Homeland Security Department to surveil social media accounts of immigrants, lawful residents for “antisemitic” activity

Jacob Crosse

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem speaks to employees at the Department of Homeland Security, Jan. 28, 2025, in Washington. [AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta]

In an attack on the free speech rights of the entire working class in the US and internationally, on Wednesday the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) announced that as part of its visa application process it would begin screening and logging social media accounts and flagging what it deemed “antisemitic” activity. Those found advocating for Palestinian equality, accountability for US-backed Israeli war crimes, or an end to the Zionist state are at risk of being denied entry to the US.

The press release stated that US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) “will begin considering aliens’ antisemitic activity on social media and the physical harassment of Jewish individuals as grounds for denying immigration benefit requests.”

In line with the previous administration of Democrat Joe Biden, which falsely conflated opposition to the genocide in Gaza with hatred of Jewish people, Trump’s DHS is using the same lie to stifle the democratic rights of not only immigrants but lawful permanent residents as well. The press release notes that this policy “will immediately affect aliens applying for lawful permanent resident status, foreign students and aliens affiliated with educational institutions linked to antisemitic activity.”

Paving the way to not only deport but to imprison and possibly assassinate alleged “terrorist” sympathizers, the DHS wrote that it will:

enforce all relevant immigration laws to the maximum degree, to protect the homeland from extremists and terrorist aliens, including those who support antisemitic terrorism, violent antisemitic ideologies and antisemitic terrorist organizations such as Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Hezbollah, or Ansar Allah, aka: “the Houthis.”

Underscoring the anti-democratic character of the policy, DHS Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs Tricia McLaughlin wrote:

Sec. Noem has made it clear that anyone who thinks they can come to America and hide behind the First Amendment to advocate for anti-Semitic violence and terrorism—think again. You are not welcome here.

The agency said it will:

consider social media content that indicates an alien endorsing, espousing, promoting, or supporting antisemitic terrorism, antisemitic terrorist organizations, or other antisemitic activity as a negative factor in any USCIS discretionary analysis when adjudicating immigration benefit requests.

While people who evince support for organizations and groups that are currently engaged in armed resistance against US imperialism and the genocide in Gaza have been targeted, no neo-Nazi or right-wing organizations that actually practice and promote antisemitism were listed.

This latest attack on democratic rights was met by the Democratic Party with the same indifference it has displayed during the first three months of the Trump administration. As of this writing, not a single leading Democrat, including Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (New York) and Rashida Tlaib (Michigan) or Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders has issued a statement condemning the policy.

The latest policy follows the ongoing kidnapping and detention of international students, who have spoken out against the genocide in Gaza, such as Columbia’s Mahmoud Khalil and Tufts University’s Rumeysa Ozturk, both of whom remain imprisoned in immigration detention centers for their pro-Palestinian thought crimes.

On Monday, US District Judge William K. Sessions III denied a request by Ozturk’s lawyers to have her released, citing questions over jurisdiction. After Ozturk was kidnapped outside her apartment in Somerville, Massachusetts, on March 25, immigration Gestapo whisked her over 1,300 miles away to Louisiana, without her inhaler. Ozturk’s lawyers have claimed in court filings that their client has suffered at least three asthma attacks since being abducted.

Far from standing up for students’ democratic rights, universities have bent over backwards to accommodate Trump’s dictatorial scheme to transform the major colleges into bastions of fascist thought and propaganda. This prostration has not prevented the Trump administration from vindictively withholding federal funding.

On Tuesday, the Trump administration confirmed it had frozen more than $1 billion in funding for Cornell and $790 million for Northwestern. Both schools are among more than 60 currently facing “civil rights” investigations by the Department of Education over alleged “antisemitism”—that is, anti-genocide protests that were not sufficiently suppressed.

Revealing the close connections between many universities and the US war machine, Cornell confirmed that it received 75 stop-work orders in connection with grants from the Department of Defense. The university’s statement noted that the grants funded research that is “profoundly significant to American defense, cybersecurity and health.”

The blocking of funds to Northwestern comes less than two weeks after the Big Ten university released a report on its efforts to block students from organizing and supporting anti-genocide protests on campus. The report noted that the university had updated its “demonstration policy” to prohibit “overnight demonstrations” and to discipline students for “refusing to remove or adjust a mask or face covering if requested to do so by an authorized University official for identification purposes.”

The university also announced mandatory “antisemitism training” for “students, faculty and staff,” which uses the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism. The IHRA definition equates opposition to Zionism and Israel with antisemitism and deems it “antisemitic” to compare any of the innumerable crimes of Israel to those of the Nazis.

Additionally, Northwestern announced ominously that it had hired:

additional police who, together with our existing officers, are empowered by the state to arrest people who trespass or otherwise violate the law. We also have enhanced our private security force and our relationships with outside law enforcement agencies.

These and many other capitulations to the Trump administration did not prevent the university from having its funding frozen. Similarly, on Wednesday Science reported that the Trump administration was “killing” $400 million in federal grants to Columbia University. Last month, even after it capitulated to Trump’s demands and expelled or suspended dozens of students, the university saw $250 million in biomedical research grants blocked by Trump.

Emboldened by the complicity of the Democrats and universities in their deportation operations and attacks on democratic rights, Trump administration officials are openly flouting court orders and due process. Axios reported that during an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) event on Wednesday, DHS Secretary Kristi Noem told agents that the more than 200 people sent to a maximum security El Salvadoran gulag without a trial “should stay there for the rest of their lives.”

Speaking to the outlet, Trump’s “Border czar” Tom Homan said:

I’ve talked to the highest level at ICE and they’ve reassured me several times: Everyone that was removed under the Alien Enemies Act was a gang member and a terrorist.

A CBS “60 Minutes” report that aired this past Sunday found that 75 percent, or 179 of the 238 Venezuelan men kidnapped and currently imprisoned in El Salvador, had no criminal record. Among those currently imprisoned is Andry Hernandez Romero, a 31-year-old makeup artist and gay man. According to his lawyer, Lindsay Toczylowski, Romero loves theater, has never been affiliated with a gang and legally applied for asylum in the United States last year.

European Union imposes counter-tariffs on the US

Peter Schwarz

After the punitive tariffs announced by US President Donald Trump came into force on Wednesday morning, the European Union (EU) responded with countermeasures of its own. However, these are relatively modest.

While the US imposed import duties of 20 percent on almost all goods from the EU (the previously imposed tariffs of 25 percent on cars, steel and aluminum remain in force), the EU is only imposing tariffs of between 10 and 25 percent on selected goods worth €21 billion. This is less than the €26 billion of steel and aluminum imports to the US from Europe subject to tariffs.

Moreover, the tariffs will only come into force gradually: Around a fifth from mid-April, another portion from mid-May and the levies on almonds and soybeans only at the beginning of December. The list of affected goods, which primarily targets regions with a high proportion of Trump voters, was already drawn up in response to the steel and aluminum tariffs.

Unlike China, which responded to horrendous US tariffs of 104 percent with counter-tariffs of 84 percent, Brussels is holding out for an agreement with Washington. The EU Commission emphasized: “These countermeasures can be suspended at any time if the US agrees to a fair and balanced negotiation outcome.” It went on the say that the EU “clearly prefers to find a balanced and mutually beneficial negotiated solution with the US.”

There are also hopes that—as the German daily FAZ put it—“the power of facts will put Trump in his place,” that the rise in consumer prices in the US and the negative consequences of the tariffs for American companies and financial institutions will persuade Trump to back down. The exchange of blows between the head of Trump’s trade policy Peter Navarro and Tesla boss Elon Musk, who traded bitter insults, was followed with great interest in Europe. However, the hopes associated with this could prove to be misplaced.

The consequences of an escalating trade war between the US and the European Union would be devastating. There are no two other regions of the world that are so closely intertwined economically. Together, they account for almost 30 percent of global trade in goods and services and 43 percent of global economic output (GDP).

In 2024, the EU and the US exchanged goods worth €865 billion and services worth €746 billion. Some 26 percent of EU goods exports went to the US, while 13.7 percent of imported goods came from the US. The EU achieved a surplus of €157 billion in trade in goods (which Trump used to justify the punitive tariffs), while the reverse is true for services: the US had a surplus of €109 billion.

However, there are also voices in Europe pushing for a tougher stance against the US. Germany and France in particular also want to take action against American service companies.

Germany is particularly hard hit by the US tariffs. It exported goods worth €161 billion to the US in 2024. The German pharmaceutical industry and car manufacturer Porsche each delivered around a quarter of their production to the US. Aircraft construction, manufacturers of specialty goods such as medical equipment, shipbuilders, who build cruise ships for the US, and the automotive industry in particular are also heavily affected by the tariffs.

While some carmakers, such as Porsche and Audi, only sell models produced in Europe in the US, others, such as Volkswagen, BMW and Mercedes, have plants in the US, but also import from Europe and Mexico and therefore remain dependent on international suppliers. Audi has already responded to the punitive tariffs with an export ban and for the time being only intends to sell cars in the US that are already stockpiled locally.

Outgoing German Economics Minister Robert Habeck (Greens) proposed on Monday to use the “Anti-Coercion Instrument” against Trump’s punitive tariffs, which is considered a “bazooka” in the EU’s trade arsenal. Introduced in late 2023, the Anti-Coercion Instrument allows for a wide range of countermeasures that go far beyond tariffs. American tech companies such as Alphabet, Meta, Apple, Microsoft and Amazon, which generate billions in sales in Europe, could be restricted in their activities and subject to additional duties. This would set off an escalation spiral with devastating economic consequences.

On Wednesday afternoon, Trump suspended for 90 days the increased tariffs for 75 countries that had shown a willingness to negotiate and left them at a standard tariff of 10 percent. At the same time, he announced a further increase in tariffs on imports from China to 125 percent with immediate effect. However, even if the conflict between the US and the EU does not escalate further, Europe will be directly affected by the trade war between the US and China. The European stock markets have reacted with heavy fluctuations and losses.

The EU is facing a dilemma. If it supports China against Trump’s tariffs, there is a risk of an escalation of the conflict with the US and the final break-up of NATO, on which it relies in the war against Russia. If it stands with the US against China, it risks losing its most important trading partner alongside the US. In 2024, the EU exported goods worth €213 billion to China and imported goods worth €518 billion.

The EU is therefore trying to defuse the conflict. Commission President Ursula von der Leyen spoke to Chinese Prime Minister Li Qiang on the phone on Tuesday and called on him to prevent further escalation. In view of the widespread disruption caused by the US tariffs, Europe and China, as the world’s two largest markets, have a responsibility to ensure a free and fair trading system, said von der Leyen. But she was unsuccessful. China was not prepared to bow to US pressure and increased its counter-tariffs from 34 to 84 percent a day later.

Even if Trump imposes tariffs on “friend and foe,” China is the real target of his offensive, as the latest turn of events shows. Even the conservative FAZ understands this. “With his tariff war, Trump is exacerbating the major global conflict that will shape the 21st century,” it says in a commentary by Nikolas Busse. China, and not Russia, is the main problem from the United States’ perspective. “Trump has imposed his tariffs on the whole world, but his military plans are primarily aimed at China. In this he is no different from his predecessors.”

Germany and the EU are reacting to the US’s aggressive approach by rearming in order to participate independently in the violent imperialist redivision of the world. The price is being paid by the working class and young people on both sides of the Atlantic in the form of mass redundancies, social cuts, state repression and their use as cannon fodder in future wars.

Parties that once called themselves left or reformist are playing a key role in this. In Germany, on the same day that Trump’s punitive tariffs came into force, the Social Democrats concluded a coalition agreement with the conservative Christian Democratic Union/Christian Social Union that centers on the most comprehensive rearmament since Hitler, the expansion of the repressive state apparatus, the adoption of the fascist Alternative for Germany’s refugee policy and job cuts.

In the US, the trade unions are among the most ardent supporters of Trump’s punitive tariffs. In Germany, they are responsible for lowering real wages and organizing mass layoffs in the car industry.

Vietnam among hardest hit by Trump tariffs

Peter Symonds

Governments, corporations and investors throughout Asia are in shock after Trump declared economic war on the world last week and announced huge “reciprocal” tariffs on friend and foe alike. While China—regarded in Washington as the chief threat to American global dominance—was hit with an extra 34 percent tariff on all exports to the US, Trump imposed hefty tariffs on most countries in the region.

Workers assemble electric cars at a Vinfast factory in Hai Phong, Vietnam, on Sept. 29, 2023 [AP Photo/Hau Dinh]

Among the hardest hit were the 10 countries that form the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN), most having tariffs of 30 percent or more imposed putting them towards the top of the list. These were: Cambodia (49 percent), Laos (48 percent), Vietnam (46 percent), Myanmar (44 percent), Thailand (36 percent), Indonesia (32 percent). Malaysia (24 percent), Brunei (24 percent) and the Philippines (17 percent) were a little lower. Singapore was the only member to be given the baseline minimum of 10 percent.

Many of the ASEAN countries benefited from the tariffs imposed on China under the first Trump administration and maintained by the Biden administration along with punitive bans targeting hi-tech Chinese corporations. Companies that had used China as a cheap-labour platform adopted a China plus One strategy, shifting part of their production to South East Asia countries to avoid the US tariffs imposed on China.

Now governments internationally are scrambling for a strategy: seeking negotiations with the Trump administration, looking for other markets, while deeply concerned about the prospect of global recession, a sharp slowdown in their economies, rapidly rising unemployment and social unrest.

Vietnam, which is heavily dependent on exports to the US, is among the hardest hit and most vulnerable.  Last year, it ranked eighth among the top trading partners of the US with total bilateral trade of $US149.6 billion, up by a huge 20.4 percent increase from 2023. The country also became the US’s sixth largest source of imports last year worth $136.6 billion, and recorded a record trade surplus with the US of $123.5 billion.

The government immediately rushed to try to open up negotiations with the Trump administration. In a letter to Trump last weekend, Vietnam’s top leader To Lam asked for a delay of at least 45 days in imposing the “reciprocal” tariffs, due to come into force tomorrow, to allow for talks.

Lam called on Trump to appoint a US representative to lead negotiations with Ho Duc Phoc, the Vietnamese deputy prime minister, “with the goal of reaching an agreement as soon as possible,” so as to avoid devastation to the Vietnamese economy and increased prices for American consumers. Lam also suggested that he and Trump meet in May.

Lam was one of the first international leaders to phone and speak directly to Trump. According to the Vietnamese government, he offered to reduce tariffs on all US imports to zero and urged Trump to do the same for Vietnamese imports into the US. Trump later described the call as “very productive,” but did not indicate whether any negotiations would take place.

The Vietnam Chamber of Commerce and Industry and the American Chamber of Commerce in Hanoi also expressed deep concern to US Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick in a letter dated Saturday, saying the tariff was “shockingly high.”

“Lower tariffs for products coming into Vietnam, and for products reaching the American consumer is what will help U.S. companies, the economy, and consumers. Higher tariffs will not,” the letter declared.

Major US corporations including Intel, Nike, First Solar, Boeing and Apple have invested heavily in Vietnam to manufacture their goods and components as part of their global operations, including exports to US markets. The imposition of a 46 percent tariff on all exports to the US would inevitably affect their plans and lead to plant closures and job losses.

Various estimates have been made of the impact of the Trump tariff on the Vietnamese economy ranging from as little as a 1 percent loss in GDP growth to as high as 5.5 percent. Around 30 percent of Vietnam’s exports go to US markets. The latest government economic data released on Sunday recorded year-on-year growth of 6.93 percent, already significantly below the government’s target of at least 8 percent for 2025.

Vietnam has already been hit by previously announced Trump tariffs on steel and aluminium of 25 percent. Last year Vietnam was the US’s fifth largest source of steel, up from ninth place the previous year. Steel mill products for the US market from Vietnam jumped in 2024 by a huge 143.3 percent from 2023, reaching 1.2 million tonnes.

The Vietnamese government is clearly desperate for negotiations and a reprieve from the Trump administration’s crippling tariffs, but all indications are that the White House will proceed with the economic shock treatment without exception.

While Trump commented favourably, although vaguely, about his phone call with Lam, during his “Liberation Day” announcement of tariffs last Wednesday he declared Vietnam a “worst offender” in trade imbalances. “Vietnam, great negotiators, great people. They like me, I like them. The problem is they charge us 90 percent, we’re going to charge them a 46 percent tariff,” he said.

His senior trade counsellor Peter Navarro flatly dismissed Vietnam’s offer of reducing all tariffs on US goods to zero, saying it was not enough. “It’s the non-tariff cheating that matters,” he said, citing intellectual property theft and a value added tax. Navarro, a notorious anti-China hawk, lashed out at Vietnam in particular for allegedly being a conduit for Chinese products as a means of avoiding US tariffs.

Speaking to Fox News, Navarro declared: “Vietnam is essentially a colony of communist China. China uses Vietnam to trans-ship to evade the tariffs. How does that work? Vietnam sells us $15 for every $1 we sell them. And about $5 of that is just Chinese product that comes into Vietnam, they slap a made-in-Vietnam label on it, and send it here to evade the tariffs.”

As Navarro well knows, Vietnam, far from being a Chinese colony, has had bitter disputes with Beijing over territorial boundaries in the South China Sea, which successive American administrations have sought to exploit.

While Vietnam is particularly exposed to Trump’s economic war against the world, every other country in South East Asia is in the same boat. To a lesser or greater extent, they all rely on exports into the US market and will also be indirectly affected by any slowdown in China as a result of the Trump tariffs. For most, China is their major trading partner. As a result, all face great economic uncertainty and the prospect of social and political upheaval.

Trump threatens to hike anti-China tariffs again amid growing financial turmoil

Nick Beams

In the midst of growing turmoil in global financial markets, which has seen trillions of dollars wiped off share values around the world as a result of the US economic war, President Trump has threatened a further 50 percent hike in tariffs on goods coming from China.

President Donald Trump is seen on the television as traders work on the floor at the New York Stock Exchange in New York, Monday, April 7, 2025. [AP Photo/Seth Wenig]

The threat is in response to the retaliation by Beijing to the so-called 34 percent “reciprocal tariff” imposed on China last week.

In a social media post, Trump wrote that if China did not remove its 34 percent response by today, “the United States will impose ADDITIONAL tariffs on China of 50 percent effective April 9th.”

If the additional tariff is imposed, it would bring the cumulative tariffs imposed on China to more than 120 percent.

There are no signs that Beijing is backing down, and it does not appear to be seeking negotiations or talks. Rather, it seems that Beijing is of the view that the fall in Wall Street—the market is on the verge of entering bear market territory (a fall of 20 percent from the previous high)—will mean the US will buckle.

Responding to the latest US threat, a spokesperson for the Chinese embassy said: “This is a typical move of unilateralism, protectionism, and economic bullying. We have stressed more than once that pressuring or threatening China is not a right way to engage with us. China will firmly safeguard its legitimate rights and interests.”

In other statements yesterday, Trump insisted that, contrary to some media reports, he was “not looking” for a pause in the imposition of the tariffs to allow for negotiations with the “many countries” seeking talks.

“We’re going to get fair deals and good deals with every country, and if we don’t, we’re going to have nothing to do with them; they’re not going to be allowed to participate in the United States,” he said.

Speaking at a press conference after a meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, he indicated that while there could be negotiations, “there are things that we need beyond tariffs.”

This comment points to one of the wider objectives of the tariff war, which is to align countries with the foreign policy of US imperialism, above all its drive against China.

This was indicated in the Fact Sheet on the tariff announcement of April 2, which said there could be an adjustment to decrease tariffs “if trading partners take significant steps to remedy non-reciprocal trade arrangements and align with the United States on economic and national security matters.”

The biggest “national security” issue as far as the US is concerned is the economic rise of China, which it considers the greatest threat to its global dominance and which it is determined to crush by all means it considers necessary, including war.

The objectives of the administration were set out by Trump’s senior counselor for trade and manufacturing, Peter Navarro, in a comment piece published in the Financial Times (FT).

Navarro, the leading anti-China hawk in the Trump entourage, said the international trading system was broken. It was “rigged against America,” resulting in a “national emergency threatening our economic prosperity and national security.”

He insisted the issues went far beyond tariffs as such and included the “barrage of non-tariff weapons,” including subsidies, product standards, licensing regimes, customs procedures, to name but a few, which were used to “strangle American exports.”

Among the hardest-hit countries are in Southeast Asia—Cambodia faces a 49 percent tariff, and Vietnam 46 percent—which have become manufacturing platforms for companies, including many US firms, that shifted some of their operations out of China to try to avoid the tariffs imposed under the first Trump administration.

Navarro’s comment made clear why the offer by Vietnam to cut its tariff to zero cut no ice, because the tariff hikes on this region have been directed against China.

“We want to hear from countries including Cambodia, Mexico, and Vietnam that you will stop allowing China to evade US tariffs by trans-shipping exports through your countries,” he wrote.

In the market turmoil yesterday, Asian stock markets were the hardest hit. The biggest fall was recorded by Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index, which dropped by more than 13 percent, its worst single day this century, outstripping the falls recorded in 2008 and the pandemic selloff in March 2020.

At the end of the global trading day, Wall Street steadied after the two-day selloff last week, the fourth-largest in the post-war period.

The day began with a further steep decline. The market then rose on incorrect reports that Trump was considering a pause in the tariff hikes and then came back down again, with the S&P 500 finishing with a loss of only 0.2 percent.

But the market turmoil is far from over. It could be about to enter a new phase.

The big hedge fund investors are financed by the banks to make their deals and have to stump up money to continue to receive credit. As the price of their assets falls, the banks issue a margin call for increased funds. Such calls are now increasing as the value of financial assets plummets, and investors are being put in a position where they may need to sell some of their assets to meet the call, which can then result in a broader selloff and even a panic.

The trading day was marked, above all, by statements from leading financial oligarchs about the depth of the crisis now confronting the US economy and its financial system as a result of the global mayhem caused by Trump’s tariff war.

Many of them backed Trump in the election on the basis of his promises to further cut taxes and regulations, opening the way for their accumulation of wealth to even greater heights. They took account of his tariff threats but considered they would be essentially ‘transactional,’ aimed at securing concessions from trading partners.

But they have now discovered they got rather more than they bargained for. No one envisaged that the Trump agenda would involve the destruction of the entire international trading system.

The warnings of the consequences of the Trump regime’s actions for both the US and global economy have come thick and fast.

Multi-billionaire hedge fund chief Bill Ackman said the US was “heading for a self-induced nuclear winter” and called for a 90-day pause to resolve issues by negotiation.

“If, on the other hand… we launch economic nuclear war on every country in the world, business investments will grind to a halt, customers will close their wallets and pocketbooks, and we will severely damage our reputation with the rest of the world that will take years and potentially decades to rehabilitate.”

While piling on support for Trump in the election campaign as he made clear tariffs were a central part of his agenda, Ackman said: “This is not what we voted for.”

Addressing a gathering of business executives and investors at the Economic Club of New York, Larry Fink, the head of the world’s biggest asset management company, BlackRock, said the US economy was “weakening as we speak.” The FT reported that there were “audible gasps” from members of the audience as he spoke.

“When you see a 2 percent market decline in three days obviously it has significant impacts, and the ripple effect of the potential of tariffs is going to be long-standing. The market is impacting Main Street.”

Ken Lagone, a long-time Republican donor, co-founder of the retail giant Home Depot, lambasted the Trump tariffs in an interview with the FT, saying they were too high and had been carried out too quickly.

The 46 percent tariff on Vietnam was “bullshit,” and the 34 percent tariff hike against China was “too aggressive, too soon.”

In his widely-read annual letter to shareholders, JP Morgan chief executive Jamie Dimon warned that the tariffs “will probably increase inflation and are causing many to consider a greater probability of a recession.”

He said the quicker the issue was resolved, the better because “negative effects increase cumulatively over time and would be hard to reverse.”

Michael Strain of the right-wing, free-market supporting American Enterprise Institute issued a comment warning that the damage caused by tariffs, wiping off trillions of dollars in share values, would not be limited to financial markets.

“Around half of all imports into the US homeland are used by American manufacturers as inputs to produce goods. By increasing the costs of production, Trump’s tariffs will reduce the competitiveness of US manufacturers. This will destroy manufacturing jobs, not promote them. Higher consumer prices from tariffs and trillions of dollars of wealth destruction will reduce consumer spending, threatening recession and rising unemployment. Uncertainty will freeze business investment, likely leading to layoffs. US manufacturing exporters will be hit hard by any foreign nations that choose to retaliate,” he said.

But despite these and many other such warnings, and the fall in the stock market, Trump has insisted there will be no let-up. Speaking to reporters on Sunday, he said: “I don’t want anything to go down. But sometimes you have to take medicine to fix something.”

But the problem that confronts Trump and every other representative of the capitalist ruling class, whatever their differences with Trump, is that there is no ‘fixing’ of the global capitalist economy on the basis of their policies.

It is wracked by the objective contradiction, irresolvable within the framework of the private profit system, between globalized production and the division of the world into rival nation-states and great powers that has now erupted in the form of a global economic and trade war.

Child poverty soars as UK Labour government slashes welfare to fund armed forces

Tania Kent

UK Chancellor Rachel Reeves’ plan to slash £15 billion in public spending in the Labour government’s Spring Statement has already thrown tens of thousands of children deeper into poverty.

The cuts were made to fund upping military spending by billions to reach a targeted 2.5 percent of GDP by 2027. Reeves announced an extra £2 billion for the Ministry of Defence towards this target.

Sir Keir Starmer’s right-wing government—with just nine months in office—is now the only Labour government in history that has increased child poverty under its rule.

Official figures for 2024 showed a record 4.5 million children are living in poverty. The government policies will throw a further 250,000 people into poverty at a stroke, including tens of thousands of children. Child Poverty Action Group estimates that 30,000 more children will have fallen into poverty by April 6 due to Labour’s policies. It expects the overall number to rise to 4.8 million by the end of this parliament.

Sir Keir Starmer, leader of the Labour Party, and Bridget Phillipson, Shadow Education Secretary, speak to parents during a visit to Nursery Hill Primary School, in Nuneaton, Warwickshire, June 2024. [Photo by Keir Starmer / Flickr / CC BY-NC-ND 2.0]

The most vulnerable and defenceless in society were targeted by the Spring Statement, with Reeves imposing brutal cuts of £4.8 billion on the disabled. The universal credit health component, claimed by many disabled people, will be cut by 50 percent and frozen for new claimants until 2030. Reeves announced that welfare spending as a share of GDP “will fall between 2026-27 and the end of the forecast period [2030].”

Annual poverty figures published by the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) showed that cuts to disability and incapacity benefits will push 50,000 children and 200,000 disabled adults into relative hardship by the end of the decade. But even these dire statistics have been assessed independently as being a gross underestimation of the real impact the cuts will have.

According to the New Economic Foundation (NEF), the “cuts will hit Disabled people by almost £2 billion more than the reported figures and could see around 100,000 additional people pushed into poverty.”

It noted, “The headline figures downplayed the scale and impact of these cuts by factoring in the decision not to proceed with a policy announced by the previous government and penciled in, but never fully confirmed, by this government. This policy would have changed the Work Capability Assessment (WCA) to make it harder for people to qualify for a higher rate of universal credit (UC) on the basis of illness or disability.”

Labour announced in their Green Paper published along with Reeves’ statement that the WCA would be scrapped altogether in 2028, and that they would not implement the previous government’s planned changes ahead of that. The Tory government was never likely to be able to implement its WCA plans anyway because they had already been struck down by a High Court ruling.

Labour then attempted to claim that they would effectively be “spending” £1.6 billion—the projected savings had the policy gone ahead—and had therefore lifted 150,000 people out of poverty.

As the Resolution Foundation think-tank pointed out: “Using this phantom policy to offset the scale and impact of actual cuts happening in the real world is akin to suggesting that you should feel better off because your boss had thought about cutting your wages but then decided against it.”

Labour’s attacks on the Personal Independence Payment (PIP) system and on the health top-up in UC will see the ill and disabled people lose out on £7.5 billion by 2029-30, according to Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR)

This will lead to a dramatic rise in the figures, released last week, showing an extra 100,000 children were living below the breadline in the year to April 2024—the final full year of child poverty statistics for the last Conservative government. It is the third year running that child poverty has increased.

Food poverty and hunger also rose, with 300,000 more children in households reliant on food banks over the previous 12 months, and an increase in children in food insecure families—meaning they struggled to afford regular and healthy meals.

More than a quarter of UK children (28 percent) experienced material deprivation, a measure designed to assess whether households are able to afford basics that constitute a minimum acceptable standard of living—such as food, clothes, toys and school trips.

Faced with overwhelming opposition to the sadistic policy, Labour has nonetheless refused to abolish the two-child benefit cap introduced by the Tories in 2017. The cap restricts child universal credit and tax credits allowances to the first two children in a family, unless the children were born before April 2017.

Maintaining the cap will throw more children into poverty. Hitting poorer families disproportionally, in April 2023, the cap affected 422,000 (55 percent) of the 772,000 families with three or more children claiming Universal Credit or Child Tax Credit.

Labour’s general election manifesto promised an “ambitious strategy to reduce child poverty”, alongside a commitment to end “mass dependence” on food banks and charity food handouts, which it called “a moral scar on our society”. In office it has imposed a savage and rapid offensive against the social rights and gains of the working class.

This is just the tip of the iceberg. Just over 370,000 people who currently claim PIP will lose eligibility due to the cuts and another 430,000 who would have been eligible for the benefit in the future will not get it. On average they will lose £4,500 a year.

However, the Resolution Foundation estimates that a single adult, who is now eligible for PIP and incapacity benefits but who no longer qualifies for the payment when they are reassessed could be £9,600 a year worse off. This is because when the work capability assessment is scrapped in 2028, eligibility for the incapacity element will be aligned with PIP eligibility.

Disabled families already experience high levels of poverty, with the annual “households below average income” report showing that almost half (44 percent) of all children living in poverty were living in a household where someone has a disability.

Separate data published by the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) from its family resources survey found just under a third of households (31 percent) where someone claims PIP disability benefit were food insecure.

The number of children in households that are at risk of or unable to afford enough food is at its highest level since food insecurity measures were introduced in 2020. More broadly, 4.7 million people living in disabled households are experiencing food insecurity. This includes 1.6 million children.

Dr. Philip Goodwin, chief executive officer of the UK Committee for UNICEF, points out that the UK has seen “the highest increase in child poverty of any OECD and EU country in the past decade and today’s [March 27] shocking figures show the situation is getting worse”.

Many of the children living below the poverty line are under five, he noted. “The consequences of poverty can last a lifetime and are especially harmful for babies and young children. Growing up in poverty damages children’s life chances—making them less likely to be school ready at age 5 and increasing their risk of developing health issues like asthma and obesity,” said Goodwin.

The Labour government is targeting even larger budgets for assault in its June Spending Review, including education budgets.

Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson is considering cutting school spending by £500 million and even ending universal free meals for infants, as part of negotiations with the Treasury.

According to the Times, Phillipson also offered to axe funding for free period products in schools as well as dance, music and PE schemes. They were part of a package of measures being put forward by Phillipson as Whitehall departments are instructed to identify cuts of up to 11 percent.

Labour’s lies exposed: Think tank declares the “UK is neither a high wage nor high welfare country”

Robert Stevens

Central to the propaganda of the Starmer Labour government to justify its savage cuts, echoed by a putrid media, is that welfare spending in Britain has surged out of control.

Research by the National Institute for Economic and Social Research (NIESR), based on an assessment of nations within the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), shatters these myths. The OECD is made up of 38 member countries, including the main capitalist states, with a collective population of 1.38 billion.

UK Living Standards Review 2025 report authored by the National Institute for Economic and Social Research [Photo: National Institute for Economic and Social Research]

The NIESR, established in 1938, is Britain's oldest economic research institute. Its “UK Living Standards Review 2025” published last month found that “The UK has some of the least generous welfare across the OECD: the UK ranks in the middle of OECD countries for welfare spending (as a percent of GDP) and third lowest for welfare value (percent of average wages).”

The report notes, “Welfare has only covered the cost of essentials in two out of the last 14 years: only during the pandemic did welfare cover the costs of essentials due to the £20 per week uplift to Universal Credit.”

The NIESR determines that the “UK is neither a high wage nor high welfare country: the consequence of weak wage growth and cuts in welfare spending have meant that by comparison to other countries the two main sources of living standards in the UK is limited.”

One startling conclusion of the NIESR is that “The poorest households in Slovenia and Malta are now better off than the poorest in the UK: whereas real incomes grew consistently before the 2008 financial crisis, the stagnation afterwards has meant that other countries have overtaken the UK standard of living.”

Examining massive cuts in welfare spending imposed by Conservative Party-led governments from 2010, the study notes, “these focused on reducing the welfare bill and getting claimants into work.” It finds, “The impact of this comparatively large fall in welfare spending as a proportion of GDP on people’s standard of living resulted from a decrease in the generosity of a range of welfare programs. This is most apparent when looking at replacement rates, which measure how much in welfare payments a worker, previously on an average wage, would get if they lost their job as a percentage of their previous wage. Here, the UK ranks one of the lowest amongst OECD countries.”

The UK stood third bottom of the OECD list on this criteria with only Australia (second bottom) and the United States (bottom) below it.

During the initial phase of the pandemic, millions more people were unable to work due to lockdown, resulting in a large increases in the percentage of the working-age population receiving Universal Credit (UC). Between February 2020 and February 2021 the number receiving UC almost doubled, increasing by 3 million to 5.9 million people.

For a single person under 25, the UC allowance in 2019/20 was £251.77 per month. With the £20 a week uplift provided at the time it rose to £342.72 a month. A single person over 25 saw their UC payment rise to £409.89 a month. For a couple with either person aged over 25, UC rose to £594.04 after the uplift.

The NIESR explains that the £20 uplift (£1,040 a year) “resulted in one of the largest increases in the value of welfare, nearly doubling its value in real terms.

This was still a pittance, and a big shock to those thrust into worklessness, but was made necessary to avoid a social explosion.

The withdrawal of the uplift in 2021, notes the NIESR “came at the same time CPIH [Consumer Prices Index including owner occupiers’ housing costs] had already risen above the Bank of England’s 2 per cent target and ended up reaching a peak of nearly 10 per cent in 2022. The resulting effect of the withdrawal of the Covid uplift and rising inflation was that the real value of welfare fell below its pre-Universal Credit level.”

The report details the terrible impact of one of many cuts in welfare payments on millions of working-class people. It notes, “Less than 5 per cent of private rental accommodation across the UK is affordable on housing benefit (down from 20 percent in 2020): freezing the cash value of housing benefit while private rental costs grew at record rates has led to a substantial fall in the areas of the county affordable on housing benefit.”

Some of the stark conclusions of the UK Living Standards Review 2025 report [Photo: Screenshot from NIESR report: UK Living Standards Review 2025]

The situation worsens rapidly. Just days after the NEISR research, a study by homelessness charity Crisis and the campaign group Health Equals found fewer than three in every 100 private rental properties listed in England (2.7 percent) were affordable for people on housing benefit between April and October 2024.

The NIESR presents a picture of generalised wage stagnation among the working-class population. It notes regarding this decline that the “United Kingdom had been experiencing strong and sustained wage growth for decades, averaging 2.4 percent per year (ONS, 2025) between 2000 and 2008. From 2008 onwards, wages have grown by 0.2 percent per year on average. The effect is that a household would be around £10,000 better off had UK wage growth continued in line with its pre-2008 trend.”

The report makes a comparison between Britain and other OECD countries to emphasise the drop in wage levels. “In particular, Norway and Canada started the millennium with broadly similar levels of wages to the UK and grew at a similar rate up until the 2008 financial crisis, after which growth broadly stops in the United Kingdom but continues in these two countries. By 2023, a gap had opened up in the value of wages between the United Kingdom and Norway and Canada.

“New Zealand and Slovenia both started well below the level of UK real wages in 2000, but due to the stagnation in the United Kingdom and strong and persistent wage growth in these two countries, New Zealand overtook UK wages in 2020, with Slovenia set to overtake the United Kingdom within the next few years.”

The report also points to the staggering inequality that exists in Britain, especially apparent in the capital city.

“Inner-London West represents the richest ITL2 region in Europe (which in the UK refer to counties and groups of counties), nearly double the income level of Europe’s second richest region in Germany which includes Munich. While part of the scale of this difference reflects the small geographic area that is Inner London West (therefore encompassing a large proportion of wealthy households) compared with the wider region of Munich and surrounding areas, it also underscores high UK regional inequality.

“Whereas this high-income area covers the majority of German regions, we do not see the same uniformity in the standard of living across the United Kingdom, as it does not extend far beyond London.”

A devastating finding attesting to the level of poverty at the bottom of British society reads: “If we were to rank all 269 European ITL2 regions in terms of income, the poorest German region would rank 82nd (well above the EU average) but the poorest UK region would rank 193rd (well below the EU average). While the wealthiest areas of the United Kingdom are comparable to those in other affluent countries like France and Germany, the poorest UK regions fall below the European average, whereas the poorest regions in those countries are above it. Notably, places like Birmingham [the second largest city in Britain, population 1.1 million] and parts of the North East are poorer than the least affluent areas of Slovenia.”

The NIESR concludes: “This report has shown the stark reality of life in the United Kingdom in 2025. While some enjoy a standard of living comparable to the most prosperous regions of Europe, the poorest are struggling to afford the most basic necessities, like food and heating. The United Kingdom is not a high-wage nor a high-welfare country, leaving millions trapped between low wages and inadequate support.”

The £5 billion in cuts to disability benefits rolled out in Chancellor Rachel Reeves’ Spring Statement and the government’s earlier cuts to pensioners incomes are only a down-payment to fund a vast increase in military spending. The social crisis will get much worse and engulf further millions of people as the Labour government deepens its assault on the welfare state and backs the corporations and local councils in their attack on workers’ jobs, wages and conditions.

South Korean court confirms president Yoon’s impeachment

Ben McGrath

South Korea’s Constitutional Court upheld the impeachment of former President Yoon Suk-yeol on Friday in a unanimous 8-0 decision. The ruling took effect immediately, removing Yoon from office and triggering a special presidential election likely to take place on June 3.

Yoon Suk-yeol speaking during a news conference at the National Assembly in Seoul, March 10, 2022. [AP Photo/Kim Hong-ji]

Acting chief justice Mun Hyeong-bae read the verdict at 11 am, declaring, “The negative effects on the constitutional order and the repercussions from the defendant’s violations of the law are grave, making the benefits of protecting the constitution by dismissing the defendant larger than the national losses from dismissing the president by an overwhelming degree.”

Yoon was impeached on December 14, less than two weeks after he attempted to impose martial law on December 3 in an attempted military-backed coup. The court rejected Yoon’s claims that a national emergency existed that required such a measure. The court also declared that Yoon violated the law by sending troops into the National Assembly, in an attempt to arrest leading lawmakers and block the vote that took place to lift Yoon’s martial law declaration.

Yoon, who did not attend Friday’s court session, and his legal team had falsely claimed that the main opposition Democratic Party’s (DP) control of the National Assembly had “paralyzed the constitutional order” and that the DP was working in league with “pro-North Korean leftist forces.”

After the ruling, Yoon issued a statement, saying that he “apologizes and deeply regrets not living up to expectations.” His party, the ruling People Power Party (PPP), also stated that it “humbly accepts” the court’s decision. As Yoon was president, the PPP enjoys ruling-party status, despite having fewer numbers in parliament. The Democrats claimed the impeachment verdict was a “people’s victory.”

Yoon departs office as a massively unpopular figure, with opinion polls showing that two-thirds of the population supports his removal from office. In addition to the impeachment trial, he also faces criminal charges for insurrection after he was arrested and detained in January. He was released on a technicality on March 8.

The government mobilized a huge number of police, including riot units and SWAT teams, in preparation for the court’s verdict. A total of 20,000 officers were on hand nationwide with 14,000 placed in Seoul near key government offices, including around the Constitutional Court building, near Yoon’s presidential residence in Yongsan, and in Gwanghwamun, where protests typically take place.

Anti-Yoon protesters gathered outside the Constitutional Court Thursday and Friday, where organizers estimated 150,000 people took part. Pro-Yoon demonstrators, who have included far-right and fascistic elements, were much fewer in number, reaching at most about 30,000.

In the face of this massive mobilization of police, it is important to note that mass protests broke out in 2016 and 2017 to denounce the corruption of then-president Park Geun-hye, who was subsequently impeached and removed from office. At the conclusion of her trial, the military developed plans to impose martial law if the mass protests against the government did not subside. Similar plans could be in the works now.

Publicly, the ruling class will now turn its attention to the upcoming presidential election, which will likely be a contest between the Democrats’ leader Lee Jae-myung, the established frontrunner, and a candidate selected by the PPP. Lee narrowly lost the 2022 presidential election to Yoon.

Yoon’s removal from office is not a sign that democracy is alive and well in South Korea or that the political crisis in the country has been resolved. Rather, the Constitutional Court’s unanimous verdict, without even a token dissenting voice in support of Yoon, was a calculated political decision following weeks of delay after the final hearing on February 25.

It was aimed at defusing the growth of broad social anger that found expression in anti-Yoon protests. At their height, as many as two million people gathered at the National Assembly on December 14 to demand the president’s ouster.

The South Korean ruling class feared that Yoon’s return to office would provoke a renewal of mass demonstrations that would grow far beyond the control of the political establishment, in particular that of the Democrats and their allies in the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions (KCTU).

In part popular anger towards Yoon was fueled by memories of South Korea’s past brutal dictatorships. There is also growing anger in the working class, including a developing strike movement, amid persistent declining real wages and stalled economic growth. This year, the Bank of Korea expects the GDP to grow by only 1.5 percent. It grew just 2 percent in 2024 and 1.4 percent in 2023.

The election of Trump as US president further complicated matters for the South Korean bourgeoisie, which is concerned that Trump’s trade war measures will worsen conditions for the export-oriented economy and deepen social discontent. Just this week, Washington imposed 25 percent tariffs on all exports from South Korea.

Fearing a social explosion, the Democrats did everything in their power to demobilize the mass protests that broke out in December and to block strikes by workers with the aid of the KCTU. Their primary concern was to prevent the development of any significant social movement that put forward demands that went beyond the removal of Yoon and targeted the capitalist system itself.

Instead, the Democrats worked to present Yoon’s removal from office as a done deal following his initial impeachment. They could not have foreseen the outcome of the impeachment trial, setting up a situation in which Yoon could have returned to office and potentially declared martial law again.

In doing so, the Democrats provided Yoon, the PPP, and their fascistic supporters with breathing room, and facilitated the development of the far-right pro-Yoon protests. While dwarfed by the anti-Yoon movement and lacking any broad support, these fascistic elements were given the space to stage rallies and threaten their political opponents with violence.

The threat of dictatorship has not passed. At present, South Korean ruling class may not yet be ready to dispense with bourgeois democracy, believing it to be preferable to martial law for imposing its agenda of austerity measures and forcing the working class to foot the bill for the crisis of capitalism.

However, as the economic and political crisis worsens, it is to these fascistic elements that the political establishment will turn if it decides imposing martial law or another form of dictatorship is necessary. This is already taking place around the world as the ruling classes in other countries shift further and further to the right, exemplified most clearly by the fascist Trump regime in the US.