There is nothing I can add to this blather put out by Speaker Johnson aka Spkr. Milquetoast. I have reduced my news intake as it at once depressing, anger inciting and informative. I miss the days when one could look at any channel, any daily newsprint and get a reasonable idea of what is happening in the nation and the wider world. Now the advent podcasts, online apps and one-sided news on the tube have brought me to scour the news feed from the few sources I allow into my life just to get a “fair” idea of what the facts are. The pitch by Johnson below gives me the “ick”.
House Speaker Mike Johnson delivered a contentious pitch to voters Tuesday at President Donald Trump’s Florida resort, calling it “foolish” to vote against Republican candidates in November. This comes as an NBC News poll shows Democrats well-positioned to retake the House, with some Republicans fearing Senate losses too. Even Sen. Rand Paul predicted “disastrous” midterm results for the GOP. Johnson framed the election as a contest “between normal and crazy,” claiming the Republican majority has “defied expectation and historical trends,” while governing. Speaking at the Trump National Doral Miami, where membership costs $50,000 initiation plus $1,000 monthly dues, Johnson attacked Democrats as “Marxists, open socialists, the far-left insurgent politicians,” pushing the party “over the edge,” and leaving America behind. He vowed Republicans would defy historical odds again.
If indeed the Presidents party prevails in the midterms we can be assured of a modern day civil war which will allow the current clown to continue running the circus. I can only state again: cut through the fog of bull shit and vote for folks who are as honest as we can get in the political sphere. Keep in mind if it sounds like BS, it quite possibly is!
Robert De Niro Warns There’s ‘No Way’ Trump Ends 2nd Term in 2028 Without a Fight: ‘It’s Up to the People’ | Exclusive Video
The Academy Award winner unpacks the president’s approach to the upcoming midterms on “The Best People with Nicolle Wallace”
Tess Patton
Fri, February 20, 2026 at 10:28 AM CSTmin read
Robert De Niro on “The Best People with Nicolle Wallace” (Credit: MS NOW)
Robert De Niro warned MS NOW anchor Nicolle Wallace that President Donald Trump will not go willingly at the conclusion of his second term.
“He will never leave,” De Niro told Wallace in an exclusive “The Best People” clip obtained by TheWrap. “We have to make him leave. He jokes now about nationalizing the elections. He’s not joking. We’ve seen enough already.”
The Academy Award winner will appear on the anchor’s podcast Monday, but the exclusive video sees De Niro questioning Wallace’s claim that he will be gone in three years.
Trump has teased that he has not ruled out seeking a third term as president, despite the 22nd Amendment of the U.S. Constitution which prohibits this action. De Niro told Wallace that Americans should believe he means what he says.
“Let’s not kid ourselves,” he added. “He will not leave. It’s up to us to get rid of him.”
Watch the clip here:
Wallace clarified though what this assumption means for the midterms coming up later this year. She questioned whether or not the results will be respected.
The “Casino” actor responded that Trump will attempt to disrupt the midterm elections, so it is up to American citizens to ensure safe elections going forward.
This response comes as Trump claimed he wanted to federalize all elections earlier this month. The president told former FBI Deputy Director Dan Bongino on a podcast in Febuary that the Republicans should “take over voting” and “nationalize” it, which would in turn give the Trump Administration more control over the voting process.
“We have to make sure that like what he’s trying now, that all the polling places have people that can come there safely,” De Niro said. “That might mean citizens on the other side.”
“Peaceful organization,” Wallace clarified.
“It’s up to the people,” De Niro concluded.
The “Goodfellas” actor’s episode of “The Best People with Nicolle Wallace” will be available to stream on Monday.
Trump’s chief bigot, Stephen Miller, said on Fox News this month that immigrants to the United States bring problems that extend through generations.
“With a lot of these immigrant groups, not only is the first generation unsuccessful,” Miller claimed. “You see persistent issues in every subsequent generation. So you see consistent high rates of welfare use, consistent high rates of criminal activity, consistent failures to assimilate.”
In fact, the data show just the opposite. The children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren of most immigrants are models of upward mobility in America.
In a new paper, Princeton’s Leah Boustan, Stanford’s Ran Abramitzky, Elisa Jácome of Princeton, and Santiago Pérez of UC Davis used millions of father-son pairs spanning more than a century of U.S. history to show that immigrants today are no slower to move into the middle class than immigrants were a century ago.
In fact, no matter when their parents came to the U.S. or what country they came from, children of immigrants have higher rates of upward mobility than their U.S.-born peers.
Stephen Miller’s great-great-grandfather, Wolf-Leib Glosser, was born in a dirt-floor shack in the village of Antopol, a shtetl in what is now Belarus.
For much the same reasons my great-grandparents came to America — vicious pogroms that threatened his life — Wolf-Leib came to Ellis Island on January 7, 1903, with $8 in his pockets. Though fluent in Polish, Russian, and Yiddish, he understood no English.
The family settled in Johnstown, Pennsylvania, a booming coal and steel town, where they rose from peddling goods to owning a haberdashery and then owning a chain of supermarkets and discount department stores, run by Sam and Sam’s son, Izzy (Stephen Miller’s maternal grandfather).
Two generations later, in 1985, came little Stephen — who developed such a visceral hate for immigrants that he makes up lies about them that have no bearing on reality.
In a little more than 11 months, Stephen and his boss have made sweeping changes to limit legal immigration to America.
On his first day back in office, Trump signed an executive order declaring that children born to undocumented immigrants and to some temporary foreign residents would no longer be granted citizenship automatically.
The executive order, which was paused by the courts, could throw into doubt the citizenship of hundreds of thousands of babies born each year. Miller and his boss want the Supreme Court to uphold that executive order.
After the horrific shooting of two National Guard members on November 26 by a gunman identified by authorities as an Afghan national, Trump halted naturalizations for people from many African and Middle Eastern countries.
Trump is also threatening to strip U.S. citizenship from naturalized migrants “who undermine domestic tranquillity.” He plans to deport foreigners deemed to be “non-compatible with Western Civilization” and aims to detain even more migrants in jail or in warehouses — in the U.S. or in other countries — without due process.
In addition to the unconstitutionality of such actions, they stir up the worst nativist and racist impulses in America — blaming and scapegoating entire groups of people.
As they make their case to crack down on illegal and legal immigration, Miller and Trump have targeted Minnesota’s Somali community — seizing on an investigation into fraud that took place in pockets of the Somali diaspora in the state to denounce the entire community, which Trump has called “garbage.”
Let’s be clear. Apart from Native Americans, we are all immigrants — all descended from “foreigners.” Some of our ancestors came here eagerly; some came because they were no longer safe in their homelands; some came enslaved.
Almost all of us are mongrels — of mixed nationalities, mixed ethnicities, mixed races, mixed creeds. While we maintain our own traditions, we also embrace the ideals of this nation.
You can go to Japan to live, but you cannot become Japanese. You can go to France to live and not become a Frenchman. You can go to live in Germany or Turkey, and you won’t become a German or a Turk. But … anybody from any corner of the world can come to America to live and become an American. A person becomes an American by adopting America’s principles, especially those principles summarized in the “self-evident truths” of the Declaration of Independence, such as “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”
Reagan understood that America is a set of aspirations and ideals more than it is a nationality.
Miller and Trump want to fuel bigotry. Like dictators before him, Trump’s road to tyranny is paved with stones hurled at “them.” His entire project depends on hate.
America is better than Trump and his chief bigot.
We won’t buy their hate. To the contrary, we’ll call out bigots. We won’t tolerate intolerance. We’ll protect hardworking members of our community. We’ll alert them when ICE is lurking.
We will not succumb to the ravings of a venomous president who wants us to hate each other — or his bigoted sidekick.
Comments Off on Trampling out the vintage= fighting evil
The few words recognizable from the “battle Hymn of the Republic” tell us that we need to keep fighting against the evils of the current Politics and administration. If your elected officials (the ones you voted for) are standing up for you, the next step is vote them out whenever the next election cycles arrive. The voters need to get out of their own way and vote for people who will work for you. You should keep in mind that electing anyone new is a crap shoot, but we have to keep playing since it’s the only game in town, especially if you are unwilling to get informed on facts.
Abel Meeropol (February 10, 1903 – October 29, 1986)[1] was an American songwriter and poet whose works were published under his pseudonym Lewis Allan. He wrote the poem and musical setting of “Strange Fruit” (1937), which was recorded by Billie Holiday.
Early life
Meeropol was born in 1903 to Ukrainian-Jewish immigrants in the Bronx, New York.[2][3][4] He graduated from DeWitt Clinton High School in 1921 (his classmate Countee Cullen graduated in 1922) and earned a B.A. from City College of New York and an M.A. from Harvard University. Meeropol taught English at DeWitt Clinton for 17 years.[5] During his tenure as a high school teacher, Meeropol taught author and racial justice advocate James Baldwin.[6]
Song writing and poetry
The sheet music for ‘Vote I. for Ben’, written for Communist New York City Council candidate Benjamin J. Davis Jr., 1943
Meeropol wrote the anti-lynching poem “Strange Fruit” (1937), first published as “Bitter Fruit” in a teacher union publication. He later set it to music. The song was recorded and performed by Billie Holiday and Nina Simone.[7] Holiday notes in the book Lady Sings the Blues that she co-wrote the music to the song with Meeropol and Sonny White. The writers David Margolick and Hilton Als dismissed that claim in their work Strange Fruit: The Biography of a Song, writing that hers was “an account that may set a record for most misinformation per column inch”. When challenged, Holiday—whose autobiography had been ghostwritten by William Dufty—claimed, “I ain’t never read that book.”[8] Meeropol wrote numerous other poems and songs, including the Frank Sinatra and Josh White hit “The House I Live In”.[9] He also wrote the libretto of Robert Kurka’s opera The Good Soldier Schweik, which was premiered in 1958 by the New York City Opera.
According to his adopted son Robert Meeropol, the songs “Strange Fruit” and “The House I Live In”, along with the Peggy Lee hit “Apples, Peaches and Cherries”, provided most of the royalty income of the family. “Apples, Peaches and Cherries” was translated into French by Sacha Distel and became a number one hit in France under the title “Scoubidou”. Meeropol filed a copyright infringement lawsuit over Distel’s plagiarism as Distel initially had claimed the song as his. After the case was settled, Meeropol started receiving the royalties.[10]
Meeropol published his work under the pseudonym of “Lewis Allan” in memory of the names of his two stillborn children.
Comments Off on Trumplestilskin’s Consistent, inconsistencies.
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump on Thursday pardoned former NFL players Joe Klecko, Nate Newton, Jamal Lewis, Travis Henry and the late Billy Cannon on Thursday.
The pardons were announced by White House “pardon czar” Alice Marie Johnson.
“As football reminds us, excellence is built on grit, grace, and the courage to rise again. So is our nation,” Johnson wrote on social media as she thanked Trump for his “continued commitment to second chances.”
Johnson said Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones “personally” shared the news with Newton, who won three Super Bowls with the team.
The White House did not return a request for comment Thursday night on why Trump pardoned the players.
Klecko, a former star for the New York Jets, pleaded guilty to perjury in 1993 after lying to a federal grand jury that was investigating insurance fraud. A defensive lineman, Klecko was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 2023. He was a two-time Associated Press All-Pro and a four-time Pro Bowler.
Newton, an offensive lineman, pleaded guilty to a federal drug trafficking charge in 2002 after authorities discovered $10,000 in his pickup truck as well as 175 pounds of marijuana in an accompanying car driven by another man. Newton was a two-time All-Pro and a six-time Pro Bowler.
Lewis, formerly of the Baltimore Ravens and the Cleveland Browns, pleaded guilty in a drug case in which he used a cell phone to try to set up a drug deal not long after he was the fifth pick in the 2000 NFL draft. The running back was named an All-Pro once, a Pro Bowler once and the 2003 AP Offensive Player of the Year.
What about Colin Kaepernick who did nothing wrong!
Comments Off on After 4 Months, Elon Musk Learned What Every American Already Knows, Says Ross Gerber: ‘No One In Government Wants To Cut Any Budget’
Benzinga
This is a bit outdated but content is still relevant MA
Adrian Volenik
Mon, June 2, 2025 at 3:30 PM CDT3 min read
Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA) CEO and former Trump administration adviser Elon Musk is learning a hard truth about Washington, according to investor Ross Gerber. “After 4 months Elon learned what every natural born American already knows. No one in the government wants to ‘cut’ any budget,” Gerber wrote in a May 24 post on X.
Musk has spent the past four months heading up the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, a controversial cost-cutting initiative tied to mass layoffs and agency shutdowns. But even Musk now appears to be frustrated with Washington’s spending habits. On Thursday, he wrote on X that his “scheduled time” as a special government employee had come to an end.
Musk Criticizes Trump’s Big Spending Bill
In a recent CBS News interview, Musk slammed the Trump administration’s flagship tax and spending package—dubbed the “Big, Beautiful Bill”—saying it “increases the budget deficit, not just decreases.” He warned that the legislation “undermines the work that the DOGE team is doing” and criticized the government for ignoring the need for real cuts.
The bill, which passed the House and is now before the Senate, would boost spending on defense and border security, extend tax cuts, and slash clean energy and health care programs. Nonpartisan analysts estimate it could add trillions to the national debt.
“I think a bill can be big or it can be beautiful,” Musk told CBS. “But I don’t know if it can be both.”
From Political Ally To Cautious Critic
Musk has been a vocal supporter of President Donald Trump and poured over $250 million into his 2024 campaign. But in recent weeks, he’s pulled back from the political spotlight. During a Tesla earnings call, he said he’d reduce his time with DOGE starting in May to focus more on the company. “The large slug of work necessary to get the DOGE team in place… is mostly done,” Musk explained.
He added in a CNBC interview that he would now be at the White House just “a couple days every few weeks.”
Elon Musk Is Realizing He Made a Huge Mistake
Futurism
Meanwhile, Tesla is dealing with real-world consequences. European sales of Tesla vehicles fell 49% in April, even as overall electric vehicle sales rose 28%, according to data from the European Automobile Manufacturers’ Association. Analysts blame a mix of factors, including Musk’s political activity, factory shutdowns, and an aging vehicle lineup.
Diminishing Impact Of DOGE
Musk has touted DOGE as a trillion-dollar cost-saving initiative, though watchdogs and fact-checkers have questioned its savings claims. So far, the agency claims $175 billion in savings—a figure under dispute.
Musk posted last week that while DOGE “has and will do great work to postpone the day of bankruptcy of America,” he believes the government’s “profligacy” means that only radical gains in productivity can truly save the country. He said accelerating GDP growth is now essential, possibly hinting at his push for humanoid robots to boost economic output.
Economist Peter Schiff, chief economist and global strategist at Europac.com, dismissed the impact of DOGE, writing on X: “Unfortunately I think DOGE was too little, too late to really move the needle on a sovereign debt and dollar crisis. The process has already started.”
Opinion: The voters who believe in MAGA aka DJT, LOTUS,FFLOTUS, have a rude and expensive wakeup call coming. This will affect most Americans depending on their income, the richest will suffer the least.
This is a pass through from Substack, there is an offer to follow the attached article, this is totally your option. MA
Somebody Needs to Tell Trump Everybody Is Laughing at Him
His worst fear has already come true.
Mona Charen
Dec 30, 2025
President Donald Trump on Christmas Eve at his Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach, Florida. (Photo by Andrew Caballero-Reynolds / AFP via Getty Images)
IN THE COURSE OF HIS LOSING RACE with the teleprompter during his Oval Office address on December 17, President Trump returned to a theme that obsesses him—respect. Even before his entry into politics, Trump was convinced that “weak” leaders, including Reagan, Bush, Clinton, and Obama, were despised by other nations and that the United States was a laughingstock. As of 2016, according to a Washington Post tally, Trump had fumed at least one hundred times that other nations were “laughing at us.” Between 2020 and 2024, he probably exceeded that total, and in fact, even now that Biden is in the rearview mirror, Trump perseverates about how much Biden was scorned by the world.
After a litany of lies and an extra helping of gibberish (“We had men playing in women’s sports, transgender for everybody, crime at record levels with law enforcement and words such as that just absolutely forbidden”), Trump closed with the respect theme:
When the world looks at us next year, let them see a nation that is loyal to its citizens, faithful to its workers, confident to its identity, certain to its destiny, and the envy of the entire globe. We are respected again, like we have never been respected before.
His speechwriters might want to make a note that the word “of” should follow the words “confident” and “certain,” not “to.” And while we’re offering constructive criticism, the president might profit from a little thought experiment.
Suppose you are driving in a foreign country. It’s late at night and you get pulled over by a policeman. After examining your passport and driver’s license, he narrows his eyes, gives his palm a few smacks with his nightstick, and demands a $1,000 bribe to let your infraction go. You might pay the man, but do you come away from this encounter respecting him? Or do you drive off, shaken and angry, concluding that the cop and maybe the whole country is rotten?
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The president seems genuinely not to grasp the difference between respect and fear, and because he has surrounded himself with fawning toadies, there isn’t anyone available to explain it to him. Accordingly, here is my modest effort to do so:
Dear President Trump,
Of all the wrong ideas you hold in your heart—that tariffs are paid by foreigners, that good looks are the chief credential for cabinet offices, that the 2020 election was rigged, that allies are bloodsuckers we’d be better off without—perhaps the most gobsmacking is your cherished notion that people respect you when they kiss your ass.
Sorry, that’s not true. They despise you on two levels. On the first level, because you’ve managed to get elected president, you do have leverage that nearly everyone must grapple with in some fashion. (Think of Volodymyr Zelensky.) That power comes not from you personally but from the great strength of this country, economic, military, and diplomatic. So yes, when you use that leverage to extort lavish praise from people, they will offer it. But they don’t mean a word of it. Not a word. And in their hearts they hate you for demeaning them in this fashion instead of treating them with respect.
The second level of contempt arises from the knowledge—recognized by the whole world, Mr. Trump, except you—that your extravagant need for attention and praise is evidence of your emotional stuntedness. With every renaming of a building you are sending up a signal that screams “I am so insecure!” And here’s the truth: You cannot piggyback on the respect John F. Kennedy earned by slapping your name on the arts center that was named by statute to be his living memorial. Your name may be side by side with his on the marble for now, but in our hearts, we will never respect you. Quite the opposite—for all of your depredations and twice on Sunday for attempting to hijack someone else’s honor.
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It gets worse. It isn’t just that your ravenous hunger for recognition betrays a personality disorder, it’s that your particular style of seeking it really does provoke ridicule—that’s another word for “they’re laughing at us.”
The “Gulf of America”? Musing about absorbing Canada into the United States whether they like it or not? Decorating the Oval Office in a Saddam Hussein aesthetic? Threatening to expropriate Greenland from our ally Denmark? Truly great nations don’t need to prove their manhood by lording it over smaller ones. Imposing tariffs on islands inhabited only by penguins? Panting after a Nobel Peace Prize so flagrantly that you’re claiming to have settled eight wars? In two of those cases, there was no war. In the other six, the conflicts are either ongoing or were largely settled without you. Offering meme coins for sale to the highest bidder? Auctioning off pardons to criminals and leaders on the take? You bet they’re laughing.
Among the specific nations whose contempt you most often cited against other presidents, the go-to was China. China was, in your telling, always gloating about getting one over on Biden, Obama, etc. Well, just in the past few weeks, you have agreed to give China access to high-end microchips that are crucial for commercial and military use (and that were withheld by Biden), and you have held your tongue as China has pressured our ally Japan over its support of Taiwan. You even soft-pedaled the threat from China in your National Security Strategy. A younger Trump might have demanded, ‘What did we get in return?’ Nothing.
Our traditional allies are not always laughing. More often they’re wringing their hands as you luxuriate in the company of international outlaws like Vladimir Putin and Nayib Bukele, and mouth stupendous lies such as that Zelensky started the war with Russia.
In short, there has never been a president who has made the United States less respected than you have. We are, to borrow a phrase, disrespected like never before. Whether your twisted ego can recognize that is open to question, but what is not debatable is that virtually the whole world knows.
Chinese exporters have refused to blink in the face of President Trump’s tariffs that reached as high as 145%. Instead, Beijing’s manufacturing base has redirected output with surprising force: India recorded an all-time high for purchases in August, shipments to Africa are on track for a record year, and sales to Southeast Asia have surpassed their pandemic-era levels. Analysts note that the pivot is propelling China toward a possible $1.2 trillion trade surplus, even though profits at industrial firms slipped 1.7% in the first seven months. The volume surge is keeping factories humming, but the reliance on price cuts is intensifying deflationary pressure at home.
The global reaction has been cautious but watchful. Mexico has floated tariffs as steep as 50% on Chinese cars, auto parts, and steel, while India has received dozens of requests to probe dumping practices. Indonesia’s trade ministry stepped in after viral clips showed Chinese sellers offering jeans for under $1, sparking outrage among local producers. Yet, many governments appear reluctant to escalate tensions with Beijing while already engaged in tariff negotiations with Washington. Some, such as South Africa, have favored fresh investment over penalties, while others in Latin America, including Chile and Ecuador, have quietly imposed targeted fees. Brazil, despite earlier threats, granted BYD (BYDDF) a tariff-free window to ramp up production, illustrating how Beijing’s blend of diplomacy and economic leverage is shaping outcomes.
For markets, the strategic landscape remains fluid. Trump has been pressing NATO allies to consider tariffs of up to 100% on Chinese goods, while Xi has urged BRICS nations to unite against protectionism. A weaker yuan and the Fed’s latest rate cut have also sharpened China’s export edge. Electric vehicle shipments valued at over $19 billion have held steady against last year’s pace, and Apple’s pivot to India has paradoxically lifted Chinese parts exports. Analysts suggest China could continue shifting goods toward Europe, Australia, and BRICS partners, limiting the fallout from lost US orders. All of this builds toward a high-stakes Trump-Xi summit in South Korea, where a fragile 90-day tariff truce may define the next stage of the trade confrontation. View comments (12)
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Tariffs hit China’s tech trade in America, but the rest of the world kept buying
China’s tech exports to the US have fallen 70% since the fourth quarter due to President Trump’s tariffs.
Other Asian countries, like South Korea and Vietnam, are exporting much more to the US.
Global demand for AI products remains strong, boosting Asia’s tech exports overall.
China’s tech exports to the US have cratered, but demand from the rest of the world is keeping the East Asian giant’s trade machine humming.
In August, Chinese shipments of tech products to the US plunged 70% compared to the fourth quarter of 2024, according to a Goldman Sachs analysis published Sunday.
The collapse followed the rollout of President Donald Trump’s new tariffs, including a 20% “fentanyl tariff” on all Chinese imports that took effect in March.
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Meanwhile, other Asian economies filled the gap. From the fourth quarter through August, tech exports to the US from countries like South Korea, Vietnam, and India jumped 80%, according to Goldman.
Outside the US, Chinese tech exports didn’t suffer the same fate. Demand in Europe, Asia, and emerging markets kept growing.
“Tech exports to non-US destinations showed little difference between China and the rest of Asia, with tech exports from both performing similarly well compared to other sectors,” wrote Goldman’s analysts.
In July, China and the rest of Asia’s tech exports to non-US markets rose about 20% relative to the fourth quarter of 2024, “reflecting strength in global tech demand,” Goldman’s analysts wrote.
The tariffs underscore how Washington’s trade war is reshaping supply chains and driving high-tech decoupling with China.
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But the divergence also reflects a bigger trend: a steady reordering of tech supply chains that accelerated during the pandemic and has been reinforced by Washington’s trade policies.
In 2017, nearly half of the US’s critical tech imports came directly from China. By 2025, that figure has fallen below 20%, Goldman estimated.
Taiwan, Mexico, Japan, India, and Vietnam have gained market share in the process.
Overall exports from the region rose 7% in dollar terms through August compared to a year earlier, Goldman said. Technology products accounted for more than 60% of those gains.
Taiwan has been the breakout winner, with over 70% of its exports coming from tech — the highest share in Asia.
In August, Taiwan’s exports surged 30% from the fourth quarter of 2024, powered by advanced chips and servers that are critical for AI data centers.
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Goldman’s analysts wrote that they expect the reshuffling to continue.
“Tech supply chains will likely continue to shift, further driving high-tech decoupling between the US and China and reconfiguring of Asia’s trade within and outside the region,” they wrote.
A container is loaded onto a cargo ship while docked at Hai Phong port in Vietnam
By Francesco Guarascio
HANOI (Reuters) -U.S. tariffs imposed in August risk slashing up to one-fifth of Vietnam’s exports to the United States, making it the worst-hit country in Southeast Asia, according to estimates by the United Nations Development Programme.
Vietnam was the world’s sixth-largest exporter to America last year with $136.5 billion worth of shipped goods, U.S. trade data show. Those goods are largely produced in factories run by U.S. and foreign multinational companies or their suppliers.
In a worst-case scenario of very high tariff-driven U.S. inflation, the 20% duties levied on Vietnamese goods could cause its U.S. exports to fall “over time by more than 25 billion dollars, nearly one fifth of the yearly total,” Philip Schellekens, UNDP chief economist for the Asia-Pacific region, told Reuters.
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Vietnam’s finance and industry ministries did not immediately reply to requests for comment.
The first comprehensive Vietnamese data released since tariffs took effect on August 7 show Vietnam’s exports to the United States, its biggest market, fell by 2% in August from July, with a 5.5% drop for footwear, of which Vietnam is the world’s second-largest supplier, according to the customs department. That followed a surge in exports before tariffs.
The World Bank revised down Vietnam’s growth forecasts for this year after the U.S. tariffs took effect.
Nike, Adidas and Puma, which produce a large part of their global output of shoes through suppliers in Vietnam, declined to comment.
VIETNAM HIT HARDEST
The 19.2% potential fall in Vietnamese exports to America would be nearly twice as high as the average 9.7% possible drop in exports from Southeast Asia, the most impacted region in the continent and a major industrial hub, according to a UNDP report released last week, one of the first public estimates of the hit on trade flows since the tariffs took effect.
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“No country in Southeast Asia is more exposed to U.S. tariff hikes than Vietnam,” said Schellekens, noting only China in East Asia would be hit harder in dollar terms.
Among large Southeast Asian nations, Thailand’s U.S. exports could fall 12.7%, Malaysia’s 10.4% and Indonesia’s 6.4%, the UNDP report said.
The estimated fall of U.S. exports would shave roughly 5% from Vietnam’s Gross Domestic Product, although the tariff impact could take years to fully materialise, and was likely to be mitigated by exporters’ absorption of some costs, Vietnam’s diversification to other regions and bigger domestic spending.
The UNDP estimates are based on a scenario in which duties would be entirely passed through to U.S. consumers, damping demand, which so far has not happened as the impact on U.S. inflation has been moderate.
The UNDP did not take into account either the possible effect of 40% tariffs on goods transhipped through Vietnam, which could have a devastating impact if Washington decided to set strict limits on foreign components used in exported items, given Vietnam’s goods highly rely on Chinese input.
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The UNDP data did not factor in current tariff exemptions on consumer electronics which account for about 28% of Vietnam’s total exports to America. However, even if Washington upheld those waivers, Vietnam’s U.S. exports could still fall by $18 billion, Schellekens said.
(Reporting by Francesco Guarascio; Additional reporting by Khanh Vu; Editing by Stephen Coates) View comments (70)
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Over 70% of H-1B visa holders are Indian citizens. Its government says Trump jacking the fee to $100,000 is ‘likely to have humanitarian consequences’
President Donald Trump speaks before signing executive orders in the Oval Office at the White House on September 19, 2025 in Washington, DC. Trump signed two executive orders, establishing the “Trump Gold Card” and introducing a $100,000 fee for H-1B visas.
India’s Ministry of External Affairs issued a response Saturday to President Donald Trump’s decision to impose a $100,000 fee on H-1B visa applications, warning on X that the move could create “humanitarian consequences” by disrupting families, calling for the United States to address these concerns.
The statement came after Trump signed a proclamation Friday imposing the hefty new fee on skilled worker visas, which went into effect on Sunday. The policy represents one of the most dramatic overhauls of the H-1B program in decades, targeting a visa category heavily relied upon by Indian professionals working in America’s technology sector.
“This measure is likely to have humanitarian consequences by way of the disruption caused for families,” the ministry said in its official statement. “Government hopes that these disruptions can be addressed suitably by the US authorities.”
The proclamation sparked immediate chaos across Indian communities and the global tech industry, with thousands of H-1B visa holders scrambling to return to the United States before the new rules took effect. At San Francisco International Airport, The Independent reports that several Indian passengers disembarked from an Emirates flight just minutes before takeoff, because they feared being unable to return to the U.S. under the new policy. A three-hour delay ensued.
India has particular reason for concern about the policy changes: According to the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services, Indian nationals account for 71% of H-1B visa recipients, making them by far the largest beneficiary group. Chinese nationals represent the second-largest group at approximately 12%. The dominance is even more pronounced in technology roles, where over 80% of computer-related H-1B positions are filled by Indian workers.
The new fee structure represents a staggering increase from current H-1B application costs, which range from approximately $1,700 to $4,500. The Trump administration defended the move as necessary to address “systemic abuse” of the H-1B program and protect American workers.
Major U.S. technology companies moved quickly to reassure employees after initial confusion about the policy’s scope. Reuters reports that Amazon, Microsoft, Meta, Apple, and Google—all heavy users of the H-1B program—issued urgent advisories clarifying the $100,000 fee applies only to new visa petitions, not existing holders or renewals. The White House later confirmed that current H-1B visa holders can continue to travel in and out of the United States as before.
According to federal data, Amazon currently has the highest number of H-1B visa holders at over 10,000, followed by Indian IT giant Tata Consultancy Services, with approximately 5,500. Other major beneficiaries include Microsoft, Meta, Apple, and Google, each with over 4,000 H-1B visa holders. But Alan Patricof, the private-equity investor and founder of Greycroft Partners, told the NYT, “there is not a single company that I have invested in the last 10 years that could afford to pay this.”
The policy comes amid broader tensions in U.S.-India relations following Trump’s imposition of punitive tariffs on Indian exports earlier this year. The president implemented a 25% “reciprocal” tariff on Indian goods, followed by an additional 25% penalty tied to India’s continued purchases of Russian oil, shocking Indian counterparties and bringing total duties to 50%.
India’s commerce minister Piyush Goyal is scheduled to visit Washington on Monday for trade talks, highlighting ongoing efforts to reset the relationship between the two nations. The timing of the H-1B announcement just days before these crucial negotiations adds another layer of complexity to the diplomatic discussions.
In its statement, India’s foreign ministry emphasized the mutual benefits of skilled talent mobility between the two countries. “Skilled talent mobility and exchanges have contributed enormously to technology development, innovation, economic growth, competitiveness and wealth creation in the United States and India,” the ministry said. “Policy makers will therefore assess recent steps taking into account mutual benefits, which include strong people-to-people ties between the two countries.”
The ministry also noted that Indian industry has begun analyzing the full implications of the policy changes and is expected to work with U.S. counterparts on finding solutions. India’s National Association of Software and Service Companies warned the abrupt implementation timeline could have “ripple effects on America’s innovation ecosystem and the wider job economy.”
For Indian IT services companies, the financial impact could be substantial. According to the Times of India, firms like TCS, Infosys, HCL Technologies, and Wipro could see their operating profits reduced by 7%-15% due to the new fees.
The proclamation is set to remain in effect for 12 months unless extended, and legal challenges are expected. The policy also directs the Department of Labor to raise wage requirements for H-1B workers and signals additional reforms to prioritize higher-paid, higher-skilled applications in the visa lottery system.
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