Quote:Ridiculed for imposing trade tariffs on frozen islands largely inhabited by penguins, Donald Trump's formula for calculating those levies has a serious side: it is also hitting some of the world's poorest nations hardest.

The math is simple: take the U.S. goods trade deficit with a country, divide it by that country's exports to the U.S. and turn it into a percentage figure; then cut that figure in half to produce the U.S. "reciprocal" tariff, with a floor of 10%.

That's how the volcanic Australian territory of Heard Island and McDonald Islands in the Antarctic ended up with a 10% tariff. The penguins got off lightly, you might say.

But Madagascar - one of the poorest nations in the world with gross domestic product (GDP) per head of just over $500 - meanwhile faces a 47% tariff on the modest $733 million of exports of vanilla, metals and apparel that it did with the U.S. last year.

Asked about its methodology, White House Deputy Press Secretary Kush Desai posted on X that "we literally calculated tariff and non-tariff barriers" and included a screenshot of a White House paper setting out the algebra behind the formula.

Asked on CNBC how the Trump administration came up with the formula, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick did not directly explain it but said United States Trade Representative (USTR) economists had worked for years on a metric that reflected all trade barriers set up by a given country.

But economists across the world rushed to point out that the terms cancelled each other out in such a way that it could be reduced to a simple quotient of goods trade deficit over goods trade exports.

"There is really no methodology there," said Mary Lovely, Senior Fellow at the Peterson Institute. "It is like finding you have cancer and finding the medication is based on your weight divided by your age. The word 'reciprocal' is deeply misleading."

Quote:It’s not trade policy. It’s not economic policy. The tariffs are another tool for President Trump to try to compel pledges of loyalty, this time from companies and industries in the United States. You have to understand that everything Donald Trump is doing is in service of staying in power forever, either him, or his family, or his handpicked successors. He’s trying to destroy our democracy. That’s why he is going law firm by law firm, university by university, to try to bully them into pledging loyalty to him. The tariffs are going to be used to do the same thing to private industry. Why are the tariffs so widespread? So that every business in this country has to come to the White House and make an agreement with Trump, in which he gives them tariff relief in exchange for a pledge for political loyalty. What does that pledge look like? Well, maybe they agree to champion his economic policy publicly, maybe they agree to make contributions to his political campaign, maybe they agree to police their employees to make sure nobody that works for that company works for the political opposition. What he’s doing to universities and law firms, he’s now about to use tariffs to do to companies within this country. That is the game. That is the story. It doesn’t make sense as economic policy because it isn’t economic policy; it’s an attempt to try to collapse the economy so all these companies have to come to him to make pledges of political loyalty. That frankly makes it much more insidious, much more dangerous, but if we know what he’s doing, if we understand the objective, that makes it a lot easier for the public to fight back.

Quote:President Donald Trump’s rollout of sweeping tariffs on virtually all U.S. imports slammed into markets Thursday as investors issued an emphatic rebuke of his effort to reorder global trade. The broad-based S&P 500 index plunged nearly 5% — a roughly $2 trillion wipeout — for its biggest one-day drop since June 2020, amid the depths of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Quote:But the most abject institutional surrender to Trump is in Congress. Here again, especially among Republicans, the fear factor is paramount. But aside from political cowardice, there has been a constitutional dereliction of duty.  Under the constitution, Congress has the power to raise and lower tariffs. In recent decades, Congress has delegated that power to the presidency. But, like the similar delegation of war-making power, this empowerment of the presidency is deeply undemocratic. The principle underlying this delegation of power is that the president should be allowed to set tariffs in an emergency, a rule loose enough that it amounts to unlimited tariff making power. The president has imperial power to change policy at will, without the democratic responsibility of building a coalition. Further, if the president is as doddery and fickle as Trump, it undermines the stability that international commerce requires.

Quote:As stock markets tumble in the aftermath of President Donald Trump’s sweeping tariffs, Republicans in Congress were watching with unease and talking of clawing back their power to levy tariffs — but almost none seemed ready to turn their words into action.

The Republican president is upending longstanding GOP principles like support for free trade, yet despite clear misgivings and a Constitutional mandate to decide tariffs, most lawmakers were not ready to cross Trump. Instead, they were focusing all their attention on advancing the president’s " big, beautiful bill ” of tax breaks and spending cuts, even as tariffs — in essence, import taxes — threatened to raise consumer prices across the board and push the global economy into a recession.

As the fallout from Trump’s announcement reverberated around global markets, Senate Majority Leader John Thune, who has made it clear he is no fan of tariffs, told reporters that he would give Trump “the benefit of the doubt” in hopes that the announcement was just a scare tactic to prod foreign leaders into negotiating better trade deals with the U.S...

But countries like China are already retaliating with tariffs of their own, and while the president has signaled he is open to negotiations, he was mostly sounding a defiant tone Friday, saying on social media that “MY POLICIES WILL NEVER CHANGE” while claiming that foreign investors were lining up to invest in U.S. industries. He was on the golf course Friday near his Mar-a-Lago private club in Florida.

Quote:Trump posted a link to the video to Truth Social, his social media platform, on Friday morning. The video's caption on X, formerly Twitter, reads: "Trump is playing chess while everyone else is playing checkers." The video opens: "Trump is crashing the stock market...but he's doing it on purpose."

Quote:President Trump announced Wednesday that his “reciprocal” tariff scheme was being paused for 90 days in response to overtures from dozens of countries — but duties on Chinese imports would be heightened to 125% due to a “lack of respect” from Beijing.

Trump, 78, told reporters at the White House that “yippy” critics and a “queasy” bond market were factors in his abrupt reversal...

The announcement locks in a 10% tariff rate on most imports — excluding specific items such as vehicles, which face a new 25% tariff, and goods from Mexico and Canada covered by the USMCA trade deal — until July 8, giving the administration time to hammer out “tailor-made” deals with interested nations. 

Quote:DO NOT RETALIATE AND YOU WILL BE REWARDED

Quote:White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Tuesday that President Donald Trump is exploring legal pathways to “deport” U.S. citizens to El Salvador, where the administration has already arranged to house deported immigrants in a prison known for its human rights abuses. [...]

Leavitt suggested the effort would be limited to people who have committed major crimes, but Trump has also mentioned the possibility of sending people who commit lesser offenses abroad.

Quote:4. Strict Vetting
Republicans will use existing Federal Law to keep foreign Christian-hating Communists, Marxists, and Socialists out of America.

Quote:In what may be a first in American history, President Trump just expanded the presidential pardon power to include corporations...

Although the text of the pardon is not yet public, it presumably wipes out the criminal penalties against BitMEX and forgives the crimes, making it legally impossible for federal prosecutors to go after the company for any crimes falling within the scope of the pardon at any point in the future. It also changes the company’s incentives for compliance with federal criminal laws...

The BitMEX pardon sends a different message: Companies involved in financial crimes don’t have to worry about accountability under this president, as least when it comes to crypto, for reasons that he has no incentive to ever make known. BitMEX can continue its prior criminal practices with federal impunity, and maybe even rely on the pardon to thwart future investigations into related conduct by federal lawmakers or state prosecutors.

Quote:President Donald Trump has fired one of the top U.S. military officers at NATO headquarters in Brussels, adding greater uncertainty over America’s role in the nearly eight-decade alliance...

The ouster of such a prominent U.S. officer at NATO adds more tension to Washington’s increasingly shaky relationship with the alliance. The administration’s antagonistic rhetoric against longtime NATO allies — including Vice President JD Vance’s criticisms of European cultural issues, Trump’s continued insistence the U.S. should own Greenland, and huge tariffs slapped on some of America’s closest trading partners — are part of a widening rift in the transatlantic alliance.

Quote:Jan. 6 defendants whose convictions were wiped out by President Donald Trump are entitled to a refund of restitution payments they made to cover damage to the Capitol, the Justice Department said Tuesday.

The department’s determination could result in hundreds of payouts from the federal government intended to cover the cost of repairing about $3 million in damage to the Capitol from the riot on Jan. 6, 2021.

Quote:President Donald Trump on Wednesday signed an executive order targeting a former official in his first administration by stripping him of security clearances and ordering the Department of Justice to investigate his conduct, an unprecedented step that erodes decades of separation between the president and the exercise of criminal investigatory power by the federal government.

Trump’s order targets Miles Taylor, a veteran of multiple Republican administrations who served as chief of staff to then-Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly.

Taylor infamously penned an anonymous New York Times op-ed — and later a book — describing efforts by Trump administration personnel to shield the government from Trump’s worst instincts.

(Apr 9 2025, 9:49 PM)Colibri April 1, 2025

Trump makes history by pardoning a corporation
https://archive.ph/2LHDO

Quote:In what may be a first in American history, President Trump just expanded the presidential pardon power to include corporations...

Although the text of the pardon is not yet public, it presumably wipes out the criminal penalties against BitMEX and forgives the crimes, making it legally impossible for federal prosecutors to go after the company for any crimes falling within the scope of the pardon at any point in the future. It also changes the company’s incentives for compliance with federal criminal laws...

The BitMEX pardon sends a different message: Companies involved in financial crimes don’t have to worry about accountability under this president, as least when it comes to crypto, for reasons that he has no incentive to ever make known. BitMEX can continue its prior criminal practices with federal impunity, and maybe even rely on the pardon to thwart future investigations into related conduct by federal lawmakers or state prosecutors.

Quote:A US Citizen born in Georgia is being held in Leon County Jail after being arrested and detained by ICE, despite his mother presenting a valid birth certificate and social security card to a judge.

Juan Carlos Lopez-Gomez, 20, a resident of Grady County, Georgia, was arrested Wednesday after a traffic stop while on his way to work in Tallahassee, the Florida Pheonix reported. He was charged with illegally entering Florida as an "unauthorized alien" under a controversial state law that has previously been temporarily blocked by a federal judge.

Leon County Judge LaShawn Riggans examined his birth certificate and Social Security card, declaring the documents authentic and stating there was no probable cause for the misdemeanor charge.

Quote:The Insolence of Office
For those unaware of the details of the Kilmar Abrego Garcia controversy, I commend to you National Review’s excellent, concise editorial explaining it, and I advise you to read it before proceeding. Briefly, a Salvadoran illegal immigrant here under an asylum claim was erroneously and hastily deported without due process of law, and the Trump administration is refusing to return him to the United States for his proper day in court.

For those who already know the specifics of the controversy, allow me to state my understanding of its true stakes: This is the latest and most perfectly emblematic example of the new Trump administration’s willingness to test the law well past its limits and do so by demonstrating gleefully naked contempt for it. It is all too easy to see why it is being either cheered on or winked at by Trump’s supporters and regarded with indifference by the masses. But it should alarm you deeply.

In a unanimous ruling, the Supreme Court ordered the Trump administration to “facilitate” the return of Abrego Garcia to America from El Salvador so that his claims can be adjudicated. (He currently sits there under an agreement negotiated by the Trump administration with Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele for the use of his notoriously brutal mega-prisons to house potential deportees.) This weekend the Trump administration refused, claiming, on stunningly disingenuous logic, that because Abrego Garcia had been dumped quickly into El Salvador he was now beyond American jurisdiction. (“He is detained pursuant to the sovereign, domestic authority of El Salvador.”)

Why not just ask El Salvador to return him? Conveniently, President Bukele — who just happened to be in America on an official state visit — sat in the Oval Office yesterday morning and was able to answer that question: There’s just nothing I can do, alas. “How can I smuggle a terrorist into the United States? I don’t have the power to return him to the United States.” (Bukele proceeded to smugly chuckle with Trump about how it would be nice to be able to send Americans, too, to his mega-prisons.)

What matters most about this cynical shell game is the transparent contempt for the law on display. Bukele is not his own man, after all; the purpose of his appearance yesterday was to read lines I can only speculate were at least reviewed by Stephen Miller, who sat in on the press conference to pretend that the Supreme Court had ruled 9–0 in favor of Trump rather than against him. Bukele, Trump, and Miller all wore Cheshire cat grins as they calmly told the world that the matter was out of their hands, even though all know the opposite to be true.

And everybody understands why the Trump administration feels free to defy the law: It believes it has the people on its side. He’s an illegal, anyway! We’re here to deport illegals. Who cares exactly how they’re expelled from the country, that’s not America’s problem. Miller said as much in the Oval Office press conference with Bukele. His primary defense to reporters was, “If [Abrego Garcia] was your neighbor, you would move right away.” In other words: Trust us, he’s a bad guy, so who cares how we got rid of him?

We have seen this attitude on display already in various other facets of the Trump administration: in the casual disregard for protocol embodied by Elon Musk’s DOGE, yes, but also with other bungled deportations and most flagrantly with Trump’s openly lawless decision, ten days ago, to delay closing TikTok in direct contravention of the black letter of a bill voted for by Congress and signed into law by his predecessor. The Abrego Garcia case is only the freshest example of what is now a clearly demonstrated pattern of willingness — indeed, desire — on the part of the administration to flout the procedural, constitutional, and prudential limits of the law in every field.

This is no accident; it is a strategy. Whereas DOGE culture came preinstalled with the Silicon Valley ethos of “Move fast and break things,” the wreckage in that case was at least plausibly explainable as the product of accident: impatience and a lack of proper understanding that led to avoidable error. Meanwhile, others in this administration move fast in order to intentionally break things, to expand presidential power by forcing it down the throat of a quiescent legislature and a paralyzed judiciary. Although this approach assuredly represents the will of Donald Trump, the details of its legal execution are masterminded by Stephen Miller, whose fingerprints are all over the administration’s actions in the Garcia case. Trump has instincts; Miller has a plan.

What makes Miller’s maximalist theory of executive power scary is that it is analytical rather than emotional: His insight is not that presidential power should be wielded semi-autocratically but that it can be. And he is determined to test the outermost limits of that power, confident as he is that — having survived two impeachments and succeeded at reelection — the president is functionally beyond the reach of both the law and the demos itself. (Imagine the circus bear in The Far Side removing his muzzle and telling his friend, “Hey . . . these things just snap right off.”)

Trump cares only about public opinion; Miller trusts that the people will not care, so the law can be defied to serve Trump’s populist goals. I am terrified that he is correct. Who can force Abrego Garcia’s return to the United States? Who can compel Trump to execute the TikTok ban? Who among his own party would condemn him? Who of the opposition party could hope to topple him?

And what law then restrains the president? Yesterday in the Oval Office, Miller and Trump were forced to insouciantly pretend that the Supreme Court hadn’t ruled against them. What comes next, should the court “clarify” its position? Don’t be surprised to see the Trump administration drop the pretense and deny the validity of the Supreme Court’s rulings altogether.

Donald Trump added a portrait of President Andrew Jackson in the Oval Office — an addition reputedly encouraged by none other than Stephen Miller. The reason suggests itself ominously enough in the current context. Jackson is famous for many things, but none more relevant now than his reaction to the Supreme Court’s ruling in Worcester v. Georgia (1832): “John Marshall has made his decision, now let him enforce it.”

A test of the rule of law is coming. It is not enough to write about this phenomenon with clinical detachment; it must be opposed. If not, I assure you that the spirits unleashed by Trump and Miller, perhaps seemingly innocuous now, will eventually consume us all. I’m not here to persuade you. I’m here to warn you.

Until next week.

Quote:Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) traveled to El Salvador and met with Kilmar Abrego Garcia, who was wrongly deported to the Terrorist Confinement Center in El Salvador. 📸 Abrego Garcia and Van Hollen meeting

Keep in mind: Van Hollen had been twice denied the chance to speak with Abrego Garcia, both in person and by phone.
Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele mocked their meeting. “Kilmar Abrego Garcia, miraculously risen from the ‘death camps’ & ‘torture’, now sipping margaritas with Sen. Van Hollen in the tropical paradise of El Salvador,” Bukele posted on X, with several photos.

And Trump slammed it too: “Senator Chris Van Hollen of Maryland looked like a fool yesterday standing in El Salvador begging for attention from the Fake News Media, or anyone,” Trump posted on Truth Social. “GRANDSTANDER!!!”

Why does Trump think Abrego Garcia has gang ties?:
“The Trump administration’s argument that the mistakenly deported Kilmar Abrego Garcia is a member of MS-13 is based largely on a confidential tip he and his family have long disputed,” reports The Hill’s Rebecca Beitsch.
Beitsch sifted through the court documents and explained the evidence. It’s worth reading.

Read: ‘Trump’s claims about Abrego Garcia’s gang ties largely rely on 1 confidential tip’
➤ WHAT ABOUT THAT DOMESTIC VIOLENCE PROTECTION ORDER?:
Well, Jennifer Vasquez Sura, Abrego Garcia’s wife, issued a statement defending her husband.
She explained her side of things: “After surviving domestic violence in a previous relationship, I acted out of caution following a disagreement with Kilmar by seeking a civil protective order, in case things escalated. Things did not escalate, and I decided not to follow through with the civil court process. We were able to work through the situation privately as a family, including by going to counseling,” she said, per Newsweek.

➤ INTERESTING LISTEN ON THE CASE:
The New York Times’s Ezra Klein described the significance of this case on his podcast. The episode is titled, “The Emergency Is Here.” 🎙️Listen here
Excerpt: “The president of the United States is disappearing people to a Salvadoran prison for terrorists … A prison built for disappearance. … The Trump administration holds the view that anyone they send to El Salvador is beyond the reach of American law — they have been disappeared not only from our country but from our system — and from any protection or process that system affords. In our prisons, prisoners can be reached by our lawyers, by our courts, by our mercy. In El Salvador, they cannot.”

Quote:President Trump and President Bukele both made clear in the Oval Office today that they do not intend to return Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia to the U.S. following the Supreme Court's ruling. "How can I smuggle a terrorist into the United States? Of course I'm not going to do it. The question is preposterous," Bukele said.

Quote:Karoline Leavitt says if Abrego Garcia ever ends up back in the U.S., he would immediately be deported again. “Nothing will change the fact that Abrego Garcia will never be a Maryland father. He will never live in the USA again.” Shes despicable.