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Trump’s ‘Liberation Day’ Tariffs Are Coming, but at a Cost to U.S. Alliances

Published

11 months ago

April 1, 2025

Trump’s ‘Liberation Day’ Tariffs Are Coming, but at a Cost to U.S. Alliances

The incoming German chancellor, more convinced than ever that the defense and trade relationship with Washington is crumbling, has made plans to execute on his goal of “independence from the U.S.A.”

He’s not the only one.

The new Canadian prime minister said last week that “the old relationship we had with the United States” — the tightest of military and economic partnerships — is now “over.” Poland’s president is musing publicly about getting nuclear weapons. And the new leader of Greenland, host to American air bases since World War II, reacted to the uninvited visit of a high-level American delegation with indignation.

“President Trump says that the United States ‘will get Greenland,’” Prime Minister Jens-Frederik Nielsen said on social media. “Let me be clear: The United States will not get it. We do not belong to anyone else. We decide our own future.”

These are the results so far of President Trump’s threats to abandon NATO allies whose contributions he judges insufficient, his declaration that the European Union was designed “to screw” the United States and his efforts to expand the United States’ land mass. The main reaction is resistance all around. Now, into this maelstrom of threats, alienation and recriminations, President Trump is expected to announce his “Liberation Day” tariffs on Wednesday.

The details of the tariffs are still unclear, which is one reason the markets are so on edge. Political leaders are on edge as well, because Mr. Trump has made clear that the tariffs will fall on adversaries like China as well as nations that, until recently, were considered America’s closest defense and intelligence allies.

Trump administration officials do not dwell on the price that will be paid by consumers, nor on the effects that the inevitable retaliation will have on American farmers. But just as curiously, the administration has not described any cost-benefit analysis of the president’s actions, such as whether the revenue gained is worth the damage done to America’s central alliances.

Gone are the days when Mr. Trump merely threatened to pull troops out of nations like South Korea and Japan that run a trade surplus with the United States. Now, he wants them to pay up — for some kind of ill-defined mix of subsidies to their own industries, taxes on American goods, free-riding on American security and refusal of his expansionist demands.

Mr. Trump is already showing signs of concern that his targets may team up against him.

A few days ago, he posted a middle-of-the-night warning on social media to his closest allies that “if the European Union works with Canada in order to do economic harm to the USA, large scale Tariffs, far larger than currently planned, will be placed on them both.”

On Sunday China declared that its trade minister had agreed with Japan and South Korea — Washington’s two most powerful treaty allies in the Pacific — on a common response to Mr. Trump’s actions. In Seoul, the statement was described as an “exaggerated” version of a discussion about new supply chains. But Beijing clearly wanted to leave the impression that it can work with America’s allies if Washington will not.

Viewed one way, Mr. Trump’s “Liberation Day” is the logical extension of the goal he announced in his inaugural address. “Instead of taxing our citizens to enrich other countries,” he said, “we will tariff and tax foreign countries to enrich our citizens.” That suggests he does not intend the tariffs to be a negotiating tool. Instead, they are expected to be a permanent source of revenue and — if you believe officials like Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick — “they are going to reduce the deficit and balance the budget.” He added: “Let the people who live off our economy pay, and we will pay less.”

Viewed less optimistically, the imposition of the tariffs may well kick out the last of the three pillars of the trans-Atlantic, trans-Pacific and Canadian alliances. The defense relationships, the trade interdependencies and the bond nurtured over 80 years in those regions have all been intertwined.

Those three strands were deliberately designed to be reinforcing. To Mr. Trump and his allies, though, they have been twisted to take advantage of the United States, a view made clear in the exchanges in the now-famous Signal chat made public last week. It drove home the fact that while President Trump is taking on all of America’s allies, he harbors a particular animus for Europe.

As they debated the timing and wisdom of a strike on the Houthis for their attacks on shipping, Vice President JD Vance wondered whether “we are making a mistake” since it is Europe and Egypt that are most dependent on moving ships through the Suez Canal. (In fact, China is among the biggest beneficiaries, but it was never mentioned.)

“I just hate bailing out Europe again,” he wrote, leading the defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, to respond, “I fully share your loathing of European free-loading. It’s PATHETIC.” They went on to discuss that, somehow, Europe would be made to pay for the cost of the operation — even though the European allies appear to have been kept in the dark about the planned attack.

“There needs to be some further economic gain extracted in return,” Stephen Miller, the deputy chief of staff in the White House, noted in the chat.

Ivo Daalder, a former U.S. ambassador to NATO, wrote recently that the clear conclusion other countries can reach from the chat is “apparently, the U.S. military is for hire, even if there has been no request for its services.”

“And if you want us — you have to pay,” he continued.

Somewhat remarkably, Mr. Trump’s national security officials are acting as if all is normal, as if their boss is not upending the system. On Thursday, a day after Mr. Trump is expected to announce the tariffs, Secretary of State Marco Rubio will represent the United States at a long-scheduled NATO meeting that will be heavily focused on the war in Ukraine.

He will have to navigate the resentments of fellow foreign ministers, most of whom argue, largely in private, that the United States is making a fundamental error by seeking to normalize relations with Russia — rather than contain it and punish it for invading Ukraine — and that it is seeking to hobble their economies. (Occasionally these leak out: Justin Trudeau, before he left office as prime minister of Canada, told a Canadian audience that Mr. Trump was attempting “a total collapse of the Canadian economy because that will make it easier to annex us”.)

The result is that the NATO nations are meeting regularly to discuss whether it is possible to design a peacekeeping or observer force to go into Ukraine, in the event that a cease-fire takes hold, without the United States. They are discussing whether Britain and France’s nuclear umbrella could extend over the other NATO allies, because the United States may no longer be relied upon. It is an erosion of trust that, just two-and-and-half months ago, seemed almost unthinkable.

Such discussions are prompting a long-overdue recognition by European nations that they will have to spend significantly more on defense, though it would probably take a decade or longer to replicate the capabilities the United States brings to the alliance. The downside is that should there be a world crisis in coming years, the United States may have to enter it without its greatest force-multiplier: its allies.

“In the 1950s the U.S. thought NATO was going to be one of many alliances,” Kori Schake, the director of foreign and defense Policy Studies at the American Enterprise Institute, said on Monday.

“The reason that NATO survived and prospered was because the common values and the trade relationship supported the security commitments,” Ms. Schake, a defense official in President George W. Bush’s first administration who writes extensively on the history of alliances, added.

“Who does President Trump think will help us when we need allied forces for operations critical to the security of the United States?” she asked. “And who is going to sympathize with Americans if there is another 9/11, given the behavior of the government of the United States?”

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How the federal government is painting immigrants as criminals on social media

Published

7 hours ago

February 27, 2026

Press Room

How the federal government is painting immigrants as criminals on social media

Getty Images, Dept. of Homeland Security and The White House via X/Collage by Emily Bogle/NPR

Two days after At Chandee, who goes by Ricky, was arrested by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the White House’s X account posted about him, calling the 52-year-old the “WORST OF WORST” and a “CRIMINAL ILLEGAL ALIEN.”

Except that the photo the White House posted was of a different person. The post also incorrectly claimed Chandee had multiple felony convictions — he has one, for second-degree assault in 1993 when he was 18 years old. He shot two people in the legs and served three years in prison.

At “Ricky” Chandee with his wife, Tina Huynh-Chandee.

Via the Chandee family

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Via the Chandee family

Chandee, who came to the U.S. as a child refugee, was ordered to be deported back to his home country, Laos. But Laos had not been accepting all of the people the U.S. wanted it to, so the federal government determined that it was likely infeasible to deport him, his lawyer Linus Chan told NPR. Chandee therefore was granted permission to stay in the U.S. and work so long as he checked in with immigration authorities periodically. He has not missed a check-in in over 30 years and has not had another criminal incident.

People who know Chandee do not see him as “worst of the worst.”

After Chandee completed his prison sentence, he finished school and became an engineering technician. He worked for the City of Minneapolis for 26 years, became a father, and his son grew up to join the military.

In his free time, Chandee enjoys hiking and foraging for mushrooms, Minnesota Public Radio reported.

“We are proud to work alongside At ‘Ricky’ Chandee,” said Tim Sexton, Director of Public Works for the City of Minneapolis in a statement. “I don’t understand why he would be a target for removal now, why he was brutally detained and swiftly flown to Texas, or how his removal benefits our city or country.” Chandee is petitioning for his release in federal court.

Chandee’s case is not unique

Social media accounts from the White House, the Department of Homeland Security and other immigration agencies have spent much of the past year posting about people detained in the administration’s immigration crackdown, typically portraying them as hardened, violent criminals. That’s even as over 70% of the people detained don’t have criminal records according to ICE data.

NPR’s research of cases in Minnesota shows that while many of the people who have been highlighted on social media do have recent, serious criminal records, about a quarter are like Chandee, with decades-old convictions, minor offenses or only pending criminal proceedings. Scholars of immigration, media and criminal law say such a media campaign is unprecedented and paints a distorted picture of immigrants and crime.

A year into President Trump’s second term, the X accounts of DHS and ICE have posted about more than 2,000 people who were targets of mass deportation efforts. Starting late last March, DHS and ICE began posting on X on a near daily basis, often highlighting apprehensions of multiple people a day, an NPR review of government social media posts show.

Among the 2,000 people highlighted by the agencies, NPR identified 130 who were arrested by federal agents in Minnesota and tried to verify the government’s statements about their criminal histories.

In most of the social media posts, the government did not provide the state where the conviction occurred or the person’s age. Public court records do not tend to include photos so definitive identification can be a challenge.

NPR derived its findings from cases where it was able to locate a name and matching criminal history in the Minnesota court and detention system, in nationwide criminal history databases, sex offender databases, and in some cases, federal courts and other state courts.

In 19 of the 130 cases, roughly 1-in-7, public records show the most recent convictions were at least 20 years ago.

Seventeen of the 19 cases with old convictions did include violent crimes like homicide and first-degree sexual assault. ICE provided some of those names to Fox News as key examples of the agency’s accomplishments. “It’s the most disturbing list I’ve ever seen,” said Fox News reporter Bill Melugin on X, highlighting the criminal convictions of each person on the list.

For seven people, their only criminal history involved driving under the influence or disorderly conduct.

ICE agents approach a house before detaining two people in Minneapolis on Jan. 13.

Stephen Maturen/Getty Images

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Stephen Maturen/Getty Images

Six of the 130 Minnesota cases highlighted by the administration involved people with no criminal convictions. The government’s social media posts for those six instead rely upon the charges and arrests as evidence of their criminality, even though arrests don’t always lead to charges and charges can be dismissed.

In yet another case, the government highlighted a criminal charge even while noting it had been dismissed. (The person did have other existing convictions.)

For 37 of the 130 people, NPR was unable to confirm matching criminal history after consulting the databases and news coverage. Some of the names turned up no criminal history at all. The government said these people committed crimes ranging from homicide and assault to drug trafficking, and cited one by name to Fox News. NPR tried to reach out to all 37 people and their families for comment but did not receive a response from any.

In a statement to NPR, DHS’s chief spokesperson Lauren Bis did not dispute NPR’s findings or provide documentation where NPR wasn’t able to confirm matching criminal history.

“The fact that NPR is defending murderers and pedophiles is gross,” Bis wrote. “We hear far too much about criminals and not enough about their victims.” before listing four of the people with old convictions of homicide and sexual assault, underlining the date of deportation order for three of them.

Images designed to trigger emotion

The stream of social media posts with photos of mostly nonwhite people are meant to draw an emotional response, says Leo Chavez, an emeritus professor of anthropology at the University of California, Irvine. They “have been used repeatedly over and over to get people to buy into, really drastic, drastic and draconian actions and policies,” he said.

Chavez, whose most recent book is The Latino Threat: How Alarmist Rhetoric Misrepresents Immigrants, Citizens, and the Nation, recalls how political campaigns in past decades presented images of Latinos — often men — without context. “Just by showing their image, showing brown people, particularly brown men, it’s supposed to be scary.”

The fact that the government’s social media posts come with statements about criminal history as well as photos reinforces that emotional response, Chavez said. DHS has previously acknowledged inaccuracies on their website. But even if the department issues corrections, Chavez said, “the goal was actually achieved, which was to reinforce the criminality and the visualization.”

CNN’s analysis of DHS’s “Arrested: Worst of the Worst” website showed that for hundreds out of about 25,000 people posted on the website, the crimes listed were not violent felonies. Instead, DHS listed people with records that included traffic offenses, marijuana possession or illegal reentry. DHS said the website had a “glitch” that it will fix but also that the people in question “have [committed] additional crimes.”

“I’ve never seen anything like this when it comes to immigration enforcement in the modern era,” said Juliet Stumpf, a professor at Lewis & Clark Law School who studies the intersection of immigration and criminal law. She said the drumbeat of social media posts focused on specific individuals was like “FBI’s most wanted posters” or “like reality TV shows.”

Then-DHS Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs Tricia McLaughlin, flanked by deputy director of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Madison Sheahan (left), and Acting director of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Todd Lyons, speaks during a news conference at ICE Headquarters, in Washington, D.C., on May 21, 2025.

Jose Luis Magana/AP

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Jose Luis Magana/AP

Stumpf drew a parallel with an incident from the 1950s when the U.S. government deported two permanent residents suspected of being communists. “The government was kind of proclaiming and celebrating their deportation because getting rid of these communists was making the country safer,” said Stumpf, “Maybe that’s comparable to something like [this].”

An analysis by the Deportation Data Project shows a dramatic increase in arrests of noncitizens without criminal records during President Trump’s current term compared to President Biden’s term.

“If you look at research, immigrants actually tend to commit fewer crimes than even U.S. citizens do. And that’s true of immigrants who have lawful status here and immigrants who don’t,” said Stumpf. “If we have a number of social media posts that are painting immigrants as the worst of the worst…it’s actually really putting out a distorted version of reality about who immigrants actually are.”

Some claims are disputed by other authorities

In some posts, DHS and ICE have also used photos of people and statements about their criminal histories to burnish the federal government’s accomplishments, defend their agents and criticize states like Minnesota. State and local authorities have in turn pushed back, and some of the federal government’s claims about the people it has detained have been met with setbacks in the courts.

DHS accused Minnesota’s Cottonwood County of not honoring detainers, written requests by ICE to hold prisoners in custody for a period of time so ICE can pick them up. In one post, the agency identified a person who was charged with child sexual abuse, writing “This is who sanctuary city politicians and anti-ICE agitators are defending.”

The Cottonwood County sheriff’s office said DHS’s post “misrepresented the truth” in their own post on Facebook. According to their account, the county did honor the detainer but ICE said it was unable to pick up the person before the order expired and the county had to release the suspect.

The Minnesota Department of Corrections wrote in a blog post that dozens of people DHS listed on its “Worst of the Worst” website were not arrested as DHS described, but were transferred to ICE by the state because they were already in state custody. The Corrections Department has since launched a page dedicated to “correct the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) repeated false claims.”

The “Worst of the Worst” website has some overlap with the department’s social media posts, but it contains a much larger number of people — over 30,000 nationally. It included a Colombian soccer star who was extradited to the U.S., tried in Texas, convicted of drug trafficking and served time in federal prison. The website incorrectly describes him as being arrested in Wisconsin. The soccer player, Jhon Viáfara Mina, recently finished his sentence early and returned to Colombia, according to Spanish newspaper El Diario Vasco.

In some instances, DHS and ICE wrote about incidents where they ran into conflict when carrying out arrests. In those posts, they named the arrestees and posted their photos. But in one case where the incident went to court, the government’s account of the events shifted. After a federal agent shot Julio C. Sosa-Celis in Minneapolis in January, DHS claimed he was lodging a “violent attack on law enforcement.” Assault charges against Sosa-Celis fell apart in court as new evidence surfaced, and the officers involved were put on leave.

Despite the fact that the charges were dropped, DHS’s post profiling Sosa-Celis remains online.

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Bill Clinton to testify before House committee investigating Epstein links

Published

19 hours ago

February 27, 2026

Press Room

Bill Clinton to testify before House committee investigating Epstein links

Former president Bill Clinton is scheduled to give deposition Friday to a congressional committee investigating his links to Jeffrey Epstein, one day after Hillary Clinton testified before the committee and called the proceedings “partisan political theatre” and “an insult to the American people”.

During remarks before the House oversight committee, Hillary Clinton, the former secretary of state, insisted on Thursday that she had never met Epstein.

The former Democratic president, however, flew on Epstein’s private jet several times in the early 2000s but said he never visited his island.

Clinton, who engaged in an extramarital affair while president and has been accused of sexual misconduct by three women, also appears in a photo from the recently released files, in a hot tub with Epstein and a woman whose identity is redacted.

Clinton has denied the sexual misconduct claims and was not charged with any crimes. He also has not been accused of any wrongdoing connected to Epstein.

Epstein visited the White House at least 17 times during the early years of Clinton’s presidency, according to White House visitor records cited in news reports. Clinton said he cut ties with him around 2005, before the disgraced financier, who died from suicide in 2019, pleaded guilty to solicitation of a minor in Florida.

The House committee subpoenaed the Clintons in August. They initially refused to testify but agreed after Republicans threatened to hold them in contempt.

The Clintons asked for their depositions to be held publicly, with the former president stating that to do so behind closed doors would amount to a “kangaroo court”.

“Let’s stop the games + do this the right way: in a public hearing,” Clinton said on X earlier this month.

The committee’s chair, James Comer, did not grant their request, and the proceedings will be conducted behind closed doors with video to be released later.

On Thursday, Hillary Clinton’s proceedings were briefly halted after representative Lauren Boebert leaked an image of Clinton testifying.

During the full day deposition, Clinton said she had no information about Epstein and did not recall ever meeting him.

Before the deposition, Comer said it would be a long interview and that one with Bill Clinton would be “even longer”.

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Read Judge Schiltz’s Order

Published

1 day ago

February 26, 2026

Press Room

CASE 0:26-cv-00107-PJS-DLM

Doc. 12-1 Filed 02/26/26

Page 5 of 17

and to file a status update by 11:00 am on January 20. ECF No. 5. Respondents never provided a bond hearing and did not release Petitioner until January 21, ECF Nos. 10, 12, after failing to file an update, ECF No. 9. Further, Respondents released Petitioner subject to conditions despite the Court’s release order not providing for conditions. ECF Nos. 5, 12–13.

Abdi W. v. Trump, et al., Case No. 26-CV-00208 (KMM/SGE)

On January 21, 2026, the Court ordered Respondents, within 3 days, to either (a) complete Petitioner’s inspection and examination and file a notice confirming completion, or (b) release Petitioner immediately in Minnesota and confirm the date, time, and location of release. ECF No. 7. No notice was ever filed. The Court emailed counsel on January 27, 2026, at 10:39 am. No response was provided.

Adriana M.Y.M. v. David Easterwood, et al., Case No. 26-CV-213 (JWB/JFD)

On January 24, 2026, the Court ordered immediate release in Minnesota and ordered Respondents to confirm the time, date, and location of release, or anticipated release, within 48 hours. ECF No. 12. Respondent was not released until January 30, and Respondents never disclosed the time of release, instead describing it as “early this morning.” ECF No. 16.

Estefany J.S. v. Bondi, Case No. 26-CV-216 (JWB/SGE)

On January 13, 2026, at 10:59 am, the Court ordered Respondents to file a letter by 4:00 pm confirming Petitioner’s current location. ECF No. 8. After receiving no response, the Court ordered Respondents, at 5:11 pm, to immediately confirm Petitioner’s location and, by noon on January 14, file a memorandum explaining their failure to comply with the initial order. ECF No. 9. Respondents did not file the memorandum, requiring the Court to issue another order. ECF No. 12. On January 15, the Court ordered immediate release in Minnesota and required Respondents to confirm the time, date, and location of release within 48 hours. ECF No. 18. On January 20, having received no confirmation, the Court ordered Respondents to comply immediately. ECF No. 21. Respondents informed the Court that Petitioner was released in Minnesota on January 17, but did not specify the time. ECF No. 22.

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