53 h. ago The Guardian view on Donald Trump’s tariff ultimatum: tribute for access to America’s empire | Editorial

As the White House retools US imperialism with import duties, others must resist dependency – deepening regional ties and reducing exposure to chokepointsWhen Donald Trump stood before union auto workers in the Rose Garden he declared “Liberation Day”, promising to stand up for Main Street. Whether that pledge will be fulfilled is moot. He will declare victory either way. What the US president offered was not just an economic programme, but an imperial one.Mr Trump’s logic, if it exists, lies in the 397-page report on “foreign trade barriers” he brandished on Wednesday. Its message is brutally simple: you may sell your goods to Walmart shoppers, but only if you let US cloud services hoover up your data, US media flood your screens and US tech monopolies operate on their terms – not yours. TikTok is the test case for Trump’s platform nationalism: only US firms may mine data, reap profits and rule the digital empire. Continue reading...

Politics

3 d. ago The Guardian view on Trump’s tariffs: a monstrous and momentous act of folly | Editorial

The US president has expelled his own country from the rules-based global trade system that America itself createdFor the world’s already embattled trading system, it is as though an asteroid has crashed into the planet, devastating everyone and everything that previously existed there. But there is this important difference. If an asteroid struck the Earth, the impact would at least have been caused by ungovernable cosmic forces. The assault on world trade, by contrast, is a completely deliberate act of choice, taken by one man and one nation.Donald Trump’s decision to impose tariffs on every country in the world is a monstrous and momentous act of folly. Unilateral and unjustified, it was expressed on Wednesday in indefensible language in which Mr Trump described US allies as “cheaters” and “scavengers” who “looted”, “raped” and “pillaged” the US. Many of the calculations on which Mr Trump doled out his punishments are perverse, not least the exclusion of Russia from the cond...

Politics

5 d. ago The Guardian view on Donald Trump’s tariffs: a spectacle of struggle and control | Editorial

The US president wields tariffs not as a policy tool but as an instrument of pressure, rewarding loyalty and punishing defiance – even among alliesDonald Trump has probably not read much Michel Foucault. But he appears to embody the French philosopher’s claim that “politics is the continuation of war by other means”. Nowhere is this more apparent than in his fondness for tariffs. He presents taxing foreign imports as a way to rebuild the American economy in favour of blue-collar workers left behind by free trade and globalisation. Yet he plainly thinks that politics is not about truth or justice. It is about leverage and supremacy.Britain is learning first-hand that Mr Trump, with his us-versus-them framing and taste for spectacle, is an accidental Foucauldian – using tariffs as tools of loyalty and dominance, even against allies. If Mr Trump follows through on his threat to impose a 20% tariff on all imports, UK growth will suffer. The effect depends on the response....

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1 week ago The Guardian view on Trump and reality: from promoting alternative facts to erasing truths | Editorial

The decision to put documents on the assassination of John F Kennedy into the public domain comes alongside a ‘digital book burning’ of dataWhat does the public need to know? The Trump White House boasts of being the most transparent administration in history – though commentators have suggested that the inadvertent leak of military plans to a journalist may have happened because senior figures were using messaging apps such as Signal to avoid oversight. Last week, it released thousands of pages of documents on John F Kennedy’s assassination. Donald Trump has declared that Kennedy’s family and the American people “deserve transparency and truth”.Strikingly, this stated commitment to sharing information comes as his administration defunds data collection and erases existing troves of knowledge from government websites. The main drivers appear to be the desire to remove “woke” content and global heating data, and the slashing of federal spending. Information resources are both the tar...

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3 w. ago The Guardian view on Trump and Ukraine: respite is possible, but resolution looks distant | Editorial

Will-they-won’t-they over a ceasefire does not change the underlying dynamics of US retreat from supporting Kyiv A three-year conflict has taken bewildering, lurching turns in under a fortnight. Less than two weeks after Donald Trump berated Volodymyr Zelenskyy, ejected him from the White House and cut off Ukraine’s support, he U-turned to threaten financial measures “that would be very bad for Russia” if it did not reach a deal with Kyiv. Ukraine’s acceptance of a 30-day ceasefire proposal, building on its own suggestion of a halt in air and maritime conflict, threw the onus on Moscow. On Thursday, Vladimir Putin claimed to support the idea in theory – but warned of “serious issues” to address.Ukraine’s agreement prompted the resumption of US intelligence sharing and military aid, which may well have been Kyiv’s primary aim. Mr Trump would like to take the credit – and perhaps aspires to a Nobel prize – for a peace deal. Mr Trump, who was hosting Nato’s sec...

Politics

last month The Guardian view on Trump and media: attention is power. Can Democrats grab it? | Editorial

The presidency is no longer just a ‘bully pulpit’. It’s become part of the disinformation machineDonald Trump won the White House not with money, though he spent plenty of it, but by dominating the conversation. He hasn’t stopped campaigning. He uses attention to bolster his political power, and uses his office to make sure that everyone keeps watching.He was barred from leading social media platforms after the January 6 attack on the Capitol, but four years later, their owners attended his inauguration. Many of his key hires appear picked for their media presence as well as their ideological bent and sycophancy. Tuesday’s interminable address to Congress was garnished with the kind of wild claims or outright lies that he knows take off on social media. For him, posting online ultimatums to Hamas and a disturbing AI-generated “Trump Gaza” video is all part of foreign policy. One of the most chilling, and telling, moments of last week’s attack on Volodymyr Zelensk...

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