Politics
On Minnesota’s Iron Range, Trump’s Tariffs Could Be Boom or Bust
Once a week, most weeks, the ground in Chisholm, Minn., shudders underfoot.
“When they blast over here, we can feel it in town over there,” Jed Holewa, a City Council member, explained as he looked out over the pit of the Hibbing Taconite mine, a machine-made canyon of flint-colored earth extending to the hills just southwest of town.
The low rumble of controlled explosions is reassuring in an area where few livelihoods are more than a couple of degrees removed from the mines. But this month the ground beneath the Iron Range has begun to shift in a very different way.
The sedimentary rock known as taconite, found in abundance in northern Minnesota, yields most of the United States’ iron ore, which in turn is made into steel used by the American auto industry. Thus the seismic effects of President Trump’s March 26 announcement of a 25 percent tariff on all cars and auto parts imported into the United States. The measure is meant to benefit the domestic auto industry, and has earned praise from labor leaders. But analysts predict it will most likely throw that industry into near-term turmoil, and several domestic automakers saw their stock fall last week after Mr. Trump’s announcement.
The tariff announcement comes amid a brewing trade war between the United States and Canada prompted by Mr. Trump’s earlier threats to impose broad tariffs on America’s northern neighbor and its longstanding ally and trading partner. Canada has responded with its own tariffs.
At the same time, Cleveland-Cliffs, the steel conglomerate that controls Hibbing Taconite and other nearby mines, has announced plans to idle production lines and lay off more than 600 mine workers in the region, citing a softening of demand for cars. Mr. Holewa, a diesel mechanic at Hibbing Taconite, was among those waiting to hear his fate.
The son and grandson of miners, Mr. Holewa is well acquainted with both the fortunes and misfortunes of the industry, in which substantial union salaries go hand in hand with risk and uncertainty. His maternal grandfather was killed on the job, crushed by a haul truck. His father was laid off from a mine in Eveleth, Minn., in the 1980s, during the industry’s darkest period. The high points of its uneven recovery were memorialized in the model years of the Fords his family bought when he was growing up: a 1988 Tempo, a 1994 F-150.
Mr. Holewa, a Republican, is also indicative of the shifting politics of the Iron Range, where Mr. Trump made dramatic gains over previous Republican candidates in 2016 — the beginning of a collapse of a onetime rural Democratic stronghold where Republicans have since claimed most of the region’s seats in the State Legislature.
Mr. Holewa, who knocked on doors for Mr. Trump, was quick to note that the conditions that caused the layoffs preceded Mr. Trump’s tariff announcements.
“This has nothing to do with the tariffs,” he said. “Look at the price of vehicles right now. Sales are down. Lots are full.”
But a representative of Cleveland-Cliffs, whose chief executive has vocally supported Mr. Trump’s trade policy, has told local officials that the tariffs could potentially prolong the layoffs, according to Larry Cuffe Jr., the mayor of Virginia, Minn., another Iron Range town. The company did not respond to requests for comment.
And observers of Minnesota industry say the layoffs — the most serious non-Covid-related job cuts the Iron Range’s mines have experienced in a decade — are a reminder of how uniquely exposed the region is to Mr. Trump’s radical trade experiments: how much it stands to gain or lose — or both — from the shocks the president hopes to deliver to the system.
“It’s throwing a big uncertainty into the supply chain,” said Bob Kill, the chief executive of Enterprise Minnesota, an organization that assists manufacturers in the state. “You see it at the Iron Range happening with raw material.”
The range should in theory benefit from the expanded tariffs on imported steel that Mr. Trump announced in February. But it is also sensitive to shifts and uncertainty in the auto market, as this month’s layoffs have shown. And a trade war with Canada could upend many businesses in the region, which is closer to the Canadian border than to Minneapolis, and raise the price of an array of goods and services, including electricity and dairy products.
“We’re going to ride it out and see,” said Mike Jugovich, a county commissioner and a retired Hibbing Taconite miner in St. Louis County, which encompasses most of the Iron Range. “We don’t have a real choice in the matter. We’re joined at the hip to the tariffs.”
Boomtowns both wild and worldly
Most of America’s domestically produced iron has come from northern Minnesota since the turn of the 20th century, when steam shovels backed by Rockefeller and Carnegie money transformed miles of boreal forest into a muddy, sooty sprawl of hard-living frontier camps.
In those years, the mines drew thousands of immigrants from Finland and Croatia and everywhere in between, producing a boomtown culture both wild and cosmopolitan — a place where “the Babel of more than 30 different alien tongues mingles with the crash and clank of machinery,” as a federal immigration agent wrote in a 1912 report.
More than a century later, the Iron Range remains culturally distinct from the rest of the state. In towns like Chisholm, onion-domed churches punctuate residential neighborhoods, red-sauce Italian restaurants line the main drags and bars keep dusty bottles of pelinkovac, a Balkan wormwood liqueur, on the top shelf for the old-timers.
Many go back generations in the mines, their family trees intertwined with histories of corporate consolidations and labor strikes, of booms and, more often, busts.
“Anybody who’s lived on the range understands that these are the cycles that occur,” said Pete Hyduke, the mayor of Hibbing, just south of Chisholm, who went into government after he was laid off from his mining job in the 1980s.
Fewer than half as many miners are now employed on the Iron Range as were at the beginning of the ’80s, when jobs fell victim to technological improvements and to the decline of the domestic steel industry, undercut by cheaper imports and the migration of manufacturing away from the United States.
Today, the range’s fortunes turn largely on trade policy, the push and pull of free-trade agreements and tariffs. This became starkly evident in the 2010s, when China, whose steel production had grown to eclipse every other country’s, began flooding the international market, cutting global prices in half by 2015 and prompting thousands of layoffs at Minnesota’s mines. Since then, “the Iron Range has known that tariffs are important for our domestic production and survival,” said Cal Warwas, a Republican state representative and a steelworker from Clinton Township.
The Obama administration eventually imposed stiff anti-dumping tariffs on China, but the episode exacerbated local discontent with the Democratic Party. Iron Rangers’ fiercely pro-union politics had for decades made the region the great rural redoubt of the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party, Minnesota’s variant on the Democratic Party. But in a socially conservative area whose fortunes rest on resource extraction, many found themselves dissenting from the D.F.L. on environmental protection and social issues, and convinced that an increasingly urban and suburban party was insufficiently attentive to the range’s economic concerns.
“They’ve become way too woke for me,” said Mr. Cuffe, the Virginia mayor, who left the D.F.L. and endorsed Mr. Trump in 2016.
Mr. Trump outperformed previous Republican candidates in the region in 2016, and endeared himself further by imposing 25 percent tariffs on Chinese steel during his first term. Today, the region’s delegation to the State Legislature is entirely Republican save for one state senator.
Hope and anxiety over tariffs
Tariffs on China are broadly supported by Republicans and Democrats alike on the Iron Range. But Mr. Trump’s promises to levy 25 percent tariffs on Canada and similar penalties on cars and car parts imported to the United States have raised alarm.
“I’m very supportive of protectionist policies on industries that matter to our national defense,” said Grant Hauschild, a state senator from Minnesota’s Canada-bordering Third District, and the one remaining Democrat in the Iron Range’s legislative delegation. “However, haphazard, across-the-board tariffs on everything, everywhere, all at once, on allies as well as adversaries, is not the best policy.”
A core issue, manufacturing experts say, is that even the domestic industries Mr. Trump wants to bolster now rely on complex supply chains that run back and forth across borders with regional trading partners, which are difficult to untangle in places like the Great Lakes region.
This is particularly true of the American auto industry, which “is highly dependent on a robust North American supply chain that often involves cross-border trade,” said Matteo Fini, an analyst at S&P Global. American-made catalytic converters are shipped to Canada for installation in exhaust systems that are then shipped back to the United States. American lithium is made into cathodes in Canada, which are assembled into battery packs in the United States and then sent north again for vehicle production.
Jolts to this system may well be felt on the Iron Range, and broader tariffs on Canada, as well as any reciprocal tariffs Canada imposes, will affect the region in other ways. Minnesota utilities buy Canadian hydropower. Paper mills run on Canadian wood pulp. Tourism and Great Lakes shipping, other mainstays of the regional economy, rely on easy border transit.
The local implications of a trade war are severe enough that some of Mr. Trump’s supporters on the range have concluded that despite his years of tariff evangelism, the president’s recent threats must be a bluff.
“I think it’s just a negotiating tactic to try to get some compromise,” said Mr. Cuffe. He paused. “I’m hoping that’s the case.”
For local Democrats, however, Mr. Trump’s antagonism of their northern neighbors has added confusion to their discontent with the president.
“All this stuff about Canada — I mean, where did it come from?” said Mary Beth Perreira, a retired public health nurse in Hibbing. “If you have a brain, you know that we’re going to pay for it all.”
But others have begun to come around to Mr. Trump’s vision.
“I don’t mind them hitting Canada,” said Tim Simpson, a retired truck driver from Hibbing.
Mr. Simpson moved away from the region for a time in the 1980s, after losing his job at a local taconite mine. A political independent, he voted for Mr. Trump in 2016 but not in 2024.
Still, he said the president’s trade-war bluster might be good for the Iron Range.
“I hope it straightens a lot of stuff out, and we do get a lot of them jobs back,” he said. “We’ve been losing them since the ’60s, since I was a kid.”
Politics
Israel shares intelligence warning Iran plotted new assassination attempt against Trump: report
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Israel recently shared intelligence with the United States indicating Iran had developed a fresh plan to assassinate President Donald Trump, according to a Wall Street Journal report Thursday citing people familiar with the matter.
The reported intelligence would mark an escalation in the longstanding threats against Trump, who Iran has repeatedly vowed to retaliate against over the 2020 U.S. strike that killed Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Gen. Qassem Soleimani.
The White House referred Fox News Digital to Trump’s remarks Wednesday when asked about the report.
TRUMP FACES UNPRECEDENTED THIRD ASSASSINATION ATTEMPT
President Donald Trump speaks during a news conference at the NATO Summit in Ankara, Turkey, July 8, 2026. Trump addressed threats against his life after a report said Israel shared intelligence with the United States about an alleged new Iranian assassination plot. (Kerem Uzel/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
“They want to take out the U.S. leader — me. I’m on whatever list. I saw this morning I’m on every single one of their lists,” Trump said. “And, so far, I guess I’ve been a bit lucky, but maybe that doesn’t last very long. These are evil, sick people. And we have to root out that cancer. That cancer. You know what you do? You’ve got to cut out cancer early. And that’s the way I feel.”
Fox News Digital has also reached out to Israel’s Embassy in Washington and Iran’s Mission to the United Nations for comment.
The Journal reported the intelligence surfaced as Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu have diverged in recent weeks over how to proceed after last month’s conflict with Iran. Netanyahu has advocated for continuing military pressure on Tehran, while Trump has sought to preserve a fragile ceasefire after U.S. strikes on Iranian nuclear sites.
NETANYAHU REJECTS REPORTS OF A RIFT WITH PRESIDENT TRUMP, SAYS THE TWO REMAIN ALIGNED ON IRAN
President Donald Trump, left, and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the White House March 25, 2019. The leaders spoke Thursday after The Wall Street Journal reported Israel had shared intelligence with the United States about an alleged new Iranian plot targeting Trump. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh, File)
Trump and Netanyahu spoke Thursday and agreed to continue coordination between the two countries, according to a statement from Netanyahu’s office, which said Trump also updated the Israeli leader on recent U.S. activity in the Gulf.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during his conversation with U.S. President Donald Trump. (Avi Ohayon/GPO)
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Iranian mourners at the funeral for Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei chanted for Trump’s death and displayed a banner that said, “We Will Kill Trump,” according to the Journal.
Iran has publicly vowed for years to retaliate against Trump over the U.S. operation that killed Soleimani, the former commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ Quds Force, in Baghdad in January 2020.
WASHINGTON — A tentative armistice between the United States and Iran reached less than a month ago appeared all but dead Wednesday after the two sides traded fresh military strikes, and as President Trump directed further attacks on the Islamic Republic.
The escalation marked a dramatic turn after the Trump administration spent weeks selling a diplomatic breakthrough with Tehran that proved controversial across the political aisle, lifting oil sanctions and a naval blockade on Iran in exchange for the promise of talks over the status of the Strait of Hormuz and its decades-old nuclear program.
Now, speaking to reporters at the NATO summit in Turkey, Trump said he believed the truce — which diplomats describe as a memorandum of understanding — was “over” and that it was a “waste of time” dealing with Iranian leadership.
“They’re scum. They’re sick people,” Trump said of Iranian leaders, whom he had characterized last month as “very rational people” and “very nice to deal with.”
The president’s dim views of the ceasefire agreement’s fate were shared by Iran’s foreign ministry, which issued a statement on Wednesday saying the American attacks, the reinstatement of a U.S. naval blockade on the Strait of Hormuz, and Israel’s continuing attacks in Lebanon rendered “important and fundamental” parts of the deal “ineffective.”
The truce’s unraveling was underscored by Trump ordering the U.S. military to launch a series of strikes against Iran on Wednesday afternoon to “further degrade their ability to threaten” the commercial shipping through the Strait of Hormuz.
“The United States is holding Iran accountable for recent unjustified aggression against commercial shipping and civilian crews freely navigating a vital international waterway,” U.S. Central Command said in a statement on social media.
Earlier in the day, Trump signaled that the United States planned to “hit them hard” and floated the possibility of taking over Kharg Island, which is vital to Iran’s economy. His remarks quickly prompted oil prices to rise and global stock markets to fall, a worry that Trump acknowledged but which did not seem to sway his decision-making in relation to Iran.
“If we hit Iran, oil goes up a little bit, it is all right,” Trump said. He later added that the United States may “do some other thing that could lift it a little bit, but I don’t think it’s gonna lift it a lot at all.”
As Trump signals the continuation of fighting, his administration has been seeking more than $67 billion in funding to cover expenses related to the Iran war, a request that Congress has not yet approved as lawmakers have been split over the president’s handling of the conflict.
“The American people are paying the price for Trump’s total failure in Iran,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) said in a statement Wednesday. “Our troops are back in harm’s way and high gas costs are continuing to punish working families.”
The president’s stance on the war marked the latest setback to a fragile truce that has barely held since the 14-page agreement was signed June 17, as the U.S. and Iran engaged over the last few weeks in cycles of attacks and counterattacks.
Trump was noticeably angrier at Iran on Wednesday as he cast doubt over the deal. Last month, Trump had complimented Iranian leadership for trying to reach a peace deal and celebrated the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz, a crucial shipping route for the world’s oil and gas. But based on his remarks, it was clear he was out of patience.
“I am not happy with them,” Trump said. “They’re cuckoo. There’s something wrong with these people. For 47 years, they’ve been the bully of the Middle East and they are not the bully anymore. They are not the bully anymore.”
Trump expressed frustration with Iran’s negotiators and their resistance to abiding by U.S. demands to reopen the strait. When asked if he intended to send troops to Iran, the president dismissed the idea.
“Why would I go in now?” Trump said. “I’d go in when they’re completely eliminated or an agreement is made.”
Still, the president kept the door open for negotiations, saying that his envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner “want to negotiate.”
“They’re good people, Steve Witkoff, Jared Kushner, but they have to come back to me,” Trump said. “As far as I’m concerned, it’s just a waste of time dealing with [the Iranians]. They’re liars.”
The latest breakdown to the ceasefire followed a now-familiar chain reaction of tit-for-tat attacks, starting with a series of strikes on three oil tankers transiting the Strait of Hormuz on Tuesday, including a Qatari vessel carrying natural gas, according to the United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations center.
The Qatari tanker was off the coast of Oman when it was hit and caught fire, the maritime monitor said, in what experts say was a move to thwart ships attempting to use an alternate transit route to the one Iran specified. Iran did not claim responsibility, but a report on Iranian state television said the Qatari tanker came under attack after ignoring warnings to turn back.
The two other vessels were damaged but were able to continue to their destination, according to the U.K. group.
Qatar, which has played a vital role in facilitating negotiations between the U.S. and Iran, condemned the attack on its tanker as “unacceptable.”
The U.S. responded with a wave of strikes against more than 80 Iranian targets aimed at “impos[ing] heavy costs for targeting and attacking commercial shipping crewed by innocent civilians in an international waterway,” according to a statement from U.S. Central Command. That tally included roughly 60 Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps small boats in the strait.
Iranian state media said U.S. strikes targeted Sirik, Qeshm Island and Bushehr and Bandar Abbas, while a U.S. drone strike on the port city of Mahshahr killed one Revolutionary Guard member.
Ahead of the strikes, the White House revoked the 60-day temporary license given to Tehran to sell and deliver oil during the truce.
Iran’s military countered with its own strikes on 85 U.S. military facilities in Bahrain and Kuwait; it also shot down an MQ-9 drone, according to a statement on Wednesday.
Kuwait said its military intercepted two ballistic missiles and 13 drones, but that none had resulted in material damage or casualties.
Global oil prices surged 6% on news of Trump’s reversal on the deal, rising to more than $78 a barrel, down from the peak during the war but still above prewar levels.
The renewed violence appeared to have little effect on the funeral for Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who was killed in an Israeli strike on Feb. 28, in the war’s opening hours.
The funeral, a days-long period of mourning, is set to end on Thursday, when Khamenei’s body will return from Iraq to be buried in the city of Mashhad, his birthplace. Negotiations were to begin once more.
In his remarks Wednesday, Trump said Iranian leaders had asked for a “timeout” to attend the funeral, and that he had promised not to kill them.
“And I said give it to them, and they start shooting missiles,” Trump said.
Whether those talks — which were meant to deal with the thorniest issues between the two countries, including the Strait of Hormuz and Iran’s nuclear program — will go ahead remains unclear. Iran, for its part, maintained a defiant attitude.
“The era of bullying and extortion is over,” wrote Mohammad Ghalibaf, Iran’s parliamentary speaker. “It leads nowhere. We don’t fold.”
Ali Akbar Velayati, a senior advisor to the supreme leader, posted on X that Trump’s policy had “driven the region towards fire.”
“We had previously warned that the region is not a place for the political gambling of small countries, and we have repeatedly proven that adventures are met with an immediate response,” he wrote.
He added that the Axis of Resistance — a reference to Iran’s network of allied groups in Lebanon, Iraq and Yemen — would not be “silent against humiliation and adventurism” and has “its finger on the trigger.”
Bulos reported from Beirut and Ceballos from Washington.
Politics
Omar’s disclosures erased millions, leaving her with potential negative net worth. She won’t explain why.
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Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., refused to address her revised financial disclosures that could imply she has a negative net worth after the progressive lawmaker dramatically reducing the reported value of assets tied to her husband’s business ventures.
“Can you tell us if your husband still has the consulting business and the wine business?” Fox News Digital asked Omar.
The congresswoman stayed silent as she was repeatedly questioned, after previously telling Fox News Digital that the original filing — showing Omar’s reported assets reducing by as much as $29.9 million — was inaccurate and “incomplete” information.
ILHAN OMAR’S OFFICE SAYS SHE’S ‘NOT A MILLIONAIRE’ AFTER $30M FILING REVISED DOWN TO UNDER $100K: REPORT
US Representative Ilhan Omar, Democrat of Minnesota, speaks during a press conference with family members of Palestinian-American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh as members of Congress call for US investigations into Israel’s actions and reintroduce the Justice for Shireen Act, outside the US Capitol in Washington, DC, May 18, 2023. The Al Jazeera journalist, who was a dual US citizen, was killed on May 11, 2022. The Israeli army later admitted one of its soldiers likely shot the reporter. (Photo by SAUL LOEB / AFP) (Photo by SAUL LOEB/AFP via Getty Images)
The controversy surrounding Omar’s finances began when a 2024 financial report estimated that Omar and her husband possessed between $6 million and $30 million in assets, all while the Minnesota fraud scandal within the Somali community was beginning to come to fruition.
A more recent 2025 financial disclosure report shows Omar’s revised value of shared assets between her and husband to sit at a maximum of $125,000 — a multi-million-dollar drop from the year prior. The lower estimate of their assets, $20,000, compared to the low and high debt estimates, $30,000 and $100,000, would imply the Minnesota Democrat could have a negative net worth.
Both her and her husband have separate debts, each ranging somewhere between $15,000 and $50,000 — from her own student loans and her husband’s credit card debt, according to the disclosures.
WATCH: OMAR SILENT WHEN CONFRONTED ON ALLEGED TIES TO MASSIVE MINNESOTA FRAUD SCANDAL
RICHFIELD, MN – AUGUST 08: Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) (C) campaigns with her husband Tim Mynett (R) at the Richfield Farmers Market on August 8, 2020 in Richfield, Minnesota. Omar is hoping to retain her seat as the representative for Minnesota’s 5th Congressional District in next week’s primary election. (Photo by Stephen Maturen/Getty Images)
The biggest change in the documents involved Omar’s husband, Tim Mynett. His reported ownership interests in both his winery and venture capital advisory firm, which were previously valued in the millions of dollars, are listed with no value now.
In Omar’s 2024 financial disclosure records, Mynett’s share in his winery was valued between $1 million and $5 million, and his share at the venture capital advisory firm was valued between $5 million and $25 million. Now, his equity interests are both listed at $0.
Omar’s office previously told Fox News Digital that Mynett has partners in both businesses and said the earlier disclosure mistakenly reflected the businesses’ total equity rather than his ownership interest. The office also said the original filing listed assets without accounting for liabilities.
VANCE REFERS TIM WALZ, MINNESOTA ATTORNEY GENERAL TO DOJ FOR CRIMINAL INVESTIGATION OVER STATE’S ALLEGED FRAUD
House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer, R-Ky., has publicly voiced his interest in the Ethics Committee opening an investigation into Omar’s personal finances after the 2025 financial reports came out showing the possibility of a $29 million drop in her net worth.
Vice President JD Vance also has previously said the U.S. Department of Justice will be opening a probe into her alleged fraud as part of the administration’s anti-fraud taskforce that he spearheads, though no formal investigations have been shared with the public at this time.
Omar has been reluctant to answer Fox News Digital’s questions about her financial fallout and potential probes to be opened against her.
The Minnesota lawmaker similarly dodged answering any of Fox News Digital’s questions just last month about the revised disclosures.
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“There’s also the possibility that it might rain on this sunny day,” Omar replied without responding directly to the content of the question.
Fox News Digital’s Robert Schmad contributed to this report.
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