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      ‘It comes from racism’: immigrant workers on Trump’s deportation push

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      Donald Trump has ramped up anti-immigration fervor into his second presidency, promising mass deportations, pushing to increase arrests and bolstering public relations efforts to amplify arrests. The moves have sent a wave of terror through the undocumented worker community that underpins large parts of the US economy.“Every day I wake up and walk out the door, I go with the hope of going to work, but with the fear of not being able to come back,” said a construction worker and single parent in Texas who obtained immigration protection under the Biden administration. She requested to remain anonymous due to fears about her immigration status.“Every day I worry if something happens, who will take my kids,” she said. “I have only one child born in the US. They are the only one who might be able to return, but me and the other kids would not be able to come back.”She claimed that since Trump took office for his second term, there had been fewer opportunities to work construction jobs given the increased fear of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) raids at workplaces.Despite being in the US for 10 years and constantly trying to obtain documentation, she explained it took her experiencing weeks of wage theft to be able to get documentation through the deferred action program, which provides temporary status and work authorization to immigrants who have been victims of labor abuses.“Unfortunately, these next few years will be years of fear, years of silence,” she said. “I believe the anti-immigrant pushes are racist. People have been taken away without criminal records. We used to have the ability to pay fines before because we didn’t have criminal records, but I’ve heard from other immigrants, anyone being taken into custody by Ice, regardless of their situation, will be deported.”Trump has signed an executive order to allocate military resources at the US border with Mexico and opened Guantánamo Bay prison in Cuba to the detention of undocumented immigrants. The Department of Homeland Security also rolled back a policy of restricting Ice arrests at sensitive locations such as hospitals, places of worship and schools and the agency is pushing to recruit IRS agents to assist in immigration enforcement. The administration is also reportedly planning to reopen family detention centers.View image in fullscreenThe changes come as Trump campaigned with misleading and false statements about immigrants, portraying them as criminals and taking away jobs, including making a baseless claim that Haitian immigrants in Ohio were eating pets.Despite this rhetoric fomenting xenophobic sentiments, an October 2024 report by the Economic Policy Institute on the benefits of immigration to the US cited the enabling of economic growth as the US-born workforce declines, and the payment of nearly $100bn annually in taxes, and noted mass deportations actually result in job losses for US-born workers due to reduced local demand output.Several industries rely heavily on immigrant workers. Nearly 2.9 million immigrants, the most in any occupation group, are employed in construction and extraction, comprising 34% of employment in these occupations in the US.The Guardian spoke with several immigrant workers in construction about their experiences and fears caused by Trump’s immigration policies and the anti-immigrant sentiments stoked by his rhetoric and policies.Another undocumented construction worker in Texas said there is a “constant fear” in going to work every day that his workplace will be raided by Ice or that he will return home to find his family, the majority of whom are undocumented, taken away.“It is a constant fear. It’s something we can’t take from our minds, every instance of the day,” they said. “My main worry is there will be one day where my family might be taken away from me and be sent back to Mexico.”Trying to acquire legal documentation has been “almost impossible”, they added. “The reason behind these policies, it comes from racism. The majority of immigrants aren’t criminals. Like myself, a lot of immigrants come to this country to be able to fulfill their dreams, to be able to work. We’re humans and we have rights. The things we go through when being held in immigration detention, unless you live them, you won’t be able to understand it.”Andres Surquia of Georgia currently has immigration protection through deferred action – a government policy that allows certain undocumented immigrants to work and avoid deportation for two-year periods.“I’m scared because Trump has said he wants to remove deferred-action protections, which took me so long to get,” he said. “As immigrants, we come into this country to work and we want to be respected and protected.”The International Union of Painters and Allied Trades, which represents 140,000 workers in the US and Canada, pushed to secure deferred-action immigration protections for workers experiencing labor abuses in construction for the past several years under the Biden administration.“It was one of the main pillars we put forth as a union, in coalition with other unions, that really view immigration as a working-class issue,” said the IUPAT general president, Jimmy Williams. “Now, under the Trump administration it’s going to go back to all these workers having no recourse, and the employers continuing to be able to use their status as a way to keep them further and further from being able to speak out.”Immigration is a labor and economic issue, Williams said. The union views it as a responsibility to fight and defend these workers because they are their union members. But he expressed disappointment with Democrats whom he feels have so far failed to support these workers.“Where’s the resistance?” Williams asked. “When will the Democratic party really get it right on framing this as a working-class issue and put the target solely on where it belongs, which is on the employers that have abused this system for decades now, keeping workers’ rights down, keeping wages down? You’ve seen limited to no response from the opposition.”A construction worker in Texas who has been pursuing asylum said she had seen fewer people show up to work out of fear in recent weeks.“There’s not many people going to work any more, because of the fear. The only reason why I go to work is it’s a necessity to bring food home and pay bills,” she said. “They want to extract the people that are working in the farms, that are working in the fields, that are working in the restaurants that they eat in, and now they’re taking them without any explanation. It’s not fair.”Milton Velásquez is a construction worker in Maryland from El Salvador who currently has temporary protected status (TPS), provisional protection given to nationals of some countries in crisis. Trump has already revoked these protections for 350,000 Venezuelans and has incited fears he will revoke or limit protections for 1 million immigrants in the US from 17 nations granted protections under the Biden administration.“It scares me because if my TPS does get revoked, I will lose a lot of job opportunities without it and it would limit my income,” he said. “There is always fear of deportation. I try not to think about it, but what scares me the most is having to go back to El Salvador. I would have to work 10 times as much to get paid $10 a day.”Under the first Trump presidential term, Velásquez faced issues with trying to bring his son and daughter to the US from El Salvador through the Central American Minors program, which Trump shut down in 2017. He is still separated from his daughter.“I tried to get her a visa,” Velasquez added. “I’ve been longing to bring them here. That’s what I work for, to provide for my family, to get my family to come here.”Send us a tipIf you have information you’d like to share securely with the Guardian about the impact of the Trump administration’s temporary protected status decision, please use a non-work device to contact us via the Signal messaging app at (929) 418-7175. More

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      Trump policies make US ‘scary place to invest’ and risk stagflation, says Stiglitz

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      Donald Trump’s tariff threats have made the US “a scary place to invest” and may unleash stagflation, the Nobel prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz has said.“It risks the worst of all possible worlds: a kind of stagflation,” Stiglitz said in an interview with the Guardian.He argued that despite optimism about the US economy at the turn of the year, the uncertainty created by Trump’s on-off tariff plans and the president’s apparent contempt for the rule of law would deter investment.“If you’re a corporate in the US or in Europe, do you think you have a global market, or do you have just a European market? Where do you locate your factories?” he said.He highlighted Elon Musk’s efforts to slash government departments without congressional authority, and Trump’s disregard for contracts – including the trade pact he struck with Canada and Mexico in his first term – among damaging signals for investors considering the US as a destination.“The government has a huge number of contracts and we’re just tearing them up. How much risk do you want? The US has become, I would say, a scary place to invest,” he said.Stiglitz argued that the uncertainty was likely to slow economic growth, while at the same time Trump’s tariffs – and retaliation by other countries – would drive up inflation.The prospect of rising inflation in the world’s largest economy has led investors to pare back bets on the US Federal Reserve cutting interest rates since Trump’s return to office, amid mounting concern over the fallout from a global trade war.Stiglitz, a Columbia University professor and former World Bank economist who served as chair of Bill Clinton’s council of economic advisers, said the Fed was “clearly worried” about the inflationary effects of Trump’s policies, which could lead it to raise interest rates.“Almost all economists agree that the tariffs will increase prices. How much it will increase prices is a little bit affected by the magnitude of the appreciation of the exchange rate, but all economists think that the extent of the appreciation of the exchange rate won’t be anywhere near enough to compensate for the tariffs.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“I could certainly see a scenario where we get to stagflation – we get inflation, and a weak economy,” he said. “I cannot see a really robust economy, because I just see the global economy suffering so much from the uncertainty that Trump poses.”Scott Bessent, the US Treasury secretary, has suggested the administration wants to bring down 10-year US Treasury yields, an important interest rate, which would have a knock-on effect across global markets. Lower Treasury yields would make it cheaper for Washington to borrow.But Stiglitz suggested the only way the president’s policies would positively contribute to that goal was by running the US into the ground. “The inflation from the tariffs is going in the wrong way, and the only thing that is going in the right way for Bessent is his efforts to crater the economy,” he said.“In supporting Trump’s economic policies, [Bessent] is helping to get the yield curve down by crashing the US economy – not a good policy, I would say.” More

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      Forget Trump’s tariffs, the president’s bond market threat is worse | Heather Stewart

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      When Donald Trump gave an in-flight press conference en route to the Super Bowl last week, it generated a flurry of news, from the fresh threat of steel tariffs to the declaration of “Gulf of America Day”.Much less remarked upon was a throwaway comment about the US’s financial obligations, which underlined the fact that tariffs are far from the only way in which Trump is jeopardising economic stability.“We’re even looking at Treasuries,” the president told reporters. “There could be a problem … It could be that a lot of those things don’t count. In other words, that some of that stuff that we’re finding is very fraudulent, therefore maybe we have less debt than we thought.”The suggestion was that opening up the US Treasury’s data to Elon Musk’s “department of government efficiency” team had identified a money-saving wheeze: why not walk away from some of America’s debt obligations – a “selective default”, as economists call it.Like so many of the serially erratic president’s pronouncements, this one had to be “walked back”, as the Americans call it. Kevin Hassett, his economic adviser, stressed the next day that Trump was referring to other payments that the US Treasury had been making, not its $36tn (£28.6tn) in debt obligations. Hassett suggested the Treasury “had been “sending money out without flagging what it was for”.Yet just entertain for a moment the idea that a US administration might decide it could unilaterally default on even a small portion of its debts. The result would be catastrophic. Because of the dollar’s status as the world’s reserve currency, the yield on US Treasuries – US government bonds – is perhaps the most important benchmark in global financial markets.If investors suddenly began demanding a higher yield – in effect the interest rate – as insurance against the risk they would not get their money back, the effects would ripple through the trillions of dollars of other assets worldwide priced with reference to supposedly super-safe Treasuries.Hassett made clear this is absolutely not an outcome the saner elements of Trump’s administration were aiming for. Indeed, the treasury secretary, Scott Bessent, has said the president wants to bring down the yield on 10-year US government borrowing costs.Yet as a result of Musk’s crazed takeover of the financial plumbing of the state, the US is already welching on its obligations – moral and financial – all over the world.Every day seems to bring fresh examples: health clinics in the developing world being closed because of the dismantling of USAid; researchers whose projects funded by the National Institutes of Health have been put on hold.Officials from the city administration in New York have even claimed the government in effect dipped into the city’s bank account to claw back $80m in federal grants that had already been made.This fast-track austerity is ostensibly aimed at improving the government’s balance sheet – putting the US through “the private equity wringer”, as Wired’s Brian Barrett put it last week.But the Musk/Trump takeover simultaneously risks shattering confidence in US institutions, in a way that is liable to have long-lasting and unpredictable consequences.Five former treasury secretaries warned in an extraordinary New York Times editorial last week of the risks of letting Musk loose on the nation’s financial system.“Any hint of the selective suspension of congressionally authorised payments will be a breach of trust and ultimately, a form of default. And our credibility, once lost, will prove difficult to regain,” they said.Musk has faced legal action and is targeting arms of government with which he has a particular beef, meaning the chances of anything that looks like a formal default remain low.View image in fullscreenBut the whole performance – as exemplified by a rambling Oval Office briefing involving Trump, Musk and his son X (who has the same name as the social media platform formerly known as Twitter) – screams “political risk”, as analysts would call it if it was happening elsewhere in the world.It would not be surprising if efforts to spur the development of alternative global reserve currencies and payments structures – such as those proposed by nations in the global south – are given added impetus by the shenanigans in Washington.The sheer insularity of the Trump administration’s approach was illustrated on Friday when Bessent – supposedly one of the more sensible figures in the administration – said: “The US has a strong dollar policy, but because we have a strong dollar policy it doesn’t mean that other countries get to have a weak currency policy.”In the short term, the most immediate impact of Trump’s plans on the global economy is likely to be via his long-trailed tariffs plan, which will throw sand in the wheels of the international trading system.All of this is likely to dampen growth, and if trade analysts are right that Trump’s latest idea of “reciprocity”, based on each country’s existing tariff and VAT rates, is the opening bid in a negotiation, it may be weeks or even months before any clarity emerges.Given this corrosive uncertainty, markets have so far been remarkably quiescent in the face of Trump’s wayward trade policy, and appear to be relatively unconcerned about Musk’s slash-and-burn mission, for now.They have been putting their faith in the mighty US consumer, and the economy’s powerful and innovative tech sector, to feed the narrative of US “exceptionalism”.But every week of the Trump/Musk show in Washington surely increases the threat of a structural shift in how investors view the US economy – which would ultimately be felt around the world. More

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      Trump says US prices ‘could go up’ as he threatens new tariffs on trade partners

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      Donald Trump threatened to ramp up his economic assault on some of America’s biggest trading partners on Thursday, vowing to impose new tariffs on countries that target products made in the US within weeks.The US will impose “reciprocal” duties, the president announced. “We want a level playing field,” he declared in the Oval Office, pledging to roll out a “beautiful, simple system” of new US import duties that match those imposed by other countries.No new specific tariffs were announced, however, triggering a relief rally on Wall Street. Instead, Trump signed a presidential memorandum ordering the development of a comprehensive plan to address what the White House described as “longstanding imbalances” in the global economy.Americans could face “some short-term disturbance” if the US imposes higher tariffs on foreign goods, Trump acknowledged. “Prices could go up somewhat short-term,” he said. “But prices will also go down.”“What will go up is jobs,” claimed Trump. “The jobs will go up tremendously.”The US commerce department, now led by the billionaire Howard Lutnick, will conduct studies and report back to the president at the start of April. No exemptions will be offered from any “reciprocal” duties introduced under the new plan, Trump suggested.It is the latest bid by Trump to strain Washington’s trade ties with countries across the world – allies and rivals alike – to obtain political and economic concessions.A press notice circulated by the Trump administration promised it would take action to “put the American worker first, improve our competitiveness in every area of industry, reduce our trade deficit, and bolster our economic and national security”.US officials pointed to a series of examples of tariffs and other trade barriers that they said demonstrated how other countries were not treating the US fairly. They pointed to the European Union’s 10% tariff on cars, alongside the 2.5% US tariff on cars, and claimed that shellfish from 48 states cannot be exported to the EU, while the bloc “can export all the shellfish it wants to America”.They also cited a 100% tariff imposed by India on US motorcycles, while the US only charges 2.4%, and an 18% duty in Brazil on US ethanol, while the US charges 2.5%.Trump is due to meet Narendra Modi, the Indian prime minister, later on Thursday. Addressing reporters, he argued the EU was “very nasty”, adding: “They don’t treat us right on trade.”He also suggested that the US could hit the so-called Brics alliance – which includes Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa – with 100% tariffs, if it sought to undermine the US dollar.Trump also called for Russia’s return to the G7 group of industrialised nations, saying it had been a mistake for Moscow to be expelled. Russia was suspended from the group – then known as the G8 – in 2014, following the annexation of Crimea, and announced its permanent withdrawal in 2017.While the president and his allies believe that higher taxes on imports will help “make America great again”, they have also claimed the mere threat of higher tariffs from the world’s largest economy can prompt nations to bend to Trump’s will.Trump had trailed this announcement for days, at first promising news on Tuesday or Wednesday, before claiming early on Thursday that he would announce reciprocal tariffs – “THE BIG ONE”, he wrote on social media – later in the day. In the event, no specific new tariffs were announced.The administration has so far threatened more tariffs than it has introduced. Duties on Colombia were shelved when it agreed to accept military aircraft carrying deported immigrants; duties on Canada and Mexico have been repeatedly delayed; and modified duties on steel and aluminum, announced earlier this week, will not be enforced until next month.An additional 10% tariff on goods from China is, for now, the only threatened trade attack actually enforced since Trump returned to the White House. On Friday, it emerged that a key component of this – removing the longstanding duty-free status of low-cost packages – had been delayed.Trump’s fixation with tariffs has alarmed economists, who have warned their imposition may derail his repeated promises to rapidly bring down prices for millions of Americans.Inflation is already proving stubborn. In January, as Trump returned to office, it ticked up to an annualized rate of 3%. Egg prices have been soaring in recent months, as many US consumers continue to grapple with the elevated cost of living.Trump said he would not commission any studies into how his mooted tariffs could affect prices for Americans. “There’s nothing to study,” he said. “It’s going to go well.”Asked whether the Trump administration’s plan to align US tariffs with those imposed by other countries risked raising prices for US consumers, Lutnick – standing alongside the president – sought to shift responsibility onto other countries. “​If they drop their tariffs, prices for Americans are going down​,”​ he said.Trump has frequently highlighted the US’s trade deficit with the world – the fact that the value of its imports greatly exceeds that of its exports – as evidence of unfairness.“Closed markets” overseas reduce US exports, while “open markets at home result in significant imports”, the White House notice said, arguing that this had undercut the US’s ability to compete. More

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      If you thought Elon Musk was bad, look at his dreadful mini-mes and shudder for America | Emma Brockes

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      You would be forgiven for thinking we were back at the Bullingdon Club, in the company of Jonty, Munty, Stiffy, Kipper, Chugger and, to use the polite version, Pig Botherer – only in this case it’s Big Balls and a guy with a history of racist tweeting. This is the sudden, startling emergence into American political life of a type deeply recognisable to Brits: that is, jaunty young men with juvenile nicknames and a firm belief they should be running the world.This being America, the class signifiers are slightly different from those in Britain. But in most regards, the cohort of young men hired by Elon Musk for his cost-cutting taskforce, the department of government efficiency (Doge), will be familiar to anyone who lived through the era of Boris Johnson’s weapons-grade flippancy or reports of David Cameron’s youthful hijinks. (Donald Trump is very flippant, of course, but his style skews locker room rather than debate chamber – or, in this case, maths olympiad.) And while politics has always run on young, volunteer energy, less common in the US, perhaps, is the imperial swagger, the sheer frivolous entitlement accompanying a crowd that has seemingly been given the keys to the kingdom.Let’s look at the lineup. The youngest of Musk’s Doge hires, Edward Coristine – online username, Big Balls – is a 19-year-old former intern at Neuralink, Musk’s neurotechnology company, who until recently appeared to be a first-year student at Northeastern University in Boston. Luke Farritor is a 23-year-old former SpaceX intern. Marko Elez, 25, used to work for X and SpaceX, and was revealed by the Wall Street Journal to have authored several since-removed tweets asserting, among other things, “You could not pay me to marry outside of my ethnicity.” (Elez briefly resigned before Musk announced he’d reinstate him.)And Gavin Kliger, a 25-year-old who boosted a post on X by the white supremacist Nick Fuentes, and whose newly launched Substack this week highlighted the perils of skipping freshman English 101 with a post entitled “Why DOGE: Why I gave up a seven-figure salary to save America.”Between them, these men have gained access to federal premises and staffing systems that govern agencies including USAid, the Department of Health and Human Services, the education and energy departments, and the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, and contain sensitive information relating to millions of Americans. Elez was, reportedly, erroneously given overwrite access to the Treasury department’s payment system before it was yanked back to read-only.Of course, given that Doge has not responded to questions about what, if any, security clearance these young men have gone through, read-only is bad enough. The head of Doge, hiring in his own image, has turned to young, male software engineers with startup energy and the conviction that if you understand coding, you understand life. They’ve established sleeping pods in spare offices at the federal agencies they have been engaged to gut or dismantle, so that while Musk goes on X to mock federal employees for not working at weekends, his mini-mes work round the clock.This feat would be more impressive if their online remarks and bios didn’t flag what might diplomatically be called large gaps in their skill-sets. Musk, a man with the emotional maturity of a cartoon bank robber, is leading a group of men most of whom have no government or management experience whatsoever, let alone expertise in fields governed by the agencies they have been tasked to reform. The whole scene is reminiscent of the 90s boom in management consultancy, during which new graduates stared with frank disbelief at anyone who was over 35 and still breathing. And sure enough, as reported in the New York Times, young engineers have been overheard referring to federal employees as “dinosaurs”, who have in turn called the guys in baseball caps “Muskrats”.On X, meanwhile, Musk amplified a post pitching “autistic tech bros” against “non-binary Deep State theater kids”, and another that said what’s happening in the US right now is equivalent to “the yearbook committe and theater kid types getting rocked by a football team and chess club alliance”. Theatre kids and chess nerds are, traditionally, both categories of social death in high school that are targeted by queen bees and jocks, a case of Musk siding with the oppressor that’s even sadder when you consider that Trump isn’t even a real jock. (For a full account of Trump’s hilariously mediocre sports career relative to his claims about it, read Lucky Loser by Russ Buettner and Susanne Craig.)Anyway, we know how this ends. In the largest sense, with the cancellation of programmes mandated democratically in Congress by a bunch of unelected goons in puffer vests. And in the smallest sense, with one of these 22-year-old jerks spilling his Big Gulp cup of Mountain Dew over a keyboard at the Treasury and wiping the social security data of 70 million Americans. I look forward to watching as Big Balls and co find new ways to tank an economy even more efficiently and irreversibly than Brexit.

      Emma Brockes is a Guardian columnist More

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      Modi heads to US in mission to dodge a tit-for-tat tariff battle

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      The Indian prime minister, Narendra Modi, is heading to Washington for high-stakes talks in an attempt to avoid a trade war with Donald Trump.India is considering tariff cuts in at least a dozen sectors in the hope of dodging US tariffs that would pile more pressure on its already slowing economy.Wednesday’s meeting will test the much-hyped “bromance” between Trump and Modi, in which they exchanged bear hugs and effusive compliments during the president’s first term. Trump has called Modi “the nicest human being”, while the Indian prime minister has referred to the president as his “dear friend.” Both are populists who rose to power on waves of anti-establishment ardour and nationalism.The Indian foreign secretary, Vikram Misri, told reporters that the fact the prime minister had been invited to visit the US “within barely three weeks of the new administration taking office, shows the importance of the India-US partnership”.Trump has not held back his frustration over India’s high tariffs, labelling the country a “very big abuser” and accusing it of blocking US imports.Modi’s two-day visit comes shortly after Trump announced a 25% tariff on global steel and aluminium imports into the US. Calling the tariffs “the first of many”, the president indicated there could be levies on cars, chemicals, pharmaceuticals and other goods. He is planning a system of “reciprocal tariffs”, saying: “If they charge us, we charge them.”The metal tariffs have rattled India’s steel and aluminium industries, which export good worth billions of dollars to the US each year. The Indian Steel Association said on Tuesday the steel tariff was “expected to slash exports to the US by 85%”.In an effort to pre-empt punitive trade action, in its budget last week the Indian government cut duties on a range of goods, including high-end motorcycles such as Harley-Davidsons. It is also considering tariff cuts on other products, including electronics, medical and surgical equipment, chemicals, dish antennae and wood pulp, many of which originate in the US.Bilateral trade has been growing steadily, surpassing $118bn (£95bn) in the last financial year, with India running a $32bn trade surplus. Trump says he wants a relationship that is more “fair” while India says it is open to discussing a limited trade deal to address US concerns about market access.Trump has urged Modi to buy more US defence and energy products, with India presenting a lucrative market as the world’s largest arms importer. Nuclear energy, including small and modular reactors, is also on the agenda, as India seeks to expand its clean energy sources to meet decarbonisation targets. Reports suggest India is already in talks to buy combat vehicles and finalise a fighter jet engine deal.Another significant issue is Trump’s crackdown on illegal migration. The president says Modi has assured him India “will do what’s right” on the matter.The US last week deported 104 Indian migrants and plans to return many more. Images of deportees in shackles during a 42-hour military flight prompted public anger in India, with a senior Indian government official responding that “this kind of treatment can perhaps be avoided”. Discussions are expected to focus on managing the return of hundreds of other Indian nationals to be deported.Modi will also push for expanding H-1B visas, which are vital for the Indian IT workforce in the US. Importantly for Modi, Trump has expressed support for the H-1B visa programme, which brings skilled foreign workers to the tech sector. Elon Musk has backed the H-1B visa scheme, saying it drives innovation but, highlighting the ideological divide among key figures in Trump’s orbit, Steve Bannon and other Maga voices argue that H-1B visas siphon jobs and undermine American workers.Modi has framed his visit as an opportunity to build on the successes of the US-India partnership, in particular in technology, defence, energy, and supply chains. But his immediate mission is to keep trade relations from spiralling into a damaging tit-for-tat tariff battle. More

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      ‘It’s a constant weight’: Americans struggle with record credit card debt

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      US credit card debt reached a record $1.17tn in the third quarter of 2024, growing from $770bn in the first quarter of 2021 and the share of active credit card holders making just minimum payments rose to 10.75%, the highest percentage ever in data going back to 2012.The Guardian spoke with individuals around the US about their experiences and issues with credit card and other personal debt. They requested to remain anonymous for privacy concerns about personal finances.Angela, a 42-year-old teacher in Virginia, explained she and her husband had struggled with paying off about $20,000 in credit card debt accrued mostly from paying medical bills not covered by her health insurance from infertility issues.“The medicines, procedures, and travel all hit us hard,” she said. “It just piles up and it piles up and you have to miss a payment because something else in life happens, and or you don’t make the payment you want to make, and it just starts to kind of snowball on you.”The debt has made it difficult to save anything and is always looming on her.“It’s a constant weight in the back of my mind which clouds all my little joys,” said Angela. “With inflation, cost of living rising, and life, I have struggled to pay down the debt. We do less, stress about what we can spend on or can afford.”A 54-year-old woman in Ohio said she lost her job in 2024 and was not approved for unemployment benefits because she was classified as a subcontractor, adding to debt she already had from medical bills and home repairs.“I’m now unable to pay them, and I can’t find a job due to a tight market and most likely age discrimination,” she said. “My debt has escalated to the equivalent of half my typical annual income. This and the inability to find a job have left me with no choice but to remain in a very unhappy, toxic, romantic relationship.”A 35-year-old software engineer in Los Angeles, California, said she accrued significant personal debt putting herself through engineering school at the age of 29, but despite making a salary of over $100,000 a year, she still struggles with paying it off and keeping up with bills.“I’m now facing huge interest rates and can barely pay down principal balances,” they said. “Student loans only covered my rent. If additional student loans existed for people in situations like mine, I wouldn’t have needed to charge so much to my credit cards.”This week the senators Bernie Sanders and Josh Hawley introduced a bill to cap credit card interest rates to 10% for the next five years, which Trump has claimed he would support. The average credit card interest rate is 28.6%, despite banks being able to borrow from the Federal Reserve at less than 4.5%.About 82% of all US adults have at least one credit card, with the average about four credit cards per US consumer, according to Experian, and the average household has over $21,000 in credit card debt.A 69-year-old retiree in Moody, Alabama, said she lived check to check on social security and had had no choice but to rely on credit card debt for food, bills and other living expenses.“I am constantly stressed about money,” she said, adding it had created anxiety, depression and sleeping issues.A 47-year-old teacher in Mesa, Arizona, said he had fallen into debt trying to provide for a family of four, and covering the funeral costs for his mother, even as he said he had been “working my car to the bone for gig work to pick up the slack”.A 72-year-old in California said she only made a little over $1,200 a month from social security, but more than half of it went toward a debt consolidation payment.“Money is always an issue with me, I’m currently keeping my debt at bay with loans out of what little I have for retirement, but still losing about half my monthly income to debt repayment that I wish I could be saving for a home.”A 53-year-old in Connecticut explained he had fallen into significant credit card debt after losing his small business due to the pandemic shutdowns, from barely ever using credit cards to maxing out several, even after finding a job, which was difficult at his age.“The pay was a fraction of what my business was pulling in and at this point, I maxed out the credit cards as I didn’t have a lot of credit on them to begin with. I have since taken out two personal loans and got a third credit card. All of them are maxed out,” they said. “I’ve gained 60lb, my hair has been falling out, and I can’t sleep more than four hours a night.”Money owed on revolving debt grew 52.5% to $645bn, from a decade low of $423bn in second quarter 2021, according to a report by the Philadelphia Federal Reserve.Twenty-three per cent of Americans with less than $25,000 annual income have no bank account. Forty-six per cent of Americans with annual incomes between $50,000 and $99,999 carried a credit card balance, while low-income Americans were more likely to predominantly use buy now, pay later, payday or pawn shop loans, with average annual interest rates of payday loans at 400%, with many much higher.According to data from the US Federal Reserve, 6% of Americans used a payday loan in 2023, up 1% from 2022, with users more likely to be low-income, Black and Hispanic adults, and adults with a disability.David, a 57-year-old gig worker and educator in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, said he first took out a payday loan about six years ago when he lived in Oklahoma and had just started a new job and needed a loan to bridge the gap between paychecks.He said he was offered more money for the loan than he asked for, and as he made payments, the lender frequently offered to extend him more credit.“They report every late payment, every non-payment to the collection agencies, and I got into a merry-go-round, in over my head, and it wrecked my credit score,” said David. “There’s no negotiating, settling, or anything like that with payday lenders.”He said the collection tactics included calling his place of employment, calling the references on his initial loan application, to demand payment from him, which continued to grow with high interest rates and added fees. The length of time and impact it had on him had given him major depression and suicidal thoughts, he said.“They’re so predatory on very vulnerable people,” he added. “I can’t even get my own apartment without a co-signer. It’s just humiliating.” More

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      in US Politics

      Trump announces 25% tariffs on foreign steel and aluminum

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      Donald Trump announced 25% tariffs on foreign steel and aluminum on Monday, ramping up his controversial bid to boost the US economy by hiking taxes on imports from overseas.The modified US duties will be enforced “without exceptions or exemptions”, the president declared, dashing the hopes of countries that hoped to avoid them.Trump first imposed steep tariffs on foreign steel and aluminum during his first presidency. The action announced on Monday night ends exemptions granted to certain countries, and increases the duty rate on aluminum.The changes are not due to come into effect until 4 March, however, according to a White House official – raising the prospect of the Trump administration brokering deals with governments seeking reprieve.Countries including Australia have already been making their case and Trump later said he would give “great consideration” to Australia’s request for an exemption to the steel tariffs due to that country’s trade deficit with the US.Trump first trailed his latest tariff actions on Sunday, adding that he would also announce a further set of reciprocal tariffs later in the week, drawing warnings of retaliation from trade partners.“The steel and aluminum tariffs 2.0 will put an end to foreign dumping, boost domestic production and secure our steel and aluminum industries as the backbone and pillar industries of America’s economic and national security,” Peter Navarro, Trump’s top trade adviser, told reporters.“This isn’t just about trade. It’s about ensuring that America never has to rely on foreign nations for critical industries like steel and aluminum.”Trump will also impose a new North American standard requiring steel imports to be “melted and poured” and aluminum to be “smelted and cast” within the region to curb US imports of minimally processed Chinese and Russian metals that circumvent other tariffs.Trump and his allies, who repeatedly claimed that tariffs could “Make America great again” when fighting to regain the White House, believe that higher taxes on imported steel and aluminum will help shore up US industrial heartlands.The US president said he would announce plans to impose reciprocal tariffs on other countries over the next two days. He signed two proclamations as he spoke to reporters in the Oval Office: one ending waivers granted by Joe Biden to steel and aluminum tariffs instituted during his first term, and the other raising duties on both metals to 25%.He also raised the prospect of future US tariffs on cars, semiconductor chips and pharmaceuticals from markets across the world.Asked about the possibility of other countries retaliating against US tariffs, Trump said: “I don’t mind.”Canada’s industry minister said the US tariffs were “totally unjustified”, with Canadian steel and aluminum supporting key US industries including defense, shipbuilding, energy and autos.“This is making North America more competitive and secure,” Francois-Philippe Champagne said in a statement. “We are consulting with our international partners as we examine the details. Our response will be clear and calibrated.”The European Commission said it saw no justification for the tariffs and said President Ursula von der Leyen would meet US vice-president JD Vance in Paris on Tuesday during an AI summit.In South Korea, the industry ministry called in steelmakers to discuss how to minimize the impact of tariffs.Ahead of a meeting with Trump on Wednesday, Indian prime minister Narendra Modi was preparing to offer to cut Indian tariffs in a range of sectors that could boost US exports to the country, government officials in Delhi said.Trump has previously called India a “very big abuser” on trade, and his top economic adviser Kevin Hassett singled out the country as having “enormously high” tariffs in a CNBC interview.This latest wave of tariffs is different than the one imposed by the White House on China last week, which hit all goods traveling from the country to the US with an additional 10% duty. He also threatened Canada and Mexico with the same blanket tariffs, at higher a rate of 25%, only to agree to a one-month delay before pulling the trigger.Trump signed proclamations that raised the tariff rate on aluminum imports to 25% from the previous 10% that he imposed in 2018 to aid the struggling sector. His action reinstates a 25% tariff on millions of tonnes of steel imports and aluminum imports that had been entering the US duty-free under quota deals, exemptions and thousands of product exclusions.The proclamations were extensions of Trump’s 2018 section 232 national security tariffs to protect steel and aluminum makers. A White House official said the exemptions had eroded the effectiveness of these measures.About a quarter of steel used in the US is from overseas, with Canada, Brazil and Mexico as the top providers. South Korea, Japan and Germany are also key markets.China, hit by a 25% steel tariff during Trump’s first administration that was maintained under Joe Biden, is not a significant exporter of steel to the US. But it is the largest exporter of steel to the world, dominating the global market with typically cheaper products. Some countries then export their own steel products, at higher rates, to markets including the US.Trump’s fixation with tariffs has alarmed economists, who have warned their imposition may derail his repeated promises to rapidly bring down prices for millions of Americans.But Trump has defended his strategy, claiming they could raise “trillions” of dollars for the US economy – and that even the mere threat of import duties can prompt countries to bend to his will. “Tariffs are very powerful, both economically and in getting everything else you want,” he said last week.Reuters contributed to this story More