Vietnam Still Finalizing Trade Deal Already Announced by Trump
Trump said Wednesday the two sides agreed a deal that will see the US impose a 20% tariff on Vietnamese exports, with a 40% levy on any goods deemed to be transshipped through the country. Vietnam had agreed to drop all levies on US imports, he said.
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Forbes
5 minutes ago
- Forbes
How Trump's Spending Bill Helps The Rich Buy Their Private Jets
A little-discussed portion of the billionaire President Donald Trump's 'Big Beautiful Bill" hands a lucrative break to ultrawealthy Americans in the form of a tax policy for private jet purchases. An under-the-radar provision of Trump's spending bill lands a massive potential tax advantage for ... More the ultrawealthy as part of a provision which would cost an estimated $378 billion. Patrick McMullan via Getty Images Part of the spending package that just passed the Senate is the permanent restoration of the 100% 'bonus depreciation' federal law, which allows businesses to write off the full amount of qualifying items in the year of purchase. Bonus depreciation was originally a part of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017, but phased down from the 100% level beginning in 2023 and was set to permanently expire by 2027, according to Thomson Reuters. The bonus depreciation policy applies to a slew of qualified, physical business expenses which depreciate over time, such as machinery and company cars, but the policy is often associated with big-ticket luxury items, such as private aircraft, and its institution last decade led to a boom in jet sales. That means that unlike standard business accounting procedures in which capital investments are spread across multiple years and are never fully written off, the full value of qualified property could be written off year one. A $10 million plane could now be a $10 million deduction in that same year, noted the aviation industry publication Flying magazine. 'For someone interested in buying a jet, whether new or used, this is a very big deal,' Matthew Bere, managing director of aviation at the Oklahoma-based bank BOK Financial, said this week, saying he expects the megabill's passage to 'spur a lot of activity in aircraft sales.' This is an 'example of oligarch friendly rules,' says Chuck Collins, director of the Program on Inequality and the Common Good at the Institute for Policy Studies progressive think tank. Collins described the bonus depreciation provision as a 'massive tax break for billionaires and centi-millionaires' from the 'private jet lobby' in a Tuesday post. Big Number $378 billion. That's how much the permanent establishment of 100% bonus depreciation would cost taxpayers over 10 years, according to Congressional Budget Office estimates. 'The all-at-once tax deduction could potentially reduce' jet buyers' taxable income by 'millions of dollars in a given year,' explained Bere. How The Senate Made This Deduction Permanent The version of Trump's 'Big Beautiful Bill' passed by the House in May only extended the 100% bonus depreciation through 2029, while the Senate made the deduction permanent. The private aviation industry celebrated the change, and charter plane provider FlyUSA described the legislation as 'a power-packed provision that could change the game for private aircraft acquisition.' Key Background The private jet friendly bonus depreciation provision adds to heavy criticism from Democrats and nonpartisan watchdogs who say the bill will disproportionately help the rich and hurt the poor. The bill will lower the lowest 20% of American earners' incomes by 2.9% while the top 1% of earners will get a 1.9% boost, according to the Yale University Budget Lab. 'This bill gives another tax break to the ultrawealthy — so they can buy another private jet,' Sen. Mark Kelly, D-Ariz., said this week. Environmental groups frequently criticize private jet usage for its outsized emission, and U.S. departures account for 65% of private jet flights globally, according to the International Council on Clean Transportation. Kyle Khan-Mullins and Lily Ogburn contributed reporting. Further Reading Forbes Senate Passes One Big Beautiful Bill Despite One Big Not-So-Beautiful Price Tag By Kelly Phillips Erb Forbes How Trump's Spending Bill Impacts Student Loans—Including Higher Payments And More Restrictions By Alison Durkee
CNN
7 minutes ago
- CNN
A group of lawmakers attempt to visit ‘Alligator Alcatraz' amid humanitarian concerns
Florida lawmakers worried about 'humanitarian concerns' are attempting to access 'Alligator Alcatraz' Thursday to inspect the grounds of the new detention center, just hours after the arrival of its first group of detainees. 'What's happening here is un-American,' Florida state Sen. Shevrin Jones and four other Democratic state lawmakers said in a joint news release. 'What we're witnessing isn't about security or solving problems—it's about inhumane political theater that endangers real people.' The lawmakers spoke to reporters outside the facility Thursday afternoon but it's unclear whether they were allowed inside. Detainees arrived at the facility in the middle of the Florida Everglades, the Florida Division of Emergency Management said Thursday, following reports of flooding earlier this week. The lawmakers noted there have been reports of extreme heat, structural issues, environmental threats, and human rights violations that 'demand immediate oversight.' President Donald Trump toured the facility Tuesday and shortly after, summer storms amid the region's hurricane season brought flooding to it, adding to a list of concerns about the facility's readiness to house migrants. Wires were seen submerged in pooling water across the floor and high winds made the facility's floor and walls tremble, reporter video from CNN affiliate Spectrum News 13 showed. A combination of weather observations and estimates from radar indicate that anywhere from around 0.40 to 1.5 inches of rain fell at the facility in less than two hours on Tuesday, according to CNN Weather. Later that night, 'vendors went back and tightened any seams at the base of the structures that allowed water intrusion during the heavy storm, which was minimal,' Stephanie Hartman, a spokesperson for the Florida Department of Emergency Management, told CNN. But more rainfall could be on the horizon amid the region's hurricane season and the chance for storms in the forecast every day in the next week, according to CNN Weather. It's unclear how many detainees are currently being housed at the compound as of Thursday, but it has the capacity to hold 3,000 people, with room for more, Kevin Guthrie, executive director of the Florida Division of Emergency Management, said in a roundtable Tuesday alongside Trump. Tricia McLaughlin, the assistant secretary for public affairs at the Department of Homeland Security, said authorities will 'expand facilities and bed space in just days.' Nestled in the middle of Florida's humid, subtropical wetland ecosystem, 'Alligator Alcatraz' was transformed from a training and transition airport to a temporary tent city for migrants. The expected cost to run the detention center for one year is $450 million, a Department of Homeland Security official told CNN, adding that Florida will front the costs of the facility and then 'submit reimbursement requests' through FEMA and the Department of Homeland Security. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said the facility is necessary to alleviate burdens on the state's law enforcement agencies and jails, and touted it for being designed to be 'completely self-contained' – which has prompted local immigration rights advocates to accuse the DeSantis administration of creating a facility 'engineered to enact suffering.' 'Clearly from a security perspective, if someone escapes, there's a lot of alligators you're going to have to contend (with),' DeSantis said last week. 'No one is going anywhere once you do that. It's as safe and secure as you can be.' Migrants will be housed in repurposed FEMA trailers and 'soft-sided temporary facilities,' a Department of Homeland Security official told CNN. The same tents are often used to house those displaced by natural disasters, like hurricanes, DeSantis' office said. They likely will provide the only shelter from mother nature as summer in South Florida proves to be the region's wettest season, in part due to the tropical activity of hurricane season and daily thunderstorms. State officials said they are developing evacuation plans for the facility in the event of severe weather. CNN's Devon M. Sayers, Chelsea Bailey and Luke Snyder contributed to this report.
Atlantic
9 minutes ago
- Atlantic
Google Might Be Next to Settle With Trump
Of all the titans of social media, Google CEO Sundar Pichai tried to keep the groveling to a minimum after Donald Trump won last year. He did not, like Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, go on podcasts to praise the benefits of 'masculine energy' or hire the new president's close friend, the UFC boss Dana White, to his board of directors. He did not, like X owner Elon Musk, go to work in the White House or publicly declare his straight-man 'love' for Trump. Unlike TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew, Pichai never pushed a notification to all app users (with an exclamation point!) thanking Trump for his efforts. There was instead a brief visit to Mar-a-Lago, the requisite $1 million Google donation to Trump's inaugural fund, and the stoic appearance as a background prop during the ceremony in the U.S. Capitol rotunda. Even Pichai's statement that day read dutiful and dry: 'We look forward to working with you to usher in a new era of technology + AI innovation that will benefit all Americans.' But the man who runs YouTube may soon get another opportunity to demonstrate his fealty. Trump had sued Zuckerberg, Pichai, and the former CEO of Twitter (which Musk later purchased and renamed X) in 2021 for restricting his accounts after the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol. The president alleged that the companies and executives had illegally censored him at the urging of U.S. political leaders, violating his First Amendment rights. It was an ironic argument from a politician who likes to settle political grudges with governmental threats. But it was an effective one: During their postelection courtships of Trump, Zuckerberg settled his case with a payment of $25 million, mostly to Trump's presidential-library fund, and Musk followed with $10 million more. Now it may be Pichai's turn. Lawyers for President Trump and Pichai have begun 'productive discussions' about the next steps of the case against YouTube, 'with additional discussions anticipated in the near future,' according to briefs filed in a San Francisco federal court shortly after Memorial Day that appear to have escaped public notice. The parties have asked the judge to give them until September 2 to come to an agreement on a path forward. 'I can't talk about that,' John Cole, a lawyer in the case for Trump, told me when I called to ask about settlement talks. José Castañeda, a spokesperson for Google, also declined to comment. The fact that the talks are happening at all says more about Trump's remarkable use of presidential power than his legal prowess or the merits of his case. In 2022, a federal district court dismissed Trump's case against X after concluding that Trump had failed to 'plausibly allege' that Twitter's decision to ban his account was directed by the government. Trump's case against YouTube was put on hold while Trump appealed the X case to the Ninth Circuit, which appeared likely to rule against Trump again. But Musk's decision to settle his case while he was working alongside Trump in the White House prevented the appeals court from issuing a decision, and effectively reopened the YouTube case this spring. That has left Pichai with a difficult choice: Continue with a legal fight he may win on the merits and risk the wrath of the president of the United States, or agree to give some money to Trump's presidential library and move on. The whole situation is head-spinning: Trump has shown that he can successfully use the powers of his elected office to threaten private companies into settling civil suits even when the cases are based on the allegation that those same companies broke the law by caving to the demands of politicians like him. 'Essentially what this means is that the English language has failed us,' Robert Corn-Revere, the general counsel of the free-speech group Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, told me. 'We need a stronger word than hypocrisy to describe these kinds of activities.' The incoherence of Trump's position on the First Amendment has become clear as he has used the power of his office to target the speech of political foes at universities and law firms and uncompliant media outlets such as the Associated Press, while simultaneously condemning the very idea that the government should ever try to restrict the speech of his political allies. When the contradiction is pointed out, he dismisses it. His advisers push back fiercely. For Trump, what matters is winning. 'The idea that President Trump is infringing on the First Amendment is a joke,' White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt told me in a statement. 'This story should be about how pitiful it was for Big Tech to censor the former President of the United States—not the other way around. The President is holding these powerful and wealthy institutions accountable for their years of wrongdoing.' Legal observers suggest another way of looking at Trump's approach to free speech. ''I will support my friends and go after the people who oppose me,'' Raymond Brescia, an associate dean at Albany Law School, told me. 'It's hard to look at it any other way.' About three months after he took office, Trump alleged during an Oval Office signing ceremony that the Biden administration had illegally launched Internal Revenue Service investigations into his supporters because of their political views. 'We're finding that many people, just having to do with Trump support, have gone through hell,' he said. 'It's a very illegal thing to do what they did.' I was in the room that day, and I asked Trump how he squared that concern with his decision to entertain changing Harvard University's tax status because he did not like its diversity policies and its handling of on-campus protests. He quickly pivoted. 'Because I think Harvard is a disgrace. I think what they did was a disgrace,' he said. Harvard, of course, has asked a court to rule that Trump's various punishments violate the First Amendment. This week's settlement by Paramount Global, the parent company of CBS News, offers further evidence of his mindset. Before the 2024 election, Trump filed a lawsuit against CBS Broadcasting Inc., alleging that the network had violated the Texas Deceptive Trade Practices Act by choosing to air two different edits, on two different shows, of Vice President Kamala Harris's answer to a question. Such editing is a routine part of political journalism, which regularly shortens quotes and tapes for brevity. Trump argued that the version that aired for a larger audience on 60 Minutes made Harris look deceptively better because it left out some of her confusing stammering. Rather than wait for the courts to address the merits of his claim, he applied his own pressure once he regained government power. Trump's new chair of the Federal Communications Commission, Brendan Carr, reopened a closed complaint alleging that the editing amounted to 'news distortion.' Carr had previously said that the claim should be considered when the FCC weighed approval of the proposed merger of Paramount Global and its new investor, Skydance. Trump egged Carr on. In a post complaining about a different 60 Minutes segment in April, Trump wrote that he hoped Carr would 'impose the maximum fines and punishment' on CBS. Paramount agreed Tuesday to give $16 million to Trump's presidential library to settle the Harris-interview case. Trump's presidential-library foundation, which incorporated in Florida in May, has not yet disclosed its plans for what to do with all the settlement money. Trump's son Eric Trump, his son-in-law Michael Boulos, and an attorney for the Trump Organization, James Kiley, have been named the initial trustees. All the while, the Trump administration has continued to ceremoniously embrace the First Amendment rights of American companies and citizens. On his first day in office, Trump issued an executive order called Restoring Freedom of Speech and Ending Federal Censorship, which condemned the Biden administration for 'exerting substantial coercive pressure' on social-media companies to moderate posts on their sites. Trump declared that it was now the policy of the United States to 'ensure that no Federal Government officer, employee, or agent engages in or facilitates any conduct that would unconstitutionally abridge the free speech of any American citizen.' 'There is a new sheriff in town,' Vice President J. D. Vance declared on February 14 in Munich, Germany. 'And under Donald Trump's leadership, we may disagree with your views, but we will fight to defend your right to offer them in the public square, agree or disagree.' Vance didn't mention that just three days earlier, Leavitt had told an Associated Press reporter that, at Trump's direction, the AP would lose its permanent spot in the White House press pool, barring it from the Oval Office and Air Force One, until the wire service started referring to the Gulf of Mexico as the ' Gulf of America.' A district-court judge ruled that this decision violated the First Amendment rights of the AP, though the ruling was later paused by an appellate court after the White House imposed broader changes on how the pool system is organized. The AP, which has not bowed to Trump's demands and has yet to regain its spot, has since been let into the pool on occasion and continues to have access to White House briefings. The courts have not been impressed by such misdirection. Just three months after Trump's executive order barring unconstitutional abridgement of free speech, D.C. federal district Judge Beryl A. Howell ruled that Trump had committed that exact offense. At issue was a March 6 executive order, 14230, that declared that employees of the law firm Perkins Coie should be limited from entering federal buildings, interacting with federal employees, or holding security clearances because of the firm's 'dishonest and dangerous' activity, including the decision to represent Hillary Clinton during her 2016 presidential campaign and to promote diversity in its hiring practices. Three other federal judges have since thrown out Trump executive orders targeting three more law firms on the same grounds. 'In a cringe-worthy twist on the theatrical phrase 'Let's kill all the lawyers,' EO 14230 takes the approach of 'Let's kill the lawyers I don't like,' sending the clear message: lawyers must stick to the party line, or else,' Judge Howell explained while voiding the executive order. Trump appealed Howell's ruling this week to the D.C. Circuit. Should Pichai choose to fight it out in court with Trump, he would quite possibly get a favorable ruling. When the Ninth Circuit heard the X case in 2023, two of the three judges on the panel questioned the evidence that Trump had gathered to suggest that his ban from Twitter had been caused by government pressure. As in the YouTube case, Trump's lawyers had presented only general comments from public officials about the need for social-media companies to increase moderation, including from members of the House and Senate, then-candidates Joe Biden and Harris, and former first lady Michelle Obama. 'Why do statements from, let's say, four senators at a committee hearing all of a sudden commit all of the power of the federal government to create state action here?' Ninth Circuit Judge Jay Bybee, an appointee of President George W. Bush, asked during oral arguments in the case. 'I don't know of any case that stands for that proposition.' The problem for Pichai is different, of course, as it was for Zuckerberg, Musk, and Paramount—and will be for anyone else Trump targets. Google could end up losing more by prevailing in court than it will win by conceding the case and making an eight-figure donation to Trump's presidential library.
