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The New York Times on Wednesday interviewed several experts on international trade who were utterly baffled by President Donald Trump's obsession with bilateral trade deficits, which Trump has long cited as evidence that other nations are "taking advantage" of the United States.In reality, a trade deficit simply means that the United States imports more net goods from foreign countries than foreign countries import from the United States, and experts say that there are many reasons such trade deficits exist that have nothing to do with other nations "cheating" in international trade.“It’s totally silly,” Dani Rodrik, an economist at Harvard University, tells the Times of Trump's trade deficit obsession. "There’s no other way to say it, it makes no sense."ALSO READ: Conservative columnist hits GOP for 'wild Republican verbal gymnastics' over tax cutsThe Times goes on to explain that calculating trade surpluses and deficits is also not an exact science, as the Netherlands technically has a trade surplus with the United States but only because its ports are the locations where American goods arrive before they are shipped throughout Europe."The Netherlands unloads U.S. goods in its ports and sends them throughout Europe to other consumers, while Singapore does something similar for Asia," the Times writes. "But a trade deficit is calculated based on the country the good reaches first, not its ultimate destination."The question of how trade deficits are calculated is particularly relevant given how much the Trump administration relied on trade deficit numbers to calculate the number of tariffs it is slapping on foreign goods.Mary Lovely, a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, mocked the Trump administration's tariff formula and argued that it "gives a gloss of science to what is essentially a made-up approach."

Amazon, Google and Microsoft are building datacentres in water-scarce parts of five continentsAmazon, Microsoft and Google are operating datacentres that use vast amounts of water in some of the world’s driest areas and are building many more, the non-profit investigatory organisation SourceMaterial and the Guardian have found.With Donald Trump pledging to support them, the three technology giants are planning hundreds of datacentres in the US and across the globe, with a potentially huge impact on populations already living with water scarcity. Continue reading...

President Donald Trump's net worth has taken a hit — by the hundreds of millions — following his tariff announcement last week, Forbes reported Tuesday. Forbes senior editor Dan Alexander estimated the loss at about $500 million, down to $4.2 billion from $4.7 billion on April 2. "Trump’s biggest loss comes from his most valuable asset, the Trump Media and Technology Group, which declined 8% over the last three trading days, hitting its lowest price since October," Alexander wrote. "His stake, worth $2.2 billion Wednesday, now sits at $2 billion." Also losing value are Trump’s commercial real estate holdings, residential real estate, and golf courses. "The real threat to Trump’s portfolio, however, is the possibility of belt tightening," Alexander wrote. "Club members might cut back on weddings, lavish dining or even memberships." ALSO READ: 'Not much I can do': GOP senator gives up fight against Trump's tariffs Alexander quoted an industry insider saying, “If you hit a recession, your wife looks over at you and says ‘What the [heck] are we doing with this expensive club membership?’" Alexander wrote that Trump has lost more from privately held assets than from his publicly traded stock. "The greatest threat to Trump is not direct tariffs on products he imports, given that his businesses don’t sell much in the way of hard goods," according to Forbes. "It’s the loss of investor confidence around the world. People rely on whims, not logic, when deciding whether to buy or ditch luxury real estate, pricy club memberships and high-flying meme stocks." Forbes estimated that Elon Musk has seen his net worth decline "below $300 billion for the first time since November 2024," following the Trump tariff announcement. Over the weekend, Musk broke from White House policy, posting a video on X in which he lamented high tariffs and called for "a zero tariff situation." Musk and Trump trade adviser Peter Navarro, an architect of Trump's trade plan, publicly traded more insults on Tuesday, even before the Dow Jones Industrial Average closed down 300 points. Read the Forbes article here.

Even though one of the goals of President Donald Trump 's trade war is to revive U.S. manufacturing, his administration is slashing a key program meant to help modernize plants across the country — including in Vice President JD Vance's hometown of Middletown, Ohio.New reporting from CNN says the Trump administration has frozen $6.3 billion in Biden-era grant programs that would have allowed large industrial companies to upgrade their equipment. In the meantime, Elon Musk's DOGE will decide what it will allocate, if anything, to companies like "steel giant" Cleveland-Cliffs.According to CNN, the company was slated to receive a $500 million grant to upgrade its blast furnaces."The new furnaces — which run on climate-friendly hydrogen, natural gas and electricity instead of coal — would have extended the life of the plant and given the steel company a foot in the future," the article stated.ALSO READ: 'The Hard Reset': Here's how the U.S. is exporting terrorism around the worldIn addition, the grants, "which would have created over 100 permanent jobs and 1,200 construction jobs in Middletown alone, are slated for termination under the Trump administration," according to internal documents obtained by CNN.Middletown is the Ohio town where Vance grew up.Climate Reporter Ella Nilsen wrote, "Experts fear the cuts could have a chilling effect on America’s manufacturing industry, especially as the global economy reels from Trump’s tariff war. Trump’s tariffs, which were meant to be a boon to manufacturing, could be painful in the short term as they roil markets, stoke recession fears and seize supply chains."An anonymous source told CNN, "it 'makes zero sense' to cut a major federal grant to one of the largest employers in the vice president’s hometown."The source continued, “There’s no political logic to it whatsoever. Cliffs is the major vertically integrated steel manufacturer left in this country, and they’ve been quite supportive of Trump’s tariffs. This really reads like a bunch of 24-year-olds at DOGE are working through this.”In a statement, an Energy Department spokesperson told CNN that “no final decisions have been made” about funding cuts.Read the CNN article here.

Numerous passengers traveling on major cruise lines such as Carnival and Disney say in court documents that they were raped and assaulted — oftentimes by crew members.View Entire Post ›

The move comes amid Russia's crackdown on media and dissent.View Entire Post ›

In the six months since Mahsa Amini's death, Iranian security forces have reportedly used draconian tactics to try to suppress dissent.View Entire Post ›

The ICC warrants mark the first international charges to be brought since the invasion started in 2022.View Entire Post ›