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      Trump tariffs: what are reciprocal tariffs and how will they affect US consumers?

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      Donald Trump has once again threatened to impose a wave of tariffs on US imports, stepping up his bid to overhaul the global economic order.On Thursday, the US president said he plans to introduce “reciprocal” tariffs, ensuring the US imposes the same taxes on its imports from the rest of the world that American goods face in other countries.“It’s fair to all,” said Trump. “No other country can complain.”The latest announcement follows a string of others from the Trump administration, promising tariffs on both America’s close allies and economic rivals. But most have yet to be enforced.Here’s what we know about Trump’s tariffs so far:What are the tariffs has Trump announced?No new tariffs were announced on Thursday. Instead, the president ordered his officials to investigate which countries the US should target with import duties.The White House has previously said it would place a 25% tariff on goods from Canada and Mexico, introduce a 10% levy on Canadian energy exports, and amend duties on steel and aluminum from all over the world.So far, the only new duty that has come into force under Trump is a a new 10% tariff on goods from China..What is a tariff and why does Trump want to use it against certain countries?A tariff is a tax levied on foreign goods imported into a country. The US is currently the largest goods importer in the world – in 2022, the value of imported goods in the US totalled $3.2tn.Before entering office, Trump threatened tariffs on the US’s three biggest trading partners: China, Mexico and Canada. Specifically, he said he wanted to see a 25% tariff on Mexico and Canada and a 10% tariff on China, until the countries deal with immigrants and illegal drugs coming into the US.Trump sees tariffs as a powerful bargaining chip – but it comes with a high price.Trump frames tariffs as a policy that can apply pressure on US manufacturers and importers to produce goods domestically.“All you have to do is build your plant in the United States, and you don’t have any tariffs,” Trump has said. But the global economy has been intertwined for decades. US farmers, for example, would not be able to produce the number of avocados Mexico produces for many years.What this means is that importers will probably push the cost of tariffs on to consumers, causing prices to rise.What is a reciprocal tariff?On the campaign trail and in the White House, Trump has repeatedly raised the prospect of a wave of “reciprocal” duties: taxing imports from certain countries at the same rate those countries impose on goods from the US.The president and his allies have pitched this as a great rebalancing of the global economy, which they claim has been tilted against the US for too long.How will US consumers be affected by the tariffs?Tariffs on imports often make prices go up.Canada, for example, is a major exporter of crude oil, while Mexico exports many fresh fruits and vegetables. Mexico is also the largest auto parts exporter to the US. China is a major exporter of chips used in electronics like phones and laptops.It’s not just the imports that consumers buy directly. When tariffs push up the price of imports, that includes imported materials used to make other products domestically in the US. Higher prices for materials will eventually make their way to consumers.Americans have been bracing for the impact tariffs will have on prices. In a November Harris/Guardian poll, nearly two-thirds of Americans said they expected prices to go up if Trump implements broad tariffs.Which federal laws give Trump the power to enact tariffs?US federal law gives the president broad powers to enact tariffs without congressional approval.Trump has the power to declare a national economic emergency to enact his tariffs. This would invoke the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA), which gives the president the power to manage imports during a national emergency.Trump can also apply tariffs under section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act, which gives the president power to impose tariffs on certain industries. This is what Trump used in 2018, when he hit Canada, Mexico and the European Union with tariffs on aluminum and steel.Have a question about Trump tariffs? Wondering how they affect inflation, prices or the economy? We’re here to help. Email callum.jones@theguardian.com and we may answer your question in a future story 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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      Trump and Musk’s attack on USAid is causing global chaos. Millions of lives are now at risk | Devi Sridhar

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      Amid the daily troubling news coming from the United States are the ongoing and increasingly damaging efforts by President Donald Trump, supported by secretary of state Marco Rubio and Elon Musk, to shut down the US Agency for International Development (USAid). Musk has called it a “criminal organization” and said that it was “time for it to die”. The agency website is down, so little official information is available. But in the week since funding to the agency was frozen, and the majority of staff placed on leave, thousands of public health and development programmes worldwide have been thrown into turmoil, and now face an uncertain future.USAid is the main federal agency that works to provide foreign aid assistance to the poorest countries and people in the world. On Friday, a US judge prevented around 2,000 USAid employees from being placed on leave, and ordered the reinstatement of about 500 more. But Trump and Musk appear to want to move forward with a plan that would see its global workforce reduced from about 10,000 staff and contractors, to just over 600.It’s hard to overstate how disruptive this has already been to humanitarian work worldwide: most programmes have just been shut overnight with staff laid off, drugs and food left in warehouses, and patients and others not able to access services. The people affected live in some of the most vulnerable countries like Ukraine, Jordan, Ethiopia, Somalia, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Afghanistan.Although we don’t know the full extent of the damage, specific reports suggest that vital services have been thrown into chaos. Some walk-in sexual health and HIV services in South Africa shuttered overnight without notice, Ethiopia’s health ministry has reportedly laid off 5,000 healthcare professionals who were hired with US funding, and nearly half a billion dollars worth of food aid overseen by the agency and currently in ports, transit or storage is destined to spoil.USAid’s overall contribution is immense. It is the largest humanitarian operator globally – in 2023, the US provided 42% of all humanitarian assistance or about $68bn (£55bn), of which USAid spending made up about $40bn. And yet at the same time, both foreign aid and USAid specifically make up a tiny fraction of federal government spending: less than 1%. Cutting back makes little difference to overall US government spending, but is massively destructive to programmes reliant on this funding to deliver their on-the-ground work.What does that less than 1% of federal spending buy the US public? This argument has been re-hashed in presidency after presidency, and the answers are clear.Foreign aid can reduce instability, conflict and extreme poverty, which are major causes of mass displacement. Supporting programmes that keep more places safe and stable means fewer people needing to flee persecution, dire poverty or violence. With all the concerns over illegal immigration, reducing aid could make this challenge even harder to manage. Foreign aid can support countries to grow economically and create new markets and opportunities. Think of places like India, which have managed to create a vibrant and growing middle class.In the world of global health, foreign aid is vital to support countries in managing health challenges, including outbreaks of infectious diseases. Just think back to the west Africa Ebola outbreak in 2014. Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone struggled to contain Ebola spreading and were reliant on international partners to assist them. It was in the interest of all countries to help them given that the global spread of Ebola was imminent. In addition, the US builds vital soft power and influence in countries in which it provides help. Russia and China have learned this lesson – and will probably step into the aid vacuum left by the US.And beyond any of those “enlightened self-interest” arguments above is the simple fact that foreign aid helps other human beings who are struggling, including some of the poorest and most vulnerable in the world. It’s good to do because it’s simply good to do. Cutting programmes overnight means that women who might have lived are more likely to die in childbirth; those with HIV face not having access to clinics for lifesaving antiretroviral treatment; and hungry children no longer get nutritional supplements and food.Foreign aid shouldn’t be a partisan issue. The largest global health programme for a single disease, Pepfar, was launched by a Republican president, George W Bush, and is estimated to have prevented 25 million Aids deaths since its creation. I think back to a poll of Americans in 2016 by the Kaiser Family Foundation, where more than 60% of respondents said that the US was spending either the right amount or too little on global health, and only about 30% thought it was spending too much. It’s not clear that the US public actually supports these drastic cuts and freezes.Perhaps many now think that the US needs to worry more about its own domestic financial troubles than sending money overseas. A recent study found that the US economy is performing better than any of its peer countries, but performs worse on other metrics like health, happiness and social trust. “Wealthy but unhappy” is what the study’s authors found. Maybe the lesson here is that Americans need to reject Trump’s discourse and embrace being part of a global community and engaging with the world through agencies like USAid. That could lead to an America that is still wealthy, but just a bit more healthy and happy.

      Prof Devi Sridhar is chair of global public health at the University of Edinburgh More

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      USAid cuts sow feeling of betrayal among Yazidis, 10 years after IS genocide

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      During the first Trump administration, Mike Pence, the vice-president, pledged hundreds of millions of dollars, mostly through USAid and the state department, to help Christians and other religious minorities who were persecuted by Islamic State and – in the case of the Yazidis – suffered a genocide.But under the second Trump administration, the same figures who championed the rights of religious minorities have fallen silent or actively participated in the destruction of USAid, cutting crucial aid to support the same communities they once helped – who now feel abandoned by the US.That has had an immediate effect on the ground, according to activists and current and former USAid employees, who said the cutoff in aid has paused work among still traumatised communities and sown a feeling of betrayal 10 years after the genocide.View image in fullscreenIn Sinjar, the Iraqi town where thousands were massacred by IS, the freeze has halted operations to provide water and electricity, primary healthcare centres, the construction of schools, community centres and other basic infrastructure at a time when thousands of Yazidis are returning home after more than a decade in Syrian refugee camps. In one case, electricity transformers already delivered had to be put into storage because of the stop-work order, leaving a community without reliable electricity.“It was a shock that USAid was frozen for helping those communities that the US had helped to survive. [Before], US help was omnipresent,” said Mirza Dinnayi, a prominent Yazidi human rights activists who runs the House of Co-Existence (HOC) multicultural community center in Sinjar.He said that USAid, which provided the vast majority of humanitarian funding to the area, had been was a “pillar of stabilisation and normalisation”.“They had a crucial role in his first administration for recognising the Yazidi genocide and supporting US aid to help Iraq,” said Dinnayi. “Minority rights and religious freedoms were supported in the first administration. I’m wondering why the second administration is not aware about that.”View image in fullscreenCharities supporting Christian minorities, such as Catholic Relief Services (CRS), have also been directly affected by the work stoppage, including their programs in Iraq’s Nineveh Plains area and among Christian communities, according to people familiar with their work in the area. CRS, a top recipient of funds from USAid, is facing up to 50% layoffs this year and has begun shutting down programs that account for half of the organization’s $1.5bn budget, according to an email obtained by the National Catholic Reporter.“I see a lot of harm in the abrupt way that this assistance has stopped,” said a former USAid employee in Iraq.Meanwhile in Washington, a coterie of conservatives – many with former ties to Pence and USAid – have now allied with Elon Musk’s effort to take down the agency.One of them is Max Primorac, a senior research fellow at the Heritage Foundation’s Margaret Thatcher Center for Freedom, who authored Project 2025’s chapter on USAid recommending a blueprint to downsize the agency. He is set to testify before the House foreign affairs committee on Thursday at a hearing titled the “USAid betrayal”.Primorac did not respond to a request for an interview sent through the Heritage Foundation.View image in fullscreenPrimorac is one of a number of prominent conservatives who supported Pence’s initiative to support religious minorities but have now gone on record backing the aid freeze. Others include Pence himself, vice-president JD Vance, secretary of state Marco Rubio, and Pete Marocco, the Trump ally and USAid skeptic who nonetheless protected funding to religious initiatives under Pence. Marocco even reportedly led operations with his Patriot Group International to exfiltrate Yazidis in 2016.From late 2018 to early 2019, Primorac traveled to Erbil and northern Iraq as Pence’s special envoy, “overseeing a multi-agency genocide recovery effort to assist religious minority returns”, according to his current biography on the Heritage Foundation’s website.Colleagues said he arrived with a dim view of USAid but that he came to support at least some of the efforts the agency was making in the field.“He had a couple of visits to areas where we worked and I think that changed him a bit in a positive way,” said a USAid employee.Now, the person said, “for someone who really believed in his mission supporting religious minorities, he does not seem to be paying attention or advocating for a way forward.”Primorac later boasted that he had led a “$400m counter-genocide program… to spur the return of Iraqi Christians to their ancient homeland” and excoriated the Biden administration for turning its back on Iraq’s “traumatised” Christians.“Under the Trump administration, I led a counter-genocide program in Iraq to help Christian and Yazidi victims recover from IS’s campaign of extermination,” he wrote in another article for Newsweek. “We provided these traumatized religious minorities with humanitarian aid, [and] psycho-social help.”Now he has become one of the leading voices calling for the agency’s dissolution, authoring a recent Fox News editorial “how USAid went woke and destroyed itself”. An advance copy of his testimony to the House set for Thursday did not reference his work in Iraq.Former colleagues say they share some of Primorac’s criticisms of USAid but were perplexed by his full-scale repudiation of their work, the programs he previously cooperated with.View image in fullscreen“If we are going to achieve meaningful reform in the foreign assistance system, we need honest dialogue, and it’s important for me to acknowledge that I share some of his critiques about USAid,” said a person who leads a major USAid funded project in Iraq.“I only wish that [Primorac] would approach the conversation in a similar way, acknowledging all of the great work that USAid has achieved – especially in Iraq.”The change reflects how top Republicans are hedging their views under the Trump administration and a campaign led by Musk to eviscerate the agency, which he has called “criminal” and “corrupt”.Current and former USAid members in the field said that they have heard nothing from their former supporters in the US, and have effectively been cut out of systems that would give crucial information on budgets and projects meant to support communities.“It’s quite puzzling, to be honest,” said one former USAid employee in Iraq.Meanwhile, the onslaught in Washington has continued. At the International Religious Freedom Summit last week, vice-president JD Vance denounced USAid for promoting “atheism” while boasting of “bringing relief to Yazidis, Christians and other faith communities facing genocidal terror from Isis” in the past.“It was perplexing to hear the vice president champion these initiatives while, at the same time, funds for efforts like these are literally being turned off,” wrote Adam Nicholas Phillips, the lead administration official at USAid working on faith-based partnerships during the Biden administration.“Maybe the attacks on USAid are just misinformed and will be righted. Maybe there is a bold plan to invest in foreign assistance. I take administration officials at their word and I’m praying these decisions are reversed with haste.” More

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      Trump administration sued for access to immigration detainees at Guantánamo Bay – live

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      A coalition of immigrant rights organizations has sued the Trump administration for access to undocumented immigrants held at Guantánamo Bay.The group, which includes the American Civil Liberties Union and its Washington DC affiliate along with the Center for Constitutional Rights and International Refugee Assistance Project, sued on behalf of several detainees brought to the US military base under a new Trump administration policy, as well as multiple legal service providers seeking to access people held there. Also among the plaintiffs is a family member of a man detained at Guantánamo.“The Trump administration cannot be allowed to build upon Guantánamo’s sordid past with these latest cruel, secretive, and illegal maneuvers. Our constitution does not allow the government to hold people incommunicado, without any ability to speak to counsel or the outside world,” said Eunice Cho, senior staff attorney with the ACLU’s National Prison Project.Here’s more about the Trump administration’s decision to send migrants to the base in Cuba:Speaking to reporters in the Oval office after Tulsi Gabbard’s swearing in as his intelligence director, Donald Trump said that he had “a great call” with President Vladimir Putin of Russia that lasted for “over an hour this morning” on the subject of ending the war in Ukraine. “I also had a call with President Zelensky, a very good call after that, and I think we’re on the way to getting peace”.After again claiming that as many as 1.5 million soldiers had been killed in the war, a vastly larger number than either nation, or independent experts estimate, Trump said that a meeting between his Vice President, JD Vance and Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky this week at the Munich Security Conference would be part of the peace talks.“I’ll be dealing with President Putin, largely on the phone, and we ultimately expect to meet. In fact, we expect that he’ll come here, and I’ll go there, and we’re going to meet also, probably in Saudi Arabia. The first time we’ll meet in Saudi Arabia, to see if we get something done”.Trump suggested that the meeting would be arranged by Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.The Saudi crown prince and the head of Russia’s sovereign wealth fund, Kirill Dmitriev, were involved in negotiations for the release of American teacher Marc Fogel from a Russian prison, a source close to the negotiations between Russia and the United States told Reuters earlier on Wednesday.Donald Trump was just asked during the Oval Office ceremony to swear in Tulsi Gabbard how soon he would like the Department of Education to be closed.Jennifer Jacobs of CBS News reports on X that he replied: right away.“It’s a con job” the president said.Moments after being sworn in as director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard promises “to refocus our intelligence community” in remarks in the Oval Office.Here is some of what Gabbard said to the pool reporters allowed into the room, as Trump and Bondi looked on:
      Unfortunately, the American people have very little trust in the intelligence community, largely because they’ve seen the weaponization and politicization of an entity that is supposed to be purely focused on ensuring our national security.So I look forward to being able to help fulfill that mandate that the American people delivered to you very clearly in this election to refocus our intelligence community by empowering the great patriots who have chosen to serve our country in this way and focus on ensuring the safety, security and freedom of the American people. As you said, Mr. President, this is what I’ve dedicated my life to, and it is truly humbling to be in this position to serve in your administration help to rebuild that trust and ultimately to keep the American people safe. Last thing I’ll mention is that in your National Prayer Breakfast speech, you made a statement about your legacy of wanting to be remembered as a peacemaker. I know that I can speak for many of my fellow service members who are here today, veterans, Medal of Honor recipients, how deeply that resonates with us. For those who volunteer to put their lives on the line when duty calls, but to have a president, commander in chief who recognizes the cost of that sacrifice and ensuring that war is the last resort, not the first. So thank you for your leadership. On behalf of my friends here and all who wear the uniform, we’re grateful.
      Tulsi Gabbard has been sworn in as Donald Trump’s director of national intelligence, in an Oval Office ceremony attended by the president.Attorney general Pam Bondi administered the oath.Trump spoke briefly about Gabbard, calling her “an American of extraordinary courage and patriotism”. He’s scheduled to sign unspecified executive orders in a few minutes.The trustees of the Kennedy Center have elected Donald Trump as their chairman, the Washington Post reports, after the president made the unusual announcement that he would like to oversee the Washington DC performing arts venue.The president had earlier this week named Ric Grenell, a diplomat and longtime associate, as the center’s interim executive director, a decision that raised fears of politicization at the venue. The Post reports that the center’s current president Deborah Rutter told staff she was stepping down, and that Trump had also ordered the firing of all of Joe Biden’s appointees to the center’s board. Here’s more on Trump’s foray into the performing arts:A coalition of immigrant rights organizations has sued the Trump administration for access to undocumented immigrants held at Guantánamo Bay.The group, which includes the American Civil Liberties Union and its Washington DC affiliate along with the Center for Constitutional Rights and International Refugee Assistance Project, sued on behalf of several detainees brought to the US military base under a new Trump administration policy, as well as multiple legal service providers seeking to access people held there. Also among the plaintiffs is a family member of a man detained at Guantánamo.“The Trump administration cannot be allowed to build upon Guantánamo’s sordid past with these latest cruel, secretive, and illegal maneuvers. Our constitution does not allow the government to hold people incommunicado, without any ability to speak to counsel or the outside world,” said Eunice Cho, senior staff attorney with the ACLU’s National Prison Project.Here’s more about the Trump administration’s decision to send migrants to the base in Cuba:White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt hit back at legal scholars concerned that Donald Trump’s government-transforming executive orders have sparked a constitutional crisis, saying that the administration is acting lawfully.“The real constitutional crisis is taking place within our judicial branch, where district court judges and liberal districts across the country are abusing their power to unilaterally block president Trump’s basic executive authority,” Leavitt said at her press briefing earlier today. She then attacked federal judges who have disrupted the administration’s policies:
      We believe these judges are acting as judicial activists rather than honest arbiters of the law, and they have issued at least 12 injunctions against this administration in the past 14 days, often without citing any evidence or grounds for their lawsuits. This is part of a larger concerted effort by Democrat activists and nothing more than the continuation of the weaponization of justice by president Trump.
      Meanwhile, the Democratic state attorneys general who have led much of the legal pushback to Trump believe they are fighting a “dictatorship”. Here’s more on that:The chaotic effects of Donald Trump’s drive to dismantle USAid continue to be uncovered, with Reuters reporting that 17 labs in 13 states have had to halt farm research as the agency unraveled.That could set back efforts to stay on top of emerging threats to agriculture in the United States, researchers who spoke to Reuters said. Here’s more:
      The lab closures are another hit to U.S. agriculture from President Donald Trump’s overhaul of the federal government, by blocking research work designed to advance seed and equipment technology and develop markets abroad for U.S. commodities. Farmers have already seen disruptions to government food purchases for aid, and to agricultural grant and loan programs.
      Land-grant universities were founded on land given to states by the federal government.
      “For U.S. farmers, this is not good,” said Peter Goldsmith, who leads the University of Illinois’ Soybean Innovation Lab, one of the affected labs.
      The State Department did not respond to a request for comment.
      The network of 17 laboratories was funded by USAID through a program called Feed the Future Innovation Labs, and pursued research in partnership with countries such as Malawi, Tanzania, Bangladesh, and Rwanda, the lab directors said.
      Their research helps U.S. farmers because programs conducted overseas can develop production practices that may be useful in the U.S. or provide advance warning of pests, directors said.
      “It really reduces our capacity to help farmers fight pests and diseases and help American farmers prevent incursions,” said David Hughes, director of the USAID Innovation Lab on Current and Emerging Threats to Crops at Penn State University.
      One study that has been halted was working to control a viral disease spread by an aphid that was hurting banana crops in Tanzania, Hughes said.
      David Tschirley, who runs an agency-funded lab at Michigan State University and is chair of the Feed the Future Innovation Lab Council, which represents the lab network, said about 300 people are employed by the labs, and they have as many as 4,000 collaborators abroad.
      “It presents an American face to the world that is a very appreciated face,” he said, adding that such work benefits national security.
      Speaking at Nato headquarters in Brussels, Belgium, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth ruled out Nato membership for Ukraine, which the country’s president Volodymyr Zelenskyy had been pushing for.“We want, like you, a sovereign and prosperous Ukraine,” Hegseth said, adding that the expectation Ukraine’s borders could revert to their 2014 status before the annexation of Crimea is “unrealistic.”Three people, including one American, are being released from Belarus, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said on Wednesday. The US envoy for hostages, Adam Boehler, told reporters at the White House that the individual wishes to remain private.The news comes shortly after American schoolteacher Marc Fogel was released by Russia after being imprisoned since 2021. Fogel was arrested in Moscow after Russian authorities found less than an ounce of marijuana in his luggage.The White House said on Wednesday that it was not aware of any preconditions for US President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin to visit each other’s countries.“Not that I’m aware of. That doesn’t mean they don’t exist,” White House spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt said, when asked at a press briefing if there were conditions for Trump’s and Putin’s visits.“I was just talking with the president and our national security team, I wasn’t made aware of any conditions,” she added.The defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, was heckled during a visit to a US military installation in Germany as military families protested against the Trump administration’s rollback of diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives.About two dozen adults who live at the military base chanted “DEI” and booed at Hegseth as he arrived to the US European Command headquarters in Stuttgart, Germany, NBC News reported.Separately, a group of students attending the Patch middle school, also in Stuttgart, held a walkout, according to a letter from the school obtained by the Washington Post. More

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      The Long Wave: Why Trump’s USAid freeze endangers millions

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      Hello and welcome to The Long Wave. I have been following Donald Trump’s suspension of the US Agency for International Development. USAid is the world’s single biggest aid donor, and the decision to halt its work has sent shockwaves around the world. This week, I trace the effects of its potential demise on the Black diaspora. But first, the weekly roundup.Weekly roundupView image in fullscreenFresh calls for DRC ceasefire | A summit of leaders from across Africa, including Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, has called for an immediate and unconditional ceasefire in DRC. The Rwanda-backed M23 rebel group has seized swathes of territory in eastern DRC, leaving thousands dead or displaced.Altadena seeks justice for LA fire victims | A memorial service at the First African Methodist Episcopal church in Pasadena, led by the Rev Al Sharpton, has highlighted the Eaton wildfire’s disproportionate impact on Altadena’s Black residents in a rally for justice and equality.Liverpool waterfront’s role in slavery | Canning Dock in Liverpool, England, where ships trafficking enslaved Africans to the Caribbean were fitted out and repaired, is opening to the public so lesser-told aspects of its history can be explored. This project, alongside other redevelopment programmes, aims to shed light on the waterfront’s role in the transatlantic slave trade.Overtourism fears for Bo-Kaap | Residents of the picturesque, candy-coloured Bo-Kaap district in Cape Town, South Africa, are grappling with the impacts of tourism. Many have expressed frustration about road traffic, crowds blocking streets for photos and rising gentrification.Black hair animation makes waves | Researchers at Yale University and the University of California, Santa Cruz, have developed algorithms to capture the true form of afro-textured hair in animation and computer graphics. The development marks a huge step for the portrayal of Black characters in animated films, cartoons and video games.In depth: What is USAid and why has it been suspended?View image in fullscreenThe significance and reach of USAid’s operations came very close to home when I realised that even in the war-stricken cities of my birthplace, Sudan, USAid was providing support to soup kitchens crucial to the survival of cut-off civilian populations. The freezing of USAid’s work has severely compromised these life-saving efforts, as well as that of US-funded facilities caring for malnourished babies. In the capital, Khartoum, two-thirds of Sudan’s soup kitchens closed in the first week after the aid suspension.On Donald Trump’s first day in office, he announced a 90-day pause in the organisation’s operations because they were part of a “foreign aid industry and bureaucracy … not aligned with American interests”. USAid was established by John F Kennedy in 1961 as an independent agency of the US government. It grew to have a large remit, providing everything from humanitarian assistance to disaster relief. But it also plays a role in education, promoting democratic participation and governance, and supporting the health ministries of the countries it operates in. The range of its programmes and the number of locations in which it is active is staggering.The USAid budget was more than $40bn in the 2023 fiscal year. The suspension, which looks like a permanent dismantling, is embroiled in legal disputes. A federal judge has blocked the decision to put thousands of USAid workers on administrative leave, on the grounds that the Trump administration does not have the authority to abolish an agency established by congressional legislation. As the process unfolds, the work of the agency has been halted overnight, with severe repercussions.Sub-Saharan AfricaView image in fullscreenCountries in sub-Saharan Africa account for more than a third of US foreign assistance spending. In addition to famine relief and medical and humanitarian support in conflict areas such as Sudan, USAid assists health ministries and, most urgently, a large sexual health and HIV prevention programme. Approximately 40,000 healthcare workers in Kenya partly financed by USAid are likely to lose their jobs. The impacts on treatment available to patients, pregnant women and disease treatment are almost too vast to estimate.What is unfolding in South Africa – where patients have showed up for treatment and medication to find that clinics were closed – offers a small insight into what could happen next to people at the sharpest end of medical emergencies. The country is in the grip of one of the world’s largest HIV/Aids epidemics, constituting a quarter of cases worldwide.Latin AmericaView image in fullscreenUSAid’s work focuses on the challenges most prominent in any given location. In Latin America, support for those displaced by guerrilla violence, integration of migrants and the prevention of sexual exploitation have relied heavily on US foreign assistance. Almost 8 million Venezuelans have left the country in the past decade, fleeing economic crises and settling in neighbouring countries. About 3 million of them are in Colombia, the largest recipient of US foreign aid in South America. Last year, USAid funded the feeding and nutrition of a large number of refugees in Colombia, partnering with the UN World Food Programme and extending almost $50m in relief. Abandoning such vulnerable populations not only deprives them of food, but leaves them prone to exploitation and abuse by the sort of criminal gangs that prey on the displaced and hungry.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe ramifications of the suspension extend to the preservation of precious and fragile ecosystems. In Brazil, USAid forged the Partnership for the Conservation of Amazon Biodiversity, an agreement that supports Indigenous people and rural communities, and in doing so protects the Amazon and helps combat the climate emergency. The loss of that support affects not just these communities and those employed by such foreign assistance programmes, but the environmental health of the planet.The CaribbeanView image in fullscreenIn the Caribbean, USAid projects are diverse and embedded in civil society, environmental protection and future proofing younger generations. In Jamaica, among the programmes that have halted is the Youth Empower Activity, which is targeted at the most at-risk people. It helps them access education, professional training and improve job prospects, with a view to increasing household income and promoting national development. Thousands of Jamaicans are enrolled in the scheme – but now a total of $54m of US funding is under threat in the country, according to government estimates.The suspension could also interrupt a USAid-funded, Caribbean-wide project to bolster food security by increasing fruit and vegetable farming, scholarships for degrees in agriculture and support for small farmers. The shutdown came days after the launch of a programme to reduce the risks to marine and coastal biodiversity – an attempt to ameliorate an environmental crisis affecting the region’s coral reefs and biodiversity. Beyond the impact on individuals, small business owners, and the environment, there is, as with all such stoppages, the loss of livelihoods of people employed by these schemes.Soft power lostView image in fullscreenDespite the large sums deployed, USAid, and US foreign assistance in general, is perceived to also benefit the United States. Although it cannot be quantified in exact numbers, supporters say such assistance contributes to the US’s soft power abroad. That soft power is twofold: the first is in a sort of preventive measure, whereby aid helps to stabilise poorer countries and pre-empt deepening crises that could compromise the US’s global security agenda. The second is that aid is seen as a bulwark to the influence of countries such as Russia and China, both of which are particularly active in Africa, for example. In maintaining a presence on the ground across the world, and strong alliances with governments and civil society organisations, the US promotes a foreign policy that aims to curtail the ability of its adversaries to create their own alliances and political footholds.Aid model under scrutinyView image in fullscreenThe speed of the suspension, and how it has plunged so many around the world into hunger and uncertainty, raises questions about the wisdom of depending so profoundly on a country that has proven to be so unreliable. Ken Opalo, a specialist in development and the author of An Africanist Perspective on Substack, wrote: “The cuts are a painful reminder that aid dependence isn’t a viable development strategy.” If the USAid suspension remains, that viable development strategy, or the stepping in of alternative funders, will not materialise overnight. In the meantime, millions of people wait to learn if their sudden change in circumstances will become permanent, subject to a huge constitutional battle thousands of miles away.

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