Trump's southern neighbour on how to weather his worst
New Zealand may be thousands of kilometres away from the United States, but at times that distance feels like precious little insulation from Donald Trump.
Spare a thought, then, for the United States' southern neighbour as it is buffeted by Trump's every decree.
'Whether it is economics, trade, border, migration, security, you name it – on every single one of the [issues where] Donald Trump has built his ethos, Mexico is right there in the middle,' international trade expert and former Mexican government official Juan Carlos Baker tells Newsroom.
Among the many 'moving pieces' that the country must keep its eye on, there is Trump's notorious border wall and associated American angst about illegal immigration, as well as concern about drug trafficking from the south.
Mexico has also been hit by the US President's tariff war, with Trump announcing 25 percent tariffs on almost all imports (along with those from Canada). The tariffs could be potentially devastating for the country's economy, which sends over 80 percent of its exports to the US and has millions of jobs, and hundreds of billions of dollars in foreign investment, at stake.
Yet there is agreement among most in Mexico that President Claudia Sheinbaum has been more or less successful in avoiding the most damaging consequences of the Trump administration's policies.
Midway through his first year back in the White House and the border hasn't collapsed; nor for that matter has Mexico's economy in the face of the Trump tariffs.
'I'm not saying that we are out of the woods: I'm just saying that if we remember the fears and the concerns that people had at the beginning of 2025, well, the consensus in Mexico is that none of those sort of apocalyptic scenarios have taken place.'
So what can Mexico teach New Zealand – and the world – about how to handle Trump?
Unlike some, Sheinbaum didn't rush to Washington to meet Trump, instead allowing some space for the reality of his decisions to sink in before offering up potentially unwise concessions.
'He's not rational and he doesn't take those gestures … as tokens of friendship – he sees all of those developments as people pledging to satisfy him, so we have to play the longer game.'
Juan Carlos Baker says we should take Donald Trump seriously, but not literally.
As Mexico's vice minister for foreign trade between 2016 and 2018, Baker had a front-row seat to Trump's first stint in the White House – a period arguably defined more by personality clashes than policy triumphs.
'He had never held any office, he had never been elected – not even to the city council, right? – and then suddenly he's president of the United States, so it took him some months to figure out what he could actually do and what he couldn't do.
'This time around, the learning curve is basically flat … he now knows the boundaries of his power.'
The use of executive orders provides just one example of what he has learned. Between 2017 and 2021, Trump signed a total of 220 such orders; not even six months into his second term, he has issued 163 and counting, supporting a narrative of a leader taking decisive action.
He is also taking those decisions with 'absolute disregard and contempt' for usual safeguards like Congress and the courts, and with far fewer people around who might be able to keep his worst impulses in check.
'The first time … he at least made some conscious efforts to pick people that were capable and intelligent and that helped him [land] the plane, so to speak.
'Now you see the Cabinet and the people that surround him, and it's all yes men or yes women – there's really no adults in the room.'
Despite that, Baker warns against viewing Trump as some all-powerful being, and says there is value in building bridges with other powerful figures who might be able to hold him to account. Politicians like California governor Gavin Newsom have already taken the President to task for his response to unrest in Los Angeles, while the courts have also shown a willingness to rule against key policies like his tariffs, whether or not he respects them.
It's also wise not to fixate too heavily on Trump's latest target, Baker says, given how quickly he can shift from topic to topic. As one diplomat friend told him, we should take the President seriously but not literally.
'He's going to talk, he's going to try to influence and win over the media cycle … [but] he will find something else to be entertained with in a few hours.'
Mexico President Claudia Sheinbaum appears to have avoided the worst-case scenarios for US-Mexico relations so far.
Yet with three and a half years of Trump's term left, and the economic importance of the US, Mexico can't wait him out, meaning the two countries will need to sit down and agree on the path ahead.
Among Mexico's likely red lines, Baker says, are any proposals that would require the country to breach its international commitments – such as withdrawing from the World Trade Organisation or its trade agreements like the CPTPP – or to artificially stunt its exports to address Trump's concern about trade deficits.
Countries like Mexico and New Zealand can act as 'honest brokers', helping to rally other countries in defence of rules and institutions, and against any attempts to dismantle them.
But countries must also continue discussions with the US and Trump, tempting though it may be to dismiss them as 'crazy' and focus efforts elsewhere.
'Someone has to talk to them, someone needs to really understand what's going through their mind. I'm not saying that we become an enabler of the US … but if you don't really know what is fueling their actions, how can you expect to offer alternatives?'
Can Trump and his team be encouraged to see sense – or are we on the verge of catastrophe? Baker is cautiously optimistic.
'We are already six months in, and the world hasn't disappeared. We're still here, and we just need to fine-tune a couple of things and let reality sink in, and we'll be able to turn the corner, I'm sure.'
Juan Carlos Baker and Sam Sachdeva are among the speakers at the NZ Institute of International Affairs' annual conference, taking place in Wellington on Tuesday 17 June
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On The West's War Against Iran
Article – Gordon Campbell The world needs to stop talking about Israels right to defend itself, & start talking about the worlds need to defend itself against Israel. Gaza, Lebanon, Iran….these have become the stepping stones in Israels plan to expand its rule, Clearly, the world needs to stop talking about Israel's right to defend itself, and start talking about the world's need to defend itself against Israel. Gaza, Lebanon, Iran….these have become the stepping stones in Israel's plan to expand its rule, unrivalled, over all the land between the river and the sea. Iran was on the cusp of making a nuclear weapon? Even the crackpot American Congresswoman politician Marjorie Taylor Greene has been un-impressed by that excuse, noting that Israel 'has been saying the same thing for the past 20 years'. Donald Trump's intelligence boss Tulsi Gabbard recently testified under oath to a Congressional hearing that Iran was not engaged in building a nuclear weapon: Trump's intelligence czar Tulsi Gabbard, another anti-war figure, testified in March that Iran is not building a nuclear weapon.'The IC [Intelligence Community] continues to assess that Iran is not building a nuclear weapon and Supreme Leader Khamenei has not authorized the nuclear weapons program he suspended in 2003,' Gabbard said, while noting, however, that Iran's enriched uranium stockpile is at its highest levels, unprecedented for a state without nuclear weapons. Iran is surrounded by enemies. Like North Korea, it may well regard having a nuclear weapon capability as its best self-defence against invasion. Yet even if one treated the nuclear enrichment- to-nuclear bomb progression as inevitable – which it wasn't – can Israel actually succeed in destroying Iran's well-protected nuclear facilities? Probably not. Not unless there is regime change in Teheran, which has long been the end purpose of Israel's aggression. Israel is unlikely to succeed in this aim, either. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has in recent days, called once again on the 'proud people of Iran' to stand up for their 'freedom from an evil and repressive regime.' As this Al Jazeera columnist has pointed out: The assumption that Iranians would simply do Israel's bidding as it bombs them relentlessly and unilaterally, seems akin to the notion that if Israel starves and exterminates the Palestinians in Gaza to the required extent, they would rise against Hamas and remove it from power. Even if one bought the notion that all the Iranian people have been waiting for is an Israeli strike to move against the regime, Al Jazeera says, such beliefs demonstrate a profound lack of understanding of the wider historical forces that shape Iranian politics: While many Iranians undoubtedly oppose the Islamic Republic, Iranians of all political persuasions are consistently 'patriotic', committed to supporting Iranian sovereignty and independence from any attempts by external elements to impose their agendas on their country. For that reason, any invading force should be careful about what would come in the wake of their initial 'victory.' Israel, the US and any puppets they install in power would face being mired for a generation in a war of resistance that would dwarf what happened in Iraq after the US invasion in 2003. Shades of 2003 Talking of 2003…Israel's decision to attack Iran (even while talks between the US and Iran on limiting Iran's nuclear ambitions were still happening in Oman) shares that equally cynical historical precedent. Back in March 2003, the US had used the 'weapons of mass destruction' excuse to justify its invasion of Iraq, an attack it launched even while the UN arms inspectors were still at work inside Iraq, looking for those mythical WMDs. Then as now, we are not talking about a pre-emptive war against an external existential threat. This is a war of aggression against a sovereign nation, and it is being waged by an expansionist Israel, with US approval and support. Israel would not have proceeded without getting a green light from the US, which began issuing travel advisories and moving its diplomats out of the region in the week before the attacks began. Beyond the US, Israel can always count on other Western nations to do next to nothing to halt its aggression, or to punish it in any significant way. All year, the West has been bending over backwards to avoid looking as though it is criticising Israel for its genocidal use of starvation as a weapon of war against the two million Palestinian civilian inhabitants of Gaza. For example: when the leaders of Canada, the UK, Australia and New Zealand announced sanctions against two extremist members of the Israeli Cabinet, the co-signing leaders made a truly pathetic distinction: These measures are directed at individuals who directly contribute to extremist settler violence,' said Canadian Foreign Minister Anita Anand. 'The measures are not directed against the state of Israel itself.' Right. So, what on earth would Israel have to do – and what would a collectively responsible Israeli Cabinet have to sign off on – before New Zealand could gather up the courage to impose sanctions on the state of Israel? To state the obvious…long ago, Israel went well past the point of proportionate retaliation for the Hamas terrorist actions of October 7,2023. Israel's subsequent actions in Gaza continue to be unfathomably cruel and evil. What mother or father, watching their sons and daughters being systematically starved to death before their eyes, would not risk crowding and jostling for the inadequate amounts of dried food (much of it useless without fuel or water) that is being dribbled out through a handful of privately-run US aid centres – and not through the far more extensive and competent UN aid facilities? Desperate Palestinians are being drawn by the hunger of their families into congregating outside these sham US aid centres, where scores of them are then being shot down by Israeli troops on a daily basis. Food is being used as a lethal magnet to facilitate further mass killings, while New Zealand – and the rest of the Western world- continue to urge both sides to show restraint. Ludicrously, we continue to call on Israel to abide by the norms of international law that the IDF has consistently flouted in Gaza for the past 18 months. Nearly 20,000 dead Palestinian children later, and with the surviving children being slowly and deliberately deprived of food and water, we are still imploring Israel to show restraint. Iran's bomb Reportedly, Israel's latest attacks targeted and killed Ali Shamkani, Iran's chief negotiator in the US-led nuclear containment talks in Oman. Israel has also killed at least six of Iran's leading nuclear scientists, including Fereidoun Abbas, the former head of Iran's Atomic Energy Association. (Back in 2010, Abbas had been seriously wounded when a motorcyclist detonated a magnetic bomb under his car.) Since 2010, Israel has been steadily murdering a succession of Iran nuclear scientists, who had been working on the country's development of nuclear energy in order to meet the country's long-term and entirely legitimate energy needs. Because of the potential that further nuclear enrichment might someday result in the development of a bomb, the Obama administration struck a deal in 2015 with the then-relatively liberal administration of Hassan Rouhani in Teheran. Under the terms of that 2015 deal, Iran agreed to desist from added enrichment, in return for economic sanctions being lifted, and for Iran being enabled to trade with the West. In the wake of this opening, a more democratic society might have been able to emerge in Iran. According to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspectors at the time, Iran lived up to its side of the bargain. America, however, did not. Once elected in 2016, Donald Trump immediately scrapped this deal, and imposed even heavier trade sanctions. By doing so, Trump fatally undermined Iran's political liberals, and confirmed the predictions made by the regime's hard-liners that the US could never be trusted. By scrapping the 2015 deal, Trump also forced Iran into an enduring dependence on China as the only major market for its oil. This entirely avoidable outcome gave China a reliable proxy state in the Middle East, and a platform for influence that it had never had before. Fast forward to this year. Nearly 10 years after Iran had restricted its nuclear ambitions in return for trade advantages that it never received, Trump was back again at the bargaining table in Oman – offering Iran what one critic called 'a dime-store version' of the same deal that Trump had torn up in 2016. Regardless, Iran continued to talk, while preparing for the Israeli attack that everyone knew was coming, whatever concessions Iran offered. Few will shed tears over the likely fall of the stupidly brutal and corrupt regime in Teheran, which lost its revolutionary lustre decades ago. For example: even on the cusp of the Israeli attack, the religious authorities in Teheran were engaged in a crackdown on ordinary citizens walking dogs in public, or riding with them in cars. Allegedly, a prayer said when one has a dog hair on one's clothing will not be effective. ( I'd love to know how this was tested.) To repeat: Iran will not be an easy conquest. The country has had long experience of being subjected to external aggression and to the rule of foreign-backed puppets. For example, a US/UK funded coup in 1953 toppled the democratically elected Mossadegh government, and brought the Shah to power. As mentioned above, if Iran's current government is overthrown by external forces it will be extremely difficult to govern, given the underground resistance that will surely flourish in the wake of any foreign-led regime change. Ironically…who might the US and Israel like to install as the ruler of a newly 'democratic' Iran? That amenable puppet could well be the 65 year old Reza Pahlavi, the eldest son of the Shah deposed in 1979. The more things are changed in Iran, the more they are likely to stay the same. Footnote: Meanwhile, back in Gaza: to discredit and divide support for Hamas, the Israelis have reportedly armed and assisted a criminal Palestinian militia led by a Rafah resident called Yasser Abu Shabab. Reportedly, this gangster chief and his roughly 100 armed followers have – apparently with Israel's blessing – been looting aid convoys. and re-selling the food at a profit. Footnote Two: The media coverage of the Iran/Israel conflict to date has, as usual, been heavily weighted in favour of reportage from the Israeli side of the conflict. Extensive sympathetic coverage is being extended to Israeli citizens – and to embedded Western media – sheltering under Israel's extensive Iron Dome missile defence system. As well, Israelis are reportedly getting phone warnings of incoming Iranian missiles in time to move into bomb shelters that are – also, reportedly- well stocked with food and water. The citizens of Iran have no such luck – which may explain why their death toll is currently running at nearly 20 times higher – and they are certainly not getting such sympathetic treatment from our media. Al Jazeera, again: The Iranian Health Ministry said early Monday that at least 224 people have been killed, 90 percent of them civilians, and 1,481 wounded since Israel attacked Iran. Dozens of women and children were among the dead. So it goes. In the Middle East, they seem to be chronically unwilling/unable to give more than fleeting air time at best, to non-Israeli/US voices. Even the liberal voices on Israel's Ha'aretz news service are rarely called upon. True, foreign media have been barred by the IDF from entering Gaza. Yet, as this columnist in the Independent newspaper recently pointed out, it probably wouldn't have made much difference to the coverage, anyway: The truth is the coverage would have looked much as it has done for more than a year and a half, with Israel dictating the story lines, with Israel's denials foregrounded, with Israel's claims of Hamas 'terrorists' in every hospital, school, bakery, university, and refugee camp used to justify the destruction and slaughter. British doctors volunteering in Gaza who have told us there were no Hamas fighters in the hospitals they worked in, or anyone armed apart from the Israeli soldiers that shot up their medical facilities, would not be more believed because Jeremy Bowen interviewed them in Khan Younis rather than Richard Madeley in a London studio.
Scoop
2 hours ago
- Scoop
The West's War Against Iran
Clearly, the world needs to stop talking about Israel's right to defend itself, and start talking about the world's need to defend itself against Israel. Gaza, Lebanon, have become the stepping stones in Israel's plan to expand its rule, unrivalled, over all the land between the river and the sea. Iran was on the cusp of making a nuclear weapon? Even the crackpot American Congresswoman politician Marjorie Taylor Greene has been un-impressed by that excuse, noting that Israel 'has been saying the same thing for the past 20 years'. Donald Trump's intelligence boss Tulsi Gabbard recently testified under oath to a Congressional hearing that Iran was not engaged in building a nuclear weapon: Trump's intelligence czar Tulsi Gabbard, another anti-war figure, testified in March that Iran is not building a nuclear weapon.'The IC [Intelligence Community] continues to assess that Iran is not building a nuclear weapon and Supreme Leader Khamenei has not authorized the nuclear weapons program he suspended in 2003,' Gabbard said, while noting, however, that Iran's enriched uranium stockpile is at its highest levels, unprecedented for a state without nuclear weapons. Iran is surrounded by enemies. Like North Korea, it may well regard having a nuclear weapon capability as its best self-defence against invasion. Yet even if one treated the nuclear enrichment- to-nuclear bomb progression as inevitable – which it wasn't - can Israel actually succeed in destroying Iran's well-protected nuclear facilities? Probably not. Not unless there is regime change in Teheran, which has long been the end purpose of Israel's aggression. Israel is unlikely to succeed in this aim, either. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has in recent days, called once again on the 'proud people of Iran' to stand up for their 'freedom from an evil and repressive regime.' As this Al Jazeera columnist has pointed out: The assumption that Iranians would simply do Israel's bidding as it bombs them relentlessly and unilaterally, seems akin to the notion that if Israel starves and exterminates the Palestinians in Gaza to the required extent, they would rise against Hamas and remove it from power. Even if one bought the notion that all the Iranian people have been waiting for is an Israeli strike to move against the regime, Al Jazeera says, such beliefs demonstrate a profound lack of understanding of the wider historical forces that shape Iranian politics: While many Iranians undoubtedly oppose the Islamic Republic, Iranians of all political persuasions are consistently 'patriotic', committed to supporting Iranian sovereignty and independence from any attempts by external elements to impose their agendas on their country. For that reason, any invading force should be careful about what would come in the wake of their initial 'victory.' Israel, the US and any puppets they install in power would face being mired for a generation in a war of resistance that would dwarf what happened in Iraq after the US invasion in 2003. Shades of 2003 Talking of decision to attack Iran (even while talks between the US and Iran on limiting Iran's nuclear ambitions were still happening in Oman) shares that equally cynical historical precedent. Back in March 2003, the US had used the 'weapons of mass destruction' excuse to justify its invasion of Iraq, an attack it launched even while the UN arms inspectors were still at work inside Iraq, looking for those mythical WMDs. Then as now, we are not talking about a pre-emptive war against an external existential threat. This is a war of aggression against a sovereign nation, and it is being waged by an expansionist Israel, with US approval and support. Israel would not have proceeded without getting a green light from the US, which began issuing travel advisories and moving its diplomats out of the region in the week before the attacks began. Beyond the US, Israel can always count on other Western nations to do next to nothing to halt its aggression, or to punish it in any significant way. All year, the West has been bending over backwards to avoid looking as though it is criticising Israel for its genocidal use of starvation as a weapon of war against the two million Palestinian civilian inhabitants of Gaza. For example: when the leaders of Canada, the UK, Australia and New Zealand announced sanctions against two extremist members of the Israeli Cabinet, the co-signing leaders made a truly pathetic distinction: These measures are directed at individuals who directly contribute to extremist settler violence," said Canadian Foreign Minister Anita Anand. 'The measures are not directed against the state of Israel itself." Right. So, what on earth would Israel have to do – and what would a collectively responsible Israeli Cabinet have to sign off on - before New Zealand could gather up the courage to impose sanctions on the state of Israel? To state the ago, Israel went well past the point of proportionate retaliation for the Hamas terrorist actions of October 7,2023. Israel's subsequent actions in Gaza continue to be unfathomably cruel and evil. What mother or father, watching their sons and daughters being systematically starved to death before their eyes, would not risk crowding and jostling for the inadequate amounts of dried food (much of it useless without fuel or water) that is being dribbled out through a handful of privately-run US aid centres – and not through the far more extensive and competent UN aid facilities? Desperate Palestinians are being drawn by the hunger of their families into congregating outside these sham US aid centres, where scores of them are then being shot down by Israeli troops on a daily basis. Food is being used as a lethal magnet to facilitate further mass killings, while New Zealand – and the rest of the Western world- continue to urge both sides to show restraint. Ludicrously, we continue to call on Israel to abide by the norms of international law that the IDF has consistently flouted in Gaza for the past 18 months. Nearly 20,000 dead Palestinian children later, and with the surviving children being slowly and deliberately deprived of food and water, we are still imploring Israel to show restraint. Iran's bomb Reportedly, Israel's latest attacks targeted and killed Ali Shamkani, Iran's chief negotiator in the US-led nuclear containment talks in Oman. Israel has also killed at least six of Iran's leading nuclear scientists, including Fereidoun Abbas, the former head of Iran's Atomic Energy Association. (Back in 2010, Abbas had been seriously wounded when a motorcyclist detonated a magnetic bomb under his car.) Since 2010, Israel has been steadily murdering a succession of Iran nuclear scientists, who had been working on the country's development of nuclear energy in order to meet the country's long-term and entirely legitimate energy needs. Because of the potential that further nuclear enrichment might someday result in the development of a bomb, the Obama administration struck a deal in 2015 with the then-relatively liberal administration of Hassan Rouhani in Teheran. Under the terms of that 2015 deal, Iran agreed to desist from added enrichment, in return for economic sanctions being lifted, and for Iran being enabled to trade with the West. In the wake of this opening, a more democratic society might have been able to emerge in Iran. According to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspectors at the time, Iran lived up to its side of the bargain. America, however, did not. Once elected in 2016, Donald Trump immediately scrapped this deal, and imposed even heavier trade sanctions. By doing so, Trump fatally undermined Iran's political liberals, and confirmed the predictions made by the regime's hard-liners that the US could never be trusted. By scrapping the 2015 deal, Trump also forced Iran into an enduring dependence on China as the only major market for its oil. This entirely avoidable outcome gave China a reliable proxy state in the Middle East, and a platform for influence that it had never had before. Fast forward to this year. Nearly 10 years after Iran had restricted its nuclear ambitions in return for trade advantages that it never received, Trump was back again at the bargaining table in Oman – offering Iran what one critic called 'a dime-store version' of the same deal that Trump had torn up in 2016. Regardless, Iran continued to talk, while preparing for the Israeli attack that everyone knew was coming, whatever concessions Iran offered. Few will shed tears over the likely fall of the stupidly brutal and corrupt regime in Teheran, which lost its revolutionary lustre decades ago. For example: even on the cusp of the Israeli attack, the religious authorities in Teheran were engaged in a crackdown on ordinary citizens walking dogs in public, or riding with them in cars. Allegedly, a prayer said when one has a dog hair on one's clothing will not be effective. ( I'd love to know how this was tested.) To repeat: Iran will not be an easy conquest. The country has had long experience of being subjected to external aggression and to the rule of foreign-backed puppets. For example, a US/UK funded coup in 1953 toppled the democratically elected Mossadegh government, and brought the Shah to power. As mentioned above, if Iran's current government is overthrown by external forces it will be extremely difficult to govern, given the underground resistance that will surely flourish in the wake of any foreign-led regime change. might the US and Israel like to install as the ruler of a newly 'democratic' Iran? That amenable puppet could well be the 65 year old Reza Pahlavi, the eldest son of the Shah deposed in 1979. The more things are changed in Iran, the more they are likely to stay the same. Footnote: Meanwhile, back in Gaza: to discredit and divide support for Hamas, the Israelis have reportedly armed and assisted a criminal Palestinian militia led by a Rafah resident called Yasser Abu Shabab. Reportedly, this gangster chief and his roughly 100 armed followers have – apparently with Israel's blessing - been looting aid convoys. and re-selling the food at a profit. Footnote Two: The media coverage of the Iran/Israel conflict to date has, as usual, been heavily weighted in favour of reportage from the Israeli side of the conflict. Extensive sympathetic coverage is being extended to Israeli citizens – and to embedded Western media – sheltering under Israel's extensive Iron Dome missile defence system. As well, Israelis are reportedly getting phone warnings of incoming Iranian missiles in time to move into bomb shelters that are - also, reportedly- well stocked with food and water. The citizens of Iran have no such luck – which may explain why their death toll is currently running at nearly 20 times higher - and they are certainly not getting such sympathetic treatment from our media. Al Jazeera, again: The Iranian Health Ministry said early Monday that at least 224 people have been killed, 90 percent of them civilians, and 1,481 wounded since Israel attacked Iran. Dozens of women and children were among the dead. So it goes. In the Middle East, they seem to be chronically unwilling/unable to give more than fleeting air time at best, to non-Israeli/US voices. Even the liberal voices on Israel's Ha'aretz news service are rarely called upon. True, foreign media have been barred by the IDF from entering Gaza. Yet, as this columnist in the Independent newspaper recently pointed out, it probably wouldn't have made much difference to the coverage, anyway: The truth is the coverage would have looked much as it has done for more than a year and a half, with Israel dictating the story lines, with Israel's denials foregrounded, with Israel's claims of Hamas 'terrorists' in every hospital, school, bakery, university, and refugee camp used to justify the destruction and slaughter. British doctors volunteering in Gaza who have told us there were no Hamas fighters in the hospitals they worked in, or anyone armed apart from the Israeli soldiers that shot up their medical facilities, would not be more believed because Jeremy Bowen interviewed them in Khan Younis rather than Richard Madeley in a London studio.
NZ Herald
3 hours ago
- NZ Herald
Prominent Samoan fashion designer shot and killed at protest in Utah
A prominent Samoan fashion designer who was shot at a protest against US President Donald Trump in Utah's capital has died. AFP have reported Arthur 'Afa' Folasa Ah Loo, 39, was shot at the Salt Lake City 'No Kings' protest yesterday, after a 24-year-old man brandished an AR-15-style semi-automatic rifle,
