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      Mother and three kids released by Ice after protests from US ‘border czar’s’ hometown

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      A mother and her three children who were taken into custody by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) agents as part of a sweep in the tiny hometown of the Trump administration’s “border czar”, Tom Homan, have been released following days of outcry from community figures and protesters calling for their freedom.Over the weekend, about a thousand protesters marched outside of Homan’s home in a small New York village, calling for the release of the children and their mother after they were detained last month. The family has not been named or spoken out publicly.Jaime Cook, principal of the Sackets Harbor school district where the children reportedly attended class, wrote a letter to the community pleading for the students’ safe return.She described the children as having “no ties to criminal activity” and that they are “loved in their classrooms”.“We are in shock,” the letter reads. “And it is that shared shock that has unified our community in the call for our students’ release.”The family was taken into custody in a 27 March raid at a large dairy farm in the remote town that has a population of fewer than 1,500 in Jefferson county in north-western New York state, on Lake Ontario near the Canadian border. The target of the raid was reportedly a South African national charged with trafficking in child sexual abuse material, whom they apprehended, Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agents said.But authorities separately picked up and detained the family, as well as three other immigrants they said were without documentation. The family was moved to the Karnes county immigration processing center, a privately run detention facility in Texas, by 30 March.Cook’s letter said that the family had declared themselves to immigration judges, were attending court on their assigned dates and had been following the legal process.The release of the family was confirmed on Monday by local officials, school administrators, and the New York governor, Kathy Hochul.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionHochul said in a statement that she had direct confirmation from Homan that “this family – a third grader, two teenagers and their mother – are currently on their way back to Jefferson county. I cannot imagine the trauma these kids and their mom are feeling, and I pray they will be able to heal when they return home.”The protests were organized with the help of the Jefferson county committee of the Democratic Party. Corey Decillis, committee chair, told NBC News that protestors had seen these raids “occur right in the last 60 days across the country, but when it happens in your backyard, I think that’s what garners people’s attention.” More

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      Netanyahu discusses Gaza and tariffs with Trump at White House meeting

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      The Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, met with Donald Trump on Monday for the second time since the US president’s return to office, marking the first effort by a foreign leader to negotiate a deal after Trump announced sweeping tariffs last week.Speaking alongside Trump in the Oval Office, Netanyahu said Israel would eliminate the trade deficit with the US. “We intend to do it very quickly,” he told reporters, adding that he believed Israel could “serve as a model for many countries who ought to do the same”.Trump said the pair had a “great discussion” but did not indicate whether he would reduce the tariffs on Israeli goods. “Maybe not,” he said. “Don’t forget we help Israel a lot. We give Israel $4bn a year. That’s a lot.”Trump denied reports that he was considering a 90-day pause on his tariff rollout. “We’re not looking at that,” he told reporters. “We have many, many countries that are coming to negotiate deals with us, and there are going to be fair deals.”Trump also announced that the US and Iran were beginning talks on Tehran’s nuclear program. “We’re having direct talks with Iran, and they’ve started. It’ll go on Saturday. We have a very big meeting, and we’ll see what can happen,” he told reporters. He warned Tehran would be “in great danger” if the talks collapse.Netanyahu expressed a cautious support for US-Iran talks but insisted Tehran must not have nuclear weapons. “If it can be done diplomatically … I think that would be a good thing,” he said. “But whatever happens, we must make sure that Iran does not have nuclear weapons.”The comments came in the Oval Office after Trump and Netanyahu held private talks. The White House canceled a joint press conference that was scheduled to take place afterward, without offering an immediate explanation.Netanyahu, announcing the last-minute meeting on Sunday, said he was visiting at the invitation of Trump to speak about efforts to release Israeli hostages from Gaza, as well as new US tariffs.The meeting came after the Trump administration announced his trade war last Wednesday with tariffs on the US’s trading partners, including a 17% tariff on Israeli goods.The US is Israel’s closest ally and largest single trading partner. Israel had hoped to avoid the new tariffs by moving to cancel its remaining tariffs on US imports a day before Trump’s announcement.Before his meeting with Trump, Netanyahu met with the US special envoy to the Middle East, Steve Witkoff. He also met with the US commerce secretary, Howard Lutnick, and the US trade representative Jamieson Greer on Sunday night in Washington. The Israeli government described the latter meeting as “warm, friendly and productive”.During Netanyahu’s last visit in February, Trump shocked the world by proposing to take over the Gaza Strip, removing more than 2 million Palestinians and redeveloping the occupied territory as a “Riviera of the Middle East”, in effect endorsing the ethnic cleansing of the people of Gaza.Since then, Israel has resumed its bombardment in Gaza, collapsing nearly two months of ceasefire with Hamas that had been brokered by the US, Egypt and Qatar.Nearly 1,400 Palestinians have been killed in the renewed Israeli operations in Gaza, according to Palestinian health officials, taking the total death toll since the start of the war to more than 50,000. Israel has also halted all supplies of food, fuel and humanitarian aid into Gaza.Netanyahu’s visit to the US comes as he faces pressure at home to return to ceasefire negotiations and secure the release of the remaining hostages in Gaza.Netanyahu told reporters on Monday that he and Trump had discussed the US leader’s “bold” vision to move Palestinians from Gaza, and that he is working with the US on another deal to secure the release of additional hostages. “We’re working now on another deal, that we hope will succeed,” he said.Netanyahu also claimed that Israel is committed to “enabling the people of Gaza to freely make a choice to go wherever they want”. Last week, he said Israel was “seizing territory” and intended to “divide up” the Gaza Strip by building a new security corridor, inflaming fears that Israel intends to take permanent control of the strip when the war ends.Netanyahu arrived in Washington on Sunday night from Hungary, after a four-day official visit that marked the Israeli leader’s first visit to European soil since the international criminal court (ICC) issued an arrest warrant for him over allegations of war crimes in Gaza.Hungary’s prime minister, Viktor Orbán, made it clear he would defy the court to host Netanyahu, and announced that he would take Hungary out of the ICC because it had become “political”. The US is not a member of the court. More

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      Rightwing group backed by Koch and Leo sues to stop Trump tariffs

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      A libertarian group backed by Leonard Leo and Charles Koch has mounted a legal challenge against Donald Trump’s tariff regime, in a sign of spreading rightwing opposition to a policy that has sent international markets plummeting.The New Civil Liberties Alliance filed a suit against Trump’s imposition of import tariffs on exports from China, arguing that doing so under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) – which the president has invoked to justify the duties on nearly all countries – is unlawful.The group’s actions echo support given by four Republican senators last week for a Democratic amendment calling for the reversal of 25% tariffs imposed on Canada.Last Wednesday’s amendment passed with the support of Mitch McConnell, the former Republican Senate majority leader, and his fellow GOP members Rand Paul, Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski, who argued that tariffs on Canada would be economically harmful.The action from the alliance has the potential to be even more emblematic, given its backing from Koch, a billionaire industrialist, and Leo, a wealthy legal activist who advised Trump on the nomination of three conservative supreme court justices during his first presidency, which has given the court a 6-3 rightwing majority. The group received money from organisations affiliated with Leo and Koch in 2022.The alliance has tabled its action on behalf of Simplified, a Florida-based home goods company whose business is heavily reliant on imports from China. It argues that the president has exceeded his powers in invoking the IEEPA to justify tariffs.“This statute authorizes specific emergency actions like imposing sanctions or freezing assets to protect the United States from foreign threats,” the alliance said in a statement. “It does not authorize the president to impose tariffs. In its nearly 50-year history, no other president – including President Trump in his first term – has ever tried to use the IEEPA to impose tariffs.”The alliance also argues that power to impose tariffs lies not with a sitting president, but with Congress, and warns that those imposed by Trump could run afoul of US supreme court rulings.“His attempt to use the IEEPA this way not only violates the law as written, but it also invites application of the supreme court’s major questions doctrine, which tells courts not to discern policies of ‘vast economic and political significance’ in a law without explicit congressional authorization,” its statement said.Mark Chenoweth, the alliance’s president, said the court in Pensacola – where the suit has been filed – would have to observe this legal precedent.“Reading this law [IEEPA] broadly enough to uphold the China tariff would transfer core legislative power,” he said. “To avoid that non-delegation pitfall, the court must construe the statute consistent with nearly 50 years of unbroken practice and decide it does not permit tariff setting.”The suit argues that there is no connection between the fentanyl epidemic – which Trump has cited as a reason for invoking the emergency powers – and the tariffs.“The means of an across-the-board tariff does not fit the end of stopping an influx of opioids, and is in no sense ‘necessary’ to that stated purpose,” the complaint filed on behalf of Simplified argues.“In fact, President Trump’s own statements reveal the real reason for the China tariff, which is to reduce American trade deficits while raising federal revenue.”The legal case adds to rumbling disquiet on tariffs among some of Trump’s usually vocal supporters, including the billionaire hedge fund manager Bill Ackman.Paul, a senator from Kentucky who has been one of the most consistent congressional anti-tariff voices, told the Washington Post that other Capitol Hill Republicans shared his concern.“They all see the stock market, and they’re all worried about it,” Paul said. “But they are putting on a stiff upper lip to try to act as if nothing’s happening and hoping it goes away.”Speaking in support of last week’s Democratic amendment, sponsored by the Virginia senator Tim Kaine, Paul said: “I don’t care if the president is a Republican or a Democrat. I don’t want to live under emergency rule. I don’t want to live where my representatives cannot speak for me and have a check and balance on power.”Trump attacked Paul and the three other Republican senators who backed the amendment and suggested they were driven by “Trump derangement syndrome”.In another sign of Republican concern, the GOP senator from Iowa Chuck Grassley – along with a Washington Democrat, Maria Cantrell – introduced a bill that would limit Trump’s ability to impose or increase tariffs by requiring Congress to approve them within 60 days. The White House budget office said on Monday that Trump would veto the bill. More

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      First Black Republican congresswoman honored in Utah memorial service

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      Family and friends of the former US congresswoman Mia Love gathered Monday in Salt Lake City to honor the life and legacy of the first Black Republican woman elected to Congress after she died of brain cancer last month aged 49.The former lawmaker from Utah, a daughter of Haitian immigrants, had undergone treatment for an aggressive brain tumor called glioblastoma and received immunotherapy as part of a clinical trial. She died on 23 March at her home in Saratoga Springs, Utah, weeks after her daughter announced she was no longer responding to treatment.Hundreds of mourners entered her service from a walkway lined with American flags at the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints Institute of Religion on the University of Utah campus. Long tables displayed framed family photos and bouquets of red and white flowers.Love served only two terms in Congress before suffering a razor-thin loss to Democrat Ben McAdams in the 2018 midterm elections as Democrats surged. Yet she left her mark on Utah’s political scene and later leveraged her prominence into becoming a political commentator for CNN.She was briefly considered a rising star in the GOP, but her power within the party fizzled out as Donald Trump took hold. Love kept her distance from the US president and called him out in 2018 for vulgar comments he made about immigrants from Haiti, El Salvador and some African nations.Jason Love, her husband, drew laughter from the somber crowd at Monday’s service when he told stories of his wife’s “superpowers”.View image in fullscreenHe described discovering her influence after he tried to return the many toasters the couple received as wedding gifts and failing because he didn’t have receipts. His wife then entered the store and came out three minutes later with cash in hand.“I thought: ‘Wow, I have married a Jedi knight,’” he said with a laugh.Her motherhood, he said, was her greatest superpower.“She was an extraordinary mother, and she believed that the most important work she would do within her life was within the walls of her own home with her children,” Jason Love said. “She always made it a special place for each of them to feel loved and to begin to achieve their full potential.”A choir of Love’s friends sang some of her favorite hymns, as well as Ed Sheeran’s Supermarket Flowers. Her children, Alessa, Abigale and Peyton, read an op-ed their mother published in the Deseret News shortly before she died in which she shared her enduring wish for the country to become less divisive.Love’s sister Cyndi Brito shared childhood memories, including how Love used to rehearse all day and night for starring roles in her school plays. She was always the best at everything she did and made everyone around her feel important, her sister said.Brito read an excerpt of a speech her third-grade daughter gave at a recent school assembly for Black History Month honoring Love’s legacy.“Mia Love played many roles and had many titles, but the most important role and the most important title that Mia Love played in my eyes was auntie,” Brito recalled her daughter, Carly, telling classmates.Love did not emphasize her race during her campaigns, but she acknowledged the significance of her election after her 2014 victory. She said her win defied naysayers who suggested a Black, Republican, Mormon woman could not win a congressional seat in overwhelmingly white Utah.On Sunday evening, state leaders and members of the public visited the Utah capitol to pay their respects at Love’s flag-covered coffin behind ropes in the building’s rotunda.Love, born Ludmya Bourdeau, was diagnosed with brain cancer in 2022 and said her doctors estimated she had only 10 to 15 months to live, which she surpassed. With aggressive treatments, Love lived for nearly three years after receiving her diagnosis.Her close friend, Utah’s lieutenant governor, Deidre Henderson, told the audience on Monday that Love had asked her friends and family to rally around her like a campaign team when she was diagnosed.“‘I’m in fight mode,’ she told us, ‘and what I need from you all, more than anything, is to help me fight it. This is a campaign, and we are going to win,’” Henderson recalled.Love entered politics in 2003 after winning a city council seat in Saratoga Springs, 30 miles (48km) south of Salt Lake City. She was elected as the city’s mayor in 2009, becoming the first Black woman to serve as a mayor in Utah.In 2012, after giving a rousing speech at the Republican national convention, she narrowly lost a bid for the US House against the Democratic incumbent. She ran again two years later and won. More

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      Volatility grips global stock markets as Trump insists on tariff ‘medicine’

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      Extreme volatility plagued global stock markets on Monday, with Wall Street swinging in and out of the red as Donald Trump defied stark warnings that his global trade assault will wreak widespread economic damage, comparing new US tariffs to medicine.A renewed sell-off began in Asia, before hitting European equities and reaching the US. It was briefly reversed amid hopes of a reprieve, only for Trump to threaten China with more steep tariffs, intensifying pressure on the market.On Wall Street, the benchmark S&P 500 dropped by as much as 4.1% – entering bear market territory after falling more than 20% from its most recent peak, in February – before launching an extraordinary reversal to turn positive.While markets were fleetingly boosted after Kevin Hassett, director of the White House national economic council, signaled that Trump was open to considering a 90-day pause on tariffs for all countries but China, the relief did not last long.After hours of turbulent trading, the S&P closed down 0.2%. The Dow Jones industrial average finished down 0.9%.“We’re not looking at that,” Trump told reporters, when asked about the prospect of a pause. Pressed on whether the tariffs set the stage for negotiations with countries, or were permanent, he replied: “Well, it can both be true. There can be permanent tariffs, and there can also be negotiations.”The FTSE 100 closed down 4.38% in London at 7,702.08 – the lowest close in more than a year – after the Nikkei 225 slumped 7.8% in Tokyo. Other major European also ended the day sharply lower, including Germany’s DAX and France’s CAC which both fell more than 4%.Trump, who has previously used market rallies as a barometer of his success, tried to brush off the sell-off this weekend. “I don’t want anything to go down,” the US president said on Sunday. “But sometimes you have to take medicine to fix something.”He stood firm on Monday. “The United States has a chance to do something that should have been done DECADES AGO,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform. “Don’t be Weak! Don’t be Stupid!”As China prepares to retaliate, Trump threatened to further increase US tariffs on the country – an additional rate of 50% – if it hits back. All talks with Beijing over potential meetings have been “terminated”, he said.Major share indices have fallen dramatically since he unveiled his controversial plan to overhaul the US economy last week. The Trump administration imposed a blanket 10% tariff on imported goods this weekend, and is set to follow with higher tariffs on products from specific nations from Wednesday.While senior figures in corporate America have been reluctant to criticize Trump since his inauguration in January, a handful have started to sound the alarm in recent days.Larry Fink, CEO of the investment giant BlackRock, expressed concern on Monday over the threat of a downturn. “The economy is weakening as we speak,” he said at the Economic Club of New York, according to Bloomberg. “Most CEOs I talk to would say we are probably in a recession right now.”The JPMorgan Chase boss, Jamie Dimon, one of the most influential executives on Wall Street, warned that Trump’s tariff plan was “likely” to exacerbate inflation. “Whether or not the menu of tariffs causes a recession remains in question, but it will slow down growth,” he wrote in his annual letter to shareholders.Dimon added: “The quicker this issue is resolved, the better because some of the negative effects increase cumulatively over time and would be hard to reverse.”The billionaire fund manager Bill Ackman, who backed Trump’s campaign for the presidency, has also demanded the administration reconsider its plan. “We are heading for a self-induced, economic nuclear winter,” he wrote on X, formerly Twitter.Even Elon Musk, a close ally of Trump, currently leading the so-called “department of government efficiency” inside the government, appeared to break with the administration on the issue. Peter Navarro, Trump’s top trade adviser, “ain’t built shit”, Musk wrote on X, which he owns, this weekend.Navarro, for his part, insisted in a television interview on Monday morning that the stock market would find a bottom. Less than hour later, when New York opened for trading, the search continued.The technology-focused Nasdaq Composite started the day down 4.3%, before switching in and out of the red. It ended the day broadly flat, up by 0.1%. The VIX “fear index” of volatility rose as high as 60 for the first time since August.Oil prices also came under pressure, with Brent and WTI benchmarks stooping to their lowest levels in four years, as growing economic tensions between Washington and Beijing stoked fears that a global downturn would challenge demand.Sir Richard Branson, co-founder of Virgin Group, argued the “predictable and preventable” market chaos would have “catastrophic” implications for people in the US and around the world, and claimed companies were already going bankrupt as a result of the weaker dollar and higher costs.“This is the moment to own up to a colossal mistake and change course,” Branson wrote on X. “Otherwise, America will face ruin for years to come.” More

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      South Sudan says person at centre of US deportation row is from DRC

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      The government of South Sudan said on Monday that an individual at the centre of a deportation row with the US, which South Sudan refused to allow into the country at the weekend, is a citizen of neighbouring Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).South Sudan said the individual was a man named Makula Kintu, not Nimeiri Garang, as his paperwork claimed and had been using travel documents which were not his. “In accordance with our immigration protocols, we returned him to the sending country for further processing,” the foreign ministry spokesperson, Apuk Ayuel Mayen, said.Footage released by the authorities in South Sudan’s capital, Juba, showed a man speaking to immigration authorities at Juba international airport, saying he was born in North Kivu, in the eastern DRC. He identified himself as Kintu and said he had been deported from the US against his will.On Sunday, the US announced that it had revoked the visas of all South Sudanese passport holders in reaction to the refusal by immigration authorities at Juba international airport to repatriate the man, accusing the east African country of “taking advantage of the United States”.Mayen, the foreign ministry spokesperson, said that South Sudan “deeply regrets” the blanket measure against all of the country’s citizens based on “an isolated incident involving misrepresentation by an individual who is not a South Sudanese national”.She added that the government of South Sudan was open to receiving its citizens, whether they voluntarily leave the US or are deported, and had maintained open communication with the US, despite claims by Washington that it had been rebuffed.Trump administration officials have said the individual’s documents were verified by South Sudan’s embassy in Washington DC and that South Sudan had “violated” its obligation “by refusing to accept one of their nationals certified by their own embassy in Washington and repatriated to their country”.In a post on social media, the US deputy secretary of state, Chris Landau, said: “Specifically, on February 13, 2025, the South Sudanese Embassy issued the individual an emergency travel letter certifying his nationality as South Sudanese and giving his date and place of birth (in what is now South Sudan, which then was part of Sudan).”Landau added that it was “unacceptable and irresponsible” for South Sudanese authorities to then reject a decision made by their embassy and “as far as we’re concerned, the Embassy’s certification is conclusive and the matter is closed”.Marco Rubio, the US secretary of state, said a visa and entry ban for South Sudanese citizens would go into immediate effect and would be reviewed once South Sudan, in the US government’s eyes, began cooperating again.Jok Madut Jok, an academic specialising in South Sudan at Syracuse University, in upstate New York, said if the mistake was made at South Sudan’s Washington embassy, that doesn’t “get the US off the hook for this measure”. “On humanitarian grounds, this needs to be rolled back because it is too broad,” he said, adding that many people attempting to come to the US could be refugees fleeing conflict.South Sudanese passport holders have enjoyed “temporary protected status” (TPS) in the US since 2011 which affords them legal protections against deportation due to instability and fighting in their country of origin. The Department of Homeland Security believes 133 people from South Sudan were on the US TPS programme last year.Donald Trump wanted to end TPS during his first term and the US president has attempted to do so again, targeting nationals from Nicaragua, Haiti, Venezuela and Cuba.TPS was renewed for South Sudanese nationals last September but is set to expire in May, which comes as South Sudan faces an escalating risk of renewed fighting by leaders from its two largest ethnic groups.South Sudan, the world’s youngest country, gained independence from Sudan in 2011, and has since struggled with armed conflict and poverty. Between 2013 and 2018, fighting between factions loyal to the current president, Salva Kiir Mayardit, and his vice-president, Riek Machar, killed nearly 400,000 people.Alexandra Ribe, an immigration attorney who specialises in humanitarian issues, said it is too early to tell what impact the measure would have on South Sudanese in the US as it was not clear what enforcement action immigration authorities would take, but described it as “punitive”.Ribe said the measure would “send a chill down the spines of nationals from the targeted country who have nothing to do with the issue at hand”. More

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      The Guardian view on Starmer’s choices: time to be bold | Editorial

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      In his speech to the Labour party conference in 2005, Tony Blair used a seasonal analogy to make the case for embracing disruptive but inevitable change. “I hear people say we have to stop and debate globalisation,” Mr Blair told delegates. “You might as well debate whether autumn should follow summer.”Twenty years on, to quote the billionaire US hedge fund manager Bill Ackman, it is the threat of a self-inflicted “economic nuclear winter” that haunts the global economy. Donald Trump’s imposition of swingeing US tariffs has unleashed mayhem on stock markets across the world, upending assumptions governing the world trade order since Bretton Woods. As Darren Jones, the chief secretary to the Treasury, said at the weekend: “Globalisation as we’ve known it for the last couple of decades has come to an end.”What that means for the Labour government he serves and for Britain is both fraught with consequence and, to a significant degree, beyond Whitehall’s control. Second-guessing Mr Trump’s ultimate intentions – and the political and economic risks that he is willing to take, as consumers suffer the consequences of a trade war – is a futile exercise. But as the White House seeks to bully, intimidate and coerce its way to a new settlement between the US and the rest of the world, the risk of a global recession is clear.What Sir Keir Starmer described on Monday as a “new era” will require strategic boldness from an habitually cautious prime minister. Sir Keir should, for example, now go further and faster to reset relations with the EU, the UK’s biggest trading partner by far. That may involve an uneasy balancing act if EU countries decide to retaliate against Mr Trump, as the government seeks a trade deal with the White House and related tariff mitigation. But the alternative is unsplendid and impotent isolation, and a future “special relationship” with the US that approximates ever more closely to vassal status.Domestically, a reset is also required. Speaking in the West Midlands, Sir Keir announced modest measures to assist the UK car industry, hammered by 25% tariffs on exports at a time when it is also dealing with the pressures of the green transition. The prime minister described this as a “downpayment” on future support. But supply-side plans to relax electric vehicle targets for manufacturers send the wrong environmental message, when what is needed are radical measures to turbocharge consumer demand.The problem, paradoxically for a prime minister who defines himself as a pragmatist, is ideology. As the UK faces potentially huge economic headwinds, Labour’s industrial strategy will need to be bigger, more interventionist and less constrained by the redundant economic orthodoxies to which it continues to pay obeisance. Aspirations to drive significant growth through a combination of budgetary conservatism and deregulation were already looking doomed prior to Mr Trump’s act of sabotage last week. Following “liberation day”, Sir Keir’s ongoing insistence that the government will stubbornly persist with its fiscal rules begins to look like an act of national self-harm.Mr Blair’s old message on globalisation, addressed to post-industrial regions suffering the effects of unleashed market forces, used to be to adapt or face the consequences. As Mr Trump gambles on the fate of the world economy, making up the rules as he goes along, Labour will need to do precisely that, and at pace.

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      Here’s one key thing you should know about Trump’s shock to the world economy: it could work | James Meadway

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      It’s less than a week since Donald Trump’s sensational announcement that he was unilaterally ending the world’s trading system with the imposition of a 10% minimum tariff for trading with the US – and a very much higher rate for those countries unfortunate enough to have the US as a major export partner. Long-term allies such as Japan and South Korea have been hammered with tariffs of around 25%, while export-dependent poorer countries such as Vietnam, which sells about a third of its exports to the US, have been hit with tariffs in excess of 45%. A further round of global debt crises is possible as heavily indebted countries face the sudden loss of export earnings.Global stock markets have tumbled as panicked investors dump shares, and political condemnation has been near-universal. China has already retaliated with 34% tariffs, threatening an escalating trade war. Right now, it looks and feels like disastrous overreach by a uniquely erratic administration at the behest of a president with a terrifyingly limited grasp of how the modern economy works.Trump has talked about imposing tariffs on the world since he first rose to prominence in the 1980s, when his target was Japan. In a political career notable for its jack-knifes in policy and direction, tariffs – “the most beautiful word in the dictionary” – have been a constant. But this is about far more than his long-cherished whims. However inconsistent or even confused Trump may sometimes appear to be, those around him have a clear-eyed view of what they want to achieve.His Treasury secretary, hedgefund billionaire Scott Bessent, has spoken of a “global economic reordering” that he intends to shape to the benefit of the US’s elite. Trump’s new chair of the Council of Economic Advisers, Stephen Miran, wrote a lengthy paper, A User’s Guide to Restructuring the Global Trading System, shortly before his appointment. The latter is particularly ambitious – detailing how the US should use not only tariffs but also the threat of withdrawing its security support to compel its friends and allies to accept cuts in payments due from the Federal Reserve on their US Treasury bills. This would be a potentially massive loss to them, akin, in reality, to a US debt default. But it is tariffs that are the cutting edge of the plan – leveraging the US’s power as the world’s largest consumer and greatest debtor to compel other countries into a negotiation on terms.After decades winning in an international trading game it wrote and refereed the rules for, the US is now facing serious competition – primarily from China, but with Europe as an expensive irritant. The response of this administration is to kick over the table, and demand everyone starts again. What it ultimately wants is a cheaper dollar to revive US manufacturing and Chinese competition held off, all the while keeping the dollar as the world’s reserve currency. And the rest of the world will pay the price.There are precedents. In October 1979, Paul Volcker, newly appointed as chair of the Federal Reserve, drove up interest rates to a remarkable 13% in a bid to tackle inflation, later raising them to 17%. Soon the US was in recession. Millions lost their jobs over the next two years, notably in manufacturing, where soaring interest rates had driven up the value of the dollar, making US exports less affordable on the world market. After a light easing of interest rate hell by the Fed, Volcker applied a second dose of the medicine, driving interest rates up to 19% and forcing the economy back into a double-dip recession. Unemployment peaked at around 10% in late 1982.View image in fullscreenBut by mid-1983, inflation had come down to 2.5%. For the rest of the 1980s, the US economy boomed. The “Volcker shock” appeared to have worked. Volcker is today a folk hero among central bankers: Ben Bernanke, chair of the Federal Reserve during the 2008 crisis, praised Volcker’s “independence” and willingness to brazen out the political storm.More decisive than lower inflation, however, was the reshaping of the US economy Volcker’s interest-rate shock accelerated: with manufacturing in freefall, investment flooded into finance and property, firing up what became the great credit bubble of the 1990s and 2000s. The world economy was reordered around a US that acted as a giant sink for its output – swallowing exports from the rest of the world on seemingly limitless borrowing. China’s extraordinary boom was the flipside of US debt and deindustrialisation. The Volcker shock, more than any other single action, created the globalised world system that Trump is now bent on destroying.Few would have bet on Volcker’s world-shaping capacity at the time. The stock market response to the shock was immediate and unanimous. US shares plunged by a record 8% in the two days after his announcement. The S&P 500 lost 27% of its value before August 1982 – two years of grinding decline. Manufacturers and unions hated it, understandably: they were on the wrong side of an epochal reconfiguration of US capitalism. But they were not the only losers: rising interest rates in the US meant less developed countries had to spend more on servicing debts, just as recession squeezed their major export markets. The result was the so-called “third world” debt crisis, as heavily indebted countries across the global south plunged into spirals of economic decline and soaring indebtedness.Over the weekend, Bessent and commerce secretary Howard Lutnick were doing the media rounds, insisting that there would be no climbdown on the tariffs. Trump is not for turning on what is clearly for him a personal crusade. Already, countries such as Vietnam are promising to cut all their tariffs on US goods – a clear and brutal demonstration of the US’s continuing economic power. The administration has claimed 50 other countries have also asked to open negotiations. By the end of the week, expect Trump to be triumphantly announcing more such concessions from economies in the global south. His real target – China – will be a far tougher nut to crack, if it breaks at all.Perhaps the rolling market chaos will become too much. Perhaps the administration will blink first. There is no guarantee this extraordinary gamble will work, not even for those in the clique around Trump. But it would be a mistake to assume it cannot work – and however the pieces now land, they will not return to their old places.

      James Meadway is the host of the podcast Macrodose More