Country: United States

MSNBC: Trump’s ‘Golden Dome’ system is an expensive way to make America less safe

At MSNBC, Chief Editor Kelsey D. Atherton walks through how Trump’s recent announcement of a “Golden Dome” missile defense system is an expensive investment in insecurity.

“If missile defense works as promised,” writes Atherton, “it creates an opportunity for the leadership of the protected country to launch nuclear strikes without fear of suffering nuclear retaliation in return. This is true even if missile defense does not actually work as a defense, because overcoming planned defenses means building a larger arsenal and possibly taking a gamble on launching a nuclear first strike, rather than forever losing that deterrent effect.”

Read Trump’s ‘Golden Dome’ system is an expensive way to make America less safe at MSNBC.

Labor deserves better than Trump’s disastrous tariffs

Joe Mayall is a Denver-based labor activist and writer whose work has appeared in Jacobin, PRISM, and The Progressive Magazine. He writes the JoeWrote newsletter, and you can follow him on Blue Sky (@joemayall.bsky.social) and X(@joemayall).

During his second inaugural address, President Donald Trump stated he would enact his campaign promise to “tariff and tax foreign countries to enrich our citizens.” To the surprise and horror of many, including members of Trump’s inner circle, the President has followed through with his chaotic plans. With shifting country-specific rates and conflicting statements from press briefings and Truth Social, the president’s trade policy has upturned financial markets and left everyone from world leaders to small business owners scratching their heads.

As for why these tariffs were enacted, Occam’s razor points to a mix of ignorance and corruption. The president claims they are closing trade deficits, which he misunderstands as the amount a foreign nation is “stealing” from America. Trump boasted about how much he and his friends made manipulating the market, so one can’t discount that the tariffs are a means to personal enrichment.

The absurd rationale and design of the tariffs were only outdone by their implementation. Economists quickly deduced the administration was using an incorrect formula to produce the country-specific tariff rates. However, they’re changing so rapidly that it might not matter.

Just four days after the tariffs went into effect, the White House announced a ninety-day pause. China was the lone exception, receiving a 125% tariff, which was then increased to 145% to include tariffs for fentanyl, an illegal drug rarely disclosed at ports. Predictably, this has caused a trade war, with nations pledging retaliatory tariffs ranging from 25% to 125%.

As the public’s frustration builds with every point their 401(k)s fall, many wonder what the point of tariffs is and whether they can be used for good at all. UAW President Shawn Fain and Congressman Chris Deluzio—neither a fan of Trump—have praised some tariffs as necessary to protect American workers. While oppositional politics have Democrats condemning Trump’s plan, politicians from both parties would be wise not to overcorrect into anti-tariff absolutism.

Instead, they should propose a calculated trade policy that avoids the turmoil of Trump’s tariffs while fostering a dignified life for workers within and outside the United States.

Pair Tariffs with Domestic Investment

For most of the 20th century, Democrats favored tariffs to deter offshoring production to countries with lower wages and lax labor protections.

Before the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), the United States tariffed the “value-added” on products shipped abroad for assembly and then re-imported for sale. This artificial cost cut into corporations’ profit margins, motivating companies to keep production in America. 

During the 1970s, a typical American automotive assembly plant used parts from over a thousand producers. But when NAFTA removed tariffs in 1994, production was consolidated in maquiladoras, foreign-owned factories in Mexico. By the turn of the millennium, American automotive plants only used between seven and eight hundred part producers, contributing to the estimated 850,000 American manufacturing jobs lost by NAFTA.

While targeted tariffs like those implemented before NAFTA are beneficial, Trump’s decision to tariff entire countries offers no advantage for workers. As the President’s plan taxes everything from the affected country, American consumers will have to pay higher prices for imported products, even if there is no American alternative worth protecting. Coffee is the foremost example of this problem. 

As coffee grows in tropical climates, only 1% of the coffee Americans drink is domestic. The rest is imported. As our leading coffee suppliers (Brazil, Colombia, and Vietnam) are now under heavy tariffs, Americans will be forced to pay higher prices, as there is not enough non-taxed domestic-grown coffee to go around. Here, Trump’s tariffs hurt American consumers as well as domestic and foreign coffee producers, who will see demand fall.

That’s why tariffs should be surgical, implemented only when the net benefit outweighs the costs. However, the U.S. can’t rely only on discouraging the consumption of foreign-made products. Washington must pair tariffs with domestic investments to create an effective trade policy that benefits workers and consumers alike. Fortunately, this concept is not novel, so policymakers don’t need to start from scratch. 

A good example of the tariff-and-invest strategy is America’s current tariffs on Asian solar panels, which were paired with the Inflation Reduction Act’s (IRA) $60 billion investment in green energy manufacturing. 

In 2018, President Trump placed a tariff on Asian solar imports, which Biden preserved when he took office. Combined with the IRA’s benefits, the tariffs motivated the South Korean solar panel manufacturer Qcells (and its parent company Hanwha) to move production out of China and into the U.S. In 2023, Qcells expanded its plant in Dalton, GA, with another plant scheduled to open in nearby Cartersville later this year.

While the full impact of the IRA funding and solar tariffs will take time to materialize, they provide a sound foundation for a labor-friendly trade policy. To ensure future investments benefit workers as much as capitalists, Congress could require any company that receives public investments to have a unionized workforce and ban them from buying back stock. Washington could even emulate the German Codetermination Act of 1976, mandating that companies benefiting from public policy give workers a say in managerial decisions through board seats and supervisory councils. 

A Leahy Law for Labor

Whenever tariffs are suggested, many critics claim that while they may protect American workers, they harm laborers in the developing world by keeping jobs in the U.S. Even when made in good faith, this critique misunderstands that reasonable trade policy protects all workers, foreign and domestic. Once again, NAFTA serves as an adequate example. 

Prior to implementation, free trade advocates argued the deal would improve the quality of life for foreign workers, specifically Mexicans. In reality, NAFTA harmed workers on both sides of the Rio Grande. 

After two decades of free trade, Mexico’s real wages remained stagnant at 1994 levels. While discussions about NAFTA frequently center auto and manufacturing workers, they weren’t the only victims. With Mexico’s tariffs no longer in effect, American-subsidized corn flooded the country’s food markets, wiping out approximately 1.9 million Mexican agricultural jobs and driving undocumented immigration. 

As American companies are known to offshore manufacturing to take advantage of easily exploitable laborers, Congress should pass a Leahy Law for labor. Just as the Vermont Senator’s namesake legislation bars weapons sales to human rights abusers, the United States should set a standard for ethical labor and place punitive tariffs on any company that violates it. This would apply upward pressure on global labor standards and eliminate the cost-cutting benefit of offshoring manufacturing, incentivizing companies to keep production in the U.S. Again, Washington would not have to devise such a policy from scratch. 

For over a century, the International Labour Organization (ILO) has published recommended labor standards designed to help world leaders implement trade policy that respects the international working class. Recently updated in 2019, the ILO’s handbook provides guidance on everything from child labor (no dangerous work for anyone under eighteen) to appropriate wages (no company vouchers or coupons). There are even tailored recommendations for specific industries (fishers, dockworkers, etc.) and marginalized groups such as migrants, pregnant people, and indigenous communities. 

With the intent to uplift the quality of life for American and foreign workers, adopting these standards and setting substantial, punitive tariffs for companies that violate them would benefit both American workers and their foreign counterparts. With companies deterred from offshoring to employ cheap, vulnerable labor, the American working class can rest assured that exercising their collective bargaining rights won’t result in their employer shipping their jobs overseas. 

While Trump’s chaotic tariff plan warrants condemnation, politicians should avoid slipping into anti-tariff absolutism. Not only are tariffs an effective tool in the trade policy toolbox, but domestic politics demands addressing the consequences of free trade. Those willing to throw the baby out with the bathwater and expel tariffs for good would be wise to remember that Donald Trump’s opposition to NAFTA made him popular with working-class communities that were once reliable Democratic voters. Running on a full return to the lost free trade regime of the past might temporarily thwart Trump, but it will not end the social and economic frustration that birthed his reactionary movement. 

House Armed Services Committee Reconciliation Proposal a Military Contractor and Billionaire Welfare Giveaway

As the House Armed Services Committee takes up its portion of what will become President Trump’s reconciliation bill, the Center for International Policy issued the following statement:

“The House Armed Services Committee (HASC) majority’s proposal to add $150 billion to the Pentagon budget is a clear attempt to funnel public money into the pockets of military contractors and billionaires, disguised as a national security measure.

“The so-called “Golden Dome” would get $24.7 billion. Trump’s fantasy missile shield will fail to make Americans any safer from today’s threats, but succeed in steering billions of dollars in contracts to Trump’s cronies, like Elon Musk’s SpaceX. The HASC proposal also includes $360 million to prevent the retirement of the obsolete F-22 and $1.5 billion for Sentinel ICBMs, one of the more dangerous elements of the plan’s $12.9 billion nuclear weapons spending spree.

“HASC Chairman Mike Rogers (R-AL) claims the arms industry is under-resourced, but the $899 billion in military spending already appropriated for this year exceeds the GDP of all but 20 countries. This proposal would balloon this year’s Pentagon budget to $1.05 trillion.

“Despite increased profits and cash flow, military contractors are spending more of their revenue on cash dividends and stock buybacks and less on R&D and capital expenditures, leaving it to taxpayers to cover those expenses. It’s fitting that this proposal is part of the same bill that will drive further inequality by cutting at least $300 billion in Medicaid funding and slashing other programs that help Americans working to make ends meet. The message of this package is clear: welfare is fine, so long as it’s for corporations and billionaires.”

Trump’s Predatory Capitalism Does Nothing for America’s Workers 

Executive Vice President Matt Duss and Senior Non Resident Fellow Trevor Sutton analyze America’s economic policy, emphasizing that Neoliberalism might have failed—but Trumpism is no alternative.

It has become accepted wisdom that U.S. President Donald Trump’s populist message has been effective because it has criticized a failed economic ideology of neoliberalism. In both administrations, Trump has rejected some long-standing bipartisan orthodoxies about the relationship between the state and markets, such as the belief that economic integration and lowering of trade barriers are unquestionably in the national interest, or that the government should exercise restraint in addressing trade imbalances and managing currency exchange rates.

It is not hard to understand why such economic heresies resonate. Globalization has been a major factor in industrial decline, loss of livelihoods, and downward pressure on wages in the United States. But we should not mistake Trump’s rejection of orthodoxies for any concern for ordinary Americans. He aspires to personal control, not economic justice.

The impacts of globalization were not hard to foresee: The multilateral trade system built during and expanded in the wake of the Cold War was designed primarily to reduce barriers to trade. Other concerns that might be significantly influenced or aggravated by economic integration—for example, inequality, labor rights, and environmental protection—were viewed as matters that national governments could address through their domestic systems or on an ad hoc basis through free trade agreements.

The belief that the deregulatory pressures and labor dislocation produced by globalization could be offset through domestic policies and free trade agreements looks naive in hindsight. In practice, the rules of the trade system constrained national governments’ ability to slow deindustrialization and offshoring of jobs and provided inadequate tools to respond to weak enforcement of labor and environmental standards by trading partners.

These shortcomings enabled a shift in manufacturing activity away from advanced economies into emerging markets, which amplified the disruptive effects of automation on industrial workforces. For many workers, especially those in countries that lack a strong commitment to redistribution like the United States, the shift to a service economy has meant lower wages and increased precarity.

Trump’s fondness for tariffs and bold promises to revive manufacturing may tap into legitimate grievances about globalization but should not be mistaken for genuine economic populism. Trade liberalization has not been the only driver of inequality and insecurity in the United States. Deregulation of financial markets, regressive changes to the tax code, spiraling health care costs, and reductions in pension benefits have also played an important role in bringing Americans to their current plight.

Far from seeking to reverse these trends, Trump is accelerating them by dismantling the administrative state, privatizing or outright eliminating core state functions, pushing tax cuts that favor the rich, and attacking labor rights.

What Trump is actually doing is not fighting for ordinary Americans but asserting personalized rule over markets for political showmanship and performative retribution, producing disruption but not progress. His announcement earlier this month of massively increased tariffs, followed by a suspension of those tariffs, after which he claimed credit for a “historic” market rally after it partially recovered from the dip, is a perfect example. As Rep. Ryan Zinke, who served as secretary of the interior during Trump’s first term, observed succinctly, “Tariffs are a tool the president enjoys because it’s personal power.”

This is not a return to the regulated capitalism that drove middle-class growth, innovation, and industrial expansion in the mid-20th century. Instead, it’s a regression to a much older form of government, one in which the head of state surrounds himself with cronies and abuses his powers to tax, spend, and tariff to dole out favors. In other words, a spoils system.

Far from offering a “post-neoliberal” agenda, Trump is reproducing the worst aspects of that order and combining it with the worst aspects of an older one. We must reject and prevent a recurrence of Trump’s predatory capitalism, but the answer is not a reversion to market fundamentalism. The goal should be a system that empowers ordinary citizens and serves the common good, not the whims of one man or a handful of oligarchs and corporate overlords, and one that looks to the sustainable future rather than seeking to recreate a gilded past based on plunder.

Creating such a system will require far more comprehensive and strategic changes in policy than antagonistic and erratic tariffs. Many of the key reforms that will be needed are inward-facing, such as a more progressive and simpler tax code, an expanded welfare state, and stronger labor protections, especially those that can address the challenges we will soon face with rapid automation. But these internal measures will only succeed if we reform the external economic and geopolitical environment so markets are not insulated from democratic control and wealth cannot buy impunity.

This shift in the external environment will require a corresponding shift in U.S. foreign and international economic policy. A post-neoliberal economic agenda that works for all Americans should, at a minimum, reflect the following four goals: a fairer trade system that gives states more flexibility in balancing the interests of trading partners with national priorities; an industrial policy that emphasizes good-quality jobs and economic mobility—including in the services sector—at least as much as strategic competition and national security; international coordination to stop regulatory arbitrage and tax avoidance; and a new approach to U.S. foreign assistance and diplomacy focused on equitable distribution of global goods and building worker power.

This agenda will only succeed if Americans can relax the grip of oligarchs and their old guard allies on our institutions. This will not be an easy task and will require perseverance in achieving long overdue reforms, such as amending the federal bribery statute to better reflect commonsense understandings of corruption (which successive Supreme Court decisions have essentially defined out of existence), imposing stricter ethics rules on U.S. officials, and importantly, reforming our country’s campaign finance rules, which have created a political system that is more responsive to a small group of economic elites than to the needs of the majority.

There is no question that the old neoliberal theology that dominated U.S. economic policymaking for decades has failed American working people, steadily siphoning the fruit of their labor disproportionately upward to an elite with the power and influence to game the system. Some amount of creative destruction was long overdue. But we shouldn’t be fooled by Trump’s approach, which simply reproduces the worst aspects of the old order while doing nothing for working people. We need a new economic model that truly puts them at the center.

Read in Foreign Policy. 

 

Trump’s Predatory Capitalism Does Nothing for America’s Workers 

Global Social Media Bans Will Hurt Vulnerable Communities

In early January, Meta put out a sudden and unexpected announcement that the platform would be ending its third-party fact checking model in the US, saying that their approach to manage content on their platforms had “gone too far.” Instead, Meta will now be moving to a Community Notes model written by users of the platform, similar to X. These changes came amidst other larger changes to the platform’s hate speech and censorship rules which will be applied globally, with the announcement stating that the platform will be “getting rid of a number of restrictions on topics like immigration, gender identity and gender that are the subject of frequent political discourse and debate.”

Support Alternative Platforms - users can move to platforms like Bluesky and support the AT protocol which are decentralised and challenge the control of the major tech companies Raise the Right Questions - advocates and governments need to look beyond profits and face value and start asking big tech companies the right questions about why their profits are based on potential harm Account for Cultural Nuance - governments and international organisations should establish safety protocols and ethical regulations around

But while the announcement focused on the idea of promoting “free speech”, critics pointed out that it didn’t actually detail just how those changes would take place. News outlets like NPR reported that Meta now allows users to call gay and trans people “mentally ill” and refer to women as “household objects and property.” Those are just some of the more obvious changes in a larger shifting power dynamic that over the last year has slowly made it clear that the digital realm is increasingly unsafe. With the monopoly of digital communication and connection in the hands of a few Big Tech platforms, these US based companies like X and Meta have enough power and access across the world to not just impact everyday communication but influence social dynamics and even global politics. Facebook’s facilitation of the Rohingya genocide isn’t new news, but it is an example of how the safeguards these platforms have supposedly had in place for years haven’t been working, and these changes may seek to worsen the situation further particularly for vulnerable groups. 

Is Social Media Becoming More Dangerous?

Across the United States and the world digital spaces already unsafe for many marginalized groups  are predicted to become more exclusionary, and even dangerous in many ways. 

“When people talk about tech policies, when they talk about vulnerable communities they have a very narrow perspective of the US based minority,” says attorney Ari Cohn, who works at the intersection of speech and technology. That excludes the culturally-nuanced and global conversation that is needed to safeguard global vulnerable populations. 

With fewer fact checkers – even in just the US – and lesser controls online, these platforms are creating digital spaces that now account even less for cultural nuances and needs than they did before, which can further endanger people in the Global South. Because these decisions are made by tech company leadership in the US, many vulnerable groups across the world aren’t even factored into the conversation about safety or risk 

“With the tech landscape generally the regular terms we acknowledge or are worried about are non consensual sexual or intimate images, but the definition of intimate is something we need to work around, so for example if we see a picture of a couple is leaked from Pakistan, to Meta it’s just a picture of people holding hands but for us the context will make it different, put those people at risk”, says Wardah Iftikhar, Project Manager at SHE LEADS, which focuses on eliminating online gender based violence.

It’s these cultural nuances and the risks posed to marginalized groups that make it essential to understand just what this push for “free speech” really means. Yael Eisenstat, an American democracy activist and technology policy expert, summarizes the three changes that she says help us understand that these directives aren’t about free speech and risk contributing to more hate and extremism, pointing out that 1, the algorithm on platforms like X favors Elon Musk and the people he prioritizes, 2, previously banned users being let onto the platform, and 3, the new verification systems now prioritizing people who can pay which further skews the power into the hands of people who have money. 

“These changes combined are important because they are the opposite of actually trying to foster free open speech and tilting it towards people willing to pay, or people the owner is willing to prioritize, while at the same time making it clear that they don’t want to while at the same time making it clear that they no longer want to engage with civil society and outside experts,” Eisenstat shares, emphasizing how this disparity increases further in the global south in countries where X/formerly Twitter’s $8 verification fee could mean a significant amount for many people. 

The risk of false, and possibly dangerous information further increases with the move away from fact checking. “If there were a fair community notes system I could see that this could be a better solution than the fact checking, but you have to take it into account that all or most of the community notes in the past which countered a claim, referred mostly to these fact checker organizations and their articles which were paid by meta, and now they’re gone,” says Berlin-based writer and lecturer Michael Seeman whose work focuses on the issues of digital capitalism.

It also further silos users within their own information bubbles online, which can lead to radicalization as well, particularly as Eisenstat points out that in the case of X many of those allowed back on the platform were extremists and white supremacists. Iftikhar, says that social media platforms have the power to let us remain in our silos. 

“For people supporting Palestine they thought everyone was supporting Palestine and people supporting Israel thought everyone was supporting Israel and people in Palestine were being offensive,” she says.  

Big Tech & Global Autocracy

Of course there is the actual shadowbanning on pro-Palestinian that took place across many of Meta’s platforms, which in the larger picture also raises questions about what the future of these platforms’ relationships with global governments will look like – particularly those governments that want to exercise control over their citizens. 

Dr Courtney Radsch, a journalist, scholar and advocate focused on the intersection of technology, media, and rights points out that we’re already seeing the ripple effects of these policies globally through the de-amplification of journalists and Meta’s news ban in Canada. 

“This leads to an increase of harassment of people using these services especially people who are already marginalized, it has led to a rise in extremist and right wing populism being expressed on these platforms around the world and led to what many see as a rise of degradation on these platforms due to a rise of what many see as AI generated crap that flourishes on these platforms,” Radsch shares. 

The monopoly of these platforms over communications also means that governments only need to ban access to one or two platforms to completely silence any dissenting voices or citizen-led communication, and as is clear from Meta’s catering to Trump, they could just as easily cater to the demands of other governments as well. 

 “They no longer put a strong emphasis on filtering out the mis- and disinformation so it’s easy for autocracies to use platforms as a channel to augment their voice and send their message across the board,” says Xiaomeng Lu, director of Geo-technology at Eurasia Group. 

Decentralising Control

However Eisenstat doesn’t believe that misinformation should be made illegal.

“The questions I think are more important is not how should these companies moderate misinformation but what is it about their design and structures where misinformation and salacious content is being amplified more than fact based information,” she says.

It’s important to be raising the right questions around tech policy and cutting through the noise these platforms are creating in order to be able to come up with long term solutions that can create a more decentralized control around digital spaces. Radsch also believes that there shouldn’t be content focused regulations. 

“There will always be propaganda, there has been throughout history, and platforms monetize this, they monetize engagement. Polarization and extremism do well, and the issue is less about a piece of misinformation and more about industry operations that have risen because it’s so profitable and because algorithms designed in a way to make platform money,” she says.

Cohn also points out that too much regulation may also have its own issues. “There is room to worry about to whether there’s too much centralized power about what is fact,” he says, adding “I think the answer lies somewhere else, in decentralization, like the AT protocol that Bluesky operates on , when people have the easy ability to build a network that taps into a protocol that a lot of other people are using, it becomes a lot more difficult to tap into that or control that.” 

Radsch further believes that the domination of these platforms needs to be broken up, and also needs to be seen in line with the rise of AI dominance, which she says cannot be separated from what we’re seeing in terms of social media platforms consolidating power. 

The answers to curbing power from platforms that have grown so big, and have so much control over the globe aren’t easy – and as authoritarianism rises across the world they may only seek to get more difficult. But the first step can come from changing the way we are asking the questions in the first place, and start questioning what drives these platforms instead of only questioning the content.

Anmol Irfan is a Muslim-Pakistani freelance journalist and editor. Her work aims at exploring marginalized narratives in the Global South with a key focus on gender, climate and tech. She tweets @anmolirfan22

The Real Scandal Is Bombing Yemen, Not the Group Chat

On this episode of The Time of Monsters, Matt Duss on the contradictions of Trump’s foreign policy.

Ordinary Republicans like Marco Rubio are Dismantling American Foreign Policy

Rui Zhong is a writer and researcher living in the Washington D.C. metro area. She studies China, censorship, and technology’s role in nationalism and foreign policy

Donald Trump began his second Administration allowing Elon Musk to spearhead a sweeping ransacking of the federal workforce, beginning with foreign policy. Tasked with overseeing the rapidly dissolving network of embassies and formerly independent USAID offices is Trump’s Secretary of State Marco Rubio, a longtime Republican fixture within American foreign policy. Rubio is working with colleagues within the Trump administration to renege, avoid or otherwise thwart attempts to make good on financial and policy commitments in the international space. In conjunction with the Department of Justice, Rubio argued (in his secondary role as the terminal Administrator of USAID) that the United States had no obligation to pay out frozen aid contracts already committed to ongoing projects – and then declared the overwhelming bulk of them terminated 

Pay What’s Owed. Foreign policy spending, while directed by the Secretary of State, must pay out what is allocated by Congress, and a Secretary of State should resign rather than authorize DOGE-scale cuts. Vote Against Appointees Without Guarantees. Senators should look beyond congeniality when confirming nominees to execute bipartisan foreign policy Design future aid institutions with an eye towards safeguarding them against the kind of sabotage authorized by Rubio.

The thorough complicity of Marco Rubio and other institutional Republican stalwarts goes far deeper than mere verbal hypocrisy. Within Trump’s first administration, Rubio identified the problem of Trump’s conduct against Ukraine following impeachment by the House of Representatives, but ultimately declined to convict him. 

“Can anyone doubt that at least half of the country would view his removal as illegitimate — as nothing short of a coup d’état?” Rubio wrote at the time in a blog post justifying his decision. “It is difficult to conceive of any scheme Putin could undertake that would undermine confidence in our democracy more than removal would.” 

Five years later, Rubio’s entry and active participation in the second Trump Administration reflects a shift in conventional Republican culture, a highly visible reminder of the party’s transformation from one that first mocked, then reluctantly welcomed Trump, to one that is fundamentally about Trump. On international relations in particular, mainstream Republicans have changed to accommodate Trump, with Rubio only the latest member of the cadre to bend the knee.

Of all the selections by Donald Trump for the Cabinet of his second administration, Rubio has the longest tenure within Republican politics and conservative spaces. Foreign policy was one of the ways Rubio had appealed to moderates and even liberals, taking photo opportunities with Hong Kong dissenters and through his service on the human rights-centric Congressional-Executive Commission on China.

During his confirmation hearings, Democratic Senators praised the cordial lines of communication they maintained over the course of his fourteen-year Senate career. “You and I have also had a good working relationship for many years,” said Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH). “I believe you have the skills and are well qualified to serve as secretary of State.” The Senate voted to confirm Rubio 99 in favor with no dissents, greeting Rubio’s nomination to Secretary of State as the promise of a steady hand to steer foreign policy. 

Most of his former Democratic colleagues likely did not envision Rubio rushing to sign off on decisions such as abruptly ending funding the Fulbright Program, nor his sullen silence as Trump and Vance berated Ukrainian President for lack of deference during a March 1st Oval Office Meeting. When asked about his opinion of the meeting by CNN, Rubio said: “I think he should apologize for wasting our time for a meeting that was gonna [sic] end the way it did.” Putin’s schemes were not mentioned. Likely, such topics are not encouraged under the Trump administration.

It is easy to understand why Democratic Senators might have expected Rubio to continue the hawkish but structurally normative habits of his Senate career. During Trump’s First Administration, then-Senator Rubio and most Republicans stuck to a baseline level of support for American soft power institutions and foreign policy practices. Non-political staffers were not subject to executive office oversight, and the Hill mostly consulted agencies for technical information in a neutral relationship. The second Trump administration began instead with a bombastic declaration to cut departments, a process rhetorically and explicitly guided by Elon Musk, through his role in the new Department of Government Efficiency.

Elevated to Secretary of State, Rubio capitulated to these cuts almost immediately, discarding the values-based steps he took to secure the cabinet nomination in the first place. As the White House cut State Department offices like the office of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor, he accepted such closures as collateral damage in service of the same fictional concept of cutting government to efficiency pursued by Musk and his hit team of hired henchmen. At the time of the writing of this piece, Rubio also allegedly pursued the usage of AI to deport students that appeared “pro-Hamas.” He also moved to exempt a wide swath of policies from public commentary during draft phases, removing a mechanism that allowed for democratic input on policies under consideration. And he has, the New Republic reports, “terminated a contract that was in the process of transferring evidence of alleged Russian abductions of Ukrainian children—a potential war crime—to law enforcement officials in Europe.” 

Rubio’s foreign policy doctrine and its wide-ranging surveillance and policy process changes would not look out of place in the authoritarian regimes he’d pursued hawkishly as a Senator. It is not unheard of for politicians to change opinions or policy positions as they rise in power and prominence, nor is it unorthodox practice for them to discard previously-held values at the apex of that political climb. Rubio’s opportunism, however, stands out because he presides over a particularly monumental and irreversible demolition project. If Rubio took the position under the hopes that he would guide foreign policy as he had from the Senate, he has instead been tasked with dismantling the very institutions needed to execute US diplomacy in the world. Partners, contractors and grantees in the United States and abroad cannot forget or experience in reverse the betrayal they feel at getting abandoned. Because Rubio put his face and name to the abandonment, there can be no lifeline offered from any other mainstream Republicans, unless an unforeseen sea change occurs. 

Immediate monetary disbursement and assurance given to grantees, allies and partners are the absolute minimum of what would be needed to restore this historic crisis of confidence in the U.S. foreign policy institutions. Money obligated to agreements are a cornerstone of maintaining the reputation of the United States as an implementation partner on the most fundamental diplomatic, consular and development policies. Based on current trajectories of agencies and programs being cut, frozen or suspended, Rubio and the purportedly “stabilizing” element of the Republican party can be written off as uninterested, unwilling or unable to curb the impulses of Musk and Trump.

This post also appears on the IPJ Substack, read and subscribe here.

Might Makes Right: Matt Duss on Trump’s Foreign Policy Doctrine, from Ukraine to Gaza

Watch the Full Interview with Democracy Now

Transcript:

Matt, welcome back to Democracy Now! Talk about what you understand at this point. At the time of this broadcast, the meeting between Zelensky and Trump has not taken place at the White House yet.

MATT DUSS: Right. Well, what we understand — what I understand right now is that a few weeks ago this deal on rare earth minerals actually originated with the Ukrainians in the hopes that this would be a way to entice Donald Trump into offering U.S. security guarantees. They understand, I think quite rightly, that Donald Trump is always interested in how he can profit, how he can — how he can cut deals. And the hope was that an exchange for some claim to Ukraine’s rare earth mineral wealth, this would translate into real military security guarantees from the United States to Ukraine’s security.

Donald Trump responded to that by saying, “I love this idea. I’m not going to give you any real security guarantees.” However, he does seem to imply that by giving the United States a stake in the future — in future profits in Ukraine, this, in itself, could translate into a form of security guarantee. He has talked about U.S. workers being present doing this work in Ukraine as a form of a guarantee, but believing that would also mean that Donald Trump, the United States would respond militarily to an attack by Russia that endangered those Americans. So, this is still unclear, as are the actual details of this minerals deal.

AMY GOODMAN: So, I mean, it’s very interesting, because you’d think the person who’s most concerned about this — I mean, Zelensky, for reasons of just how much of the rare earth minerals they would be promising to the U.S. — but the person who would be most concerned about this is the president of Russia, is Putin.

MATT DUSS: I mean, I think that’s right. You know, he obviously does not want the United States and Ukraine to be drawing into a closer relationship. So, again, this is why I say we really do need to wait and see the actual details of this deal. As of right now, it has Ukraine promising to invest some portion of their mineral wealth into a shared fund between Ukraine and the United States, and which would also be reinvested in Ukraine, although U.S. companies would be the ones developing this. Donald Trump sees this as a way of getting the United States, quote, “paid back” for its support for Ukraine’s defense. But you’re right: Anything that draws the U.S. and Ukraine closer is something that can’t make Vladimir Putin very happy.

AMY GOODMAN: During his first Cabinet meeting this week, President Trump was asked by reporters about tariffs on the European Union. And I’m asking you this as Trump just met, of course, with the British Prime Minister Starmer. They also talked about Ukraine. But this is particularly interesting, what he said, what Trump said about the European Union.

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: I mean, look, let’s be honest: The European Union was formed in order to screw the United States. That’s the purpose of it. And they’ve done a good job of it. But now I’m president.

AMY GOODMAN: Can you talk about the history and what Trump is talking about?

MATT DUSS: From his perspective, he clearly sees the EU as a way to just form a larger economic bloc that could compete with and possibly, as he said it, screw the United States. But, obviously, it’s much more complicated than that. Economic competition is part of it. I mean, coming out of World War II, there was a huge security and political component of this, Europe trying to draw together to coordinate and to talk more effectively to avoid a third round. We went through two world wars, you know, driven by European economic and military competition. So it was a real effort to avoid that. But Donald Trump simply sees it as a way, as he said, to screw the United States by separate European countries drawing together into one large economic formation that could make joint economic decisions.

AMY GOODMAN: And so, now President Trump is threatening tariffs, starting Tuesday, on Mexico, on Canada, increased tariffs on China, and threatening to tariff the whole European Union.

MATT DUSS: Right. I mean, he did this in his first term. You know, he sees tariffs as yet another way to extract concessions. It’s hard to know exactly how far he’s going to go, as we saw in his comments just now about Zelensky. Last week, he was calling Zelensky a dictator; this week, he can’t believe he said that. You know, frankly, I can’t believe he said that, either. So we’ll have to wait and see what he actually does.

I think what’s interesting about all these meetings we’ve been seeing from European leaders — Macron last week and Starmer just yesterday, and I’m sure we’ll see this from Zelensky today — is that they all understand that they do not want to be in public spats with Donald Trump. They are seeking ways to flatter him. They’re seeking ways to demonstrate that he can profit from a better relationship with their countries.

AMY GOODMAN: In your recent piece for The Guardian, where you talk about “What are we to make of Trump’s Ukraine policy?” you talk about discussions between the U.S. and Moscow in deciding the future of Ukraine. You also compare this to U.S.-Israel relations as both nations plan the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from Gaza. So, if you can talk about, in both cases, the first, leaving out Ukraine — though he’s meeting with Zelensky today and denying he said — of course, he did say that Zelensky is a dictator — but leaving out Ukraine and leaving out the Palestinians when it comes to their fate?

MATT DUSS: Right. I mean, I see a great deal of similarity, you know, a consistency to Trump’s approach. He sees the global order as one in which great powers, powerful countries make the decisions, and less powerful countries, less powerful communities and peoples simply have to live with the consequences. We saw that in the negotiation between the United States and Russia, hosted by Saudi Arabia, where Russia and the United States were essentially determining the future of Ukraine. We saw this in the appearance at the White House with Benjamin Netanyahu a few weeks ago, where he announced his proposal for the removal — essentially, the ethnic cleansing — of Gaza, a decision with huge consequences for the Palestinian people and for the region made without a Palestinian in sight. So, again, I think this is how Trump sees the world. The United States, by dint of its enormous economic and military power, sits with other great powers and simply determines the rules of the road, and weaker countries and other peoples who aren’t in the room have to deal with it.

AMY GOODMAN: Finally, you saw this video, AI-generated video, that President Trump retweeted on his social media, on Truth Social, this horrific video about Gaza.

MATT DUSS: Yeah.

AMY GOODMAN: And it has Trump Gaza, a huge hotel. It has a gold statue of President Trump. It has Elon Musk walking down the streets. And it has Netanyahu and Trump sitting on beach chairs on the ocean with their cocktails. And finally, it has Trump dancing with an almost completely naked, her bottom naked, woman. What is this?

MATT DUSS: I don’t have a good answer for you. I don’t know who dropped acid and made that video. But, you know, it really —

AMY GOODMAN: The point isn’t who made it. The point is he tweeted it.

MATT DUSS: That’s right. No, that’s right. You know, clearly, that appealed to him. But, I mean, we saw this from his comments with Netanyahu, is that he sees the redevelopment, as he would say it, of Gaza as a source of potential profit, just as he sees this deal on rare earth minerals with Ukraine as a source of potential profit. In both of these cases, you always have to follow the money. You know, the thing to ask about every decision Donald Trump makes is: How does this translate into money in Donald Trump’s pocket? So, he clearly sees some advantage into this garish redevelopment of Gaza into, you know, one big Trump casino and golf course — of course, without any consideration for the people who actually live there right now.

What are we to make of Trump’s Ukraine policy? | The Guardian

It’s been quite a week for US foreign policy. Following a phone call last week between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin, US and Russian delegates met in Saudi Arabia to smooth relations between the two countries and discuss possible paths to ending the war in Ukraine.

Ukraine was not invited to the talks. Quite reasonably, Volodymyr Zelenskyy has said his country would not be bound by decisions taken without their participation. Trump responded to this by falsely claiming that Ukraine had started the war, and sought to undermine Zelenskyy’s legitimacy by claiming in a Truth Social post that he “refuses to have Elections, is very low in Ukrainian Polls … A Dictator without Elections.”

In reality, Zelenskyy’s current approval rating is more than 50%, which is higher than Trump’s. And while it’s fair to ask whether Ukraine should have elections during the war, only a total rube would believe that Trump is bringing this up because he cares about democracy.

In terms of optics, the talks themselves are a clear victory for Putin, a validation of his well-known aspiration to restore the great power status to which he believes Russia is historically entitled. In this view, the future of Ukraine, and of Europe, is something to be determined by the United States and Russia irrespective of the populations involved.

For Trump’s part, it fits neatly with his modus operandi that Russia and the United States would get to make those decisions. Just as with the spectacle of the US president and Israeli prime minister a few weeks ago determining the future of the Palestinians who weren’t even in the room, in Trump’s jungle the powerful make decisions that the weak must simply accept, international law and human rights be damned.

You can say this for Trump: at least he’s consistent. The previous administration’s approach to two major wars – Ukraine and Gaza – was characterized by a glaring double standard in which Russia’s blatant violations of the laws of war were rightly condemned, while Israel’s commission of the same were shamefully excused and supported. The rights of the Ukrainian people to freedom and self-determination were treated as unquestionable, while those same rights for the Palestinian people were considered negotiable, if considered at all.

Trump now appears to be resolving this tension by throwing the Ukrainians under the bus along with the Palestinians. And as with his forced-displacement proposal for Gaza, he seems to see Russian talks over Ukraine as primarily a business venture, with the state department readout of the meeting highlighting possible new “investment opportunities” in warming US-Russia relations. (This shows again how wildly off the mark the Washington establishment’s “isolationist” criticisms of Trump have been. In truth, Trump is much more an old-school imperialist, always looking for new spoils to be enjoyed. The amount of time and energy devoted to the idea that Trump is a “Russian asset” obscured the more prosaic homegrown danger posed by his predatory authoritarian capitalism.)

That said, it’s important not to overreact to these talks by dismissing the notion of diplomacy to end the war, nor lose sight of the larger problem in what Trump is doing and how these foreign policy moves tie into his broader agenda. While Trump’s comments indicate a troubling direction of travel and a propaganda victory for Putin, that in and of itself is not enough reason not to avoid negotiations. We should be talking to our adversaries more, not less. The question is what we get from them. And if this initial dialogue helps lead to a durable end to the war, that’s positive. The details will matter.

As will Ukrainian buy-in. There’s some evidence that Ukrainians could support an agreement that comes short of total victory. According to a November Gallup poll, 52% of Ukrainians would like to see their country negotiate an end to the war as soon as possible. According to the same poll, more than half of this group (52%) believe that Ukraine should be open to making some territorial concessions as part of such an agreement.

But for any such agreement to be more than just a temporary halt to conflict, it will need to ensure Ukraine’s security and sovereignty. Simply imposing an agreement that returns Ukraine to Russian vassal state status is not only unjust, but it will also not work. No people would accept decisions about their fate made over their heads, nor should they be expected to. The Ukrainians won’t, just as the Palestinians won’t.

European allies have responded with understandable alarm to Trump’s abrupt policy shift, even if they have no excuse not to have seen it coming. Europeans can no more be cut out of negotiations over the future of their region than Ukraine can be excised from talks over its own fate. If this latest shock finally, at long last, spurs our European allies to take greater responsibility for their own region’s security, that would be a positive outcome. But given how quickly the urgency of past “turning points” has faded, we shouldn’t hold our breath.

The tone and choice of location for this week’s talks in Riyadh (itself a propaganda victory for the Saudi regime) are just one piece of a larger picture in which the United States is now aligning itself more fully with the global forces of ethnonationalism, authoritarianism and oligarchy. As the Trump administration draws closer to rightwing autocrats internationally, it is also hard at work here at home dismantling the administrative state and divvying up the spoils among its own oligarch allies.

Until Democrats are willing to look more honestly and critically at the influence that wealthy interests have on their own party and their governing choices, they won’t be able to offer a compelling and convincing alternative.

Read in The Guardian.

Instead of Needed Reductions, Trump’s Pentagon “Cuts” are Actually Harmful Reallocations

In response to the Trump administration’s proposed reallocations within and from the Pentagon budget, Center for International Policy president and CEO Nancy Okail issued the following statement:

“Cutting out-of-control Pentagon spending should be a top priority. A good-faith process of reducing our military budget to actually align with U.S. interests would contribute greatly to a more secure world and a healthier, more equitable and more competitive America.

“What the Trump Administration has proposed is not that. It is merely a ‘reallocation’ — yet another scam to harm marginalized communities, trash the environment, and erode basic rights while redirecting taxpayer dollars to further enrich favored defense contractors and Trump’s billionaire backers.

“As with its other assaults on agencies across the U.S. government, the administration is falsely scapegoating diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives alongside efforts to combat climate change as top causes of waste. Targeting these modest yet important programs as a priority for cost savings at what is arguably the world’s most bloated bureaucracy defies credulity. 

“It is also not clear there will actually be any cost savings, as what the administration first touted as budget reductions or were just hours later described as ‘offsets’ or ‘reallocations’ that would exempt large swaths of spending and pay for massive new projects and weapons systems. These include boondoggles like a fantastical domestic ‘Iron Dome’ missile defense system and new nuclear weapons that arms experts believe are not only unnecessary, but are so dangerous that they could trigger an accidental nuclear war. Unsurprisingly, many of the companies that stand to make a taxpayer-funded fortune from these wasteful new schemes are headed by wealthy backers of President Trump.

“Trump’s reallocation proposal is little more than a cup-and-ball grift that will continue taxpayer-funded waste at the Pentagon, shuffling it to the personal benefit of Trump and his billionaire associates, while worsening the security threats faced by the United States. A serious process of right-sizing military spending is desperately overdue. Countries that have prioritized their people above their arms industry’s profit margins are outpacing us in health, education, infrastructure, economic competitiveness and overall quality of life. 

“While these false cuts are a huge missed opportunity that abandon the powerful anti-war and anti-status quo sentiments that Trump successfully leveraged in his presidential campaign, they also demonstrate that Pentagon reductions are not the third rail they are often believed to be. Pentagon bloat makes us less safe and there is no shortage of serious plans for strategic reductions that improve human security. Lawmakers and other policy professionals should therefore not merely oppose Trump’s fake cuts, but also present an ambitious and feasible plan for genuine transformations that prioritize the pressing needs of American citizens while ensuring their security.”

For additional analysis related to military spending, check out Center for International Policy’s Climate and Militarism Program (CAMP) and Security Assistance Monitor (SAM).