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    Trump’s tariffs have hurt tea exports to the US, says Fortnum & Mason boss

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    The boss of upmarket retailer Fortnum & Mason has said Donald Trump’s trade war has hit sales of its luxury tea exports to the US and forced up prices.Tom Athron, the London-based retailer’s chief executive, said Trump’s stricter country of origin rules and the end of the “de minimis” cost exemption for parcels worth less than $800 (£587) had hit customers across the Atlantic.“The American authorities have told us – this is the tea industry in its entirety – that if you’ve got tea from China and India in your tea, then its country of origin [is] China or India, and therefore those enormous tariffs apply,” he told the Financial Times.Trump, who landed in the UK on Tuesday for an unprecedented second state visit for a US president, last month imposed a 50% tariff on imports from India as a punishment for buying Russian oil.And earlier this year, the US administration raised tariffs as high as 145% on Chinese goods as the trade war intensified, before dropping them to 30% in May to facilitate talks between the two trading giants. The world’s two largest economies held talks in Madrid this week to try to reach a potential deal.For a 250g canister of loose leaf Royal Blend tea, which retails to US consumers at $27.85, Fortnum’s has now been forced to charge delivery fees starting at $25.41 owing to the changes to US taxes and duties.The 318-year-old retailer, which holds two royal warrants, was not previously liable for any tariffs on the majority of its deliveries to US customers.US custom agents assess whether a “substantive transformation” has been made to a product to decide whether its country of origin is different from where the product has been sourced.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThis process can be unclear to retailers, while the scrapping of “de miminis” rules has led to customers being wary of buying Fortnum & Mason’s products, which are popular with expats and international buyers.“A lot of our things are sent as gifts [so] if you’re living in New York and I’m sending a present to you, I want to be sure that you’re not going to be landed with a $200 bill on receipt of your parcel,” said Athron. “It’s all in hand, logistically we’re immaculate, it just means prices will go up for US consumers.”Overseas sales of Fortnum & Mason’s goods, including its famous hampers, were £12.5m in the year to July 2024, accounting for about 5.5% of total revenues.Wider inflationary pressure has led the retailer to raise the UK price of a 250g canister of loose leaf Breakfast Blend tea by almost 40% over the last five years. More

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      When Trump comes to UK, normal rules of state visits will not apply

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      Donald Trump has repeatedly described Keir Starmer as a “good man”, distancing himself from the attacks on the UK prime minister mounted by other figures on the US far right such as Elon Musk.One of the many known unknowns, however, of a Trump state visit is what kind of Trump will show up when a microphone is placed in front of him.The US president is often a bundle of contradictions. During his first state visit in 2018 most UK diplomats said he was a picture of affability, yet he took it upon himself to conduct an interview with the Sun in which he insulted Theresa May, and said Boris Johnson would make a great prime minister. He seemed unaware he might have caused offence.Starmer as host will have to grin and bear whatever brickbats Trump sends his way about the state of free speech in the UK, recognition of the state of Palestine, immigration, or the possibility that Reform will lead the next government in the UK. The one thing the Foreign Office knows is that the normal rules of state visits do not apply.An added loose mooring will be the absence of the former UK ambassador to Washington Peter Mandelson, who was dismissed for his connections to Jeffrey Epstein. Ambassadors are known to personally visit every site of every stop on a state visit. Their job is often quite literally to look round corners for what might be coming. Lord Mandelson, a stickler for detail, would have been poring over every angle of the state visit in conjunction with Buckingham Palace and the White House. Fortunately, most of it will have been battened down weeks ago. But his knowledge of the mood inside the Trump administration in the days before the visit will be missed.Behind the formal glamour, and pre-cooked agreements on tech and nuclear power cooperation, Starmer will have to choose how to spend his limited political capital. The two most pressing foreign policy issues are ones on which the UK and the US cannot agree: Israel’s future relationship with the Arab world, and the threat posed to Europe and Ukraine by Vladimir Putin. But it is the latter on which Starmer hopes to make progress.Speaking at the weekend in Kyiv, Jonathan Powell, the UK’s national security adviser, gave a glimpse of current Downing Street thinking. “Putin’s sport is judo. He likes to counterbalance the action with reaction. He likes having options. If we can close his options off and leave him with only one, he will take it,” Powell said.“The main message we should be sending is real pressure to convince [Putin] the war will go on for a long time if he doesn’t make peace. His summer campaign more or less has failed already, the Russian economic position is not good, the whole economy is a war economy. If we can apply the pressure the US president is talking about in terms of targeted sanctions, and tariffs that he put on India, we might bring him to the table.”But Powell skirted around whether Trump’s latest proposal for sanctions was serious or a smokescreen to avoid doing anything. After months and months of patience-sapping delay, Trump has set out in the past fortnight new preconditions that would need to be in place before the US would ever massively sanction Russia. He said he would only do so if every Nato country, including Turkey, stopped importing Russia energy and also punished China with 50%-100% tariffs for its imports of Russian energy. Trump has already put 25% tariffs on India, the other great importer of Russian energy.The Republican senator Lindsey Graham, who has spent a lot of time trying to blend the European and US approaches to Russia, explained on Sunday: “We have tried the red-carpet approach. It is not working … It is now time for the Europeans to follow President Trump’s lead to go after India and China – if China and India change their practices towards Putin, this war will end.”Starmer intends to test Trump on whether 50% tariffs on China, which would rupture China-Europe trade, is a deal-breaker. Concerted transatlantic sanctions might yet be possible if Trump demanded a ban on Russian crude imports by Hungary and Slovakia, or of imports of fuel made from Russian crude refined in third countries such as India. A ban on seaborne Russian crude oil has already cut the EU’s Russian oil imports by 90%, but Hungary and Slovakia still import it via a pipeline.Starmer’s task will be to steer Trump to more targeted sanctions on Chinese and Indian refineries, as well as yet more measures against the Russian shadow fleet. Trump’s Ukraine special envoy, Keith Kellogg, said: “If you look at the strength of sanctions from a scale of one to 10, we’re at a six. But we are at an enforcement level of three.”Starmer will also try to convince Trump the incursion of about 20 drones into Polish airspace by Russia was not the accident that Trump has suggested. Radosław Sikorski, the Polish foreign minister, ridiculed the accident theory in Kyiv, saying: “We don’t believe in 20 mistakes at the same time.”Behind this argument is the fundamental discussion that Starmer tries to avoid in public – whether Trump knows Putin is stalling on a ceasefire but does not greatly care, since he believes Ukraine will lose the war and inevitably will have to cede large tracts of its territory.That requires going back to the very first principles about the victim and aggressor in Ukraine. More

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      Donald Trump says Charlie Kirk has died after being shot at university event – latest updates

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      Charlie Kirk, a Trump ally and rightwing activist, has been shot and killed at an event at Utah Valley University in Orem, Utah, on Wednesday. Here’s what we know so far:

      Kirk, 31, died after being shot during a presentation on campus. Donald Trump first announced the death in a Truth Social post.

      Donald Trump wrote: “The Great, and even Legendary, Charlie Kirk, is dead. No one understood or had the Heart of the Youth in the United States of America better than Charlie. He was loved and admired by ALL, especially me, and now, he is no longer with us. Melania and my Sympathies go out to his beautiful wife Erika, and family. Charlie, we love you!”

      Campus police are investigating the incident. The university said the suspect is not in custody. A person arrested earlier has been released and is no longer a suspect.

      Kirk, the executive director of Turning Point USA (TPUSA), was shot at about 12.10pm local time while appearing at an event. In video posts circulating on social media, Kirk can be seen getting struck while speaking and sitting beneath a tent. Kirk was there as part of the American Comeback tour, which is hosted by the TPUSA chapter at Utah Valley. Video footage shows students on campus running away from the sound of gunshots.

      Kirk was about 20 minutes into a presentation when a shot was fired from a nearby building, the university told CNBC. The university has said a “single shot” was fired towards Kirk.

      Political leaders in the US immediately condemned the attack. Joe Biden, the former US president, tweeted: “There is no place in our country for this kind of violence. It must end now. Jill and I are praying for Charlie Kirk’s family and loved ones.”

      Senior Democrats and Republicans also condemned the shooting. Gavin Newsom, Josh Shapiro, Chuck Schumer and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez were among Democrats who condemned the attack. JD Vance, Pam Bondi, Kristi Noem and Pete Hegseth paid tribute to Kirk and asked the public to pray for him.

      The House speaker, Mike Johnson, told reporters in the Capitol: “Political violence has become all too common in American society. This is not who we are. It violates the core principles of our country.”

      In an internal email to staff members that was posted online on Wednesday, the Turning Point USA COO, Justin Streiff, said: “It is with a heavy heart that we, the Turning Point USA leadership team, write to notify you that earlier this afternoon Charlie went to his eternal reward with Jesus Christ in Heaven … However, in the meantime, Turning Point USA and Turning Point Action will be closed for business until Monday, the 15th – likely longer.”

      The White House lowered its flag to half-staff in Kirk’s honor.
      Former presidents Barack Obama and Joe Biden, and the former vice-president Kamala Harris, have all condemned the fatal shooting of Charlie Kirk in posts on social media.While the motive of the person who shot Kirk remains unknown, as police hunt for a suspect, all three Democrats argued that political violence must be condemned.“We don’t yet know what motivated the person who shot and killed Charlie Kirk, but this kind of despicable violence has no place in our democracy,” Obama wrote. “Michelle and I will be praying for Charlie’s family tonight, especially his wife Erika and their two young children.”“There is no place in our country for this kind of violence. It must end now,” Biden wrote on social media. “Jill and I are praying for Charlie Kirk’s family and loved ones.”“I am deeply disturbed by the shooting in Utah”, Harris wrote before news of Kirkj’s death was announced by Donald Trump. “Doug and I send our prayers to Charlie Kirk and his family. Let me be clear: Political violence has no place in America. I condemn this act, and we all must work together to ensure this does not lead to more violence.”The newly installed flag on the north lawn of the White House was lowered to half-staff on Tuesday afternoon, after Donald Trump announced the death of Charlie Kirk, who was fatally shot while debating students at Utah Valley University on Tuesday.Trump wrote on social media that he was ordering all American flags to be lowered across the country until Sunday evening.A spokesperson for Utah Valley University, Ellen Treanor, tells the Guardian: “A suspect was in custody, but they are no longer a suspect.”In a statement, Treanor added:
      It is with the tremendous sadness and shock that Charlie Kirk, who was invited by the student group TPUSA, was shot at about 12:20 when he began speaking at his planned event on the Utah Valley University Orem Campus. Kirk was immediately transported by his security team to a local hospital.
      Campus was immediately evacuated. Campus is closed and classes have been canceled until further notice. We are asking those still on campus to secure in place until police officers can safely escort them off campus.
      The incident is currently being investigated by four agencies: Orem Police, UVU Police, FBI, and Utah Department of Public Safety.
      Among those coming to terms with the fatal shooting of Charlie Kirk on Wednesday is the progressive streamer, Hasan Piker, who was scheduled to debate Kirk at Dartmouth College in two weeks.On his Twitch live stream, Piker expressed horror at the shooting, and urged his followers not to celebrate it, but told viewers to stop writing in to tell him to wear a bulletproof vest or hire security for his public appearances.“I don’t have any security,” Piker told his viewers. “It shouldn’t be like this.” He went on to argue that only gun control could prevent mass shootings.“In a moment like this, a reasonable government would say: ‘Alright, enough is enough,’” Piker said. “If we had a responsible government and not a bunch of fucking psychopaths running the show,” he added, the US would already have had serious gun control following the massacre at at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut in 2012.“I need to really reconsider the way I do everything outside, for the forseeable future,” Piker said.“Before people say: ‘Wear a bulletproof vest,’ again, he got shot in the neck,” Piker said. “A bulletproof vest would not have saved Charlie Kirk.”“The only thing that could have potentially saved Charlie Kirk,” he added, “was if our administrations, prior to this one and this one as well, actually had reasonable gun control as a policy position, in the aftermath of, I don’t know, a hundred other school shootings.”The House speaker, Mike Johnson, told reporters in the Capitol a few minutes ago: “Political violence has become all too common in American society. This is not who we are. It violates the core principles of our country.”Writing on his social network, Donald Trump just announced the death of Charlie Kirk.Trump wrote:
      The Great, and even Legendary, Charlie Kirk, is dead. No one understood or had the Heart of the Youth in the United States of America better than Charlie. He was loved and admired by ALL, especially me, and now, he is no longer with us. Melania and my Sympathies go out to his beautiful wife Erika, and family. Charlie, we love you!
      A White House correspondent for the New York Post reports that she just spoke with Donald Trump on the phone about Charlie Kirk.“He’s not doing well,” Trump told Diana Nerozzi. “It looks very bad.”She then asked Trump how he was feeling. He replied: “Not good. He was a very, very good friend of mine and he was a tremendous person.”Videos circulating on social media showed an attender at the student event on Wednesday asking Charlie Kirk: “Do you know how many transgender Americans have been mass shooters over the last 10 years?”In response, Kirk said: “Too many,” as the crowd clapped.In a follow-up question, the attender asked: “Do you know how many mass shooters there have been in America over the last 10 years?”Kirk replied: “Counting or not counting gang violence?”Seconds later, Kirk could be seen struck in the neck as he falls back in his chair.A spokesperson for Utah Valley University has retracted an earlier claim that a suspect in the shooting of Charlie Kirk, the conservative activist, is in custody.In a statement provided to Deseret News in Utah, university spokesperson Scott Trotter said: “We can confirm that Mr Kirk was shot, but we don’t know his condition. The suspect is not in custody. Police are still investigating Campus is closed for the rest of the day.”Trotter told the New York Times that police had taken someone into custody earlier but have determined that he was not the gunman.Kirk’s event in Utah today was the first of a 15-stop tour at universities across the country. Titled “The American Comeback”, the 31-year-old activist was due to speak at Colorado State University on 18 September.

      Charlie Kirk, a Trump ally and rightwing activist, has been shot at an event at Utah Valley University on Wednesday.

      The university said in a statement that Kirk was taken away by his security. Law enforcement have told the AP he is in hospital and in a critical condition.

      Campus police are investigating the incident. There are some conflicting reports about the detainment status of the suspect.

      Donald Trump has asked for prayers for Kirk. Trump wrote on Truth Social: “We must all pray for Charlie Kirk, who has been shot. A great guy from top to bottom. GOD BLESS HIM!”

      Kirk, the executive director of Turning Point USA (TPUSA), was shot at about 12.10pm local time while hosting an event. In video posts circulating on social media, Kirk can be seen getting struck while speaking and sitting beneath a tent. Kirk was there as part of The American Comeback Tour, which is hosted by the TPUSA chapter at Utah Valley. There is also video footage of students on campus running away from the sound of gunshots.

      Kirk was about 20 minutes into a presentation when shots were fired from a nearby building, the university told CNBC. The university has said a “single shot” was fired towards Kirk.

      FBI director Kash Patel has said that his agency is “closely monitoring” the situation.

      The shooting sparked immediate condemnation from Republicans and Democrats. Gavin Newsom, Josh Shapiro and Chuck Schumer condemned the attack. JD Vance, Pam Bondi, Kristi Noem and Pete Hegseth paid tribute to Kirk and asked the public to pray for him.

      Spencer Cox, Utah’s governor, said that he has been “briefed by law enforcement following the violence directed at Charlie Kirk during his visit to Utah Valley University today.” Cox added that “those responsible will be held fully accountable,” and uged “Americans of every political persuasion” to condemn the shooting. He offered his prayers to Kirk, his family and all those affected.

      Shortly before shots rang out, Kirk tweeted: “WE. ARE. SO. BACK. Utah Valley University is FIRED UP and READY for the first stop back on the American Comeback Tour.”
      Charlie Kirk is in critical condition at a hospital, after being shot at a speaking event at Utah Valley University, a law enforcement official tells the Associated Press.The university said earlier that a suspect was in custody, and the college campus has closed, and classes have been cancelled.Eva Terry, another Deseret News reporter who was also at the event, described the direction of the shot, saying: “It looks like it came from the middle to the right side of the audience.Describing the suspect, Terry said: “It looks like he was an older gentleman, probably in his late 50s to 60s, wearing what looks like a worker’s uniform.”Kirk was being asked a question about mass shootings when he was shot in the neck, according to eyewitnesses.Speaking to the Guardian, Deseret News reporter Emma Pitts who was at the event said: “He was on the second question and it was regarding mass shootings and the person he was debating had asked about if he knew how many mass shootings had involved a transgender shooter to which Kirk responded. Then he asked how many mass shootings had been in total in the last couple of years, I believe.“And then before he could even answer, we heard a gunshot and we just saw Charlie Kirk’s neck turn to the side and it appeared that he had been shot in the neck. There was blood, immediately a lot of blood,” Pitts added.“After the shots were fired, everyone immediately took to the ground … we were just trying to stay hidden. I don’t know how quickly it was, probably within a minute, everyone started running away … Since then the university has been completely evacuated,” said Pitts.Utah Valley University, based in Orem about 40 miles south of Salt Lake City, has closed its campus and is cancelling classes “until further notice”, according to statement.“Police are investigating. Leave campus immediately,” the university added.We’re also hearing from several leading Democrats across the country, condemning the shooting at Utah Valley University.Pennsylvania governor Josh Shapiro said in a post on X that “the attack on Charlie Kirk is horrifying and this growing type of unconscionable violence cannot be allowed in our society.” Shapiro added that “Political violence has no place in our country.”Similarly, California governor Gavin Newsom described the shooting as “disgusting, vile, and reprehensible.”On Capitol Hill, Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer said that he was “praying” for Kirk and his family, while echoing statements denouncing political violence.Alongside the president, several members of his cabinet have offered their prayers to Charlie Kirk, the conservative activist and Turning Point founder, who was shot during a speaking engagement at Utah Valley University.Vice-president JD Vance asked his followers to “say a prayer for Charlie Kirk, a genuinely good guy and a young father”, and attorney general Pam Bondi wrote that “FBI and ATF agents are on the scene. PRAY FOR CHARLIE.”Meanwhile, Kristi Noem, secretary of the Department for Homeland Security, said that she and her husband “are lifting up Charlie, Erika, and their family in our prayers right now”.Defense secretary Pete Hegseth added that Kirk was “an incredible Christian, American, and human being”. More

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      US supreme court to decide on legality of Trump’s sweeping global tariffs

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      The US supreme court agreed on Tuesday to decide the legality of Donald Trump’s sweeping global tariffs, setting up a major test of one of the Republican president’s boldest assertions of executive power that has been central to his economic and trade agenda.The justices took up the justice department’s appeal of a lower court’s ruling that Trump overstepped his authority in imposing most of his tariffs under a federal law meant for emergencies. The court swiftly acted after the administration last week asked it to review the case, which involves trillions of dollars in customs duties over the next decade.The court, which begins its next nine-month term on 6 October, placed the case on a fast track, scheduling oral arguments for the first week of November.The justices also agreed to hear a separate challenge to Trump’s tariffs brought by a family-owned toy company, Learning Resources.The US court of appeals for the federal circuit in Washington ruled on 29 August that Trump overreached in invoking a 1977 law known as the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) to impose the tariffs, undercutting a major priority for the president in his second term. The tariffs, however, remain in effect during the appeal to the supreme court.The levies are part of a trade war instigated by Trump since he returned to the presidency in January that has alienated trading partners, increased volatility in financial markets and fueled global economic uncertainty.Trump has made tariffs a key foreign policy tool, using them to renegotiate trade deals, extract concessions and exert political pressure on other countries.Trump in April invoked the 1977 law in imposing tariffs on goods imported from individual countries to address trade deficits, as well as separate tariffs announced in February as economic leverage on China, Canada and Mexico to curb the trafficking of fentanyl and illicit drugs into the US.The law gives the president power to deal with “an unusual and extraordinary threat” amid a national emergency. It historically had been used for imposing sanctions on enemies or freezing their assets. Prior to Trump, the law had never been used to impose tariffs.Trump’s Department of Justice has argued that the law allows tariffs under emergency provisions that authorize a president to “regulate” imports.
      “The stakes in this case could not be higher,” the justice department said in a filing. Denying Trump‘s tariff power “would expose our nation to trade retaliation without effective defenses and thrust America back to the brink of economic catastrophe”, it added.Trump has said that if he loses the case the US might have to unwind trade deals, causing the country to “suffer so greatly”.The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office reported in August that the increased duties on imports from foreign countries could reduce the US national deficit by $4tn over the next decade. More

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      US treasury secretary denies Trump tariffs are tax on Americans

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      US treasury secretary Scott Bessent has refused to acknowledge that the sweeping trade tariffs imposed by Donald Trump around the world are taxes on Americans.In a new interview on Sunday with NBC host Kristen Welker, Bessent, a former billionaire hedge fund manager, dismissed concerns from major American companies including John Deere, Nike and Black and Decker who have all said that Trump’s tariffs policy will cost them billions of dollars annually.Addressing Welker, Bessent said: “You’re taking these from earnings calls, and on earnings calls, they have to give the draconian scenario. There aren’t companies coming out and saying, ‘Oh, because of the tariffs, we’re doing this.’”He went on to add: “If things are so bad, why was the GDP 3.3%? Why is the stock market at a new high? Because, you know, with President Trump, we care both about big companies and small companies.”As concerns continue to grow over American companies trying to pass on the cost of US tariffs on to everyday Americans, Welker asked: “Do you acknowledge that these tariffs are attacks on American consumers?” To which Bessent replied: “No, I don’t.”Bessent’s latest interview follows a ruling by a federal appeals court which found that Trump had overstepped his presidential authority when he imposed sweeping tariffs on dozens of countries earlier this year that sent shockwaves across global markets.The tariffs established a 10% baseline for nearly all of the US’s trading partners. Trump also imposed so-called “reciprocal” tariffs imposed on countries that he accused of unfairly treating the US in trade. Lesotho, a south African nation of 2.3 million people faced a 50% tariff, while Trump also imposed a 10% tariff on a group of uninhabited islands home to penguins near Antarctica.In response to the federal appeals court’s decision, the Trump administration has recently asked the US supreme court to overturn the ruling.Speaking on whether the Trump administration would be prepared to offer rebates if the supreme court rules against the administration, Bessent said: “We would have to give a refund on about half the tariffs which would be terrible for the treasury… There’s no ‘be prepared.’ If the court says it, we’d have to do it.”Nevertheless, Bessent remained confident that the conservative-majority supreme court would side with the Trump administration, saying: “I am confident that we will win at the supreme court. But there are numerous other avenues that we can take. They diminish president Trump’s negotiating position … This isn’t about the dollars. This is about balance. The dollars are an after amount.”Bessent’s comments also came on the heels of newly released data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics which revealed that in August, 12,000 manufacturing jobs were lost, marking a total loss of 42,000 jobs since April when Trump made his tariff announcement.“Are these numbers proof that the tariffs are failing to produce the manufacturing jobs that President Trump promised?” Welker asked Bessent, to which he replied: “It’s been a couple of months. And with the manufacturing sector … we can’t snap our fingers and have factories built.”Bessent went on to add that he believes “by the fourth quarter, we’re going to see a substantial acceleration”.In addition to a decline in manufacturing employment since April, job openings and hires have fallen by 76,000 and 18,000, respectively, according to the Center for American Progress.According to economists, Trump’s tariffs are expected to cost American households $2,400 annually while wage growth among manufacturing workers remain stagnant under the tariffs.In August, manufacturing workers earned an hourly average of $35.50, marking only a 10-cent increase from July, the center reported. More

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      Donald Trump maelstrom likely to leave US economic model unrecognisable | Heather Stewart

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      Donald Trump observed blithely last week that if his cherished tariff regime is struck down by the US supreme court, he may need to “unwind” some of the trade deals struck since he declared “liberation day” in April.It was a reminder, as if it were needed, that nothing about Trump’s economic policy is set in stone. Not only does the ageing president alter his demands on a whim, but it is unclear to what extent he has the power to make them stick.Yet even if the “reciprocal” tariffs first announced on 2 April are rolled back, they are only one aspect of a much wider assault on the last vestiges of what was once known as the “Washington consensus”.To name just a few of Trump’s recent interventions, he has taken a 10% government stake in the US tech company Intel, demanded 15% of the revenue of Nvidia’s chip sales to China and suggested the chief executive of Goldman Sachs should go.This at the same as taking a sledgehammer to Federal Reserve independence by lobbing insults at the chair, Jerome Powell, and trying to sack Lisa Cook from the central bank’s board.The head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics was removed by Trump after a run of poor jobs data; the chief of the National Labor Relations Board, Jennifer Abruzzo, was fired, too.The tech bros who back Trump loathe the NLRB for its role in upholding workers’ rights – mandating unionisation ballots at Amazon warehouses, for example.Trump’s approach is simultaneously systematic, in its determination to smash existing norms, and utterly chaotic. It is hard to categorise: corporate America is being unleashed – through the wilful destruction of environmental and labour standards, for example – and brought to heel.The leftwing senator Bernie Sanders welcomed Trump’s efforts to take a stake in Intel in exchange for government grants, for example – something he advocated in the Guardian back in 2022 – while some Republicans have condemned the approach as (heaven forbid) “socialism”.Partly because it coincides with the AI-fuelled stock boom that has propelled the value of tech companies into the stratosphere, the market response to this torching of the status quo has so far been modest.Whatever emerges from another three and a half years of this maelstrom is likely to be unrecognisable as the US economic model of recent decades.Its destruction has not happened overnight. The days were already long gone when the US, as the world’s undisputed economic superpower, could export free market, financialised capitalism worldwide.After the 2008 crash, the conditions for which were created in Wall Street boardrooms, any moral or practical claim the US had to offer an economic example to other nations evaporated.As the turmoil rippled out through the global economy, and the US government responded by bailing out large chunks of its financial sector, the lie of laissez-faire was laid bare.The crisis exposed the risks of turbocharged capitalism to countries outside the US, too – not least in the former Soviet bloc – that had been advised to adopt the model wholesale.As Ivan Krastev and Stephen Holmes put it in their compelling polemic The Light that Failed, “confidence that the political economy of the west was a model for the future of mankind had been linked to the belief that western elites knew what they were doing. Suddenly it was obvious that they didn’t.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionBack home in the US, meanwhile – as in the UK – the perception that banks had been bailed out, while the galaxy brains behind the crisis got off scot-free, sowed the seeds of a corrosive sense of injustice.Similarly, even before the crash, the idea that ever-expanding free trade brings economic benefits was bumping up against the fact that even if that is true in aggregate, for workers across the US rust belt, just as in the UK’s former manufacturing heartlands, it brought deindustrialisation and unemployment.This was fertile ground for Trump’s populist economic message. His first-term China tariffs were, with hindsight, a relatively modest stab at, as he saw it, tilting the playing field back towards the US.Joe Biden did not unwind those tariffs, which went with the grain of geopolitics, as any hopes that economic liberalisation would bring China into the fold of democracies were sadly dashed, and President Xi’s regime took on an increasingly authoritarian bent.Biden also took a muscular approach to the state’s role in the economy, with the billions in grants and loans distributed under the Inflation Reduction Act linked to national priorities of cutting carbon emissions and creating jobs.So the idea that before Trump arrived on the scene, free market US capitalism was motoring along unchallenged is misleading, but the pace at which he is crushing its remaining norms is extraordinary.There is ample ground for legitimate disagreement here: taxpayer stakes in strategic companies are much more common in European economies, for example. Trump may be laying down tracks that future US governments with different priorities could follow.Given that it is so unclear even what kind of economy he is groping towards, the overriding sense for the moment is of radical uncertainty. Friday’s weak US payrolls data, with the unemployment rate close to a four-year high, suggested companies may be responding with caution.Investors appear to have decided to avert their eyes for now, buoyed up by the prospect of Fed rate cuts, and the mega returns of the tech companies. However, with every chaotic week that passes, the risks must increase – and as the UK has learned in the wake of the Liz Truss debacle, economic credibility is quicker to lose than to rebuild. More

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      One by one, leaders learn that grovelling to Trump leads to disaster. When will it dawn on Starmer? | Simon Tisdall

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      Sucking up to Donald Trump never works for long. Narendra Modi is the latest world leader to learn this lesson the hard way. Wooing his “true friend” in the White House, India’s authoritarian prime minister thought he’d conquered Trump’s inconstant heart. The two men hit peak pals in 2019, holding hands at a “Howdy Modi” rally in Texas. But it’s all gone pear-shaped thanks to Trump’s tariffs and dalliance with Pakistan. Like a jilted lover on the rebound, Modi shamelessly threw himself at Vladimir Putin in China last week. Don and Narendra! It’s over! Although, to be honest, it always felt a little shallow.Other suitors for Trump’s slippery hand have suffered similar heartbreak. France’s Emmanuel Macron turned on the charm, feting him at the grand reopening of Notre Dame Cathedral. But Trump cruelly dumped him after they argued over Gaza, calling him a publicity-seeker who “always gets it wrong”. The EU’s Ursula von der Leyen, desperate for a tete-a-tete, flew to Trump’s Scottish golf course to pay court. Result: perhaps the most humiliating, lopsided trade deal since imperial Britain’s 19th-century “unequal treaties” with Peking’s dragon throne.The list of broken pledges and dashed hopes is lengthy. Relationships between states normally pivot on power, policy and strategic interests. But with faithless, fickle Trump, it’s always personal – and impermanent. Disconcertingly, he told Mexico’s impressive president, Claudia Sheinbaum, that he “likes her very much” – then threatened to invade her country, ostensibly in pursuit of drug cartels. Leaders from Canada, Germany, Japan, South Korea and South Africa have all attempted to ingratiate themselves, to varying degrees. They still haven’t fared well.All this should set red lights flashing for Britain’s Keir Starmer ahead of Trump’s state visit in 10 days’ time. The prime minister’s unedifying Trump-whisperer act has produced little benefit to date, at high reputational cost. Starmer apparently believes his handling of the US relationship is a highlight of his first year in office. Yet Trump ignores his Gaza ceasefire pleas and opposes UK recognition of a Palestinian state. He hugely boosted Putin, Britain’s nemesis, with his half-baked Alaska summit. US security guarantees for postwar Ukraine are more mirage than reality. His steel tariffs and protectionist policies continue to hurt UK workers.His second state visit is an appalling prospect. The honour is utterly undeserved. It’s obvious what Trump will gain: a royal endorsement, a chance to play at being King Donald, a privileged platform from which to deliver his corrosive, divisive populist-nationalist diatribes at a moment of considerable social fragility in the US and UK. Polls suggest many Britons strongly oppose the visit; and most don’t trust the US. So what Starmer thinks he will gain is a mystery. The fleeting goodwill of a would-be dictator who is dismantling US democracy and wrecking the global laws-based order championed by the UK is a poor return.View image in fullscreenAs he demands homage from abject subjects, this spectacle will confirm the UK in the eyes of the world as a lackey state, afraid to stand up for its values. Starmer’s government is now so morally confused that it refuses to acknowledge that Israel, fully backed by Trump, is committing genocide in Gaza, while at the same time making the wearing of a pro-Palestine T-shirt a terrorist act. The Trump travesty will be an embarrassment, signalling a further descent into colonial subservience. As next year’s 250th anniversary of US independence approaches, the chronically unhealthy “special relationship” has finally come full circle.Not everyone is genuflecting to Trump – and evidence mounts that resistance, not grovelling, is by far the best way to handle this schoolyard bully. Modi’s geopolitical fling in China showed he’s learned that when dealing with Trump, firm resolve, supported by alternative options, is the better policy. Last week’s defiant speech by China’s leader, Xi Jinping, reflected a similar realisation. Both he and Putin have discovered that when they dig their heels in, whether the issue is Ukraine, trade or sanctions, Trump backs off. Xi has adopted an uncompromising stance from the start. Putin uses flattery, skilfully manipulating Trump’s frail ego. The result is the same. Like cowards the world over, Trump respects strength because he’s weak. So he caves.The bigger the wolf, the more sheepishly Trump responds. Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, like Putin, an indicted war criminal, has shown that by sticking to his guns (literally, in his case), he can face down Trump. More than that, Trump can be co-opted. After Netanyahu attacked Iran in June, against initial US advice, he induced the White House to join in – although, contemptibly, Trump only did so once he was certain who was winning. Then, typically, he claimed credit for a bogus world-changing victory. North Korea’s dictator, Kim Jong-un, similarly bamboozled Trump during his first term. Having learned nothing, and nursing his implausible Nobel peace prize ambitions, Trump is again raising the prospect of unconditional engagement with Kim.Brazil’s president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has the right idea. The more Trump tries to bully him with 50% tariffs and a barrage of criticism, the more he resists. Trump is particularly exercised over the fate of Jair Bolsonaro, Lula’s hard-right predecessor, who, like Trump, mounted a failed electoral coup. But Lula is not having any of it. “If the United States doesn’t want to buy [from us], we will find new partners,” he said. “The world is big, and it’s eager to do business with Brazil.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThat’s the spirit! And guess what? Lula’s poll ratings are soaring. Wake up, Keir Starmer – and dump Trump.

      Simon Tisdall is a Guardian foreign affairs commentator

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      Postal traffic into US plunges by more than 80% after Trump ends exemption

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      Postal traffic into the United States plunged by more than 80% after the Trump administration ended a tariff exemption for low-cost imports, the United Nations postal agency said Saturday.The Universal Postal Union says it has started rolling out new measures that can help postal operators around the world calculate and collect duties, or taxes, after the US eliminated the so-called “de minimis exemption” for lower-value parcels.Eighty-eight postal operators have told the UPU that they have suspended some or all postal service to the United States until a solution is implemented with regard to US-bound parcels valued at $800 or less, which had been the cutoff for imported goods to escape customs charges.“The global network saw postal traffic to the US come to a near-halt after the implementation of the new rules on Aug 29, 2025, which for the first time placed the burden of customs duty collection and remittance on transportation carriers or US Customs and Border Protection agency-approved qualified parties,” the UPU said in a statement.The UPU said information exchanged among postal operators through its electronic network showed traffic from its 192 member countries – nearly all the world countries – had fallen 81% on 29 August, compared with a week earlier.The agency, based in Bern, Switzerland, said the “major operational disruptions” have occurred because airlines and other carriers indicated they weren’t willing or able to collect such duties, and foreign postal operators had not established a link to CBP-qualified companies.Before the measure took effect, the postal union sent a letter to the US secretary of state Marco Rubio to express concerns about its impact.The de minimis exemption has existed in some form since 1938, and the administration says it has become a loophole that foreign businesses exploit to evade tariffs and that criminals use to get drugs into the US.Purchases that previously entered the US without needing to clear customs now require vetting and are subject to their origin country’s applicable tariff rate, which can range from 10% to 50%.While the change applies to the products of every country, US residents will not have to pay duties on incoming gifts valued at up to $100, or on up to $200 worth of personal souvenirs from trips abroad, according to the White House.The UPU said its members had not been given enough time or guidance to comply with the procedures outlined in the executive order Donald Trump signed on 30 July to eliminate the duty-free eligibility of low-value goods. More

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      Trump plans to sign executive order to rename Pentagon to ‘Department of War’ – as it happened

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      Donald Trump plans to sign an executive order on Friday authorizing the US department of defense to refer to itself as to the “Department of War”, two people familiar with the matter told the Guardian on Thursday.The move, to use a name Trump called “much more appropriate” in remarks last week, would restore a name used until 1947, when Congress merged the previously independent war department and navy department with the air force into a single organization, known as the National Military Establishment. In 1949, Congress changed the name of the National Military Establishment to the Department of Defense, and made the army, navy and air force secretaries subordinate to a single, cabinet-level secretary of defense.A draft White House fact sheet on Trump’s rebranding initiative implicitly acknowledges that only Congress can formally change the department’s name, saying that the order would authorize the defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, to propose legislation that would make the change permanent. In the meantime, the order instructs Hegseth and the department to start using “Department of War” as a secondary title in official correspondence, public communications and executive branch documents. The order also authorizes Hegseth to refer to himself as the “secretary of war”.When Trump was asked by a reporter last week how he plans to rename the department, since that would require an act of Congress, Trump said: “We’re just going to do it. I’m sure Congress will go along, if we need that, I don’t think we even need that.”“It just to me, seems like a just a much more appropriate,” he added. “The other is, ‘defense’ is too defensive. And we want to be defensive, but we want to be offensive, too if we have to be. So, it just sounded to me better.”Trump’s embrace of the old name, which seems to put to rest longstanding claims that he was ever the “antiwar candidate” for the presidency, comes days after he ordered the military to carry out the extrajudicial killing of 11 suspected drug smugglers.During his 2015 campaign for the Republican presidential nomination, Trump himself rejected the perception that he was anti-war by proclaiming that he was, in fact, “much more militaristic” than even George W Bush.Four years earlier, when he was flirting with a run for the presidency against Barack Obama, Trump had demanded US military intervention in Libya.“I can’t believe what our country is doing,” Trump told viewers of his YouTube video blog on 28 February 2011, two weeks before the Obama administration got US security council authorization “to protect civilians” in Libya. “Gaddafi in Libya is killing thousands of people, nobody knows how bad it is, and we’re sitting around we have soldiers all have the Middle East, and we’re not bringing them in to stop this horrible carnage and that’s what it is: it’s a carnage.”Five months later, after the US-led air campaign had forced Gaddafi from power in Libya – and Trump had decided not to challenge Obama for the presidency – the star of The Apprentice posted another YouTube clip, complaining that the administration should have waited longer to aid the Libyan rebels, to force them to agree to surrender half of the country’s oil reserves.“What we should’ve done is we should’ve asked the rebels when they came to us – and they came to us, they were being routed by Qaddafi, they were being decimated – we should’ve said, ‘We’ll help you, but we want 50% of your oil,’” Trump had said. “They would’ve said, ‘How about 75%?’”This brings our live coverage of the second Trump administration to a close for the day, but we will return on Friday. Among the day’s developments:

      The health secretary, Robert F Kennedy Jr, fended off calls for his resignation and spread vaccine misinformation during a contentious Senate hearing.

      Susan Monarez, the ousted CDC director, rejected Kennedy’s claim that she had lied about having been pressured to rubber-stamp vaccine recommendations from a panel of his anti-vaccine allies, and offered to repeat her claim under oath.

      Donald Trump plans to sign an executive order on Friday authorizing the US Department of Defense to refer to itself as the “department of war”, two people familiar with the matter told the Guardian.

      Trump hosted an array of tech industry leaders for dinner in the White House state dinning room on Thursday night, including Mark Zuckerberg, Tim Cook, Bill Gates, Sam Altman and Sergey Brin, but his former first buddy, Elon Musk, was a notable absence.

      As Trump accuses Federal Reserve governor Lisa Cook of criminal mortgage fraud, for allegedly obtaining more than one mortgage on a home designated as her primary residence, at least three members of his cabinet have multiple primary-residence mortgages, ProPublica reports.

      The justice department has launched a criminal mortgage fraud inquiry into Federal Reserve governor Lisa Cook and issued grand jury subpoenas out of both Georgia and Michigan.

      New York’s attorney general moved to have the state’s highest court reinstate Trump’s staggering civil fraud penalty, appealing a lower court decision that slashed the potential half-billion dollar penalty to zero.
      As we reported earlier, during a contentious Senate hearing on Thursday, the health secretary, Robert F Kennedy Jr, was asked twice whether he agreed with Retsef Levi, an MIT professor the secretary appointed to the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP), who has said that mRNA Covid vaccines “cause serious harm including death, especially among young people”.Kennedy said that he did agree with that statement, which Levi made in a video he posted on his X account in 2023, and has pinned at the top to this day.“I am filming this video to share my strong conviction that at this point in time all Covid mRNA vaccination program[s] should stop immediately,” Levi said in the video, “because of the mounting and indisputable evidence that they cause unprecedented level[s] of harm, including the death of young people and children.”Levi, who is Israeli, cited what he called evidence for this conclusion based on his reading of statistics from Israel’s EMS during its vaccination program in 2021. But he offered no scientific or medical evidence to support his claim, which is a fringe view not shared by the overwhelming majority or vaccine experts and medical doctors.It is worth stressing that both of the senators who asked Kennedy about that expert’s claim – Michael Bennet, a Democratic senator, and Thom Tillis, a Republican senator – referred to the new vaccine advisory board member as “Dr Levi”. That might have led some viewers to assume that Levi is a medical doctor, but he is not. He is a professor at MIT’s school of management, with a doctorate in operations research and no expertise in the science of infectious diseases or vaccines.It is unclear how Levi’s background qualifies him for a position on a vaccine panel responsible for making vaccine recommendations and whose members are supposed to be “medical and public health experts”.Donald Trump hosted an array of tech industry leaders for dinner in the White House state dinning room on Thursday night, including Mark Zuckerberg, Tim Cook, Bill Gates, Sam Altman and Sergey Brin, but his former first buddy, Elon Musk, was a notable absence.The event, which was to have been held on the newly paved-over Rose Garden, until a forecast of thunderstorms forced the event indoors, began with televised words of praise for the president from several of the assembled tech leaders, and a brief series of questions from reporters.On his social network X, formerly known as Twitter, Musk responded to a question about why he was not at the White House by writing: “I was invited, but unfortunately could not attend. A representative of mine will be there.”Musk did not say who his representative was, but one of the guests was Jared Isaacman, a billionaire private astronaut who had been Musk’s pick to lead Nasa, until his nomination was withdrawn as Musk’s relations with Trump frayed.Donald Trump plans to sign an executive order on Friday authorizing the US department of defense to refer to itself as to the “Department of War”, two people familiar with the matter told the Guardian on Thursday.The move, to use a name Trump called “much more appropriate” in remarks last week, would restore a name used until 1947, when Congress merged the previously independent war department and navy department with the air force into a single organization, known as the National Military Establishment. In 1949, Congress changed the name of the National Military Establishment to the Department of Defense, and made the army, navy and air force secretaries subordinate to a single, cabinet-level secretary of defense.A draft White House fact sheet on Trump’s rebranding initiative implicitly acknowledges that only Congress can formally change the department’s name, saying that the order would authorize the defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, to propose legislation that would make the change permanent. In the meantime, the order instructs Hegseth and the department to start using “Department of War” as a secondary title in official correspondence, public communications and executive branch documents. The order also authorizes Hegseth to refer to himself as the “secretary of war”.When Trump was asked by a reporter last week how he plans to rename the department, since that would require an act of Congress, Trump said: “We’re just going to do it. I’m sure Congress will go along, if we need that, I don’t think we even need that.”“It just to me, seems like a just a much more appropriate,” he added. “The other is, ‘defense’ is too defensive. And we want to be defensive, but we want to be offensive, too if we have to be. So, it just sounded to me better.”Trump’s embrace of the old name, which seems to put to rest longstanding claims that he was ever the “antiwar candidate” for the presidency, comes days after he ordered the military to carry out the extrajudicial killing of 11 suspected drug smugglers.During his 2015 campaign for the Republican presidential nomination, Trump himself rejected the perception that he was anti-war by proclaiming that he was, in fact, “much more militaristic” than even George W Bush.Four years earlier, when he was flirting with a run for the presidency against Barack Obama, Trump had demanded US military intervention in Libya.“I can’t believe what our country is doing,” Trump told viewers of his YouTube video blog on 28 February 2011, two weeks before the Obama administration got US security council authorization “to protect civilians” in Libya. “Gaddafi in Libya is killing thousands of people, nobody knows how bad it is, and we’re sitting around we have soldiers all have the Middle East, and we’re not bringing them in to stop this horrible carnage and that’s what it is: it’s a carnage.”Five months later, after the US-led air campaign had forced Gaddafi from power in Libya – and Trump had decided not to challenge Obama for the presidency – the star of The Apprentice posted another YouTube clip, complaining that the administration should have waited longer to aid the Libyan rebels, to force them to agree to surrender half of the country’s oil reserves.“What we should’ve done is we should’ve asked the rebels when they came to us – and they came to us, they were being routed by Qaddafi, they were being decimated – we should’ve said, ‘We’ll help you, but we want 50% of your oil,’” Trump had said. “They would’ve said, ‘How about 75%?’”As Donald Trump accuses Federal Reserve governor Lisa Cook of criminal mortgage fraud, for allegedly obtaining more than one mortgage on a home designated her primary residence, at least three members of his cabinet have multiple primary-residence mortgages, ProPublica reports.Trump’s transportation secretary, Sean Duffy, his labor secretary, Lori Chavez-DeRemer, and his Environmental Protection Agency administrator, Lee Zeldin, all have primary-residence mortgages on at least two properties, according to financial disclosure forms, real estate records and publicly available mortgage data provided by Hunterbrook Media to ProPublica.Real estate experts told the non-profit investigative outlet that claiming primary residences on different mortgages at the same time is often legal and rarely prosecuted.But Trump has called for the prosecution of Cook, the Biden-nominated central banker, for allegedly having multiple primary-residence mortgages, and leveled the same charge against Adam Schiff, the Democratic senator who led his first impeachment, and Letitia James, the New York attorney general who brought a successful civil fraud case against Trump.Two days after an appeals court reinstated a Democratic member of Federal Trade Commission, ruling that her attempted firing by Donald Trump was unlikely to survive her legal challenge, the justice department asked the supreme court to let Trump remove her again as the legal battle continues.The commissioner, Rebecca Slaughter, posted an image of herself back at work on Thursday, with the caption: “Back at my desk, back online, and have already moved to reinstitute the Click to Cancel Rule. Hope a majority of the Commission will join me – all Americans deserve to be protected from abusive subscription traps.”The FTC’s “click-to-cancel” rule, which would have required businesses to make it easy for consumers to cancel unwanted subscriptions and memberships, was adopted in October after the agency received more than 16,000 comments from consumers enraged about having to jump through hoops to cancel their enrollments.Implementation of the rule was delayed by the FTC in May, two months after Trump removed Slaughter and another Democratic commissioner.A federal appeals court vacated the rule on procedural grounds in July, just days before it was set to go into effect. Seven Democratic senators wrote to the new FTC chair that month, urging him to have the commission fix the procedural flaws identified by the court and reissue the rule.Susan Monarez, the ousted CDC director, just rejected Robert F Kennedy Jr’s claim, during a contentious senate hearing on Thursday, that she had lied about having been pressured to rubber-stamp vaccine recommendations from a panel of his anti-vaccine allies.In an account of her firing published on the Wall Street Journal opinion page, Monarez wrote that, at a meeting with Kennedy on 25 August:
      I was told to preapprove the recommendations of a vaccine advisory panel newly filled with people who have publicly expressed antivaccine rhetoric. That panel’s next meeting is scheduled for Sept. 18-19. It is imperative that the panel’s recommendations aren’t rubber-stamped but instead are rigorously and scientifically reviewed before being accepted or rejected.
      When Kennedy was confronted with that accusation by Ron Wyden, an Oregon Democrat, at the Senate hearing, he denied that he gave Monarez that order.“No, I did not say that to her, Kennedy said. “And I never had a private meeting with her”, he added. “So there are witnesses to every meeting that we had, and all of those witnesses will say I never said that.”Kennedy was not asked if anyone else at the meeting did issue such an order to Monarez, which would be consistent with her account.Instead, Wyden asked Kennedy if Monarez was “lying today to the Wall Street Journal and the American people”.“Yes sir”, Kennedy replied.In a statement responding to Kennedy’s testimony, Monarez’s lawyers, Mark Zaid and Abbe Lowell, wrote: “Secretary Kennedy’s claims are false, and at times, patently ridiculous. Dr. Monarez stands by what she wrote in her op-ed in The Wall Street Journal, would repeat it all under oath and continues to support the vision she outlined at her confirmation hearing that science will control her decisions.”Senators Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren have already called for Monarez to be called to testify before the senate, which would be under oath.Hawaii announced today that it would join a new public health alliance formed by a trio of west coast states in response to the turmoil at the CDC.On Wednesday, the California governor Gavin Newsom announced that his state had partnered with Washington and Oregon to form the West Coast Health Alliance, which they said would provide residents with science-based immunization guidance as the nation’s top public health agency – and a slew of red states – roll back long-standing recommendations medical experts and researchers have credited with limiting the spread of infectious diseases.“By joining the West Coast Health Alliance, we’re giving Hawaii’s people the same consistent, evidence-based guidance they can trust to keep their families and neighbors safe,”Josh Green, theDemocratic governor of Hawaii, said in a statement.Green, an emergency room physician, said a science-driven approach was “critical as we all go forward into an era with severe threats from infectious diseases”.The Democratic governors of California, Oregon and Washington unveiled the new alliance on the same day that Florida’s Republican surgeon general said the state would end all vaccine mandates for schoolchildren.The justice department has launched a criminal mortgage fraud inquiry into Federal Reserve governor Lisa Cook and issued grand jury subpoenas out of both Georgia and Michigan, according to documents seen by Reuters and a source familiar with the matter.The investigation, which followed a criminal referral from Federal Housing Finance Agency director Bill Pulte, is being conducted by Ed Martin, who was tapped by attorney general Pam Bondi as a special assistant US attorney to assist with mortgage fraud investigations involving public officials, along with the US attorneys’ offices in the northern district of Georgia and the eastern district of Michigan, according to the person, who spoke anonymously since the matter is not public.Pulte, who was appointed by Trump, has accused Cook of committing fraud by listing more than one property as a primary residence when she applied for mortgages, potentially to secure lower interest rates. Cook owns properties in Michigan, Georgia and Massachusetts.Trump terminated Cook over Pulte’s allegations, prompting her to file a lawsuit challenging his effort to oust her. Cook’s lawyer, prominent Washington attorney Abbe Lowell, said the DoJ was scrambling to invent new justifications for Trump’s overreach in firing the Fed governor.“He wants cover, and they are providing it. The questions over how Governor Cook described her properties from time to time, which we have started to address in the pending case and will continue to do so, are not fraud, but it takes nothing for this DOJ to undertake a new politicized investigation, and they appear to have just done it again,” Lowell said.The case, which will likely end up before the supreme court, has ramifications for the Fed’s ability to set interest rate policy without regard to politicians’ wishes, widely seen as critical to any central bank’s ability to keep inflation under control.Trump has demanded that the US central bank cut rates immediately and aggressively, berating Fed chair Jerome Powell for his stewardship of monetary policy. The central bank is expected to deliver a rate cut at its 16-17 September meeting.In one of her recent legal filings challenging Trump’s actions, Cook said she listed mortgages on three properties on forms submitted to the White House and Senate in the vetting process for her appointment to the Fed in 2022. Any inconsistencies were known when she was confirmed and cannot give Trump grounds to fire her now.Cook is the third public official to be targeted in a criminal investigation over mortgage fraud allegations. Martin, who also presides over the “Weaponization Working Group” and serves as pardon attorney, is also pursuing criminal investigations into Democratic senator Adam Schiff as well as New York attorney general Letitia James.There are also grand juries convened in those two cases, which started prior to Martin’s new appointment as a special assistant US attorney, according to the source and documents seen by Reuters.The United States will phase out some security assistance for European countries near the border with Russia, two sources familiar with the matter have told Reuters.The plan comes in the broader context of Donald Trump’s so-called “America First” foreign policy, in which his administration has slashed foreign aid and is pushing European countries to cover more of the cost of their own security.The move, first reported by the Financial Times (paywall), comes as Russia’s war with Ukraine has heightened concerns in Europe about regional instability and the possibility of further aggression from Moscow. Key recipients of the funding include Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania.Congress has approved funding for the assistance plan, which comes under the Department of Defense, but only through the end of September 2026. Trump’s administration has not asked that the program be extended, according to the FT report and confirmed to Reuters by one of its sources.Asked for comment, a White House official referred to an order Trump signed shortly after beginning his second term in January.“On day one of his second term, President Trump signed an executive order to reevaluate and realign United States foreign aid,” the official said.“This action has been coordinated with European countries in line with the executive order and the president’s longstanding emphasis on ensuring Europe takes more responsibility for its own defense,” the official said.Senator Jeanne Shaheen, the top Democrat on the Senate foreign relations committee, called the decision misguided.“It makes no sense at all to undercut our allies’ defense readiness at the same time that we’re asking them to step up their own capabilities, and it puts American troops at risk when we slash the training of the allied soldiers they would fight alongside,” she said in a statement. More