“While claiming to support the Haitian people, [the United States] has significantly cut foreign aid and continued to deport Haitian immigrants under the pretext of national priorities, just when Haiti urgently needs support,” Geng Shuang, China’s deputy permanent representative to the United Nations (UN), said on Monday, April 21, at the Security Council.
“What is even more shocking is that … they also recently extended their so-called 10% basic tariff to Haiti, one of the least developed countries in the world,” the Chinese ambassador continued.
Geng said China is deeply concerned about the “worsening crisis in Haiti and the rampant gang violence, the near collapse of the state and the desperate situation of the people.”
The White House said on Wednesday that fines on Apple and Meta Platforms by the European Union were a “novel form of economic extortion” that the United States will not tolerate. Apple was fined 500 million euros (US $570 million) on Wednesday and Meta 200 million euros, as EU antitrust regulators handed out the first sanctions under…
In a shameless attempt to undermine international accountability for accused war criminal Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Hungarian President Viktor Orbán graciously hosted the architect of Israel’s 18-month genocide in Gaza on April 3.
The International Criminal Court (ICC) is now formally investigating Hungary’s blatant refusal to fulfill its legal obligation to arrest Netanyahu and send him to The Hague. States parties to the Rome Statute have a duty to cooperate with the court and facilitate the arrest of any ICC suspect who enters their territory. Although Orbán announced Hungary’s withdrawal from the statute on April 3, it does not take effect for one year.
Since his inauguration, Donald Trump has been on a relentless spree, pushing policy after policy and executive order after executive order. From rollbacks on environmental regulations to attacks on immigrants, many of these will inevitably affect public health and well being. No matter how random a decision or policy may seem, an underlying theme of Trump’s rhetoric is an effort to divide the working class, identifying already marginalized groups as “the enemy” or “the problem.” This is an effort to misdirect the righteous anger of the public away from crises caused by capitalism and toward groups that are negatively affected by the same capitalist system.
Border Patrol arrested and imprisoned a U.S. citizen with learning disabilities in Arizona for over a week earlier this month after he approached an immigration officer asking for help after a medical episode, he has said, contradicting the government’s account of the encounter. As Popular Information has reported, 19-year-old Jose Hermosillo was arrested on April 8 in Tucson.
In a recent development from Washington, Donald Trump has become the subject of intense speculation regarding his notable weight loss, sparking discussions about his potential use of Ozempic. According to the Daily Beast’s exclusive coverage in their newsletter the Swamp, Trump’s physical transformation has caught the attention of both medical experts and political insiders. Maybe it’s actually Ozempic that’s on Trump’s dinner menu?
Trump taking Ozempic? Why not?
At the age of 78, the president’s “glow up” is officially credited by his physician Sean Barbabella to an “active lifestyle” and frequent golfing victories. However, close observers and health specialists express scepticism about such explanations fully accounting for the dramatic change. Trump’s weight reportedly dropped from an unofficial 254 lbs to an official 224 lbs, marking a 12 percent loss in body weight — a shift considered unusually rapid for lifestyle modifications alone.
Dr. Lisa Oldson, an expert in obesity medicine, expressed doubts to the Swamp about the possibility of such swift weight loss without medical aid. She stated, “Most people don’t lose [weight] that fast without meds,” adding that significant drops, such as 30 to 100 pounds, are often linked to newer pharmaceutical treatments known as GLP-1 receptor agonists. These drugs, including Ozempic and Wegovy, serve to assist patients with diabetes and obesity by moderating appetite and improving metabolism – patients like Trump.
Similarly, dietitian Dr. Carolyn Williams of Tuscaloosa, Alabama, acknowledged the likelihood that Trump’s weight loss involved GLP-1 drugs but noted that these medications often come with side effects that make users feel unwell — a condition seemingly absent in Trump’s current public appearances.
While Trump’s press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, dismissed these claims entirely, asserting to The Swamp that his “peak physical and mental condition” results from his “strenuous schedule working 20 hours per day, his exercise on the golf course, and his diet courtesy of the exceptional White House chefs,” this narrative does little to explain the broader political context.
Ozempic for Trump, but not for you
Notably, despite Trump’s personal possible benefit from such medications — which can cost upwards of $1,200 per month — his political stance took a turn this month when he scrapped former president Joe Biden’s proposal to cover obesity drugs under Medicare.
This plan aimed to make these potentially life-changing medicines accessible to millions of Americans at a time when obesity rates are soaring across the Global North. Trump’s decision to block the initiative fits a wider pattern of budget cuts and austerity measures targeting social welfare, even as he enjoys the privileges his wealth affords.
The controversy deepens with the presence of Dr. Mehmet Oz, freshly appointed head of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, who has a history of promoting dubious weight-loss products, including one that was scientifically discredited and had its research paper retracted. This juxtaposition highlights the ongoing disconnect between commercial interests, political power, and public health – a chasm often experienced by populations in the Global South while wealthy elites engage in health trends and treatments inaccessible to many.
Billionaire narcissists don’t see what the rest of us see when they look in the mirror
Elon Musk, another billionaire frequently in the limelight for his reliance on GLP-1 drugs, has voiced on social media the urgent need to make these medications affordable to the public. The contrast between Musk’s calls and Trump’s rejection of public funding for these drugs underscores a broader crisis where those with resources prioritise their own health advantages while the wider population bears the brunt of systemic neglect.
As this political saga unfolds, it vividly displays how the personal health choices and political manoeuvres of Trump reflect not just individual concerns but larger structural inequalities.
The president’s continued participation in elite pursuits like golf, alongside his refusal to extend vital health benefits, raises stark questions about the priorities of leadership touted as “making America great again” while ignoring the health crises affecting most of its people.
For now, Trump’s slimmer figure is a striking symbol of growing global disparities shaped by politics and profit.
A delegation of five congressional Democrats traveled to Louisiana on Tuesday to visit Mahmoud Khalil and Rümeysa Öztürk in the immigration prisons they’re being held in and to demand their release. The group of lawmakers, led by Rep. Troy Carter (Louisiana), is the first from Congress to visit either Khalil or Öztürk since they were abducted by immigration agents last month and flown from…
According to a leaked draft of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) budget, the Trump administration is considering eliminating federal funding for services provided to LGBTQ youth through the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline. The proposed cut — set to take effect in October, if the budget proposals are approved by Congress — would strip essential support from a service that has…
Television personality Mehmet Oz was sworn in Friday as the new administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. In his remarks, Oz stressed the need to reduce chronic illness, declaring, “It is the patriotic duty of all Americans to take care of themselves. It’s important for serving in the military, but it’s also important because healthy people don’t consume healthcare resources.
Has the love, or even more so the fixation, gone with the US dollar, that all cushioning reserve currency that has shown itself unimpeachable for decades? A curious event teasing and ruffling currency watchers and financiers is becoming a pattern: the US dollar is being sold off, suggesting it has lost its princely shine. To this can also be added the sale of US Treasuries.
Even before the global imposition of Donald Trump’s tariff-driven bonanza and his public bruising of Federal Reserve chairman, Jerome Powell, the world’s dominant currency was already being moved on. Since 2014, the Chinese and Russian central banks have tried to move out of US Treasury holdings, preferring the magic of gold. In 2022, the latter went so far as to link its currency, the ruble, to gold.
For all that, something far more dramatic would be needed to upset the status of the dollar, and certainly the authority of its “exorbitant privilege”, to use that apt term coined in the 1960s by the then French Minister of Finance, Valéry Giscard d’Estaing. Only “serious economic and financial mismanagement by the United States”, proposed economics professor Barry Eichengreen in 2010, “could precipitate flight from the dollar.”
In the autumn leading to the 2024 presidential election, there was little to suggest any such flight. The dollar had markedly appreciated, boosted by the statistical astrology of US economic growth. This continued after Trump’s victory in November. The promise of a vigorous tariff policy, one potentially inflationary, also charmed investors keen to make greater returns from their dollars, assuming a raise of interest rates by the Federal Reserve.
The tariff policy well and truly arrived on “Liberation Day” (April 2), proving to be erratic, arbitrarily derived and often economically illiterate in application. The precipitated fall of the greenback shocked the currency pundits. “For several years, the market’s been buying this US growth story, the US stock market’s been outperforming other stock markets, and suddenly you had economists thinking tariffs would push the US into recession,” remarks Jane Foley, head of foreign exchange (FX) strategy at Rabobank. Additionally, the tariff regime has encouraged countries with current account surpluses denoted in US assets to consider returning them back to domestic markets, something that will further weaken the dollar.
Trump has also lost patience with Powell, petulantly ventilating on Truth Social that the Federal Reserve chair impose pre-emptive cuts to interest rates, given the White House’s own assessment that the US faces no inflation. There would be, declared Trump in a post, a “SLOWING of the economy unless Mr. Too Late, a major loser, lowers interest rates, NOW.” While Europe continued to lower its rates, Powell had proved himself slow on the draw, “except when it came to the Election period when he lowered in order to help Sleepy Joe Biden, later Kamala, get elected.”
In the angry mist, the President floated the possibility that the central banker might be removed. His “termination” could not “come fast enough.” He also charged his advisors to distribute poisoned packages of speculation as to what he intended to do with the recalcitrant Powell. White House National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett obliged, telling reporters that, “The President and his team will continue to study that matter [of removing Powell].”
Then, in true seesaw fashion, the President claimed the opposite of what he meant, a move that also sent the market into another galloping spree. “I have no intention of firing him,” Trump told reporters on April 22. “I would like to see him be a little more active in terms of his idea to lower interest rates.”
In the tumult of it all, investors are scouring other havens, shunning the status quo and traditional sensibility of the dollar. The Japanese yen and Swiss franc are returning to favour. As is the euro. While an economist’s word should never be taken as gospel, chief currency analyst at ForexLive, Adam Button offers his view: “The market wants to invest in the fastest growing places, and the US administration is showing that it is not trying to maximize growth, or they have a different idea about how to get there. And I think that’s rattled the market.”
Curious events are unfolding as a result of Trump’s carnivalesque approach to trade and markets. While the value of the greenback has fallen, the returns from 10-year US government bonds have risen. This is the sort of thing common in new, emerging markets, where capital is susceptible to flight amidst conditions of volatility. In the US, this is the fifth time it has happened in three decades. Even with the rise in bond yields, the dollar’s slide has not been arrested.
For the easily panicked, a particular safe haven – and one already identified by central bankers and investors – is gold. With US government debt no longer attractive for traders, the yellow metal has outperformed most major assets with its giddying rise. Having passed $US3,500-an-ounce on April 22, the favouring of gold is merely one aspect of a market narrative that has turned the Trump Tariff Wall into the Selling of America.
Crystal ball gazing is a mug’s game in economics, but countries wishing to see the defanging of dollar diplomacy and greenback bullying long used by Washington to maintain power will see flashes of opportunity. The dollar’s privilege may no longer be exorbitant.
Sociologist Arlie Hochschild has spent years talking with people living in rural parts of the country who have been hit hard by the loss of manufacturing jobs and shuttered coal mines. They’re the very people President Donald Trump argues will benefit most from his sweeping wave of tariffs and recent executive orders aimed at reviving coal mining in the US. But Hochschild is skeptical that Trump’s policies will actually benefit those in rural America. But Hochschild argues that Trump’s policies will only fill an emotional need for those in rural America.
In her latest book, Stolen Pride, Hochschild visited Pikeville, Kentucky, a small city in Appalachia where coal jobs were leaving, opioids were arriving, and a white supremacist march was being planned. The more she talked to people, the more she saw how Trump played on their shame and pride about their downward mobility and ultimately used that to his political advantage. On this week’s episode of More To The Story, host Al Letson talks with Hochschild about the long slide of downward mobility in rural America and why she thinks Trump’s policies ultimately won’t benefit his most core supporters.
Producer: Josh Sanburn | Editor: Kara McGuirk-Allison | Theme music: Fernando Arruda and Jim Briggs | Digital producer: Nikki Frick | Interim executive producers: Brett Myers and Taki Telonidis | Host: Al Letson Donate today at Revealnews.org/more
Why has US President Donald Trump imposed tariffs on countries all around the world? And in particular, why is Trump waging a trade war on China? What are his real goals?
Well, to try to answer these questions, I spoke with the economist Michael Hudson, who is the author of many books, and who just published the new report “Return of the robber barons: Trump’s distorted view of US tariff history“.
Michael Hudson outlined the history of the use of tariffs in the United States and in other countries, and he explained how Trump is using tariffs as a weapon of class war, to benefit the rich at the expense of the vast majority of the population, and also how Trump is trying to reshape the global financial system, in order to benefit the United States at the expense of everyone else.
The US District Court for the District of Columbia has granted a preliminary injunction in Widakuswara v Lake, affirming the US Agency for Global Media (USAGM) was unlawfully shuttered by the Trump administration, Acting Director Victor Morales and Special Adviser Kari Lake.
The decision enshrines that USAGM must fulfill its legally required functions and protects the editorial independence of Voice of America (VOA) journalists and other federal media professionals within the agency and newsrooms that receive grants from the agency, such as Radio Free Asia and others with implications for independent media in the Asia-Pacific region.
Journalists, federal workers, and unions celebrate this important step in defending this critical agency, First Amendment rights, resisting unlawful political interference in public broadcasting, and ensuring USAGM workers can continue to fulfill their congressionally mandated function, reports the News Guild-CWA press union.
“Today’s ruling is a victory for the rule of law, for press freedom and journalistic integrity, and for democracy worldwide,” said the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) national president Everett Kelley.
“The Trump administration’s illegal attempt to shutter Voice of America and other outlets under the US Agency for Global Media was a transparent effort to silence the voices of patriotic journalists and professionals who have dedicated their careers to spreading the truth and fighting propaganda from lawless authoritarian regimes.
“This preliminary injunction will allow these employees to get back to work as we continue the fight to preserve their jobs and critical mission.”
President Lee Saunders of the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees AFSCME), the largest trade union of public employees in the United States, said: “Today’s ruling is a major win for AFSCME members and Voice of America workers who have dedicated their careers to reporting the truth and spreading freedom to millions across the world.
Judge’s message clear
“The judge’s message is clear — this administration has no right to unilaterally dismantle essential agencies simply because they do not agree with their purpose.
“We celebrate this decision and will continue to work with our partners to ensure that the Voice of America is restored.”
“Journalists hold power to account and that includes the Trump administration,” said NewsGuild-CWA president Jon Schleuss. “This injunction orders the administration to reverse course and restore the Congressionally-mandated news broadcasts of Radio Free Asia, Voice of America and other newsrooms broadcasting to people who hope for freedom in countries where that is denied.”
“We are gratified by today’s ruling. This is another step in the process to restore VOA to full operation.” said government accountability project senior counsel David Seide.
“VOA is more than just an iconic brand with deep roots in American and global history; it is a vital, living force that provides truth and hope to those living under oppressive regimes.” Image: Getty/The Conversation“Today’s ruling marks a significant victory for press freedom and for the dedicated women and men who bring it to life — our clients, the journalists, executives, and staff of Voice of America,” said Andrew G. Celli, Jr., founding partner at Emery Celli Brinckerhoff Abady Ward & Maazel LLP and counsel for the plaintiffs.
“VOA is more than just an iconic brand with deep roots in American and global history; it is a vital, living force that provides truth and hope to those living under oppressive regimes.
“We are thrilled that its voice — a voice for the voiceless — will once again be heard loud and clear around the world.
Powerful affirmation of rule of law
“This decision is a powerful affirmation of the rule of law and the vital role that independent journalism plays in our democracy. The court’s action protects independent journalism and federal media professionals at Voice of America as we continue this case, and reaffirms that no administration can silence the truth without accountability,” said Skye Perryman, president and CEO of Democracy Forward, co-counsel for the plaintiffs.
“We are proud to be with workers, unions and journalists in resisting political interference against independent journalism and will continue to fight for transparency and our democratic values.”
“Today’s decision is another necessary step in restoring the rule of law and correcting the injustices faced by the workers, reporters, and listeners of Voice of America and US Agency for Global Media,” said former Ambassador Norm Eisen, co-founder and executive chair of the State Democracy Defenders Fund.
“By granting this preliminary injunction, the court has reaffirmed the legal protections afforded to these civil servants and halted an attempt to undermine a free and independent press. We are proud to represent this resilient coalition and support the cause of a free and fair press.”
“This decision is a powerful affirmation of the role that independent journalism plays in advancing democracy and countering disinformation. From Voice of America to Radio Free Asia and across the US Agency for Global Media, these networks are essential tools of American soft power — trusted sources of truth in places where it is often scarce,” said Tom Yazdgerdi, president of the American Foreign Service Association.
“By upholding editorial independence, the court has protected the credibility of USAGM journalists and the global mission they serve.”
A critical victory
“We’re very pleased that Judge Lamberth has recognised that the Trump administration acted improperly in shuttering Voice of America,” said Clayton Weimers, executive director of Reporters Without Borders (RSF) USA.
“The USAGM must act immediately to implement this ruling and put over 1300 VOA employees back to work to deliver reliable information to their audience of millions around the world.”
While only the beginning of what may be a long, hard-fought battle, the court’s decision to grant a preliminary injunction marks a critical victory — not just for VOA journalists, but also for federal workers and the unions that represent them.
It affirms that the rule of law still protects those who speak truth to power.
In May 1932, jobless WWI veterans organized a group called the a march on Washington. 43,000 demonstrators including 17,000 veterans their families, and affiliated groups gathered to demand to demand compensation from the Federal Government for their sacrifices in World War 1. That march and it’s suppression by the military was a key factor in the overturning of a deeply reactionary Republican Administration and the onset of the New Deal.
In this same month of May 2025, plans are being made in Washington for a military parade by Donald Trump for his birthday on June 14, honoring himself. All this is occurring in the face of his planned cut of 72,000 employees in the Veterans Administration to improve “efficiency” on an agency with an already existing reputation for taking forever to process disability claims that are vital to the health of our veterans.
It’s well past time that the United States government to put less care about it’s patrons at Lockheed Martin and more care into their soldiers and veterans. It’s time to build for a new Veterans March on Washington on June 14 to counter this military parade honoring this aspiring dictator, and this is the best way to defeat him.
This is not just a moral question alone but a tactical one as well. The crux of Trump or any would-be dictator in history succeeding is based on the support of their rank and file soldiers and these are the same troops that are being grossly underpaid, exploited and expendable in the pursuit of the reckless dreams of our “fearless leader”.
Trump has openly declared that he intends to use military force against political dissent in this nation and the question of whether these same exploited soldiers are ready to pull the trigger is pivotal as to whether he succeeds or fails. They will have to choose on whether or not to stand down and uphold the US Constitution. The stark choice will be to to either resist or to follow the path of least resistance.
All of our efforts against Trump cannot and will not succeed unless and until we put the issues facing our troops and veterans front and center and June 14 is the day to do it.
Hundreds of colleges, universities and scholarly societies in the U.S. have pledged to resist the Trump administration’s “unprecedented” all-out attacks on higher education as the president targets universities with massive funding revocations and other retribution. Over 200 institutions have signed a statement, published Tuesday, calling for leaders in higher education to rise to the moment…
As green groups honor the 55th annual Earth Day on Tuesday, environmental leaders are highlighting the need to fight back against the detrimental climate policies of U.S. President Donald Trump and his “billionaire allies,” even as they brace for the possibility of further federal action that could hamper the climate movement. Since entering office, Trump has signed executive orders aimed at…
President Donald Trump castigated the Supreme Court for its weekend ruling against his plans to deport dozens of Venezuelan immigrants without recognizing their due process rights, claiming in a Truth Social post on Monday that it would be impossible to grant everyone the right to a trial that is guaranteed under the U.S. Constitution. The high court’s order was issued on Saturday after a…
In a shameless attempt to undermine international accountability for accused war criminal Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Hungarian President Viktor Orbán graciously hosted the architect of Israel’s 18-month genocide in Gaza on April 3. The International Criminal Court (ICC) is now formally investigating Hungary’s blatant refusal to fulfill its legal obligation to arrest Netanyahu…
The Education Department has announced that it is restarting student loan collections on borrowers in default for the first time since March 2020, plunging millions of Americans into further financial uncertainty even as the Trump administration is supposedly seeking to dismantle the agency entirely. In a press release on Monday, the department said that it will start involuntary collection…
An analysis released Monday in the wake of new Federal Election Commission filings shows that the Trump administration has dropped or paused federal enforcement cases against at least 17 corporations that donated to the president’s inaugural fund, an indication that companies’ attempts to buy favor with the White House are already paying off. In the new analysis, the watchdog group Public…
“I want you to do [ads] for the border,” Donald Trump told Kristi Noem after nominating her to lead the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). At least that’s what the DHS secretary recounted at a Conservative Political Action Conference dinner in February: “‘I want them around the world,’” Noem recalled Trump saying. “‘I want you to tell people not to come to this country if they’re going to come…
President Donald Trump is again loudly complaining that the US military bases in Asia are too costly for the US to bear. As part of the new round of tariff negotiations with Japan and Korea, Trump is calling on Japan and Korea to pay for stationing the US troops. Here’s a much better idea: close the bases and return the US servicemen to the US.
Trump implies that the US is providing a great service to Japan and Korea by stationing 50,000 troops in Japan and nearly 30,000 in Korea. Yet these countries do not need the US to defend themselves. They are wealthy and can certainly provide their own defense. Far more importantly, diplomacy can ensure the peace in northeast Asia far more effectively and far less expensively than US troops.
The US acts as if Japan needs to be defended against China. Let’s have a look. During the past 1,000 years, during which time China was the region’s dominant power for all but the last 150 years, how many times did China attempt to invade Japan? If you answered zero, you are correct. China did not attempt to invade Japan on a single occasion.
You might quibble. What about the two attempts in 1274 and 1281, roughly 750 years ago? It’s true that when the Mongols temporarily ruled China between 1271 and 1368, the Mongols twice sent expeditionary fleets to invade Japan, and both times were defeated by a combination of typhoons (known in Japanese lore as the Kamikaze winds) and by Japanese coastal defenses.
Japan, on the other hand, made several attempts to attack or conquer China. In 1592, the arrogant and erratic Japanese military leader Toyotomi Hideyoshi launched an invasion of Korea with the goal of conquering Ming China. He did not get far, dying in 1598 without even having subdued Korea. In 1894-5, Japan invaded and defeated China in the Sino-Japanese war, taking Taiwan as a Japanese colony. In 1931, Japan invaded northeast China (Manchuria) and created the Japanese colony of Manchukuo. In 1937, Japan invaded China, starting World War II in the Pacific region.
Nobody thinks that Japan is going to invade China today, and there is no rhyme, reason, or historical precedent to believe that China is going to invade Japan. Japan has no need for the US military bases to protect itself from China.
The same is true of China and Korea. During the past 1,000 years, China never invaded Korea, except on one occasion: when the US threatened China. China entered the war in late 1950 on the side of North Korea to fight the US troops advancing northward towards the Chinese border. At the time, US General Douglas MacArthur recklessly recommended attacking China with atomic bombs. MacArthur also proposed to support Chinese nationalist forces, then based in Taiwan, to invade the Chinese mainland. President Harry Truman, thank God, rejected MacArthur’s recommendations.
South Korea needs deterrence against North Korea, to be sure, but that would be achieved far more effectively and credibly through a regional security system including China, Japan, Russia, North Korea, South Korea, than through the presence of the US, which has repeatedly stoked North Korea’s nuclear arsenal and military build-up, not diminished it.
In fact, the US military bases in East Asia are really for the US projection of power, not for the defense of Japan or Korea. This is even more reason why they should be removed. Though the US claims that its bases in East Asia are defensive, they are understandably viewed by China and North Korea as a direct threat – for example, by creating the possibility of a decapitation strike, and by dangerously lowering the response times for China and North Korea to a US provocation or some kind of misunderstanding. Russia vociferously opposed NATO in Ukraine for the same justifiable reasons. NATO has frequently intervened in US-backed regime-change operations and has placed missile systems dangerously close to Russia.
Indeed, just as Russia feared, NATO has actively participated in the Ukraine War, providing armaments, strategy, intelligence, and even programming and tracking for missile strikes deep inside of Russia.
Note that Trump is currently obsessed with two small port facilities in Panama owned by a Hong Kong company, claiming that China is threatening US security (!), and wants the facilities sold to an American buyer. The US on the other hand surrounds China not with two tiny port facilities but with major US military bases in Japan, South Korea, Guam, the Philippines, and the Indian Ocean near to China’s international sea lanes.
The best strategy for the superpowers is to stay out of each other’s lanes. China and Russia should not open military bases in the Western Hemisphere, to put it mildly. The last time that was tried, when the Soviet Union placed nuclear weapons in Cuba in 1962, the world nearly ended in nuclear annihilation. (See Martin Sherwin’s remarkable book, Gambling with Armageddon for the shocking details on how close the world came to nuclear Armageddon). Neither China nor Russia shows the slightest inclination to do so today, despite all of the provocations of facing US bases in their own neighborhoods.
Trump is looking for ways to save money – an excellent idea given that the US federal budget is hemorrhaging $2 trillion dollars a year, more than 6% of US GDP. Closing the US overseas military bases would be an excellent place to start.
Trump even seemed to point that way at the start of his second term, but the Congressional Republicans have called for increases, not decreases, in military spending. Yet with America’s 750 or so overseas military bases in around 80 countries, it’s high time to close these bases, pocket the saving, and return to diplomacy. Getting the host countries to pay for something that doesn’t help them or the US is a huge drain of time, diplomacy, and resources, both for the US and the host countries.
The US should make a basic deal with China, Russia, and other powers. “You keep your military bases out of our neighborhood, and we’ll keep our military bases out of yours.” Basic reciprocity among the major powers would save trillions of dollars of military outlays over the coming decade and, more importantly, would push the Doomsday Clock back from 89 seconds to nuclear Armageddon.
The government funds institutions that stretch across American society. The Trump administration is demanding the relinquishment of constitutional rights to keep the money flowing.
The new guard of kleptocrats are seeking quick deals on Gaza and Ukraine, not because they want peace but because they’ve found a better way to make themselves even richer.
Anyone trying to make sense of the Trump administration’s policy towards Gaza should have a thumping headache by now.
Initially, US President Donald Trump called for the mass expulsion of Palestinians from the tiny territory wrecked by Israel over the past year and a half, so that he could build the “Riviera of the Middle East” on the crushed bodies of Gaza’s children.
He followed up last week with an explicitly genocidal threat addressed to “the people of Gaza” – all two million-plus of them. They would be “DEAD” if the Israeli hostages held by Hamas were not quickly released – a decision over which Gaza’s population has precisely no control.
To make this extermination threat more credible, his administration has expedited the transfer of an extra $4bn worth of US weapons to Israel, bypassing Congressional approval.
Those arms include more of the 2,000lb bombs sent by the Biden administration, which turned Gaza into a “demolition site“, as Trump himself called it.
The White House also nodded through Israel’s reimposition of a blockade that has once again choked off food, water and fuel to the enclave – further evidence of Israel’s genocidal intent.
But while all this was going on, Trump also dispatched to the region a special envoy, Adam Boehler, to negotiate the release of the few dozen Israeli hostages still held in Gaza.
He was given permission to break with more than 30 years of US foreign policy and meet directly with Hamas, long designated a terrorist organisation by Washington.
‘Pretty nice guys’
The meeting reportedly took place without Israel’s knowledge.
One Israeli official observed: “You can’t announce that this organisation [Hamas] needs to be eliminated and destroyed, and give Israel full backing to do it, and at the same time conduct secret and intimate contacts with the group.”
In an interview with CNN at the weekend, Boehler remarked of Hamas: “They don’t have horns growing out of their head. They’re actually guys like us. They’re pretty nice guys.”
Then, in another unprecedented move, Boehler gave interviews to Israeli TV channels to speak directly to the Israeli public – apparently to prevent Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, from misrepresenting the content of his talks with Hamas.
In one interview, Boehler said Hamas had proposed a five to 10-year truce with Israel. During that period, Hamas would be expected to “lay down its arms” and forgo political power in Gaza. He the proposal as “not a bad first offer”.
In another, he referred to Palestinian prisoners as “hostages”.
His approach left Israel quietly seething but unable to say much for fear of antagonising Trump.
‘No agent of Israel’
In parallel, Trump’s Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff – who reportedly laid down the law early on to Netanyahu by ordering him to attend a meeting on the Sabbath – headed to Doha this week to try to restore a ceasefire deal he had previously negotiated.
He appears determined to push Israel into honouring the second phase of that agreement, which requires the Israeli army to withdraw from Gaza and halt its war on the enclave. That would pave the way for a third phase, in which Gaza is reconstructed.
Witkoff’s terms, according to reports, are that Hamas agrees to demilitarise and its fighters leave the enclave.
Israel is deeply opposed to a second phase. It wants to stick with phase one, in which it finishes swapping the remaining Israeli captives held by Hamas for some of the many thousands of Palestinians imprisoned in Israeli torture camps.
The idea is that, once completed, Israel will be free to restart the slaughter.
Boehler reinforced Witkoff’s message, saying the White House hoped to “jump-start” talks and that the US was not “an agent of Israel” – implicitly acknowledging that, for many decades, it has very much looked like one.
Trump indicated a change of heart himself on Wednesday, telling reporters at the White House: “Nobody will expel the Palestinians.”
Sword of retribution
Apparently confounding Boehler’s claim that the US is able to make its own decisions about the Middle East, Trump was reported on Thursday to have removed him from dealing with the hostages issue following Israeli objections.
Meanwhile, Trump noisily shredded First Amendment protections on political speech, specifically in relation to Israel.
He signed an executive order empowering US authorities to arrest and deport visa holders protesting Israel’s year-and-a-half-long slaughter in Gaza – or what the world’s highest court is investigating as a “plausible” genocide.
That quickly resulted in the arrest of Mahmoud Khalil, a leader of last spring’s student protests at New York’s Columbia University – one of the most high-profile of dozens of protracted demonstrations on US campuses last year, which were often met with police violence.
The Department of Homeland Security accused Khalil of “activities” – namely, campus protests – supposedly “aligned to Hamas”. These demonstrations, it alleged, threatened “US national security”.
“This is the first arrest of many to come,” Trump wrote on social media, declaring that his administration would be coming after anyone “engaged in pro-terrorist, anti-Semitic, anti-American activity”. Axios reported last week that Secretary of State Marco Rubio planned to use AI to search through foreign students’ social media accounts for signs of “terrorist” sympathies.
These developments formalise Washington’s working assumption that any opposition to Israel’s killing and maiming of tens of thousands of Palestinian children should be equated with terrorism – a view increasingly shared, it seems, by UK and European authorities.
In concert, the White House announced that it was cancelling some $400m in federal grants and contracts to Columbia University over its “continued inaction in the face of persistent harassment of Jewish students”.
Confusingly, the university administration was among the most hardline in calling in police to crush the protests against the genocide. But the financial cuts had the intended effect, with Columbia announcing on Thursday it would inflict stringent punishments, including expulsions and degree revocations, on students and graduates who had taken part in a campus sit-in last year.
Some 60 other institutions have reportedly received letters warning that they are in danger of funding cuts if they do not “protect Jewish students” – a reference to those who cheerlead Israel’s war crimes.
That will come at a heavy price for other students, including many Jewish students, who have been exercising their constitutional right to criticise Israel’s crimes.
A sword of retribution now hangs over every single publicly funded centre of higher learning in the US: crush any sign of opposition to Israel’s destruction of Gaza, or face dire financial consequences.
‘Baffling rhetoric’
Does any of this amount to a clear strategy? Does it make any sense?
These mixed messages fit a pattern with the Trump administration. Its wider strategy is, as Francesca Albanese, the United Nations special rapporteur on the occupied territories, calls it: psychological overwhelming.
“Hitting us every day with XXL [extra-extra large] doses of baffling rhetoric and erratic policies serves to ‘control the script’, distracting and disorienting us, normalising the absurd, all while disrupting global stability (and consolidating US control).”
The White House is doing something similar over Ukraine.
It is now talking directly to Russia, shutting the door on Nato membership for Ukraine, publicly humiliating Ukraine’s president, while also threatening more sanctions and tariffs on Moscow unless it agrees to a rapid ceasefire.
The Trump administration’s goal is to normalise its inconsistencies, hypocrisies, lies and misdirections so they become entirely unremarkable.
Opposition to its will – a will that can change from day to day, or week to week – will be treated as treasonous. The only safe response in such circumstances is acquiescence, passivity and silence.
In the tumultuous political landscape Trump has created, the one constant – our North Star – is the western media’s uncritical cheerleading of the West’s war industries.
Consider the Biden administration. The media’s harshest condemnation came not over the destruction Washington wrought on Afghanistan during its 20-year occupation, but for ending the war – a war that had left the country in ruins and the official enemy, the Taliban, stronger than ever.
Contrast that with the media’s resolutely muted response to Biden’s 15 months of arming Israel’s genocide in Gaza. In doing so, the media eagerly cast aside their supposed humanitarian concerns, including their ritualistic nods to the post-Second World War global order and international law.
Similarly, the media have been openly critical of Trump’s overtures to Russia over Ukraine, siding with European leaders who insist the war must continue to the bitter end – regardless of how much higher the death toll of Ukrainians and Russians climbs as a result.
And predictably, the media have gone out of their way to accommodate Trump’s Israel-supporting, openly genocidal rhetoric and actions towards Gaza.
It was astonishing to watch outlets that regularly portray Trump as a threat to democracy contort themselves to whitewash his explicit call to exterminate “the people of Gaza” should the hostages not be immediately released. Instead, they mendaciously suggested he was referring only to Hamas leadership.
It is not just Trump and his team who are well practised in the dark arts of deception.
Illegitimacy trap
While the Trump administration may be playing fast and loose with Washington’s political culture, it is largely adhering to the West’s traditional script on Israel and Palestine.
Witkoff and Boehler are deploying a well-worn strategy, binding the Palestinians into what could be called an illegitimacy trap. Damned if you do; damned if you don’t.
Whatever Palestinians choose – and however much they are dispossessed and brutalised – it is they, and anyone who supports them, who are cast as the villains. The criminals. The oppressors. The Jew-haters. The terrorists.
This applies not only to Hamas but also to the accommodationists of Fatah.
Faced with relentless dispossession through decades of Israeli colonisation, Palestinian factions have responded in the two main ways available to them.
One is to adopt the course enshrined in international law as the right of all occupied peoples: armed resistance. This is the path Hamas has taken as it governs the concentration camp that is Gaza.
Every US administration, including the current one, however, has conditioned any talks about statehood on Palestinians renouncing armed resistance from the outset, dismissing their right in international law as terrorism.
For that reason, until now, Hamas has always been excluded from negotiations. The talks that have taken place – over its head – have operated on the assumption that Hamas must be disarmed before Israel is expected to make any concessions.
Hamas must relinquish its weapons voluntarily – against an opponent armed to the teeth, whose bad faith in negotiations is legendary – or it will be forcibly disarmed by Israel or its rival, Fatah.
In other words, peace with Israel is premised on civil war for Palestinians.
That appears to be the course the Trump administration will pursue. For now, it is demanding that Hamas “demilitarise” voluntarily. When that fails, Hamas will find itself back at square one.
Endless accommodation
Faced with Trump’s plan to ethnically cleanse the Palestinians from Gaza, Hamas has precisely no incentive to disarm.
In fact, it has a further disincentive. Its rivals in Fatah are all too visibly caught in their own, even more fatal, illegitimacy trap.
Mahmoud Abbas’s faction, which heads the Palestinian Authority (PA) in the West Bank, has chosen the alternative to armed resistance: diplomacy and endless political accommodation.
The problem is that Israel has never shown the slightest interest in granting the Palestinians – even Fatah’s “moderates” – a state.
Even during the so-called apex of peacemaking – the Oslo Accords of the 1990s – Palestinian statehood was never mentioned.
Oslo was simply a nebulous process in which Israel was supposed to gradually withdraw from the occupied territories as Palestinian leaders took responsibility for maintaining “security” – meaning, in practice, Israel’s security.
In short, the Oslo concept of “peace” was little different from the catastrophic status quo in Gaza before the genocide began.
During its so-called disengagement in 2005, Israel pulled its soldiers back to a fortified cordon, and from there controlled all movement and trade in and out of the enclave.
In the vacated space, Israel allowed only a glorified local authority, running the schools, emptying the bins and acting as a security contractor for Israel against those not ready to accept this as their permanent fate.
Hamas refused to play ball.
Abbas’s PA, on the other hand, accepted this kind of model for its series of cantons across the West Bank – on the assumption that obedience would eventually pay dividends.
It hasn’t. Now Israel is gearing up to formally annex most of the West Bank, backed by the Trump administration. Behind the scenes, the White House is finagling support from the Gulf states.
Fatah cannot extricate itself any more than Hamas from the illegitimacy trap set for it by Washington and Europe.
Clinging to the old order
Paradoxically, critics in Washington – backed by the media and European elites – dismiss Trump’s moves on Ukraine as appeasement of a supposedly resurgent Russian imperialism, rather than as peacemaking.
These same critics are equally discomfited by the Trump administration’s meetings with Hamas.
All of this breaks with the decades-old Washington consensus, which dictates who are the good guys and who are the bad guys, who are the law enforcers and who are the terrorists.
In typical fashion, Trump is disrupting these former certainties.
The reassuring, knee-jerk response is to take one side or another. Either Trump is a mould-breaker, remaking a dysfunctional world order. Or he is a fascist-in-the-making, who will hasten the collapse of the established world order, bringing it crashing down on our heads.
The truth is he is both.
There is a consistency to Trump’s approach to both Ukraine and Gaza – despite the apparent contradiction. In both he appears determined to bring to an end a failing status quo. In the former, he wants an end to war and destruction by forcing Ukraine’s surrender; in the latter, he wants the running sore of a Palestinian concentration camp gone by forcibly emptying it of its inhabitants.
This new consistency replaces an older one, in which Washington’s elite perpetuated forever wars against painted devils that justified the siphoning of national wealth into the coffers of the war industries on which that elite’s wealth depended.
The pretexts for those forever wars had become so threadbare, and so destabilising in a world of ever-depleting resources, that the elites behind those wars were utterly discredited.
The far-right, most especially Trump, is riding that wave of disillusionment. And its success stems precisely from this rule-breaking, by presenting itself as a new broom sweeping away the old guard of corporate war-makers.
As the Bidens, Starmers, Macrons, and Von der Leyens sink deeper into the mire, the more desperately they cling to a crumbling system. Trump’s disruption works against them.
Feathering their nests
But the new guard is no more invested in peace than the old, as Gaza makes clear. It is simply looking for new ways to do business – new deals that still siphon national wealth away from ordinary people and into the pockets of billionaires.
Trump would rather strike lucrative deals with Russia’s Vladimir Putin over resources – in both Russia and Ukraine – than sink more money into a futile war that locks up the region’s vast potential profits.
And he would rather put an end to Gaza’s decades-long status as a no-go zone, a holding centre for Palestinians, when it could instead be transformed into a playground for the rich, its vast offshore gas reserves finally exploited.
The new guard of kleptocrats is less interested in forever wars – not because they have any love for peace, but because they believe they’ve found a better way to make themselves even richer.
This newfound openness to “doing things differently” has an appeal, especially after decades of the same cynical elites waging the same cynical wars.
But make no mistake: the fundamentals remain unchanged. The rich are still looking out for themselves. They are still feathering their own nests, not yours. They still see the world as their plaything, where lesser humans – you and me – are expendable.
If he can, Trump will end the war in Ukraine by cutting a money-making deal, over Kyiv’s head, with Russia.
If he can, Trump will end the slaughter in Gaza by striking a deal with Israel and the Gulf states, over the heads of Hamas and Fatah, to ethnically cleanse the Palestinians from their homeland.
And if he can get away with it, Trump is ready for something else, too. He’s prepared to break heads at home to ensure his critics can’t stop him and his billionaire pals from getting their way.
The global markets have been rattled under the presidency of far-right menace Donald Trump, revealing the stark failure of the promises made at his inauguration and exposing the broader fragility of the Global North’s economic models.
Contrary to the hopeful predictions of a triumphant surge in the stock markets following Trump’s rise to power, the S&P 500 has plummeted by a severe 14% since he took office. This marks the worst start to a presidential term in nearly a century, as reported by the IndexBox Market Intelligence Platform.
The decline is historic in its scale; the 14% fall in just three months is the most significant drop since 1928 and even surpasses the 9% fall seen during Franklin D. Roosevelt’s third term amidst the cataclysmic conditions of 1941.
Donald Trump: the worst start to a presidency in 100 years for the stock markets
The Bespoke Investment Group’s analysis reveals that the initial spike in the market, sparked by Trump’s promises of tax cuts and rolling back regulations, has been swiftly undone by his erratic and unpredictable trade policies, which have sown uncertainty and chaos.
While the US market has stumbled, the global picture is uneven yet telling. Across the board, 45 country ETFs have been surveyed, and only Taiwan’s market has fared worse, collapsing by 15.5%.
Meanwhile, European markets have displayed a sharp contrast to this turmoil. Germany’s iShares MSCI ETF climbed by an encouraging 10.8%, and Italy’s stock market rose by 10.2% over the same timeframe, demonstrating a resilience that starkly contrasts with America’s faltering financial stage.
This unfolding economic drama underscores the failures not only of Trump’s administration but also highlights the inherent weaknesses in the broader Global North’s economic systems.
Promises of growth and prosperity under leadership primarily focused on corporate and elite interests have resulted instead in instability and fear, hitting ordinary people hard across the US and beyond.
The Global North: falling apart
The continued turbulence of US markets reflects deeper systemic issues, where short-term gains for a privileged few come at the grave expense of the majority’s economic security.
As the shockwaves of Trump’s policies ripple globally, it is clear that the myth of the American economic miracle has taken a hard knock, urging a critical look at the directions championed by the Global North’s ruling elites.
The sharp market decline acts as a stark headline for the failures many have long warned about—failures which not only devastate domestic livelihoods but also weaken economies worldwide.
For more than 100 years, the United States and Canada have benefitted from a peaceful 5,500-mile (or 8,900-kilometre) border and co-operation on many issues of common concern. Michigan has benefitted from this relationship and without Canada, restoration efforts in the Great Lakes would not have begun in the 1970s to transform the region’s Rust Belt legacy of industrial pollution.
Michigan officials, and those of the seven other Great Lakes states, are fully aware of this history, so it is puzzling that they’ve been silent in the wake of a stream of suggestions by President Donald Trump that Canada should become the 51st state.
Some would posit, “If you have nothing nice to say, don’t say anything.”
US president Donald Trump is not beholden to that epithet and neither is his vice-president JD “I don’t like China” Vance.
Previously, in January 2018, Trump was criticized for referring to Haiti and African countries as “shithole countries.”
On 8 April 2025, Trump took pleasure in describing countries purportedly cowering at the prospect of US tariffs being levied on them:
These countries are calling us up, kissing my ass. They are, they are dying to make a deal. Please, please sir, make a deal. I’ll do anything. I’ll do anything sir.
The same lack of respectful discourse is followed by Vance. At a meeting in the White House on 28 February 2025, Volodomyr Zelenskyy found himself attacked on two sides. However unsavoury a character Zelenskyy is, and however improper his remarks might have been when he was at the White House, he was a guest. And the attack, in particular by Vance, on a guest was unbecoming.
We borrow money from Chinese peasants to buy the things those Chinese peasants manufacture.
Decidedly, it was a boorish comment from the vice-president. China’s foreign ministry spokesperson Lin Jian was not impressed:
It is surprising and sad to hear such ignorant and impolite words from this vice president.
Is Vance merely revealing his ignorance as well as rudeness? Is there any truth to the depiction Vance proffers on China?
Today’s Chinese “peasants”
China has eliminated extreme poverty. The US Census Bureau’s Supplemental Poverty Measure (SPM) and official poverty data report 5.3% of Americans (around 17.5 million people) as living in “deep poverty” (with incomes below 50% of the federal poverty line) (source: Census.gov – Poverty Tables [Table B-1, B-2]).
An end to extreme poverty posits an end to homelessness. In the US, homelessness is rising in recent years. Ecofact.org reports:
There were 771,480 people recorded as homeless in 2024 — or about 23 per 10,000 people. This represented an increase of over 18% relative to the numbers recorded in 2023. The data show that 36 percent of the homeless were unsheltered — that is, they lived in places not considered fit for human habitation …
Chinese peasants live in the world’s largest economy expressed as GDP (PPP). Chinese peasants put up a space station on their own. Cars produced by Chinese peasants are dominating the world market. And Chinese peasants have developed (Chinese tech is stolen according to Vance) flying cars for the markets, when the markets are ready. These peasants are great at innovating and manufacturing: Comac C919 narrow-body airliner, Long March rockets, 30-satellite Beidou positioning system, molten salt thorium reactors, HarmonyOS, 5.5G, 3nm chips, robotics, AI, hypersonic weapons, etc, etc.
And pertinently for peasants, China’s agricultural sector is undergoing significant transformation through technological innovation, while in the US, farmers are worried about China’s retaliatory tariffs.
Many Americans, if presented the choice, might well opt for Chinese peasant status.
On April 17, US airstrikes on Yemen killed 74 people and injured 171 in a dangerous escalation of US President Donald Trump’s war against the poorest country in the Middle East. A resident of the area around Yemen’s Ras Issa fuel port told Chinese media that “among the victims were employees, truck drivers, contracted workers, and civilian trainees of the port,” and “rescue teams recovering bodies and extinguishing fires were also targeted in [US] subsequent strikes.”
Trump’s attack targeted Ras Issa a vital lifeline connecting the isolated, bombarded country to outside supply shipments. For its part, the US administration claimed that the bombing intended to prevent Iranian fuel from reaching “the Iran-backed Houthi terrorists” in order to “deprive them of illegal revenue that has funded Houthi efforts to terrorize the entire region for over 10 years.”
While it is US policy to delegitimize Ansar Allah (also known as “the Houthis”) as “Iran-backed terrorists,” in fact, 80 percent of Yemenis live under the Sanaa-based Supreme Political Council led by Ansar Allah, making them Yemen’s de facto government. They have a huge degree of public support, as evidenced by the regular protests of tens of even hundreds of thousands of Yemenis opposing US aggression and supporting Ansar Allah’s armed support for Palestinian liberation.
Ansar Allah survived eight years of Saudi-led attacks on Yemen, a war of aggression (backed militarily and diplomatically by governments of the US, Canada, and Europe) that levelled civilian infrastructure and killed almost 400,000 Yemenis. Trump’s bombings will not destroy the vilified “Houthi rebels,” but that is not their goal. What Washington wants is to force Yemen to withdraw its armed support for Palestinians resisting Israel’s genocide.
After Israel launched its onslaught against Gaza in October 2023, Yemen imposed a blockade on Red Sea shipping to Israel. As Israel’s assault on Palestinians in Gaza reached genocidal proportions, Yemen launched drone and missile attacks against Israeli targets. From the beginning, Ansar Allah was very forthright: they stated that the attacks on Red Sea ships and Israeli targets would stop once Israel ceased its genocidal assault on Gaza. During the Gaza ceasefire of January 19 to March 18, 2025, Ansar Allah did cease its military actions in the Red Sea (even as Israel violated the ceasefire 962 times), clearly demonstrating the connection between Israel’s genocide and Yemeni military activity.
US efforts to paint the Yemenis as puppets of Iran, mindless terrorists, and maritime pirates are part of a concerted effort by Washington to obfuscate the just, defensive, and humanitarian motivations behind Ansar Allah’s actions. The recent phase of US attacks on Yemen began in January 2024 under former president Joe Biden, and these bombings received logistical support from, among other countries, Canada and the United Kingdom. After coming to office, Trump intensified the US war on Yemen. Since March, his attacks have killed more than 50 Yemenis, not counting the recent bombardment of civilians at the Ras Issa port. Reportedly, his administration is mulling a ground invasion of Yemen.
One must always keep in mind why America is upping its attacks on the Yemeni people. It is because Yemen is trying to prevent Israel, an outpost of US power in the Middle East, from carrying out a genocide. That’s it. International and humanitarian law mean nothing to Washington. US efforts to paint Ansar Allah as illegitimate, criminal, or aggressors are transparent attempts to rhetorically discredit a regional resistance movement in order to make the massacre of Yemenis palatable to Western audiences.
In the US empire’s eyes, the reason Yemenis need to be massacred is obvious: they are opponents of Israel’s genocide in Gaza. Trump is massacring Yemenis so that Israel can continue massacring Palestinians. It really is that simple.
Nobody is complaining anymore about Latin America and the Caribbean being neglected by the hegemon to the north. The Trump administration is contending with it on multiple fronts: prioritizing “massive deportations,” halting the “flood of drugs,” combatting “threats to US security,” and stopping other countries from “ripping us off” in trade. The over 200-year-old Monroe Doctrine is alive and on steroids.
But has Washington taken a sharp right turn, qualitatively departing from past practices, or simply intensified an already manifest imperial trajectory? And, from a south-of-the-border perspective, to what extent are the perceived problems “made in the USA”?
Externalization of problems
The view from Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) is that the Yankees have a problem; they project their issues onto their southern neighbors. An extreme example is Barack Obama’s baseless declaration in 2015 of a “national emergency” – subsequently reaffirmed by each successive president – because of the “unusual and extraordinary threat” posed by Venezuela.
From Washington’s imperial perspective, problems are seen as coming from the south with the US as the victim when, as in the case of Venezuela’s national security, reality is inverted.
Another case in point: migration is seen as a supply-side conundrum; “they” are “invading us.” In practice, deliberate past US policy (Trump has largely ended these practices) encouraged migration from Venezuela, Nicaragua, and especially Cuba to weaken their governments.
More to the point, as has been admitted by some of the perpetrators, the main driver for migrants to leave their homes and face great risks in transit are not pull factors, such as a purported love of “our democracy,” but push factors. These range from capitalist exploitation of Central America’s Northern Triangle to the impoverishment caused by US unilateral coercive measures in Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua.
As for drugs, trenchantly pointed out by Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum to her US counterpart, the US itself harbors cartels, is the largest narcotic consumer market, exports the majority of armaments used by drug barons and hosts money laundering banks.
Rather than “ripping off” Uncle Sam in trade, the LAC region runs lopsided deficits in service industries, a trade benefit conveniently ignored when Trump’s tariffs were calculated. US firms also benefit from LAC as a low-cost source of inputs and assembly for their supply chains. The imperialist narrative conveniently omits crediting its access to strategic resources at favorable terms and the dominance of US firms and dollar-based finance. Various trade agreements, which Trump treats as giveaways, in practice favor US corporations. Unequal exchange is established as a key factor in underdevelopment of the LAC region, despite Trump’s assertion of the opposite.
Finally, gang violence is another US export: literally so in the case of the notorious Mara Salvatrucha and Barrio 18 gangs which originated in Los Angeles and whose members were deported by US authorities to El Salvador.
Migration becomes “invasion”
Biden’s ambivalence on migration, tightening aspects of border controls but encouraging more than half a million Latinos to enter the US via “humanitarian parole,” gave Trump an opening. He sold his working class base the notion that migrants were not just taking US jobs but were “criminals.” His populist argument appears to side with US workers, but doesn’t impact the corporate elites who support him.
In fact, deportations have not increased, but are now much higher profile and overtly political. So Venezuelans are arbitrarily characterized as gang members and sent to prison in El Salvador. Deportations to other countries have involved waving the big stick: supposed “allies,” Costa Rica and Panama, have even been obliged to accept asylum seekers from elsewhere, rejected and abandoned by Washington.
The “war on drugs” risks becoming a literal war
Trump’s anti-drug policy has maintained a decades-long focus on supply-side enforcement with a renewed emphasis on deploying military assets to attack cartels and interdict drug shipments.
What has distinguished his approach is not so much the policy itself, but the blunt and often unilateral manner in which it is being implemented. Support is overtly conditioned on political alignment with Washington’s objectives.
So troops are deployed on the southern border and Mexico’s cartels are threatened with drone attacks, with no promise to consult Mexican authorities. Alleged members of Venezuela’s Tren de Aragua gang are treated as terrorists, and wartime legislation is deployed against them as supposed agents of a narco-terrorist state.
Hemispheric security
The focus of current US policy in the region is countering Chinese influence, particularly Beijing’s investments in infrastructure, telecommunications, and energy. “The expanding role of the Chinese Communist Party in the Western Hemisphere,” Trump’s Secretary of State Marco Rubio complains, “threatens US interests.”
Yet while the US approaches geopolitics as a “zero-sum game” in which its military dominance is a priority, China professes to follow the principles of “equality and mutual benefit,” offering carrots rather than waving a stick.
China’s economic penetration has been spectacular, making it the region’s second largest trading partner and the first in South America itself. However, Trump has succeeded in forcing Panama to leave China’s Belt and Road Initiative, while Brazil and Mexico, the region’s two largest economies have yet to join, presumably due to US pressure. In Peru, users of a major port developed by China may be threatened by special tariffs.
The US International Development Finance Corporation’s budget is slated to double. According to Foreign Policy, it should be strengthened still further to combat China’s influence. However, China has an enormous head start, and the US will struggle to catch up, especially as its other development agency, USAID, has had its budget decimated.
Militarily, Trump has increased the visibility and scope of US security operations in the region. Joint exercises, port calls, and programs like the Caribbean Basin Security Initiative continue to be ramped up. While Latin American leaders at April’s CELAC summit called for the region to be a “zone of peace,” Trump threatens war:
Panama has been strong-armed into accepting a greater US military presence, in what has been dubbed a camouflaged invasion.
Ecuador’s President Noboa is accepting US military help as well as the private mercenaries of Blackwater’s Erik Prince, in his own “war” against gang violence.
Marco Rubio has warned Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro that “we have a big navy, and it can get almost anywhere,” threatening to deploy forces in neighboring Guyana.
NATO’s presence in the region has been growing with Colombia already a “partner” and Argentina working to become one. The latter’s collaboration is vital to the West’s military role in the South Atlantic. Its president Milei has become tellingly ambivalent about his country’s claim to the British-occupied Malvinas islands, which are key to strategic dominance.
War by other means – tariffs and sanctions
Washington’s enormous machinery of unilateral coercive measures (aka “sanctions”), now total 15,373 (of which over 5,000 were imposed in Trump’s first term). The US blockade of Cuba has been tightened, and it is even attempting to throttle Cuba’s extraordinarily effective and popular medical missions abroad. Rubio issued an ominous warning: “The moment of truth is arriving, Cuba is literally collapsing.”
Sanctions against Venezuela have also been strengthened, despite Trump initially hinting at a more collaborative approach. Nicaragua has so far evaded new sanctions, but is threatened both with exclusion from the regional trade agreement (CAFTA) which benefits its exports, and with the loss of its remaining multilateral source of development finance.
The region escaped relatively lightly from Trump’s “Liberation Day” declarations, with a new, minimum 10 percent tariff. Mexico still faces heavy tariff barriers and higher “reciprocal” tariffs on some other LAC countries – Guyana, Venezuela and Nicaragua – have been postponed until July.
Prospects for LAC unity or sowing seeds in the sea
Fragmentation of regional unity has been a long-standing US policy objective. Trump, in particular, openly disdains multilateralism, which is really another term for opposition to US imperialism.
Left-leaning electoral victories in Mexico (2018), Chile and Honduras (2021), and Colombia and Brazil (2022) have bolstered regional unity. This so-called Pink Tide added to the successes and leadership of Cuba, Nicaragua, and Venezuela and their respective socialist revolutions.
But upcoming elections in Chile and Honduras (November), and Colombia and Brazil (both 2026) could significantly reverse those gains. Continuation of leftist rule in Bolivia after this coming August’s election looks dim, given bitter splits in its ranks. In a reportedly fraudulent election in Ecuador, the leftist challenge to the incumbent Noboa appears to have failed. However, current rightist hegemony in Peru’s 2026 election could be challenged.
Foreign Affairspredicts: “Widespread frustration over organized crime throughout the hemisphere, as well as social changes such as the spread of evangelical Christianity, mean that right-wing leaders may be favored to win upcoming elections.”
The future for progressive unity is therefore uncertain and has constrained LAC’s response to the Trumpocalypse. The Organization of American States will not question US imperialism. The alternative regional mechanism, CELAC, was set up without Washington’s participation, in part to rectify the OAS’s deficiencies. A broad, anti-imperialist statement drafted by Honduran President Xiomara Castro for its recent summit was heavily watered down by Argentina and Paraguay, who then rejected even the weakened version (Nicaragua also rejected it, for the opposite reasons). CELAC ended up decrying sanctions and calling for LAC to be a zone of peace, but failed to explicitly support Cuba or Venezuela against US aggression.
The multilateral body with a potentially strong but as yet unclear regional influence is the BRICS, of which Brazil is a founding member and now has associates Cuba and Bolivia. Other LAC countries are keen to join. But (in another show of regional disunity, this time on the left) Venezuela’s and Nicaragua’s recent applications were blocked by Brazil.
From Biden to Trump – a bridge or a break?
Independent of the theatre surrounding Trump’s performance style – inflammatory language, threats, and public ultimatums – his underlying policies are mostly aligned with the bipartisan consensus that has long guided US policy for the region. These include support for market-oriented reforms, militarized security assistance, antagonism to leftist governments, and containment of Chinese influence.
When the actual consequences are examined, what might be called the “Biden bridge” underlies, at least in part, Trump’s distinctively confrontational practices. For instance, in March 2020, Trump placed a $15M bounty on the head of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro. Biden reciprocated, upping the ante to $25M in January 2025. Or, compare the number of deportees in Trump’s term to-date in 2025 to a comparable period in 2024, when Biden booted out even more migrants.
Under Trump’s first administration, Biden’s interim tenure, and now Trump’s return, deportation machinery remained largely intact, enforcement funding stayed robust, and private detention centers prospered. In effect, Biden normalized the enforcement-heavy model, just without Trump’s nativist overtones.
In short, Washington’s regional policy has become increasingly shaped by institutional inertia and bipartisan enforcement consensus, rather than sharply divergent ideological commitments.
That is not to say the policy has been static. In fact, the trajectory has been precipitously to the right. Warning that the “anti-leftist component of Trumpism can’t be overstated.” Latin America analyst Steve Ellner predicts, “when threats and populism lose their momentum, the anti-communist hawks may get their way.”
So, there is a “Biden-bridge” in the sense of the continuation of a trajectory of increasingly aggressive imperialism from one president to the next. But there is also a “bridge too far” aspect, of which dumping migrants in El Salvador’s pay-by-the-head prison is (so far) the most extreme example.
If there is an upside to Trump’s return to the Oval Office, it is that he unapologetically exposes the core imperialist drive for naked domination, making explicit the coercive foundations of US hegemony in the region. While Trump pays scant regard to international commitments, disregarding trade treaties, his predecessors – Biden, Obama, Clinton, and Bush – all promoted the “rules-based order” to reflect US priorities, conveniently replacing international law.
Trump’s policies have been a stark amplification of enduring US priorities. They have revealed the structural limits of regional autonomy under Yankee hegemony, especially as Trump’s new territorial ambitions stretch from Greenland to Panama. The strongarm underpinnings of policies, previously cloaked in the hypocritical language of partnership, now take the form of mafia-style threats.
Nobody is complaining anymore about Latin America and the Caribbean being neglected by the hegemon to the north. The Trump administration is contending with it on multiple fronts: prioritizing “massive deportations,” halting the “flood of drugs,” combatting “threats to US security,” and stopping other countries from “ripping us off” in trade. The over 200-year-old Monroe Doctrine is alive and on steroids.
But has Washington taken a sharp right turn, qualitatively departing from past practices, or simply intensified an already manifest imperial trajectory? And, from a south-of-the-border perspective, to what extent are the perceived problems “made in the USA”?
![To President Trump, the USAGM [Voice of America] has become a promoter of "anti-American ideas" and agendas](https://asiapacificreport.nz/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/VOA-TConv-680wide-300x215.png)
