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Global economy will ‘massively suffer’ from Donald Trump tariffs, Ursula von der Leyen warns – Europe live
by Evelyn Reynolds 3 April 2025, 09:40
European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen warned this morning that the global economy “will massively suffer” as a result of tariffs imposed by US president Donald Trump last night, as she said the EU was “prepared to respond.”Despite Trump’s direct attack on “pathetic” EU as he imposed 20% tariffs on the bloc, von der Leyen still expressed hopes that the relationship could “move from confrontation to negotiation,” as she warned “there seems to be no order in disorder.”But it wasn’t immediately obvious that there was any genuine prospect of that happening.Instead the EU and the individual member states are now scrambling to consider how to manage the situation.French president Emmanuel Macron has called an emergency meeting with sectors affected by Trump’s tariffs this afternoon.German economic daily Handelsblatt published new estimates this morning that the US tariffs – including 25% on car imports – could cost German carmakers BMW, Mercedes and Volkswagen as much as €11 bn given Germany is the largest EU car exporter to the US. For perspective, it’s just under a third of the total value of German automotive exports to the US at €36.8 bn.But the worry is not only about the immediate impact, but the more long term consequences of last night’s decision.Addressing Europeans directly, von der Leyen said “I know that many of you feel let down by our oldest ally,” as she stressed the need to think about what’s next.Or as Moritz Schularick, president of the Kiel Institute for the World Economy, put it to Handelsblatt:
“There is this memorable picture of a stick that you can bend and that comes back again and again. But at some point, if you bend too much, the stick breaks.
I believe that in terms of trust in the United States, something has broken down in recent weeks that will not come back so quickly.”
It’s Thursday, 3 April 2025, it’s Jakub Krupa here, and this is Europe Live.Good morning. Fasten your seatbelts, it’s going to be a lively one.Rutte opens with expressing condolences about the death of four US soldiers during a Nato training in Lithuania.He then highlights the new US administration’s desire to “break the deadlock” on Ukraine with Russia, and he pointedly says that European allies step up their spending in response to demands from president Trump.Rubio thanks for his condolences and stresses that the troops’ participation in training shows that the “US is in Nato, … as active as it has ever been,” as he criticised “this hysteria and hyperbole” about the US and Nato.The United States President Trump’s made clear he supports Nato. We’re going to remain in Nato. He’s made it clear,” he says.But he adds that the US wants Nato “to be stronger, more viable” and “invest more in national security.”“[Trump] is not against Nato. He is against a Nato that does not have the capabilities that it needs to fulfil the obligations that the treaty imposes upon each and every member state,” he says.He adds that “no one expects that you’re going to be able to do this in one year or two, but the pathway has to be real.”No questions after their statements, so that’s it.Meanwhile in Brussels, US state secretary Marco Rubio is taking part in today’s Nato ministerial meeting.He is appearing at a press conference together the alliance’s secretary general Mark Rutte now.You can follow it below and I will bring you the key lines here.Italian prime minister Giorgia Meloni has cancelled all her appointments on Thursday as she wants to focus on the response to Trump’s tariffs, her office said.La Repubblica reported that she had been expected to attend events in Calabria, but decided to stay in Rome instead.Earlier today, I brought you her initial response to Trump’s announcement from last night, as she opposed the decision and vowed to “do everything we can to work towards an agreement with the United States, with the aim of avoiding a trade war that would inevitably weaken the West in favor of other global players.”Meloni was the only sitting European leader to attend Trump’s inauguration in January.Elsewhere, Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu is in Hungary today to meet with the country’s prime minister Viktor Orbán, and that’s despite, as AP notes, a warrant for his arrest issued by the world’s top war crimes court.Instead, Netanyahu was welcomed with military honours at the beginning of his four-day trip, and the two leaders will speak together at a press conference in Budapest later this morning.The international criminal court in The Hague, the Netherlands, issued a warrant for Netanyahu’s arrest last year over his government’s actions in the Gaza Strip. Hungary criticised it at the time as “outrageously impudent” and “cynical.”A senior aide to Orbán said today that Hungary would now move to withdraw from the court, “in accordance with the constitutional and international legal framework.”While that’s a more radical move, a number of other countries previously indicated they would allow Netanyahu to visit without arresting him, including Germany and Poland, while France claimed he had “immunity” from the court’s order.I will keep an eye on this story for you and bring you the latest.The tariff issue has put Spain’s far-right Vox party – devoted fans of Trump and his radical agenda – in something of a bind.But, reacting to news of the 20% tariffs on EU products, the party’s leader, Santiago Abascal, has chosen to blame … the EU and his political opponents in Spain.His recent post on X has more than a whiff of diversionary tactics to it. In it, he accuses Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Commission, Spain’s Socialist prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, and Alberto Núñez Feijóo, leader of the conservative People’s party (PP) of failing to defend the interests of the Spanish people.“The People’s party and the Socialists are dragging us into a suicidal trade war,” he wrote.“Our economy competes on unequal terms because of the ideological bureaucracy of the two-party system. And the only solution they offer is further submission to China, continued wars, and censorship of anyone who speaks out. We must expel this corrupt caste that has only brought ruin and loss of freedoms. And we will do it.”The Spanish Wine Federation (FEV) has described Trump’s imposition of a 20% tariff on EU products as a “significant blow to Spanish wineries”, for whom the US is the second largest export destination, and the No 1 export destination when it comes to sparkling wines.“The tariffs announced by the US are completely unjustified in the specific case of wine, considering that the current tariff gap between the tariffs applied by the EU and the US is minimal,” the FEV’s director general, José Luis Benítez, said on Thursday.Benítez warned that the measure would harm not only Spanish wine-makers but also US consumers, “who consume more wine than they produce”.He also pointed out that the newly announced tariffs would be particularly damaging to small and medium-sized producers, which make up 99% of Spain’s wineries, as they have less capacity to diversify their exports and are more dependent on the main export markets.The US market represents approximately 13% of Spain’s total foreign sales. In 2024, 97m litres of wine were exported for a value of around €390m.German chancellor Olaf Scholz said Trump’s decision was “fundamentally wrong” and undermined the free trade globally, as he warned that all countries “will suffer from these ill-considered decisions.”He said it amounted to “an attack on a trade system that has created prosperity all round the world, itself an American achievement.”Using similar language, German economy minister Robert Habeck said these were “the most disruptive tariff increases in 90 years,” as he warned of potentially “dramatic” effects of the US president’s decisions.Speaking at a press conference in Berlin, Habeck said it was “economically wrong” to say that the existing trading arrangements were “of detriment to the US,” as he called to reject this logic and urged nations in favour of free trade to form a united front in response.Habeck warned that the consequences of these decisions will affect the next federal government and have ramifications “far beyond Germany and beyond Europe.”]The minister also spoke about countermeasures being prepared in response. He said he was not in a position to show them or announce details yet – although he briefly waves the documents at reporters – but he insisted that “good work has been done there” to prepare for this moment.He added that he hoped Trump would buckle under pressure, but “the logical consequence is that he has to feel the pressure” from Germany, Europe and other like-minded countries.Greek finance minister Kyriakos Pierrakakis said that the fresh tariffs imposed by the US government on world trade were a historic shift towards protectionism and a deviation from how the European Union sees economic and social progress, Reuters reported.“As a country, we are in favour of free trade,” Pierrakakis said in a statement. “We hope that this chapter will last as little as possible.”French prime minister François Bayrou told reporters that Donald Trump’s tariffs marked “a catastrophe” for the global economy, and posed “an immense difficulty” for Europe.Speaking on the margins of a meeting in the French Senate, he also said the move will be “a catastrophe for the US and for US citizens.”In comments reported by BFMTV and Le Figaro, Bayrou criticised the US for turning on its allies, as he warned about “serious times” facing Europe and the West.The EU will respond in a “legitimate, proportionate and decisive way” to Donald Trump’s trade tariffs, but its strongest weapon is still “a last resort”, the head of the European parliament’s international trade committee has said.Bernd Lange, a German Social Democrat, said the EU was discussing the use of the anti-coercion instrument, which EU insiders almost inevitably describe as “the big bazooka”.The anti-coercion legislation, which entered into force in 2023, gives the EU wide leeway to impose commerce and investment sanctions against a foreign government deemed to be using trade in an attempt to browbeat countries into changing unrelated policies. The law allows the EU to use ten different kinds of retaliation against a coercive government, notably targeting services. Possible measures could include taxing tech companies, revoking banking licenses and intellectual property rights, blocking companies from public procurementIt was agreed not long after China had imposed trade restrictions on Lithuania over the Baltic state’s friendly policy towards Taiwan.Lange, who helped negotiate the law, said the EU was discussing use of this instrument – “this is of course the bazooka, the strongest measure we could take” – but it would only be used as a last resort.“This is not our first step. Using the ACI, this would really be hard escalation and therefore a last resort, but we have it.”Having renamed Trump’s so-called “liberation day”, as “inflation day”, the MEP said that the EU could target US tech giants in retaliation for tariffs, which is possible even without the anti-coercion law. “Of course if we are really on an escalation ladder, then of course we will have a look to the tech giants as well – I would say this is not the first choice.”The MEP, who travels to Washington next week, still hopes the EU can negotiate its way out of tariffs, but is not optimistic. He described the structure of the US government as “totally unclear” and that only the president and his trade adviser, Peter Navarro, controlled trade, rather than senior officials, such as the US Trade Representative, adding: “That is really a mess.”The EU has some options when considering its response to overnight announcements, including retaliating with tariffs on US goods and services and forming closer ties with other countries.The bloc has already rejected one possible option: fold your cards. But vowing retaliation is only the start.The questions are about what response the EU will have, how quickly it can be marshalled and whether divisions between member states will undermine the tough talk.The EU response will depend on how tightly its 27 member states line up behind a common strategy in a trade war that could trigger economic turmoil and job losses in Europe. An early indication should come on Monday when EU trade ministers meet to discuss the retaliation planned for this month and other measures.Nerves are building. France is worried about the fallout on its wines and spirits industry; Dublin fears an exodus of US multinationals headquartered in Ireland; and the Italian prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, has said the bloc should not act on impulse while the national industry group Confindustria has called for negotiations with the White House.Forging a common line will be critical to new forms of trade retaliation: for example, only a weighted majority of EU countries can decide whether the bloc is facing coercion from the US. That would be an outcome almost no one imagined a decade ago.The German Federation of Business, BDI, has denounced Trump’s tariffs as an “unprecedented attack” on global trade.In a statement issued this morning, it warned that “the European economy must not become a plaything of geopolitical interests” and called for a united response to the 20% tax the 27 countries now face.
“The announced tariffs are an unprecedented attack on the international trading system, free trade, and global supply chains. The rationale for this protectionist escalation is incomprehensible. It threatens our export-oriented companies and jeopardizes prosperity, stability, jobs, innovation, and investment worldwide.
The European Union can only act as a united front. This applies to the 27 member states as well as across sectors. The EU has its own instruments for an effective counter-reaction, which it can use decisively. We support the Commission’s strategy of remaining willing to negotiate, aware of Europe’s strengths, and responding flexibly to potential offers.
German industry has always relied on fair competition, open markets, and cooperative relations with the United States. The EU must now strengthen its alliances with other major trading partners and should coordinate its response with them. A coordinated response is also necessary to counter diversion effects in international trade.”
Elsewhere, Danish prime minister Mette Frederiksen continues her three-day trip to Greenland amid escalating tensions with the US over the future status of the island.Arriving yesterday, she said “it is clear that with the pressure put on Greenland by the Americans, in terms of sovereignty, borders and the future, we need to stay united.”“I have but one wish and that is to do all that I can to take care of this marvellous country and to support it at a difficult time,” Frederiksen said.She had a dinner with the new Greenlandic prime minister, Jens-Frederik Nielsen, last night, and today gets on with a full programme of meetings likely to touch on the future shape of Danish-Greenlandic relations and economic cooperation.Frederiksen also met with the outgoing prime minister Múte B. Egede who will remain a prominent figure in the new government formed after last month’s snap elections in Greenland.The talks will be a first test for Nielsen’s new administration on whether it can formulate new demands to Copenhagen and get things done in the face of US interest in the island.Frederiksen’s visit comes just days after a highly controversial trip by US vice-president JD Vance, who came over to the US Pituffik Space Base only to directly criticise Denmark for “not doing a good job at keeping Greenland safe,” and accusing it of “underinvesting in the people of Greenland and … in the security architecture” of the island.Earlier this week, Washington Post reported that the Trump administration was studying the potential costs involved should the US succeed in its plans of taking control over Greenland, including whether it could put together a more attractive financial package to compete with Denmark.The paper said that officials were also looking at what revenue to the US Treasury could be gained from the island’s natural resources.I will keep an eye on what comes out of Frederiksen’s meetings.European stock markets are now open and they’re reacting exactly as you would expect them to.The pan-European Stoxx 600 index has fallen 1.5% at the start of trading, to its lowest level in over two months.Germany’s DAX fell almost 2.5% at the start of tading in Frankfurt, while in Paris the CAC 40 is down 2.2% and Spain’s IBEX lost 1.5%.You can follow all the latest business reaction here:Norwegian prime minister Jonas Gahr Støre expressed alarm over “bad news” on US tariffs warning they were “very serious,” with Norway hit by a 15% levy on its goods imported to the US.But Støre told public broadcaster NRK that “there is an opening for negotiations here, the Americans say, and we will use that in every possible way that we can,” Reuters reported.Støre also said he would travel to Brussels on Monday to meet with senior EU officials, including European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen to discuss further steps.UK prime minister Keir Starmer told business chiefs that “clearly there will be an economic impact” from Donald Trump’s tariffs, as he insisted the government would react with “cool and calm heads,” PA news agency reported.He said “nothing is off the table” when it comes to the UK response.Starmer said the government will now focus on making decisions “guided only by our national interest” and on “putting money in the pockets of working people,” as he stressed “one of the great strengths of this nation is our ability to keep a cool head.”Here are some further quotes from Starmer, via PA:
“Today marks a new stage in our preparation. We have a range of levers at our disposal and we will continue our work with businesses across the country to discuss their assessment of the options.”
“Our intention remains to secure a deal, but nothing is off the table.”
“We must rise to this challenge and that is why I’ve instructed my team to move further and faster on the changes I believe will make our economy stronger and more resilient.”
“Because this Government will do everything necessary to defend the UK’s national interest, everything necessary to provide the foundation of security that working people need to get on with their lives.”
“That is how we have acted and how we will continue to act: with pragmatism, cool and calm heads, focused on our national security.”
Our political editor, Pippa Crerar, noted that Downing Street, which had been expecting a 20% rate to be imposed on the UK, expressed relief to have escaped the higher rate with lower, 10% tariffs.Keir Starmer’s more conciliatory approach to the Trump administration appeared to have paid off, she said.European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen warned of “dire consequences” for millions of people, as she said tariffs would “hurt consumers around the world.”She said there was “no clear path through the complexity and chaos that is being created as all US trading partners are hit,” but she insisted the EU’s unity “is our strength” and the bloc would be prepared to respond with calibrated countermeasures.Outgoing German economy minister Robert Habeck stressed the need for a united EU response, saying the bloc should leverage the fact it has the largest single market in the world.“Europe’s strength is our strength,” he said, adding he hoped for “a negotiated solution.”Italian prime minister Giorgia Meloni called the introduction of US tariffs “wrong” as she vowed to “do everything we can to work towards an agreement with the United States, with the aim of avoiding a trade war that would inevitably weaken the West in favor of other global players.”“In any case, as always, we will act in the interest of Italy and its economy, also by discussing with other European partners,” she added.Swedish prime minister Ulf Kristersson said he “deeply regreted” the US decision, saying “we don’t want growing trade barriers” as he lauded the benefits of free trade.But he said the government was ready to respond and work with the EU to “take every opportunity to reverse these developments.”“We want to find our way back to the path of trade and cooperation together with the US,” he stressed.Irish prime minister Micheál Martin said that tariffs “benefit no one,” as he warned they are “bad for the world economy, they hurt people [and] businesses.”“My priority, and that of the government, is to protect Irish jobs and the Irish economy, and we will work with our companies … to navigate the period ahead,” he said.He said he would work with EU partners to “get on a negotiation with the US to limit the damage.”Martin also highlighted “the added value and the strength that Ireland has given to so many US companies” based there.Polish prime minister Donald Tusk posted a brief update on social media, saying: “Friendship means partnership. Partnership means really and truly reciprocal tariffs. Adequate decisions are needed.”Finnish prime minister Petteri Orpo said the tariff decisions were “concerning,” as he warned “there are no winners in a trade war.”“Businesses, consumers, and economic growth suffer. The EU is ready to respond and negotiate. We support this effort. Finland is prepared as part of the Union,” he said.European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen warned this morning that the global economy “will massively suffer” as a result of tariffs imposed by US president Donald Trump last night, as she said the EU was “prepared to respond.”Despite Trump’s direct attack on “pathetic” EU as he imposed 20% tariffs on the bloc, von der Leyen still expressed hopes that the relationship could “move from confrontation to negotiation,” as she warned “there seems to be no order in disorder.”But it wasn’t immediately obvious that there was any genuine prospect of that happening.Instead the EU and the individual member states are now scrambling to consider how to manage the situation.French president Emmanuel Macron has called an emergency meeting with sectors affected by Trump’s tariffs this afternoon.German economic daily Handelsblatt published new estimates this morning that the US tariffs – including 25% on car imports – could cost German carmakers BMW, Mercedes and Volkswagen as much as €11 bn given Germany is the largest EU car exporter to the US. For perspective, it’s just under a third of the total value of German automotive exports to the US at €36.8 bn.But the worry is not only about the immediate impact, but the more long term consequences of last night’s decision.Addressing Europeans directly, von der Leyen said “I know that many of you feel let down by our oldest ally,” as she stressed the need to think about what’s next.Or as Moritz Schularick, president of the Kiel Institute for the World Economy, put it to Handelsblatt:
“There is this memorable picture of a stick that you can bend and that comes back again and again. But at some point, if you bend too much, the stick breaks.
I believe that in terms of trust in the United States, something has broken down in recent weeks that will not come back so quickly.”
It’s Thursday, 3 April 2025, it’s Jakub Krupa here, and this is Europe Live.Good morning. Fasten your seatbelts, it’s going to be a lively one. More
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Asian countries riven by war and disaster face some of steepest Trump tariffs
by Evelyn Reynolds 3 April 2025, 09:13
Developing nations in south-east Asia, including wartorn and earthquake-hit Myanmar, and several African nations are among the trading partners facing the highest tariffs set by Donald Trump.Upending decades of US trade policy and threatening to unleash a global trade war, the US president announced a raft of tariffs on Wednesday that he said were designed to stop the US economy from being “cheated”.“This is one of the most important days, in my opinion, in American history,” said Trump on Wednesday. “It’s our declaration of economic independence.”He hailed the moment as “liberation day”, but the tariffs are likely to be met with loud protests from some of the world’s weakest economies. One expert said Trump was likely to be targeting countries that received investment from China, regardless of the situation in that country. Chinese manufacturers have previously relocated to countries such as Vietnam and Cambodia not only due to lower operating costs, but also to avoid tariffs.The tariffs come as many countries in south-east Asia are already grappling with the fallout from the cuts to USAID, which provides humanitarian assistance to a region vulnerable to natural disasters and support for pro-democracy activists battling repressive regimes.Cambodia, a developing economy where 17.8% of the population live below the poverty line, according to the Asian Development Bank (ADB), is the worst-hit country in the region with a tariff rate of 49%. More than half of the country’s factories are reportedly Chinese-owned, with the countries exports dominated by garments and footwear.Next worse-hit is the landlocked south-east Asian nation of Laos, a country heavily bombed by the US during the cold war, with 48%. According to the ADB, Laos has a poverty rate of 18.3%.Not far behind is Vietnam with 46% and Myanmar, a nation reeling from a devastating earthquake on Friday, and years of civil war following a 2021 military coup, with 44%.Indonesia, the biggest economy in south-east Asia, faces a 32% tariff rate, while Thailand, the second-largest, has been hit with a rate of 36%.Major US rival and trading partner China has been hit with a 34% reciprocal tariff, on top of the 20% levy already imposed.Dr Siwage Dharma Negara, a senior fellow at the ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute in Singapore, said the tariffs on south-east Asian nations were intended to hurt China.“The administration thinks that by targeting these countries they can target Chinese investment in countries like Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, Indonesia. By targeting their products maybe it will affect Chinese exports and the economy,” he said.“The real target is China but the real impact on those countries will be quite significant because this investment creates jobs and export revenue.”Tariffs on countries such as Indonesia, he said, would be counterproductive for the US, and the detail of how they would be applied remained unclear.“Some garments and footwear [companies] are American brands like Nike, or Adidas, US companies that have factories in Indonesia. Will they face the same tariffs as well?” he said.Stephen Olson, a former US trade negotiator, said countries in south-east Asia would be forced to reconsider their relationships with Washington. “A closer tilt towards China could be the result. It’s hard to have constructive, productive relations with a country that has just dropped a ton of bricks on your head,” said Olson, a visiting senior fellow at the ISEAS – Yusof Ishak Institute.“The world’s largest importer has now essentially hung a sign on its border saying ‘closed for business’,” he added. “We are now faced with two plausible scenarios: Either the impacted trade partners hold firm and retaliate in the hope that Trump will be forced to back down, or they look to cut deals with Trump in order to avoid the tariffs. It is unlikely that either scenario will end well.”Other nations among the hardest hit are several nations in Africa, including Lesotho – a country that Trump claimed “nobody has ever heard of” – with 50%, Madagascar with 47% and Botswana with 37%. Lesotho, a small mountainous kingdom surrounded by South Africa, has the second-highest level of HIV infection of the world, with almost one in four adults HIV-positive.In south Asia, Sri Lanka is facing a 44% tariff. In Europe, Serbia faces a 37% rate.In addition to the reciprocal tariffs on a few dozen countries, Trump will impose a 10% universal tariff on all imported goods. That tariff will go into effect on 5 April, while the reciprocal tariffs will begin on 9 April.The US president has justified the changes by saying they are retribution for countries that have long “cheated” America, and the levies will bring jobs back to the US.But economists have warned the sweeping changes will raise costs, threaten jobs, slow growth and isolate the US from a system of global trade it pioneered, and furthered over several decades.“This is how you sabotage the world’s economic engine while claiming to supercharge it,” said Nigel Green, the CEO of global financial advisory deVere Group.“The reality is stark: these tariffs will push prices higher on thousands of everyday goods – from phones to food – and that will fuel inflation at a time when it is already uncomfortably persistent.” More
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Republicans join Democrats in Senate vote to rescind Trump Canada tariffs
by Evelyn Reynolds 3 April 2025, 00:42
Several Republican senators joined Democrats to pass a resolution that would block Donald Trump’s tariffs on Canada, a rare rebuke of the president’s trade policy just hours after he announced plans for sweeping import taxes on some of the country’s largest trading partners.In a 51-48 vote, four Republicans – Susan Collins of Maine, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and both Kentucky senators, the former majority leader Mitch McConnell and Rand Paul – defied Trump’s pressure campaign and supported the measure. Democrats used a procedural maneuver to force a vote on the resolution, which would terminate the national emergency on fentanyl Trump is using to justify tariffs on Canada.While Trump’s sweeping new tariffs, introduced in a White House Rose Garden ceremony on Wednesday, did not include additional levies on Canada, the Senate vote amounted to a significant bipartisan condemnation of the president’s escalating global trade war with allies and enemies alike.“Tariffs will hurt our families. Canada is not an enemy,” the Democratic senator Tim Kaine, the bill’s sponsor, said in a floor speech on Wednesday. “Let’s not label an ally as an enemy. Let’s not impose punishing costs on American families at a time they can’t afford it. Let’s not hurt American small businesses. Let’s not make our national security investments in ships and subs more expensive.”Republicans have expressed varying degrees of unease over Trump’s clampdown on free trade – once a pillar of conservative orthodoxy – but few were willing to cross him, and many GOP leaders and supporters, including the House speaker Mike Johnson, were in the Rose Garden on Wednesday – a day dubbed “liberation day” by the president – as a way of championing the historic barrage of tariffs on goods from overseas he believes will boost American manufacturing.The Senate’s legislation has practically no chance of passing the Republican-controlled House and being signed by Trump, but it showed the limits of Republican support for Trump’s vision of remaking the US economy by restricting free trade. Many economists are warning that the plan could cause an economic contraction, and GOP senators are already watching with unease as Trump upends the United States’ relationship with the rest of the world.Before the vote, the Senate majority leader John Thune of South Dakota urged Republicans to oppose the resolution, arguing that the tariffs were needed to “ensure that President Trump has the tools to combat the flow of fentanyl from all directions”.In a post on his social media platform, Truth Social, sent just before 1am ET on Wednesday, Trump assailed the four GOP senators who had expressed opposition to his tariffs, imploring them to “get on the Republican bandwagon, for a change, and fight the Democrats wild and flagrant push to not penalize Canada for the sale, into our Country, of large amounts of Fentanyl”.He vowed not to sign the measure if it reached his desk.Defending her vote, Collins said that the tariffs would hurt working families in her state of Maine, which shares a long border with Canada.“The price hikes that will happen for Maine families, every time they go to the grocery store, they fill their gas tank, they fill their heating oil tank, if these tariffs go into effect, will be so harmful,” she said in a Wednesday floor speech. “And as price hikes always do, they will hurt those the most who can afford them the least.”She also argued that fentanyl from Canada was not a major threat to the US, as Trump’s national emergency claims. “The fact is the vast majority of fentanyl in America comes from the southern border,” she said.Democrats argued that Americans were turning against Trump’s agenda, pointing to a string of strong performances by their party in recent special elections that included a consequential victory in a Wisconsin state supreme court race on Tuesday night.“The American people are seeing how bad Trump is,” the Senate minority leader, Chuck Schumer, said in a floor speech. “Tariffs is a good part of it. And they are not supporting people like Elon Musk and those who support Donald Trump.”Earlier on Wednesday, the representative Gregory Meeks, the top Democrat on the House foreign affairs committee, said he would also force a similar vote in the House on the tariffs.“Republicans can’t keep ducking this – it’s time they show whether they support the economic pain Trump is inflicting on their constituents,” he wrote on X. More
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Trump goes full gameshow host to push his tariff plan – and nobody’s a winner
by Evelyn Reynolds 2 April 2025, 23:35
It was Jeopardy!, or The Price Is Right, come to Washington.On an unseasonably chilly day in the White House Rose Garden, Donald Trump stood with a giant chart listing which reciprocal tariffs he would impose on China, the European Union, the United Kingdom and other hapless contestants.The winner?Trump, of course, the maestro of fake populism, watched by a crowd that included men in hard hats and fluorescent construction worker vests.The losers?Everybody else.Sensing a bad headline, Trump hadn’t wanted his “liberation day” to coincide with April Fools’ Day, so he waited until 2 April to enter his fool’s paradise. It turned out to be liberation for his decades-old grievances about the US getting ripped off as Trump stuck two fingers up at the world.“For decades, our country has been looted, pillaged, raped and plundered by nations near and far – both friend and foe alike,” the president said against a backdrop of nine giant US flags on the White House colonnade. “Foreign cheaters have ransacked our factories, and foreign scavengers have torn apart our once beautiful American dream.”He nodded to American steelworkers, car-workers, farmers and craftspeople in the audience. These blue-collar workers have been central to Trump’s political rise. Their industrial towns in the midwest and elsewhere were hollowed out by the trade policies of Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton, which sent thousands of jobs abroad where labour was cheaper.Trump couldn’t quite bring himself to say that “liberation day” represents a final repudiation of Reagan, still a god in Republican circles. But he did drive a stake through the heart of the 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement, or Nafta, describing it as “the worst trade deal ever made”.In 2016’s great revolt against globalization, the forgotten workers could have voted for the leftwing populism of Bernie Sanders, but he lost the Democratic party nomination to Hillary Clinton.Instead, enough went for Trump to make him president, believing his promises that he alone could fix it, end American carnage and get the factories throbbing again. As it turned out, he delivered a $1.5tn bill that slashed taxes for corporations and the wealthy.Many workers duly switched back to the Democrats, with Joe Biden in 2020. He did pour money into manufacturing – for example, with the Chips and Science Act, a bipartisan bill investing $52bn to revitalize the semiconductor industry.Yet in 2024 the pendulum swung again.Somehow a Manhattan billionaire with a criminal record again persuaded blue-collar workers that he was on their side. He claimed he could wave tariffs (taxes on foreign imports), which he has described as the most beautiful word in the English language, like a magic wand.In reality, experts say, it will result in higher prices and slower growth. The Ontario premier Doug Ford called this not liberation day but termination day because of all the jobs that will be lost. Trump playing with tariffs is like a child playing with matches.As he prepared to sign an executive order imposing reciprocal tariffs on about 60 countries, he mused that it was payback time: “Reciprocal: that means they do it to us and we do it to them. Very simple. Can’t get any simpler than that. This is one of the most important days, in my opinion, in American history. It’s our declaration of economic independence.”It was a strange message to hear from the leader of the wealthiest, most powerful country in the world as he slapped tariffs on the likes of Ethiopia, Haiti and Lesotho.“For years, hardworking American citizens were forced to sit on the sidelines as other nations got rich and powerful, much of it at our expense. But now it’s our turn to prosper … Today we’re standing up for the American worker and we are finally putting America first,” he said.View image in fullscreenEven then, Trump claimed he was being kind by not going “full reciprocal”. He summoned his commerce secretary, Howard Lutnick, to bring the chart to the podium and, as if it were a gameshow, began running through the scores on the doors:“China, first row. China, 67%. That’s tariffs charged to the USA, including currency manipulation and trade barriers. So 67%, so we’re going to be charging a discounted reciprocal tariff of 34%. I think in other words, they charge us, we charge them, we charge them less. So how can anybody be upset?“European Union, they’re very tough – very, very tough traders. You know, you think of the European Union, very friendly. They rip us off. It’s so sad to say, it’s so pathetic. Thirty-nine percent. We’re going to charge them 20%, so we’re charging them essentially half.“Vietnam: great negotiators, great people, they like me. I like them. The problem is they charge us 90%. We’re going to charge them 46% tariff.”And so on to Taiwan, Japan (“very, very tough, great people”), Switzerland, Indonesia, Malaysia and Cambodia: “United Kingdom, 10%, and we’ll go 10%, so we’ll do the same thing.”Once he’d gone through the figures, Trump rambled, as he tends to do, as if at a campaign rally: “The price of eggs dropped now 59%, and they’re going down more, and the availability is fantastic. They were saying that for Easter, please don’t use eggs. Could you use plastic eggs? I said, we don’t want to do that.”And: “It’s such an old-fashioned term but a beautiful term: groceries. It sort of says a bag with different things in it. Groceries went through the roof and I campaigned on that. I talked about the word ‘groceries’ for a lot, and energy costs now are down. Groceries are down.”In other words, everything is going great despite Signalgate, despite disappointing election results on Tuesday, despite a falling stock market and sapping consumer confidence. Now, a global trade war, too. The US is about to discover the one thing more dangerous than a politician who believes in nothing is a politician who believes in something stupid. More
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Donald Trump builds a wall made of tariffs, enclosing the whole US
by Evelyn Reynolds 2 April 2025, 21:37
Donald Trump is finally making good on his campaign promises to “build that wall” – but instead of steel fencing along the Mexican border, it will be constructed from tariffs, and will enclose the entire United States.In his pugnacious and typically rambling speech on the White House lawn on Wednesday, Trump set out plans for across-the-board import taxes, ranging from 10% to more than 40%.The president promised “liberation”, yet the immediate impact is more likely to be rising prices for US shoppers and corrosive uncertainty for firms, exacerbating an economic slowdown that may already be under way.Outside the wall, countries will be affected according to how dependent their economies are on exports to the US – and how exposed they are to the global trading system. For some, it is likely to be devastating.The UK will be relieved to be slapped with “only” the 10% minimum, after Keir Starmer’s charm offensive, and the EU may have feared worse than 20%. But for some countries Trump outlined much higher rates: 46% for Vietnam, 49% for Cambodia and 29% for Pakistan, for example.The precise effects of sweeping tariffs on this historic scale are very hard to predict. One factor is how rival economies will respond – with retaliatory tariffs tending to make a bad situation worse, though they may make short-term political sense (see Mark Carney’s poll ratings in Canada).Another question is whether the dollar may appreciate, somewhat softening the blow for US importers. That may limit the pass-through to prices, which would otherwise be expected to rise as the cost of importing products and materials increases.The main challenge in assessing the exact impact of the plans, though, is that Trump’s statement did not mark the end of the period of profound economic uncertainty that began when he arrived in the White House – quite the opposite.Instead, he has fired the starting gun on a new and inherently unpredictable scramble, in which governments will fire back with their own punitive tariffs – at the same time as negotiating hard to try to secure exemptions.As in the UK, where ministers hope to secure an “economic agreement”, which appears to involve sweeteners for US big tech and lower tariffs on food imports, these talks are likely to have economic consequences of their own.And it remains unclear, to say the least, how amenable Trump is likely to be to persuasion. On one hand, he appears to enjoy the theatre of using tariffs to exact policy concessions, which he can then portray as a winning deal.Trump-watchers have also sometimes argued that a dramatic slide in stock prices might lead the president to pull back from the harshest version of the policy.His press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, insisted on Tuesday that “Wall Street will be just fine” as a result of the tariff package.But in other moments, Trump has appeared to suggest a bit of market turbulence might be part of the plan.“There is a period of transition, because what we’re doing is very big,” he said in a recent Fox News interview – in which he also declined to rule out a recession.There is also the small matter of the revenues the administration hopes to raise from tariffs, which it wants to use to fund tax cuts.White House trade adviser Peter Navarro has suggested the levies could raise an extraordinary $600bn (£460bn) a year: hardly consistent with offering carve-outs to every major economy that comes knocking.Caving in would also undermine another of Trump’s sometimes-contradictory aims: persuading firms to create new manufacturing jobs, inside the shelter of the tariff wall.As bewildered trade experts repeatedly said in the run-up to what Trump has called “liberation day”, and are likely to continue to say after Trump’s outing in the Rose Garden, guessing what happens next is all but impossible.All this makes for an alarming level of uncertainty – and what economists are very clear about is that consumers and businesses hate that.Consumer confidence measures in the US have already been sliding sharply. Alongside weeks of headlines about the ambiguous tariff plans, the tens of thousands of abrupt government job losses made by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (Doge) seem unlikely to have helped the mood.And in boardrooms, baffled executives may be extremely reluctant to press ahead with significant investments – bringing manufacturing back into the US as Trump hopes, for example – when it is unclear how long the tariffs will endure.Whatever the medium-term prospects of “jobs and factories” coming “roaring back” to the US, as Trump predicted, for now what some had already dubbed a “Trumpcession” appears significantly more likely to happen, than the “golden age” he has promised. More
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Trump announces sweeping new tariffs, upending decades of US trade policy
by Evelyn Reynolds 2 April 2025, 20:47
Donald Trump announced sweeping tariffs on some of its largest trading partners on Wednesday, upending decades of US trade policy and threatening to unleash a global trade war on what he has dubbed “liberation day”.Trump said he will impose a 10% universal tariff on all imported foreign goods in addition to “reciprocal tariffs” on a few dozen countries, charging additional duties onto countries that Trump claims have “cheated” America.The 10% universal tariff will go into effect on 5 April while the reciprocal tariffs will begin on 9 April.“This is one of the most important days, in my opinion, in American history,” Trump said, in a long-winded speech on the White House lawn. For decades America had been “looted, pillaged and raped” by its trading partners, he said. “In many cases, the friend is worse than the foe.”Over the past few months, Trump has rattled global stock markets, alarmed corporate executives and economists, and triggered heated rows with the US’s largest trading partners by announcing and delaying plans to impose tariffs on foreign imports several times since taking office.But for the start of what appears to be a dramatic shift in American trade policy, one that could cause ricochets in the global economy, Trump tried to sell the tariffs with a celebratory tone.Nine giant US flags flanked Trump onstage in the Rose Garden, as the president spoke in front of his cabinet and a crowd of union workers wearing hard hats and fluorescent construction worker vests. Before Trump came onstage, a marine band played celebratory music to excite the crowd.At one point, Trump paused his speech to throw a Maga hat into the crowd. In the next breath, he announced the 10% universal baseline tariff.In the middle of his hour-long speech, the president displayed a chart that showed the “unfair” fees that countries placed on the US, alongside the new “USA Discounted Reciprocal Tariffs”. China charged the US 67% in “unfair” fees, and said the US would now levy a 34% fee. The EU charges 39% on imports, according to the White House, and will now be levied at 20%. Trump said the UK would be charged 10% – the baseline tariff – equal to the Trump administration’s calculations of the UK’s fees on US imports.Special exceptions were made for Canada and Mexico, though the countries were previously targets of proposed broad tariffs. The White House said that goods covered by an existing trade deal with Canada and Mexico will continue to see no tariffs.Trump said the tariff calculations also include “currency manipulation and trade barriers”, though the White House has not elaborated on how it calculated the new tariffs.It appears Trump has zeroed in on the industry-specific tariffs the countries have placed on American exports. In his speech, Trump criticized policies like the EU’s ban on imported chicken, Canadian tariffs on dairy and Japan’s levies on rice.Trump said the US would charge half of the fees he feels trading partners unfairly impose on the US because the US people are “very kind”. The countries have “placed massive tariffs on [US] products and created non-monetary tariffs to decimate our industries”, Trump said, calling them “common sense reciprocal tariffs”.“Reciprocal: that means they do it to us and we do it to them. Very simple, can’t get any more simple than that,” he said. “This indeed will be the golden age of America,” he said.Trump was ultimately following through with a promise he made during the election: on the campaign trail, Trump floated the idea of a 10% universal tariff on all imported goods.The new tariffs come on top of a lineup of levies that Trump has already implemented: an additional 20% tariff on all Chinese imports and a 25% tariff on all steel and aluminum imports. There is also a 10% tariff on energy imports from Canada.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionTrump also announced in March a 25% tariff on all imported vehicles and, eventually, imported auto parts, which will start going into effect on Thursday.“These tariffs are going to give us growth like you’ve never seen before, and it’ll be something very special to watch,” Trump said.Trump has made clear the goals he wants to accomplish through his tariffs: bring manufacturing back to the US; respond to unfair trade policies from other countries; increase tax revenue; and incentivize crackdowns on migration and drug trafficking. But the implementation of his tariffs has so far have been haphazard, with multiple rollbacks and delays, and vague promises that have yet to come to fruitionBut the threats have soured US relations with its largest trading partners. Canada’s prime minister, Mark Carney, has called them “unjustified” and pledged to retaliate. The European Union has said it has a “strong plan” to retaliate. Other retaliatory tariffs could eventually lead to higher prices that would hurt American exporters.The US stock market closed slightly up on Wednesday, ahead of Trump’s announcement, with a slight boost from news that Elon Musk may step away from his role in the White House soon to focus on his businesses.Even with the slight upswing, two of the three major stock exchanges saw their worst quarter in over two years after Monday marked the end of the first quarter.In March, consumer confidence plunged to its lowest level in over four years. Polls have shown that tariffs are unpopular with Americans, including Republicans. Only 28% of people in a poll from Marquette Law School released Wednesday said that tariffs help the economy.The uncertainty around Trump’s tariff policies have increased the likelihood of a recession, according to recent forecasts from economists at Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan and other banks. More
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After months of surrender, the Democrats have finally stood up to Trump – thank you, Cory Booker | Emma Brockes
by Evelyn Reynolds 2 April 2025, 16:54
One of the problems beleaguering political opponents of Donald Trump has been finding a form of protest that, given the scale of his outrages, doesn’t seem entirely futile. You can parade outside a Tesla showroom. You can hold up dumb little signs during Trump’s address to Congress inscribed with slogans such as “This is not normal” and “Musk steals”. You can, as Democrats appear to have been doing since the election, play dead.Alternatively, you can go for the ostentatious, performative gesture. On Monday evening, Cory Booker, the Democratic senator for New Jersey who carries himself like someone who’d have been happier in an era when men wore capes, started speaking on the floor of the Senate and carried on for 25 hours and five minutes, breaking the chamber’s record by almost 50 minutes and delivering – finally – a solid, usable symbol of rebellion.This wasn’t a filibuster per se; no legislation was being passed. Booker decided to speak for “as long as I am physically able”, he said, in general protest against Trump and in what he described as a “moral moment” – a claim that, when he ended his speech on Tuesday evening, hoarse of voice and teary-eyed, didn’t seem to me an exaggeration.The power of the filibuster is vested in the iron-man stamina required to perform it: in Booker’s case, standing for longer than a direct flight between Washington DC and Sydney, without food, rest or toilet breaks. It puts him in a category of protest that floats somewhere between a sit-in and a hunger strike, a measure of commitment that demands a kind of default respect, as does the technical challenge of filling the airtime. A few hours into his speech, Booker asked a Senate page to remove his chair and with it the temptation to sit down. Democratic senators were permitted to ask him questions or make short remarks to give him brief respite from speaking. Mostly, however, it was on Booker to keep talking and talking, which he did – it should be noted, quite easily – by enumerating all the terrible things Trump has done in his first three months in office.View image in fullscreenThere was something immensely satisfying – cathartic, even – in watching Booker protest against Trump via a form of dissent that, while radical and pushed to its absolute limit, still fell within congressional norms. Part of the fallout from Trump and his cohorts’ behaviour has been the shocking realisation that you can ditch standards and protocols, ignore judges and bin entire social and scientific programmes created by Congress, and, at least in the immediate term, nothing will happen. (In the medium to long term, of course, people will die.)It could be argued that Trump’s extraordinary, norm-busting behaviour requires protest that meets it in the extra-political realm. Democrats aren’t going to storm the Capitol, but I have friends who have talked about withholding their federal taxes this tax season. Teslas aren’t only being boycotted but set on fire. Beyond the US, Europe is targeting Republican states in particular with reciprocal tariffs – Alabama beef and soybeans from Louisiana – to inflict personal economic pain on Trump and his supporters.Still, it is the direct political victories that matter the most. In a ringing blow to Trump this week, the election of judge Susan Crawford over her Musk-backed rival for the Wisconsin supreme court – in a race that garnered a huge turnout from voters – highlights the power of boring, process-observant political pushback over more flamboyant gestures. This race was critical in determining the state’s congressional lines, gerrymandered by the Republican-controlled state Senate to favour Republican outcomes. But it also sent a more broadly cheering message: that the involvement of Elon Musk – who, along with affiliated groups, ploughed more than $20m into trying to get Brad Schimel elected – ended up motivating the Democratic vote more emphatically than the Republican.Meanwhile, Booker kept talking. It was telling that, during and after his marathon speech, neither Musk nor Trump acknowledged him on their various social media platforms, although a White House spokesman did derisively refer to Booker’s performance as a “Spartacus” moment. Over the course of the 25 hours, people drifted in and out to watch his feat of endurance, while his staff kept his face wipes replenished and placed folders of material before him to read from. To date, the art of the political spectacle has been almost exclusively Trump’s for the taking. It was a relief, finally, to see a Democrat seize and hang on to the mic.
Emma Brockes is a Guardian columnist
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‘Hope in my heart’: displaced Afghans in limbo as White House freezes refugee programs
by Evelyn Reynolds 2 April 2025, 15:00
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View image in fullscreenThe 24-year-old Afghan woman wants to become a surgeon – and she had set her sights on training in the US.She wants to care for other women and girls, so they don’t have to be afraid to visit the doctor – so at least in one crucial aspect of their lives they won’t have to endure the unwanted advances, dismissive comments and blatant disrespect that she’s experienced from many of the men who have always surrounded her, first in her native Afghanistan and now in legal limbo in Pakistan.“I hope a lot that I will be a doctor in the future. I don’t know it will happen, but I hope,” she said. “It means that a woman is powerful, that if she wants to do something, she can.”Yet for the moment, she has no way to attend medical school anywhere. She can barely step outside the apartment in Islamabad where she and her two sisters, her teenage brother, and their mother spend each day terrified that police will arrest and deport them back to face Taliban rule.Simply as a woman in the Taliban’s Afghanistan her lifestyle would be severely restricted, but as Christians the whole family would literally be in mortal danger.Her family has documents from the United Nations Refugee Agency proving that they’re certified asylum seekers, and they were on the verge of getting the green light to come to the US.But to the Trump administration right now, these plans don’t matter – despite volunteer groups in Texas preparing for months to welcome them.To the police in Pakistan, where they are in exile, those UN documents don’t matter either. What matters is that the family is Afghan and is no longer wanted there.“Everywhere is policed. Every day, police come to our house. It’s too difficult for us,” said the woman in an interview over Zoom. The Guardian is withholding the family’s identity while they remain at risk.“In these days, we awake with a fear,” she said of her family. They have already been lying low in Pakistan for three years after fleeing Afghanistan.View image in fullscreenA few months ago, it seemed as though the family was finally on the cusp of relief, soon to fly to east Texas.“They were nearing the finish line. We didn’t have any certainty, they hadn’t actually been approved and travel wasn’t being scheduled yet. But we were right there – everything, all the screening, was done,” said Justin Reese, one member of a group of Texas volunteers who were getting ready to welcome the family.Then, on the first day of Donald Trump’s second term as president, one of his many immigration-related executive orders indefinitely suspended the US Refugee Admissions Program (USRAP) – and with it, the family’s chance at reaching imminent safety.“By every metric, they have played by the rules and they are being treated like this,” said Reese. “It’s very damaging to them individually, and it’s damaging, I think, to the future security of the US, for us to be seen as this mercurial, as this incoherent.”A federal district judge temporarily blocked Trump’s effective ban on refugees coming to the US, offering those on the brink of resettlement a flicker of hope, but a circuit panel has now rolled back that decision, saying only people already approved must be allowed to come. And whether an administration ideologically opposed to refugee resettlement will resume the program at scale – or in any meaningful way – remains an open question, particularly after the state department has tried to terminate essential funding agreements with all of the US’s resettlement agencies for the entire fiscal year. That was even before the prospect of new Trump travel restrictions on Afghans entering the US, and before immigration officials suddenly paused green card processing for refugees already here.“I don’t know how you get to a place of suspending refugee resettlement as policy without a series of ideological turns that I don’t understand how to unwind,” Reese said.Before the ascent of Trumpism, USRAP enjoyed widespread bipartisan support for myriad reasons: its protection of American allies and related benefits to national security; its solidarity with “frontline states” such as Turkey and Colombia that are taking in so many of the world’s displaced people; its signal to other nations that the US cares about human rights.In fact, even before the refugee resettlement program was written into US law, organizations cropped up across the nation in response to the atrocities of the second world war – and the US’s role in rejecting refugees early on who then became victims of the Holocaust. These agencies welcomed displaced people from around the world, many fleeing communism from the Baltic states, Hungary or Vietnam.After Congress established a more universal, standardized refugee framework, general support for resettlement continued, even following the 11 September 2001 attacks that reshaped much of the US immigration system. Sometimes, scandals would arise within the program, but administrations would address them and move on.Then, in 2015, Trump ran for president and soon started trumpeting a narrative that refugees posed a security threat to American communities, despite them being some of the most thoroughly vetted newcomers in the country.“There [was] already a kind of deteriorating bipartisan support,” Yael Schacher, director for the Americas and Europe at Refugees International, the humanitarian organization, recalled of that moment.By fiscal year 2020, the first Trump administration had gutted the US’s refugee resettlement infrastructure and set the annual ceiling on refugee admissions at 18,000 – the lowest cap on record.When Joe Biden took office, his administration eventually rebuilt resettlement capacity in the US, with more than 100,000 people welcomed in his last full fiscal year in office.To do so, Biden made innovations, such as an initiative called the Welcome Corps, which invited Americans and green card holders to form private groups and financially sponsor refugees for resettlement in the US.“I think the idea of the Welcome Corps was that it was politically foolproof,” said Schacher, and that “because it relied on private funds and private individuals to step up … that these folks would push back against the Trump administration and make sure that folks still come. And they would step in if government funding was withdrawn. I think it remains to be seen if that’s actually going to work politically.”Reese and his family knew that they wanted to participate in the Welcome Corps. A software developer by trade, he had spent the better part of a decade learning about the politics and policy of offering refuge.Just before the coronavirus pandemic gripped the US, he traveled to Greece to serve in a refugee camp with 20,000 residents representing 40 different nationalities. The corner of camp where he volunteered hosted mostly Afghans, and he returned home to east Texas with new friendships and phone numbers from within that community.So when Kabul fell to the Taliban and the US withdrew troops from Afghanistan in 2021, his phone started buzzing with alerts from worried Afghans whose loved ones were still stranded in danger. He sprang into action, attempting to cut through red tape to try to get desperate families in Afghanistan on US evacuation flights. It was frantic and exhausting.View image in fullscreen“Everything felt like an inch away and then a mile away at the same time, because you just knew if you just were smart enough or well-resourced enough, then you could make this happen,” he remembered.Simultaneously, the Afghan family of five he would eventually try to resettle through the Welcome Corps was fleeing Afghanistan for Pakistan. The Taliban’s return to power was the final straw that dashed any hope they had for stability in their homeland, though it was hardly their first brush with persecution.As members of the Hazara ethnic community, their people had long been victims of massacres and genocides, including by the Taliban at the turn of the 21st century. Having converted from Shia Islam to Christianity, the family had been targeted by their neighbors, beaten and forced to move many times. And as a household in which the patriarch died about a decade ago, the women had been subject to constant unwanted attention and harassment from unscrupulous men.“We miss, a lot, our country,” one of the daughters said. “We miss our memories that we had. But unfortunately we can’t go back because I have lots of bad memories from Taliban … situations, and it makes me sad.” As she described the family’s experience, she wept.Her family met Reese in person when they were all in Islamabad in late 2023. Until then, they had been names on a list for Reese, names he was still trying to help find refuge. After getting to know the family face to face, he wanted to bring them to his own community, where he thought their life experiences would resonate with people.He found willing volunteers back in east Texas. With 10 members, Reese’s Welcome Corps group is far larger than required and includes a veteran who served in Afghanistan, a missionary’s kid who grew up in Afghanistan and Pakistan, a couple whose children work with Afghans abroad, and others uniquely equipped to help.Offers of housing and other support flowed in. And Reese’s commitment to sponsor the Afghan family made a huge difference in their lives, even as they remained in a precarious situation abroad. They suddenly felt as though they were waiting in Pakistan for a reason, and they stopped worrying as much about their future while imagining safety together in the US.“It made my family so happy,” one of the daughters said. In Texas, she hoped, “we can continue our studies and we can continue our lives without any worries”.Now Reese’s garage is full of donated household items from an online wishlist to outfit what would have been the family’s new home in Tyler, Texas. It’s unclear when or if the family will ever arrive – news Reese had to deliver personally.“I have a hard time talking about how it made us feel without being angry because I do feel that it’s not just unnecessary and harmful, but strategically incompetent,” he said. “I don’t believe that anybody involved in turning [USRAP] off had to deliver phone calls like the ones that we had to over the last few weeks.”Despite the setback and the increasingly serious threats of deportation the family faces in Islamabad, one of the daughters expressed gratitude for “brother Justin”, as she calls Reese, and appreciates at least hearing an update on their case.Trump’s actions have made her “sad, but I hope”, she said, adding: “I have hope in my heart that this program will open again.” More

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