OLIVER BOYD-BARRETT
Empire, Communication and NATO Wars
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The Penalty for Barking Insanity
The editor of the Economist, Zanny Minton Beddoes. summarizes what she had learned over the past few days of the Trump Tariff Fiasco:
“First, this show has only one protagonist who matters: Mr Trump. There is no tariff strategy beyond his whims. Second, although Mr Trump blinked yesterday, don’t think that this Tariff Show is over. America is still engaged in a brutal tit-for-tat trade war with China. (The two countries’ headline tariffs on each other are now 145% and 84% respectively and neither Mr Trump nor Xi Jinping, the Chinese president, wants to lose face by backing down.) America still has a 10% duty on virtually all other countries, by itself a dramatic increase. And while Mr Trump now promises great deals from negotiations with the dozens of countries queuing up to talk to him, he retains his long-held conviction that tariffs are a powerful weapon to ensure manufacturing jobs return to America. The trouble is that if companies are really to be persuaded to reshore manufacturing jobs to America, then America’s tariffs will need to stay high. But if they stay high, what incentive do trading partners have to give huge concessions? Mr Trump’s muddled convictions, and the contradictions they contain, will hang over all the many bilateral negotiations his team is about to start.”
Trump’s claim that 75 or more companies want to negotiate with him is just that - a claim and so far the only evidence of the claim is what Trump is saying. In short: the claim is very unlikely to be accurate and may be wildly untrue.
Issues of Ilegality
For Consortium News, Andrew Napolitano examines Trump’s false claim that his tariff policy is the result of a “national emergency.” The 1977 International Economic Emergency Powers Act permits the president to impose tariffs on goods emanating from outside the U.S. in the case of an economic emergency. The statute defined an emergency as a sudden and unexpected event that adversely affects U.S. national security or economic prosperity. The Trump administration initially tried to argue that the introduction of fentanyl into the U.S. by foreign persons constituted the emergency but that was a totally implausible basis for the tariffs. So the administration came up with an equally implausible excuse, namely that the U.S. imbalance of trade was the emergency.
But the trade imbalance goes back to 1934, so is clearly not an emergency.
In short, there is no lawful basis for Trump’s imposition of the tariffs. Furthermore the Constitution awards the power to tax exclusively to Congress. Since the Trump sales tax emanated in the White House, it violates the Constitution. Nor can Congress give away any of its core functions
The Supreme Court has made clear that there is no emergency doctrine.
Issues of Criminality
Illegality, certainly, criminality also (if there is a difference), according to Nick Beams of the World Socialist Web Site who notes that Trump’s “pause” yesterday (leading to a significant but temporary recovery on Wall Street yesterday that has been shaved back today):
“Came amid growing signs that the entire financial system—in particular the US Treasury market—was just days or even hours away from a meltdown on the scale of the crises of September 2008 and March 2020, or potentially even greater.”
Especially significant, he says, was the selloff in the US Treasury market—a foundation of the global financial system—which drove yields sharply higher. The crisis in the Treasury market was exacerbated when Hedge funds and other major investors, faced margin calls from the banks - in other words, demands to provide additional funds as collateral to maintain the credit lines essential to their operations. The only available source of additional cash was the sale of Treasury holdings. Foreign investors and governments—which hold roughly one-third of US Treasury bonds—were beginning to pull out of the market.
“There were also signs that hedge funds were being forced to unwind their so-called “basis trades,” a strategy that profits from small differences between the price of Treasury bonds and their corresponding futures contracts. Because the price gap is minimal, these trades rely on massive leverage, with the total volume estimated at around $1 trillion.”
Worse, it was feared that China, the second largest holder of US Treasury bonds, could start to shift out of dollar assets in response to Trump’s economic war against it. The fall of the dollar raised questions as to the viability of its reserve currency status under conditions in which US policy is a major source of instability and uncertainty.
“As with every action of the Trump administration, the events of yesterday were steeped in corruption and criminality. Just before the markets opened—and several hours before the public announcement of the “pause”—Trump posted on social media that “this is a great time to buy.” It will be left to future investigation to uncover how many billions were made by the Trump family and the gang of fascists operating in and around the administration.”
The Inevitability of Recession or Worse
Recession is inevitable:
“Business confidence is in tatters due to the uncertainty generated by the administration’s policies. A 90-day pause for negotiations with the dozens of countries targeted by “reciprocal tariffs” will do nothing to reverse this collapse. Recession is very much on the horizon.”
The targeting of China - Trump appears to have genuinely believed he could entice China to negotiate - was foolish, ignorant or even recklessly disregarding evidence of China’s consistency in not being intimidated by threat and holding its ground. A normal democratic government would never have gained traction on the basis of such a mixture of stupidity and recklessness because it would have consulted broadly and across the political spectrum.
Trump’s tariff lunacy is possible because the US has abandoned the final, torn shreds of democracy that were left after decades of abuse by both Democrats and Republicans. If the Imperial model that has replaced it was both intelligent and benign then perhaps the consequences would be less dire. But instead we have a vengeful hubris that passes for intelligence.
Tariffs on Asian countries which do important business with China are intended as a warning to them to turn aside from China and yield for their “protection” to the bizarre, peremptory bullying and likely crimination of the US Administration, a foolish choice which now only idiot nations are likely to risk.
“Trump—the grotesque and criminal personification of American imperialism—along with the representatives of ruling classes in every country, will use the “pause” to coordinate their responses to international rivals and sharpen their weapons against the working class at home, in preparation for the eruption of class struggle they all fear and know is coming.”
The Peril of Mental Instability
Intellinews sees things in a comparable light:
“What is amazing is the current instability. Things change on a pin in a day on the back of the latest Trump utterance. He is incontinent with bad ideas. Market boards are swept with red only to flip green the next day after he processes what his latest orders actually mean to the rest of the world.
And the corruption in this administration was made visible to all yesterday and is rank. We already knew they were self-serving unprincipled sycophants, but now it appears they are also just plain greedy. There was an extremely visible spike in buying on the market page only 20 minutes before the tariff 90-day pause announcement.
And futhermore...
The Blink
A Blinking Reversal?
The others?
- (1) A belief in China that it China is better positioned than America to bear the inflation and economic discontent that the tariffs unleash, which may be as soon as when American consumer prices begin to rise or employment begins to fall. This could be exacerbated were the yuan to be strengthened but, then, in that case Chinese industry and supply chains would also be suffering.
- (2) Li Qiang, Mr Xi’s deputy, said in March that the country was preparing for “bigger-than-expected external shocks” and that it was willing to enact policies to ensure economic stability. This could indicate cuts to interest rates and banking-reserve ratios.
- (3) Local governments are expected to help struggling exporters to find new sources of demand at home and in non-American markets. China could lower tariffs on the rest of the world, while increasing export subsidies.
- (4) China is propping up the market by buying stocks.
- (5) That China’s economy could fully decouple from America’s is contemplated. There is growing support for this. China is considering the suspension of all co-operation with America on fentanyl. Another idea is to ban imports of American poultry and other agricultural products, such as soya beans and sorghum, which mainly come from Republican states.
- (6) China may impose restrictions on American services, where the US enjoys a trade surplus, impacting American consultancies and law firms still operating in the country. It could also probe intellectual property held by American firms.
For the New York Times (New York Times) Daisuke Wakabayashie speculates that the tariffs might have encouraged some companies to hunker down in China, making China an even more appealing place to produce in and buy from. He writes that they have eliminated some of the motivation to diversify production or sourcing to places like Vietnam, India or other Asian countries. These companies are wary about adding more upheaval with a drastic change to their supply chains, and are choosing to stay with what they know. They are looking for ways to save costs or develop new products. One source notes that cost advantages are not the only factor of importance but that sophisticated Chinese manufacturing and engineering processes also count for a lot. Most American factories cannot match China’s manufacturing capability, capacity and speed even if the tariffs eat into its cost advantages. Finding suppliers is a difficult, expensive and time-consuming process. The perception of haphazard decision-making in the United States is not exactly an attraction to relocate there.
Israeli Atrocities
“The testimonies demonstrate that soldiers were given orders to deliberately, methodically, and systematically annihilate whatever was within the designated perimeter, including entire residential neighborhoods, public buildings, educational institutions, mosques, and cemeteries, with very few exceptions,” the paper says. “Industrial zones and agricultural areas which served the entire population of Gaza were laid to waste, regardless of whether those areas had any connection whatsoever to the fighting.”
One informant claimed: “we’re killing them, we’re killing their wives, their children, their cats, their dogs,” they added. “We’re destroying their houses and pissing on their graves.”
Another was briefed that all Palestinians in the area were terrorists. Yet another described the borderline as a kill zone.”
An investigation published by Haaretz in December described a “kill zone” in the Netzarim corridor in the heart of Gaza, where troops were ordered to shoot “anyone who enters.”
“The forces in the field call it ‘the line of dead bodies,’” one commander said. “After shootings, bodies are not collected, attracting packs of dogs come to eat them. In Gaza, people know that wherever you see these dogs, that’s where you must not go.”
(2) AIPAC Shenanigans. For the Grayzone, Max Blumenthal (Blumenthal) reports how AIPAC’s CEO has unintentionally detailed his organization’s grooming of Trump’s top national security officials, and how his group’s “access” ensures they continue to follow Israel’s agenda. AIPAC’s new CEO, Elliott Brandt, described how his organization has cultivated influence with Secretary of State Marco Rubio, National Security Director Mike Waltz, and CIA Director John Ratcliffe – and how it believes it can gain “access” to their internal discussions. The three named officials had relied heavily on pro-Israel donors to fuel their campaigns for office and all had relationships with key AIPAC leaders from their communities.”
(3) Meta Zionism. Also for the Grayzone (Grayzone), ¡Do Not Panic! reports Meta’s recruitment of vast numbers of former Israeli soldiers and provides a peek into a biased content moderation process that’s been heavily censoring pro-Palestinian accounts amid the Israeli siege of Gaza. More than one hundred former Israeli spies and IDF soldiers work for tech giant Meta, including its head of AI policy, who served in the IDF under an Israeli government scheme that allows non-Israelis to volunteer for the Israeli army. Many of the former soldiers worked for Israel’s spy agency Unit 8200. These ex-IDF members are based evenly across Meta’s US offices and in its Tel Aviv office, and a significant number of them, like Anderson, have a specialization in AI.
(4) UN Report on Israeli Gender-Based Violence. Kit Klarenberg of Global Delinquents reports on the recent (March 2025) UN Human Rights High Commission exposure of how the Zionist entity has employed “sexual, reproductive and other forms of gender-based violence against Palestinians” on an industrial scale since the Gaza genocide erupted in October 2023. (See UN HRHC)
“The UN concludes these hideous acts are a central component of Israel’s “broader effort to undermine [Palestinians’] right to self-determination,” their systematic nature pointing unambiguously to endorsement by Tel Aviv’s military and political leaders...
“The UN encountered no obstacles collecting voluminous highly incriminating evidence of this vile abuse. In addition to a welter of victim and witness testimony, perpetrators often voyeuristically captured themselves and their confederates openly committing these crimes on camera.
“Frequently, these abhorrent images were pridefully posted on the culprits’ personal social media accounts. Such actions amply attest to the culture of total impunity in which ZOF soldiers literally rape and pillage.
This eschatalogical burden of virtue and loving self-sacrifice would be bad enough, he says, but it has become ever so much more oppressive, suffocating by, yes, you know who - CHINA - that dastardly upstart whom we failed to kill off in the opium war, and which has now trying to undermine the flower of US manhood and take his women, that is to say undermine its manufacturing and defense industrial base, and to mess about with its financial system (by purchasing an enormous number of US treasury bonds, perhaps, that have long helped sustain US hegemony?).
So the way to deal with such riff-raff, Miran admonishes, is through Unilateral Tariff Actions - UTAs as we call them in the trade. Yes, yes, of course, they are absolutely territying but, hey, they provide what every good US citizen prays for on Sundays: greater flexibility to rapidly shift policy and negotiating leverage.
Look here, people just have to understand that access to the market of that paradise of spiritually uplifting shopping malls, wheezing cart-wheeling homeless people, brutalist officescrapers, crack-addled veterans and those nice press photos of the victims of police violence, is a “privilege that must be earned, not a right”. Got that?
OK, guys, it is time to be tough. No more free-loading; no more “here comes Mr. US nice-guy” to give freely and out of an excess of love a hand to genocidal maniacs everywhere, and to bomb the hell out of anyone he doesn’t like just because he can (pity, please, those hard-working, peace-loving US servicemen and women, the principal armor of the US Killing Apparatus - USKA, as we say in the trade). To all those guys out there who have been sozzling carefree on so much free domination, and bullying and who get to listen, enraptured, to a perpetual stream of Washington “we-are-the-victims” b*llsh*t rhetoric - oh no, that stuff ain’t goin’ to be free no more, yu’all are going to have to PAY!
So how can these cheap freeloading dandies help out poor-little ol’ Uncle Sam just do all that good he’s been a-doin’ for all the world?
Well, Miran has almost as many options as a Starbucks menu: accept higher tariffs on their exports to the US; just stop all that unfairing trade sh*t they’ve been doin’; open out their legs and buy more from America; boost defense spending and procurement from the US (share the dyin’ for Chrissake!); invest in and install factories in America; or - and this is soooooooo simple - they can just write checks to theTreasury, givin’ ol’ Uncle Sam a little boost to those cuddly public goods he’s been a-givin’.
China Unstressed
In his daily broadcast today, Alexander Mercouris argues that Chinese exports to the US appear to be dominated by consumer goods which the US can replace only with some difficulty and over time, whereas US exports to China are dominated by agriculture and energy products which China can fairly easily replace from Russia, Brazil and other sources. This is in a context in which the US share of global demand had fallen to 13% in 2024 from 20% in 2004, and the US was already facing inflationary pressures significantly more severe than in China and while the value of Russian-Chinese trade is increasing from $250 billion in 2024 to an estimated $300 billion by 2030.
Earlier today, the Trump Administration has announced a 90 day pause on the tariffs to be imposed on those 75 or so countries that it says have indicated a willingess to negotiate a “solution,” and that have not retaliated, and for this period have the tariff has been lowered to 10%.
So the children of the abusive parent have been offered a sweetie if they stay silent, be-ripponed neat and prim, hair brushed, faces washed. Their job, in the words of Alexander Mercouris this morning, is to prop up American hegemony. The option that Miran does NOT mention is for the US to close down all those foreign bases, put a final end to such obscene expenditure on arms that will only one day end up destorying the planet, trim its expenditure to its means, and cease insisting that all trade be conducted in the $ and give up its reserve currency status (which requires a deficit budget).
Instead Trump wants a defense budget of $1 trillion, adding further to the cost of what is, paradoxically, a history of military inefficacy and global mayhem. He dreams of a nineteenth century America based on obsolete technogy of rows and rows of disciplined, industrial pawns.
Perhaps Trump is right to want a more self-sufficient America. But for this to be sustainable the goal needs to be not just of a self-sufficient America, but one that is also humanly vibrant and worth living in, that has a political structure that gives voice and influence to all sectors of society, one that is not dependent on and weighed down by a non-productive, military-industrial incubus, one that works ardently to rid the world of the threat of nuclear annihilation, whose politics are superordinate to the interests of corporations and plutocrats, whose dollar is unburdened by reserve status, a society of considerably greater wealth equality, whose mainstream media are owned by the people, a society which extends free healthcare for all, and free education, up to and including a (de-aristocraticized) higher education system, and which bravely and honestly confronts all the challenges of climate crisis, working transparently and in good faith with its sister nations.
A letter that Trump sent to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in March had proposed negotiations on a new nuclear deal, with a two-month ultimatum to reach an agreement. Iran has so far rejected direct negotiations (but concedes to indirect talks through Oman). The Iranian mission to the UN declined to comment when asked about direct talks or the meeting that Trump announced.
Since we don’t know what exactly is going to be demanded of Iran, it is not totally inconceivable that the opportunity may be a theatrical exercise in which Iran goes along with some reasonably do-able compromise such as agreeing to Russia’s holding of sensitive Iranian nuclear assets, as under the JCPOA agreement that was casually sabotaged by Trump in 2018, in return for a lessening of sanctions. Trump sabotaged JCPOA in 2018 principally because he wanted to extend it to missiles. Tehran refuses to allow the issue of missiles to return to the table.
Iran, of course, does not have a nuclear weapon; it has not had a nuclear “program” (which could be just a couple of sketches on an envelope, if that) since 2003, its Supreme Leader has pronounced a fatwa against nuclear weapons and has recently confirmed that the fatwa is alive and well, while the country is so thoroughly monitored and surveilled by the IAEA, US and Israel that there is no credible chance that it could launch the development of a nuclear warhead without everyone knowing about it months in advance, let alone there being any way in which Iran would be able to secretly align the warhead with a suitable missile (which would take several months to a year), always holding in mind that Israel has hundreds of nuclear missiles and is not, as is Iran, a signatory to the nuclear non-proliferation treaty.
Iran, China, and Russia are to hold expert-level consultations on the Iranian nuclear program in Moscow tomorrow. Russia’s Foreign Ministry has condemned the threats against Iran and has said that Moscow remains committed to a resolution that respect Tehran’s right to peaceful nuclear energy. China and Russia have recently condemned the “unlawful sanctions” imposed on Iran. They want a resolution that addresses the root causes of the current crisis.
In the meantime, Washington has been beefing up its military preparedness for further violent conflict in the Middle East in addition to its support for Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza and the West Bank, and its on-going bombing campaign against the Houthis in Yemen. It has been sending additional B-2 bombers to Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean and boosting other regional air assets. It is sending a second aircraft carrier to the region. It has deployed a second Terminal High-Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) battery to Israel and a further two Patriot air defense batteries to Israel, and othmer Patriot systems to “defend US air bases and nearby allies” as part of its military buildup in the Middle East that’s aimed at Iran. The Biden administration sent a THAAD system and about 100 troops to operate it in October 2024, ahead of Israel’s then strike on Iran. Two out of the seven THAAD batteries the US operates are based in the country.
YEMEN
Citing SABA, Yemen’s news agency, David DeCamp reports for Antiwar.com that at least four people were killed by a US airstrike on a residential building in the Yemeni capital of Sanaa on Sunday night.
“The report said that two women were among the four killed, and another 23 were injured, including 11 women and children. The attack also damaged multiple homes in the area.
Yemen’s Health Ministry said earlier in the day that overnight US airstrikes on the northern Saada province killed at least two civilians and wounded four others. The strikes hit a solar panel shop and a nearby home.”
The Administration has claimed that its bombing campaign, so far estimated to have cost nearly $1 billion, is effective because the Houthis have not fired on any more US ships. But alternative sources say that the Houthis have not targeted any US ships since Israel broke the Gaza ceasefire on March 18, but only Israeli shipping. The Administration claims that the Houthis’ campaign is entirely dependent on assistance from Iran. Alternative sources deny that the Houthis are directly controlled by Iran, and say that they have their own missile-capable production facilities. Further, the missile launchers that they use are highly mobile and not directly susceptible to US attempts to destroy them.
In the meantime, Trump has circulated a satellite image of a US bombing of a gathering of Houthis that Trump claims was assembled to plan further attacks but which Houthis sources say was a prayer group. The fascist creepiness of Trump’s decision to share an image of mass murder for which the US is responsible may be considered equivalent to the 2010 WikiLeaks release of a classified US military video depicting the indiscriminate slaying of over a dozen people in the Iraqi suburb of New Baghdad -- including two Reuters news staff. Further, the Trump Administration still supports Israel’s account of its murder llast week of 15 Palestinian medical workers, even after a video showed that the Israeli military was lying about the incident.
Gaza and the West Bank
“Photos and videos coming out of Gaza show that many children were among the dead and wounded. According to the Palestinian news agency WAFA, at least nine children were killed by Israeli shelling and airstrikes on the al-Tuffah neighborhood of Gaza City.”
Hamas (acknowledging that the situation in Gaza is unsupportable) has already offered to return all hostages to Israel in return for a complete cessation of hostilities. The Times of India reported yesterday that Hamas is prepared to release all of the remaining hostages at once in exchange for a permanent ceasefire. The report cited a senior Palestinian official familiar with the ongoing truce talks. Apparently, Hamas was still prepared to release a number of hostages as part of a renewed temporary ceasefire, but Hamas wants guarantees from the mediators that Israel would agree to subsequently enter negotiations on ending the war.
Israel rejected the latest Hamas offer and countered with its own proposal for the release of 11 hostages that does not include a commitment to hold talks on a permanent ceasefire. This is not acceptable to Hamas, according to the Times’ source. who also said that Hamas “will never disarm” before a Palestinian state has been created.
For Antiwar.com David DeCamp notes that Israel, using US weapons, has killed a further 1,300 Palestinians since the resumption of the genocide on March 18, and has imposed a total blockage on Gaza that cuts off all humanitarian aid and all other groups. IDF now controls more than 50% of Gaza territory. His report highlights comments to the effect that both Trump and Netanyahu have reaffirmed their desire for the ethnic cleansing of Gaza, while claiming that there are other countries (as yet unnamed) willing to take in the Palestinian population.Trump has also said it would be a “good thing” for the US to take over and control Gaza, noting that the Strip is “an incredible piece of important real estate.”
© 2025 Oliver Boyd-Barrett
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ALL CAPTIONS AND PULL QUOTES BY THE EDITORS NOT THE AUTHORS
