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      in US Politics

      Canada PM under pressure to stand up to Trump over tariff plan; US motorists could face higher gas prices – live

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      Other members of Canada’s parliament are calling on prime minister Justin Trudeau to ready a “war room” for the coming battle over tariffs with the United States.“The only thing a bully responds to is strength. So where is our plan to fight back?” Jagmeet Singh, leader of the New Democratic Party, asked Trudeau. “Where is the war room?”“I don’t think the idea of going to war with the United States is what anyone wants. What we will do is stand up for Canadian jobs,” Trudeau said. “Stand up for the prosperity we create when we work together.”Meanwhile, members of Canada’s liberal and conservative parties are debating ways Trudeau could promote a “Canada First” policy or work collaboratively with “our US partner.”In an election post-mortem today, top Harris campaign officials said there was little else Kamala Harris could have done to win the 2024 election.Speaking on the podcast “Pod Save America”, David Plouffe, Jen O’Malley Dillon, Quentin Fulks and Stephanie Cutter said Harris couldn’t have distanced herself further from Joe Biden because she was loyal and faced backlash over inflation that’s hurt incumbent politicians across the globe this year.“She had tremendous loyalty to President Biden,” Cutter said. “Imagine if we said, ‘Well, we would have taken this approach on the border.’ Imagine the round of stories coming out after that, of people saying, ‘Well, she never said that in the meeting.’”Plouffe added that the campaign’s internal polling never showed Harris leading president-elect Donald Trump.“We didn’t get the breaks we needed on Election Day,” he said. “I think it surprised people, because there was these public polls that came out in late September, early October, showing us with leads that we never saw.”Fulks noted that Democrats could learn from how Republicans support their own, even amid controversy.“Democrats are eating our own to a very high degree, and until that stops, we’re not going to be able to address a lot of the things that just need to be said,” he said.During a thank-you call today, Kamala Harris told small-dollar donors that they helped to raise $1.4 billion over the course of her 107-day campaign.“The outcome of the election, of this election, obviously, is not what we wanted. It is not what we worked so hard for, but I am proud of the race we ran and your role was critical — what we did in 107 days was unprecedented,” she said. “The fight that fueled our campaign, a fight for freedom and opportunity, did not end on November 5th.”Harris’s running mate, Minnesota governor Tim Walz, joined the call and urged supporters to “find the place in your community to heal both yourselves and your community.” He acknowledged feels of grief that supporters might be feeling and added, “You did everything that was asked.”Donald Trump’s team has announced that it has signed transition paperwork with the White House, which the incoming administration appeared to be dodging after failing to sign the agreement by its 1 October due date. The agreement, which directs $7.2m in federal funding to the transition, requires the incoming presidential administration to agree to an ethics pledge and cap private donations.The announcement that Trump’s team had signed the memorandum of understanding with the White House came in a press release from Trump’s chief-of-staff Susie Wiles.“After completing the selection process of his incoming Cabinet, President-elect Trump is entering the next phase of his administration’s transition by executing a Memorandum of Understanding with President Joe Biden’s White House. This engagement allows our intended Cabinet nominees to begin critical preparations, including the deployment of landing teams to every department and agency, and complete the orderly transition of power,” she said.Speaking from the White House, Joe Biden has announced a ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hezbollah.“Under the deal reached today, effective at 4am tomorrow local time, the fighting across the Lebanese-Israeli border will end,” he said. “This is designed to be a permanent cesation of hostility.”Explaining the terms of the deal, Biden said, the Lebanese army will take control of the region as Israel withdraws its forces over the next 60 days. Hezbollah will not be allowed to rebuild its infrastructure. “There will be no US troops deployed in southern Lebanon,” he said, adding that the US and France would continue to provide support to Lebanon. If Lebanon fails to abide by the terms of the agreement, Biden said, Israeli retains the right to defend itself.“Now Hamas has a choice to make,” Biden said, gesturing to the ongoing war in Gaza. “Over the coming days, the United States will make another push – with Turkey, Egypt, Qatar, Israel and others – to achieve a ceasefire in Gaza.”A day after Elon Musk claimed to have met with “senior military officers,” the Pentagon told reporters it was not aware of any meetings with Trump transition officials, the Washington Post reports.“The president-elect’s transition team has not contacted the department yet to conduct those transitions, so I’m not aware of any official meetings,” Pentagon press secretary Patrick Ryder told reporters. Donald Trump’s transition team has declined to sign paperwork that would require the incoming administration to agree to an ethics pledge and cap private donations, which has slowed the transition.Yesterday, Musk claimed to have met with “senior military officers today” in a social media post responding to a statement from Vivek Ramaswamy about government efficiency.“In a meeting with senior military officers today, they told me that it now takes longer to renovate stairs (24 months) in the Pentagon than it took to build the WHOLE Pentagon (16 months) in the 1940s!!” Musk wrote.Speaking at an emergency gathering of the Canadian parliament today, Justin Trudeau urged unity while leaders of two of the country’s largest industrial and oil-rich provinces raised concerns over US-Canada relations, Reuters reports.The premier of Ontario, the country’s industrial heartland, said Trump had good reason to be worried about border security.“Do we need to do a better job on our borders? 1,000 percent … we do have to listen to the threat of too many illegals crossing the border,” Doug Ford told reporters. “We have to squash the illegal drugs, the illegal guns.”Ford has called on Trudeau to abandon the U.S.-Canada-Mexico trade deal in favor of a bilateral agreement with the US, and called Trump’s comparison of Canada to Mexico “the most insulting thing I have ever heard”.Likewise, the premier of the oil-rich province of Alberta said yesterday that Trump had valid concerns over border security.“We are calling on the federal government to work with the incoming administration to resolve these issues immediately, thereby avoiding any unnecessary tariffs on Canadian exports to the U.S.,” Danielle Smith said in a social media post. She added, “The vast majority of Alberta’s energy exports to the U.S. are delivered through secure and safe pipelines which do not in any way contribute to these illegal activities at the border.”A federal judge has rejected Rudy Giuliani’s request to reschedule a January trial date for after Donald Trump’s inauguration. The judge has ordered Giuliani to pay two Georgia election workers $148 million for spreading falsehoods after the 2020 election. The 16 January trial had been set to determine whether Giuliani would have to relinquish assets such as a Palm Beach condo and Yankees World Series rings to pay the judgement.“My client regularly consults and deals directly with President-elect Trump on issues that are taking place as the incoming administration is afoot as well as inauguration events,” Giuliani’s attorney Joseph Cammarata said. “My client wants to exercise his political right to be there.”“The defendant’s social calendar does not constitute good cause [to delay the trial],” US District Court Judge Lewis Liman said. He did suggest that he would be open to moving the trial forward a few days.Other members of Canada’s parliament are calling on prime minister Justin Trudeau to ready a “war room” for the coming battle over tariffs with the United States.“The only thing a bully responds to is strength. So where is our plan to fight back?” Jagmeet Singh, leader of the New Democratic Party, asked Trudeau. “Where is the war room?”“I don’t think the idea of going to war with the United States is what anyone wants. What we will do is stand up for Canadian jobs,” Trudeau said. “Stand up for the prosperity we create when we work together.”Meanwhile, members of Canada’s liberal and conservative parties are debating ways Trudeau could promote a “Canada First” policy or work collaboratively with “our US partner.”Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau is discussing the United States’ proposed tariffs with the leader of the opposition, Pierre Poilievre, before the Canadian parliament. Poilievre has criticized Trudeau, calling on him to “put Canada first” in its relations with the United States and do more to fix Canada’s “broken borders” and “liberalization of drugs”.“The prime minister’s disastrous legalization and liberalization of drugs has the Americans worried,” Poilievre said. “Where’s the plan to stop the drugs and keep our border open to trade?”Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau is expected to speak shortly at today’s gathering of the nation’s parliament, just a day after Donald Trump threatened to levy 25% tariffs against the US’s northern neighbor.Trudeau spoke with Trump earlier today, and said “it was a good call,” adding that they “obviously talked about laying out the facts, talking about how the intense and effective connections between our two countries flow back and forth.”Donald Trump’s team is discussing pursuing direct talks with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, hoping a fresh diplomatic push can lower the risks of armed conflict, according to two people familiar with the matter, Reuters reports.Several in Trump’s team now see a direct approach from Trump, to build on a relationship that already exists, as most likely to break the ice with Kim, years after the two traded insults and what Trump called “beautiful” letters in an unprecedented diplomatic effort during his first term in office, the people said.The policy discussions are fluid and no final decisions have been made by the president-elect, the sources said.Trump’s transition team did not respond to a request for comment.What reciprocation Kim will offer Trump is unclear. The North Koreans ignored four years of outreach by outgoing president Joe Biden to start talks with no pre-conditions, and Kim is emboldened by an expanded missile arsenal and a much closer relationship with Russia.
      We have already gone as far as we can on negotiating with the United States,” Kim said last week in a speech at a Pyongyang military exhibition, according to state media.
      During his 2017-2021 presidency, Trump held three meetings with Kim, in Singapore, Hanoi, and at the Korean border, the first time a sitting US president had set foot in the country.Their diplomacy yielded no concrete results, even as Trump described their talks as falling “in love.” The US called for North Korea to abandon its nuclear weapons, while Kim demanded full sanctions relief, then issued new threats.North Korea has sent troops to fight alongside Russia in its war with Ukraine.Donald Trump’s pledge to impose 25% tariffs on Canadian and Mexican imports in his first day in office does not exempt crude oil from the trade penalties, two sources familiar with the plan told Reuters today.Oil producers already warned that tariffs on crude would drive up the price of gas for US motorists, the FT reported earlier.“A 25% tariff on oil and natural gas would likely result in lower production in Canada and higher gasoline and energy costs to American consumers while threatening North American energy security,” Lisa Baiton, head of the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers, told the business-focussed newspaper.In the vagaries of the markets and geopolitics, oil prices rose earlier on news of Trump’s tariffs pledge, over predictions they would discourage production, thereby raising prices, but now have dropped slightly, Reuters reports, on news of a pending ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon, apparently because Wall Streeters, leaping 10 steps ahead, imagine it could lead to a relaxing of sanctions on Iran and therefore a glut of oil supply, suppressing prices…. More

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      in Elections

      Rudy Giuliani tells judge he can’t pay his bills in courtroom outburst

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      The former New York mayor and lawyer to Donald Trump, Rudy Giuliani, erupted in court on Tuesday, telling a judge: “I can’t pay my bills!”Sketches by courtroom artists, who create pictures for the media to use when cameras are not allowed in court, such as federal courts, showed a furious Giuliani, 80, pointing at the judge in his case, Lewis Liman.The hearing in federal court in Manhattan concerned a near-$150m judgment won by Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss, two Georgia elections workers whom Giuliani defamed while advancing Trump’s lie that electoral fraud in 2020 cost him victory over Joe Biden.Liman said Giuliani had not been complying with orders to surrender assets.Giuliani said on Tuesday: “The implications you are making against me are wrong. I have no car, no credit card, no cash, everything I have is tied up, they have put stop orders on my business accounts, and I can’t pay my bills!”Giuliani’s fall has been spectacular. After making his name as a hard-charging prosecutor who took on organized crime, he was mayor for two terms, in office on 11 September 2001 and widely praised for his leadership after the terrorist attacks on the US. His 2008 presidential run flopped but Giuliani enjoyed a successful consulting and speaking career before allying himself with Trump when the property magnate entered Republican politics in 2015.Giuliani missed out on a cabinet appointment but became Trump’s personal attorney – work that fueled Trump’s first impeachment, in 2019 for blackmailing Ukraine for political dirt. Giuliani then became a prime driver of Trump’s failed attempt to overturn the 2020 election – work which produced criminal charges, to which he pleaded not guilty, the huge defamation judgment, and disbarments in Washington and New York.In New York on Tuesday, Giuliani’s lawyer told the judge his client had turned over assets including a Mercedes Benz sports car once owned by the film star Lauren Bacall. An attorney for Freeman and Moss said Giuliani had turned over the car but not the title to it. Attorneys for the two women have also said they have gained access to Giuliani’s $5m Upper East Side apartment in Manhattan, but have not secured “the keys, stock, or proprietary lease”.In court, the judge told Giuliani’s lawyer: “A car without a title is meaningless … your client is a competent person. He was the US attorney in the district. The notion that he can’t apply for a title certificate – ”Giuliani cut him off, saying: “I did apply for it! What am I supposed to do, make it up myself? Your implication that I have not been diligent about it is totally incorrect.”He then launched his outburst about financial problems.Giuliani’s lawyer asked Liman to extend deadlines, given he had only just started on the case after previous attorneys withdrew. Liman denied the request, saying: “You can’t restart the clock by firing one counsel and hiring another. He has already received multiple extensions, and missed multiple deadlines.”Trial is set for 16 January regarding whether Giuliani must also give Moss and Freeman his Florida home and four New York Yankees World Series commemoration rings. On Tuesday, Giuliani’s lawyer asked if the trial could be pushed back, so his client could attend inaugural events for Trump, who will be sworn in as president in Washington DC on 20 January. Liman said no.Outside court, Giuliani told reporters Liman was “going to rule against me. If you were sitting in the courtroom and couldn’t figure it out, you’re stupid.” He also said the judge’s “background is serious leftwing Democrat … about as leftwing as you get” – even while acknowledging Liman was nominated by Trump.Giuliani said he did not regret defaming Freeman and Moss.“I regret the persecution I have been put through,” he said. More

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      in US Politics

      Trump border chief threatens jail for Denver mayor amid deportation dispute

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      Tom Homan, Donald Trump’s hardline incoming border czar, has threatened to put the mayor of Denver in jail after the latter said he was willing to risk incarceration to resist the president-elect’s migrant mass deportation plan.The threat was issued against Mike Johnston, a Democrat, who said he was not afraid of being jailed and encouraged people to protest against mass round-ups of immigrants in their cities and communities.Johnston’s remarks came after Trump focused during the presidential election campaign on the Denver suburb of Aurora, which he said had become “a war zone” where apartment buildings had been taken over by Venezuelan gang members.Asked to respond by Fox News’s Sean Hannity, Homan said: “Me and the Denver mayor, we agree on one thing; he’s willing to go to jail. I’m willing to put him in jail.”Johnston had originally been asked by a local Denver television station to respond to Homan’s previous vows to arrest local leaders and politicians who stood in the way of deportation efforts.He said he was not willing to go to jail, though he is “not afraid of that” in a Friday interview with 9 News.“I think the goal is we want to be able to negotiate with reasonable people how to solve hard problems,” he told the outlet.He said previously, in a separate interview, that he would send Denver police to the city line to confront federal agents – an action he likened to Tiananmen Square. He later withdrew the comments.Speaking to Hannity, Homan insisted that he was willing to put Johnston “in jail because there’s a statute”.“What it says is that it’s a felony if you knowingly harbour and conceal an illegal alien from immigration authorities. It’s also a felony to impede a federal law enforcement officer. So if he don’t help, that’s fine. He can get the hell out of the way, but we’re going to go do the job,” he said, before adding: “I find it hard to believe that any mayor or governor would say they don’t want public safety threats removed from their neighbourhoods.“I don’t know what the hell is going on in Denver, but we’re going to go in and we’re going to go and we’re going to fix it. If you don’t want to fix it, if you don’t want to protect his communities, President Trump and Ice [Immigration and Customs Enforcement] will.”Homan, who was deputy director of Ice in Trump’s first administration, said the president-elect had a “mandate from the American people … to save American lives”.He has taken a similarly unbending stance against other local and state Democratic politicians who have declared their local fiefdoms “sanctuary cities” safe from Trump’s deportation plans.Gavin Newsom, the California governor, and the Illinois governor, JB Pritzker, have both vowed opposition. Pritzker recently told journalists: “If you come for my people, you come through me.”In a separate Fox News interview at the weekend, Homan said the incoming administration would respond to blocking tactics by withholding federal funding from non-compliant cities and states.“That’s going to happen, I guarantee you,” he told the network’s Mark Levin. More

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      in US Politics

      The Guardian view on Donald Trump’s tariffs: protectionism is no longer taboo in politics | Editorial

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      Donald Trump’s broadside against America’s three largest trading partners, with whom it runs a $500bn trade deficit, should surprise no one. Since 2016, both Mr Trump and Mr Biden have departed from established norms in international trade. The two presidencies diverged significantly in approach: Mr Biden emphasised systemic reform while Mr Trump relied on rhetoric and theatrics. Although both administrations faced criticism for driving up costs through tariffs and industrial policy, global events were primarily behind rising prices.Mr Trump’s self-declared fondness for tariffs is closely tied to his ability to authorise them unilaterally, bypassing Congress under claims of national security. This may explain his recent announcement of plans to impose 25% tariffs on all goods from Canada and Mexico, and an additional 10% on Chinese imports, unless these countries address alleged issues of illegal immigration and fentanyl smuggling. The US president-elect clearly sees tariffs as more than mere policies; they are a calculated means of gaining leverage. By threatening to impose them, Mr Trump is signalling a desire to negotiate – but only on his terms.Mr Trump’s trade tactics reshaped relations with Mexico and Canada, setting the stage for a 2026 review of the 2019 agreement he secured with the US’s neighbours. However, his approach faltered with China. Despite the first Trump administration imposing $112bn in tariffs and threatening to levy $500bn more, Beijing negotiated a 2020 trade deal but did not, after Covid, meet its commitments, leaving Mr Biden to continue the confrontation.Trade involves sacrifices to achieve gains. Cheaper consumer goods might lead to fewer domestic jobs or lower wages in certain industries. Increased imports can mean a reduction in local manufacturing. Running a trade deficit is not necessarily harmful, but it requires an activist policy to ensure that the pain is not geographically concentrated. For decades, the neoliberal economic order championed a vision of a borderless world, where goods and services flowed freely with minimal barriers. This ideal dominated global trade policy and corporate strategy, rendering “protectionism” taboo in mainstream debate. However, since the global financial crash, scepticism about globalisation has steadily grown.An increasing focus on justice, sustainability and better working conditions has reshaped trade priorities worldwide. There has also been a growing shift toward producing goods closer to home, either through increased domestic manufacturing or by developing nearby supply chains. However, wealthy nations, led by the US, have consistently resisted granting poorer countries the flexibility to modernise, while claiming exceptions to rules they enforce on others. During the pandemic, the US prioritised its pharmaceutical industry profits over global vaccine access, blocking life-saving doses for developing countries.Globalisation’s decline began long before Mr Trump, with his protectionist policies reflecting rather than driving this shift. The retreat from globalisation will probably continue, fuelled by geopolitical tensions, post-pandemic supply chain restructuring, and rising demands for equitable trade. Mr Trump’s policies, however, will make an uncertain world even more volatile. His suspicion of win-win deals will make it harder for policymakers around the world who seek to balance their national interests with the need for global cooperation. More

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      in US Politics

      Mexico president vows to retaliate with own tariffs against Trump’s tax threat

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      Mexico’s president, Claudia Sheinbaum, has rebuked Donald Trump’s threat to impose steep tariffs on Mexico, arguing the plan would do nothing to halt the flow of migrants or drugs bound for the US border, and vowing that Mexico would hit back with tariffs of its own.“One tariff would be followed by another in response, and so on until we put at risk common businesses,” Sheinbaum said, warning that tariffs would cause inflation and job losses in both countries. “What sense is there?”Sheinbaum’s comments came after Trump said on Monday that, as one of his first actions as president, he would impose a 25% tax on all imports from Mexico and Canada in an effort to stop the flow of migrants and narcotics into the United States.“This Tariff will remain in effect until such time as Drugs, in particular Fentanyl, and all Illegal Aliens stop this Invasion of our Country!” Trump wrote on his Truth Social page.It is unclear if the president-elect’s proposal would even be legal or possible, given that the three countries share a free trade agreement known as the USMCA that was negotiated during his previous term in the White House.But as analysts pointed out, Trump has never been one to abide by the rules.“Did we really think that Trump was going to become more institutional or more formal?” said Valeria Moy, a Mexican economist and director general of IMCO, a public policy analysis firm. “The Trump that the United States and the world will have, at least in the signs he’s given, is a Trump that will be more dictatorial, tougher, more emboldened.”Even if they are legally questionable, the tariffs could provide Trump with a quick win upon taking office in January, said Viri Ríos, a Mexican public policy expert.“I don’t rule out that he would implement them temporarily to give a result to his electoral base, which would be happy to see that Donald Trump is being consistent with his campaign promises,” she said. “But from that to this being a long term strategy, it seems to me that it would not be good for the United States itself.”Mexico is the United States’s top trade partner as of September, representing 15.8% of total trade. According to Ríos, a 25% tariff on Mexican goods would cost the US economy $125bn over 10 years, while costing its GDP between 0.5 and 0.74%.With such steep tariffs, US companies importing Mexican goods would undoubtedly have to raise their prices.“The main victim will be the American consumer, because at the end of the day, tariffs are more or less reflected in prices,” said Moy.That could end up costing Trump politically, given the role consumer prices played in his election win.“One of the main reasons why Trump’s campaign was successful, was that people felt that inflation had increased during Biden’s last term,” said Ríos. “So I think he’s playing with fire.”Analysts also questioned whether Trump’s plan would even have its desired impact, given that the flow of drugs to the US is driven by American demand, not by the flow of goods.“It’s a bit like scapegoating,” said Ríos. “The key to this problem isn’t in Mexico, it’s in the United States.”Ultimately, analysts viewed Trump’s proposal as a threat to force Mexico on to the negotiating table and implement policies on migration and security that could have some meaningful impact on the flow of drugs and migrants to the United States.“We’ve already seen this [from Trump] – first you threaten, then you negotiate,” said Moy. “He’s using it as a threat to sit down and negotiate and say ‘Ok, you, president of Mexico … What are you going to do to contain the flow of migrants and what are you going to do in terms of security? What are you going to do to prevent fentanyl from passing from Mexico to the United States? And if you don’t do it, I’ll put tariffs on you.’” More

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      in US Politics

      Trump’s tariff threat sets stage for bitter global trade war

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      Donald Trump’s threat to impose steep tariffs on goods imported into the US has set the stage for a bitter global trade war, according to trade experts and economists, with consumers and companies warned to brace for steep costs.The president-elect announced on Monday night that he intended to hit Canada, Mexico and China with tariffs on all their exports to the US – until they reduce migration and the flow of drugs into the country.As officials in the three countries scrambled to respond, Keith Rockwell, a former director at the World Trade Organization, predicted that Trump’s move could spark a trade war. “The United States exports hundreds of billions of dollars worth of goods to these countries,” he said. “Anyone who expects that they will stand pat and not retaliate has not been paying attention.”China promptly suggested that both sides would lose from an escalation in economic tensions. “No one will win a trade war or a tariff war,” Liu Pengyu, a spokesperson at the Chinese embassy in Washington, wrote on X, formerly Twitter. Chrystia Freeland, Canada’s deputy prime minister, and Dominic LeBlanc, its public safety minister, touted the country’s “balanced and mutually beneficial” economic ties with the US.Hours after Trump issued the announcements on Truth Social, his social media platform, economists at ING released research that estimated his broader campaign proposals on trade – including a universal tariff of between 10% and 20% on all goods imported from overseas, and a 60% tariff on all goods from China – could cost each US consumer up to $2,400 each year.“This potential increase in consumer costs and inflation could have widespread economic implications, particularly in an economy where consumer spending accounts for 70% of all activity,” James Knightley of ING said.It is unclear whether Trump, who has described “tariff” as “the most beautiful word in the dictionary”, will follow through on this plan. Tariffs – levies paid for by the company importing foreign goods – are not popular with voters, even Trump’s voters. A Harris poll conducted for the Guardian found 69% of people believe they will increase the prices they pay.And while he threatened universal tariffs while campaigning for the White House, this proposal – a 25% duty on all goods from Mexico and Canada, and a 10% duty on China, on top of existing duties – is more targeted.“Trump’s statements clearly herald the dawn of a new era of US trade protectionism that will sweep many US trading partners into its ambit,” said Eswar Prasad, former head of the IMF’s China division. “Such tariffs will have a disruptive effect on US as well as international trade, as countries around the world jockey to soften the blow of US tariffs on their own economies and try to find ways to evade the tariffs.”On the campaign trail, Trump and his allies claimed such measures would help strengthen the US economy and “make America wealthy again”. Many economists took a different view, warning that sweeping tariffs would increase the price of goods for US consumers, and risk prompting other nations to retaliate, hitting US businesses exporting goods to the world.But in his announcements on Tuesday, Trump did not focus on the economic benefits has claimed tariffs would bring. Instead, he blamed Mexico and Canada for “ridiculous Open Borders” he alleged were prompting an immigration crisis, and China for “the massive amounts of drugs, in particular Fentanyl” arriving in the US – and pledged to impose tariffs on these countries until they addressed his concerns.“Trump apparently sees tariffs as a tool with broad uses in tackling a variety of malign external factors that have adverse effects on the US economy, society and national security,” noted Prasad, now a professor of trade policy at Cornell University.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe billionaire hedge fund manager Bill Ackman, who endorsed Trump, wrote on X that the president-elect “is going to use tariffs as a weapon to achieve economic and political outcomes which are in the best interest of America”, in a bid to deliver on his “America First” policy strategy.Making such announcements on social media “is a great way for Trump to effect foreign policy changes even before he takes office”, Ackman claimed.As Trump builds out his broader trade strategy, Rockwell, formerly of the WTO, said a 10% universal tariff would me “more manageable” than 20%. “But if you raise it 20%, that creates a different dynamic,” he said. “You’re going to see much, much less demand for these products coming in.“There will also be, without any doubt, retaliation,” he added. European officials “have got their list drawn up”, he said. “It’s the most closely guarded secret in Brussels, but it’s drawn up.”Countries will hit back with tariffs on “political pinch points”, Rockwell predicted. Under the last Trump administration, the European Union targeted US exports including Harley-Davidson bikes, Levi’s jeans and Kentucky bourbon. More

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      in US Politics

      Biden proposes Medicare and Medicaid cover weight-loss drugs for 7.4m people

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      The Biden administration is proposing to make “miracle” weight loss drugs free for low-income people and retirees, in a move aimed at tackling America’s chronic obesity problem but which throws down a gauntlet to the incoming president, Donald Trump.The proposal, unveiled on Tuesday, would see expensive drugs such as Ozempic, Wegovy and Zepbound covered by Medicaid and Medicare, the federal government programs for the poor and the elderly.It would come at a hefty cost to the public purse. The drugs would be covered for anyone qualifying as obese, a definition that currently fits 40% of the US population. Currently, coverage is only given when patients have other conditions that is caused by obesity, such as diabetes, heart disease and cancer.Xavier Becerra, the US health and human services secretary, called the move a “game changer”.“It helps us recognize that obesity is with us,” he told the Washington Post. “It’s severe. It’s damaging our country’s health. It’s damaging our economy.”But the proposed reform amounted to a challenge to Trump’s incoming administration, which would have to decide whether to implement the change a few days after taking office in January. Trump has sworn to slash the federal budget.It also paved the way for a likely conflict between two of Trump’s health sector nominees: Robert F Kennedy Jr, who has been proposed as the health and human services secretary, and Mehmet Oz, the celebrity physician who has been nominated to run Medicare and Medicaid.Kennedy has vowed to promote healthy eating and improve fitness in the battle against obesity, and has fiercely criticised weight loss drugs, blaming them for obscuring the causes of ill health.He recently claimed to Fox News that covering a drug like Ozempic for every overweight American would cost $3tn a year.“If we spend about one-fifth of that, giving good food, three meals a day, to every man, woman and child in our country, we could solve the obesity and diabetes epidemic overnight for a tiny fraction of the cost,” he said.“There’s a huge push to sell this to the American public. They’re counting on selling to Americans because we’re so stupid and so addicted to drugs.”Oz has taken a different tack, praising Ozempic on social media last year. “[F]or those who want to lose a few pounds, Ozempic and other semaglutide medications can be a big help,” he wrote. “We need to make it as easy as possible for people to meet their health goals, period.”Beccera estimated that 3.4 million people on Medicare and 4 million on Medicaid would become eligible for the drugs under the new rule.But other research suggests that far more people may qualify. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), the agency Oz has been nominated to head, has estimated that 28 million recipients suffer from obesity.A recent Congressional Budget Office analysis estimated that federal spending would rise by $35bn between 2026 and 2034 by allowing Medicare alone to cover weight-loss medications.People can lose between 15% and 25% of their body weight thanks to the drugs, which imitate the hormones that regulate appetites. A month’s supply can cost around $1,000. More

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      in US Politics

      The Democrats’ next campaign should appeal to their base, not swing voters | Steve Phillips

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      Many people are drawing the wrong conclusions about what happened in the 2024 election. The conventional wisdom is that large swaths of population groups shifted their political allegiances to Donald Trump, propelling him to victory over Kamala Harris.A more careful reading of the data, however, shows that those conclusions are inaccurate, and the biggest problem for Democrats was a failure to turn out Democratic voters. Coming to terms with the unfounded faith in voter persuasion – at the extent of tried and true voter turnout programs – will have profound implications for the future of the Democratic party and the country.The cause of the confusion is the fact that Trump won dozens of counties across the country that voted for Joe Biden in 2020. Seeing that the Democratic margin had shrunk or evaporated in these places, most in the media rushed to report a massive national shift to the right, replete with graphics showing maps with red arrows pointing rightward.Looking more closely at the results and comparing them to the data from the 2020 election, one can see that while the counties did swing, the voters, for the most part, did not. What leaps out from a careful comparison is the finding that Democratic voter turnout fell through the floor. Trump didn’t win those counties because people switched their votes to him; he won because significant numbers of people who voted for Biden in 2020 did not vote at all in 2024.The decline in voter turnout is first visible from the simple fact that the total number of votes cast in 2024 is smaller than the number cast in 2020 (153m in 2024 versus 155m in 2020). This is despite the fact that the size of the US population has increased by 4.5 million people since the last election.It is when one takes a closer look at the underlying data that the picture comes into sharper focus. In nearly a third of the top 50 counties that flipped from Democrat to Republican, Trump’s vote actually declined from his 2020 numbers. If Democratic voters are coming over to the Republican ranks, their vote total should go up, not down. In Pinellas county, Florida, for example, Trump got nearly 7,000 fewer votes than in 2020, but the Democratic vote total plummeted by 35,000 votes.This pattern is evident in nearly all of the counties that flipped. Even in the counties where Trump’s vote increased marginally over 2020, that increase was generally dwarfed by the Democratic decline. In Erie county in the critical swing state of Pennsylvania, Trump improved on his 2020 showing by 801 votes, but the votes for Harris dropped by 2,618 votes, more than enough to have carried the county had those voters cast ballots.Just as is the case in medicine, an effective treatment requires an accurate diagnosis. The anemic Democratic voter turnout is the result of a cataclysmic failure of theory of change, strategy and spending, most notably by the Democratic Super Pac Future Forward.Super Pacs have great freedom and flexibility in that there are no limits on the size of contributions they can receive and few restrictions on their electoral activities. I helped create one of the country’s first such committees, Vote Hope, in 2007 to help Barack Obama, and our theory of change was that boosting Black voter turnout would help elect the country’s first Black president. Accordingly, we spent our money on hiring canvassers to knock on doors and buses to drive voters to the polls.Future Forward embraced the view that they could devise clever television and digital ads that would persuade Trump-leaning voters to back the Democrats. Accordingly, they poured nearly $700m into an advertising avalanche that was redundant to Harris’s ads and obviously ineffective. In a fawning New York Times profile, their effort was described as “animated by the idea that a blend of data science, political science and testing can usher in a new era of rigor in advertising”.There were seven battleground states where the parties concentrated their time, energy, and resources. Imagine if Future Forward had spent $100m in each state, hiring canvassers, investing in community-based civic engagement organizations, and funding the labor-intensive and expensive yet effective work of getting out the vote. Such a program would have boosted voter turnout, bringing back out the coalition that defeated Trump in 2020.A failure of this magnitude demands soul-searching and brutal re-assessment of prior assumptions and strategies. The work of defending and ultimately taking back the country starts now, and a sober assessment of the election results makes clear that 2024 marks the requiem for the widely held but thinly supported view that it makes more sense to invest in persuasion over the power-building program of getting out the vote.

      Steve Phillips is the founder of Democracy in Color, and author of Brown Is the New White: How the Demographic Revolution Has Created a New American Majority and How We Win the Civil War: Securing a Multiracial Democracy and Ending White Supremacy for Good More