President Donald Trump listens to Jeff Crowe speak during an event on energy production in the East Room of the White House, April 8, 2025, in Washington
TRUMP’S 90-day tariff reprieve spells 90 days of geopolitical turbulence, US bullying and the threat of war.
All three have been constant features of the period of US “unipolar” power, especially since the beginning of what even US presidents have termed the “forever wars.” But Trump’s aggression is global.
That is not changed by the 90-day pause on tariffs (above a 10 per cent base line) on everyone except China, on whose products tariffs are now being hiked well above 100 per cent.
Yes, it identifies China as his main target. Yes, it is an affronted response to the one big country which has met his threats with defiance.
But the escalation against China and suspension — not removal — of threatened tariffs elsewhere are part of the same strategy. Trump is trying to browbeat the world into siding with the United States against China in a conflict the US, not China, has decided on.
Successive US governments have slapped sanctions (which, not being UN-authorised, have no international legal standing) on Chinese products.
But the universal tariff threat ratchets up the pressure. Align with our demands, the US says, or we have already identified the level of economic pain we are going to inflict on you.
Those demands are intended to force all markets open to whatever the US wants. Economist Michael Roberts points to the catch-all list of supposedly unfair practices the US objects to, including “currency manipulation, ‘opaque’ licensing, ‘discriminatory’ product standards, ‘burdensome’ customs procedures, data localisation and so-called ‘lawfare’ of taxes and regulation.”
This is the extraterritorial imposition of US power writ large. Other countries may not decide their own policies on procurement, the quality or safety of goods, tariffs (!), protecting their citizens’ data from US acquisition, or how to tax and regulate US companies operating on their territory. It is outrageous.
Neo-Fascist Climate Science Denier Donald Trump says Burn, Baby, Burn.Elon Musk urges you to be a Fascist like him, says that you can ignore facts and reality then.
U.S. President Donald Trump speaks alongside coal and energy workers during an executive order signing ceremony in the East Room of the White House on April 8, 2025 in Washington, D.C. (Photo: Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)
“Coal is a disaster for our health, our wallets, and the planet,” said one environmental lawyer.
U.S. President Donald Trump on Tuesday signed multiple executive orders that aim to boost the coal industry, a move that critics denounced as “reckless” and “breathlessly stupid” even before the orders were officially unveiled.
Among the orders signed Tuesday, Trump directed U.S. Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum to acknowledge the end of a moratorium that had halted new coal leasing on public lands and to prioritize coal leasing and related activities, and also directed U.S. Secretary of Energy Chris Wright to determine whether coal used in steel production can be considered a “critical material.” According to Reuters, permitting this classification would pave the way for the administration to use emergency powers to boost production.
Trump also paused environmental regulation imposed under former President Joe Biden that applied to certain coal-burning power plants thereby purportedly “safeguarding the nation’s energy grid and security, and saving coal plants from closure.”
Additionally, one order directed the “Energy Department to develop a process for using emergency powers to prevent unprofitable coal plants from shutting down in order to avert power outages,” according to The New York Times, a move that may face court challenges.
Jill Tauber, vice president of litigation for climate and energy at the green group Earthjustice, said Tuesday: “Coal is a disaster for our health, our wallets, and the planet. President Trump’s efforts to rescue failing coal plants and open our lands to destructive mining is another in a series of actions that sacrifices American lives for fossil fuel industry profit. Instead of investing in pollution, we should be leading the way on clean energy.”
“The only way to prop up coal is to deny reality, and the reality is that people no longer rely on coal because it’s expensive, unreliable, and devastating to public health,” said Julie McNamara, an associate policy director with the Union of Concerned Scientists, in a statement on Tuesday.
“Instead of supporting the economy-boosting clean energy transition that maintains widespread public support across the country, President Trump is relentlessly attempting to tear it down.”
Trump has vowed to support what he calls “beautiful, clean coal,” though the industry has been in decline for years. Coal-fired electricity generation has dropped from 38.5% of the country’s generation mix in 2014 to 14.7% in 2024, according to a 2025 factbook from BloombergNEF and the Business Council for Sustainable Energy. Coal is also the dirtiest fossil fuel.
The executive order builds on previous moves by the Trump administration. Last month, Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin announced an effort to rollback a host of EPA regulations, including some that will impact coal producers.
On the first day of his second term, Trump declared a “national energy emergency” intended to help deliver on his campaign pledge to “drill, baby, drill.” That emergency defined energy to include oil, natural gas, uranium, coal, biofuels, geothermal, flowing water, and critical minerals—but it omitted solar and wind.
Reporting earlier Tuesday indicated that Trump would sign an order invoking presidential emergency authority to force coal-fired power plants to stay open.
In a statement released in response to that reporting, Tyson Slocum, energy program director at the watchdog Public Citizen, said: “Reviving or extending coal to power data centers would force working families to subsidize polluting coal on behalf of Big Tech billionaires and despoil our nation’s public lands.”
“Coal kills. In the last two decades, nearly half a million Americans have died from exposure to coal pollution,” said Ben Jealous, executive director of the environmental organization the Sierra Club in a statement on earlier on Tuesday, also in response to reports that executive orders were forthcoming.
In another move that generated swift criticism, Trump signed an executive order on Tuesday directing U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi to investigate state policies that are aimed at confronting the climate crisis and to take action to stop enforcement of those laws.
According to The Washington Post, it is unclear what authority would the agency would rely on. The order specifically calls out state climate superfund laws in New York and Vermont.
“President Trump’s executive order weaponizes the Justice Department against states that dare to make polluters pay for climate damage,” said Cassidy DiPaola, communications director of Make Polluters Pay—a campaign to build public support for climate litigation—in a statement on Wednesday.
“This is the fossil fuel industry’s desperation on full display—they’re so afraid of facing evidence of their deception in court that they’ve convinced the president to launch a federal assault on state sovereignty. We are watching corporate capture of government unfold in real time,” DiPaola added.
Power-mad orange gasbag Donald Trump says Burn, Baby, Burn.Elon Musk urges you to be a Fascist like him, says that you can ignore facts and reality then.Orcas discuss how Trump was re-elected and him being an insane, xenophobic Fascist.
A Venezuelan migrant tries in vain to access the CBP One app a day after the second inauguration of U.S. President Donald Trump on January 21, 2025 in Nogales, Mexico. The incoming administration shut down the app which was created by the Biden administration to allow migrants to schedule appointments to gain entry into the United States. (Photo: John Moore/Getty Images)
“It was never about ‘legal’ immigration, but always about upholding white supremacy,” said one human rights lawyer.
In yet another Trump administration attack on migrants, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security on Monday announced that nearly 1 million migrants who entered the country legally using a Customs and Border Protection mobile application must leave “immediately” or face consequences including potential criminal prosecution.
DHS notified migrants who were granted temporary parole protection after entering the country using the CBP One app—which was launched by the Biden administration in 2020 and upgraded in 2023—that “it is time for you to leave the United States.”
The department “mis now exercising its discretion to terminate your parole,” the agency said in an email to affected—and more than 200,000 unaffected—migrants. “Unless it expires sooner, your parole will terminate seven days from the date of this notice.”
“If you do not deport from the United States immediately you will be subject to potential law enforcement actions that will result in your removal,” the notice continues. “You will be subject to potential criminal prosecution, civil fines, and penalties, and any other lawful options available to the federal government.”
The Trump administration is revoking the legal status of migrants who entered the U.S. via the Biden-era CBP One app, instructing them to leave the immediately or face arrest.
They are being told to self-deport via the same app that allowed them in. It is now called CBP Home. pic.twitter.com/ea2M3lbRGy
— Camilo Montoya-Galvez (@camiloreports) April 8, 2025
“DHS encourages you to leave immediately on your own,” the notice stresses, providing a link to a new app—called CBP Home—containing “a self-deportation reporting feature for aliens illegally in the country.”
“Do not attempt to remain in the United States. The federal government will find you,” DHS ominously added.
Approximately 985,000 migrants used the problem-plagued CBP One app to schedule appointments with U.S. immigration officials when arriving at ports of entry and were generally permitted to remain in the country for two years with work authorization.
However, DHS claimed Monday that “the Biden administration abused the parole authority to allow millions of illegal aliens into the U.S. which further fueled the worst border crisis in U.S. history.”
“Canceling these paroles is a promise kept to the American people to secure our borders and protect national security,” the agency added.
President Donald Trumpended new CBP One entries on January 20, his first day in office, via executive order, a move that left thousands of vulnerable migrants stranded in Mexico after their immigration appointments were canceled.
Monday’s announcement does not affect people who entered the U.S. under Operation Allies Welcome for Afghans or the Uniting for Ukraine program—although more than 200,000 Ukrainian beneficiaries last week received a separate jarring email mistakenly informing them that their status had been revoked.
The new policy also “should not immediately affect migrants who entered via CBP One and applied for asylum and have pending cases in immigration court,” according to CBS News immigration and politics reporter Camilo Montoya-Galvez, who noted that “the government generally has to wait for those cases to be adjudicated or terminated before moving to deport.”
More than 500,000 Cuban, Haitian, Nicaraguan, and Venezuelan migrants who entered the country via the CBP One app with U.S.-based financial sponsors are also bracing for the loss of their protected status on April 24. Additionally, the Trump administration announced the revocation of Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for over 1 million Haitian and Venezuelan migrants.
However, on March 31 a federal judge in San Francisco blocked the administration’s effort to expel 350,000 Venezuelan TPS recipients, finding that the deportations were “motivated by unconstitutional animus” and would “inflict irreparable harm” upon affected migrants.
Critics have accused the Trump administration and its supporters of reveling in the cruelty inherent in forcibly removing migrants.
This isn’t policy. This is state-sponsored dehumanization—with a soundtrack.
Weaponizing suffering. Mocking lives torn apart. Celebrating cruelty like it’s a game show.
This is how fascism talks when it thinks no one can stop it. We see you. And we will stop you.…
Proponents, meanwhile, say Trump is keeping his promise to carry out the largest mass deportation campaign in U.S. history—even as statistics show that the Biden administration deported people at a faster rate last year.
Migrants and other immigrants, including those who legally sought asylum in the United States—at least one of whom was wrongfully expelled—are being sent by the Trump administration to destinations including a camp in the Panamanian jungle and an ultra-high security prison in El Salvador.
Advocacy groups argue that such deportations are unlawful and violate deportees’ rights. Human Rights Watch has documented cases of “torture, ill-treatment, incommunicado detention, severe violations of due process, and inhumane conditions, such as lack of access to adequate healthcare and food” in Salvadoran prisons.
Responding to Monday’s DHS announcement, U.S. human rights attorney Qasim Rashid noted on social media that “985K migrants entered [the] USA through legal means during the previous administration.”
“Trump just unilaterally revoked their legal status,” Rashid added. “It was never about ‘legal’ immigration, but always about upholding white supremacy. This man is a fascist.”
Allen Orr Jr., a Washington, D.C.-based immigration lawyer, lamented Tuesday that “migrants who followed the rules and entered legally through CBP One are now being punished.”
“Not because they broke the law, but because of who granted them the benefit,” he added. “This isn’t about security; it’s about revenge.”
Orcas discuss how Trump was re-elected and him being an insane, xenophobic Fascist.Neo-Fascist Climate Science Denier Donald Trump says Burn, Baby, Burn.Elon Musk urges you to be a Fascist like him, says that you can ignore facts and reality then.
Inmates the Trump administration alleges are linked to criminal organizations are lined up by guards in their cells at the Terrorism Confinement Center, a maximum security prison, on March 16, 2025 in Tecoluca, El Salvador. (Photo: Salvadoran Government via Getty Images)
“How the government reacts will tell us so much about how far down the road to autocracy we are,” said one lawyer.
A U.S. judge on Friday ordered the return of a Maryland resident who the Trump administration mistakenly deported to a prison in El Salvador last month, according to The Associated Press.
Prior to issuing the ruling, U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis called the deportation of Kilmar Abrego Garcia “an illegal act.”
The judge, an appointee of former President Barack Obama, gave the Trump administration end of the day of the day on Monday to bring him back to the United States.
Supporters outside the courtroom cheered as the judge handed down her order, according to The Washington Post.
Responding to the ruling on social media, U.S. Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) said: “This is a big win. Now Trump must comply with the judge’s order.”
Immigration lawyer Ava Benach wrote: “The right decision. How the government reacts will tell us so much about how far down the road to autocracy we are.”
The right decision. How the government reacts will tell us so much about how far down the road to autocracy we are.
Abrego Garcia was among hundreds of people the administration expelled in mid-March to a notorious megaprison in El Salvador after targeting them for alleged gang ties.
In a court papers filed earlier this week in the U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland, an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) acting field office director admitted that the removal of Abrego Garcia on March 15 “was an error.”
Abrego Garcia was deported despite the fact that in 2019, a U.S. immigration judge ruled that he could not be deported to his native El Salvador because he would likely face gang persecution there.
Neo-Fascist Climate Science Denier Donald Trump says Burn, Baby, Burn.Elon Musk urges you to be a Fascist like him, says that you can ignore facts and reality then.
Traders work on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange during morning trading on April 3, 2025 in New York City. (Photo: Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images)
Instead of strategically imposing tariffs, Trump has chosen to “give the country the most massive tax increase in its history, possibly exceeding $1 trillion on an annual basis.”
As stocks “nosedived” on Thursday, economists, policymakers, and campaigners around the world continued to warn about the impacts of U.S. President Donald Trump’s trade war, which includes a 10% universal tariff for imports and steeper duties—that he claims are “reciprocal”—for dozens of countries, set to take effect over the next week.
“This is how you sabotage the world’s economic engine while claiming to supercharge it,” wrote Nigel Green, CEO of the international financial consultancy deVere Group. “Trump is blowing up the post-war system that made the U.S. and the world more prosperous, and he’s doing it with reckless confidence.”
As Bloomberg detailed after the president’s “Liberation Day” remarks from the White House Rose Garden:
China’s cumulative tariff rate of 54% includes both the 20% duty already charged earlier this year, added to the 34% levy calculated as part of Trump’s so-called reciprocal plan, according to people familiar with the matter. The European Union’s rate is 20% and Vietnam’s is 46%, White House documents showed. Other nations slapped with larger tariffs include Japan with 24%, South Korea with 25%, India with 26%, Cambodia with 49%, and Taiwan with 32%.
In Europe on Thursday, “the regional Stoxx 600 index provisionally ended down around 2.7%,” while “the U.K.’s FTSE 100 was down 1.6%, with France’s CAC 40 and Germany’s DAX posting deeper losses of 3.3% and 3.1%, respectively,” according to CNBC.
In the United States, CNBC reported, “the broad market index dropped 4%, putting it on track for its worst day since September 2022. The Dow Jones Industrial Average tumbled 1,200 points, or 3%, while the Nasdaq Composite fell 5%. The slide across equities was broad, with decliners at the New York Stock Exchange outnumbering advancers by 6-to-1.”
However, as Economic Policy Institute (EPI) chief economist Josh Bivens noted last week, “because most households depend overwhelmingly on wages from work as their primary source of income and not returns from wealth-holding, the stock market tells us nothing about these households’ economic situations.”
And Trump’s tariffs are expected to hit U.S. households hard, as the cost of his taxes on imports are passed on to consumers.
“Tariffs can be a legitimate and useful tool in industrial policy for well-defined strategic goals, but broad-based tariffs that significantly raise the average effective tariff rate in the United States are unwise,” Bivens and EPI senior economist Adam Hersh stressed in a Thursday statement—which also called out Trump for mischaracterizing one of the think tank’s 2022 analyses.
“Further, the second Trump administration’s rationale, parameters, and timeline for tariffs have been ever-shifting,” Bivens and Hersh continued. “As the original post cited by the administration argues, tariffs should not be a goal unto themselves, but a strategic tool to pair with other efforts to restore American competitiveness in narrowly targeted industrial sectors.”
Instead of strategically imposing tariffs, Trump has chosen to “give the country the most massive tax increase in its history, possibly exceeding $1 trillion on an annual basis, which comes to $7,000 per household,” warned Center for Economic and Policy Research co-founder and senior economist Dean Baker. “And this tax hike will primarily hit moderate and middle-income families. Trump’s taxes go easy on the rich, who spend a smaller share of their income on imported goods.”
Baker—like various other economists and journalists—also took aim at Trump’s claims that the tariffs are reciprocal, explaining:
Trump’s team calculated our trade deficit with each country and divided it by their exports to the United States. Trump decided that this figure was equal to that country’s tariff on goods imported from the U.S.
Trump’s method of calculating tariffs is comparable to the doctor who assesses your proper weight by dividing your height by your birthday. Any doctor who did this is clearly batshit crazy, and unfortunately so is our president. And apparently none of his economic advisers has the courage and integrity to set him straight or to resign.
However, outside Trump’s administration, the intense criticism continued to mount, including from groups focused on combating the fossil fuel-driven climate emergency, which also endangers the global economy.
Andreas Sieber, associate director of policy and Campaigns at 350.org, said Thursday that “Trump’s tariffs won’t slow the global energy transition—they’ll only hurt ordinary people, particularly Americans.”
“Despite his claims he ‘gets’ economic policy, his record tells a different story: Tariffs are tanking U.S. stocks and fueling inflation,” Sieber added. “The transition to renewables is unstoppable, with or without him. His latest move does little to impact the booming clean energy market but will isolate the U.S. and drive up costs for American consumers.”
Allie Rosenbluth, U.S. campaign manager at Oil Change International, similarly emphasized that “Trump’s tariffs will hurt working families first and foremost, raising costs for essentials we depend on and threatening to plunge the U.S. economy into a recession. Though Trump pretends to care about the cost of living for ordinary people, his real loyalties lie with his fossil fuel industry donors.”
“If he actually cared about energy affordability, he would stop bullying other countries into buying more U.S. liquefied natural gas (LNG), which boosts the fossil fuel industry’s profits, but results in increased prices for domestic consumers and pushes us further toward climate catastrophe,” she asserted. “The one step countries can take to hit Trump where it hurts most is wean off their dependency on fossil fuels from the United States.”
The impact of Trump’s new levies won’t be limited to working-class people in the United States. Nick Dearden, director of U.K.-based Global Justice Now, pointed out that “Trump has set light to the global economy and unleashed a world of pain, not least on a group of developing countries that will suffer tremendous impoverishment as a result of his punitive tariffs.”
“All those affected must come together and stand up to this bully by building a very different international economy that promotes the interests of ordinary people rather than the oligarchs standing behind Trump,” he argued. “For all its scraping and crawling, the U.K. got no special treatment here, and the government should learn this lesson fast: They need to stop giving away our rights and protections in a futile effort to appease Donald Trump.”
Leaders in the United States are also encouraging resistance to Trump. U.S. Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) said Wednesday that “this week you will read many confused economists and political pundits who won’t understand how the tariffs make economic sense. That’s because they don’t. They aren’t designed as economic policy. The tariffs are simply a new, super dangerous political tool.”
Murphy made the case that “the tariffs are DESIGNED to create economic hardship. Why? So that Trump has a straight face rationale for releasing them, business by business or industry by industry. As he adjusts or grants relief, it’s a win-win: the economy improves and dissent disappears.”
“But as long as we see this clearly, we can stop him. Public mobilization is working. Today, a few Republicans joined Democrats to vote against one set of tariffs,” he added, referring to a resolution that would undo levies on Canadian imports. “The people still have the power.”
Neo-Fascist Climate Science Denier Donald Trump says Burn, Baby, Burn.Elon Musk urges you to be a Fascist like him, says that you can ignore facts and reality then.Orcas discuss Donald Trump and the killer apes’ concept of democracy. Front Orca warns that Trump is crashing his country’s economy and that everything he does he does for the fantastically wealthy.
