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      Trump border chief threatens jail for Denver mayor amid deportation dispute

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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      Democrats decry ‘sham for justice’ after prosecutors drop Trump charges

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      Responding to news that the special counsel Jack Smith had dropped all charges against Donald Trump for his attempt to overturn the 2020 election and retention of classified information, Dan Goldman, a prosecutor turned New York Democrat and member of the House oversight committee, lamented “a shame for justice in this country”.“It establishes that Donald Trump is above the law,” Goldman told CNN. “The supreme court put him above the law [by ruling that he had ‘absolute immunity’ for official acts] but now he appears to escape full accountability for what were crimes charged by a grand jury.”Goldman rejected the argument that by re-electing Trump, the American people had acquitted him of all charges.“I think what was very clear is that people voted for Donald Trump because they thought that he was going to improve the lives of the middle class, and perhaps in addition that he would secure the border,” Goldman said. “They did not vote for him to dismantle our democracy, to attack the constitution, to politicize all of our agencies, and certainly not as a referendum on his criminal cases.“Those cases should have been played out in a court of law … and Donald Trump should not have been able to run out the clock.”Elsewhere, Aquilino Gonell, a former Capitol police sergeant who testified memorably about his experiences and injuries on 6 January 2021, when Trump sent a mob to attack Congress, lamented a simple “miscarriage of justice”.“‘No one is above the law’ is a great slogan,” added Gonell, who suffered injuries to his hands, shoulder, calf and foot, as well as psychological trauma, in the Capitol attack.To many Americans on Monday, “no one is above the law”, however, no longer seemed like a legal reality. Three weeks after Trump defeated Kamala Harris, Smith dropped 44 charges against him: four for election subversion and 40 for retention of classified records.Smith said he was following Department of Justice policy, which says a sitting president cannot be charged. He also said he was acting “without prejudice”, which meant the cases could be refiled after Trump leaves power.That was an echo of the situation in New York, where sentencing on Trump’s 34 felony convictions related to hush money payments to a porn star has been postponed. In Georgia, eight election subversion charges remain on the docket.Nonetheless, among Trump’s opponents, the mood was one of despond. The writer Tom Nichols, a conservative Trump critic, summed up: “Mission accomplished. He ran for [president] to stay out of jail, and here we are.”Steven Cheung, Trump’s spokesperson, celebrated “a major victory for the rule of law”, adding: “The American people and President Trump want an immediate end to the political weaponization of our justice system and we look forward to uniting our country.”Democrats, however, expect Trump to seek revenge, not unity – and immediate comments from both the president-elect and JD Vance, the Ohio senator and incoming vice-president, did little to calm such fears.Vance said: “If Donald J Trump had lost an election, he may very well have spent the rest of his life in prison. These prosecutions were always political. Now it’s time to ensure what happened to President Trump never happens in this country again.”In a post to his own social media platform, Trump said all cases against him, including civil suits in New York resulting in multimillion-dollar penalties, were “empty and lawless”, orchestrated by his Democratic foes.“It was a political hijacking,” Trump said, “and a low point in the history of our country that such a thing could have happened, and yet, I persevered, against all odds, and WON.” More

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      Ireland prices corporation tax loss from Trump policies at €10bn

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      Ireland’s prime minister has said the country could lose €10bn (£8.35bn) in corporate tax if just three US multinationals were repatriated to America under a hostile Donald Trump administration.His remarks come just days after Trump nominated the Wall Street investor Howard Lutnick to lead the Department of Commerce with direct responsibility for trade.While Trump has already warned he would impose tariffs on EU imports, Lutnick has singled out Ireland for criticism saying “it is nonsense that Ireland of all places runs a trade surplus at our expense”.Simon Harris said if he was returned as taoiseach in Friday’s general election, he would immediately seek engagement with Trump. He has also proposed an early EU-US trade summit to avert damage in trade ties with the overall European trade bloc.“If three US companies left Ireland it could cost us €10bn [£8.5bn] in corporation tax,” Harris said on Monday while canvassing in Dundrum, Dublin.“I’m not pre-empting it, I’m not saying that’s going to happen, I’m not predicting it, but that is the level of risk that our economy is exposed to,” he said.Ten multinationals account for 60% of Ireland’s corporate tax receipts, with Microsoft, which books some global as well as EU revenues through Ireland, thought to be the single biggest contributor.Ireland’s goods trade surplus with the US is now a record €35bn with Irish goods exports up by 8% in the first eight months of 2024, boosted by the pharmaceutical and chemical sectors.Goods exported to the US totalled €45.5bn between January and August, according to the government’s Central Statistics Office, compared with imports of €11bn for the same period.Harris said he had no reason to believe that Trump was not “serious about pursuing the policies that he has campaigned on”, which includes repatriating jobs and profits that he believes should be homegrown.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionHe also referenced the Wall Street Journal article on what it said was the “US tax system blows a windfall into Ireland” fuelling savings into not just one but two sovereign wealth funds, including a €14bn windfall in back tax from Apple on the foot of a European court of justice ruling.“The Wall Street Journal front page gives an indication here” that Trump is intent on action, said Harris.However, he said Ireland would be prepared and would cope just as it did with “Brexit, Covid [and the] cost of living crisis”. More