“The Trump administration has upended what it calls “blatantly unfair” talks to set a carbon tax on international shipping and has vowed “reciprocal measures” to shield U.S. ships from any fees, according to a letter seen by POLITICO.
The International Maritime Organization’s Maritime Environmental Protection Conference (MEPC) is taking place in London this week and aims to reach a deal on reducing greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) from shipping.
“President Donald Trump is throwing the weight of the Justice Department against the last bastion of U.S. climate action: states and cities.
In a sweeping executive order signed late Tuesday, Trump ordered Attorney General Pam Bondi to “stop the enforcement of State laws” on climate change that the administration says are unconstitutional, unenforceable or preempted by federal laws.”
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“The move came as Trump presided over a White House event Tuesday aimed at reviving the coal industry, which has withered against competition from less expensive natural gas and renewables.
He pledged to a row of coal miners standing behind him that he’d direct the Department of Justice to “identify and fight every single unconstitutional state or legal regulation that’s putting our coal miners out of business.”
Some legal experts said the White House’s executive order would be “toothless,” though climate advocates worry about gambling with a judiciary dominated by conservative appointees. And in a statement, Democratic governors said Trump would not intimidate them from climate action.”
“The EU can apply retaliatory tariffs on nearly €21 billion of U.S. products like soybeans, motorcycles and orange juice after the bloc’s 27 countries assented to the measures on Wednesday, the European Commission announced.
“The EU considers U.S. tariffs unjustified and damaging, causing economic harm to both sides, as well as the global economy. The EU has stated its clear preference to find negotiated outcomes with the U.S., which would be balanced and mutually beneficial,” the EU executive said in a statement.
Hitting back against U.S. President Donald Trump’s steel and aluminum tariffs, the European Union’s countermeasures will apply in three rounds. Measures covering €3.9 billion in trade will go into force next week, with a further €13.5 billion from mid-May and a final round of €3.5 billion following in December.”
“The Trump administration froze $1 billion in federal funding for Cornell University and $790 million for Northwestern University, the White House confirmed.
The freeze is the latest in a series of federal funding attacks against the Ivy League, but Northwestern would be the first institution to face a funding cut outside of that group. University officials from Northwestern have said they have not yet received official notice of the funding freezes.”
“San Antonio sends almost half its exports to Canada, which makes the Texas trade hub one of the most vulnerable U.S. cities in the tariff war.
Mayor Ron Nirenberg says one in five jobs in his state is exposed by President Donald Trump’s new tariff regime — “300,000 jobs immediately on the block.””
“When Veronica Sanchez called a Social Security hotline Thursday, she waited two hours before her call was abruptly disconnected.
On Friday, she was on hold for six hours and still did not get through to anyone.
“I’m gonna have to take time out of my work to stand in line and hopefully get this resolved,” the 52-year-old medical practice manager in Canoga Park said Monday before calling one more time.
For Sanchez, the stakes are high: If she does not obtain a medical letter from the agency by April 15, her parents, who are on a fixed income, risk losing about $2,500 a month in medical care. They would no longer receive insulin medication for their diabetes, she said, and could lose their daily visit from a nurse.
But even if Sanchez shows up in person, she is not likely to speak to an agent. Field offices are no longer accepting walk-in appointments.
“The system, it’s broken down,” Sanchez said.
Elderly and disabled people — and those who care for them — are encountering a knot of bureaucratic hurdles and service disruptions after the Trump administration imposed a sweeping overhaul of the Social Security Administration system.”
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“In February, the agency that sends monthly checks to nearly 73 million Americans announced plans to slash 7,000 jobs and consolidate its regional offices from 10 to four as part of an effort to “reduce the size of its bloated workforce and organizational structure.” The cutbacks, enforced by Musk’s advisory team known as the Department of Government Efficiency, represent a 12% reduction of the agency’s workforce.
Sanchez does not believe she is reaping the benefits of government efficiency.
“It’s frustrating,” she said, noting that a call that would once take 15 minutes now involves much more work.”
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“Maria Town, president and chief executive of the American Assn. of People with Disabilities, told The Times that the system changes were not only hurting people’s ability to sign up and enroll for benefits. People already connected to the system who needed support were also having trouble appealing benefits decisions or accessing medical services.
“You can’t get anyone on the phone,” she said.
Even before Trump took office, Town said, the system had challenges: About 30,000 disabled people died in 2023 waiting for their SSDI application to be approved.”
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“About five months ago, Taylor said, he asked for the same letter at the same office and did not run into any issues. He didn’t know what to make of the difference and had not followed the changes in the White House.
“If this is what they’re doing in Washington, it isn’t fair to everyone else,” he said. “Poor people always seem to get the worst of it.””
“President Donald Trump on Wednesday announced a 90-day pause of the higher tariffs against 60-odd trading partners that went into effect earlier Wednesday, with the exception of China — an abrupt reversal of his market-rattling trade policy.
Trump, in a Truth Social post, said he plans to keep the administration’s global baseline tariff increase of 10 percent in place for all countries.
But tariffs he imposed on China will continue to rise, Trump wrote, increasing to 125 percent, due to Beijing’s continued retaliation.”
“Trump argues that tariffs will stimulate the U.S. economy by boosting domestic production, which is possible only if tariffs make imports more expensive. Yet Trump is loath to admit that tariffs collected from importers translate into higher prices for U.S. businesses and consumers.
“China is eating the Tariffs,” Trump claimed during his first trade war. The upshot, he said, was that “cost increases have thus far been almost unnoticeable.” If so, there was little reason to expect that tariffs would help U.S. companies at the expense of their foreign competitors.
Trump is still pushing these contradictory claims. The White House claims tariffs “do not raise prices” yet somehow “create new incentives for US consumers to buy US-made products.”
During a recent interview, by contrast, Trump admitted that his 25 percent tariff on imported cars might make them more expensive. “I couldn’t care less if they raise prices,” he said, “because people are going to start buying American-made cars.”
Even that concession was misleading, because those “American-made cars” frequently incorporate foreign-made parts, which are also covered by Trump’s tariffs. Overall, Yale’s Budget Lab estimates, Trump’s tariffs will raise car prices by 13.5 percent, adding $6,400 to the cost of “an average new 2024 car.””
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“Trump ignores that tradeoff too, pretending tariffs can be a reliable source of easy revenue even though they are designed to shrink the flow of the products on which they are levied. As Trump tells it, we can tax ourselves to prosperity at no cost to Americans and use the windfall to tackle the federal government’s looming fiscal crisis.
If all that is true, it is a mystery why Trump also presents tariffs as a bargaining tool that can be used to extract concessions from other countries, such as assistance in border control and the war on drugs. Such threats work only if Trump is willing to forgo the supposedly unalloyed benefits of tariffs.”
“”You gotta get scared that people who are not criminals are getting lassoed up and deported and sent to El Salvador prisons,” Joe Rogan said on his hugely popular podcast this week. “This is kind of crazy, that that could be possible. That’s horrific.”
Rogan was alluding to Venezuelan makeup artist Andry Hernandez, who was shipped off to El Salvador’s notorious Center for Terrorism Confinement (CECOT) last month. Based largely on innocent tattoos, Hernandez’s supporters say, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) mistakenly identified him as a member of Tren de Aragua, the Venezuelan gang targeted by President Donald Trump’s March 15 proclamation invoking the Alien Enemies Act (AEA).”
“Wednesday’s announcement elevated tariffs on three of America’s five largest agricultural trading partners—China (34 percent), the European Union (20 percent), and Japan (24 percent). Mexico and Canada, which are America’s two largest trading partners, were exempt from the list but have faced 25 percent duties on certain products since March.
Together, these five markets account for more than 60 percent of American agricultural exports and retaliatory tariffs have already been enacted by some. China has implemented a 10 percent to 15 percent tariff on American soybeans, cotton, pork, and poultry. In March, Canada announced retaliatory tariffs on a number of American goods, including $5.8 billion worth of agricultural products. The European Union, meanwhile, is considering a suite of tariffs that will impact the agricultural sector.
As these tariffs make it harder for American farmers to access foreign markets, thus decreasing revenue, they could also increase production costs and the price of fertilizer, which is one of the largest expenses involved in farming. Imports of the three most commonly used nutrients in fertilizers—potassium (potash), nitrogen, and phosphorus—topped $10 billion in 2023, $5 billion of which came from Canada. Potash, which “is an irreplaceable component of modern agricultural production,” according to the Fertilizer Institute, is sourced predominantly from Canada. Nitrogen, meanwhile, is imported mainly from Canada (the country meets 10 percent of American nitrogen needs), Russia, and Trinidad and Tobago (10 percent tariff).”
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“The damage that this policy will cause is not lost on the Trump administration. On Monday, Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins told the Des Moines Register that her agency is ready to make farmers affected by tariffs “whole” through cash assistance programs. Under the first Trump administration, the Agriculture Department also hedged against its poor trade policy by issuing $28 billion in bailouts to farmers.
Monetary compensation may provide farmers a reprieve, but it will be at the expense of taxpayers, who are going to have to pay more for their favorite products because of Trump’s trade war.”