Tag Archives: Canada

Independent: White House backed down on China’s tariff after president was told they would hurt ‘Trump’s people’ the most

Posted on by
Reply

Several White House staffers had to warn the president that his tariffs would impact ‘Trump’s people.’

The White House eased tariffs imposed on China after several staffers were forced to warn President Donald Trump that his penalties would cause his supporters – or “Trump’s people,” – to suffer economically, according to a report.

While Trump was reluctant to lower tariffs against Beijing too quickly, several White House staffers – including Chief of Staff Susie Wiles, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and other aides – warned him the penalties were placing his own supporters in danger, sources told the Washington Post.

…

“The key argument was that this was beginning to hurt Trump’s supporters – Trump’s people,” one person briefed on the talks said. “It gave Susie a key window.”

White House eases China’s tariff after learning it would hurt ‘Trump’s people’ most
Several White House staffers had to warn the president that his tariffs would impact ‘Trump’s people.’

https://www.the-independent.com/news/world/americas/us-politics/china-tariffs-trade-trump-friends-b2751003.html

National Security Journal: NATO Is Now Dead

Posted on by
Reply

NATO, in its current form, is depicted as a “corpse,” its strategic effectiveness undermined by decades of European defense underfunding (“free-riding”) and US strategic overstretch.

-Most member states fail to meet spending commitments, rendering the alliance a hollow shell, a reality starkly exposed by the war in Ukraine where the US carries the primary burden.

-President Trump’s approach is seen not as the cause of NATO’s decline but as a catalyst for a necessary reckoning, forcing Europe to confront its defense responsibilities.

-A fundamental reset towards a European-led security framework, with US support rather than dominance, is essential for future relevance.

NATO Is Now Dead
President Trump’s approach is seen not as the cause of NATO’s decline but as a catalyst for a necessary reckoning, forcing Europe to confront its defense responsibilities.
NATO Is Now Dead

Moneywise: ‘We want them back desperately’: US border communities losing millions in sales tax revenue as Canadian shoppers avoid US travel due to Trump’s tariffs and ’51st state’ rhetoric

Posted on by
Reply

There’s a long-standing tradition of Canadians crossing the border to shop at outlets and malls in the U.S.

This is especially true in Erie and Niagara County, which are located near the border and feature top shopping destinations such as the Walden Galleria Mall and the Fashion Outlets of Niagara Falls.

But unfortunately, things have changed. Cars traveling across the border into the U.S. are down significantly in 2025, and counties like Erie and Niagara are paying the price through a drop in sales tax revenue.

In February and March of 2025, 35,619 fewer cars crossed the Peace Bridge that connects Canada to Buffalo, NY, compared to the number of cars that crossed the bridge during the same months in 2024. During the same period, 29,537 fewer cars crossed the Rainbow Bridge in Niagara Falls.

So that’s about 65,000 cars of shoppers no longer shopping, per month.

‘We want them back desperately’: US border communities losing millions in sales tax revenue as Canadian shoppers avoid US travel due to Trump’s tariffs and ’51st state’ rhetoric
Did Trump take it a bridge too far?

https://moneywise.com/news/we-want-them-back-desperately-us-border-communities-losing-millions-in-sales-tax-revenue-as-canadian-shoppers-avoid-us-travel-due-to-trumps-tariffs-and-51st-state-rhetoric

CNBC: Trump administration ‘looking at’ suspending habeas corpus for migrants, Stephen [“Goebbels”] Miller says

Posted on by
Reply
  • Senior White House advisor Stephen [“Goebbels”] Miller said that the Trump administration is “actively looking at” suspending the writ of habeas corpus, the right to challenge a person’s detention by the government, for migrants.
  • [“Goebbels”] Miller was answering a reporter who asked about President Donald Trump entertaining the idea of suspending the writ to deal with illegal immigration into the United States.
  • The writ has only been suspended four times since the U.S. Constitution was adopted, and in all but one case, Congress first authorized that action.
  • [“Goebbels”] Miller spoke hours after a federal judge in Vermont ordered the release of Tufts University student Rumeysa Öztürk from the custody of U.S. immigration authorities. She had challenged her detention with a habeas writ.

White House deputy chief of staff for policy Stephen [“Goebbels”] Miller said Friday that the Trump administration is “actively looking at” suspending the writ of habeas corpus — the constitutional right to challenge in court the legality of a person’s detention by the government — for migrants.

[“Goebbels”] Miller’s comment came in response to a White House reporter who asked about President Donald Trump entertaining the idea of suspending the writ to deal with the problem of illegal immigration into the United States.

Asked when that might happen, [“Goebbels”] Miller responded: “The Constitution is clear, and that, of course, is the supreme law of the land, that the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus can be suspended in time of invasion.”

“So, I would say that’s an option we’re actively looking at,” he said.

This comes a day or two after the release of Rumeysa Öztürk, who was detained for 45 days by ICE for writing an op-ed column in a newspaper, never charged with nor convicted of any crime:

[“Goebbels”] Miller spoke hours after a federal judge in Vermont ordered the release of Tufts University student Rumeysa Öztürk from the custody of U.S. immigration authorities.

Öztürk, who had been imprisoned for 45 days after the Trump administration revoked the Turkish citizen’s student visa based on an assessment that she “may undermine U.S. foreign policy by crearting a hostile environment for Jewish students and indicating support for a designated terrorist organization.”

Öztürk challenged her detention with a petition for writ of habeas corpus, which noted that she “has not been charged with any crime,” and which argued that her “arrest and detention are designed to punish her speech and chill the speech of others.”

Trump administration ‘looking at’ suspending habeas corpus for migrants, Stephen Miller says
Multiple court cases challenging the Trump administrations effort to deport undocumented immigrants from the U.S. are based on habeas claims.

https://www.cnbc.com/2025/05/09/trump-deportation-habeas-corpus-miller.html

Moneywise: Trump wants to ‘abolish’ the IRS and replace federal income tax revenue with tariffs on imports — how would such a move affect middle-class Americans?

Posted on by
Reply

“Donald Trump announced the External Revenue Service, and his goal is very simple: to abolish the Internal Revenue Service and let all the outsiders pay,” U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick told Fox News on Feb. 19. The idea is that once the budget is balanced, taxes will be waived for Americans earning less than $150,000 a year.

However, the flaw in this plan is that tariffs are not paid by “outsiders.” Rather, tariffs are a tax placed on imported goods and services.

“When the U.S. imposes tariffs on imports, businesses in the United States directly pay import taxes to the U.S. government on their purchases from abroad,” according to the Tax Foundation. During Trump’s first term, “the economic evidence shows American firms and consumers were hardest hit by the Trump tariffs.”

At the same time, it would be hard to replace the revenue collected from income taxes with revenue from the planned tariffs. According to a study by the Peterson Institute for International Economics (PIIE), a non-partisan research group, the U.S. imported $3.1 trillion in goods in 2023 while raising about $2 trillion through individual and corporate income taxes.

This means it would be nearly impossible to replace income taxes with tariffs, since the tariff rate would have to be “implausibly high,” according to PIIE. The institute determined that even at a “revenue-maximizing tariff rate,” the U.S. could raise only a fraction of what it raises with income taxes.

Trump wants to ‘abolish’ the IRS and replace federal income tax revenue with tariffs on imports — how would such a move affect middle-class Americans?
Some suspect the president is “dismantling” the IRS for this reason.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/taxes/trump-wants-to-abolish-the-irs-and-replace-federal-income-tax-revenue-with-tariffs-on-imports-how-would-such-a-move-affect-middle-class-americans/ar-AA1Et0kV

Independent: Backstabbed US auto companies blast Trump’s trade deal with Britain

Posted on by
Reply

America’s automakers have strafed President Donald Trump’s “big beautiful” tentative trade deal with the U.K.

Ford, GM and Stallantis complained the “deal,” which hasn’t yet been officially agreed to, will actually hurt U.S. automakers by putting them at a competitive disadvantage with British companies.

Under the deal, Britain can send a quota of 100,000 cars annually to the U.S. with a 10 percent tariffs (amounts over that level will face 27.5 percent tariffs). Steel exports will be tariff free.

The U.S. carmakers said their vehicles produced in Canada and Mexico, or produced with parts from those countries or with steel from those countries, continue to face devastating 25 percent tariffs.

Backstabbed US auto companies blast Trump’s trade deal with Britain
Backstabbed US auto companies blast Trump’s trade deal with Britain – Trump has put American automakers at a disadvantage with their British competitors, they complain

https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/companies/backstabbed-us-auto-companies-blast-trump-s-trade-deal-with-britain/ar-AA1Evtyt

USA Today: How will Trump’s tariffs affect grocery store prices? We explain.

Posted on by
Reply

“The short answer is yes, prices are going to go up,” said David Ortega, a food economist and professor at Michigan State University. “They may not skyrocket for all imported products, but they will go up. Tariffs are a tax on imports, so by definition, they are inflationary.”

While higher tariffs could still be coming after a 90-day-pause, the baseline 10% tariff on all goods, plus higher duties on Chinese products already in effect are a big increase in food costs for American’s budgets, said Thomas Gremillion, director of food policy at The Consumer Federation of America.

“The 10% ‘default’ tariffs alone represent a truly historic federal tax increase, maybe the largest in my lifetime, with a highly regressive impact,” Gremillion said.

How will Trump’s tariffs affect grocery store prices? We explain.
How will Trump’s tariffs or the threat of more tariffs affect grocery store prices?

https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/markets/how-will-trump-s-tariffs-affect-grocery-store-prices-we-explain/ar-AA1Eco8Y

The Atlantic: The Disturbing Rise of MAGA Maoism

Posted on by
Reply

Trump seems to be ceding the future to China while emulating its past.

China may well come to dominate the next century—because President Donald Trump is taking a page from the most famous Chinese leader of the previous one.

The United States remains the world’s preeminent soft power. It’s a financial and cultural juggernaut, whose entertainment and celebrities bestride the planet. But as an industrial power, the U.S. is not so much at risk of falling behind as it is objectively behind already. A recent essay in the journal Foreign Affairs by Rush Doshi and Kurt Campbell, both China experts who served in the Biden administration, made the case with alarming specificity. China makes 20 times more cement and 13 times more steel than the U.S. It makes more than two-thirds of the world’s electric vehicles, more than three-quarters of its electric batteries, 80 percent of its consumer drones, and 90 percent of its solar panels. China’s shipbuilding capacity is several orders of magnitude larger than America’s, and its navy will be 50 percent larger than the U.S. Navy by 2030.

The Trump administration clearly recognizes the need to rebuild industrial capacity. In its executive order published on “Liberation Day,” the White House suggested that, without high tariffs, America’s “defense-industrial base” is too “dependent on foreign adversaries”—a clear allusion to China.

But …

But Trump’s approach to countering China has been so scattershot, so inept, so face-smackingly absurd, that it sometimes seems like covert policy to destroy America’s reputation. Rather than build a global trading and supply-chain alliance to match the scale of China, we’ve threatened to invade Canada and slapped new tariffs on our European and East Asian allies. Rather than invest in scientific discovery, which is the basis of our technological supremacy, the administration threatens to decimate the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation while attacking major research universities, including Harvard and Columbia. Rather than compete on clean energy, the White House has targeted solar and wind subsidies for destruction. Rather than invest in nuclear power by expanding the Department of Energy’s Loan Programs Office, which provides billion-dollar loan guarantees for nuclear projects, the administration dismissed 60 percent of its staff. Rather than secure our reputation as the world’s premier destination for global talent, we’re driving away foreign students.

https://archive.is/j0lGD#selection-673.0-708.0

Independent: Australian conservative opposition leader loses seat in ‘Trump factor’ backlash

Posted on by
Reply

The Australian opposition leader likened to Donald Trump for apeing his policies has lost his seat as the incumbent Labor government secures a landslide win.

Peter Dutton has suffered more than a 10 per cent swing against him to Labor rival Ali France, who has so far claimed nearly 59 per cent of the vote under Australia’s two-party preferred system, with election analysts projecting the conservative leader’s ousting.

King Donald’s coattails are toxic!

Australian conservative opposition leader loses seat in ‘Trump factor’ backlash
Australian conservative opposition leader loses seat in ‘Trump factor’ backlash – It comes days after Canada’s centrist Liberal Party stormed to victory in what will be seen as part of an international voter backlash against the Trump administration

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/australian-conservative-opposition-leader-loses-seat-in-trump-factor-backlash/ar-AA1E6fl5

Wall Street Journal: First Canada, Now Australia: The Trump Factor Boosts Another World Leader in an Election

Posted on by
Reply

Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese was returned to power in an election Saturday, the latest left-leaning leader to achieve a comeback victory as President Trump roils global markets and upends international affairs.

As of about 11 p.m. Sydney time, Albanese’s Labor Party was projected to win at least 87 seats in the nation’s House of Representatives—where governments are formed—defeating the conservative bloc of the Liberal and National parties, which was projected to win at least 40, according to the Australian Broadcasting Corp.

The result was a decisive win for Albanese, whose party expanded its majority in the 150-seat chamber. Before the vote, polls showed Albanese leading, but not by much.

First Canada, Now Australia: The Trump Factor Boosts Another World Leader in an Election
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese was returned to power in an election Saturday, the latest left-leaning leader to achieve a comeback victory thanks partly to President Trump.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/first-canada-now-australia-the-trump-factor-boosts-another-world-leader-in-a-close-election/ar-AA1E671D