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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

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      Pennsylvania city divided over Trump as it reels from economic whiplash

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      It was set to be the most expensive project that the beaten-down manufacturing sector of Erie, Pennsylvania, had seen in decades. In a blighted corner of town, a startup planned a $300m plant that would turn plastic waste into fuel for steel factories.Neighborhood advocates in Erie’s impoverished east side hoped the facility would provide the jobs and prosperity they needed. Environmentalists decried the pollution they expected the plant to bring. Unions got ready for what they hoped would be hundreds of jobs created by its construction, with more to come once it opened.And then it was over. Mitch Hecht, founder of the company pursuing the project, announced that a Department of Energy loan crucial to the plant’s funding was put on hold as a result of Donald Trump’s policies, which “had a severe and immediate impact on our ability to move forward”.It was the latest bout of economic whiplash to strike the county on north-west Pennsylvania’s Lake Erie shoreline, just months after its voters helped return Trump to the White House. Those who backed the president say they are sticking with him, even as his administration’s spending cuts have upended projects and budgets and tariffs have created new uncertainties for businesses.Once reliably Democratic at the presidential level, Erie county has emerged as hotly contested territory ever since 2016, when Trump became the first Republican to win the area in 32 years. Joe Biden carried the county by a slim 1,417 votes four years later, but it flipped back to Trump in 2024 by nearly the same margin.“We’re set up in this moment for extreme growth over the next 15, 20, 30 years, and as we try to just hobble off the starting line, we’re just getting whacked over the head by these larger macro policies and intentional immigration policies that create an inflation environment,” said Drew Whiting, CEO of the Erie Downtown Development Corporation.View image in fullscreenThe non-profit’s renovation efforts have helped open a food hall and new apartments and shops in what was once the poorest zip code in the US, and its latest project is a mixed-use space that could create 100 jobs and bring in up to $10m a year in tax revenue. But since the start of the year, costs of labor and materials have jumped 37%, which Whiting blamed on a dollar weakened by economic uncertainty, along with labor shortages worsened by Trump’s immigration crackdown.A short drive from downtown, a placard reading: “A recycling revolution is happening in Erie” standing outside a long-shuttered paper mill is the only sign remaining of the plastic waste facility that the startup International Recycling Group (IRG) planned to build there.Though environmental groups warned IRG’s plant would create more pollution and lead to garbage filling Lake Erie, projects intended to fight the climate crisis and address long-running problems such as how to dispose of plastic waste were priorities of the Biden administration, and last year, IRG announced it had received a $182m loan commitment from the energy department.On his first day in office, Trump signed an executive order that paused disbursements of such funds, and by April of this year, Hecht had announced that the loan had been put on hold, and the project would be canceled. IRG did not respond to a request for comment, and the Department of Energy did not respond to an email sent during the government shutdown.Railing against “waste, fraud and abuse” in Washington, Trump has put on hold numerous federal programs. Erie’s food bank, Second Harvest, has lost $1m that would go towards food purchasing, or about 25% of their budget, due to such funding cuts, its CEO, Gregory Hall, said.Meanwhile, need for their assistance has only grown, climbing 43% in the past two to three years as food prices rose and local grocers went under. A deadlock in the state legislature over approving a budget, which began in July, has only worsened the financial situation. “It has been a plethora of different funding cuts, different programs canceled, that is truly having an impact on not only the amount of food, but the types and quality of food that we can provide to the neighbors in our region,” Hall said.Trump’s solution to the ills plaguing communities like Erie is tariffs, which he says will encourage businesses to bring jobs back to the US from overseas, and protect domestic manufacturers from foreign competition. Businesses are divided over how significant the levies are, and whether the turmoil they have brought will be worth it.“It’s greatly impacted profitability, but it’s also it’s leading to the product not getting harvested,” said Roger Schultz, a farmer outside Erie who said his largest markets for apples, Canada and Mexico, are far less interested in taking his crop this year because of the levies.He was skeptical that the president’s promises of new trade deals would lead to those markets reopening.“Fundamental changes have happened out there in the marketplace, and no amount of pleading or price cutting or, ‘Hey, won’t you try this,’ is going to get you back in that,” Schultz said.At the injection plastic firm Erie Molded Packaging, sales have risen 15% this year, and its president, Tom Tredway, said he is looking at expanding their factory, thanks in part to tax deductions for businesses included in Trump and the GOP’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act. While all of their suppliers and customers are in the US, the thin-gauge aluminum that is used in liners for their plastic containers is manufactured abroad, and tariffs have driven the prices higher.“It’s a nuisance more than anything,” he said.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionView image in fullscreenJezree Friend, vice-president of the Manufacturer and Business Association, an Erie-based advocacy and training group, described the higher costs as a necessary evil.“It’s a growing pain that gets you now. I think a lot of the business owners recognize that and are actually OK with that, by what they’re telling me,” he said.When Second Harvest distributes groceries, people line up in their cars hours early out of concern that the food on hand may run out. Those who supported the president on a recent Wednesday said they were pleased with what he had done so far.“I think he stands up for the people. I think he’s doing right,” said Norm Francis, 81, who runs a business fixing stained glass. “Corporate greed”, he said, was to blame for food prices that had become increasingly unaffordable for him, but the tariffs were “the right thing to do”.Ahead of him in line was Sally Michalak, 73, a retiree who was counting on Trump’s deportation campaign to curb inflation.“He’s getting rid of the illegals, so once all that settles down, I think grocery prices will go down,” she said.As for his funding cuts, Michalak shrugged them off as a necessary component of transforming a government she viewed as broken.“It’s just one of these deals where, if the house burns down, you have to tear it down completely before you rebuild it, and that’s what he’s doing,” she said.Rebuilding was on the mind of Gary Horton, executive director of the Urban Erie Community Development Corporation, as he sat in the gymnasium of a shuttered elementary school not far from where IRG would have built its plant. Closed in 2012 as enrollment in the neighborhoods around it declined, the Burton school has been used by local police for active shooter drills that have left paint splatter on the walls and bullet casings on the floor.Two years ago, Horton’s group bought it and turned the grounds into a community garden, with plans to hopefully reopen the school if the neighborhood’s economy turned around, hopefully with the help of the plastics plant.“The success of it would have helped us here, but it would have also helped maybe cultivate an atmosphere where other developers or other owners of projects would do the same thing,” Horton said.Now that the project has been canceled, “the odds of doing something right now aren’t great,” Horton conceded. “But we still have the challenge, and we still have the opportunity.” More

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      US and Canada spar over ad of Reagan denouncing tariffs that led to derailed trade talks

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      After the US suspended all trade negotiations with Canada over a 1987 speech by Ronald Reagan denouncing tariffs that appeared to spark Donald Trump’s ire, the premier of Ontario said he planned to run an ad featuring the speech again during the World Series on Friday.Doug Ford, whose government ran the Reagan ad in US markets this week, first posted on X that the two nations were “stronger together”, while Trump added his own string of social media posts trumpeting the supposed benefits of tariffs.“Canada and the United States are friends, neighbours and allies. President Ronald Reagan knew that we are stronger together,” Ford wrote on X alongside the Reagan video. “God bless Canada and God bless the United States.”Ford said the ad will run during the first game of the World Series, but, after speaking with Canadian prime minister Mark Carney, Ford announced the campaign will end Monday.“Our intention was always to initiate a conversation about the kind of economy that Americans want to build and the impact of tariffs on workers and businesses,” Ford said. “We’ve achieved our goal, having reached US audiences at the highest levels.”The quick breakdown in relationships apparently stems from a one-minute television advertisement featuring Reagan’s radio address declaring that “trade barriers hurt every American worker”.Trump responded on Truth Social without evidence that Canada had somehow run a “fraudulent” and “fake” advertisement, and announced that “all trade negotiations with Canada are hereby terminated”.Rubio, the secretary of state, told reporters on Friday that Ford had aired commercials in the US which “took President Reagan’s words out of context”, adding that the Reagan Foundation had criticized the effort, too. “The President made his announcement that he suspended any trade talks with Canada for now,” Rubio said.The Reagan Foundation said on Thursday that the Ontario government’s advertisement “misrepresents” Reagan’s address, without elaborating how. It added that officials “did not seek nor receive permission to use and edit the remarks” and added that the organization was reviewing its legal options.It also encouraged people to watch the video of Reagan’s speech on its YouTube channel.Ford’s office responded by reposting the longer, five-minute excerpt, and said that the commercial uses “an unedited excerpt from one of Reagan’s public addresses, which is available through public domain”.Democratic lawmakers on the House ways and means committee jumped in to defend the Ontario advertisement. “This is the ad that drove Trump to cancel all trade talks with Canada,” the committee posted on social media. “Unlike Trump’s AI slop, this is real and uses Reagan’s own words on tariffs.”The dispute comes as both countries face critical deadlines in the next few weeks. Next week marks the cutoff for public comments on the scheduled review of the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement, which faces its mandatory six-year assessment in July 2026. The following day, 4 November, Carney, will deliver a federal budget expected to focus on reducing reliance on US markets.Then on 5 November the US supreme court will hear constitutional challenges to Trump’s authority to impose tariffs under emergency powers. A federal appeals court ruled in August that such sweeping duties exceed presidential authority, potentially undermining the legal foundation for the 35% tariffs now applied to Canadian steel, aluminum, timber and automobiles.Chris Sands, the director of the Center for Canadian Studies at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, suggested the collapse in talks simply formalizes a dead-end process.“Can we stop trade talks? Yes, you can stop talks about steel, aluminum, energy, all of it,” he said.“But there was no evidence we were going anywhere anyway.”Sands noted the irony of Trump citing Reagan while reversing his trade legacy. “Reagan loved the country – he loved free trade. Maybe Donald Trump believes that, but it’s not what he’s selling now.”Washington imposed 25% tariffs on Canadian imports this spring, prompting retaliation from Ottawa before Trump raised duties to 35% in August. Ontario, heavily dependent on cross-border manufacturing and automotive trade, has been particularly affected. The breakdown ultimately leaves Carney navigating domestic pressure with a minority government.“Carney’s trying to keep all the provinces together,” Sands said. “He’s walking a tightrope between angry Canadians, an angry Trump, and premiers who are going off-script.”Before departing for Asia on Friday morning, Carney acknowledged the changed reality. “We can’t control the trade policy of the United States,” he told reporters, noting that US policy had fundamentally shifted from previous decades.But he emphasized Canada’s readiness to resume detailed negotiations on steel, aluminum and energy sectors, “when the Americans are ready to have those discussions, because it will be for the benefit of workers in the United States, workers in Canada and families in both of our countries.”For now, Carney said, Canada will focus on what it can control: building at home and “developing new partnerships and opportunities, including with the economic giants of Asia”. More

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      Markets rebound amid latest US-China tariff spat as traders look to possible ‘Taco trade’

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      European stock markets have edged higher and cryptocurrencies rebounded amid signs that a new front in the US-China trade war may not be a severe as first feared.Tensions between Washington and Beijing escalated again on Friday and over the weekend, as Donald Trump threatened to impose additional US tariffs of 100% on China starting next month.The US president accused the country of “very hostile” moves to restrict exports of rare-earth minerals needed for American industry. Beijing said it would retaliate if Trump does not back down.However, Trump and senior US officials opened a door to a possible deal with China on Sunday. The president wrote on Truth Social: “Don’t worry about China, it will all be fine! Highly respected President Xi just had a bad moment. He doesn’t want Depression for his country, and neither do I. The U.S.A. wants to help China, not hurt it!!!”The comments have offered some comfort for investors in Europe, with stocks opening mostly higher on Monday. The UK’s blue-chip FTSE 100 index rose by 0.2% in early trading, while markets in France, Spain, Germany were all up by about 0.5%.Most big cryptocurrencies rebounded after a deep sell-off over the weekend. Bitcoin edged up by 0.3% to more than $115,000, after falling below $105,000 on Friday. Ether had dropped to less than $3,500 but rebounded to about $4,100.Richard Hunter, of the broker Interactive Investor, said investors were hoping for a “Taco trade”, which is the idea that markets rally because “Trump Always Chickens Out” (Taco) of aggressive tariff decisions.“The president’s propensity to shoot from the hip unsettles the investment environment, even though some are already speculating that the Taco trade is alive and well,” he said.However, a heightened sense of uncertainty is pushing investors to gold, which is considered a safe haven asset. Its spot price hit another new high on Monday, rising to as high as $4,078.5 an ounce.Derren Nathan, of the broker Hargreaves Lansdown, noted that US stock futures suggested that there could be “at least a partial rebound” when the market opens later on Monday.“Traders may be banking on a similar pattern where American indexes entered a six-month period of almost unbroken growth helped by a string of trade deals, and growing hopes of a soft-landing for the US economy,” he said.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionShares in Anglo-Swedish pharmaceutical firm AstraZeneca – which made a deal with Trump to lower drug prices and avoid tariffs over the weekend – initially rose on Monday morning, before falling back by 0.4%.Fears were still running high in Asia, with main markets tumbling on Monday. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index dropped by 2.3%, while the Taiwanese market fell by 1.4% and the Thai exchange declined by 2%. In mainland China, the Shenzhen exchange fell by 1.4% and the Shanghai market slipped 0.4%.On Monday, Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Lin Jian urged the US to promptly correct its “wrong practices” and said it would act to safeguard its interests.Despite the trade tensions, Chinese exports bounced back in September, topping forecasts as it diversified its markets.Chinese exports rose by 8.3% year on year last month, according to official customs data. This was the fastest growth since March, and beat a 6% increase forecast by economists polled by Reuters. It comes after a 4.4% increase in August. More

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      China warns US of retaliation over Trump’s 100% tariffs threat

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      Beijing has told the US it will retaliate if Donald Trump fails to back down on his threat to impose 100% tariffs on Chinese imports as investors brace for another bout of trade war turmoil.China’s commerce ministry blamed Washington for raising trade tensions between the two countries after Trump announced on Friday that he would impose the additional tariffs on China’s exports to the US, along with new controls on critical software, by 1 November.“Wilful threats of high tariffs are not the right way to get along with China,” a spokesperson for the commerce ministry said on Sunday, according to the state news agency Xinhua. “China’s position on the trade war is consistent. We do not want it, but we are not afraid of it.“If the United States insists on going the wrong way, China will surely take resolute measures to protect its legitimate rights and interests.”Trump and senior US administration officials opened a door to a China trade deal on Sunday as market futures showed another US stock market drop.“Don’t worry about China, it will all be fine! Highly respected President Xi just had a bad moment. He doesn’t want Depression for his country, and neither do I. The U.S.A. wants to help China, not hurt it!!!” Trump wrote on Truth Social.The message came after JD Vance called on Beijing to “choose the path of reason” in the latest spiralling trade fight between the world’s two leading economies that has shaken stock markets.Dow futures showed a drop of 887 points ahead of the stock markets’ open on Monday. The index dropped sharply lower on Friday after reignited fears of a trade war with China when threatened to impose 100% tariffs on Chinese imports after China said it would restrict rare earth exports. The Dow fell 879 points, or 1.9%.“It’s going to be a delicate dance, and a lot of it is going to depend on how the Chinese respond,” Vance said on Fox News’s Sunday Morning Futures. “If they respond in a highly aggressive manner, I guarantee you, the president of the United States has far more cards than the People’s Republic of China. If, however, they’re willing to be reasonable,” he said, then the US would, too.The US president shocked the financial markets on Friday when he accused China of “very hostile” moves to restrict exports of rare-earth materials needed by US industry.It prompted heavy falls on Wall Street, where about $2tn (£1.5tn) was wiped off the value of the US stocks.China insisted on Sunday that its latest export controls on rare earths such as holmium, erbium, thulium, europium and ytterbium were legitimate.“China’s export controls are not export bans,” said the commerce ministry spokesperson. “All applications of compliant export for civil use can get approval, so that relevant businesses have no need to worry.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe measures were introduced after Washington added a number of Chinese firms to its export control list in a crackdown on the use of foreign affiliates to circumvent export curbs on chipmaking equipment and other goods and technology.The UK’s FTSE 100 share index fell almost 1% on Friday as Trump’s threat sparked a late selloff. The futures market indicates there could be further losses in London and New York on Monday, although there could also be relief that Beijing has not yet retaliated.Bitcoin, which had tumbled 8% after Trump’s post on Truth Social, rose by 4% on Sunday after China refrained from retaliating.Trump’s tariff threat was “a rather unwelcome development for financial markets” as investors had “by and large moved on from the trade and tariff story”, said Michael Brown, a senior research strategist at the brokerage firm Pepperstone.“Chiefly, the question that every man and his dog are attempting to answer is whether this is a credible threat, that the Trump admin might follow through on, or whether this is another example of the ‘escalate to de-escalate’ strategy that Trump used so frequently earlier in the year.“A strategy where outlandish and ridiculous tariff figures are threatened, in an attempt to focus minds, extract concessions from the other party, and ultimately come to agreement faster than otherwise might’ve been possible.” More

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      US farmers caught in Trump-China trade war – who’ll buy the soybeans?

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      At the Purfeerst farm in southern Minnesota, the soybean harvest just wrapped up for the season. The silver grain bins are full of about 100,000 bushels of soybeans, which grab about $10 a piece.This year, though, the fate of the soybeans, and the people whose livelihoods depend on selling them, is up in the air: America’s soybean farmers are stuck in the middle of a trade war between the US and China, the biggest purchaser of soybean exports, used to feed China’s pigs.“We are gonna have to find a home for them soybeans some time soon,” said Matt Purfeerst, a fifth-generation farmer on the family’s land. “They won’t stay in our bins for ever.”No other country comes close to purchasing as many American soybeans as China – last year, it was more than $12bn worth. This year, the country has not purchased a single dollar’s worth, cutting off the country that makes up about half of US soybean exports.While Trump has said he intends some sort of payment to go to soybean farmers hurt by tariffs, an announcement of a specific plan is on hold while the government is shut down. He said in a Truth Social post last week that he would be meeting with the Chinese president soon and “soybeans will be a major topic of discussion”.The White House cast blame on Democrats for the government shutdown for the delay in a response to the Guardian on Wednesday, erroneously claiming they were prioritizing healthcare for migrants over farmers.View image in fullscreen“President Trump, [Treasury] Secretary [Scott] Bessent, and [Agriculture] Secretary [Brooke] Rollins are always in touch about the needs of our farmers, who played a crucial role in the president’s November victory,” spokeswoman Anna Kelly said. “Unfortunately, Democrats in Congress have stalled progress on this issue with their prolonged shutdown to serve illegal immigrants instead of America’s farmers. No decisions have been made, but we look forward to sharing good news soon.”Purfeerst’s family farm grows soybeans and corn, and has some beef cattle. The job is a round-the-clock combination of engineering, business, manual labor, environmental science. And it’s increasingly hard for family farms to make it. Costs for propane, fertilizer and seed have gone up, he said, and the prices for the goods they are selling don’t make up for the increased costs.Soybean farmers have become the “poster child out there right now of how this one particular segment’s getting hurt”, he said. The farm recently welcomed the Democratic US senator Amy Klobuchar for a visit to talk about how the tariffs were playing out, but Purfeerst said political affiliations didn’t matter.“Only 1% of the population is even involved in [agriculture] any more,” he said. “And what gets really challenging is this perception of ag out there, whether it’s on tariffs and prices or environmental issues, farmers kind of seem to be the crosshairs of a lot of it.”Farming areas voted for Trump in 2024, as did much of rural America. One analysis, by Investigate Midwest, showed Trump growing his support among farming-dependent counties in 2024 despite a trade war during his first term that negatively affected farmers.“I’m not gonna get into who I voted for particularly, but I would just have to say, at the time, you got to make decisions who you think is going to be the best leader of the country, and go on with life,” Purfeerst said. “And in four years, you get to vote again. That’s the beauty of our society. It’s not an 80-year regime. It’s a four-year cycle. It’s hard to say what’s gonna come about. I mean, everyone’s got their pros and cons.”View image in fullscreenPurfeerst has options for his soybeans: because of his farm’s location, he can sell domestically to soybean crush facilities in nearby towns, sell on the rail market, or sell in Minneapolis and put product on barges down the Mississippi River. Other soybean farmers, especially those in more remote parts of the midwest where soybeans are mostly produced, aren’t as lucky.Stories from all parts of the country where soybeans are grown have surfaced in recent weeks – in Arkansas, Illinois, Nebraska, Indiana, the Dakotas. Farmers face higher costs for inputs like fertilizer and equipment. They rely on China as a purchaser. Soybeans sitting in bins too long is subject to weather and pests. The prices fluctuate, so it’s a gamble to hold on to it that sometimes can pay off, or sometimes lose money.“Let’s say tomorrow we get a trade deal with China, and it’s favorable to soybeans. All of a sudden you might see this market jump from $10 to $12 in three, four days,” Purfeerst said. “So it makes it extremely challenging from a risk management standpoint of: when do you market your crop, and how many eggs do you put in that basket? The potential is $12, but if we don’t get a trade deal, it could go to $9 … There’s a huge volatility in soybeans.”The soybean industry has been warning for months that China’s exit from the market would be devastating, calling on the Trump administration to come up with a trade deal that spares farmers. The American Soybean Association wrote a letter to Trump in August, saying the country’s soybean farmers were “standing at a trade and financial precipice” and “cannot survive a prolonged trade dispute with our largest customer”.Tim Walz, Minnesota’s Democratic governor, declared the first week of October as soybean week, saying in the announcement that “our soybean farmers are confronting a crisis they haven’t seen since the 1980s”.“They’ve produced a bumper crop this year, just to find out they have nowhere to sell their harvest thanks to Trump’s trade policies,” Walz said. “Minnesota’s got the best beans in the world – I encourage Minnesotans to stand with our farmers and continue to advocate for federal trade reform.”It’s not the first time a Trump trade plan has hurt soybean farmers: in 2018, a trade war led to significant reductions in soybean exports to China. Since then, the market has rebounded, though China has ramped up soybean purchases from Brazil and Argentina, stockpiling imports earlier this year.Republican lawmakers have said they are sympathetic to the farmers and want to find a way to help them. James Comer, a Republican congressman from Kentucky, said this week that soybean farmers were not to blame for the problem they are facing.“They planted that crop assuming that those foreign markets were going to be there,” Comer said in a recent TV appearance. “I think we need to do something to help the soybean farmers.”A bailout is “really just a Band-Aid”, though it’s one that many farmers would welcome as they are getting squeezed right now, Purfeerst said. Most farmers would prefer an open market, without tariffs, for their products, letting the market dictate prices. They don’t want the trade war now to affect a long-term relationship that makes up a significant chunk of market share. There also should be more emphasis put on increasing domestic uses of soybeans, though a long-range plan like that won’t help the farmers who are stuck right now, he said.“There’s farms that are struggling to make money on soybean acres, and you’ve got to remember: whatever payment we’re getting, whatever that dollar amount might be, if we get anything, it’s not just going in our back pocket,” he said. “We’ve got a fertilizer bill. We’ve got to pay the seed bill. There’s a lot of payments. So really, that money might be in the farmer’s hands for a month, until it gets spent on inputs for next year.” More

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      Nature, books and naked bike rides: Portlanders push back on Trump claims that city is ‘like living in hell’

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      In Portland, Oregon, a city Donald Trump claims to have seen “burning down to the ground” on his television, residents are pushing back on the US president’s false depiction of their tranquil city as a war zone.Trump, who refuses to accept firsthand accounts from Oregon’s governor and the Portland mayor that the widespread unrest he thinks he’s seen on television is not actually happening, has ordered the military in to the Pacific north-west city.Portland police made three arrests on Thursday night after fistfights broke out between demonstrators and a pro-Trump influencer from Washington DC at an Ice field office, and 200 national guard troops are expected to arrive in the coming days. But a visit to the Ice field on Thursday afternoon showed that, far from being “under siege” by militants, there were fewer than 10 protesters on the sidewalk, nearly outnumbered by journalists.Now residents, frustrated with the president’s false claims that Portland is “war ravaged”, are showing a different side of their city from the one depicted by Trump and Fox News.A raft of Instagram and TikTok videos from Portlanders are poking holes in Trump’s claim that life in their city is “like living in hell”, showcasing verdant hiking trails, trees in rich fall colors and a thriving food scene. Plans are also being drawn up for the most Portland of all possible responses: an Emergency Naked Bike Ride against “the militarization of our city”.View image in fullscreenOn a rainy Thursday in the city, the kitchen at Kann, Portland’s award-winning Haitian restaurant, was busy preparing for dinner. Jokes about Trump’s war were shared at Coava, a cafe with a single-origin coffee menu that changes seasonally which is popular with Japanese tourists. Business was brisk at Powell’s Books, the downtown icon which inspired the new protest slogan: “Portland isn’t a war zone; it’s a bookstore with a city around it.”The parking lot was full at Providore Fine Foods, a culinary marketplace whose owner, Kaie Wellman, said she was concerned about how Trump’s “threats against our city” could be “devastating for local businesses” like hers, which worked so hard to survive the pandemic only to be hit first by Trump’s tariffs and now his “100% false” portrayal of a minor protest at the Ice field office in the city’s south waterfront district. “It’s really profoundly upsetting,” she said.Wellman, a fifth-generation Oregonian, is opening a bistro this month in the Portland Art Museum’s new Mark Rothko Pavilion, a $110m expansion that has taken a decade to complete. “It really is such a cornerstone for our community, for downtown Portland, to have such a significant new building,” she said. She describes her leap of faith in opening a new restaurant just blocks from where the 2020 protests for racial justice took place as “a love letter to Portland and what a vibrant community we are.“One of the main reasons that we’re opening up this cafe downtown, and do what we do here in town, is because of our deep love for the state and for the city. And to see it portrayed anything less than what it is, you know, is just so frustrating. It’s a place that people want to come and live and raise their families. And it’s kind of unmatched in beauty,” Wellman said.View image in fullscreen“Yes, we’ve had issues here, but we’ve had the same issues that basically every other city around this world has had. And we’re coming at these issues from a thoughtful place and not trying to sweep them away. But the issue that’s being portrayed right now does not exist in this town.”Asked about Trump’s claims of lawlessness, Wellman said it was “not the case at all”. “And I am in the south waterfront at least two to three times a week because my 92-year-old mother lives in the south waterfront,” she added. “So I can tell you firsthand what’s been happening down there. And what I have seen, at the quote-unquote very worst, it’s still been peaceful protests. Maybe there’s been some strong words thrown around.”“I would say right now, if there is any disturbance that’s been going on, it’s Black Hawk helicopters that are circling around a neighborhood that is filled with many retirees and older people … causing all of them fear and a lack of sleep,” she added.View image in fullscreenBack at the Ice field office protest, Amanda Cochran, a US army veteran, was holding a homemade sign that read “Vets Against Militarization” on one side, and “Immigrants Are Not the Enemy’ on the other. She wore a tour shirt for the Canadian rock band Three Days Grace with the lyrics “Let’s start a riot.”“I’m here because I’m really fed up with the fact that Trump is talking about using the military to go into cities and to train the forces,” she said.“I served in the US army for six years and this is my first time ever protesting,” she said. “I just felt really strongly that if we don’t stand up and say something then this could easily become a militarized country and the citizens will be under the control of the military, and I don’t think that that is OK, and that’s not what I fought for.“Us veterans, we have the privilege of being able to express our opinions because we’re out, and hopefully we can kind of give those soldiers that don’t want to be there a voice. If enough of us show up, maybe Trump will back off,” she added.Across the street, the Fox News correspondent Bill Melugin, who has been reporting from inside the facility, prepared for a live hit out front, accompanied by three men with covered faces who appeared to be private security guards.Just to their left, a young protest organizer, Jack Dickinson, who achieved a measure of viral fame this week for the chicken costume he wears to mock Trump, was being interviewed for the local news.Why a chicken? One of the advantages of the costume, Dickinson explained, is that “it disarms people.“We’re dealing with a real influx of rightwing agitators right now,” he continued. “It becomes difficult for them to interact in certain ways, I think, when there’s the chicken suit, but not just the chicken suit, it’s then somebody who tries to have a conversation with them about the soybean situation that we’re facing right now,” referring to the collapse in crop prices for US farmers due to Trump’s trade war with China.View image in fullscreen“We do not want this to escalate,” he said, agreeing with local officials who suggest that Trump wants to provoke a response from the protesters.“There is definitely a desire for a response. We saw this most clearly on Sunday night because for that protest, we had 30 people that were down here associated with rightwing Twitter accounts or rightwing YouTube channels,” Dickinson said. “There is a clear desire to get somebody reacting in a way that they can frame as a justification for what they are doing. And Portland just isn’t giving them what they want.” More

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      in US Politics

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

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