Where There's Smoke, There's $244 Billion a Year in Damage
If any Canadian import should be tariffed out of existence, it's one that President Donald Trump couldn't tax even if he wanted to: wildfire smoke. Unfortunately, it's a product in increasing and borderless abundance across North America and the world, endangering lives and inflicting billions of dollars in economic damage every year.
In fact, a new study suggests wildfire smoke is a bigger threat to American health and prosperity than many other climate-change effects combined.
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CBS News
21 minutes ago
- CBS News
Steve Bannon calls for federal investigation into Musk after split with Trump
What are the potential implications of the fallout between President Trump and Elon Musk? Steve Bannon on Friday called for the Trump administration to investigate Elon Musk, whose brewing feud with the president became public Thursday in a series of escalating tit-for-tat social media posts. Bannon, a former White House chief strategist and an ally of President Trump, told CBS News that he wants the White House and Trump administration to probe alleged drug use by Musk, as well as the South African-native's immigration status. "They have to do that. You have to take his security clearance. Investigate drug use and investigate his involvement" with China, Bannon said in a phone interview. "And you have to investigate his status as a citizen." Bannon questioned whether Musk's path to citizenship was handled properly. "If it turned out he overstayed visas and lied about it, it's not right. It has to be investigated," Bannon said. Musk, the world's richest man, was at first a powerful voice in the White House, after spending some $277 million in support of Mr. Trump's election campaign. Mr. Trump lauded the cost-cutting efforts of the Musk-inspired Department of Government Efficiency during a March speech before Congress, but their relationship has since soured. Bannon now believes DOGE needs greater scrutiny from the administration. "Did they take data sets to feed into their AI model? This has to be investigated now. He's an unstable individual. What did DOGE do? What did DOGE find?" Bannon asked, saying it's a matter of "national security." Bannon has criticized Musk for years, claiming to CBS News in March 2023 that Musk was "owned by the Chinese Communist Party." In January, he called Musk "out of control." Bannon said Friday he is in "touch with the White House at many levels." His comments came the day after Mr. Trump and Musk's relationship broke down in a series of dramatic, public outbursts that erupted over Musk's withering criticisms of Republicans' tax and budget bill. The president said Musk "went CRAZY!" and threatened to cancel Musk's lucrative government contracts. Musk claimed that Mr. Trump could not have won the presidency without him, voiced support for impeachment and claimed the president's name appeared in files related to the case of Jeffrey Epstein, the deceased financier who died by suicide in federal custody in 2019 while facing charges of sex trafficking. Throughout the back and forth, Mr. Trump continued to defend the budget bill Musk opposes. "I don't mind Elon turning against me, but he should have done so months ago. This is one of the Greatest Bills ever presented to Congress," Mr. Trump posted on his social media site. contributed to this report.
Bloomberg
25 minutes ago
- Bloomberg
Musk Picks a Fight With the White House and Tesla Loses
After the world's least surprising blowup, we the people are reportedly to be treated to its least convincing truce. Investors in Tesla Inc., nominally run by Elon Musk, the chief-buddy-turned-chief-critic of President Donald Trump, are apparently relieved. The stock bounced in trading Friday after Thursday's epic slide took Tesla's value back below $1 trillion. There are relief rallies and there are delusion rallies. This one bears a striking resemblance to the latter. Tesla's valuation, largely an extension of Musk himself, has lately also become an extension of his relationship with Trump — which he has now trashed. Regardless of any bromides on Friday, the bust-up has laid bare the enumerable risks to which Tesla is exposed by Musk's politicking. And all this on the eve of its robotaxi launch, now relegated to a side show.
Yahoo
31 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Trump adds Ireland to trade ‘blacklist'
Donald Trump has added Ireland to the White House's official blacklist of countries for the nation's trade surplus with the US. Ireland joins fellow new entrant Switzerland in the US treasury's bad books, on a list that includes regular US targets including China, Japan, Germany, Vietnam and South Korea. Appearing on the watchlist puts Ireland, whose dominant industries are pharmaceuticals and technology, at the front of the queue of countries likely to attract Mr Trump's ire. If escalated, it can open the door to tariffs and other sanctions. The US president has previously singled out Ireland as a country whose trade surplus hurts the US economy. 'We do have a massive deficit with Ireland, because Ireland was very smart. They took our pharmaceutical companies away,' he told Micheál Martin, the Irish Taoiseach, in the Oval Office in March. He even considered putting a 200pc tariff on US pharmaceutical imports from Ireland. 'We don't want to do anything to hurt Ireland. We do want fairness,' he said. Ireland's goods exports to the US surged by 49pc in the first quarter of 2025 from the same period a year earlier, the country's statistics office reported this week, as exporters scrambled to get shipments off before any of Mr Trump's tariffs kicked in. The export surge fuelled a 9.7pc bounce in Ireland's GDP in the first quarter. Irish exports are under dire threat from Mr Trump's potential tariff of 50pc on goods imports from the EU. Dublin and other European capitals are now sweating on Brussels' negotiations with Washington to avoid this levy hitting the bloc in early July. On Friday, the German central bank warned that if the two sides did not strike a deal, Europe's biggest economy would remain mired in recession until 2027. German data issued on Friday showed a 1.4pc drop in factory output in April and a 10.3pc slump in German exports to the US from a month earlier, as pre-tariff, front-end loading of trans-Atlantic shipments came to a halt. The two sides' trade negotiators met in Paris this week. Maros Sefcovic, the EU trade commissioner, said afterwards that talks were 'advancing in the right direction at pace', while Jamieson Greer, the US trade representative, declared himself 'pleased that negotiations are advancing quickly'. They have slightly more than four weeks until the expiry of a 90-day pause on Mr Trump's tariffs on July 9. The president has frequently expressed hostility towards the EU over its trade policies, but was peaceable towards a visiting Friedrich Merz, the German chancellor, at a meeting in the Oval Office on Thursday. 'We'll end up hopefully with a trade deal,' he told reporters. 'I'm OK with the tariffs, or we make a deal with the trade.' The US treasury's report on Friday – a twice-yearly 'Monitoring List of major trading partners whose currency practices and macroeconomic policies merit close attention' – had some advice for both Germany and Ireland. Dublin was urged to focus on boosting activity in its domestic economy', to help Ireland 'address its over-reliance' on export-focused multinational companies. Berlin was told that Germany's unbalanced trade with the US was caused by German businesses and consumers failing to open their wallets and spend their savings.
