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      Mike Pence rebukes Trump over tariffs and ‘wavering’ support for Ukraine

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      Donald Trump’s tariffs policy will trigger a “price shock” and possible shortages, and lead to public pressure on him to change his approach, the former vice-president Mike Pence has said.In one of his most wide-ranging critiques yet on the policies of the president he used to serve, Pence, speaking to CNN, derided the White House’s “wavering” support for Ukraine and declared – in direct contradiction of repeated assurances from Trump – that President Vladimir Putin of Russia “doesn’t want peace”.Pence’s comments came in an interview after receiving the John F Kennedy Profile in Courage award in recognition of his refusal to bow to pressure from Trump to overturn the 2020 presidential election when he presided over Congress’s certification of the results on 6 January 2021.The vice president’s determination to carry out his constitutional role and certify Joe Biden’s victory presaged an attack on the US Capitol by a violent mob, who chanted “hang Mike Pence”, as the vice-president was spirited to safety by security personnel.Pence told CNN’s Kaitlan Collins that Trump’s decision to pardon about 1,600 convicted rioters after he returned to office in January “sent the wrong message”.“I was deeply disappointed to see President Trump pardon people that engaged in violence against law enforcement officers that day,” he said.Addressing tariffs – which Trump has made a signature policy of his second presidency while implementing a 90-day pause on exports from most countries after international markets plunged – Pence said they were “not a win for the American people” and warned that their worst effects had yet to be seen.“I do have concerns that, with the president’s call for broad-based tariffs against friend and foe alike, that ultimately the administration is advancing policies that are not targeted at countries that have been abusing our trade relationship, but rather are essentially new industrial policy that will result in inflation, that will harm consumers and that will ultimately harm the American economy,” he said.“Even the administration has conceded that there may be a price shock in the economy, and there may be shortages” after the current pause expires, Pence said.He said the White House was in danger of stoking a political backlash, citing Trump’s recent comment that tariffs might result in American children having two dolls instead of 30 and that “maybe the dolls will cost a couple of bucks more”.“Keeping our kids’ toys affordable: that really is part of the American dream,” he said.“I think the American people are going to see the consequences of this. I think they’ll demand a different approach.”He criticized the administration for threatening to abandon support for Ukraine, whose president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Trump has publicly blamed for Russia’s invasion, while repeatedly praising Putin – relenting only recently after the Russian leader rebuffed peace offers and instead ordered missile attacks on Kyiv.Pence said: “If the last three years teaches us anything, it’s that Vladimir Putin doesn’t want peace; he wants Ukraine. And the fact that we are now nearly two months of following a ceasefire agreement that Ukraine has agreed to and Russia continues to delay and give excuses confirms that point.“The wavering support the administration has shown over the last few months, I believe, has only emboldened Russia.”He was equally scathing about Trump’s stance towards Canada, which he had hit with trade tariffs and said he would like to annex as the 51st US state.Pence, by contrast, called Canada “a great ally, whose soldiers have fought and died alongside Americans in every war since world war one”. More

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      TeleMessage app used by Mike Waltz suspends service over suspected hack

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      The communications app used by Mike Waltz, Donald Trump’s former national security adviser, says it is temporarily suspending services following a reported hack that exposed some of its potentially sensitive messages.Oregon-based Smarsh, which runs the TeleMessage app, said in an email to Reuters that it was “investigating a potential security incident” and was suspending all its services “out of an abundance of caution”.A Reuters photograph showed Waltz using TeleMessage, an unofficial version of the popular encrypted messaging app Signal, on his phone during a cabinet meeting on Wednesday.Waltz was ousted the following day and Trump named his secretary of state, Marco Rubio, to take on Waltz’s job on an interim basis. At the same time, Trump said he would nominate Waltz to be the US ambassador to the United Nations.The move capped weeks of controversy over Waltz’s creation of a Signal group to share real-time updates on US military action in Yemen. That chat drew particular attention because Waltz, or someone using his account, accidentally added a prominent US journalist to the group.Concerns over the security of Waltz’s communications were further heightened, when it was reported on Sunday that a hacker had broken into TeleMessage’s back-end infrastructure and intercepted some of its users’ messages.Tech news site 404 Media said the hacker provided them with stolen material, some of which the news site was able to independently verify.Smarsh did not immediately respond to a request by Reuters for more detail about the breach.Reuters contributed to this report More

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      The Guardian view on Trump’s shock therapy: warehouse and transport workers are the first victims of a class war | Editorial

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      The White House, eager to win a trade war it barely understands, has yanked the emergency brake on China-US trade without checking who’s inside the vehicle. Donald Trump’s early April trade decree has taken a month to hit the economy – that’s how long Chinese containers need to reach Los Angeles. And on cue, US pacific ports registered a 45% drop in container bookings this week from China. When warehouses fall quiet and trucks idle in California, the silence will creep eastward. Unemployment will surely tick upwards.Even if Washington reverses course by the end of May, and Beijing plays nice, the best-case scenario is delayed damage. Some goods are being rerouted to avoid charges, but you can’t reboot global logistics overnight. This isn’t strategic decoupling – it’s economic self-harm. By the time the Trump administration notices, it will be too late. The consequences of the US president’s rash tactics will reverberate through Main Street. Mr Trump offers a flippant excuse: blame 11-year-olds with too many dolls – not his own tariffs – for rising hardship.US gross domestic product just shrank for the first time in three years – despite Mr Trump’s promise of a “golden era”. His tariffs are steering the world toward a downturn. Even the International Monetary Fund (IMF) knows it. According to its latest modelling, the fund now sees the probability of global growth falling below 2%, a threshold widely seen as equivalent to a global recession, as approaching one in four. That’s double the risk it estimated six months ago. Escalating US tariffs, says the IMF, are the main reason behind the darkening skies.What does this mean for the world? Below 2% global growth, much of the per capita gains vanish. Most of what’s left is soaked up by expanding giants in Asia and Africa – places with the people and industrial catch-up capacity to grow even in a weakened global economy. The UK does not have this. Britain is an ageing, post-industrial economy in a productivity slump without the momentum of demographics or the slack of underdevelopment. That’s why Labour can’t afford to sit back. Rising living standards and real economic security require government to invest, build and redistribute – because the market alone won’t.Commentators still blindly cling to David Ricardo’s 1817 theory of comparative advantage – as if today’s global capitalism mirrors Georgian England’s trade in wine and cloth. It doesn’t. Ricardo assumed nations specialise based on domestic costs. But in a world of mobile capital, it’s companies that specialise, not countries. That’s what the economist Dani Rodrik warned in the late 1990s: free capital flows undermine comparative advantage. Development now depends not on obeying trade patterns, but on shaping them – through industrial policy.But Maga protectionism isn’t rebuilding US industry – it’s shock therapy. Mr Trump engineers a trade crisis to hike prices, kill off “uncompetitive” firms and clear the way for a leaner, capital-heavy economy. Meanwhile, tax cuts hand America’s oligarchic tendency even more power to reshape markets in its image. Mr Trump’s narrative promises a revival for US workers – particularly the unionised holdouts in places such as Detroit – but what they will get is higher costs, stagnant wages and patriotic slogans. This isn’t industrial policy. It’s class politics disguised as economic nationalism – a controlled demolition of what remains of US labour’s bargaining power, sold as a populist renaissance.Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here. More

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      Trump says he will reopen Alcatraz prison for ‘most ruthless offenders’

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      Donald Trump has said he is directing his government to reopen and expand Alcatraz, the notorious former prison on an island off San Francisco that has been closed for more than 60 years.In a post on his Truth Social site on Sunday evening, Trump wrote: “For too long, America has been plagued by vicious, violent, and repeat Criminal Offenders, the dregs of society, who will never contribute anything other than Misery and Suffering. When we were a more serious Nation, in times past, we did not hesitate to lock up the most dangerous criminals, and keep them far away from anyone they could harm. That’s the way it’s supposed to be.”He added: “That is why, today, I am directing the Bureau of Prisons, together with the Department of Justice, FBI, and Homeland Security, to reopen a substantially enlarged and rebuilt ALCATRAZ, to house America’s most ruthless and violent Offenders.”Trump’s directive to rebuild and reopen the long-shuttered penitentiary is the latest salvo in his effort to overhaul how and where federal prisoners and immigration detainees are locked up.But such a move would likely be expensive and challenging. The prison was closed in 1963 due to crumbling infrastructure and the high cost of repairing and supplying the island facility, because everything from fuel to food had to be brought by boat.Bringing the facility up to modern-day standards would require massive investment at a time when the Federal Bureau of Prisons has been shuttering prisons for similar infrastructure issues.The island is now a major tourist site that is operated by the National Park Service and is a designated national historic landmark.The former House speaker Nancy Pelosi, a California Democrat whose district includes the island, questioned the feasibility of reopening the prison. “It is now a very popular national park and major tourist attraction. The President’s proposal is not a serious one,” she wrote on X.The prison – which was considered inescapable due to the strong ocean currents and cold Pacific waters that surround it – was known as “the Rock” and housed some of the nation’s most notorious criminals, including Al Capone and George “Machine Gun” Kelly.In the 29 years it was open, 36 men attempted 14 separate escapes, according to the FBI. Nearly all were caught or did not survive.The fates of three inmates – the brothers John and Clarence Anglin, and Frank Morris – are the subject of some debate, with their story dramatised in the 1979 film Escape from Alcatraz starring Clint Eastwood.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionA spokesperson for the Bureau of Prisons said in a statement that the agency “will comply with all presidential orders”. They did not immediately answer questions from the Associated Press regarding the practicality and feasibility of reopening Alcatraz or the agency’s possible role in the future of the former prison given the National Park Service’s control of the island.The order comes as Trump has been clashing with the courts as he tries to send accused gang members to a maximum-security prison in El Salvador, without due process. Trump has also floated the legally dubious idea of sending some federal US prisoners to the Terrorism Confinement Center, known as CECOT.Trump also directed the opening of a detention centre at Guantánamo Bay in Cuba, to hold up to 30,000 of what he has called the “worst criminal aliens”. More

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      ‘Fight back’: journalist taking Trump administration to court calls for media to resist attacks

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      The lead plaintiff in a lawsuit fighting Donald Trump’s order to dismantle Voice of America has said the media has to resist as the administration becomes increasingly aggressive against the press.“I never in a million years thought I would have to fight for freedom of the press in the United States of America. And yet here we are,” says Patsy Widakuswara, the White House bureau chief for the broadcasting network. “As journalism is under attack, it feels empowering to fight back. We need more people to resist and fight back.”Kicked out of press conferences on multiple continents for asking pointed questions, Widakuswara is not the type to balk at challenging powerful leaders. In her three decades as a journalist those instincts have served her well, and perhaps at no better time than now.The White House reporter is now leading the charge to save VOA, which the US president has described as “anti-Trump” and “radical”. In March, Trump signed an executive order that effectively cut off its funding via its parent company, the US Agency for Global Media (USAGM).Launched in 1942, initially to counter Nazi propaganda, VOA is a federally funded international broadcasting network, produced in dozens of languages that reach about 350 million people around the globe.View image in fullscreenFor decades it has been seen as a form of soft power, encapsulating the values of liberal America. But after Trump’s order its operations have been suspended, with virtually all of VOA’s staff of 1,300 placed on immediate administrative leave and about 600 contractors terminated.The lawsuit filed by Widakuswara and several of her colleagues follows lawsuits the Trump administration has taken out against ABC News and CBS’s 60 Minutes in the US, and attempts to expel some press from the White House. Those backing the case argue that VOA has for decades provided an important source of objective information, especially in illiberal environments.“These are not just women in Afghanistan or farmers in Africa,” said Widakuswara of VOA’s audience. “They’re also activists in Russia and decision makers all around the world who are also facing the onslaught of disinformation and propaganda from Russia, Iran, China, and extremist organisations like [Islamic State] and al-Qaida.”At home having a quiet Saturday when she received the email about VOA’s demise, Widakuswara says to do nothing was inconceivable. In a matter of days she had rallied a team to fight against it, and by Friday morning had filed a lawsuit.“It’s just the way I’m wired,” she says over the phone from Washington. “Congress gave us a mandate to tell America’s story to the world through factual, balanced and comprehensive reporting. If they want to change the size, structure or function of VOA, they can’t just shut us down. They must go through Congress. That’s the law.”View image in fullscreen‘Holding autocratic governments to account’Starting her career in Jakarta in the late 90s, just as Indonesia’s decades-long dictator Suharto was being toppled, the Indonesian-born journalist has seen first-hand the impacts of authoritarian regimes.Widakuswara worked at a campus radio station, and later as a fixer for foreign journalists when they flooded in to cover the event, as mass student protests inundated the parliament building and forced Suharto to step down.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“That was my first taste in media,” she says. “Holding autocratic governments to account.”The experience led to a career in television, and a British Foreign and Commonwealth Office scholarship to obtain her master’s in journalism at Goldsmiths, University of London. After stints at the BBC and Channel 4, she was named VOA’s White House bureau chief in 2021.Now, she finds herself pushing against fascistic tendencies in her adopted home. “I grew up in 80s Indonesia where there was no press freedom and newspapers had to be careful what they printed to avoid government closure,” she says. “Could the US backslide that far? Not if enough people resist, and that’s why I’m fighting back.”Her lawsuit, backed by Reporters Without Borders and four unions, argues the Trump administration, through the actions of the defendants, USAGM, and the government’s special adviser Kari Lake, are attempting to unlawfully dismantle VOA’s operations because they deem it contrary to the government’s agenda.Widakuswara argues that Trump’s executive order is a violation of press freedom, the first amendment, and laws to prevent executive overreach, with VOA funding approved by Congress, not the president.Another motivating factor is to support her 47 colleagues at VOA on J-1 or journalist visas in the US, who could be sent back to countries such as Russia, Belarus, Vietnam and Myanmar which have previously jailed journalists.Widakuswara’s efforts to save VOA appeared to score an early win, with a judge in April ordering the Trump administration to restore funding to VOA and other US-funded media. But the preliminary injunction was only a temporary measure.On Saturday, just as VOA staff were preparing for a “phased return” to work, a court of appeals issued a stay on that ruling, saying the court did not have the authority to block Trump’s executive order regarding employment matters.Keenly aware of the unfavourable political climate she is up against, Widakuswara says it is hard to know if their case will ultimately prevail, but the only choice is to try. “Even if it’s just like a 5% chance or even a 1% chance, that’s better than a 0% chance, which is what happens if we do nothing.” More

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      Trump announces 100% tariffs on movies ‘produced in foreign lands’

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      Donald Trump on Sunday announced on his Truth Social platform a 100% tariff on all movies “produced in Foreign Lands”, saying the US film industry was dying a “very fast death” due to the incentives that other countries were offering to draw American film-makers.In his post, he claimed to have authorised the commerce department and the US trade representative to immediately begin instituting such a tariff.“This is a concerted effort by other Nations and, therefore, a National Security threat,” Trump said in the Truth Social post. “It is, in addition to everything else, messaging and propaganda!”“WE WANT MOVIES MADE IN AMERICA, AGAIN!” Trump added.Commerce secretary Howard Lutnick posting on X said: “We’re on it.” Neither Lutnick nor Trump provided any details on the implementation. It was not immediately clear whether the move would target production companies, foreign or American, producing films overseas.Film and television production in Los Angeles has fallen by nearly 40% over the last decade, according to FilmLA, a non-profit that tracks the region’s production. At the same time, governments around the world have offered more generous tax credits and cash rebates to lure productions, and capture a greater share of the $248bn that Ampere Analysis predicts will be spent globally in 2025 to produce content.Politicians in Australia and New Zealand said on Monday they would advocate for their respective film industries, after the president’s announcement.Australia’s home affairs minister Tony Burke said he had spoken to the head of the government body Screen Australia about the proposed tariffs. “Nobody should be under any doubt that we will be standing up unequivocally for the rights of the Australian screen industry,” he said in a statement.New Zealand prime minister Christopher Luxon told a news conference the government was awaiting further detail of the proposed tariffs. “We’ll have to see the detail of what actually ultimately emerges. But we’ll be obviously a great advocate, great champion of that sector in that industry,” he said.The announcement from Trump comes after he triggered a trade war with China, and imposed global tariffs which have roiled markets and led to fears of a US recession. The film industry has already been feeling the effects of the tariffs, as China in April responded to the announcements by reducing the quota of American movies allowed into that country.China is the world’s second largest film market after the US, although in recent years domestic offerings have outshone Hollywood imports.Former senior commerce department official William Reinsch, a senior fellow with the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said retaliation against Trump’s foreign movies tariffs would be devastating.“The retaliation will kill our industry. We have a lot more to lose than to gain,” he said, adding that it would be difficult to make a national security or national emergency case for movies. More

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      Trump says he ‘doesn’t rule out’ using military force to control Greenland

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      Donald Trump would not rule out using military force to gain control of Greenland, the world’s largest island and an autonomous territory within Denmark, a fellow Nato member with the US.Since taking office, the US president has repeatedly expressed the idea of US expansion into Greenland, triggering widespread condemnation and unease both on the island itself and in the global diplomatic community. Greenland is seen as strategically important both for defense and as a future source of mineral wealth.In an interview on NBC’s Meet The Press on Sunday, Trump was asked whether he would rule out using force against the territory.“I don’t rule it out. I don’t say I’m going to do it, but I don’t rule out anything. No, not there. We need Greenland very badly. Greenland is a very small amount of people, which we’ll take care of, and we’ll cherish them, and all of that. But we need that for international security,” Trump said.The exchange came as part of wide-ranging interview following Trump’s first 100-days in office last week and he was also asked about the idea of using military force against Canada – an idea once unthinkable but now a subject of speculation amid Trump’s repeated assertion he would like to make Canada the US’s 51st state.“It’s highly unlikely. I don’t see it with Canada. I just don’t see it, I have to be honest with you,” Trump said.Trump said he had spoke with Canada’s new prime minister, Mark Carney, and confirmed that the pair had not spoken about making his country part of the US.But he said they could discuss the topic when Carney visits Washington DC “this week or next week”. Carney, along with around 90% of Canadians, oppose the idea of folding Canada into the US. But Trump said he was open to a discussion.“I’ll always talk about that. You know why? We subsidize Canada to the tune of $200bn a year,” Trump said. “We don’t need their cars. In fact, we don’t want their cars. We don’t need their energy. We don’t even want their energy. We have more than they do. We don’t want their lumber. We have great lumber. All I have to do is free it up from the environmental lunatics.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionTrump said that if “Canada was part of the US it wouldn’t cost us. It would be great … it would be a cherished state. And, if you look at our map, if you look at the geography – I’m a real estate guy at heart. When I look down at that without that artificial line that was drawn with a ruler many years ago – was just an artificial line, goes straight across. You don’t even realize.”“What a beautiful country it would be,” he added.A poll published last month found that 68% of Americans believe Trump is serious about the US trying to take over Greenland, and 53% think Trump is serious when he talks about the US trying to take control of Canada.But the survey, commissioned by ABC News found that respondents didn’t think either annexation would be a good idea. About 86% said they opposed the US trying to take control of Canada, and 76% opposed trying to take control of Greenland. More

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      Donald Trump’s cartoon-like chaos leaves US economy on unstable course | Heather Stewart

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      Ten days reporting from the US – in Pittsburgh, Washington DC, and just across the Potomac River in Arlington, Virginia – gave me a fascinating snapshot of what feels like the slow-motion unravelling of the world’s largest economy.So many conversations featured uncertainty and wariness; and weariness, too, as businesses and consumers weigh up every decision, against the backdrop of the chaos emanating from the White House.Even the president conceded last week that the economy was in a “transition period”, claiming he had warned of this during his campaign. (When challenged, the White House could not come up with any examples of when he had done so.)The problem for Trump and his supporters, many of whom remain staunchly loyal, is that the transition period in question is starting to resemble that felt by the classic Looney Tunes character Wile E Coyote between charging off a cliff into midair and plunging to the ground.So far, the hard data from the US economy is holding up well. Friday’s payrolls report was strong, and the negative first quarter gross domestic product reading, while worrying, was hard to take a clear reading from because of the rise in imports as companies stocked up ahead of tariffs.There is little sign of anything as dramatic as mass job cuts, or a sudden stop in consumer spending – although the recent crop of data mainly relates to the period before “liberation day”.Look at the forward-looking surveys, though, and there are clear signs of anxiety. The long-running Michigan consumer sentiment index just had its steepest quarterly decline since the 1990 recession.Spend any amount of time talking to US consumers and businesses, and it is abundantly clear why: there are so many sources of policy ambiguity as to make the future not just uncertain but completely unknowable.There is a cliche that “markets hate uncertainty”, but in truth the same applies to everyone in the real economy, too: the company wondering what size order to put in and how many people to hire and the family thinking about buying that fridge or booking that holiday.It is not surprising they are uncertain. No one, even inside the administration, can say with any confidence what the tariff rates on imports from specific countries will be in July.Even if the tariff policy was crystal clear, its impact on prices would be hard to gauge – depending, as it does, on how much of the cost companies are willing to bear (or “eat”, as the Americans have it) at the expense of reduced profits, and how much is passed on to consumers.For the moment, as the Treasury secretary, Scott Bessent, has admitted, the tariffs on China, at 145%, are now so high as to amount to an effective trade embargo.Not every company will have the deep pockets and global reach of Apple to be able to bend its supply chain away from China to manufacture products for the US elsewhere (in the iPhone-maker’s case, India). Instead, many will be scrambling to find substitutes, which may be more expensive or not exist at all. Shortages of some products seem a distinct possibility.At the same time, sharp cuts in federal budgets, many of which have an ideological taint, including Robert F Kennedy Jr’s decimation of the National Institutes of Health, are raising short-term questions about unemployment and much longer-term worries about the US’s world-leading science base.Some of the most heartbreaking conversations I had were about aspects of Trump’s immigration policy: the man who said a Guatemalan friend’s six-year-old son had stopped going to school in case his mum was snatched by the authorities while he was there, and the restaurant manager who said it was becoming harder to hire Latinos because even fully documented workers feared they could face deportation anyway.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThese are first and foremost human tragedies, but clearly they also have an economic dimension. The credit rating agency Fitch warned in a report last week: “Risks associated with mass deportations could include potential worker shortages, production delays and increased wage inflation that hinders revenue growth, weakens profitability and lowers return on investment.”Of course, because the US economy’s abrupt gearshift has been driven by deliberate policy actions, it’s tempting to think: “It doesn’t have to be like this.”Much more of the real economy impact so far results from this widely shared uncertainty – or perhaps it is better to call it fear – than from the specifics of Trump’s policies.Business owners told me that if they just knew what the final tariffs on products from the various countries in their supply chain would be, for example, then over time they could adapt.It is not completely out of the question that a more settled policy position could arrive in the coming weeks.Certainly, Bessent appears to be trying to manoeuvre Trump towards striking a series of “deals” (in effect, promises of concessions in exchange for tariff carve-outs) with key economies.Yet the president appears to have such a love of political drama – and such an inability to choose a course and stick to it – that the unknowability of future policy seems to be the very essence of Trump 2.0.It seemed to be the mighty bond markets, driving up the cost of US borrowing, that checked Trump’s initial “liberation day” drive, prompting the “pause”.But if time drags on with no agreements in sight, the next wave of distress signals are likely to come not from Wall Street but from main street – in soaring prices and empty shelves. How Trump responds then is anyone’s guess. More