu, in the eastern DRC. He identified himself as Kintu and said he had been deported from the US against his will.On Sunday, the US announced that it had revoked the visas of all South Sudanese passport holders in reaction to the refusal by immigration authorities at Juba international airport to repatriate the man, accusing the east African country of “taking advantage of the United States”.Mayen, the foreign ministry spokesperson, said that South Sudan “deeply regrets” the blanket measure against all of the country’s citizens based on “an isolated incident involving misrepresentation by an individual who is not a South Sudanese national”.She added that the government of South Sudan was open to receiving its citizens, whether they voluntarily leave the US or are deported, and had maintained open communication with the US, despite claims by Washington that it had been rebuffed.Trump administration officials have said the individual’s documents were verified by South Sudan’s embassy in Washington DC and that South Sudan had “violated” its obligation “by refusing to accept one of their nationals certified by their own embassy in Washington and repatriated to their country”.In a post on social media, the US deputy secretary of state, Chris Landau, said: “Specifically, on February 13, 2025, the South Sudanese Embassy issued the individual an emergency travel letter certifying his nationality as South Sudanese and giving his date and place of birth (in what is now South Sudan, which then was part of Sudan).”Landau added that it was “unacceptable and irresponsible” for South Sudanese authorities to then reject a decision made by their embassy and “as far as we’re concerned, the Embassy’s certification is conclusive and the matter is closed”.Marco Rubio, the US secretary of state, said a visa and entry ban for South Sudanese citizens would go into immediate effect and would be reviewed once South Sudan, in the US government’s eyes, began cooperating again.Jok Madut Jok, an academic specialising in South Sudan at Syracuse University, in upstate New York, said if the mistake was made at South Sudan’s Washington embassy, that doesn’t “get the US off the hook for this measure”. “On humanitarian grounds, this needs to be rolled back because it is too broad,” he said, adding that many people attempting to come to the US could be refugees fleeing conflict.South Sudanese passport holders have enjoyed “temporary protected status” (TPS) in the US since 2011 which affords them legal protections against deportation due to instability and fighting in their country of origin. The Department of Homeland Security believes 133 people from South Sudan were on the US TPS programme last year.Donald Trump wanted to end TPS during his first term and the US president has attempted to do so again, targeting nationals from Nicaragua, Haiti, Venezuela and Cuba.TPS was renewed for South Sudanese nationals last September but is set to expire in May, which comes as South Sudan faces an escalating risk of renewed fighting by leaders from its two largest ethnic groups.South Sudan, the world’s youngest country, gained independence from Sudan in 2011, and has since struggled with armed conflict and poverty. Between 2013 and 2018, fighting between factions loyal to the current president, Salva Kiir Mayardit, and his vice-president, Riek Machar, killed nearly 400,000 people.Alexandra Ribe, an immigration attorney who specialises in humanitarian issues, said it is too early to tell what impact the measure would have on South Sudanese in the US as it was not clear what enforcement action immigration authorities would take, but described it as “punitive”.Ribe said the measure would “send a chill down the spines of nationals from the targeted country who have nothing to do with the issue at hand”. More

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      Here’s one key thing you should know about Trump’s shock to the world economy: it could work | James Meadway

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      It’s less than a week since Donald Trump’s sensational announcement that he was unilaterally ending the world’s trading system with the imposition of a 10% minimum tariff for trading with the US – and a very much higher rate for those countries unfortunate enough to have the US as a major export partner. Long-term allies such as Japan and South Korea have been hammered with tariffs of around 25%, while export-dependent poorer countries such as Vietnam, which sells about a third of its exports to the US, have been hit with tariffs in excess of 45%. A further round of global debt crises is possible as heavily indebted countries face the sudden loss of export earnings.Global stock markets have tumbled as panicked investors dump shares, and political condemnation has been near-universal. China has already retaliated with 34% tariffs, threatening an escalating trade war. Right now, it looks and feels like disastrous overreach by a uniquely erratic administration at the behest of a president with a terrifyingly limited grasp of how the modern economy works.Trump has talked about imposing tariffs on the world since he first rose to prominence in the 1980s, when his target was Japan. In a political career notable for its jack-knifes in policy and direction, tariffs – “the most beautiful word in the dictionary” – have been a constant. But this is about far more than his long-cherished whims. However inconsistent or even confused Trump may sometimes appear to be, those around him have a clear-eyed view of what they want to achieve.His Treasury secretary, hedgefund billionaire Scott Bessent, has spoken of a “global economic reordering” that he intends to shape to the benefit of the US’s elite. Trump’s new chair of the Council of Economic Advisers, Stephen Miran, wrote a lengthy paper, A User’s Guide to Restructuring the Global Trading System, shortly before his appointment. The latter is particularly ambitious – detailing how the US should use not only tariffs but also the threat of withdrawing its security support to compel its friends and allies to accept cuts in payments due from the Federal Reserve on their US Treasury bills. This would be a potentially massive loss to them, akin, in reality, to a US debt default. But it is tariffs that are the cutting edge of the plan – leveraging the US’s power as the world’s largest consumer and greatest debtor to compel other countries into a negotiation on terms.After decades winning in an international trading game it wrote and refereed the rules for, the US is now facing serious competition – primarily from China, but with Europe as an expensive irritant. The response of this administration is to kick over the table, and demand everyone starts again. What it ultimately wants is a cheaper dollar to revive US manufacturing and Chinese competition held off, all the while keeping the dollar as the world’s reserve currency. And the rest of the world will pay the price.There are precedents. In October 1979, Paul Volcker, newly appointed as chair of the Federal Reserve, drove up interest rates to a remarkable 13% in a bid to tackle inflation, later raising them to 17%. Soon the US was in recession. Millions lost their jobs over the next two years, notably in manufacturing, where soaring interest rates had driven up the value of the dollar, making US exports less affordable on the world market. After a light easing of interest rate hell by the Fed, Volcker applied a second dose of the medicine, driving interest rates up to 19% and forcing the economy back into a double-dip recession. Unemployment peaked at around 10% in late 1982.View image in fullscreenBut by mid-1983, inflation had come down to 2.5%. For the rest of the 1980s, the US economy boomed. The “Volcker shock” appeared to have worked. Volcker is today a folk hero among central bankers: Ben Bernanke, chair of the Federal Reserve during the 2008 crisis, praised Volcker’s “independence” and willingness to brazen out the political storm.More decisive than lower inflation, however, was the reshaping of the US economy Volcker’s interest-rate shock accelerated: with manufacturing in freefall, investment flooded into finance and property, firing up what became the great credit bubble of the 1990s and 2000s. The world economy was reordered around a US that acted as a giant sink for its output – swallowing exports from the rest of the world on seemingly limitless borrowing. China’s extraordinary boom was the flipside of US debt and deindustrialisation. The Volcker shock, more than any other single action, created the globalised world system that Trump is now bent on destroying.Few would have bet on Volcker’s world-shaping capacity at the time. The stock market response to the shock was immediate and unanimous. US shares plunged by a record 8% in the two days after his announcement. The S&P 500 lost 27% of its value before August 1982 – two years of grinding decline. Manufacturers and unions hated it, understandably: they were on the wrong side of an epochal reconfiguration of US capitalism. But they were not the only losers: rising interest rates in the US meant less developed countries had to spend more on servicing debts, just as recession squeezed their major export markets. The result was the so-called “third world” debt crisis, as heavily indebted countries across the global south plunged into spirals of economic decline and soaring indebtedness.Over the weekend, Bessent and commerce secretary Howard Lutnick were doing the media rounds, insisting that there would be no climbdown on the tariffs. Trump is not for turning on what is clearly for him a personal crusade. Already, countries such as Vietnam are promising to cut all their tariffs on US goods – a clear and brutal demonstration of the US’s continuing economic power. The administration has claimed 50 other countries have also asked to open negotiations. By the end of the week, expect Trump to be triumphantly announcing more such concessions from economies in the global south. His real target – China – will be a far tougher nut to crack, if it breaks at all.Perhaps the rolling market chaos will become too much. Perhaps the administration will blink first. There is no guarantee this extraordinary gamble will work, not even for those in the clique around Trump. But it would be a mistake to assume it cannot work – and however the pieces now land, they will not return to their old places.

      James Meadway is the host of the podcast Macrodose More

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      Deported over a speeding ticket? Dozens of US students’ visas abruptly revoked

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      Lisa was eating takeout at a friend’s place when the email from her university landed. She clicked into her inbox and skimmed the message:“ISS [International Student Services] is writing to inform you that your SEVIS record was terminated …”The wording felt unfamiliar. She read it again, but it still sounded like a scam – absurd and unreal.Lisa is an international student at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, just one month away from graduation. She asked to use a pseudonym due to concerns about retaliation and an ongoing legal case.Before going to bed, she found someone posted a similar notice on social media. It was through these posts that Lisa understood what the email had actually meant: with her Student and Exchange Visitor Information System record terminated, she was now considered out of status in the US. Staying could mean violating immigration laws.The Department of Homeland Security maintains the Sevis database that tracks international students and scholars on F, M and J visas. Once a Sevis record is terminated, a student’s legal status becomes immediately invalid. They must either leave the US within the grace period, typically 15 days, or take steps to restore their status. Otherwise, they risk deportation and future visa restrictions.She dug through comment sections. Joined group chats. Searched for patterns. One emerged: most of the affected students had been fingerprinted. Some had been cited for non-criminal offenses, but the messages they received said they had criminal records.That’s when she remembered: a year ago, she was driving home when she got two speeding tickets: one for speeding and another for failing to stop. She hadn’t seen the police car behind her until it was too late. To get the charges dismissed, she showed up in court, where she was fingerprinted.Lisa is one of several students across states who found their legal status revoked by the US government on 4 April, without prior notice or clear explanation. University statements show that at least 39 students have been affected, including UC Berkeley, UCLA, UC San Diego, Stanford, Ohio State, the University of Tennessee, the University of Kentucky, Minnesota State University and the University of Oregon.An online self-reported data sheet created by affected students suggests the issue may be more widespread. Students from 50 universities reported their visas were canceled around 4 April, with many noting that they had prior records, some limited to citations or non-criminal offenses.View image in fullscreenThis secret wave of revocation came a few days after the US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, announced the revocation of 300 or more student visas. “We do it every day. Every time I find one of these lunatics, I take away their visas,” he said at a news conference on 27 March, referring to students he described as national security threats.Lisa’s university had included a screenshot of her Sevis record in the message. Termination was logged on 4 April by a system administrator, with a note: “Individual identified in criminal records check and/or has had their VISA revoked.”Shenqi Cai, a California immigration attorney and managing attorney at Lashine Law, said she got the first call from a student on 3 April. “At the time, we thought it was a one-off. It seemed strange.”But by Friday, more cases kept coming in. She contacted designated school officials at several partner universities and confirmed that the terminations were visible in the Sevis system.Cai said this round of Sevis terminations appeared to be unprecedented. “Students weren’t given any chance to explain their situation. As long as the system flagged them, what we believe is a kind of criminal screening trigger, they were terminated under one broad directive.”Based on the information collected so far, Cai said about 90% of the affected students had been fingerprinted. But she explained that the criteria used to flag students can vary by state. “Each state defines these triggers differently. The thresholds are inconsistent. A student may be arrested in one state, but that doesn’t mean they’ll be convicted, because the power to decide guilt or innocence lies with the judge.”David, a Chinese student who completed his undergraduate degree, was immediately unable to continue working. He requested a pseudonym due to fears of retaliation and an ongoing legal case.In 2024, David was reported to police after a verbal argument with his partner. When officers arrived, they were still arguing, but there was no physical contact, he said. Because of a language barrier, his partner couldn’t clearly explain what had happened. David was detained overnight and later ordered to appear in court.“My partner wrote a statement to the prosecutor explaining it wasn’t domestic violence,” he said. The charge was eventually dropped. Court records show the case was dismissed with prejudice, and the judge ordered the arrest record and biometric data to be destroyed.Three years later, David received a Sevis termination notice.Unlike enrolled F-1 students, David is working under Optional Practical Training, a work authorization linked to the Sevis system. Once a Sevis record is terminated, that authorization ends and is nearly impossible to recover.David was nearing the end of his first year of employment when he got the notice on Friday. He scheduled a lunch meeting with his manager, who said the company would try to help him relocate to Canada. But because the termination took effect immediately, he was subjected to the 15-day departure rule.“I told my family, and they felt just as powerless,” he said. “But we don’t come from wealth, and there’s not a lot they can do.”Bill is facing the same dilemma. He graduated in December 2024 and is currently job-hunting. He asked not to use his real name due to a pending case.In early 2025, Bill hit another car while making a turn. At the time, his driver’s license had just expired. Police cited him for driving with an expired license. After renewing it, he followed the instructions and appeared in court.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“I went with a temporary license. The court staff were friendly,” he said. “One even joked, ‘This is no big deal, handsome,’ while taking my fingerprints and photos. It felt like a scene out of a movie.”His initial appearance only involved ID verification. When he asked if the hearing could be held that day, a staff member told him it was scheduled for May and suggested he come back then.“I thought it was fine. My license was updated, I just had to show up again.” But on 3 April, he suddenly received a notice from the school that his Sevis record had been terminated.Now, Bill has no idea what to do. Legally, he should leave the country immediately, but his case is still open and he’s required to appear in court in May. He doesn’t know whether showing up would put him at risk of detention.On 4 April, he met with his university’s international office. Staff there were willing to help, he said, but had few tools. They asked him to write a personal statement, which they promised to pass along to university leadership. The only formal support offered was a referral to a discounted lawyer – $150 an hour.View image in fullscreen“The dust of history falls on me, and it becomes a mountain. That’s all there is to it,” he said.By Sunday evening, the panic had spread. Three hundred students joined a Zoom info session hosted by Brad Banias, a federal court immigration litigator and former justice department trial attorney. Questions poured into the chat box: “Should we leave our apartments right now in case ICE shows up?” “Will an unpaid parking ticket be a problem?”Banias called the terminations a political move, not a legal one. “It makes me angry to see 19-year-olds just trying to study, and suddenly a parking ticket they didn’t even know about shows up on a criminal background check,” he said. “Don’t let them convince you it’s reasonable to leave the country over a parking ticket.”For Lisa, the future was just starting to take shape. She is about to graduate in one month, with a job offer and grad school acceptance. But now, she said she wasn’t even sure if she should go to class on Monday.Back in April 2024, she was pulled over in Madison for speeding. She hadn’t noticed the patrol car behind her right away, and by the time she stopped, two officers approached. One told her not to worry – it was her first offense, and all she needed to do was pay the fine. But the other issued two citations: one for speeding, the other for failing to stop.They told her it was just a miscommunication, something she could clear up in court.But that never really happened.“My first court date was just for ID,” she said. “They fingerprinted me, took a photo, measured my height. The judge barely said anything. No hearing, just a new court date.”She asked if the case could be resolved sooner and was told to schedule an online meeting. She did. During that meeting, the case was dropped. No record. They asked if she accepted. She said yes.Everything after that went smoothly: her work visa was approved, the company background checks cleared, and she had no trouble leaving and re-entering the country. She thought it was behind her.Then the email came.“I don’t know if I’m still allowed to graduate,” she said. “If I don’t get my degree, does the grad school still take me? Does the company push back the offer? Worst case, I don’t graduate. I go home and start college again. Four more years. And then what?” More

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      ‘Trump and Musk are setting the example’: how companies are becoming emboldened to be more anti-union

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      Donald Trump’s aggressive wave of anti-union actions is already spurring some US employers to take a more hostile stance toward unions, as labor leaders voice fears that the president’s moves will embolden more and more companies to fight harder against unions and slow their recent progress.Indeed, some worker advocates worry that unions will be walloped during Trump’s second term the way they were under Ronald Reagan after he crushed the 1981 air traffic controllers’ strike and inspired many corporations to fight harder against unions. As Trump and Elon Musk carry out their anti-union agenda in Washington DC, Utah passed a law that prohibits collective bargaining by public sector workers, and a Michigan company refused to move forward with a union election.“If history is any indicator on this – and I think it is – when you see a president’s administration basically declaring war on unions, that’s going to certainly embolden private sector employers,” said Joseph McCartin, a labor historian at Georgetown University and author of the definitive book about the disastrous 1981 strike by the Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization (Patco).Labor experts point to several Trump administration actions that show a huge hostility toward unions, including Trump’s order to end collective bargaining by 50,000 airport screeners and then a far-reaching order to rip up union contracts and prohibit bargaining for over a million federal employees at more than a dozen agencies, including the state department, the treasury and health and human services. Trump and Musk have also fired tens of thousands of federal workers while disregarding protections in their union contracts. Moreover, Trump fired Gwynne Wilcox, who was the National Labor Relations Board’s (NLRB) acting chair. Wilcox insists her dismissal was illegal, but on 28 March a federal appeals court declined to reinstate her, at least for now.“What we’re seeing is Patco on steroids,” Sara Nelson, the president of the Association of Flight Attendants, said in an interview. “This is the president saying even the idea of having a union contract and having something in black and white to protect workers and having collective bargaining – he’s saying none of this should exist.”Trump’s anti-union and anti-worker actions have been piling up. He rescinded the $17.75-an-hour minimum wage that federal contractors must pay their workers. He issued an order to kill the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service, which seeks to settle potentially disastrous labor disputes. He nominated a management-side lawyer, Crystal Carey, to be the NLRB’s general counsel; her law firm represents anti-union employers, including Amazon, SpaceX and Tesla. Even the Teamsters’ president, Sean O’Brien, who has sought good relations with Trump, condemned that appointment, saying: “Carey has spent her entire professional career backing Big Business to the detriment of working people … [S]he wants to decimate labor unions.” (O’Brien did praise Trump’s choice of labor secretary, Lori Chavez-DeRemer.)Beyond that, Trump has repeatedly insulted the nation’s 2 million federal workers, saying: “Many of them don’t work at all. Many of them never showed up to work.”Eric Blanc, a labor studies professor at Rutgers University, said these actions have “demonstrated that Trump’s rhetoric about being pro-worker and pro-union was just that: pure rhetoric. This is an administration that is pushing the limits on how far you can go to destroy the labor movement and people’s labor standards.”Blanc said Trump’s replacing of the pro-union Joe Biden as president, has “certainly emboldened the big corporations that were already stonewalling their unions: Starbucks, Amazon, REI, where we saw the most emblematic union successes of the past few years”.In February, Utah’s governor signed a law that prohibits unions representing teachers, firefighters, police officers and other government employees from bargaining for better pay and working conditions. In a move directly inspired by Trump’s actions, a Michigan amusement and water park refused to move forward with a union election, believing that the NLRB was paralyzed after Wilcox was fired, leaving it without a quorum.“Companies could definitely get more anti-union because Trump and Musk are setting the example,” said Thomas Kochan, a longtime professor of industrial relations at MIT. “They’re firing workers who are unionized. They’re ignoring their labor contracts.”Kochan said he fears the consequences for unions if the supreme court upholds the firing of federal workers despite their contract protections or upholds Trump’s dismissal of Wilcox, leaving the NLRB without a quorum. “Then I think we will see companies come out of the woodwork to be more anti-union because there’s so little risk,” Kochan said. “We’ll see companies like SpaceX and Tesla just ignore the law because there will be no consequences. That’s the big risk now.”In his high-profile role, taking a figurative chainsaw to federal agencies and firing tens of thousands of workers, the fiercely anti-union Musk could inspire corporate executives to follow in his anti-union footsteps. SpaceX is even seeking to have the NLRB declared unconstitutional. “Musk is sort of the praetorian guard of the anti-union movement,” McCartin said. “He’s the tip of the spear.”But Blanc said corporate executives might hesitate about following Musk. “He is extremely unpopular, and his policies are not popular,” Blanc said. “Corporate America is not blind to that, and they’ll think twice about unleashing a backlash like the one Musk has unleashed.”Labor experts said it could take a few years before many companies become visibly more hostile toward unions. That was the case after the Patco strike. It was not until two or three years after that strike that several prominent employers –International Paper, Greyhound and Phelps Dodge – showed a harder attitude toward unions. They broke their unions’ strikes by hiring large numbers of replacement workers – an unusual move at the time.That tougher behavior under former president Ronald Reagan sped the decline of private sector unions. Today, just 6% of private sector workers are in unions, while 32% of public sector workers are. Anti-union ideologues are increasingly targeting public sector unions, which often support Democrats.“Because almost half of the labor movement is now in the public sector, the assault that we’re seeing now is really focused on the public sector,” McCartin said. “That really threatens to break the spine of the labor movement.”The flight attendants’ Nelson said it’s imperative for the labor movement to stand up and stand together to resist Trump’s and Musk’s anti-union actions: “It’s on all of us to use the power we have to stop this before everything is broken and every safety net is stolen by the oligarchs,” including Musk. Nelson said the labor movement has very few options at this point except to mobilize for a general strike.

      This article was amended on 7 April 2025 to clarify the timing of an order to rip up union contracts and an appeals court declining to reinstate Gwynne Wilcox. More