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    Trump accused of caving to big business after deal to cut Swiss tariffs to 15%

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    Donald Trump agreed to cut US tariffs on Switzerland from 39% to 15% as part of a new trade pact, lowering duties that strained economic ties and hit Swiss exporters.The two countries have signed a “non-binding memorandum of understanding”, the Swiss government announced, following bilateral talks in Washington and intense lobbying by Swiss firms.Critics seized on the announcement as evidence that the White House had put corporate interests ahead of those of struggling Americans, as inflation continues to increase the cost of living nationwide.“While prices for American families are going way up because of Trump’s chaotic tariffs, it’s the billionaires and giant corporations cozying up to Trump that get relief,” Senator Elizabeth Warren, a Massachusetts Democrat, said.Leading Swiss executives met Trump at the White House earlier this month. Rolex, the luxury Swiss watchmaker, also invited the president and a string of his officials to the US Open tennis final in September.Upon arrival, Trump “did ask in jest whether he would have been invited had it not been for the tariffs”, Jean-Frédéric Dufour, the Rolex CEO, later disclosed. This was “a moment that brought a round of laughter all around”, he added.Dufour denied that Rolex had engaged in “any negotiation” with the US over tariffs. The White House dismissed Warren’s criticism as “asinine conspiracy theories”.Trump was gifted a golden table clock by Rolex, which was later spotted on his desk in the Oval Office. Another firm is said to have donated an engraved gold bar.The US trade representative, Jamieson Greer, also confirmed the breakthrough on Friday, telling CNBC, the financial news network, that both sides had “essentially reached a deal”.The Trump administration agreed to limit US tariffs on Switzerland and Liechtenstein “to a maximum of 15%” under the deal, according to a statement from the Swiss government.This brings US tariffs on Switzerland in line with those on the European Union – allowing Swiss exporters the same treatment as rivals in neighboring countries.In return, Switzerland will reduce tariffs “on a range of US products”, the statement said. “In addition to all industrial products, fish and seafood, this includes agricultural products from the US that Switzerland considers non-sensitive.”Swiss officials also committed to granting a series of quotas for US goods that can be exported to Switzerland on a duty-free basis, including 500 tonnes of beef, 1,000 tonnes of bison meat and 1,500 tonnes of poultry.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“The date for implementing these market access concessions will be coordinated with the US to ensure that customs duties are reduced at the same time,” the statement said.This is the latest “framework” trade deal to be struck by Trump and his administration. Unlike formal free trade agreements, which are substantial and can take years to negotiate, these pacts have typically been narrow in focus and light on detail.The precise timing of the implementation, and when the new tariffs and quotas will be enforced, has yet to be finalized.“They’re going to send a lot of manufacturing here to the United States – pharmaceuticals, gold smelting, railway equipment,” Greer claimed on CNBC, “so we’re really excited about that deal and what it means for American manufacturing.”The Swiss government said companies in the country were “planning to make direct investments” in the US worth $200bn “by the end of 2028”. More

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      Trump weighs giving Americans $2,000 from tariff revenues in bid for support

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      Donald Trump on Sunday mused about giving most Americans $2,000 funded by tariff revenues collected by the president’s administration – an evident bid to rally public support on the issue.“A dividend of at least $2000 a person (not including high income people!) will be paid to everyone,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform on Sunday.The post also made it a point to call people against tariffs “FOOLS!”For such a plan to take effect, congressional approval would likely be required. Earlier this year, Republican senator Josh Hawley of Missouri introduced a bill proposing $600 in tariff rebates for nearly all Americans and their dependent children.“Americans deserve a tax rebate after four years of [Joe] Biden [White House] policies that have devastated families’ savings and livelihoods,” Hawley said at the time. He said the legislation would “allow hard-working Americans to benefit from the wealth that Trump’s tariffs are returning to this country”.However, US treasury secretary, Scott Bessent, said in August that the administration’s main focus remains reducing the national debt, which stands at $38.12tn, using funds from tariff collections. He said the money would be used first to start paying down the federal debt – not to give rebate checks to Americans.According to the treasury department’s September report, $195bn in customs duties were collected during the first three quarters of the year.Though, it appears that the cost of giving out $2,000 checks could easily surpass the amount actually collected from the tariffs. According to calculations, these payments would cost close to if not more than double the amount that has reportedly been generated so far.“If the cutoff is $100,000, 150M adults would qualify, for a cost near $300 billion,” wrote Erica York, vice-president of federal tax policy at the Tax Foundation, on social media. “If kids qualify, that grows.”“The math gets worse accounting for the full budgetary impact of tariffs”, York added. “Adjusting for that, tariffs have raised $90 billion of net revenues compared to Trump’s proposed $300 billion rebate.”John Arnold, co-chair of Arnold Ventures, estimated that the dividend payments could cost as much as $513bn.As of October, consumers were paying an average effective tariff rate of nearly 18%, the highest since 1934, according to data from the Yale Budget Lab. Since the president introduced widespread tariffs on global trading partners in April, companies have passed part of those costs on to consumers.This isn’t the first time Trump has floated the idea of giving Americans stimulus checks based on revenue from his tariffs. In October, he said that he was considering offering Americans checks from the revenue, worth somewhere between $1,000 and $2,000. In July, the president again suggested that the government might consider tariff rebate checks.In February, he and tech mogul Elon Musk, who at the time was still advising the White House, said they were considering the idea of a $5,000 “dividend” check based on savings generated by the so-called department of government efficiency (Doge). These payments never came to be as the national deficit actually increased under Doge, and the amount cut from federal spending was significantly exaggerated.The US supreme court heard arguments on Wednesday on Trump’s sweeping global tariffs and appeared skeptical of their legality. More

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      Trump’s supreme court strategy is to redefine ‘tariffs’. Will the justices buy it?

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      Donald Trump faced arguably the biggest test so far of his contentious use of executive power at the US supreme court on Wednesday. The stakes could not be higher – “literally, LIFE OR DEATH” for the US, at least according to the president.Trump’s signature, globe-rattling economic policy, his sweeping tariffs regime, was in the dock – specifically, the legal mechanism his administration has used to enforce it. And the man dispatched to defend the White House put forward a somewhat puzzling argument.“These are regulatory tariffs,” D John Sauer, US solicitor general, assured the court. “They are not revenue-raising tariffs. The fact that they raise revenue is only incidental.”It was a curious, and more than a little confusing, explanation – tariffs on goods from overseas might raise revenue, but are not revenue-raising – designed to counter rulings by lower courts that set the stage for this test before the highest court in the land.A federal appeals court in Washington DC ruled in August that the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA), a 1977 law Trump invoked to impose many of his tariffs, did not grant “the power to tax” to the president.Congress is granted sole authority under the constitution to levy taxes. Trump bypassed Congress – lawfully, his aides insist – to drive through a policy estimated to equate to the largest tax hike since 1993.Thus, on Wednesday morning, the administration appeared to argue before the supreme court that these tariffs – taxes paid by myriad US companies on imported products – were not really taxes at all.Critics are not having it. “Anybody can look up in the dictionary,” Maria Cantwell, Democratic senator from Washington, told the Guardian. “Tariffs are an import tax, plain and simple. I would assume the administration understands that.”“I actually am surprised that it was so lacking,” Cantwell added, of the administration’s case.The court did not appear persuaded, either. “You want to say tariffs are not taxes,” said the liberal justice Sonia Sotomayor. “But that’s exactly what they are.”Some conservatives on the bench also sounded skeptical. “The vehicle is the imposition of taxes on Americans, and that has always been a core power of Congress,” said the chief justice John Roberts.The administration’s argument that the fact tariffs raise money is “only incidental” might be more persuasive if the president spent less time boasting about the amount of money they raised. “My tariffs are bringing in hundreds of billions of dollars,” Trump declared in a speech hours after the hearing.The president has argued – in typically binary terms – that the fate of his flagship economic strategy is aligned with that of the nation. But there are many business owners in the US, grappling with the abrupt imposition of steep tariffs, who believe the fate of their companies has been jeopardized by this regime.While official statistics (at least, those published before the government shutdown) have shown persisting inflation and a stalling jobs market, Trump continues to erroneously claim his agenda is producing stellar results. “Our Economy is BOOMING, and Costs are coming way down,” he wrote on social media during Wednesday’s hearing.It is ultimately down to voters, as some did on Tuesday, to deliver their verdict on Trump’s agenda. For now, a handful of small firms, together with a dozen states, have joined forces to challenge the way in which he has rammed it through.“We think that this case is really about executive overreach,” said Stephen Woldenberg, senior vice-president of sales at Learning Resources, a toy company based near Chicago that sued the administration to invalidate Trump’s tariffs as exceeding his authority.At the heart of this case is really a “broader issue”, according to Woldenberg, of who sets taxes – and how – across the US. “We weren’t really willing to let politicians, and really a single politician, decide our fate,” he said.That fate is now in the hands of a court Trump has shaped. The justices have pledged to fast-track their decision. On Wednesday, at least, most sounded unpersuaded by the administration’s defense. More

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      US supreme court to hear oral arguments on legality of Trump imposing tariffs

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      Donald Trump’s sweeping tariffs on the world will be scrutinized by the US supreme court today, a crucial legal test of the president’s controversial economic strategy – and his power.Justices are scheduled to hear oral arguments today on the legality of using emergency powers to impose tariffs on almost every US trading partner.In a series of executive orders issued earlier this year, Trump cited the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, or IEEPA, a 1977 law which in some circumstances grants the president authority to regulate or prohibit international transactions during a national emergency, as he slapped steep duties on imports into the US.The supreme court – controlled by a rightwing supermajority that was crafted by Trump – will review whether IEEPA grants the president the authority to levy a tariff, a word not mentioned in the law. Congress is granted sole authority under the constitution to levy taxes. The court has until the end of its term, in July 2026, to issue a ruling on the case.Lower courts have ruled against Trump’s tariffs, prompting appeals from the Trump administration, setting up this latest test of Trump’s presidential power. The supreme court has largely sided with the administration through its shadow docket to overrule lower courts.Should the supreme court ultimately rule against Trump’s use of IEEPA to impose tariffs, it will force the White House to go back to the drawing board and reconsider how to enforce an aggressive economic policy which has strained global trade ties.Should the court side with the administration, however, it will embolden a president who has repeatedly claimed – despite warnings over the risk of higher prices – that tariffs will help make America great again, raising “trillions” of dollars for the federal government and revitalizing its industrial heartlands.Trump himself has argued the court’s decision is immensely important. The case is “one of the most important in the History of the Country”, he wrote on social media over the weekend, claiming that ruling against him would leave the US “defenseless”.“If we win, we will be the Richest, Most Secure Country anywhere in the World, BY FAR,” Trump claimed. “If we lose, our Country could be reduced to almost Third World status – Pray to God that that doesn’t happen!”But some of his senior officials have suggested that, if the court rules against their current strategy, they will find another way to impose tariffs. Treasury secretary Scott Bessent, who plans to attend the oral arguments in the case, has said the administration has “lots of other authorities” to do so.According to the non-partisan Tax Foundation, Trump’s tariffs amount to an average tax increase per US household of $1,200 in 2025 and $1,600 in 2026.A coalition of 12 states and small businesses, Arizona, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Maine, Minnesota, Nevada, New Mexico, New York, Oregon and Vermont, have sued the Trump administration to block the tariffs.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionSeveral other small businesses also filed suit against the Trump administration to block the tariffs. The cases, Learning Resources, Inc v Trump and Trump v VOS Selections, were consolidated by the court.“No one person should have the power to impose taxes that have such vast global economic consequences,” Jeffrey Schwab, Liberty Justice Center’s senior counsel, said in a statement on the lawsuit filed on behalf of small businesses against the tariffs. “The Constitution gives the power to set tax rates – including tariffs – to Congress, not the President.”About 40 legal briefs have been filed in opposition to the tariffs, including from the US Chamber of Commerce, the largest business lobby group in the US.The US Chamber has urged Congress to reclaim its constitutional role in setting tariffs, stating in a letter on 27 October to the US Senate: “American families are facing thousands of dollars in higher prices as a result of these increased taxes. Small businesses, manufacturers, and ranchers are struggling with higher costs, with additional economic pain likely in the coming months.”The US Senate voted 51 to 47 last week to nullify Trump’s so-called reciprocal tariffs, with four Republicans joining Democrats in the vote, though the House is not expected to take similar action.But despite opposition in the Senate, the House of Representatives is unlikely to take similar action. House Republicans created a rule earlier this year that will block resolutions on the tariffs from getting a floor vote. More

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      The ghost of Ronald Reagan has spooked Trump over tariffs | Sidney Blumenthal

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      Halloween came early for Donald Trump. Ronald Reagan spooked him. Trump had a startled reaction to the TV ad that appeared during the first game of the World Series, placed by the provincial government of Ontario, featuring excerpts from President Reagan’s radio talk in April 1987 in which he explained the danger of trade wars. “Their Advertisement was to be taken down, IMMEDIATELY, but they let it run last night during the World Series, knowing that it was a FRAUD,” Trump posted. It was, he falsely claimed, a “serious misrepresentation of the facts, and hostile act”. In retaliation, he slapped an additional 10% tariff on Canada.Trump was apparently horrified at the sudden presence of the ghost of conservatism past, who had kept the outlandish bounder at arm’s length and whom Trump regarded warily if not nervously. Reagan was the original, bigger and more successful performer, whose appeal was as the harbinger of morning in America, not the grim reaper of a zombie nightfall. Canada is being punished for Trump’s fright.Trump seemingly fears Reagan’s image might be taken as a warning to the supreme court to rule against him in the impending case of Trump v VOS, in which the basis of his tariff regime is at stake. “Canada is trying to illegally influence the United States Supreme Court in one of the most important rulings in the history of our Country,” Trump claimed.Two courts have already ruled against Trump for his invocation of national security under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) to impose tariffs on whomever he wishes without the approval of the Congress. In late May, the US court of international trade held that most of Trump’s tariffs were “contrary to law”. He appealed to the US court of appeals for the federal circuit, which on 29 August affirmed the CIT ruling. The appeals court observed that “tariffs are a core Congressional power”. The IEEPA does not explicitly grant the president the authority to impose tariffs. Even if the IEEPA were interpreted to allow tariffs, it would represent an unconstitutional delegation of Congress’s power to the president.Twice rebuffed, Trump has appealed to the supreme court. The argument is scheduled for 5 November. Trump’s hair-trigger response to the sudden appearance of Reagan’s shade revealed his deep unease with how the court might rule. Even though the court has permitted many of his policies to proceed temporarily without legal justification through the “shadow docket”, he seems to know he might be on shaky ground here. In the tariff case, the amicus briefs against Trump were filed by some of the leading lights of the conservative legal world. Trump accused the appeals court judges of “hatred” and called Leonard Leo, the co-chair of the Federalist Society, which provided Trump with the lists of nominees for judgeships, a “sleazebag”. Trump is clearly afraid.On 15 October Trump announced that he might attend the oral arguments in person, to become the first sitting president ever to witness a supreme court case. Trump apparently has no concern about tainting the perception of the court’s objectivity or legitimacy. Either the court works for him or it does not; the justices fall in line or they are among the enemies within. To Trump, the Republican court should be no different from the Department of Justice under his thumb. He evidently views the separation of powers as a personal affront, unfairly stealing from him. Everything is a zero-sum game, not just international trade. “I’m the speaker and the president,” Trump has joked, according to the New York Times.Trump’s appearance in the sanctum of the court would let them know who’s the real chief. Just as the attorney general, Pam Bondi, and her deputy, Todd Blanche, sat behind Emil Bove, Trump’s henchman and nominee for the federal appeals bench, as Bove faced the senators at his confirmation hearing, Trump could sit behind his solicitor general, D John Sauer, to glower at the black-robed justices. His presence would threaten to strip away the veneer of the court’s independence as well as show his distrust for his own lawyer’s ability to prevail on the merits. Whether he wins or loses the case, he has personalized it. Winning would be interpreted as a victory for intimidation; losing would be flouting him rather than ruling on the merits. Either way, he would be poison and the decision would be, as it is said in the law, the fruit of the poisonous tree.Trump has been losing his case so far because of his transparently weak and sham argument, part economic illiteracy and part glaring cynicism, though there is a blurred line with Trump. Granting Trump his boneheaded economics, assuming he’s just a crude real estate operator who does not know the most basic things about international trade, may lend his primitivism a patina of dumb clumsy earnestness. Contrary to Trump’s stubborn ignorance, however, trade deficits are not a mercantilist zero-sum game and tariffs are not a tax on foreign countries. His complementary point that he must be able to impose universal tariffs by fiat whenever he likes without congressional authority, the only president ever to grab power for himself unilaterally under the statute in its 50-year history, because of the non sequitur of fentanyl trafficking, is so ridiculously phoney that it colors his whole case as typically dishonest.Trump’s snap imposition of 50% tariffs on Brazil for its supreme court’s judgment convicting his ally the former president Jair Bolsonaro of an attempted coup and Trump’s additional 10% tariff on Canada in his fit of pique at the Reagan TV ad may only serve to undermine his already tenuous argument that he is compelled to usurp sole power based on the IEEPA in the interest of national security. His tantrums are gifts to the opposing attorney, who may well hold them up as obvious refutations of his claims.In advance of Trump’s date with the court, he has raced around Asia tossing concessions which he hails as victories. Dropping the tariff rates for Japan, South Korea and China, while Beijing lifted its retaliatory threats to withhold rare earth minerals and stop purchasing American soybeans, he has to that extent reduced the harm he alone has been responsible for inflicting.The previously perfectly submissive Republican Congress has begun to crack up in reaction to the stress that Trump’s policies have placed on the rural Republican base. In symbolic votes, five GOP senators joined Democrats to oppose Trump’s tariffs on Brazil and four voted against his tariffs on Canada. The Republicans are in an uproar, following American ranchers, over his approval of importation of more Argentinian beef, apparently as a favor to his rightwing ally Javier Milei, to whom he has also authorized the payment of $20bn in support of the waning Argentinian currency. While Trump has grudgingly acknowledged that he cannot run for a third term, the Republican members of the Congress still have to face the music.The illegality of his tariffs aside, Trump’s retreat reveals the lasting damage he has already done to the US economy, his enhancement of Chinese power and his alienation of our allies, and it exposes his performance as a pantomime strongman on the world stage. Though some of his tariffs will be reduced, even those that remain stand at an unprecedented level in living memory.“Consumers face an overall average effective tariff rate of 17.9%, the highest since 1934,” the Yale Budget Lab reports. For small businesses, which account for one-third of US trade, 78% expect higher costs, and, unable to absorb them, 71% anticipate needing to pass them on as price increases. The Organization of Economic Co-operation and Development projects that as a result of Trump’s tariffs the US Gross Domestic Product growth rate will fall from 2.8% in 2024 to 1.5% in 2026 – a decline of nearly half.Trump’s atavistic return to the Republican protectionism of the 1930s, which deepened the Great Depression, rejects the lessons that Ronald Reagan sought to teach. “The memory of all this occurring back in the 30s made me determined when I came to Washington to spare the American people the protectionist legislation that destroys prosperity,” Reagan, the former New Dealer, said in the speech that enraged Trump enough to punish Canada for reviving it.Reagan’s talk was a prophetic warning of the peril of Trump’s tariffs: “You see, at first, when someone says, ‘Let’s impose tariffs on foreign imports,’ it looks like they’re doing the patriotic thing by protecting American products and jobs. And sometimes for a short while it works – but only for a short time … High tariffs inevitably lead to retaliation by foreign countries and the triggering of fierce trade wars … Then the worst happens: markets shrink and collapse; businesses and industries shut down; and millions of people lose their jobs.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionTrump’s relationship with Reagan was always uneasy. Throughout the 1980s, he sought Reagan’s imprimatur. In 1983, Reagan was asked to send a congratulatory telegram on the opening of Trump Tower. A few years later, Trump invited the president to attend a LaToya Jackson concert at his Taj Mahal Hotel and Casino at Atlantic City. Several attempts to edge close to Reagan were rejected, according to the Washington Post. The White House counsel’s office wrote “NO” on the telegram request. Offering advice on calling Trump, Reagan’s political director advised, “He has a large ego” – “large” was underlined.Nancy and Ronald Reagan lavished attention on the wealthy, but Trump was apparently too vulgar. It seems not even Trump’s lawyer, Roy Cohn, who was close to Nancy Reagan, could gain him access. Finally, Trump got himself invited to a social event at the White House, stood in the photo line and took a standard picture shaking hands with the president, and received the signed picture. Unfortunately, it was signed from “Reagan Reagan”. A corrected photo was sent, but Trump featured the original image as a token of his significance in The Art of the Deal.In that book, published in 1987, Trump suggested that Reagan was a hollow construct, “so smooth, so effective a performer” that “only now, seven years later, are people beginning to question whether there’s anything beneath that smile”. That year Trump briefly considered his first run for the presidency. He made a foray into New Hampshire and bought full-page ads in the New York Times, Washington Post and Boston Globe scathingly attacking Reagan for weakness. His “Open Letter” stated, “There’s nothing wrong with America’s Foreign Defense Policy that a little backbone can’t cure.” He blamed the federal deficit on our alliances. “Make Japan, Saudi Arabia, and others pay for the protection we extend to allies,” he wrote. “Let’s not let our great country be laughed at anymore.” It was the complaint he would retail for decades regardless of the circumstances. At the bottom, the ads reproduced his squiggly signature, nearly identical to the one on the lewd birthday card to Jeffrey Epstein that he denies he ever wrote. Now, “Reagan Reagan” has returned to haunt him.There’s a twist characteristic of the Trump era. If Trump loses his tariff case, the duties collected from companies will have to be refunded. The Wall Street financial firm of Cantor Fitzgerald reportedly anticipates a market on the rights to the tariff refunds. Its former head Howard Lutnick is the secretary of commerce, and his sons now run the firm. A Cantor Fitzgerald subsidiary is offering 20% to 30% in cash upfront rather than wait for litigation to resolve the claims, according to Wired magazine. In exchange, the company would eventually get the full refund. But if Trump prevails, the claims would be worthless. A spokesperson for Cantor Fitzgerald calls the report “absolutely false”, saying in a statement that it is “not in the business of positioning any risk, taking views or facilitating business in litigation claims involving the legality of US tariffs”.In August, however, the senators Ron Wyden and Elizabeth Warren sent a letter on 13 August to Brandon Lutnick, Cantor Fitzgerald’s CEO, seeking information. “Given that one of the purported architects of President Trump’s tariff policy is Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, your father and the former Chairman and CEO of Cantor Fitzgerald, LP, the firm’s actions raise obvious conflict-of-interest and insider dealing concerns.”The senators inquired: “Has anyone at Cantor or Cantor Fitzgerald, LP communicated with any individual representing the Administration’s interest or working on the court cases on these matters? If so, please provide a list of all such conversations, including the date, the individuals involved, and the nature of the conversation.”A spokesperson for the commerce department stated in an email to Wired, “Secretary Lutnick knows nothing about this decision because he has no insight or strategic control over Cantor Fitzgerald.” He remains busy working on Trump’s tariffs. This article was amended on 4 November 2025 to add a response from Cantor Fitzgerald to the Wired report.

      Sidney Blumenthal, former senior adviser to Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton, has published three books of a projected five-volume political life of Abraham Lincoln: A Self-Made Man, Wrestling With His Angel and All the Powers of Earth. He is a Guardian US columnist More

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      Trump policies spur economic anxiety in US Republican heartland: ‘Tariffs are affecting everything’

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      For decades, a line of storefronts in Jeffersonville, Ohio, a town of 1,200 people 40 minutes south-west of Columbus, lay empty.But now locals are hard at work renovating the downtown and paving streets in anticipation of a potential economic boom fueled by a huge new electric vehicle battery manufacturing plant.Two miles south of Jeffersonville, Korean and Japanese companies LG Energy Solution and Honda are in the midst of sinking $3.5bn into a facility that is expected to begin production in the coming months.Hundreds of people have been employed in the construction of the plant, and more than 525 people have been hired to work in engineering and other manufacturing roles at the facility. In total, about 2,200 people are expected to be employed on a site that, until several years ago, was open farmland.But some locals are concerned.A host of Trump administration policies – tariff measures and the end of clean vehicle tax credits worth thousands of dollars to car buyers – are causing multinational manufacturing companies to consider pausing hundreds of millions of dollars in future investments, a move that would hit small, majority-Republican towns such as Jeffersonville especially hard.Moreover, a raid by ICE immigration officers on a Hyundai-LG battery plant in Ellabell, a small town in south-east Georgia in September that saw more than 300 South Korean workers detained and sent home has sent shock waves through places like Jeffersonville and the C-suites of international companies alike.View image in fullscreen“The construction process has been slowing down. My fear is that the whole thing is going to stop, and we’re left with just unfinished concrete out there,” says Amy Wright, a Fayette county resident, of the under-construction battery plant.“What’s more, a lot of the people hired to do the construction of the plant are not locals. They are from out-of-state; I’ve met them at the gym.”While in last year’s presidential election, 77% of voters in Fayette county backed Trump, recent polls suggest his popularity in rural America has taken a nosedive.One poll suggests that his approval rating among rural Americans has slipped from 59% in August to 47% in October. Others chart his net approval rating in states he won in last year’s presidential election – Ohio, Michigan and Indiana – in negative territory by as much as 18.9 points.Wright says her son, who works for a local company that supplies Honda with parts, recently received notice that a prior promise of overtime work was being rescinded. She says she believes Honda is reeling in spending due to US government policies.“Tariffs are affecting everything,” says Wright.What’s happening in Jeffersonville is being mirrored across the midwest.In Kentucky, Michigan and elsewhere, global giants Toyota and Stellantis have spent billions of dollars in small communities, much of which came in the form of clean energy tax breaks from the Biden administration’s Inflation Reduction Act of 2022.Toyota’s biggest production facility on the planet is in a small Kentucky town called Georgetown, where the company employs more than 10,000 people and has invested $11bn in the local economy since the late 1980s. These workers churn out nearly half a million vehicles and hundreds of thousands of engines every year.However, in August Toyota warned that it faced a $9.5bn financial hit to it and its suppliers due to tariffs imposed by the Trump administration, the largest estimate of any automotive manufacturer. In July, Kentucky’s governor, Andy Beshear, said Trump’s tariffs were undermining investments in the state such as Toyota’s, calling them “chaos”.View image in fullscreenSixty-three per cent of voters in Georgetown’s Scott county backed Trump in last year’s presidential election.Last April, Stellantis laid off 900 workers at locations across the midwest due to Trump’s tariffs.In Indiana, one of the largest employers in the state, the Swiss pharmaceutical company Roche is reportedly considering pulling out of $50bn worth of investment in the coming years if Trump follows through on his executive order to target companies that don’t reduce drug prices.“No [manufacturer] wanted to alienate customers, but those days are past. So, the bulk of tariff price increases will hit in the coming months. This matters, because factory employment is a major share of rural counties in the midwest – about 30% in Indiana, and similar in Illinois, Ohio, Michigan and Wisconsin,” says Michael Hicks, an economist and professor at Ball State University in Indiana.“These things will clearly have a political effect, but my hunch is not fully for several months. Overlaying all this is the risk of a significant [economic] downturn, where tariffs combine with a financial bubble that would surely hit rural – red – communities very hard.”Still, others believe that the tariffs will benefit small American towns in the long run.“Toyota is doing fine and I don’t see [tariffs] as being a big hurt for us here in Georgetown,” says Robert Linder, co-owner of the Porch restaurant that’s situated a mile north of the huge facility, and who worked at the plant for 29 years.In April, Toyota suggested it might move more vehicle production to Georgetown to beat the tariffs, though that move could be years in the making. Sales of Toyota brands in the US have been growing this year, with the company thus far eating the cost of tariffs rather than passing it on to consumers.“They just announced a $10bn investment in the United States for more Toyota plants. If Toyota was worried about [tariffs] they wouldn’t be expanding,” says Linder. Recent reports, however, suggest the $10bn figure referred to previously announced investments.However, large multinationals have a track record of announcing major projects only for reality to play out in a very different way.In Wisconsin, the Taiwanese tech company Foxconn claimed it would spend $10bn on a facility outside the town of Mount Pleasant. Instead, local taxpayers today find themselves on the hook for $1.2bn spent on highways, attorneys and other infrastructure for a facility that has never transpired.In Arizona, the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC), backed directly by Trump, has been plagued with lawsuits related to safety and other issues, and missed project deadlines following promises to become a major employer of local talent.Despite Ohio’s governor, Mike DeWine, recently claiming there was no need to worry about the future of the LG-Honda battery plant, on 28 October, Honda announced it was reducing production at plants across Ohio due to a semiconductor chip shortage.While more than two dozen jobs are available at the Jeffersonville site, according to the LG-Honda plant’s hiring website, it’s a far cry from the more than 2,000 positions cited by officials previously.For Amy Wright, policies coming out of the White House are having a clear effect on residents of rural Ohio. As an organizer of four local No Kings protests against Trump’s policies she’s noticed a change in the people who are coming to the rallies.“We’ve had more and more people who have voted for [Trump] show up and say: ‘This is not good, this is not what we voted for,’” she says. More

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      Canadian PM Carney apologises to Trump over anti-tariff Reagan ad run by Ontario premier

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      The Canadian prime minister, Mark Carney, said he had apologised to the US president, Donald Trump, over an anti-tariff political advertisement and had told the Ontario premier, Doug Ford, not to run it.Carney, speaking to reporters on Saturday after attending an Asia-Pacific summit in South Korea, said he had made the apology privately to Trump when they both attended a dinner hosted by South Korea’s president on Wednesday.“I did apologise to the president,” Carney said, confirming comments by Trump made on Friday.Carney also confirmed that he had reviewed the ad with Ford before it aired, but said he had opposed using it.“I told Ford I did not want to go forward with the ad,” he said.The ad, commissioned by Ford, an outspoken Conservative politician who is sometimes compared to Trump, uses a snippet of Republican icon and former president Ronald Reagan saying that tariffs cause trade wars and economic disaster.In response, Trump announced that he was increasing tariffs on goods from Canada, and Washington has also halted trade talks with Canada.When departing South Korea earlier this week, Trump remarked he had a “very nice” conversation with Carney at that dinner, but did not elaborate. On Friday Trump still said the United States and Canada will not restart trade talks.Carney said his talks with the Chinese president, Xi Jinping, on Friday were a turning point in relations after years of tensions.The last formal meeting between the leaders of Canada and China happened in 2017 when the then prime minister Justin Trudeau had a brief exchange with Xi at a meeting in San Francisco.In recent years, Canadian citizens were detained and executed in China, and Canada’s security authorities concluded that China interfered in at least two federal elections.Carney said he had discussed foreign interference with Xi, among other issues.The trip to Asia had been part of efforts to reduce Canada’s reliance on the United States, Carney said.“It can’t happen overnight, but we’re moving very fast,” he said. More

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      US Senate votes to end Trump’s global tariffs on more than 100 countries

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      The US Senate took a stand against Donald Trump’s global tariffs affecting more than 100 countries on Thursday, voting to nullify the so-called “reciprocal” tariffs.Four Republicans joined with all Democrats to vote 51-47 on a resolution to end the base-level tariffs that the president put into place via executive order.It was the third time the Republicans have voted alongside Democrats on a tariff resolution this week, previously rallying to end tariffs targeting Brazil and Canada.Going against Trump is rare for Republicans in his second term. But Republican senators Susan Collins of Maine, Mitch McConnell and Rand Paul of Kentucky, and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska joined the opposition party.The vote comes as Trump is wrapping up a week in Asia, where he struck a deal with China to lower tariffs on Chinese goods into the country and get China to buy up US soya beans, a pain point of the trade wars that had farmers on edge, among other concessions.Despite the opposition in the Senate, the House is unlikely to take any similar action. House Republicans created a rule earlier this year that will block resolutions on the tariffs from getting a floor vote.The tariff resolutions are a rebuke to the tariffs themselves and to Trump overstepping his authority and bypassing Congress. Senator Tim Kaine, a Democrat from Virginia, told reporters that the symbolic opposition should catch the president’s attention.“I did learn in the first Trump term that the president is responsive to things like this. When he sees Republicans starting to vote against his policies, even in small numbers, that makes an impression on him and can often cause him to alter his behavior,” Kaine said. More

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      Trump raises tariffs on Canada by 10% in retaliation for anti-tariff TV ad

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      Donald Trump announced on Saturday that he will raise US tariffs on Canada by 10% in retaliation for an anti-tariff advertisement sponsored by the Ontario government, which has further strained one of the world’s largest trade partnerships.The statement, posted on Trump’s Truth Social account, came after several days of public disputes over the ad, which referenced Ronald Reagan’s support for free trade and provoked the US president’s anger.“Because of their serious misrepresentation of the facts, and hostile act, I am increasing the Tariff on Canada by 10% over and above what they are paying now,” Trump said Saturday on social media.He further accused the ad of being a “fraud” and said the “sole purpose” of it was “Canada’s hope that the United States Supreme Court will come to their ‘rescue’ on Tariffs that they have used for years to hurt the United States”, he added.“Now the United States is able to defend itself against high and overbearing Canadian Tariffs (and those from the rest of the World as well!),” the president wrote.Ontario premier Doug Ford said Friday that the province will suspend its US ad campaign on Monday, after discussions with prime minister Mark Carney, in an effort to reopen trade negotiations.The ad, which was paid for by the government of the Canadian province of Ontario, uses excerpts of a 1987 speech where Reagan says “trade barriers hurt every American worker”.View image in fullscreenThe ad aired Friday during the broadcast for Game 1 of Major League Baseball’s World Series, in which the Toronto Blue Jays faced off against the Los Angeles Dodgers.“Their Advertisement was to be taken down, IMMEDIATELY, but they let it run last night during the World Series, knowing that it was a FRAUD,” Trump posted.Trump had previously terminated trade talks with Canada due to the ad.It was not immediately clear what goods would be affected by Trump’s announcement. The majority of Canadian exports to the US are exempt from tariffs because of the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) that was signed during Trump’s first term.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe Trump administration in August imposed a 35% tariff on Canadian goods not covered by the USMCA. Canada’s economy has suffered from sector tariffs of 50% imposed this year by Trump on steel and aluminium from all countries.Candace Laing, president of the Canadian chamber of commerce, said: “tariffs at any level remain a tax on America first, then North American competitiveness as a whole. We hope this threat of escalation can be resolved through diplomatic channels and further negotiation. CUSMA [the Canada–United States–Mexico Agreement] means a North America where businesses do better. A successful free trade zone is fundamental for both our economies.”The Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation & Institute, a non-profit organization that works to advance his legacy and principles, wrote in a post on X that Ontario did not seek or receive permission to use the clips.The foundation said in a statement that the advert used “selective audio and video” and “misrepresents” Reagan’s comments. It said it was “reviewing its legal options”, which Trump cited in his Truth Social post.Carney on Friday said Canada stood ready to resume trade talks with the US. Trump and Carney will both be at the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) summit in Malaysia, but the president told reporters on Air Force One he has no plans to meet with the Canadian leader.The Canadian prime minister had previously removed most of Canada’s retaliatory tariffs on US imports imposed by his predecessor, but White House adviser Kevin Hassett said on Friday that Trump was frustrated with Canada and trade talks have not been going well. More