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Yahoo
5 days ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Economic analyst blasts Trump's ‘unprecedented' megabill: Americans will be ‘worse off'
'Morning Joe' economic analyst Steve Rattner warns that Donald Trump's 'unprecedented' spending package will take the United States in the 'wrong direction.' On Monday morning, the former Obama-era Treasury official pulled out a set of new charts to break down the president's 'big, beautiful' bill and the devastating effects he said it will have on everyday Americans. Initially, according to Rattner, people might not feel the true cost of Trump's legislation: 'All the good stuff takes effect now. People are going to get these increases in their standard deduction and their Child Tax Credit. The Social Security Administration has already sent out a letter to Social Security recipients saying, 'you're going to get a big tax windfall from this bill.' So they're already out there marketing this.' 'The bad stuff doesn't take effect, for the most part, until after the '26 midterm elections,' Rattner continued. '[Republicans] staggered this stuff in a way that could work to their political advantage, or at least less political harm.' Part of the 'bad stuff' packed into the megabill, according to the analyst, is how Republicans' drastic Medicaid cuts could kick 11 million people off their insurance over the coming decade. 'This is unprecedented in our history. We've always moved forward, not backwards,' Rattner said. Rattner then moved on to what he said was the most important chart of his presentation, which showed how Trump's bill would deliver tax cuts to the rich at the expense of low-income Americans. 'If you're in the top 20% of the country, you're going to get an average $6,000 benefit,' Rattner explained, as he pointed at a large green arrow. 'If you go down here to the bottom 20%, what do you see? These people are actually going to be worse off.' 'They get a very small tax cut, but it is completely, wildly offset by what they lose from Medicaid cuts, from food stamp cuts, from other cuts, and so they end up actually $560 worse off,' he explained. Rattner said the projections are unlike anything he had seen before. 'In 50 years of watching economic policy, I have never seen a package that was so regressive, that did so much to take money from the poor, give it to the rich. This is unprecedented in our history. It is the most amazing piece of social legislation — in the wrong direction — that we have ever seen.' You can watch Rattner's full analysis in the clip at the top. This article was originally published on
Mail & Guardian
04-07-2025
- Politics
- Mail & Guardian
It is China that has won the ‘Cold War' in the Middle East
China plans to lead the world through building state, economic and diplomatic capabilities and not through war. (Yuan Hongyan / ImagineChina / Imaginechina via AFP) The latest illegal bombing of Iran by the United States could mean many things for the world if seen through the lens of the ongoing struggle to rebalance global power relations. Obviously in the bigger scheme of things, the US cares as little about Iran than it does about China, which has, in many ways, surpassed America in terms of global power and influence. If the US thought it could lure China, or even Russia into a regional or global war, then it has failed to do so, and will continue to fail. China has no interest in waging a war; it is busy building state, economic and diplomatic capabilities to lead the world. In this sense, China has won the 'Cold War' in Iran/Middle East. The Osiraq option In an analysis paper titled Which Path to Persia? — incidentally, it's dated June 2009 — the Saban Centre of the Brookings Institute lays down the foreign policy options for the Obama administration on how to address the Iran 'problem' which is considered a 'national security' priority. The paper advises the US administration to settle for the Osiraq option, which refers to the surprise airstrike by the It proposes that the Osiraq option is the best option because the US 'might be able to provide a reasonable justification for such a campaign by building on the fact that the UN Security Council has repeatedly proscribed Iran's nuclear enrichment activities in resolutions enacted under Chapter VII of the UN Charter, which are binding on all member states'. The Osiraq option was chosen because it was less risky in terms of the strategic interest calculus of the US in that region. It also knew that boots on the ground would mean Iraq and Afghanistan 0.2, and the appetite for another prolonged war is very low on the US domestic front. Even Israel could not go the conventional warfare route with boots on the ground; because a full-on invasion by Israel would inevitably force the US to join the war and the situation would be untenable; Iran has capabilities far greater than Iraq. The paper suggests, quite strangely, that unlike a ground invasion, the Osiraq style is not a 'regime change' kind of strategy. A rhetorically erratic Donald Trump had a different idea though. Days after he violated Iran's sovereignty, he posted on his site Truth Social: 'It is not politically correct to use the term, 'Regime Change' but if the current Iranian Regime is unable to MAKE IRAN GREAT AGAIN, why wouldn't there be a Regime change??? MIGA!!' War is the pursuit of politics by other means, namely, violence. Often, 'winning' a war is as pyrrhic for the victor as it is for the conquered. Anyway, the very idea of winning a war is debatable. Others suggest, quite correctly I would say, that there is no winner in war. The strategic intent of countries like the US is not to win the war. It is to weaken the so-called enemies, divide a people and plunder their resources — often through regime change disguised as the protection of''national interests'. The idea is that if you cannot secure your interests through normal means, you must either buy or bomb your way in. Whatever it is, there is always an organising set of interests that inform the pursuit of war. The recent so-called peace treaty between the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Rwanda signed in the Oval Office — not on African soil — is a perfect example of the US's global imperialist agenda. By the way, Trump has never set foot in Africa. We also know that the bombing of Iran has obliterated any little respect that was left in the United Nations as a multilateral system aimed at preserving peace and preventing future wars. The bombing was carried out without a UN resolution or US congress authorisation, thus making it a unilateral rogue decision by the US government. It violated Iran's sovereignty and international law in a context where the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) confirmed, repeatedly, that Iran is not building nuclear warheads, in the same way that it found no evidence of 'Weapons of Mass Destruction' in Iraq at the turn of the century. Geopolitical 'game of thrones'? The single most important headache for the US today is the re-emergence of China as a strategic power pole in a multipolar world. In both his campaigns for the presidency, Trump made it clear that China is the US's 'main competitor', and one of his former national security advisers, Robert O'Brien, put it better when he said, 'China is the threat of the century.' Trump believes this hook, line and sinker. As I suggested in a recent article, The US, the 'Great Transformation' and the New World Order, the changing balance of global power is characterised by the decline of the US as a superpower, and the rise of China as a significant hegemon while a multipolar world order is in the offing. Much of the disastrous domestic and foreign policy coming out of the White House today is an attempt at dealing with this unstoppable great transformation. The US elite does not have a coherent strategic response yet. The elites in both countries are aware that the decline-rise situation between the two countries gives rise to the Thucydides Trap moment. China knows that it is ahead, while the US knows that it has fallen behind on so many indicators of power. But the US is hellbent on kneeling before the shrine of neocon conceptions of power, so much that it is inflicting a lot of self-harm against the 'national interest'. For its own sake, the US will do well to heed the advice of one of the most hardened conservative Republicans, the late Henry Kissinger, who wrote in his book On China that if not handled properly, US-China relations could mirror the Britain-Germany relations pre-World War II with disastrous consequences for both countries — and obviously, the world as a whole. Kissinger counsels that both countries should seek mutually beneficial relations. It is now evident to everyone that the US has already lost the war on global hegemony and consequently, ceased to be a global hegemon or, at worst, a hyperpower that bullies and dictates to everyone in the world. The latest attempt at stirring a trade war, essentially against China, is a case in point. China remains unshaken. China is playing the long 'game of thrones'. Whether it is the Southeast China seas, Taiwan or Iran tensions, it simply refuses to transform the ongoing tensions into war. It has understood the injunction of Sun Tzu that it is better to win the war without fighting it. The US believes it, too, is playing a long game — the political rhetoric of Trump notwithstanding. In fact, it is Trump and his advisers that defines China as a strategic threat or competitor. Which way for Africa and the Global South? Africa and the Global South must respond strategically in the interests of the vast majority of the people of the world who stand to lose if a major war were to break out. The foreign policy of the US is largely the same in the Middle East and Africa. Without a clear strategic orientation, smaller countries will find it difficult to navigate the current tides caused by the rebalancing of power in the global arena. Some analysis suggests that small countries have no agency, power or even a cost-benefit analysis to make in these high stakes struggles for the rebalancing of global power relations. I think such analysis is grossly mistaken if one considers the role of small countries in World War II or the choice of non-alignment during the Cold War years. There is a lot to lose and gain in a multipolar world for countries in the Global South. The requirement is that they must be strategic, intentional and consolidate on national and regional unity and integration. There are more opportunities in a multipolar setting than a unipolar or bipolar one. The Global South must position itself well to benefit from this world which is struggling to be born. David Maimela is a researcher and writer in public policy with a specialisation on foreign policy and international relations based at Unisa. He writes in his personal capacity.
New York Times
24-06-2025
- Politics
- New York Times
Antony Blinken: Trump's Iran Strike Was a Mistake. I Hope It Succeeds.
The strike on three of Iran's nuclear facilities by the United States was unwise and unnecessary. Now that it's done, I very much hope it succeeded. That's the paradox for many former officials like me who worked on the Iran nuclear problem during previous administrations. We shared a determination that Iran never be allowed to produce or possess a nuclear weapon. Iran without a nuclear weapon is bad enough: a leading state sponsor of terrorism; a destructive and destabilizing force via its proxies in Lebanon, Syria, Gaza, Yemen and Iraq; an existential threat to Israel. An Iran with a nuclear weapon would feel emboldened to act with even greater impunity in each of those arenas. So why was the strike a mistake? First, it never should have come to this. In 2015, the Obama administration, together with Britain, France, Germany, Russia, China and the European Union, reached agreement with Tehran on the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or J.C.P.O.A. The nuclear deal effectively put Iran's program to make fissile material, the fuel for a nuclear weapon, in a lockbox, with stringent procedures for monitoring Iran's nuclear program. The deal pushed 'breakout' — the amount of time it would take Iran to produce enough weapons-grade uranium for a single nuclear weapon — to at least one year. If Iran reneged on the agreement or refused to extend it when certain provisions expired after 15 years, we would know it and have plenty of time to respond, including, if necessary, militarily. In 2018, President Trump tore up the agreement and replaced it with … nothing. In response, Iran accelerated its enrichment, quite likely reducing its breakout time to a matter of days or weeks. Mr. Trump, in essence, is now trying to put out a fire on which he poured gasoline. Second, fissile material is a necessary but insufficient element for a bomb. You also need an explosive weapon. As of now — and there are conflicting messages coming from within the Trump administration — our intelligence agencies believe Iran has not yet made a decision to weaponize. If and when it does, it would take Tehran 18 to 24 months to produce an explosive device, according to some estimates. In other words, there was still time for diplomacy to work, and the situation wasn't nearly the emergency that Mr. Trump portrayed it to be. Third, experts I've spoken to had real doubts about the ability of the Massive Ordnance Penetrator, or M.O.P. — the 30,000-pound bombs unique to America's arsenal that were dropped on Iran's nuclear sites — to fully incapacitate the Fordo site and other deeply buried or fortified components of Iran's nuclear program. Initial reports suggest that while Iran's nuclear infrastructure was severely damaged, it was not destroyed. Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
New York Times
17-06-2025
- Politics
- New York Times
The Israel-Iran Conflict
Israel calls its attack on Iran's nuclear program a justified response to an existential threat: Benjamin Netanyahu argues that Iran's leaders should be taken at their word when they say they wish to wipe his country off the map. So Israel has spent the last several days razing Iran's nuclear structures and killing the people in charge of them; more than 200 people have died, according to the Iranian health ministry. Iran has been shooting back, blowing up buildings in Tel Aviv; at least 24 people have died, according to Israel. Why are these two nations in this mess? Iran watched the United States fell governments in Iraq and Afghanistan. The government believes nuclear bombs (and the threat that it could use them) will protect it, just as they have protected North Korea. Israel does not believe in the power of diplomacy to solve this existential threat. North Korea has been tolerated as a rogue regime with nuclear bombs because nations assume Kim Jong-un won't use them. But Israel and its supporters treat Iran as uniquely irrational. Netanyahu saw a previous deal as vulnerable to cheating, and he struck Iran last week while President Trump was negotiating a new one. But military intervention has its problems, too. Today's newsletter is about that puzzle. The talking cure American presidents have chased a nuclear deal and asked Israel for restraint. The agreement struck in the last years of the Obama administration did not meet Netanyahu's very high bar — the total elimination of Iran's nuclear program — but it put inspectors on the ground to ensure Iran halted development. In exchange, Western nations loosened sanctions and unfroze Iran's assets. But even the most ardent proponents of Obama's deal had to admit that it was a temporary measure to hold off Iranian nuclear ambitions for a decade, with the hope that something — anything — would follow. By most accounts, Iran was abiding by the terms, but Trump shredded the agreement in his first term, promising in this term that he would deliver something more secure. Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
West Australian
17-06-2025
- Politics
- West Australian
Donald Trump's Iran choice: Last-chance diplomacy or a bunker-busting bomb, the Massive Ordnance Penetrator
WASHINGTON — US President Donald Trump is weighing a critical decision in the days-old war between Israel and Iran: whether to enter the fray by helping Israel destroy the deeply buried nuclear enrichment facility at Fordo, which only America's biggest 'bunker buster,' dropped by US B-2 bombers, can reach. If he decides to go ahead, the United States will become a direct participant in a new conflict in the Middle East, taking on Iran in exactly the kind of war Mr Trump has sworn, in two campaigns, he would avoid. Iranian officials have warned that US participation in an attack on its facilities will imperil any remaining chance of the nuclear disarmament deal that Mr Trump insists he is still interested in pursuing. Mr Trump has encouraged Vice President JD Vance and his Middle East envoy, Steve Witkoff, to offer to meet the Iranians this week, according to a US official. The offer may be well received, and Mr Trump said Monday that 'I think Iran basically is at the negotiating table, they want to make a deal.' The urgency appeared to be rising. The White House announced late Monday that Mr Trump was leaving the Group of 7 summit early because of the situation in the Middle East. 'As soon as I leave here, we're going to be doing something,' Mr Trump said. 'But I have to leave here.' What he intended to do remained unclear. If Mr Vance and Mr Witkoff did meet with the Iranians, officials say, the likely Iranian interlocutor would be the country's foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, who played a key role in the 2015 nuclear deal with the Obama Administration and knows every element of Iran's sprawling nuclear complex. Mr Araghchi, who has been Mr Witkoff's counterpart in recent negotiations, signalled his openness to a deal Monday, saying in a statement, 'If President Trump is genuine about diplomacy and interested in stopping this war, next steps are consequential.' 'It takes one phone call from Washington to muzzle someone like Netanyahu,' he said, referring to the Israeli Prime Minister. 'That may pave the way for a return to diplomacy.' But if that diplomatic effort fizzles, or the Iranians remain unwilling to give in to Mr Trump's central demand that they must ultimately end all uranium enrichment on Iranian soil, the President will still have the option of ordering that Fordo and other nuclear facilities be destroyed. There is only one weapon for the job, experts contend. It is called the Massive Ordnance Penetrator, or the GBU-57, and it weighs so much — 30,000 pounds — that it can be lifted only by a B-2 bomber. Israel does not own either the weapon or the bomber needed to get it aloft and over a target. If Mr Trump holds back, it could well mean that Israel's main objective in the war is never completed. 'Fordo has always been the crux of this thing,' said Brett McGurk, who worked on Middle East issues for four successive US presidents, from George W. Bush to Joe Biden. 'If this ends with Fordo still enriching, then it's not a strategic gain.' That has been true for a long time, and over the past two years the US military has refined the operation, under close White House scrutiny. The exercises led to the conclusion that one bomb would not solve the problem; any attack on Fordo would have to come in waves, with B-2s releasing one bomb after another down the same hole. And the operation would have to be executed by an American pilot and crew. This was all in the world of war planning until the opening salvos Friday morning in Tehran, Iran's capital, when Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ordered the strikes, declaring that Israel had discovered an 'imminent' threat that required 'preemptive action.' New intelligence, he suggested without describing the details, indicated that Iran was on the cusp of turning its fuel stockpile into weapons. US intelligence officials who have followed the Iranian program for years agree that Iranian scientists and nuclear specialists have been working to shorten the time it would take to manufacture a nuclear bomb, but they saw no huge breakthroughs. Yet they agree with Mr McGurk and other experts on one point: If the Fordo facility survives the conflict, Iran will retain the key equipment it needs to stay on a pathway to the bomb, even if it would first have to rebuild much of the nuclear infrastructure that Israel has left in ruins over four days of precision bombing. There may be other alternatives to bombing it, though they are hardly a sure thing. If the power to Fordo gets cut, by saboteurs or bombing, it could damage or destroy the centrifuges that spin at supersonic speeds. Rafael Grossi, director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, said Monday that this might have happened at the country's other major uranium enrichment centre, Natanz. Israel took out the power supplies to the plant Friday, and Mr Grossi said that the disruption probably sent them spinning out of control. Mr Trump rarely talks about Fordo by name, but he has occasionally alluded to the GBU-57, sometimes telling aides that he ordered its development. That is not correct: The United States began designing the weapon in 2004, during the Bush Administration, specifically to collapse the mountains protecting some of the deepest nuclear facilities in Iran and North Korea. It was, however, tested during Mr Trump's first term, and added to the arsenal. Mr Netanyahu has pressed for the United States to make its bunker busters available since the Bush Administration, so far to no avail. But people who have spoken to Mr Trump in recent months say the topic has come up repeatedly in his conversations with the Prime Minister. When Mr Trump has been asked about it, he usually avoids a direct answer. Now the pressure is on. Former Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, who resigned in a split with Mr Netanyahu, told CNN's Bianna Golodryga on Monday that 'the job has to be done, by Israel, by the United States,' an apparent reference to the fact that the bomb would have to be dropped by an American pilot in a US airplane. He said that Mr Trump had 'the option to change the Middle East and influence the world.' And Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., who often speaks for the traditional, hawkish members of his party, said on CBS on Sunday that 'if diplomacy is not successful' he will 'urge President Trump to go all in to make sure that, when this operation is over, there's nothing left standing in Iran regarding their nuclear program.' 'If that means providing bombs, provide bombs,' he said, adding, in a clear reference to the Massive Ordinance Penetrator, 'whatever bombs. If it means flying with Israel, fly with Israel.' But Republicans are hardly united in that view. And the split in the party over the decision of whether to make use of one of the Pentagon's most powerful conventional weapons to help one of America's closest allies has highlighted a far deeper divide. It is not only about crippling the centrifuges of Fordo; it is also about MAGA's view of what kinds of wars the United States should avoid at all costs. The anti-interventionist wing of the party, given its most prominent voice by influential podcaster Tucker Carlson, has argued that the lesson of Iraq and Afghanistan is that there is nothing but downside risk in getting deeply into another Middle East war. On Friday, Carlson wrote that the United States should 'drop Israel' and 'let them fight their own wars.' 'If Israel wants to wage this war, it has every right to do so,' he continued. 'It is a sovereign country, and it can do as it pleases. But not with America's backing.' At the Pentagon, opinion is divided for other reasons. Elbridge A. Colby, the undersecretary of defence for policy, the Pentagon's No. 3 post, has long argued that every military asset devoted to the wars of the Middle East is one diverted from the Pacific and the containment of China. (Mr Colby had to amend his views on Iran somewhat to get confirmed.) For now, Mr Trump can afford to keep one foot in both camps. By making one more run at coercive diplomacy, he can make the case to the MAGA faithful that he is using the threat of the Massive Ordnance Penetrator to bring the conflict to a peaceful end. And he can tell the Iranians that they are going to cease enriching uranium one way or the other, either by diplomatic agreement or because a GBU-57 imploded the mountain. But if the combination of persuasion and coercion fails, he will have to decide whether this is Israel's war or America's. This article originally appeared in The New York Times . © 2025 The New York Times Company
