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Elon Musk’s rumoured $100m donation may just fuel a fresh look at UK political funding
by Evelyn Reynolds 8 December 2024, 10:32
Elon Musk has denied he is gearing up to chuck $100m at Nigel Farage’s Reform UK party, as it pushes to take on the Tories. But the very fact the question arose is a reminder of the pressing need for political funding reform on this side of the Atlantic.Musk is the living embodiment of economic power in the modern US: a multibillionaire, with spicy political views, who has bought his way into a role as Donald Trump’s costcutter-in-chief.Part of his motivation seems to be not just slashing spending for the sake of it but the dismantling of regulators that his companies have found irksome.He had previously joined legal action, alongside Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, aimed at having the National Labor Relations Board declared unconstitutional, for example.This is the body, created in 1935, that enforces workers’ rights. It ensured staff at Amazon’s Staten Island warehouse had the opportunity to ballot – successfully – for union recognition (an outcome the giant retailer has continued to challenge).Musk has also said he wants to “delete” the Consumer Financial Protection Agency, suggesting it is “duplicative”.Musk et al’s affront at the very idea that federal agencies have oversight of business is reminiscent of the fury faced by President Theodore Roosevelt and his allies during the so-called Progressive Era, at the turn of the 20th century, when they fought to bust vast monopolies and tame the worst excesses of capitalism.The mega-rich capitalists back then were the likes of JD Rockefeller and JP Morgan but then, as now, there was a clash of principles about the government’s right to oversee corporations. And then, as now, money was used to buy influence over the debate.If Musk and his co-director, Vivek Ramaswamy, succeed in scrapping a whole suite of regulators, it could fundamentally shift the relationship between capital and the individual (which, of course, is exactly his hope).Musk’s deregulatory zeal may yet run into trouble in Congress, and Trump may tire of his fellow egotist and end up wheeling out his catchphrase from the Apprentice to tell the Tesla boss “you’re fired”.But the immense influence Musk has bought, by spending an extraordinary $243m (£190m) on getting Trump re-elected, and using X to pump out pro-Trump propaganda, should sound alarm bells in the UK.We may lack the equivalent of Silicon Valley’s galactically rich donor class, with their screwball libertarianism. But we still have a system where wealthy individuals can effectively give unlimited sums to their favourite political parties.There are spending limits during campaigns, but these are very high: for a party standing candidates in every seat in the UK, it topped £34m at this year’s general election.Party funding rules state that you have to be a UK citizen to give more than £500 – or a UK-registered company, which “carries out business in the UK”.So even if Musk felt so minded, he could not donate as an individual, but would have to channel any donation to Farage’s crew via the UK outpost of Twitter, now known as X.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionBut the very fact he could do so in theory highlights the gaping holes in our funding rules.Keir Starmer’s Labour seems at ease with big money. Labour declared three times as much in donations as all other parties combined during this year’s election campaign – more than £9.5m – with big donors including the trade unions, of course, but also wealthy individuals, such as Lord Sainsbury, the former chair of the supermarket chain, as well as the Autoglass founder, Gary Lubner, and the hedge fund manager Martin Taylor.Yet the row over freebies – which led to Starmer being castigated over donations of glasses and gig tickets – revealed a deep public scepticism over the role of private money in politics.Just as with the MPs’ expenses scandal, a practice that Westminster considered perfectly normal was shown to be deeply unpalatable to voters.Labour’s manifesto included a promise to “protect democracy by strengthening the rules around donations to political parties”. It is unclear what that meant, and it didn’t feature in Labour’s first king’s speech, but my colleague Eleni Courea has reported that Labour will look closely at a forthcoming report from the IPPR thinktank, which is expected to recommend a £100,000 annual cap on individual donations.Cross-party talks on political funding have often foundered on Labour’s reluctance to accept any cap on trade union donations. This is a difficult circle to square – Labour is, after all, the party of labour. At the very least, union donations should be democratically endorsed, so that they function as much as possible like a collection of individual members’ subs.On this basis, plans in the employment bill to move to an “opt out” approach for union political funds seem like a backwards step (though the unions would point out that they do hold regular votes on how their political funds are used).Transparency International, which campaigns to drive big money out of politics, recommends a much lower £10,000 cap on donations, and has a slate of other suggestions – including reducing campaign spending limits, which were raised dramatically by the Tories. Labour would be wise to look closely at these, too.Political funding reform should be a worthy aim in itself, without the looming threat of the populist right. But If Elon Musk’s enthusiasm for Nigel Farage helps motivate the UK’s mainstream parties to crack on with cleaning up politics, both men will have made an unexpectedly positive contribution to public life. More
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Why I’m voting against the military budget | Bernie Sanders
by Evelyn Reynolds 8 December 2024, 10:00
Today in America, 60% of our people live paycheck to paycheck, 85 million people are uninsured or underinsured and 21.5 million households are paying more than 50% of their income on housing. We have one of the highest rates of childhood poverty of almost any developed country on Earth, and 25% of older adults are trying to survive on $15,000 a year or less. In other words, the United States has fallen far behind other major countries in protecting the most vulnerable, and our government has failed millions of working families.But while so many Americans are struggling to get by, the United States is spending record-breaking amounts of money on the military. In the coming days, with relatively little debate, Congress will overwhelmingly pass the National Defense Authorization Act, approving close to $900bn for the Department of Defense (DoD). When spending on nuclear weapons and “emergency” defense spending is included, the total will approach $1tn. We now spend more than the next nine countries combined.I don’t often agree with Elon Musk, but he is right when he says the Pentagon “has little idea how its annual budget of more than $800bn is spent.” The Department of Defense is the only government agency that has been unable to pass an independent audit. It recently failed its seventh attempt in a row and could not fully account for huge portions of its $4.126tn in assets.Very few people who have researched the military-industrial complex doubt that there is massive fraud, waste and cost over-runs in the system. Defense contractors routinely overcharge the Pentagon by 40% – and sometimes more than 4,000%. For example, in October, RTX (formerly Raytheon) was fined $950m for inflating bills to the DoD, lying about labor and material costs, and paying bribes to secure foreign business. In June, Lockheed Martin was fined $70m for overcharging the navy for aircraft parts, the latest in a long line of similar abuses. The F-35, the most expensive weapon system in history, has run up hundreds of billions in cost overruns.Today, as a result of massive consolidation in the industry, a large portion of the Pentagon budget now goes to a handful of huge defense contractors like Lockheed Martin, RTX, General Dynamics and Northrop Grumman. That consolidation has been extremely profitable for the industry: since 2022, these four contractors have brought in $609bn in revenues, including $353bn in US taxpayer funds, and recorded $57bn in profits. During that same period, they have spent $61bn on dividends and stock buybacks to make their wealthy stockholders even richer.These defense contractors also provide their CEOs with exorbitant compensation packages. In the last three years for which information is available, these companies paid their CEOs more than $257m combined – with annual salaries that are about 100 times more than the secretary of defense and 500 times more than the average newly enlisted service member.How does this happen? How do we keep handing huge amounts of money to companies that routinely overcharge the American taxpayer and often engage in fraud? The answer is not complicated. These companies – like the drug companies, insurance companies, Wall Street and the fossil fuel industry – spend millions on campaign contributions and lobbying. In the recent election cycle, defense contractors spent nearly $251m on lobbying and contributed almost $37m to political candidates. Surprise, surprise! Most members of Congress vote for greatly inflated military budgets with few questions asked.The lack of accountability at the Department of Defense is not just costing American taxpayer dollars. It’s costing lives. The United States is providing many billions of dollars to help defend Ukraine from Putin’s invasion. When defense contractors said they couldn’t ramp up production without more taxpayer support, Congress repeatedly appropriated emergency funding, with roughly $78.5bn going to buy equipment and services from the major defense contractors.How did those “patriotic” companies respond? They jacked up prices. RTX increased prices for Stinger missiles from $25,000 in the 1990s to $400,000 in 2023. Lockheed Martin and RTX raised the price of the Javelin missile system from about $263,000 per unit just before the war to $350,700 this year. Similar price hikes took place for Patriot missiles and other weapons. And make no mistake: every time a contractor pads its profit margins, fewer weapons reach the frontlines. The greed of these defense contractors is not just costing American taxpayers; it’s killing Ukrainians.The United States needs a strong military, but we do not need a defense system that is designed to make huge profits for a handful of giant defense contractors. We do not need to spend almost a trillion dollars on the military, while half a million Americans are homeless and children go hungry.In this moment in history, it would be wise for us to remember what Dwight D Eisenhower, a former five-star general, said in his farewell address in 1961: “In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.” What Eisenhower said was true in 1961. It is even more true today.I will be voting against the military budget. More
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On wokeness, patriotism and change, Kamala Harris’s defeat has lessons for Starmer | Deborah Mattinson and Claire Ainsley
by Evelyn Reynolds 7 December 2024, 19:00
Given how events unfolded, it was never going to be easy for Kamala Harris. Many Democrats are convinced her campaign saved the party from an even worse result. To be fair, it achieved some real highs: she won the debate. But she never won the argument, at least not with the voters who mattered most.The US election triggered a scary deja vu moment for those of us who had watched the 2019 UK general election from behind our sofas, hands over our eyes. The Democrats lost votes with almost everyone, almost everywhere, but, like Labour in the “red wall”, most dramatically with traditional heartland voters: working-class, low-paid, non-graduates. And, like Labour back in 2019, that lost connection with core voters had not happened overnight.Working with the DC-based Progressive Policy Institute, we conducted post-election polling and focus groups with past Democrat voters who voted for Trump on 5 November. The work laid bare an anxious nation desperate for change. Be in no doubt, this was a change election: any candidate failing to offer the change the electorate craved had become a risky choice. Asking how voters felt about the results on 6 November, “relieved” was the word we heard most often.Overwhelmingly, change focused on two issues: inflation and immigration. Trump enjoyed a clear lead on both. Sure, Harris had some popular policies (anti price-gouging, tax cuts, help for first-time buyers and small businesses), but these seemed sidelined in an overcrowded campaign, with voters concluding that she was not on their side and was too focused on “woke” issues.Among working-class voters, 53% agreed the Dems had gone “too far in pushing a woke ideology”. They’ve “gone in a weird direction”, said one, “lost touch with our priorities”, said another. Worse still was the sense that any voter who disagreed with them was “a bad person”.American liberals were out of step with these voters’ views – most importantly, on loving their country. As many as 66% of Americans say theirs is the greatest country in the world, rising to 71% of working-class voters. Liberals were the only group who disagreed. What this patriotism means matters. Voters expressed it in terms of putting US interests ahead of others – it also meant recognising that change is needed and being prepared to act. As one voter put it: “If you’re not championing change, you’re not patriotic.”Hungry for that change, voters yearned for a shake-up in the way that both government and the economy operates. Just 2% said the system needed no change, while 70% believed the country was heading in the wrong direction. The Democrats did not seem to hear this – some even interpreted Harris’ pledge to “protect democracy” as “protecting the status quo”. By contrast, Trump’s appetite for disruption, coupled with his contempt for Capitol Hill sacred cows, seemed to promise change that for once might actually deliver for working class voters.Are there things the Harris campaign could have done differently? Of course. Joyful celebrities seemed tin-eared to an electorate feeling worried, pessimistic, even scared. But what should really trouble the Democrats now is the sense that the party – not just the candidate or the campaign – has, since 2020, parted company with the voters that its electoral success depended on: millions of Americans who work hard, pay their taxes, do the right thing and now feel they are not getting a fair deal. The Democrats can only win by putting those “hero voters” back at the centre of their politics. The same was true for Labour in 2024 and is true for centre-left parties elsewhere. That requires a course correction which needs to start now.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionAs Democrats absorb the result, without an immediate leadership contest to provide direction, local leaders must be prepared to step up, flex their muscles and challenge Trump. Change demands strong leadership – all the more so when voters feel vulnerable. Polling gave Trump a 28% lead on strength. Described as a “powerhouse”, he was likened to “neat whisky – gives it to you straight” while Harris was a “watered down cocktail”. Imagined as a car, he was a “sturdy dump truck owning the road, not to be argued with” while she was a “flimsy Kia”. The grit that took a mixed race woman tantalisingly close to the top job in world politics was just not evident to voters. Having absolute clarity of conviction is a must for tomorrow’s aspiring candidates – and showcasing that must start today.This is eerily familiar ground to those of us who worked hard to distance Labour from what led to catastrophic loss in 2019. It remains to be seen if the Democrats embrace the change their party needs as courageously as Keir Starmer did over the past four years.But there is food for thought for the new Labour administration, too. Labour must continue to channel its powerful change message in government, reflecting the anti-establishment mood that now exists both sides of the Atlantic. It must be prepared – enthusiastic even – about disrupting rather than defending old, tired institutions. It needs a strong overarching narrative and a plan to reform government and the economy so it can truly deliver back to the hero voters that delivered its electoral success in July. That work started last week with the launch of Starmer’s Plan for Change with its powerful emphasis on working people being better off, but there remains much to do.Deborah Mattinson is Keir Starmer’s former director of strategy. Claire Ainsley was Labour’s executive director of policy from 2020-2022 More
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US Food and Drug Administration moves to ban red food dye
by Evelyn Reynolds 7 December 2024, 18:12
A red food dye that is ubiquitous in American drinks, snacks, candies and cereals may finally be banned by the federal government after years of concern that it has adverse health impacts, particularly upon children.The federal Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has said that it could soon act to crack down upon the additive known as red 3, derived from petroleum and used to provide a cherry-red coloring to an array of foods.“With red 3, we have a petition in front of us to revoke the authorization board, and we’re hopeful that in the next few weeks we’ll be acting on that petition,” Jim Jones, the FDA’s deputy commissioner for human foods, told a US Senate health committee on Thursday.Red 3 is used in nearly 3,000 food products, according to a database by one environmental health group, including Pez, Peeps, Betty Crocker’s products and Dubble Bubble chewing gum. Like other food dyes, it adds nothing of nutritional value and is used instead to add color to foods for marketing purposes.While the FDA said that this food dye, like other such approved additives, is safe to consume if done so correctly, red 3 has been found to be carcinogenic in animals and has been banned for use in cosmetics since 1990. Public health groups have also linked it to behavioral problems in children.Pressure is now building upon the FDA to ban the food dye, along with others that are routinely provided warning labels or are banned in the European Union – yet allowed freely in the US.Last year, California banned four food dyes, including red 3. Robert F Kennedy Jr, Donald Trump’s pick to be the next health secretary during his second presidency, has linked such food dyes to cancer and has been critical of the FDA for allowing certain substances in foods.“There is simply no reason for this chemical to be in our food except to entice and mislead consumers by changing the color of their food so it looks more appealing,” Frank Pallone, a Democrat who is a ranking member on the US House energy committee, wrote to the FDA about red 3 recently.“With the holiday season in full swing where sweet treats are abundant, it is frightening that this chemical remains hidden in these foods that we and our children are eating.” More
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Trump’s ‘migrant crime’ idea is vicious and legal immigrants could suffer
by Evelyn Reynolds 7 December 2024, 16:00
On the campaign trail, president-elect Donald Trump promoted a rallying cry demanding mass deportations of as many as 20 million people – a hyper-inflated statistic that exceeds the estimated total of undocumented population in the US by millions, suggesting he might go so far as to round up immigrants in the country who have legal protections, too.But despite the US already having the largest immigration detention system worldwide, mass deportations on that scale would require an enforcement regime that doesn’t yet exist. Case in point: in Trump’s first term, authorities removed about 1.5 million people over four years, leveling a devastating toll on the families involved but falling far short of the mass repatriations Trump had aspired to back then.To multiply that number exponentially this time around would require resources, personnel and funding that are absent from the current immigration system. Alternatively, taking a more incremental approach to deport even a million people a year would cost taxpayers somewhere around $88bn annually – or nearly $1tn over more than a decade.So, as stump speeches evolve into more concrete plans during the presidential transition, Trump and his team have coalesced around several demographics to focus on detaining and deporting first (although if your grandmother gets swept up as collateral damage, Trump’s incoming border czar doesn’t seem to mind). One of their highest stated priority demographics: “criminal” immigrants.It’s true that some immigrants commit crimes, and that a handful of particularly heinous attacks in recent memory have made that front-of-mind. But Trump’s fixation on what he’s labeled “migrant crime” supposedly overtaking the nation is not only untrue but it belies the fact that, historically, immigrants commit offenses at lower rates than native-born Americans. For immigrants who have yet to earn US citizenship, there’s a clear and at times existential incentive to remain on the right side of the law: deportation could mean returning to a country where their lives or livelihoods might be at risk.Yet after Trump and his surrogates have so often used “criminals” as the example of their immigration enforcement priorities – especially when persuading non-base audiences, their argument has proved persuasive to many, and even to a subset of immigrants.Some want to believe that the vast majority of non-citizens who have worked hard, paid taxes and otherwise led upstanding lives in the US have little to fear. That the people who will be deported aren’t friends, neighbors, family members, co-workers or even themselves, but dangerous others who somehow “deserve” it.Instead, as soon as day one of Trump’s second term, the administration is expected to reverse current policy that prioritizes people who pose threats to national security, border security and public safety for immigration enforcement. That could potentially force officials to revert to the chaotic situation under Trump’s first term, when undocumented immigrants were broadly targeted and the country’s finite law enforcement resources were diverted away from real risks.Then, if Trump wants to make good on his campaign promise quickly, his earliest mass deportations may at least in part involve those most easy to locate – such as immigrants already in federal detention facilities, about 60% of whom have no criminal record (while many more detainees only have minor infractions).Other low-hanging fruit to pick up, detain and deport include people who report to their immigration check-ins, change their home addresses in government databases when they move and go into work before getting caught up in a raid – in short, people playing by the rules and trying to make a living, some of whom may have been in the US for decades and buoy up the economy.Even the “criminals” Trump has in mind for his mass deportations may not be who most Americans are envisioning. During the election, Trump made unsubstantiated and bizarre remarks about the US being a “dumping ground for the whole world to put their criminals into”. He claimed with no evidence that the newcomers arriving today, the overwhelming majority of whom are seeking protection or a better life, are actually coming from prisons and mental institutions in their home countries. And, late in the race, his campaign homed in on two cities roughly 1,200 miles apart – Aurora, Colorado, and Springfield, Ohio – to constantly portray migrants, and in particular migrants of color, as threats to Americans’ safety.For Aurora, Trump used about a dozen arrests of Venezuelans allegedly linked to a transnational gang to declare the city a “war zone” and announce an impending deportation operation named after the Colorado suburb. With a fifth of Aurora’s residents foreign-born, mothers are now crying every day after they drop off their kids at school, unsure of what Trump’s return to the presidency will mean for their family. Latinos in the community are even expressing concerns about gathering together in groups, in case of a raid.In Springfield, Trump’s vice-presidential pick, JD Vance, insistently connected the city’s large Haitian immigrant population with an uptick in the murder rate – never mind that the local county’s Republican top prosecutor said that in his 21-year career, not a single Haitian had been involved in a murder case there.After Trump and Vance used their national platform to disparage Springfield and its immigrant residents, the city received bomb threats explicitly based in anti-immigrant hate. Now, members of Springfield’s Haitian community – many of whom are in the US legally – are moving elsewhere, afraid that staying put will mean deportation come January.In Aurora, Springfield and the rest of the country, Trump’s “criminals” are whoever he wants them to be.And while he may not have the infrastructure needed to repatriate as many millions of people as he would hope, Trump has already unleashed a world of panic and pain through his looming threat of mass deportations and family separations against any immigrant – legal or undocumented – who he decides doesn’t belong in his America. More
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White supremacist Nick Fuentes charged over Chicago pepper-spray incident
by Evelyn Reynolds 7 December 2024, 14:53
The notorious white supremacist Nick Fuentes is facing battery charges in Illinois because authorities say he pepper-sprayed a woman who had knocked on his front door after he enraged many on the internet by tweeting the misogynistic slogan “your body, my choice” following Donald Trump’s victory in the recent presidential election.Fuentes, 26, was arrested on 27 November on a count of misdemeanor battery and released the same day, according to documents filed on Wednesday in the Cook county circuit court that were reported on by the Chicago Sun-Times. He is tentatively scheduled to appear in court on 19 December.The far-right, avowedly antisemitic influencer seemingly sought to make light of his legal predicament on Friday on social media, publishing a post on X that contained a thinly disguised racial slur as well as the words “Free me”.Meanwhile, the Jewish feminist activist pressing the case against Fuentes, 57-year-old Marla Rose, also commented on social media, writing on Facebook: “It. Is. On.” She added “civil case pending” to the post that displayed three fire emojis.Fuentes invited the digital sphere’s fury by celebrating Trump’s return to the presidency at the expense of Kamala Harris on 6 November with a barb tweeted on X reading: “Your body, my choice. Forever.”The post taunting the concept of women’s bodily autonomy – along with the 2022 elimination of federal abortion rights at the hands of a US supreme court dominated by judges either appointed by or aligned with Trump – had gained more than 99.7m views as of Saturday. And some of Fuentes’s political opponents retaliated by publishing his home address on social media while declaring: “Your house, our choice.”Rose ultimately told police that she had gone to record the outside of Fuentes’s home in the Chicago-area suburb of Berwyn on 10 November. He soon allegedly pepper-sprayed her, pushed her on to the concrete and broke her cellphone.Video of the encounter that Rose later released showed Fuentes open his front door as she reached up to ring the doorbell. He extended his left arm while holding a bottle of pepper spray, which prompted Rose to say: “Oh my God, what are you doing?” The phone was then seen falling while Fuentes could be heard saying: “Get the fuck out of here.” Fuentes then seemingly used his foot to drag the phone inside his house before closing the door and locking it.A police report filed on 11 November said another woman driving by Fuentes’s house at the time called officers. That witness described seeing a man shove a woman outside a home, the report recounted.Rose was still at the scene when police arrived, and officers reportedly spoke with her as well as Fuentes separately.The report added that Fuentes claimed to police that he had received death threats as well as “people showing up to his house unannounced” after posting “a political joke online” had left him “in fear for his life”. He eventually “became uncooperative” and refused to further address the confrontation with Rose, as NBC News reported.Rose had “watery” eyes but listed no other visible physical injuries, the report said.Possible punishments for misdemeanor battery under Illinois law include relatively short jail sentences, probation and fines.Some of the earliest news media headlines given to Fuentes came when he withdrew from Boston University after participating in the 2017 white supremacist rally objecting to the removal of a statue of the Confederate general Robert E Lee in Charlottesville, Virginia. A demonstrator protesting the white supremacists was murdered by a neo-Nazi sympathizer who intentionally drove a car into her as well as others.Trump then ignited a scandal by hosting Fuentes as a dinner guest at his Mar-a-Lago resort in 2022 as he geared up to run for a second presidency. Another guest at that dinner was the rapper previously known as Kanye West, who had propagated antisemitic remarks that – among other consequences – cost him a business partnership with the sportswear company Adidas. More
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Trump’s promise to tax imported goods could spell trouble for US auto industry
by Evelyn Reynolds 7 December 2024, 13:00
Few vehicles are as emblematic of the American auto industry’s might as the Ford F-150 pickup truck, the nation’s best-selling vehicle for over 40 years. But the F-150 is much less American than its image suggests. A fact that could present unique challenges for the company as Donald Trump moves to “make America great again”.Only about 32% of its components are made in the US or Canada, federal data shows, and that could spell trouble if Trump’s proposed tariffs on imported goods are implemented. Even less of the F-150 Lightning electric truck is made in the US – about 24%, a Cars.com analysis of federal data showed.The F-150’s price would almost certainly soar without some mitigation, industry observers say. Moreover, it would be virtually impossible to completely onshore its supply chain in short order – a process that could take many years.The uncertainty around the truck is representative of the auto industry as a whole as it waits to see if Trump follows through on his promised blanket taxes on imported goods. Top-selling vehicles in the US are similarly sourced from around the globe, and the auto industry’s supply chain is “a complicated universe”, said Ivan Drury, director of insights with industry analyst Edmunds.“The auto manufacturer is more like a parts collector – it’s not like Ford makes every component like everyone thinks,” Drury added. Because of that, tariffs would likely deliver supply chain shocks similar to the pandemic disruptions: “It could have the effect of you not getting the truck that you want.”Trump has proposed tariffs of between 60% and 100% on Chinese goods, and a tax of between 10% and 20% on every product imported from all other US trading partners, though very few details are available. During an October rally, he promised as much as a 500% tax on cars made in Mexico.“I’ll put a number where they can’t sell one car,” Trump boasted to the crowd.The goal is to force Ford and other automakers to onshore production and create manufacturing jobs here, but the idea is generating fears of shortages and inflation across the economy – the tariffs would cost the average US household about $2,600 per year, by some estimates.A more expensive F-150 could factor into that figure, but the impact of new tariffs will be felt widely across the industry.The industry analyst’s American Made Index (AMI) ranks how “American” 100 of the top vehicles sold in the US are, based on where parts are made as reported under the American Automobile Labeling Act, the location of vehicle assembly, US factory employment relative to vehicle production, and engine and transmission sourcing.The F-150 and F-150 Lightning ranked 58th and 56th, respectively, in 2024.The law does not require automakers to make granular data about where components such as steering wheels or airbags are made, so it is impossible to calculate how much a theoretical 20% import tax would increase the F-150’s cost. But Cars.com reported that the F-150’s 3.5-liter engines – including the Powerboost hybrid and the Raptor – are made in Mexico.All of its transmissions are made in the US, and final assembly takes place at plants near Kansas City or Detroit. For the F-150 Lightning, all motors and drive units are made in the US, and final assembly is near Detroit.“We’re at a point now in automotive history where the supply chain is not as simple as it once was and the badge on the hood is not indicative of where a vehicle was made,” said Patrick Masterson, chief copy editor at Cars.com.Ford didn’t respond to requests for comment, but when previously asked about the AMI rankings, it said: “Every single Ford F-Series truck is made in America. We build F-150s at Dearborn Truck Plant in Dearborn, Michigan, and Kansas City Assembly Plant in Kansas City, Missouri.”View image in fullscreenBy comparison, the highest ranking truck in the AMI was the Toyota Ridgeline, slotted at sixth, with 70% of its parts produced in the US or Canada, and final assembly in Alabama.No vehicles from Detroit automakers are represented in the top 20 – the highest ranking is the Chevrolet Colorado at 23. Meanwhile, three Teslas are in the top 10 with about 70% of their parts produced in the US, and final assembly in Austin or Fremont, California. The Cybertruck is also among the most American-made trucks. Given that figure, tariffs could be a boon to Trump ally Elon Musk.An automaker’s calculus on where it sources parts includes variables like cost and efficiency of the components’ production, and many even have joint production agreements with other automakers.Fully onshoring would be a long, difficult process because factories would have to be built or expanded, and a workforce would have to be hired and trained. Parts suppliers are often at capacity or do not keep stock on hand to meet sudden shifts in demand, Drury noted.If Ford suddenly asked a US supplier for millions of a hypothetical part for the F-150, there would be a “snowballing effect” as the automaker waited for it to be produced, he added.“We don’t have interchangeable cogs, and these aren’t widgets for which you can swap out one for the next – these are highly specialized components,” Drury said. “Things always sound good on paper at first but the reality of the situation is no factories can be made overnight; a lot of suppliers are stretched thin.”Some automakers who have invested in US factories may be in a better position to weather tariffs, Masterson said, especially with EVs. Ford and GM are readying several new plants that will produce EVs or batteries across the south and in Michigan.On the other hand, tariffs could be especially problematic for EVs because automakers import critical minerals or electronics, like semiconductors. The semiconductor industry began onshoring under Biden, who implemented significant tariffs on Chinese semiconductors, but it remains far from being able to fully supply US automakers.The hit on an F-150 buyer would in part depend on what form tariffs take, Masterson said. Trump has proposed blanket tariffs on imported goods, which would, in theory, include all components produced elsewhere, but observers suspect that may change as he receives input from automakers.Trump’s most dramatic claim – the 500% tax on imported cars – seemed aimed at those undergoing final assembly in Mexico, though a hypothetical vehicle assembled there could have a significant number of parts sourced from the US.While tariffs could ignite turmoil, the cost increases could also benefit automakers by presenting an opportunity to raise prices, and create a sellers’ inflation similar to that which padded major corporations’ profits, including some automakers, as inflation soared several years ago, said Isabella Weber, an economist with the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.Implementing policies that cause the nation’s most popular vehicle to suddenly be unaffordable would be deeply unpopular. Trump saw Democrats lose power over inflation, Weber added, and he might come up with measures to avoid hitting US consumers with the cost, like forcing foreign companies to pay part of the tariff.“Power will be their first goal,” Weber said. “Inflation undermines this.”Even with the potential cost shock, the tariffs seem to have some public appeal as a measure to protect the US auto industry. The message is especially potent when it comes to vehicles like the F-150, which holds cultural and emotional value. If Trump can implement policies to make the truck more American without hitting consumers with costs, it could be a huge win.“These are American companies and people have memories of them going back decades, so there’s a lot there for people to grab on to financially and emotionally,” Drury said. “That’s why autos are always going to be top of mind when asking ‘What are we are going to do to protect American industry?’” More
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Kash Patel: how Trump’s FBI pick went from public defender to provocateur
by Evelyn Reynolds 7 December 2024, 10:00
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“A lot of people say he’s crazy,” Donald Trump is reported to have once said of Kash Patel. “I think he’s kind of crazy. But sometimes you need a little crazy.”If Trump gets his way, crazy will now be coming to the FBI, the 116-year-old national security and law enforcement agency charged with protecting the US from terrorism, cybercrime and other threats.Last weekend the president-elect said he would nominate Patel as FBI director, the latest in a series of incendiary names plucked from the rightwing media ecosystem. Joy Reid, a host on the liberal MSNBC network, told viewers that he “might be the worst pick in the worst cabinet in US history”.She was far from alone in raising concerns over Patel’s inexperience, extremism and subservience to Trump. The 44-year-old has called for “major, major reform” of the FBI that could include shutting down its headquarters, slashing its intelligence operations, and targeting officials and journalists who leak information. He has praised the QAnon conspiracy-theory movement, stating: “There’s a lot of good to a lot of it.” The Guardian has also learned of fresh questions over the conduct of Patel’s non-profit foundation.His appointment is not yet a done deal. Trump would have to oust the current FBI director, Christopher Wray, whom he appointed in 2017 and who was supposed to remain in the post until 2027. Patel still faces the Senate confirmation process, in which senators would get the chance to examine his origin story, unremarkable legal career and emergence as a bombastic Trump provocateur.Kashyap “Kash” Patel is the son of Indian immigrants. His parents, of Gujarati ancestry, moved to the US in the 1970s after his father, Pramod, fled the oppressive regime of Idi Amin in Uganda. Pramod became a financial officer for an aviation company.Patel was born and raised in Garden City, a well-to-do village on Long Island, New York, living in a home that included his father’s eight siblings. In his memoir, he writes of an extended family setting off for Disney World every year in a 15-car convoy and watching the New York Islanders play ice hockey. His official biography on the Pentagon website notes: “Kash is a life-long ice hockey player, coach, and fan.”Raised Hindu, he was one of the few students of colour at Garden City high school. His senior yearbook quotation, taken from the Jewish theologian Abraham Joshua Heschel, was: “Racism is man’s gravest threat – the maximum of hatred for a minimum reason.”Patel’s early exposure to the legal world came through caddying for affluent defence lawyers as they played golf at the local country club. He gained qualifications from the University of Richmond, in Virginia, and the University College London Faculty of Laws in Britain before graduating from Pace University Law School in New York in 2005.But Patel writes in his book: “Dreams of the sky-high salary at the prestige law firms never materialized,” because “nobody would hire me”. Eventually he took a job as a local public defender in Miami-Dade county, Florida, followed by work as a federal public defender in the southern district of Florida.But by then he had become more conservative, he writes, making his choice of career a “strange fit”. He describes his public defender colleagues as “the far left of the left wing”. He was also increasingly suspicious of prosecutors from the justice department, foreshadowing his fierce critique of the so-called deep state.As a lawyer, Patel had a reputation for being good but not great. The New York Times reported: “Mr Patel’s former colleagues remember him for offering himself as a prize in a charity auction of eligible bachelors, for wildly patterned socks and for having his suits custom-made on visits to India.”View image in fullscreenThe paper quoted Patel’s former supervisor Michael Caruso, who led the southern district of Florida office at the time, as saying: “My enduring image of him is with his shoes off and his feet up on the desk, reading the Wall Street Journal.”But in late 2013 Patel found work in Washington as a terrorism prosecutor in the justice department’s national security division. He has asserted that he was the “lead prosecutor” of the perpetrators of the 2012 attack on a diplomatic compound in Benghazi, Libya, that killed four Americans; in fact he was not part of the trial team but rather a junior justice department staff member.Patel first came to prominence in Trump’s orbit as an outspoken critic of the FBI’s investigation into potential ties between Russia and Trump’s 2016 presidential election campaign.As a staffer on the House of Representatives’ intelligence committee, chaired at the time by the Republican congressman Devin Nunes, Patel helped write a four-page report – dubbed the “Nunes memo” – that detailed what it said were errors the justice department had made in obtaining a warrant to surveil a former Trump campaign adviser.He made a positive impression on some in the administration. Sean Spicer, Trump’s first White House press secretary, said: “These questions about his qualifications are a dog whistle. The guy has served in several senior positions in the intelligence world.“He’s tenacious, he’s hard working, he wants to get to the bottom of a lot of stuff. There’s no question he wants to shake things up. Washington needs to be shaken up and the leadership of the FBI has lost the trust of the American people and it needs to be restored.”Spicer added: “He’s funny, he’s intelligent. I’ve enjoyed hanging out with him. He’s a loyal friend, too: he’s someone who sticks by his friends. I understand why the left is worried about him but he’s someone who can get things done.”In 2019, Patel served on the White House national security council before becoming chief of staff to the then acting defence secretary, Christopher Miller. He denied allegations that he ran a clandestine backchannel to Trump regarding Ukraine.The former attorney general William Barr wrote in his memoir that, when Trump tried to appoint Patel as deputy director of the FBI, Barr told another official that it would only happen “over my dead body”. Gina Haspel, then the director of the CIA, also threatened to resign over the prospect of Patel becoming her deputy there.Patel also played a role in several legal investigations into Trump. In 2022 he appeared before the Washington grand jury investigating Trump’s hoarding of classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago club in Florida after receiving immunity for his testimony. He was part of a small group of supporters during Trump’s recent criminal trial in New York who accompanied him to the courthouse, telling reporters that Trump was the victim of an “unconstitutional circus”.Since Trump left office, Patel has expressed his loyalty through commercial ventures. Records show that he earned hundreds of thousands of dollars a year from consulting for Trump-related entities, including a political action committee and the company that owns Truth Social.He wrote a book called Government Gangsters, part memoir and part screed against the deep state, and children’s books that lionise Trump. The Plot Against the King features a thinly veiled Hillary Clinton as the villain going after “King Donald” while Patel plays a wizard who thwarts her plans.He has also promoted various products marketed to Trump supporters including a dietary supplement that claims to be a Covid-19 vaccine “detoxification system”. He helped produce And Justice for All, a rendition of The Star-Spangled Banner sung by a group of men incarcerated for their role in the Capitol riot.In addition, Patel launched the Kash Foundation, a non-profit organisation that funds defamation lawsuits, offers help to people including families of the January 6 rioters, and peddles merchandise such as branded socks and other clothing with the “K$H” logo.View image in fullscreenThe foundation has drawn scrutiny over its financial practices, the Guardian can disclose. Its tax filings in both 2022 and 2023 reported that it did not compensate its board members, according to the watchdog group Accountable.US. But an updated version of the filings reveal that the organisation paid more than $275,000 to a company owned by its vice-president, Andrew Ollis.A further disclosure, detailing the contractual agreement between the Kash Foundation and Ollis’s company, indicates that Ollis would receive a minimum of tens of thousands of dollars every year. The Kash Foundation did not respond to a request for comment on the discrepancy.Tony Carrk, executive director of Accountable.US, said: “Not known for his subtlety, Kash Patel has sought to make money off the Trump brand in several ways including selling a children’s book on election denialism. This enrichment also appears to extend to his friends and partners. Sadly, this appears to be the same old Trump economic model that only looks out for the lucky few at everyone else’s expense.”Meanwhile Patel has become a regular guest on rightwing podcasts and livestreamed shows hosted by Steve Bannon, Tim Pool, Benny Johnson and Stew Peters, a conspiracy theorist identified by Right Wing Watch for promoting anti-LGBTQ+ bigotry, white nationalism and virulent antisemitism.On Bannon’s War Room podcast last year, Patel vowed: “We’re going to come after the people in the media who lied about American citizens, who helped Joe Biden rig presidential elections.”And in an interview on the Shawn Ryan Show in September, Patel declared: “I’d shut down the FBI Hoover Building on day one and reopen it the next day as a museum of the ‘deep state’. Then, I’d take the 7,000 employees that work in that building and send them across America to chase down criminals. Go be cops. You’re cops – go be cops.”This resolve to upend the FBI and radically reshape its mission is already causing alarm among the bureau’s agents. Frank Figliuzzi, a former assistant director of the FBI who served there for 25 years, said: “I am getting calls from people primarily at headquarters who are saying as soon as Trump won the election, they realised they were in for a destructive period for the institution regardless of who got nominated.“Many people are probably saying, ‘Hey, here’s my résumé, can you help spread the word? I’m looking for a job.’ Now, since Patel has been nominated, more of those calls are coming. There are people who are out there trying to look for other work.”Figliuzzi predicted that, if field agents feel there is political interference in their work, for example in which cases to pursue and which to drop, there will be “tremendous pushback”. He added: “In this age where nominees are remarkably unqualified, that’s not what worries me most. What worries me most is his blind allegiance to Trump and willingness to do anything for him.”Trump, who will be sworn in next month, has teed up a cabinet of disrupters and extremists tainted by scandal. Matt Gaetz, his first choice for attorney general, was forced to withdraw amid allegations of sexual misconduct and replaced by Pam Bondi, an election denier. Pete Hegseth, nominated for defence secretary, is facing a barrage of accusations about womanising, infidelity and heavy drinking.Charlie Sykes, a conservative author and broadcaster, said: “In many ways Kash Patel is the most nakedly aggressive appointment because Kash Patel has made it very clear that he has no respect for the institution, that he would use it as an institution of retribution, that he has no other agenda other than personal loyalty to Donald Trump. Trump has appointed as the head of the FBI someone whose agenda is to destroy the FBI.”He added: “There’s a big question mark over whether he is confirmable but it makes it very clear what Trump’s agenda is going to be. He may not get Matt Gaetz, he may not get Kash Patel, he may not get Peter Hegseth, but we have a very clear idea of the direction that he is going. He wants absolute loyalists to himself who are committed to running roughshod over the institutions that they’re being appointed to.”The Associated Press contributed reporting More

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