This week on CounterSpin: If “some people believe it” were the criterion, our daily news would be full of respectful consideration of the Earth’s flatness, the relationship of intelligence to the bumps on your head, and how stepping on a crack might break your mother’s back. News media don’t, in fact, use “some people think it’s true” as the threshold for whether a notion gets talked about seriously, gets “balanced” alongside what “data suggest.” It’s about power.
Look no further than Robert Kennedy Jr. When he was just a famously named man about town, we heard about how he dumped a bear carcass in Central Park for fun, believes that children’s gender is shaped by chemicals in the water, and asserts that Covid-19 was “targeted to attack Caucasians and Black people,” while leaving “Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese” immune.
But once you become RFK Jr., secretary of health and human services in a White House whose anger must not be drawn, those previously unacceptable ideas become, as a recent New York Timespiece has it, “unorthodox.”
Kennedy’s unorthodox ideas may get us all killed while media whistle. We hear from Dr. Paul Offit, director of the Vaccine Education Center at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, about that.
Also on the show: For many years, social justice advocates rather discounted the Federal Communications Commission. Unlike the Federal Trade Commission or the Food and Drug Administration, whose actions had visible impacts on your life, the FCC didn’t seem like a player.
That changed over recent years, as we’ve seen the role the federal government plays in regulating the power of media corporations to control the flow of information. As the late, great media scholar Bob McChesneyexplained, “When the government grants free monopoly rights to TV spectrum…it is not setting the terms of competition; it is picking the winner.”
A new analysis indicates Republicans’ plan to extend soon-to-expire provisions of their party’s 2017 tax law, as well as their push to tack on additional tax breaks largely benefitting the rich and big corporations, would cost $7 trillion over the next decade, a figure that a group of congressional Democrats called “staggering.” The analysis from the nonpartisan Joint Committee on Taxation…
US president Donald Trump has imposed sweeping tariffs on countries around the world. But in doing this, Trump is raising the import prices for some of the largest US companies. Predictably, they’ve dropped in the market. What’s more, the US president himself owns shares in some of the companies.
While we have the world’s smallest violin for these huge companies, is this what Trump wants?
Trump tariffs backfiring – majorly
Take Apple. The trillion pound company has supply and manufacturing chains all around the world, including in China, India, Vietnam and Taiwan. And Trump hit all these countries with tariffs: China at 54%, India at 27%, Vietnam at 46% and Taiwan at 32%. Import tariffs such as these have resulted in Apple’s share prices dropping 9%, wiping £191 billion from its value. The US president owns shares in Apple worth £382,000.
Analysts at Rosenblatt Securities said Apple could raise iPhone prices by 43% because of the tariffs. That’s if they pass the costs on to consumers, despite Apple making net profit of £72 billion in 2024.
The tariffs have also impacted retail giants such as Amazon, Walmart and Target. All of these companies saw a share drop of more than 10% in March.
Trump is going further than his trade wars in his last administration. Everyone knows how damaging it is to American companies themselves (and say US farmers who are then hit with retaliatory tariffs). So the policies may not result in good faith favourable trade deals for the US. This is not a surprise from Trump who has bankrupted six of his own businesses.
There is no winner in a trade war, and there is no way out for protectionism
As the second largest economy, the country has promised countermeasures.
In response to all this, the UK could look to forge new relationships with other nations in order to provide an effective response to Trump’s tariffs. The US president imposed tariffs of 10% on UK imports. And business secretary Jonathan Reynolds told MPs that the Britain could retaliate with its own tariffs.
But with Keir Starmer acting as a midwife to the far right through ushering in Nigel Farage and Reform in the UK, it’s unlikely they will properly stand up to Trump.
Now that Phil Goff has ended his term as New Zealand’s High Commissioner to the UK, he is officially free to speak his mind on the damage he believes the Trump Administration is doing to the world. He has started with these comments he made on the betrayal of Ukraine by the new Administration.
By Phil Goff
Like many others, I was appalled and astounded by the dishonest comments made about the situation in Ukraine by the Trump Administration.
As one untruthful statement followed another like something out of a George Orwell novel, I increasingly felt that the lies needed to be called out.
I found it bizarre to hear President Trump publicly label Ukraine’s leader Volodymyr Zelenskyy a dictator. Everyone knew that Zelenskyy had been democratically elected and while Trump claimed his support in the polls had fallen to 4 percent it was pointed out that his actual support was around 57 percent.
Phil Goff speaking as Auckland’s mayor in 2017 on the nuclear world 30 years on . . . on the right side of history. Image: Pacific Media Centre
Trump made no similar remarks or criticism of Russia’s Vladimir Putin and never does. Yet Putin’s regime imprisons and murders his opponents and suppresses democratic rights in Russia.
Then Trump made the patently false accusation that Ukraine started the war with Russia. How could he make such a claim when the world had witnessed Russia as the aggressor which invaded its smaller neighbour, killing thousands of civilians, committing war crimes and destroying cities and infrastructure?
That President Trump could lie so blatantly is perhaps explained by his taking offence at Zelenskyy’s refusal to comply with unreasonable and self-serving demands such as ceding control of Ukraine’s mineral wealth to the US. What was also clear was that Trump was intent on pressuring Ukraine to capitulate to Russian demands for a one sided “peace settlement” which would result in neither a fair nor sustainable peace.
It is astonishing that the US voted with Russia and North Korea in the United Nations against Ukraine and in opposition to the views of democratic countries the US is normally aligned with, including New Zealand.
Withdrew satellite imaging
It then withdrew satellite imaging services Ukraine needed for its self defence in an attempt to further pressure Zelenskyy to agree to a ceasefire. No equivalent pressure has yet been placed on Russia even while it has continued its illegal attacks on Ukraine.
Trump and Vance’s disgraceful bullying of Zelenskyy in the White House as he struggled in his third language to explain the plight of his nation was as remarkable as it was appalling.
What Trump was doing and saying was wrong and a betrayal of Ukraine’s struggle to defend its freedom and nationhood.
Democratic leaders around the world knew his comments to be unfair and untrue, yet few countries have dared to criticise Trump for making them.
Like the Hans Christian Anderson fairy tale, everyone knew that the emperor had no clothes but were fearful of the consequences of speaking out to tell the truth.
As New Zealand’s High Commissioner to the UK, I had on a number of occasions met and talked with Ukrainian soldiers being trained by New Zealanders in Britain. It was an emotionally intense experience knowing that many of the men I met with would soon face death on the front line defending their country’s freedom and nationhood.
They were extremely grateful of New Zealand’s unwavering support. Yet the Trump Administration seemed to care little for that country’s cause and sacrifice in defending the values that a few months earlier had seemed so important to the United States.
The diplomatic community in London privately shared their dismay at Trump’s treatment of Ukraine. The spouse of one of my High Commissioner colleagues who had been a teacher drew a parallel with what she had witnessed in the playground. The bully would abuse a victim while all the other kids looked on and were too intimidated to intervene. The majority thus became the enablers of the bully’s actions.
Silence condoning Trump
By saying nothing, New Zealand — and many other countries — was effectively condoning and being complicit in what Trump was doing.
The lesson of history, going back to the Munich Conference in 1938, when British Prime Minister Chamberlain and his French counterpart Daladier ceded the Sudetenland part of Czechoslovakia to Hitler, was clear.
Far from satisfying or placating an aggressor, appeasement only increases their demands. That’s always the case with bullies. They respect strength, not weakness.
Czechoslovakia could have been part of the Allied defence against Hitler’s expansionism but instead it and the Czech armaments industry was passed over to Hitler. He went on to take over the rest of Czechoslovakia and then invaded Poland.
As Churchill told Chamberlain, “You had the choice between dishonour and war. You chose dishonour and you will have war.”
The question needed to be asked because Trump was using talking points which followed closely those used by the Kremlin itself and was clearly setting out to appease and favour Russia.
A career diplomat, trained as a public servant to be cautious, might have not have asked it. I was appointed, with bipartisan support, not as a career diplomat but on the basis of political experience including nine years as Foreign, Trade and Defence Minister.
Question central to validity, ethics
“The question is central to the validity as well as the ethics of the United States’ approach to Ukraine. It is also a question that trusted allies, who have made sacrifices for and with each other over the past century, have a right and duty to ask.
The New Zealand Foreign Minister’s response was that the question did not reflect the view of New Zealand’s Government and that asking it made my position as High Commissioner untenable.
The minister had the prerogative to take the action he did and I am not complaining about that for one moment. For my part, I do not regret asking the question which thanks to the minister’s response subsequently received international attention.
Over the decades New Zealand has earned the respect of the world, from allies and opponents alike, for honestly standing up for the values our country holds dear. The things we are proudest of as a nation in the positions we have taken internationally include our role as one of the founding states of the United Nations in promoting a rules-based international system including our opposition to powerful states exercising a veto.
They include opposing apartheid in South Africa and French nuclear testing in the Pacific. We did not abandon our nuclear free policy to US pressure.
In wars and in peacekeeping we have been there when it counted and have made sacrifices disproportionate to our size.
We have never been afraid to challenge aggressors or to ask questions of our allies. In asking a question about President Trump’s position on Ukraine I am content that my actions will be on the right side of history.
Phil Goff, CNZM, is a New Zealand retired politician and former diplomat. He served as leader of the Labour Party and leader of the Opposition between 11 November 2008 and 13 December 2011. Goff was elected mayor of Auckland in 2016, and served two terms, before retiring in 2022. In 2023, he took up a diplomatic post as High Commissioner of New Zealand to the United Kingdom, which he held until last month when he was sacked by Foreign Minister Winston Peters over his “untenable” comments.
Liberation Day, as April 2 was described by US President Donald Trump, had all the elements of reality television perversion. It also had a dreamy, aspirational hope: that factories would spring up from rust belt soil in a few months across the United States; that industries would, unmoored from the globe, become vibrant and burgeoning. The world’s largest importer had decided to turn back the tide.
The imposition of what Trump calls reciprocal tariffs was broadly savage. Over 180 countries fell within their scope. A baseline tariff of 10% was applied on goods imported by the US. Countries were then singled out for being particularly mischievous, in the eyes of the administration, not so much for having their own tariffs on US goods and products so much as having an unsporting surplus. For China, the new rate is 34%. For Vietnam: 46%. Taiwan: 32%. Cambodia, a stunning 49%.
The malleable rules of reality television intruded with Trump’s chart of countries and tariff rates, as revealed in the White House Rose Garden. (He would have had a bigger chart, but for the wind.) “Reciprocal – that means they do it to us, and we do it to them,” the president ventured to explain. “Can’t get simpler than that.”
Simple it was, given the rough and ready formula used to arrive at the figures. The Office of the United States Trade Representative offered a rationale: “Reciprocal tariffs are calculated as the tariff rate necessary to balance bilateral trade deficits between the US and each of our trading partners. This calculation assumes that persistent trade deficits are due to a combination of tariff and non-tariff factors that prevent trade from balancing. Tariffs work through direct reduction of imports.”
This, however, did not evidence itself in the final calculations. Central to the approach was a simple examination of trade in goods deficit from 2024, divided by the value of imports. Professing kindness, Trump offered to discount the amount by halving the arrived at figure. To illustrate, the goods trade deficit with China was US$291.9 billion, and total goods imports US$438.9 billion. When divided, the figure arrived is 0.67 or 67%. On being discounted, the final tariff rate is 34%.
This method seemed to eschew the promised, detailed evaluation that would have accounted for tariff and non-tariff trade barriers, including distortions allegedly caused by currency manipulation, local regulations and laws, and taxes such as value added tax. This is despite theremarks by the Office of the Trade Representative that the rates were calculated taking into account such matters as “[re]gulatory barriers to American products, environmental reviews, differences in consumption tax rates, compliance hurdles and costs, currency manipulation and undervaluation”.
Theories are being offered for the absurdly high rates being applied to certain poorer countries, notably those in Southeast Asia and Africa. The most logical point is that the applied rates arise because the countries in question are, as economic historian Adam Tooze explains, relatively poor. “The US does not make a lot of goods that are relevant to them to import.” They are hardly likely to redress any trade imbalance by increasing their consumption of goods produced in the US.
Siwage Dharma Negara of the ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute in Singapore assumes there is a lurking strategy at work. “The administration thinks that by targeting these countries, they can target Chinese investment in countries like Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, Indonesia. By targeting their products maybe it will affect Chinese exports and the economy.”
If that is the plan, then it risks doing quite the opposite. In the first instance, American brands have set up factories in a number of states in the region, encouraged by the adoption of the “China plus one” strategy. In line with that approach, manufacturers shifted production from China to alternative countries. Apple, Nike and Samsung Electronics, for instance, have established lucrative operations in Vietnam. Apparel companies such as Gap, Abercrombie, Adidas and Lululemon are reported to source 27 to 47% of their goods from the same country.
A similar pattern is to be found in Africa, where companies were encouraged to invest on the continent as part of the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA), a trade scheme due to expire in September. The AGOA, in place since 2000, grants eligible sub-Saharan African states duty-free access to the US market for over 1,800 products to complement over 5,000 products deemed eligible under the Generalized System of Preferences program.
The second likely outcome is pushing these bruised countries into eager Chinese arms. Those in Southeast Asia would, suggests Stephen Olson, former US trade negotiator, gravitate away from Washington. “A closer tilt to China could be the result. It’s hard to have constructive, productive relations with a country that just dropped a ton of bricks on your head.” Ditto Africa, where Beijing already occupies an influential role in trade and investment. The law of unintended consequences looks set to apply.
U.S. President Donald Trump is trashing the world trade system over a basic economic fallacy. He wrongly claims that America’s trade deficit is caused by the rest of the world ripping off the U.S., repeatedly stating things such as, “Over the decades, they ripped us off like no country has ever been ripped off in history…”
Trump aims to close the trade deficit by imposing tariffs, thereby impeding imports and restoring trade balance (or inducing other countries to end their rip-offs of America). Yet Trump’s tariffs will not close the trade deficit but will instead impoverish Americans and harm the rest of the world.
It is home to just over 2000 people, sitting between New Zealand and Australia in the South Pacific
The islands’ Chamber of Commerce said the decision by the US “raises critical questions about Norfolk Island’s international recognition as an independent sovereign nation” and Norfolk Island not being part of Australia.
“The classification of Norfolk Island as distinct from Australia in this tariff decision reinforces what the Norfolk Island community has long asserted: Norfolk Island is not an extension of Australia.”
Norfolk Island previously had a significant level of autonomy from Australia, but was absorbed directly into the country’s local government system in 2015.
Norfolk Islanders angered
The move angered many Norfolk Island people and inspired a number of campaigns, including appeals to the United Nations and the International Court of Justice, by groups wishing to re-establish a measure of their autonomy, or to sue for independence.
The Chamber of Commerce has taken the tariff as a chance to reemphasis the islands’ call for independence, including, “restoration of economic rights” and exclusive access to its exclusive economic zone.
The statement said Norfolk Island is a “sovereign nation [and] must have the ability to engage directly with international trade partners rather than through Australian officials who do not represent Norfolk Island’s interests”.
Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese told reporters yesterday: “Norfolk Island has got a 29 percent tariff. I’m not quite sure that Norfolk Island, with respect to it, is a trade competitor with the giant economy of the United States.”
“But that just shows and exemplifies the fact that nowhere on Earth is safe from this.”
The base tariff of 10 percent is also included for Tokelau, a non-self-governing territory of New Zealand, with a population of only about 1500 people living on the atoll islands.
US President Donald Trump’s global tariffs . . . “raises critical questions about Norfolk Island’s international recognition as an independent sovereign nation.” Image: Getty/The Conversation
US ‘don’t really understand’, says PANG Pacific Network on Globalisation (PANG) deputy coordinator Adam Wolfenden said he did not understand why Norfolk Island and Tokelau were added to the tariff list.
“I think this reflects the approach that’s been taken, which seems very rushed and very divorced from a common sense approach,” Wolfenden said.
“The inclusion of these territories, to me, is indicative that they don’t really understand what they’re doing.”
The Atlantic‘s Jeffrey Goldberg (3/24/25) complained “the group was transmitting information to someone not authorized to receive it”—an odd criticism for a journalist to make about government officials.
The Houthis, formally known as Ansar Allah, are the de facto government in northwest Yemen. The group began as a religious movement among the Zaydis, an idiosyncratic branch of Shia Islam, before taking a political-military turn in the 2000s. Since 2014, Ansar Allah has been a powerful faction in the country’s civil war, fighting against the Republic of Yemen, the weak but Saudi-backed internationally recognized government. With the war on hold since a 2022 ceasefire agreement, the Houthis now control the capital city of Sanaa, and govern the majority of Yemen’s population.
Beginning on March 15, the US military began an operation that has killed dozens in Yemen and injured over a hundred, including women and children, in which Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth frankly acknowledged the leveling of a civilian building.
US planning for the operation was revealed in articles by the Atlantic‘s Jeffrey Goldberg (3/24/25, 3/26/25), which disclosed that the journalist had been inadvertently added to a Signal group chat that top administration officials were using to discuss bombing plans—an inclusion that was not noticed by any of the intended participants. This prompted a furor in establishment papers like the New York Times and Washington Post, centering on the Trump administration’s use of an insecure messaging app to discuss classified matters.
While leading newspapers were not wrong to skewer the Trump administration for the use of a commercial messaging app to communicate confidential information—which, it should be remembered, allows officials to illegally destroy records of their deliberations (New York Times, 3/27/25)—the focus on Washington palace intrigue over the bombing of women and children is a stark reminder of corporate media priorities.
‘It’s now collapsed’
The part of the Trump administration group chat where they discuss the actual bombing needed no comment, according to the New York Times (3/26/25).
Since news of the Signal leak broke, the Times has published at least three dozen stories and opinion pieces focusing on the scandal. One of those many pieces was an annotated transcript of the Signal chat (3/25/25). Most messages in the chat featured explanatory notes from journalists, some messages with multiple notes. One message from national security adviser Michael Waltz the Times chose not to annotate: “The first target—their top missile guy—we had positive ID of him walking into his girlfriend’s building and it’s now collapsed.”
The “collapsed” building in question was bombed by the United States, killing at least 13 civilians, according to the Yemen Data Project. This is a war crime. While alternative media outlets have been quick to call these strikes out for what they are (e.g., Drop Site, 3/16/25; Truthout, 3/26/25; Democracy Now!, 3/26/25), the Times and the Washington Post chose not to go into questions of international law.
Amidst the dozens of stories on the Signal scandal, the Times published five stories focused on the strikes (3/15/25, 3/16/25, 3/19/25, 3/26/25, 3/27/25). None of these stories entertain the possibility of US strikes violating international law. Only one story (3/16/25) made mention of the phrase “war crime,” which was in a final paragraph quote from Hezbollah, with the group described by the Times as “another armed proxy for Iran in the region.”
The only mentions of children or “civilian” casualties were moderated by innuendo. The unfair convention of citing the “Hamas-run” health ministry—a formulation that deliberately downplays the death and destruction caused by US weaponry—has extended to Yemen, with both the Times (3/16/25, 3/19/25) and the Post (3/15/25) citing the “Houthi-run Health Ministry in Yemen” for casualty figures.
‘No credible reports’
The Washington Post‘s Missy Ryan (3/17/25) doesn’t question the Pentagon’s claim that there were “no credible reports of civilian deaths” after the attack on Yemen.
The Washington Post seemed similarly unable to bring international law into their reporting. The furthest the Post (3/15/25) was willing to go was relaying that the Houthis “claimed the strikes targeted residential areas and targeted civilians.” In the Post’s March 17 story on the US offensive, the only mention of civilian deaths was US Lt. Gen. Alexus Grynkewich’s claim that “despite Houthi assertions, there had been no credible reports of civilian deaths in the ongoing US strikes.”
Even Ishaan Tharoor (Washington Post, 3/26/25), whose column on the Yemen strikes was both more humane and more geopolitically realistic than anything else published by the Post, chose not to bring in any mention of international law.
The fact is, unnecessarily bombing a civilian building, with civilians inside, is a war crime. A civilian building is any building not immediately being used for military purposes. Even if by some interpretation, a military officer’s girlfriend’s building could be construed as a military target, the attacker is responsible for ensuring that any civilian losses are not excessive compared to military gain (the “proportionality” rule), and ensuring that “all feasible precautions must be taken to avoid, and in any event to minimize, incidental loss of civilian life, injury to civilians and damage to civilian objects.”
In this case, the “military” nature of the target is dubious at best. Further, the Houthis had not attacked US ships since December, before Trump’s inauguration (Responsible Statecraft, 3/21/25). When the Houthis attempted to respond to the recent airstrikes, a US military officer mocked the Houthis’ “level of incompetence,” claiming their retaliatory missile fire “missed by a hundred miles” (New York Times, 3/19/25). In other words, Houthi missiles are not such an imminent threat that killing over a dozen Yemeni civilians might be “proportional” to the military gain of killing their top missileer.
Finally, “all feasible precautions” were not taken to protect civilian life. Based on Waltz’s message, the military was tracking this officer, and chose to kill him only once he entered a building with civilians inside.
As the Times itself (1/16/23) has reported, “it is considered a war crime to deliberately or recklessly attack civilian populations.” The Washington Post editorial board (7/2/23) agreed, citing “large-scale destruction of civilian infrastructure” and “methodical violence against…noncombatants” as violations of international law. But these confident media assertions are in reference to Russia, an official enemy of the United States.
The strike against the “missile guy” is just one example of the indiscriminate bombing with which the US punishes Yemen. This recent offensive by the United States has destroyed plenty of residences, and airstrikes have hit a Saada cancer hospital twice (Drop Site, 3/16/25; Cradle, 3/26/25).
‘A more aggressive campaign’
After the US bombs an apartment building, killing more than a dozen civilians, the New York Times (3/16/25) turns to sources who declare that a “more aggressive” approach is needed.
Houthi-controlled Yemen sits on one side of the Bab-el-Mandeb, a narrow strait between the Arabian Peninsula and Africa that is a choke point for shipping between Asia and Europe. The Houthis announced in October 2023 that in opposition to the war on Gaza, they would use their strategic position to attack ships “linked to Israel” (Al Jazeera, 12/19/23). The Houthis have succeeded in disrupting Red Sea trade to the point that Israel’s only port on the Red Sea, the Port of Eilat, was forced to declare bankruptcy (Middle East Monitor, 7/19/24). As revealed by the Signal chat leak, the main motivation for the new air campaign on Yemen was to “send a message” and reopen the shipping lanes (New York Times, 3/25/25).
As US bombs fell on Yemen, the New York Times indulged in a variety of foreign policy reporting cliches. A day after the strikes began, the Times (3/16/25) took a survey of what should be done about the supposed threat the Houthis posed in the Middle East:
Some military analysts and former American commanders said on Sunday that a more aggressive campaign against the Houthis, particularly against Houthi leadership, was necessary to degrade the group’s ability to threaten international shipping.
The only voices the Times offered as a counterpoint were spokesmen for Iran’s foreign ministry, Russia’s foreign ministry and Hezbollah. When the only people condemning the air campaign are America’s worst enemies, it’s not hard for the reader to see who they’re supposed to side with.
The fact is, the Houthis have withstood a decade of strikes by Saudi Arabia and the United States with no signs of faltering. Indeed, as Jennifer Kavanagh (Responsible Statecraft, 3/17/25) has pointed out, the Houthis’ “willingness to take on American attacks lend them credibility and win them popular support.” In a story whose subheadline mentions a claim that children were killed, the Times is irresponsible to present the only solution as more bombs, more aggression, more killing.
‘Iranian-backed’
The US has long been implicated in a string of atrocities in Yemen (Guardian, 8/19/18).
In each of their five stories on the strikes, the New York Times referred to the “Iran-backed” or “Iranian-backed” Houthis, playing into the falsenotion that the Houthis are little more than Iran’s lapdogs in the Arabian Peninsula. Even the Washington Post, to their credit, was able to find a distinction between an ally of Iran and a proxy (e.g. 3/15/25, 3/27/25).
The Times also had a case of amnesia over the circumstances of Yemen’s protracted civil war and famine. Two stories (3/15/25, 3/27/25) mentioned the Houthi victory over a “Saudi-led coalition,” culminating in a 2022 truce, still holding tenuously. What was left unsaid was the US role in that conflict.
During the Yemeni civil war, the United States provided Saudi Arabia with plenty of firepower and logistical support to prosecute their brutal military intervention. The Department of Defense gave over $50 billion in military aid to Saudi Arabia and the UAE between 2015 and 2021 (Responsible Statecraft, 3/28/23). Despite campaign promises to the contrary, the Saudi blockade and accompanying humanitarian crisis were intact over two years into President Biden’s term of office.
Infamous airstrikes using US-made weapons include a wedding bombing that killed 21, including 11 children, a school bus bombing that killed 40 elementary school-aged boys along with 11 adults, and a market bombing that killed 107 people, including 25 children, just to name a few (CNN, 9/18; Guardian, 8/19/18; Human Rights Watch, 4/7/16). The continuous provision of weapons, training and logistical support amounted to complicity in war crimes (Human Rights Watch, 4/7/22).
Deadly effects
The Yemen where tens of thousands of children died as a result of a US-backed blockade (New York Times, 11/21/18) seems like a different country than the one discussed in a bumbling group chat.
The civil war in Yemen, which began in late 2014, has killed hundreds of thousands. From 2015–22, Saudi-led, US-backed airstrikes killed nearly 9,000 civilians, including over 1,400 children.
More deadly than the bombs and other weapons of war are the indirect effects of the war, namely disease and famine. A 2021 UN report estimated that 60% of the 377,000 deaths in the Yemeni civil war came from indirect causes (France24, 11/23/21). By 2018, Save the Children reported that by a “conservative estimate,” 85,000 children had died from hunger (New York Times, 11/21/18). Today, nearly 40% of the Yemeni population are undernourished, and nearly half of children under five are malnourished.
This ongoing famine started during the war, and has been enforced by a Saudi blockade. While the 2022 truce allowed a trickle of international shipping to Houthi-controlled Yemen, cuts in humanitarian aid have kept Yemenis in precarity (The Nation, 7/27/23).
Since the Yemeni civil war began, not enough attention has been paid to the compounding crises in the region: the civil war itself, the accompanying famine and the Biden administration’s own ill-advised bombing campaign. As juicy as one more Trump administration blunder might be, newsrooms should not lose track of the fact that this military offensive, just beginning, is already stained by violations of international law.
Head Start normally isn’t considered a partisan issue. The early child care program, under the purview of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), was launched six decades ago as part of President Lyndon B. Johnson’s “war on poverty.” It’s historically had support from both sides of the aisle in Congress; after all, few would publicly argue with the program’s central mission of…
Janine Jackson interviewed Mondoweiss‘s Michael Arria about Gaza “Power & Pushback” for the March 28, 2025, episode of CounterSpin. This is a lightly edited transcript.
Janine Jackson: Listeners may have heard about the violent attack by Israeli settlers on Hamdan Ballal, who had recently won an Academy Award for the documentary No Other Land. He has since been released from Israeli detention, but that doesn’t erase or obscure the fact that he was assaulted, arrested and spirited away in an overt attack on free expression and truth telling.
As his co-director told AP: “We came back from the Oscars, and every day…there is an attack on us. This might be their revenge on us for making the movie. It feels like punishment.”
Listeners may not have heard of all the non-Oscar-winning people who have been swept off the street and disappeared for voicing any concern about the Palestinian people, who are victims of what the majority of the world outside these borders are calling genocide.
Into the current context comes “Power and Pushback,” a new feature at Mondoweiss written by our guest. Michael Arria is Mondoweiss‘s US correspondent, and author of the book Medium Blue:The Politics of MSNBC. He joins us now by phone. Welcome to CounterSpin, Michael Arria.
JJ: Mondoweiss has been reporting, calling attention to, critiquing the occupation, ethnic cleansing, genocide of Palestinians, and the US role there, and US news media’s distorted narrative for some time now, and yet there are still so many fronts to this fight. There is still so much that calls for resistance that you saw a place for a new intervention, this new focused feature. Tell us what you’re trying to do with “Power and Pushback.”
MA: I think the idea behind “Power and Pushback” is we’re in a situation, as you described, where there’s so much happening, and this can often be a challenge, I think, for any media, let alone independent media, to keep up with. We have a very small staff; obviously we don’t have the capacity that mainstream outlets do. And with so much happening on the domestic front, especially over the last few weeks, but really dating back to the immediate aftermath of October 7, when we saw the student protests begin, I think there was a need to develop another place to catch stuff before it fell through the cracks, so to speak.
So the idea behind “Power and Pushback” is to put a focus on repression that we’ve seen throughout the United States targeting the US Palestine movement, but also to talk about some of these local fights and local battles that not just students, but people in their communities or in their workplaces, are waging on behalf of Palestine.
And the idea is to really center that and focus on that, and just put a spotlight on these fights, and show people that they’re not alone, that people are fighting. There’s victories throughout certain states.
We didn’t want it to be just, like, this is the suppression report, and this is all terrible things that are being done. We wanted it to have both elements, which is the idea behind the title. We want to cover the power centers; we want to cover lawmakers pushing draconian policies, and pro-Israel groups moving to target Palestine protesters. And we wanted to cover, obviously, these terrible unconstitutional moves by the Trump administration. But we also wanted to show the resistance that’s developing domestically against those policies, and the people who are pushing for that.
JJ: It seems so important on many levels. First of all, if folks think there’s just no pushback or resistance happening, that shapes their understanding of what’s going on. But also, one person speaking out is easier to suppress, and they need to be backed and supported by a community, and by other people. So it’s not just, “Here’s a cool story about somebody resisting this.” It seems to me to give meaningful support to the individuals who are putting themselves on the line.
Michael Arria: “It’s not just one person or two people, it’s thousands of people that oppose these policies, and are trying to fight back.”
MA: Yeah, that’s absolutely true. And I think something we should keep in mind—one of the objectives of these kind of moves that we’ve seen in recent weeks from the Trump administration is to obviously crack down on dissent. And part of that is to make people fearful about fighting back, for fear that they might be scooped up by ICE if they’re not a citizen, or their student organization might be suspended from the given college or university.
Really, throughout American history, whenever we’ve seen these kinds of campaigns, they purposely have this chilling effect on the population, and that’s kind of the idea. So as you say, we’re kind of also developing the newsletter with this in mind to show people that it’s not just one person or two people, it’s thousands of people that oppose these policies, and are trying to fight back in the face of this, despite these attempts by lawmakers and pro-Israel groups to really chill the environment, and make people skeptical about standing up and voicing support for Gaza.
JJ: Particularly at a time when, it used to be, “Well, write your congressperson, if you’re upset about something.” And we see the frustration with that avenue. And lots of folks will say, “Well, go out in the street; protest.” And so then you have to ask, OK, what’s the follow-up to that when people do protest and they are harmed for that? You can’t simply say, “We all ought to be out in the street,” and then not care about what happens to people who go out in the street, is my feeling.
MA: Absolutely true, and to your point, I think this time around with Trump, we have seen a slightly different approach from the liberal establishment. I think they’ve been much more willing to go along with his plans, and much more complicit. We see the anger towards politicians like Chuck Schumer for approving the Trump budget.
But I think that focusing on the liberal establishment and their reaction tends to get people maybe to look at the situation the wrong way. I think there actually has been a lot of protest. The numbers indicate there’s been consistent protest.
And there’s also been a lot of attempts to challenge the Trump administration legally. So Just Security runs the tracker. This is just in my head, I just wrote a piece where I referenced it, but I think there’s 146 current lawsuits or legal challenges attempting to stop the Trump administration, when it comes to many issues across the country. But more than a few of those lawsuits are connected to our issue, the issue of Israel/Palestine and student protest.
So like you say, people want to do something that they feel goes beyond just sending a letter, just calling and leaving a message for their congressperson. Especially because, it’s worth pointing out, what we’ve seen for the last three weeks has really been a culmination of a push that we’ve seen for years, in terms of stifling pro-Palestine sentiment, and in terms of stiflingcriticism of Israel. And that’s really been a bipartisan project. Even though Trump is amplifying it now and increasing it and has taken it to these draconian levels, we’ve really seen both sides of the aisle embrace some of these policies that he is currently amplifying.
I was, along with many, struck by the statement of Columbia Journalism School Dean Jelani Cobb to students, after they’d been told to scrub their social media, to essentially thought-cleanse evidence of concern for Palestinians, or protest against US actions. And this is in the context of the ICE arrest and whisking away of Mahmoud Khalil. And Cobb said, “Nobody can protect you. These are dangerous times.” He’s speaking to future journalists. What is the lesson there? What else might he have said?
MA: Yeah, I mean, it’s interesting. He said that in response to another professor making a comment, basically telling students not to post about the Middle East conflict on their social media page. I think we’re really at an interesting and scary time when we look at universities and colleges in this country, just the overall state of higher education. I think that, just like I was talking about before, how the stifling of pro-Palestine sentiment is not a new issue. It’s really been a culmination of something that’s been happening for years.
We can say the same things about our university system, right? Over the last 40 years, 50 years maybe even, we’ve seen this real push to neoliberal policies across higher education, to move to a donor model, as opposed to a model where these schools are set up and live up to the grandiose words of their mission statements, this idea that they’re these places that kids can go and learn about freedom of speech and have the freedom of inquiry, and learn about how society works and how the world works.
After October 7, we saw some big-time pro-Israel donors threaten to take away money to schools, or actually do it. I think the schools are really between a rock and a hard place, because they don’t want to see their endowments threatened. And in recent decades, we’ve seen that that is the important thing. An institution like Columbia, as a private university, they’re not really beholden to the First Amendment, technically, in the way that other places throughout the country are.
And, first of all, we should say the Trump administration first canceled about $400 million worth of contracts and grants to the school, for what it said was their inability to crack down on antisemitism. I mean, we know that they’re referring to the fact that there were pro-Palestine protests on campus. It had very little to do with antisemitism. We know that they’re being targeted because they were the first school to erect a Gaza encampment last spring, which kicked off a wave of protests throughout the United States, obviously across college campuses. We know why they’re being targeted.
But I think the very scary thing here is they withheld that money, and then they sent Columbia a letter detailing things that Columbia could do in order for them to revisit that issue, essentially implying that maybe you could get the $400 million if you did the following things. And those things include instituting a mask ban, suspending a number of students who were connected to an occupation of Hamilton Hall on campus last spring. They wanted new protocol in terms of disciplinary actions. They wanted someone to oversee the Middle East Studies Department, among other things.
And almost immediately, Columbia complied to all these demands. They’ve said publicly that they were actually thinking about doing some of this stuff before Trump had asked them. I don’t know if that makes it better or worse.
But that’s a huge part of this story. We’ve seen the universities in this country really cower and just respond to the Trump administration, and do pretty much everything they’ve asked for in this regard. And shortly before Mahmoud Khalil was detained on March 8 by plainclothes ICE agents, despite the fact he’s a permanent resident with a Green Card, Columbia had actually changed their protocol when it came to its status as a sanctuary campus.
Sanctuary campus is essentially the same as a sanctuary state. They had previously said that they wouldn’t comply or assist ICE if they were on campus. And days before Khalil was detained by ICE agents, they sent an email out to faculty and students and staff saying, “We’ve modified these policies. There are some situations where we’re going to let ICE on campus without a warrant in certain circumstances.”
So that’s a huge part of the story here. I just think that the university’s going along and being complicit in this entire ordeal. And we’ve seen a lot of resistance from faculty and Columbia students, and students across the country, who are really protesting not just these policies that we’ve seen from Trump and lawmakers, but also the complicity of their schools.
JJ: Gosh, there’s so much to say and to respond to. But along with, in particular, the Columbia protest, you see the erasure of Jewish people, of antisemitism being used as a cover to punish and penalize a community that is composed, in large part, by Jewish people who are protesting the actions of the state of Israel. And Trump, of course, being Trump, just says, “If Chuck Schumer opposes my policy, he’s a Palestinian.” He’s in his own world, but we are seeing other institutions essentially say, “Jewish people, you’re not Jewish if you are critical of Israel.” That seems like another shadow horror that is happening, and that media are playing a role in.
MA: It’s a very dark irony. I mean, not only have there been vast protests by Jewish activists and Jewish students; we saw Trump Tower occupied in the wake of Khalil’s arrest. The fact that the Trump administration is citing antisemitism as their reason for detaining these people, essentially…
I think when Khalil was first detained, there was maybe a belief that the Trump administration was going to rely on some War on Terror policy, or maybe something from Bill Clinton’s anti-terrorism law from 1995. But what we saw is that they’re actually relying on an immigration bill from 1952, which was introduced at the height of the Red Scare.
And that bill was introduced and wielded as a way to target, actually, survivors of the Holocaust, Jewish refugees in the United States, who conservative lawmakers had targeted because they accused them of being Soviet agents. So the irony here is that we see this law that was used to target Jewish people in the United States now used allegedly to protect them.
And it is another dark irony, I think, that it’s coming from this administration of all administrations. As you said, Trump casually will criticize Chuck Schumer by claiming he’s not Jewish, calling him a “Palestinian.” Trump has repeatedly criticized Jewish people more broadly for not voting for him, questioning whether Jewish voters are even Jewish, because he did all this stuff for Israel. Inherent there is the conflation of Zionism and Judaism, which in itself I think is antisemitic.
But it goes without saying that you don’t have to travel very far down Trumpland to start seeing examples of people that have been accused of antisemitism in his administration. We’re dealing with multiple people, either directly in his administration or in that broader world, who have literally given Nazi salutes in recent weeks.
So there is a real, like I said, irony to this whole situation that’s very disturbing, where you have this administration, which has a clearly anti-immigrant, bigoted, history of antisemitism in many areas, and they are detaining people for defending Gaza, for fighting against genocide; and claiming that they’re doing it because they’re antisemitic, and that antisemitism somehow threatens American foreign policy interests. So we’re really in a dark, upside-down time, I think, and it’s very terrifying.
JJ: Looking at what we know about media, we know that years from now, they will tell us, “Remember when we were all out in the streets protesting Israeli genocide in Gaza.” We know that they will say that “Martin Luther King would’ve said….” The powers that be, including in corporate news media, will co-opt the actions of today. Columbia University will have a photo montage about the protesters, and how they allowed protests to happen.
I mean, we know how history can be rewritten in real time by news media. It’s so frustrating to look at it today, and know the way that these folks are going to try to claim ownership of protest later.
That’s not a question, it’s just a rant. We can see it. We can see the way that they will talk about, “Oh, the Civil Rights Movement. That was good protest. This is bad protest,” when in real time, they hated the Civil Rights Movement.
MA: It’s very true. And these images and videos people probably have seen yesterday, a tremendously disturbing video coming out of Somerville, Massachusetts. Rumeysa Ozturk, who’s a 30-year-old Turkish national and doctoral student at Tufts, was detained, much like Khalil, snatched up on the street by undercover ICE agents wearing masks, where the police took her phone away from her. And it’s not hyperbole to say these people are being disappeared in broad daylight.
And to your point, I think people love to look back on history and convince themselves they would’ve been on the right side. They like to watch movies about historical time periods, and think that they would’ve been siding with the right side. But I think the way that people are reacting to this now, if they are supporting it or ignoring it, I think it’s pretty clear what side of history they would’ve been on if they had lived through something like the Holocaust, or like the Civil Rights Movement.
And also to your point, there is no kind of accountability for the media whatsoever, where—this is just an aside—but in the last couple of days we’ve seen this big controversy over the Signal chat, obviously, where the bombing of Yemen was revealed to a reporter.
That reporter is Jeffrey Goldberg, a former IDF soldier who has contacts throughout prominent politicians in the United States. But he’s also somebody who helped push a fabricated story about Iraq’s alleged connection to Al Qaeda, which, over 20 years ago, helped pave the way for the Iraq War. And the media is just filled with reporters like that, who have faced no accountability, or have actually moved up in their careers, and have more power now than they did 20, 23 years ago.
So it just speaks to your point, what will things look like a couple of decades from now? I think all the people who are maybe ignoring this or cheering it on, or not responding to it in any serious way, will probably not have to face any type of consequences. And to your point, they’ll also be controlling the narrative in terms of how this period gets remembered.
JJ: You can always fail upward in news media.
I’ll just ask you, finally, for any thoughts about “Power & Pushback,” what you hope folks will take from it, what you hope to uplift, any final thoughts on this intervention that you’re spearheading?
MA: I would encourage people, if they’re interested in this subject, to go on our site where they can subscribe to “Power & Pushback.” We’re really hoping, beyond this being a way to highlight the fights that I’m talking about, that it also opens up a dialogue, that people feel if they’re working in their community in terms of something, or they see something where free speech is being stifled, that they can reach out to us, and we can potentially shine a light on it and cover it.
Sometimes this stuff doesn’t happen where it’s a lot of news cameras. Sometimes it’s not a thousand people. Sometimes it’s just as simple as somebody being told they can’t wear a certain pin to work, or their website faces some sort of crackdown, or their student group at a small college is suddenly suspended. So we really are focused on covering this big-picture Trump stuff, and this big-picture higher education stuff. But we really hope that it also becomes a forum for these smaller-scale battles, because I think these are really going to add up.
And polling shows us that things have really shifted, Israel’s brand has really diminished over the past decade, particularly among progressives and Democratic voters, even if party leaders and Democratic lawmakers haven’t caught up to that. So I think, in some capacity, the momentum is on the side of the people who are protesting on behalf of Palestine, even though when you look at the media, it seems to be the opposite.
I think that a lot of these draconian measures are obviously a response to those successes. We’ve seen this crackdown on the BDS movement. We’ve seen this push to adopt the IHRA definition of antisemitism, which equates some criticism of Israel with antisemitism.
So I really think, insofar as Trump represents a backlash politics, and he does in many capacities, it’s also a backlash to the advances the Palestine movement in the United States has made over the last few years.
So like I said, in addition to covering the repression and suppression, we really want it to be a place that takes a close look at that progress, and looks at this in a wider way, where people can turn and you can talk to us about that.
So that’s what we’re hoping. I encourage people to check out our site where they can read about this stuff pretty consistently, but also sign up for our newsletter so they can get that information.
JJ: We’ve been speaking with Michael Arria. He is US correspondent at Mondoweiss—that’s Mondoweiss.net—and author of their new feature “Power and Pushback.” Michael Arria, thank you so much for joining us this week on CounterSpin.
Watchdogs and other critics swiftly denounced a budget blueprint unveiled by Senate Republicans on Wednesday that endeavors to get the GOP one step closer to delivering additional spending and trillions in tax cuts desired by U.S. President Donald Trump. Observers are also condemning Republicans’ plans to skirt the Senate parliamentarian and use a controversial gimmick to make an extension of…
By intimidating and disarming potential sources of legal resistance, Trump weakens one of the last institutional barriers standing between his administration and unbridled executive power.
As President Trump finally unveils his global tariff plan — setting a baseline 10% tariff on all imported goods, with additional hikes apparently based on individual countries’ trade balances with the United States — economists like our guest Richard Wolff warn it will have grave economic effects on American consumers and lead to a recession. Wolff says the Trump administration’s tariff strategy…
Over the past few weeks, Elon Musk has thrown around wads of money so great they made the stories of corruption in the Tammany Hall era, more than a century ago, seem positively quaint. The men of Tammany Hall bought votes with beer; Musk and the oligarchs shamelessly seek to buy them with straight checks. In a pivotal Wisconsin Supreme Court race, the world’s richest man reactivated the…
The new US administration is set to announce its reciprocal tariffs on Wednesday local time, prompting widespread concern and opposition over the uncertainty they could unleash, according to media reports.
As the date approaches, global financial markets including the US stock market have experienced a rollercoaster ride as investors’ anxiety continues to worsen.
Asia-Pacific markets were mixed on Wednesday. Japan’s benchmark Nikkei 225 edged up 0.28 percent higher to close at 35,725.87, and the broader Topix index closed down by 0.43 percent at 2,650.29. Meanwhile, South Korea’s Kospi slipped 0.62 percent to close at 2,505.86 while the Kosdaq declined 0.95 percent to close at 684.85.
As for European markets, the benchmark STOXX 600 was trading down as of press time.
US stocks dropped Wednesday as Wall Street braced for the expected rollout of the US tariffs. The Dow Jones Industrial Average lost 333 points, or 0.8 percent. The S&P 500 slid 1 percent, and the Nasdaq Composite pulled back by 1.5 percent, CNBC reported.
It followed a volatile session on Monday as investors awaited clarity on US President Donald Trump’s tariff rollout. The S&P 500 and the Nasdaq Composite posted on Monday their worst quarterly performances since 2022, as uncertainty around the Trump administration’s economic agenda roiled US equity markets in the first quarter of 2025. For the quarter, the S&P 500 slumped 4.6 percent, while the Nasdaq Composite plummeted 10.5 percent, Reuters reported.
In the bond market, the yield on the 10-year Treasury fell to 4.16 percent from 4.23 percent late Monday and from roughly 4.80 percent in January, the AP reported.
Gold prices on Monday surged above $3,100 per ounce for the first time as concerns around the US tariffs and the potential economic fallout, combined with geopolitical worries, drove a fresh wave of investments into the safe-haven asset. Spot gold prices hit a record high of $3,106.50 per ounce, according to a separate Reuters report.
Growing backlash
The tariff plan has also drawn widespread opposition from the US’ trading partners, with officials from various countries speaking out to safeguard their interests while potentially retaliating if necessary.
Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney pledged to fight unjustified trade actions, protect Canadian workers and businesses and build Canada’s economy, including through increased trade between Canada and Mexico as he spoke with Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum on Tuesday.
“With challenging times ahead, Prime Minister Carney and President Sheinbaum emphasized the importance of safeguarding North American competitiveness while respecting the sovereignty of each nation,” Carney’s office said in a statement.
Other economies have also threatened countermeasures.
The EU has “a strong plan to retaliate if necessary,” European Commission (EC) President Ursula von der Leyen said on March 20 in a speech, according to the speech released by the EC on Tuesday.
“Our objective is a negotiated solution. But of course, if need be, we will protect our interests, our people and our companies,” von der Leyen said.
The sweeping tariff measures adopted by the US will not work because they are built on a flawed assumption and “completely mistaken” diagnosis on its economy, and it wrongly blames global trade for domestic struggles, which will only lead to negative consequences, Pascal Lamy, former Director General of the World Trade Organization (WTO) told the Global Times in an exclusive interview.
Sharp tariff hikes can indeed disrupt global value and supply chains, adversely affecting other nations while simultaneously impacting the US itself, Gao Lingyun, an expert at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, told the Global Times on Wednesday.
Experts warned that the tariffs will backfire, disrupting global supply and industrial chains and saddling US businesses and consumers with higher costs.
Lamy cautioned that the US itself stands to suffer most. “If the US triggers a trade war, it will primarily hurt the US economy by raising prices, driving inflation and likely pushing up interest rates,” Lamy said, adding that this fallout could also trigger pushback from US financial markets and the general public.
Gao noted that after tariff hikes, domestic US producers often raise prices, leaving consumer welfare unimproved.
According to Gao, studies indicate that 25 percent tariffs could raise consumer costs by $5,000 to $10,000, exacerbating uncertainty for both the US and global economies. The price of a typical car could rise by between $5,000 to $10,000 “out of the gates” due to the new tariffs, according to a March 31 estimate from Wedbush Securities analyst Dan Ives, CBS News reported.
Gao pointed to recent market volatility, low consumer confidence and rising recession risks as evidence.
Goldman Sachs said in a report released on Sunday US local time “We now see a 12-month recession probability of 35 percent [in the US]. The upgrade from our previous 20 percent estimate reflects our lower growth baseline, the sharp recent deterioration in household and business confidence, and statements from White House officials indicating greater willingness to tolerate near-term economic weakness in pursuit of their policies.”
Tariffs are a double-edged sword. On the one hand, they can suppress imports of foreign products into the US. On the other hand, tariffs do not offer as many advantages for the development of the US as Washington might imagine, Liu Weidong, a research fellow at the Institute of American Studies at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, told the Global Times on Wednesday.
Tariffs fuel inflation and stifle innovation among local firms. Moreover, due to potential retaliation from other countries, US exports can also be affected, and the impacts of tariffs on the US would be mostly negative, Liu said.
However, former WTO chief Lamy downplayed the tariffs’ potential to reshape global trade, noting that the US accounts for just 15 percent of world imports. “The rest of the international trading system – 85 percent of global imports, involving trade between countries like China, India, Mexico, and Canada – can remain largely unaffected,” he said.
As for China, Liu said that as the detailed measures have not been disclosed, the specific impacts remain uncertain, though it will likely target specific sectors.
Regarding China’s response, Liu said that the country is well-prepared, with ample technological, industrial and strategic reserves.
Chinese authorities, including the Foreign Ministry and the Commerce Ministry, have stated multiple times that trade and tariff wars have no winners and the unilateral imposition of tariffs by the US undermines the multilateral trading system, as well as disrupting normal international trade order.
China-US trade ties are based on reciprocal interactions. Cooperation will bring about mutual benefit and win-win, and China will definitely take countermeasures in response to arbitrary pressure, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning said on March 12.
On April 2, Reuters headlined “US officials object to European push to buy weapons locally,” which means that Trump’s demand for Europe to increase greatly its ‘defense’ spending is, indeed, part of his plan to keep the boom in the U.S. stock markets going. This needs to be understood in the relevant context:
Right now, Trump is promising to stop America’s apparently ceaseless creation of, and participation (such as in Ukraine) in, foreign wars, but he isn’t reducing — and is instead actually increasing — America’s ‘defense’ (aggression) expenditures while cutting virtually everything else (the federal expenditures that don’t help billionaires); and, in order to do this beyond the 2027 end-date of his $400 billion weapons-sale to the Sauds, he is trying to get America’s colonies (‘allies’), such as Europe, Japan, South Korea, etc., to increase their armaments-purchases from American firms such as Lockheed Martin — the firms whose sales-volumes are especially important to America’s billionaires, the people who control the U.S. Government. This is why he doesn’t want Europeans to grow their own ‘defense’ industries.
If a European nation will allow foreign (especially American) billionaires to benefit from its sharp increase in armaments-purchases, this won’t hurt ONLY their own domestic billionaires, but it will ALSO be sending those manufacturing jobs to America and thereby boost America’s economy at the expense of the local economy. For Trump to be requesting them to do that is to insult not only that country’s billionaires but also its residents.
This is not the only reason why NATO might soon break apart. For example: Trump is determined to take Greenland for the U.S. Government — to expand the U.S. to include Greenland. However, polls show that around 85% of Greenlanders are opposed to that, and Trump is also saying that if they won’t willingly comply, then he will do it militarily. Greenland is a Danish colony, and Denmark is a part of NATO. If the U.S. invades Greenland, then how will other countries in NATO feel about that? It would present the U.S. blatantly as aggressor against a NATO member-nation — the very nation that had previously been supposedly their chief protector. What would this do to NATO?
The U.S. Congress is, according to the U.S. Constitution, supposed to be the ultimate determinant of whether or not U.S. military forces invade another country; but, so far, there has been prevailing silence from Congress about Trump’s threat against Greenlanders and even Danes — not the outrage that would prevail if America were still governed under its Constitution.
We are entering the twilight zone. Will it turn out to be the end of the U.S. empire — the end of the largest empire in all of world history? It could — especially if Congress remains silent about what has been happening. The longer this silence continues, the deeper into it we are getting.
This is certainly a weird moment in world history. Of course, ultimately, NATO will end, but the question is when and how. NATO had started on 25 July 1945 as a sentiment and resulting decision by Truman, and was then born in 1949, but is probably near its end now, and the public don’t know it because lots of ‘history’ that has been told in The West is false.
The global stock market carnage that followed US President Donald Trump’s sweeping new tariffs rippled through early trading in the United States, slamming a wide swath of key industries including retail and technology firms. The tariffs, which threaten to destabilise the world trade order and unsettle businesses, mark a sharp reversal from just a few…
The US administration claims these tariffs on imports will reduce the US trade deficit and address what it views as unfair and non-reciprocal trade practices. Trump said this would
forever be remembered as the day American industry was reborn, the day America’s destiny was reclaimed.
The “reciprocal” tariffs are designed to impose charges on other countries equivalent to half the costs they supposedly inflict on US exporters through tariffs, currency manipulation and non-tariff barriers levied on US goods.
Each nation received a tariff number that will apply to most goods. Notable sectors exempt include steel, aluminium and motor vehicles, which are already subject to new tariffs.
The minimum baseline tariff for each country is 10 percent. But many countries received higher numbers, including Vietnam (46 percent), Thailand (36 percent), China (34 percent), Indonesia (32 percent), Taiwan (32 percent) and Switzerland (31 percent).
The tariff number for China is in addition to an existing 20 percent tariff, so the total tariff applied to Chinese imports is 54 percent. Countries assigned 10 percent tariffs include Australia, New Zealand and the United Kingdom.
Canada and Mexico are exempt from the reciprocal tariffs, for now, but goods from those nations are subject to a 25 percent tariff under a separate executive order.
Although some countries do charge higher tariffs on US goods than the US imposes on their exports, and the “Liberation Day” tariffs are allegedly only half the full reciprocal rate, the calculations behind them are open to challenge.
For example, non-tariff measures are notoriously difficult to estimate and “subject to much uncertainty”, according to one recent study.
GDP impacts with retaliation Other countries are now likely to respond with retaliatory tariffs on US imports. Canada (the largest destination for US exports), the EU and China have all said they will respond in kind.
To estimate the impacts of this tit-for-tat trade standoff, I use a global model of the production, trade and consumption of goods and services. Similar simulation tools — known as “computable general equilibrium models” — are widely used by governments, academics and consultancies to evaluate policy changes.
The first model simulates a scenario in which the US imposes reciprocal and other new tariffs, and other countries respond with equivalent tariffs on US goods. Estimated changes in GDP due to US reciprocal tariffs and retaliatory tariffs by other nations are shown in the table below.
The tariffs decrease US GDP by US$438.4 billion (1.45 percent). Divided among the nation’s 126 million households, GDP per household decreases by $3,487 per year. That is larger than the corresponding decreases in any other country. (All figures are in US dollars.)
Proportional GDP decreases are largest in Mexico (2.24 percent) and Canada (1.65 percent) as these nations ship more than 75 percent of their exports to the US. Mexican households are worse off by $1,192 per year and Canadian households by $2,467.
Other nations that experience relatively large decreases in GDP include Vietnam (0.99 percent) and Switzerland (0.32 percent).
Some nations gain from the trade war. Typically, these face relatively low US tariffs (and consequently also impose relatively low tariffs on US goods). New Zealand (0.29 percent) and Brazil (0.28 percent) experience the largest increases in GDP. New Zealand households are better off by $397 per year.
Aggregate GDP for the rest of the world (all nations except the US) decreases by $62 billion.
At the global level, GDP decreases by $500 billion (0.43 percent). This result confirms the well-known rule that trade wars shrink the global economy.
GDP impacts without retaliation In the second scenario, the modelling depicts what happens if other nations do not react to the US tariffs. The changes in the GDP of selected countries are presented in the table below.
Countries that face relatively high US tariffs and ship a large proportion of their exports to the US experience the largest proportional decreases in GDP. These include Canada, Mexico, Vietnam, Thailand, Taiwan, Switzerland, South Korea and China.
Countries that face relatively low new tariffs gain, with the UK experiencing the largest GDP increase.
The tariffs decrease US GDP by $149 billion (0.49 percent) because the tariffs increase production costs and consumer prices in the US.
Aggregate GDP for the rest of the world decreases by $155 billion, more than twice the corresponding decrease when there was retaliation. This indicates that the rest of the world can reduce losses by retaliating. At the same time, retaliation leads to a worse outcome for the US.
Previous tariff announcements by the Trump administration dropped sand into the cogs of international trade. The reciprocal tariffs throw a spanner into the works. Ultimately, the US may face the largest damages.
Although New Zealand and Australia seem to have escaped the worst of Donald Trump’s latest tariffs, some Pacific Islands stand to be hit hard — including a few that aren’t even “countries”.
The US will impose a base tariff of 10 percent on all foreign imports, with rates between 20 and 50 percent for countries judged to have major tariffs on US goods.
Nauru, one of the smallest nations in the world, has been slapped with a 30 percent tariff, the US claimed they are imposing a 59 percent tariff.
Vanuatu will be given a 22 percent tariff.
Norfolk Island, which is an Australian territory, has been given a 29 percent tariff, this is despite Australia getting only 10 percent.
Most other Pacific nations were given the 10 percent base tariff.
This included Tokelau, despite it being a non-self-governing territory of New Zealand, with a population of only about 1500 people living on the atoll islands.
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
As the Trump administration escalates attacks on the pro-Palestine student movement and Israel continues the genocide in Gaza in full force, thousands are expected to partake in a mass demonstration for Palestine on April 5 in Washington DC, undeterred by repression.
Trump’s Secretary of State Marco Rubio has announced that he has signed off on the revocation of over 300 student visas for reasons related to pro-Palestine protest activity, raising alarms about free speech violations. We do it every day. Every time I find one of these lunatics, I take away their visa,” Rubio said at a press conference in Guyana on Thursday.
On March 27, President Donald Trump summarily overturned decades of federal labor relations policy and stripped more than 700,000 government workers of their union rights with a stroke of his sharpie. His executive order Exclusions from Federal Labor-Management Relations Programs, which effectively voided union contracts at dozens of departments and agencies, constitutes by far the largest and most aggressive single act of union-busting in U.S. history.
The stated rationale for Trump’s order—that the targeted workers are in agencies that affect national security and they therefore are ineligible for union representation—is flimsily transparent.
President Donald Trump’s national security adviser Michael Waltz and his staff have used personal Gmail accounts to conduct government business, a new report released Tuesday reveals, in the latest instance of Waltz seemingly using methods of communication that are unsecured and vulnerable to breaches. In at least one instance, a senior aide to Waltz used Gmail to discuss “sensitive military…
President Donald Trump is reportedly considering pushing “shadow president” Elon Musk out of his administration after the billionaire spent $25 million to elect a Republican to the Wisconsin state Supreme Court — and lost badly. Sources within the administration have told Politico, later confirmed by ABC, that Trump has informed top advisers that Musk may be stepping out of his “special…
As the UK considers how to retaliate to these tariffs, campaigners encouraged the UK to ‘Unchain from Trump’ by stopping importing US fossil fuels at current rates. In 2023, US oil and gas made up 23.5% of all UK imports for fuels. Following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the UK has become increasingly reliant on US liquified natural gas; making up a total of 26% of our imports for energy use.
This growing reliance on the US leaves UK energy supplies exposed to Trump’s trade and tariff policies. Responding to the energy crisis of 2023, the International Energy Agency stressed “the transition to a more electrified, efficient, renewables-rich energy system will reduce overall exposure to fossil fuel price volatility”. Oil prices are at a five-week high in response to Trump’s ‘trade wars’.
Campaigners assembled around a large placard depicting a British bulldog at the feet of a caricatured Trump and other placards read ‘Just Stop (importing Trump’s) Oil!’ and ‘Invest in homegrown renewables, Defund Trump’s oil machine’:
A Trump impersonator held up a storm trooper, in a nod to Trump’s use of federal forces to support his agenda during his last presidency:
Protestors chanted ‘Tangerine in a toupee! We won’t buy Trump’s oil, no way!’
Tariffs away!
Robin Wells, director of Fossil Free London who was there at the protest, commented:
Claims we have a special relationship with the USA are pure gaslighting right now. We’re being bullied by the USA and, as ever, our leaders are lapping it up.
The only way we can shield ourselves from price shocks is by funding and growing our local renewable sources and that needs to start today. It’s a long term vision for what needs to happen but we need to Just Stop Trump’s Oil!
That starts with building our storage and renewable capacity so that the UK can break free from this tangerine tyrant throwing his toys out of the pram, and from all the others who will be just like him in the future. The UK must unchain ourselves from the bully boy tactics of states gone rogue, and invest in a stable energy supply for our future.
Featured image and additional images/video via Fossil Free London
Momodou Taal, a pro-Palestinian activist and international Ph.D student, announced his decision to leave the country on Monday — ending a weeks-long struggle with the federal government that began when he sued the Trump administration.
Soon after Taal announced his decision on X and Instagram, his lawyers withdrew his lawsuit in federal court.
Taal first made national news when he, alongside Sriram Parasurama, a Ph.D. student in plant sciences, and Prof. Mũkoma wa Ngũgĩ, literatures in English, sued the Trump administration for allegedly violating their First and Fifth Amendment rights.
When Donald Trump won the 2024 presidential election, many of us turned to the words of activist and educator Daniel Hunter for comfort and direction. Hunter’s piece 10 Ways to be Prepared and Grounded Now that Trump Has Won offered practical and strategic advice to disrought people of conscience who were reeling in the wake of Trump’s victory. Hunter’s analysis included the observation that…
In a major labor victory, the Chicago Teachers Union reached a tentative agreement with Chicago Public Schools Monday night that reaffirms sanctuary school protections, protects the ability to teach Black history, gives veteran teachers a raise, and more. The deal comes amid attacks on public education by the Trump administration. “The collective bargaining agreement is a very powerful tool to use…
The Committee to Protect Journalists joined PEN America and other partner organizations in a joint letter Tuesday urging Congress to take immediate action to protect journalists affiliated with the U.S. Agency for Global Media (USAGM) outlets — such as Voice of America, Radio Free Asia, and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty — from the risk of deportation.
USAGM-affiliated journalists face serious threats, imprisonment, and persecution in their home countries due to their reporting on politically sensitive issues. The situation has been exacerbated by the Trump administration’s move to dismantle USAGM and by delays in immigration processing. The letter calls on Congress to press the State Department and U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services to prevent deportations and to secure the legal status of these journalists. Protecting them, the letter emphasizes, is a moral obligation and a vital stand for press freedom and democratic values.
United States vice president JD Vance traveled to Kalaallit Nunaat (colonial designation: Greenland) to join his wife. He issued a statement that speaks much to the imperialist mindset of the Trump administration:
I’m going to visit some of our guardians in the Space Force on the northwest coast of Greenland and also just check out what is going on with the security there of Greenland. As you know, it is really important: a lot of other countries have threatened Greenland and threatened to use its territories and its waterways to threaten the United States, to threaten Canada and of course to threaten the people of Greenland, so we’re going to check out how things are going there. So speaking for President Trump, we want to reinvigorate the security of the people of Greenland because we think it is important to protecting the security of the entire world. Unfortunately, leaders in both America and in Denmark I think ignored Greenland for far too long. That has been bad for Greenland. That has also been bad for the security of the entire world. We think we can take things in a different direction, so I am going to go check it out.
Vance says a lot of other countries have threatened Greenland (and Canada and the US). Trump points to Russia and China as threats to Greenland, without any evidence to back it up. It comes across clearly as blatant fearmongering, conjuring up a boogeyman and presenting the US as coming to the rescue.
Do Greenlanders feel afraid? If Canadians are afraid, it is about the threats the US made against Canadian sovereignty. A poll reveals that Canadians feel angry (57%), betrayed (37%), and anxious (29%) toward the Trump administration.
However, it is just silly to think Russia and China would risk world opprobrium to take over the world’s largest island, and for what? Resources and commodities that they can get by trading?
But there is a country that threatens Greenland.
Trump said to Greenland,
We strongly support your right to determine your own future. And if you choose, to welcome you into the United States of America. We need Greenland for national security and even international security. We’re working with everybody involved to try and get it. But we need it really for international world security. And I think we are going to get it; one way or the other we are going to get it. [people can be heard laughing and booing] We will keep you safe. We will make you rich …
Trump is clearly speaking out both sides of his mouth, saying he respects Greenlanders right to self-determination and then making threatening comments that the US “one way or the other we are going to get it.”
Denmark’s prime minister Mette Frederiksen complained that the US is putting “unacceptable pressure” on Greenland and Denmark. During a DR broadcast, she stated, “It is pressure that we will resist.”
Former Greenland prime minister Múte Egede realizes that the US dream to annex, own, and control Greenland is serious and calls upon allied countries to declare their support for Greenland.
Jens-Frederik Nielsen who was sworn in as the prime minister of Greenland on Friday, 28 March responded to Trump: “President Trump says that the United States is getting Greenland. Let me be clear: the United States won’t get that. We do not belong to anyone else. We determine our own future.”
On Saturday, 29 March, Trump responded about the potential use of force to take over Greenland: “I never take military force off the table. But I think there is a good chance that we could do it without military force.”
Vance and Trump Criticize Denmark
Vance criticized Denmark: “Denmark has not kept pace and devoted the resources necessary to keep this base, to keep our troops, and in my view, to keep the people of Greenland safe from a lot of very aggressive incursions from Russia, from China and other nations.” Trump echoes that sentiment, saying that the waters around Greenland have “Chinese and Russian ships all over the place” and that the US will handle the situation.
Has anyone heard of any “very aggressive incursions” by Russia, China and other nations (presumably US-designated enemies, such as Iran and North Korea) into Greenland?
Trump doubles down: “We need Greenland, very importantly, for international security. We have to have Greenland. It’s not a question of, ‘Do you think we can do without it?’ We can’t.”
What Does US Investment and Security Look Like for Its Colonies?
“Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” Vance said. “You have underinvested in the people of Greenland, and you have underinvested in the security architecture of this incredible, beautiful land mass filled with incredible people.”
Does the US do right by its overseas territories? What about US investment in overseas territories it has previously annexed? About Puerto Rico, Ben Norton wrote, “Poverty is rising in one of the world’s oldest colonies: In Puerto Rico, 41.7% of people, including 57.6% of children, live in poverty. This is nearly four times the US rate. And Puerto Rican workers are getting poorer even while unemployment falls.” The US 2020 Census revealed that Guam has a poverty rate (20.2%) twice that of the US mainland. The same 2020 census indicated, “The percentage of families in poverty for the U.S. Virgin Islands showed a slight increase from 18.3% in 2009 to 18.6% in 2019. The same census reported a decrease for families in poverty in American Samoa; poverty declined to 50.7% in 2019 from 54.4% in 2009. Is this what Greenlanders can look forward to? In comparison, in 2023, the poverty rate in Greenland was 17.4%, as calculated at below 60% of the median equivalized income,1 which is slightly above the EU average of 16.2%. However, the poverty rate in recent years has been on the rise in Greenland.
And what has US security meant for Puerto Ricans? From 1941 until 2001 the US Navy and US Marine Corps carried out bombing drills on nearby Vieques Island. Starting in 1999, protests drew attention to US militarism in its colonies. The departure of the US Navy “left the island peppered with remnants of undetonated bombs, PFAS chemicals, uranium, mercury, napalm and more. All of which are toxic materials known to have serious effects on human health along with generational impacts on the health of island youth.”
For Hawaiians? After the attack on Pearl Harbor, the island of Kaho’olawe (known as the Pacific’s Battered Bullseye) became a bombing range for the US until president George HW Bush ordered it shut down in 1990. The bombing was massive, designed to simulate the effects of a nuclear detonation. Huge 500-ton TNT charges created shock waves, vapor clouds, and sent rock and soil high into the sky, and destroyed the island’s only fresh-water aquifer.
For Micronesians? There is the ignominy of the 67 nuclear tests by the the United States in the Marshall Islands carried out between 1946 and 1958 with its concomitant fallout of radiation and the forced migration of tens of thousands of Marshall Islanders.
Even Greenland has been affected by the use of nuclear weapons by the US. In 1968, a B-52 bomber carrying four 1.1-megaton bombs crashed on the ice 19 kilometers (12 miles) from Thule, killing one crew member and leaking radioactive plutonium into Greenland’s waters. Reports of cancer and other illnesses surfaced among Danish and Kalaallit Thule Air Base workers.2
The Pentagon made a risible attempt at concealing the nuclear blunder at that time, even to the extent of one official stating: “I don’t know of any missing bomb, but we have not positively identified what I think you are looking for.”
Many people, including former Thule Air Base workers and Danish parliamentarians, state that an unexploded American hydrogen bomb also disappeared — serial number 78252. Niels-Jørgen Nehring, head of the state-sponsored DUPI [Danish Institute of International Affairs now called the Danish Institute for International Studies (DIIS)], gave credence to the claim that a lost bomb remained off Thule.
The US Thule Air Base (now Pituffik Space Base) led to the forced relocation of the Inughuit. Obedient to US dictate, colonial Danish authorities illegally exiled 650 Inuit in May 1953 from Uummannaq, Pituffik, and neighboring locales to a tent community about 100 kilometers (62 miles) north in Qaanaaq, away from their ancestral lands. “They were given four days to abandon a home that had been theirs for almost 4,000 years. They have never been allowed back,” wrote Jørgen Dragsdahl.3 The ethnic cleansing from Thule Air Base was a precursor to the subsequent ethnic cleansing of the indigenous Ilois from the erstwhile pristine coral atoll, Diego Garcia, in the Chagos archipelago by British and American governments to construct one of the largest US military bases outside the US.4
Insultingly, Greenlanders are also required to clean up the mess left by US military installations. Then US secretary of state Colin Powell rejected US responsibility, saying it had been transferred to Greenland where it would stay.
What do Greenlanders Want?
Polling results from 29 January 2025 indicate that 85% of Greenlanders do not want to exchange their present status to become a part of the US. Six percent wish to join the US and 9% are unsure. However, on the question of Greenland independence, if a referendum were held, 56% would vote in favor, 28% would vote no, and 7% didn’t know how they would vote.
The US Track Record
The US has a track record. Trump and his chosen team are operating straight out of the CIA playbook. They will lie and cheat in order to steal the homeland of the Kalaallit. The US has done this many times already. The Chagossians were shipped to Mauritius. The Chamorro continue to strive for self-determination. Palauans finally achieved it, at least partially, by agreeing to a Compact of Free Association with the US which allows the US to operate military bases in Palau and make decisions concerning external security. The Hawaiian monarchy was overthrown in a US corporate coup. Indeed, the continental US is established through the genocide of the Indigenous nations that had inhabited the landmass for millennia before Europeans reached its shores.
As well, the US has a track record in Greenland. And as the current tariff war adduces, no ally (except, it seems, Israel) can feel secure in its relationship with the US.
1 The OECD explains this jargon as: “People are classified as poor when their equivalised disposable household income is less than 50% of the median in each country.
2 See Erik Erngaard, Grønland: I Tusinde År (Lademan Forlagsaktieselskab, 1973), 227.
3 Jørgen Dragsdahl, “The Danish dilemma,” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, September/October 2001.
