Analysis Shows Big Corporations Are Using Trump Trade Chaos as ‘Cover’ to Jack Up Prices
Tusk says signs point to possible suspension of Ukraine war this year as Ukraine fatigue builds
Trump's tariff gamble pays off as US economic growth crushes expectations
Northeast section of Loop 250 has reopened near North County Road 1150 after chemical spill
US-imposed tariffs spelled disaster for this factory that exported clothes to American stores MASERU, Lesotho (AP) — The deafening roar of hundreds of sewing machines has gone silent. Spools of thread in every color are covered in dust. The warehouse is dark and empty. .......... A few months ago, work was steady. The factory's 1,300 employees have made and exported sportswear to American stores, including JCPenney, Walmart and Costco. ........ But when Trump announced sweeping new tariffs on nearly all U.S. trading partners in April, Lesotho found itself topping the list, with a rate of 50% — higher even than that of China, where the economy is 8,000 times larger. Officials here and economic experts said they were baffled. .......... The damage has already rippled through Lesotho’s economy, where textile manufacturing comprises the largest private industry with more than 30,000 workers in 2024. .......... For Tzicc and its customers, the threat and apparent singling out of Lesotho were enough. Management decided to rush to deliver preexisting orders before tariffs resumed. But American buyers stopped placing new orders. With no work left, virtually all the factory's employees were sent home — potentially permanently. ............. Officials and workers fear this may be a sign of what's to come for other factories in Lesotho, where poverty is widespread among the population of 2 million and most textile workers single-handedly support their families. ........... In March, a month before slapping Lesotho with the 50% tariff, Trump described it as a place “nobody has ever heard of," struggling to pronounce the nation's name in a speech criticizing U.S. foreign aid. ......... As textiles grew to become Lesotho's main export, some 75% of its product went to the U.S. Lesotho became known as Africa's denim capital. If an American purchased jeans from a U.S. brand such as Wrangler or Levi's, they may have been “Made in Lesotho,” as tags still note. ............. In 2000, the U.S. signed the African Growth and Opportunity Act, allowing Lesotho and other African nations to export goods to the U.S. duty free. ............. According to the Trump administration, Lesotho charges a 99% tariff on U.S. goods. The government here said it doesn’t know how the U.S. calculated that. ............ In theory, the tariff decision was based on trade deficit: Lesotho’s exports to the U.S. were around $240 million last year — mainly clothing and diamonds — and imports from the U.S. were only $2.8 million. ........... Lesotho simply cannot afford to import more U.S. products. Nearly half the population lives below the poverty line. ........... Last year, Lesotho's overall unemployment rate was about 30%, national data shows. For those 35 and younger, it was nearly 50%. ......... Most of the 12,000 people hired by Lesotho's 11 factories exporting to the U.S. are women with children to feed and school fees to pay. ...........
“Life is difficult,” former worker Mathunya said. “There is nothing, nothing at all. People don’t have money.”
Brazil’s president Lula hits back as Trump tariffs threaten US trade showdown Brazil’s president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, has said he does not fear getting on the wrong side of Donald Trump, as South America’s largest economy braces for the introduction of 50% tariffs on Friday. ......... far-right ally Jair Bolsonaro. The former Brazilian president faces decades in jail for allegedly plotting a military coup to stop Lula from taking office after the former lost the 2022 presidential election. ........ In a rare interview with the New York Times, clearly designed to send a message to the White House on the eve of a potential trade war, Lula urged the US president to avoid creating a “lose-lose” relationship between two of the largest economies in the Americas and said he did not fear publicly criticizing Trump, whom he recently called an “emperor”. ......... “There’s no reason to be afraid. I am worried, obviously, because we have economic interests, political interests, technological interests. But at no point will Brazil negotiate as if it were a small country up against a big country. Brazil will negotiate as a sovereign country,” said Lula, who has enjoyed a bounce in the polls after Trump’s threat. .......... Brazil’s president indicated that the political future of Bolsonaro – whose plot allegedly included plans to assassinate Lula – was a judicial matter and therefore non-negotiable. “Brazil has a constitution, and the former president is being tried with a full right to a defense,” Lula insisted. .......... Trump’s decision to cite Bolsonaro’s plight as one of the main justifications for his move against Brazil has left many observers doubting that the “Trump always chickens out” (Taco) maxim will apply to the Friday deadline facing Lula’s government. The US president has likened Bolsonaro’s “disgraceful” treatment to attempts to prosecute him after he unsuccessfully tried to overturn the result of the 2020 presidential election. Bolsonaro has denied plotting a coup but has admitted seeking “alternative ways” of stopping Lula from taking power. ............ Lula hinted he believed a retreat might be possible, comparing the current situation to unfounded fears over the millennium bug. “Do you remember when we were about to turn from 1999 to 2000, and there was worldwide panic that the computer systems were going to crash? Nothing happened,” said Lula, although he admitted he could not be certain “nothing will happen”.
Ukraine deploys drones to disrupt Russian summer vacations
Maddow Blog | New GDP data leads Trump to change his mind about blaming Biden for the economy
Countries push for a two-state solution, end of Israel-Hamas war
Read the Brazilian President’s Comments on His Feud with Trump President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva issued a fierce rejection of President Trump’s demands for Brazil, but said he was ready for dialogue............ Trump threatened to impose 50 percent tariffs on Brazilian imports in an extraordinary bid to intervene in the criminal proceedings against Brazil’s right-wing former president, Jair Bolsonaro. ........ President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva of Brazil then fired back, saying Brazil’s sovereignty will not be threatened. ....... to speak to the American public. ......... Brazil has a Constitution, and the former president is being tried with a full right to a defense. .............. What’s preventing it is that no one wants to talk. I have asked to make contact. I designated my vice president, my agriculture minister, my economy minister, so that each can talk to their counterpart to understand what the possibility for conversation was. So far, it hasn’t been possible. ........ The response we received was through President Trump’s website, announcing the tariffs on Brazil. ........... at no point will Brazil negotiate as if it were a small country up against a big country. Brazil will negotiate as a sovereign country. ............ I can’t just send a letter to Trump saying, ‘Listen, Trump, Brazil won’t do such-and-such if you don’t do such-and-such with Cuba.’ I can’t do that — out of respect for the United States, for diplomacy, and for the sovereignty of each nation. ........ I honestly don’t know what Trump has heard about me. But if he got to know me, he’d know that I’m 20 times better than (Bolsonaro). .......... If the United States doesn’t want to buy something of ours, we are going to look for someone who will. ............ Not even my worst enemy could say that Lula doesn’t like to negotiate. I learned politics by negotiating. I have nothing against Trump’s ideology. Trump is an issue for the American people to deal with. They voted for him. End of story. I’m not going to question the sovereign right of the American people, because I don’t want them questioning mine.
Trump Escalates Fight With Brazil, Taking Aim at Its Economy and Politics The White House hit Brazil on Wednesday with a 50 percent tariff and sanctions on a justice overseeing investigations into former President Jair Bolsonaro. ........ just as Brazilian officials sought dialogue, the White House sharply escalated the growing diplomatic crisis between the Western Hemisphere’s two most populous nations.
See Trump’s New Trade Deals and Tariffs With Every Country
The Trump Presidency Takes a Better Turn Americans want an immigration policy that secures the border and deports criminals, not one that goes after law-abiding, hardworking undocumented immigrants on whom many areas of the economy depend and who should be given a viable path to citizenship. ....... Widespread fears of a recession haven’t materialized; instead, the economy appears to be growing at a healthy clip, and the S&P 500 is up by around 10 percent since the election. ........... The Democratic Party’s approval rating is at a 35-year low ........... We do not strengthen alliances by threatening to seize the territory of our allies. We do not depoliticize justice by accusing a former president of treason or threatening to “go after people.” We do not safeguard free speech by suing journalists. We do not strengthen the rule of law by shaking down law firms. We do not make America healthy again by promoting medical quackery. ........ Americans will listen to Democrats when they propose better solutions to common problems, not when they openly root for the administration to fail.
Katy Perry and Justin Trudeau Get a Table for 2, Inviting a Serving of Speculation The former Canadian prime minister had dinner on Monday night with the newly single American pop star in Montreal, spurring intrigue over how they ended up meeting........ Ms. Perry was a judge for several seasons on American Idol, until last year, and was a Super Bowl halftime show headliner in 2015. In April, she was part of an all-female crew launched briefly into space by Blue Origin, the private spaceflight start-up of Jeff Bezos.
Putin Is Obsessed With Something He Can’t Get We tend to think of a dictator as someone who tramples the law — and that’s absolutely true. But for a dictator like Mr. Putin, who rose from the disciplined ranks of the security services to the presidency by following orders, it is just as important to be able to cite the law as to break it. Today, every new wave of political repression in Russia is preceded by the passage or revision of a law — so that more and more people can be punished “according to the law,” rather than in violation of it............. Legitimacy is a perennial problem for dictators. However strong they may appear, they always suffer from a deficit of it. ......... For many dictators, credibility truly comes on the world stage. Official visits and summits, along with successful military campaigns, are proof of their legitimacy. ......... over the past three years, Russia — despite the Kremlin’s reluctance to fully mobilize the whole nation — has become a country at war. The enemy has become mythic evil; soldiers are heroes; more are dead and wounded than in any war since World War II; the war economy is whirring; dissent is quashed. Even Mr. Putin often speaks of the “war,” not “special military operation.” The longer and broader the war effort, the more convincing the outcome must be. .............. That’s where negotiations come in. The Kremlin clearly sees them as a venue where it can claim a victory that has so far eluded it on the battlefield. This helps explain the seemingly absurd demand for Ukraine to withdraw from areas Russia doesn’t even control. For Mr. Putin, victory isn’t just about seizing territory — it’s about dictating terms, redrawing borders and having the new reality recognized. That’s how Mr. Putin can secure the legitimacy he craves. .............. the recurring dream in Moscow of a “new Yalta”— a formal stamp of legitimacy for Russia’s claims today. Yet what few recall is that Yalta failed. Rather than harmony, it ushered in the Cold War. Stalin, after hesitating between legitimacy and force, chose the latter. The world was divided. ...........
Eve Jobs’s Wedding in the Cotswolds Is Peak Quiet Luxury Eve Jobs, the youngest daughter of Steve Jobs and Laurene Powell Jobs, reportedly married in the English countryside, further cementing the Cotswolds as a hot spot for lavish weddings.
The Book That Can Inspire Both a Pope and a Politician What can a fifth-century text by St. Augustine tell us about the priorities of the two most powerful American Catholics? ........ In an interview a few months earlier, Vance had invoked the Catholic theological concept of ordo amoris — the ranking of our loves — to defend a worldview that prioritizes commitments to family and nation over more distant entities, like migrants and people in other countries. .............. This position, while consistent with the Trump administration’s approach to foreign aid, immigration and border security, earned the highest-ranking Catholic politician in America an admonishing response from Pope Francis and an indirect rebuke from Cardinal Robert Prevost, the future first American pope. Taking to X, Prevost shared an article headlined “JD Vance is wrong; Jesus doesn’t ask us to rank our love for others.” .......... the vice president has credited it with significantly informing his values, calling Augustine’s analysis of elite Roman decadence “the best criticism of our modern age I’d ever read.” ......... the two most prominent American Catholics have each been profoundly influenced by a 1,600-year-old book about why the Roman Empire was falling apart. ........... Rome was sacked by Alaric and his Visigoths in 410. Afterward, some argued that the city had fallen because it had abandoned its devotion to powerful ancient gods to follow a meek and humble new one. By then Christianity had evolved from an eccentric, first-century offshoot of Judaism into a fast-spreading, often-persecuted religion of the masses, before it was adopted and endorsed by Roman emperors............ “City of God” stands alongside classical works like Plato’s “Republic” and Aristotle’s “Politics.” Scholars contend it was second only to the Bible in influence during the Middle Ages, informing writings by Thomas Aquinas and others, who in turn gave way to Machiavelli and the moderns. ........... There’s no making Rome great again, he argues, because Rome was never great in the first place — never just or peaceful, never genuinely what some might claim it once was. Instead, Rome was driven by “lusts to dominate the world, and … though nations bend to its yoke, is itself dominated by its passion for domination.” ........... a captured pirate’s answer when Alexander the Great asks him to account for his actions: “Because I do it with one tiny ship, I am called a robber; and because you do it with a great fleet, you are called an emperor.” ......... The most successful become self-destructively addicted to domination for its own sake, inevitably at the cost of others, but even they will fail to get all that they seek, whether it’s security, success, health or pleasure. ...................
Booker Prize Nominees Include Novels by Kiran Desai, Katie Kitamura and Susan Choi The 13 titles nominated for the prestigious British literary award also include books by David Szalay, Maria Reva and Claire Adam.
They Saw Their Neighbors Taken Away by ICE. Then They Made a Plan ......... Elizabeth Castillo wasn’t an activist until Immigration and Customs Enforcement started taking away her neighbors. ............ Castillo felt her working-class neighborhood in Pasadena, just outside Los Angeles, was under siege. Six people, she said, were seized at a Winchell’s doughnut shop. Two people were taken when ICE raided her apartment complex. .......... “It was just chaos,” she said. “And you can see, you can hear, you could feel the fear, the intimidation. You could feel the terror.”
........... In 2012, she said, when her kids were all under 10, her husband, who was born in Mexico but grew up in the United States, was thrown out of the country. .......... At first, Castillo was on her own with a megaphone. When she saw ICE vehicles in the streets she followed them in her car, honking and shouting to warn people that they were coming. She started getting up before dawn to patrol her apartment complex. Then she contacted the National Day Laborer Organizing Network, which runs a nearby job center. Through them, she was plugged into a citywide network of people who are constantly tracking ICE’s activities. ............. “We have people patrolling all over the city starting at 5:30 in the morning,” said Ron Gochez, a high school teacher and spokesman for one of the more radical organizations, Unión del Barrio. When they find agents, he told me, “We get on the megaphone. We denounce the terrorists for being there, and then we inform the community in the immediate area that they are present. And then we say to the people, ‘If you are documented, come out. Come outside. Join us. Help us to defend your neighbor.’” ............ The widespread raids that have upended life in Los Angeles may soon spread to other cities, especially now that Republicans in Congress have increased ICE’s budget to $27.7 billion, up from about $8 billion. (That’s more than that of most militaries.) “We are a petri dish,” Mayor Karen Bass of Los Angeles told me. “They’re experimenting with us. If they come and make this stand in Los Angeles, then they can scare all the other cities, just like the universities have been scared, just like the legal firms have been scared.”
.................. The movement against ICE in Los Angeles — one that is starting to take root, in different forms, in cities like New York — is part of a growing shift from symbolic protest to direct action. ........... “We have been abandoned by the courts, by the business community,” and, with few exceptions, “by the political class in Washington, D.C.,” said Pablo Alvarado, co-founder of the National Day Laborer Organizing Network. “All we have are our friends, our allies and ourselves.” One of his group’s slogans is, “Solo el pueblo salva al pueblo.” It means, “Only the people can save the people.” ............ When the volunteers get word of a raid, they rush over to make a commotion. Wearing a custom black “Grupo Auto Defensa” T-shirt, Jesus Simental, a middle-aged man who works delivering industrial equipment, told me, “They don’t want noise, and we bring the thunder.” .......... In the first Trump presidency, the resistance announced itself with the Women’s March, a gargantuan display of feminist fury at Trump’s improbable victory. ........... The dominant mood in many blue precincts was despair rather than outrage. Organized opposition to Trump seemed, at least to some observers, to be dormant. A Politico headline shortly after the election announced, “The Resistance Is Not Coming to Save You. It’s Tuning Out.” ............. Think of the doctors sending abortion medication into states with prohibitions, or the protests in front of Tesla dealerships that helped push down the company’s stock price. “Resistance 2.0 is much more locally grounded and community embedded,” said Dana Fisher, an American University sociologist who studies protest movements. ............... looking back from the bleak vantage of 2025, it’s striking how optimistic many people were that some established power in American life — be it Congress, law enforcement, government bureaucrats or the media — could stop Trump from doing his worst. ............ “Getting out of this is going to require a symphony of defiance.” ............ Indivisible is running a campaign called “One Million Rising” aimed at training a million people in strategies of protest, noncooperation and civil disobedience, especially around mass deportation. The emphasis on ICE is in part simply a response to the sheer cruelty of Trump’s immigration regime. Far from prioritizing criminals, ICE, under pressure from Trump’s fanatical deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller, seems desperate to round up as many people as possible. That includes people with American spouses and children who’ve been here for decades, those who’ve followed all the rules in seeking asylum, and even those with green cards. ...................... In recent months viral videos have shown ICE agents breaking car windows, throwing people to the ground, and ripping parents away from their kids. Human Rights Watch has reported on the degrading treatment of immigrants in federal detention; at one Florida facility, men described being forced to eat “like dogs” with their hands shackled behind their backs. Venezuelan migrants sent by the United States to a megaprison in El Salvador have reportedly faced even worse conditions; Andry Hernández Romero, a gay makeup artist later freed as part of a prisoner exchange, described being tortured and sexually assaulted by guards. ........... Yet the campaign against ICE isn’t only about immigrants, because to many on the left, the agency is understood as the tip of the authoritarian spear. Trump and those close to him, after all, are openly fantasizing about stripping Americans of citizenship or sending them to the same El Salvador gulag that held Hernández Romero. Americans are being forced to acclimate to the once-unthinkable sight of masked men, wearing civilian clothes and refusing to show identification, grabbing people off the streets and throwing them in the back of vehicles. There have been reports of ICE assaulting and detaining U.S. citizens. At a Home Depot in Hollywood last month, agents reportedly tackled an American photographer who was recording a raid; he was held for more than 24 hours. (He’s now seeking $1 million in damages.) ................ “They have made a calculation that they can get away with a bunch of things as long as it’s framed as immigration enforcement,” said Greenberg. “That will then allow them to ratchet up authoritarian conditions for the rest of us.” .................. With ICE increasingly seen as the front line of a growing police state, people all over the country are looking for ways to stand up to it. In New York, ICE arrests seem to be concentrated in immigration courts, where agents have been snatching people after their asylum hearings, even when judges ask them to come back for further proceedings. .............. When the hearings are over, the volunteers try, often in vain, to escort the immigrants past intimidating groups of masked, armed ICE agents to the elevators and onto the street. That’s what New York City’s comptroller, Brad Lander, was doing when he was arrested in June. ................ there’s very little rhyme or reason as to who gets detained. “It’s like an awful game of roulette,” said Lander. .............. called on other New Yorkers to come to the courts, bear witness, and maybe engage in nonviolent civil disobedience. “We have to find ways to gum up the works of this hideous system,” he said. ................ Los Angeles, where Trump has treated the entire city like a hostile colony to be subdued.
.............. “I don’t work for Karen Bass,” the Border Patrol chief, Gregory Bovino, told Fox News. “Better get used to us now, because this is going to be normal very soon. We will go anywhere, anytime we want in Los Angeles.” .............. Tom Homan, Trump’s border czar, told Fox News that roving ICE patrols had the right to stop people because of what they look like. “They don’t need probable cause to walk up to somebody, briefly detain them, and question them,” he said, based on “their location, their occupation, their physical appearance.” On July 11, a judge issued a temporary restraining order enjoining such racial profiling, but a widespread sense of dread and anxiety remained, especially in immigrant strongholds. With frightened people staying inside, several Angelenos told me that the eerie emptiness in their neighborhoods reminded them of the pandemic. ................. One thing Los Angeles has going for it, however, is a deep, established immigrant rights ecosystem. These groups, said Bass, “have prepared for this type of stuff in the past, though not as massive, not as egregious as this.” Indeed, she told me her office relies on activist networks to keep abreast of ICE activity in the city. “That’s how I learn about where raids are happening,” she said. “It’s not like we’re notified of anything.” .............. day laborers often gather there to look for work, making Home Depots a common target for ICE ........... “If you want to protect democracy, you protect the most vulnerable. That’s what we want people from all walks of life to understand. That’s why it’s beautiful to see the soccer moms, the teachers, getting it.” ............. N.D.L.O.N. is planning a conference in Los Angeles to train people from all over the country in its strategies. .............. People “need to know what to do, how to resist, how to fight back,” he said. “Peacefully, lawfully, orderly, but resist.” ............ There is, of course, only so much such resistance can accomplish in the face of a heavily armed, spectacularly well-funded and politically powerful deportation machine. More than 2,000 immigrants have been arrested in Los Angeles over the past month. .............. a major reason public opinion is turning against Trump’s mass deportation campaign is the viral videos showing what it looks like in practice. Activist groups train people to record ICE activities wherever they see them, helping to capture both arrests and agents’ aggression toward civilian observers. “Men in masks, wearing civilian clothes, pulling guns against people who are exercising their rights while filming, that’s exactly what Americans don’t like to see,” he said. .................... but that’s how it starts. No right to due process. People just snatch you and put you in the vans. It’s something I’ve seen, and I know where that leads.” .............. “Everyone is protecting each other right now, and we can see it, we can feel it,” said Castillo. “I don’t know — we feel like the sheriffs in town.”
