Latest news with #Trumpian
Straits Times
5 hours ago
- Politics
- Straits Times
How real is Trump's U-turn on Ukraine?
The reversal is significant given the US President's previous views on Putin, but the sanctions grace period and Trumpian fickleness are reasons for caution. For the first time since he returned to power, US President Donald Trump is now explicitly blaming Russia for the continuation of Europe's bloodiest conflict since World War II. 'We want to make sure Ukraine can do what it wants to do.' That statement from US President Donald Trump on July 14 marked a U-turn on his previous position on support for the Ukrainians , locked in a brutal, bloody war against Russian invaders, now in its fourth year. In typical Trump fashion, the remarks made at a White House meeting with Nato secretary-general Mark Rutte were both imprecise and an exaggeration. It is still far from clear how much in terms of weapons and money Mr Trump is willing to contribute to Ukraine's war against Russia. And it's doubtful that the American President truly intends to give the Ukrainians a free hand to decide their future.
Los Angeles Times
16 hours ago
- Health
- Los Angeles Times
Stephen Miller says Americans will live better lives without immigrants. He's blowing smoke
Stephen Miller, the front man for Donald Trump's deportation campaign against immigrants, took to the airwaves the other day to explain why native-born Americans will just love living in a world cleansed of undocumented workers. 'What would Los Angeles look like without illegal aliens?' he asked on Fox News. 'Here's what it would look like: You would be able to see a doctor in the emergency room right away, no wait time, no problems. Your kids would go to a public school that had more money than they know what to do with. Classrooms would be half the size. Students who have special needs would get all the attention that they needed. ... There would be no fentanyl, there would be no drug deaths.' Etc., etc. No one can dispute that the world Miller described on Fox would be a paradise on Earth. No waiting at the ER? School districts flush with cash? No drug deaths? But that doesn't obscure that pretty much every word Miller uttered was fiction. The gist of Miller's spiel — in fact, the worldview that he has been espousing for years — is that 'illegal aliens' are responsible for all those ills, and exclusively responsible. It's nothing but a Trumpian fantasy. Let's take a look, starting with overcrowding at the ER. The issue has been the focus of numerous studies and surveys. Overwhelmingly, they conclude that undocumented immigration is irrelevant to ER overcrowding. In fact, immigrants generally and undocumented immigrants in particular are less likely to get their healthcare at the emergency room than native-born Americans. In California, according to a 2014 study from UCLA, 'one in five U.S.-born adults visits the ER annually, compared with roughly one in 10 undocumented adults — approximately half the rate of U.S.-born residents.' Among the reasons, explained Nadereh Pourat, the study's lead author and director of research at the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research, was fear of being asked to provide documents. The result is that undocumented individuals avoid seeking any healthcare until they become critically ill. The UCLA study found that undocumented immigrants' average number of doctor visits per year was lower than for other cohorts: 2.3 for children and 1.7 for adults, compared with 2.8 doctor visits for U.S.-born children and 3.2 for adults. ER overcrowding is an issue of long standing in the U.S., but it's not the result of an influx of undocumented immigrants. It's due to a confluence of other factors, including the tendency of even insured patients to use the ER as a primary care center, presenting with complicated or chronic ailments for which ER medicine is not well-suited. While caseloads at emergency departments have surged, their capacities are shrinking. According to a 2007 report by the National Academy of Sciences, from 1993 to 2003 the U.S. population grew by 12%, hospital admissions by 13% and ER visits by 26%. 'Not only is [emergency department] volume increasing, but patients coming to the ED are older and sicker and require more complex and time-consuming workups and treatments,' the report observed. 'During this same period, the United States experienced a net loss of 703 hospitals, 198,000 hospital beds, and 425 hospital EDs, mainly in response to cost-cutting measures.' President Trump's immigration policies during his first term suppressed the use of public healthcare facilities by undocumented immigrants and their families. The key policy was the administration's tightening of the 'public charge' rule, which applies to those seeking admission to the United States or hoping to upgrade their immigration status. The rule, which has been part of U.S. immigration policy for more than a century, allowed immigration authorities to deny entry — or deny citizenship applications of green card holders — to anyone judged to become a recipient of public assistance such as welfare (today known chiefly as Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, or TANF) or other cash assistance programs. Until Trump, healthcare programs such as Medicaid, nutrition programs such as food stamps, and subsidized housing programs weren't part of the public charge test. Even before Trump implemented the change but after a draft version leaked out, clinics serving immigrant communities across California and nationwide detected a marked drop off in patients. A clinic on the edge of Boyle Heights in Los Angeles that had been serving 12,000 patients, I reported in 2018, saw monthly patient enrollments fall by about one-third after Trump's 2016 election, and an additional 25% after the leak. President Biden rescinded the Trump rule within weeks of taking office. Undocumented immigrants are sure to be less likely to access public healthcare services, such as those available at emergency rooms, as a result of Trump's rescinding 'sensitive location' restrictions on immigration agents that had been in effect at least since 2011. That policy barred almost all immigration enforcement actions at schools, places of worship, funerals and weddings, public marches or rallies, and hospitals. Trump rescinded the policy on inauguration day in January. The goal was for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, agents 'to make substantial efforts to avoid unnecessarily alarming local communities,' agency officials stated. Today, as public shows of force and public raids by ICE have demonstrated, instilling alarm in local communities appears to be the goal. The change in the sensitive locations policy has prompted hospital and ER managers to establish formal procedures for staff confronted with the arrival of immigration agents. A model policy drafted by the Emergency Medicine Residents Assn. says staff should request identification and a warrant or other document attesting to the need for the presence of agents. It urges staff to determine whether the agents are enforcing a judicial warrant (signed by a judge) or administrative warrant (issued by ICE). The latter doesn't grant agents access to private hospital areas such as patient rooms or operating areas. What about school funding? Is Miller right to assert that mass deportations will free up a torrent of funding and cutting class sizes in half? He doesn't know what he's talking about. Most school funding in California and most other places is based on attendance. In California, the number of immigrant children in the schools was 189,634 last year. The total K-12 population was 5,837,700, making the immigrant student body 3.25% of the total. Not half. In the Los Angeles Unified School District, the estimated 30,000 children from immigrant families amounted to about 7.35% of last year's enrollment of 408,083. Also not half. With the deportation of immigrant children, the schools would lose whatever federal funding was attached to their attendance. Schools nationwide receive enhanced federal funding for English learners and other immigrants. That money, presumably, would disappear if the pupils go. What Miller failed to mention on Fox is the possible impact of the Trump administration's determination to shutter the Department of Education, placing billions of dollars of federal funding at risk. California receives more than $16 billion a year in federal aid to K-12 schools through that agency. Disabled students are at heightened risk of being deprived of resources if the agency is dismantled. Then there's fentanyl. The Trump administration's claim that undocumented immigrants are major players in this crisis appears to be just another example of its scapegoating of immigrants. The vast majority of fentanyl-related criminal convictions — nearly 90% — are of U.S. citizens. The rest included both legally present and undocumented immigrants. (The statistics comes from the U.S. Sentencing Commission.) In other words, deport every immigrant in the United States, and you still won't have made a dent in fentanyl trafficking, much less eliminate all drug deaths. What are we to make of Miller's spiel about L.A.? At one level, it's echt Miller: The portrayal of the city as a putative hellscape, larded with accusations of complicity between the city leadership and illegal immigrants — 'the leaders in Los Angeles have formed an alliance with the cartels and criminal aliens,' he said, with zero pushback from his Fox News interlocutor. At another level, it's a malevolent expression of white privilege. In Miller's ideology, the only obstacles to the return to a drug-free world of frictionless healthcare and abundantly financed education are immigrants. This ideology depends on the notion that immigrants are raiding the public purse by sponging on public services. The fact is that most undocumented immigrants aren't eligible for most such services. They can't enroll in Medicare, receive premium subsidies under the Affordable Care Act, or collect Social Security or Medicare benefits (though typically they submit falsified Social Security numbers to employers, so payments for the program are deducted from their paychecks). A 2013 study by the libertarian Cato Institute found that low-income immigrants use public benefits for which they're eligible, such as food stamps, 'at a lower rate than native-born low-income residents.' If there's an impulse underlying the anti-immigrant project directed by Miller other than racism, it's hard to detect. Federal Judge Maame Ewusi-Mensah Frimpong, who last week blocked federal agents from using racial profiling to carry out indiscriminate immigration arrests in Los Angeles, ruled that during their 'roving patrols' in Los Angeles, ICE agents detained individuals principally because of their race, that they were overheard speaking Spanish or accented English, that they were doing work associated with undocumented immigrants, or were in locations frequented by undocumented immigrants seeking day work. Miller goes down the same road as ICE — indeed, by all accounts, he's the motivating spirit behind the L.A. raids. Because he can't justify the raids, he has ginned up a fantasy of immigrants disrupting our healthcare and school programs, and the corollary fantasy that evicting them all will produce an Earthly paradise for the rest of us. Does anybody really believe that?
New Statesman
21 hours ago
- Politics
- New Statesman
Trump is serious about getting tough on Putin. No, really.
Photo byDonald Trump appears, belatedly, to be reaching the conclusion that Vladimir Putin cannot be entirely trusted. 'We get a lot of bullshit thrown at us by Putin, if you want to know the truth,' he remarked during a cabinet meeting last week (8 July). 'He's very nice to us all the time, but it turns out to be meaningless.' He expanded on that theme during a meeting with Nato secretary-general Mark Rutte in the Oval Office on 14 July, where the US president was expected to deliver a 'major announcement' on Russia. After speaking to Putin on the phone, he said, 'I always hang up and say, well that was a nice phone call, and then missiles are launched into Kyiv or some other city, and I say, 'strange.' And after that happens three or four times, you say, 'the talk doesn't mean anything.'' Even the first lady, Melania Trump, had noted the discrepancy between his 'lovely' phone conversations with Putin and the devastating war he is waging against Ukraine. 'I go home, I tell the first lady, 'you know I spoke to Vladimir today, we had a wonderful conversation,'' Trump recounted. 'She said, 'oh, really? Another city was just hit.'' Since returning to power in January – whereupon he had promised to end the war within 24 hours – Trump had believed a peace deal with Putin was within reach 'about four times,' he opined, 'but it just keeps going on and on and on.' With this pattern so clearly established and Putin so demonstrably uninterested in serious peace talks, there was growing anticipation in Washington that Trump was about to signal a radically new approach. Perhaps the major announcement would turn out to be an unequivocal declaration of support for Ukraine and a commitment to pass the bipartisan sanctions package that is currently gathering momentum in the senate and would impose a 500 percent tariff on countries that buy Russian oil and uranium (such as China and India). Fool Trump four times, one might think, and, to quote George W. Bush, 'you can't get fooled again.' To be fair, Trump did announce that Ukraine would now receive the air defence systems and other crucial weaponry that Volodymyr Zelensky has repeatedly requested – and which his own administration had previously suspended – which is unequivocally good news for Kyiv. Although he was characteristically vague on the details of what, exactly, would be sent. 'Everything. It's Patriots [the US-made missile defence system]. It's all of them,' Trump said as Rutte nodded along encouragingly. The one detail he did want to stress was that the US would not be paying for them. Instead, they would be sending the weapons to Nato, where 'rich' European countries would apparently foot the bill, and then send the weapons on to Ukraine. 'This is really big,' Rutte interjected, demonstrating, once again, his fluency in Trumpian rhetoric and his apparent comfort with public acts of self-abasement in an attempt to secure the US president's support for European security. (During their previous meeting, Rutte referred to Trump as 'Daddy.') 'This is Europeans stepping up.' If he was Putin, Rutte suggested, he would now be left with little choice but to take these negotiations 'more seriously.' Subscribe to The New Statesman today from only £8.99 per month Subscribe Alas, this is an unlikely outcome. Far from offering a stirring invocation of the need for Ukraine to prevail and Washington's unending commitment to standing with Europe against Russian aggression, Trump repeatedly distanced himself from the war. 'This is a Biden war. This is a Democrat war,' he said. 'Not a Republican or Trump war.' 'This is not Trump's,' he stressed again as he answered reporters' questions. 'We're here to get it finished and stopped.' Twice, he pointed out, 'they're not Americans dying,' noting that he and 'JD [Vance]' have a 'problem' with the war, which they had both campaigned on a promise to bring to an expedited end. 'There are no winners here,' Trump concluded, as though he was surveying a bad real estate deal. 'This is a loser.' His comments did not exactly signal robust support. As for the senate's sanctions package, which is being touted in DC as a 'sledgehammer' that will enable Trump to end the conflict, the president himself sounded noncommittal, offering only that it was 'good that they're doing it.' Instead, he promised to impose 'very severe tariffs if we don't have a deal in 50 days.' Those tariffs would be set 'at about 100 percent,' Trump said, calling them 'secondary tariffs' but offering no further details as to what this meant. (Secondary sanctions are generally imposed on third countries trading with a targeted nation, so this could mean imposing 100 percent tariffs on US imports from countries that trade with Russia, but it is not clear.) Asked how much further he was prepared to go if Putin continued to escalate his attacks on Ukraine, which has been subjected in recent weeks to the heaviest aerial bombardment since the start of the war as the Russian military, Trump responded: 'Don't ask me a question like that.' For all the dramatic billing, the problem with Trump's latest strategy is that it is essentially the same strategy that he has already tried. He is threatening Putin with very serious consequences if he doesn't end the war, while signalling that he, personally, and the US in general, has no real interest in that war beyond ensuring that 'we get it finished.' Agreeing to continue supplying Ukraine with the weapons it needs to defend itself, or at least to sell those weapons to Nato, is better than the alternative for Kyiv and allows the Ukrainian military to keep fighting, but it is not the same as committing meaningful funds and political capital to ensure Ukraine's survival against the Russian onslaught and European security. Trump has the votes to pass a massive new military aid package in congress immediately if he so desires. Evidently, he does not. There is no doubt that Trump's tone on Putin has decidedly soured in recent days. Perhaps he is genuinely reconsidering his previously admiring assessment of the Russian president, and a more consequential policy shift will eventually follow. But for now, he is choosing to respond to Putin's habitual obfuscation and clear track record of stringing him along by giving him another chance – this time another 50 days – to mend his ways, and warning that this time is really serious about getting tough. Perhaps the fifth time will turn out to be the charm, and Putin will now be persuaded to enter serious negotiations and call an end to his assault. But it is more likely that he will interpret Trump's announcement as giving him another 50 days to bombard Ukraine and grind forward on the battlefield, where he believes the Russian military has the upper hand, albeit at a glacial pace and tremendous cost. Tellingly, the Russian stock market rose after Trump's announcement. Moscow, it seems, was bracing for much worse. [See also: Putin's endgame] Related
Economic Times
2 days ago
- Business
- Economic Times
Aditya Khemka on US tariff threat over pharma and what to bet on there
Live Events You Might Also Like: Markets in pause mode as tariff uncertainty lingers: Sudip Bandyopadhyay You Might Also Like: View: India has negotiated well with Trumpian policy, but it may have to take a stand soon (You can now subscribe to our (You can now subscribe to our ETMarkets WhatsApp channel , Fund Manager,, says a possible 200% tariff looms over pharma exports to the US though investors are currently not reacting to the proposed tariff. Pharma companies exporting to the US may face earnings downside. InCred Asset Management avoids US-facing generic companies which may face earnings challenges in the next two years. On the other hand, Khemka likes domestic pharma companies with strong brands are experiencing double-digit growth and are using their cash flow wisely to create more inorganic growth opportunities for themselves. He also likes asset-light hospital companiesEntresto is a very key product for Divi's, and will be a substantial part of their earnings. Once Entresto goes generic, some of those earnings will evaporate. But let us not forget Divi's has done a substantial amount of capex over the last four-five years and that capex probably still has some steam left in terms of monetisation. As and when the incremental capex gets monetised, the earning growth might still not be a challenge for Divi' said that, from a valuation standpoint, we are very cautious on stocks like Divi's where valuations are overstretched compared to their historical averages. These stocks are trading 40-50% higher than their historical average valuation multiples and we will continue to sit out this one. For us the downside seems to be higher than the upside and hence we are not owning the it was 25% and then it is 200%, I do not think investors at this point are paying any heed to the tariff percentage that the Trump administration is talking about. It remains to be seen if they will at all have any kind of tariffs on the pharmaceutical space. These may be more of an arm-twisting tactic and the Street sees it as a sort of an arm twisting tactic and realistically they may not end up imposing any kind of said that, if you look at the pharma companies that export to the US, even if some tariff is imposed, then there is a significant downside to the earnings of these pharma companies and that means higher risks for an investor in the space. We at InCred Asset Management, do not hold any US generic companies or companies that sell to US markets substantially and hence our portfolio is relatively immune to this kind of a yes, I agree that earnings are at risk. We do not know what percentage tariffs can come out. It can be 20%, it can be 200%, it can be zero for all we know. But the risk in these stocks have definitely gone up. I have not seen the reward going the US generic stocks, earnings for the next two years will be a challenge. Many of these companies have got g-Revlimid, others have got other interesting products that they have launched over the last two years and these products will get incremental competition in 2026 or 2027. Hence, earning growth for the majority of these stocks will be a challenge. We are looking at single-digit CAGR numbers in terms of earnings from here and hence the valuation multiples that these stocks trade do not justify that kind of an earnings growth and we will definitely see some downside in these stocks if the earnings growth is in single the broader US generic space, we are very cautious and pessimistic on the outlook. In the domestic pharma space though average growth is in single digit, the good pharma companies, the pharma companies with good brand presence are growing in double digits and using their cash flow judiciously to acquire smaller companies and add inorganic growth on top of it. So, we remain bullish on those companies that are more focused on India, the branded market, and are using their cash flow wisely to create more inorganic growth opportunities for Indian diagnostic market is growing at 10% at a market level and then 85% of the diagnostic market is unorganised. So, I would say there is more and enough space for competition to come in. We have already seen Tata 1mg, Reliance Netmeds, come in and do this online discounted pricing model that Amazon will probably try now, but it does not work that well in the diagnostic space or in the healthcare space broadly speaking because healthcare is a matter of trust, matter of presence, matter of brand which cannot be built overnight, which cannot be justified by over companies that are format companies that we own, will continue to do well regardless of how many new entrants come in on the online format because the online format one lacks the trust of the patient and the doctor and two, there is more than enough space for each and every player to come and sort of get share from the unorganised players given that only 15% of the market is organised and 85% of the market is has to be very stock specific. Max Healthcare trades at 100 times trailing cash flow. Apollo is trading at 60 times trailing cash flow. Whereas Healthcare Global, is 24-25 times trailing cash flow. So, I cannot really make a statement on the entire hospital space because each individual hospital stock has a different valuation metric and is at a different spectrum altogether in terms of those valuation metrics.I would rather summarise that we are very gung-ho on the hospital space. India has a lot of scope for hospitals to grow, especially when they follow the asset light model where they lease the land and building and they do not really own the land and building. So, there is a lot of space to grow. But there are certain hospital stocks that are very expensive and may not make money for investors in the medium term. Then, there are also extremely cheap hospital stocks which can make a substantial amount of money for investors over the next three to four years.
New York Post
5 days ago
- Business
- New York Post
Tesla's feckless board needs to rein in Elon Musk before it's too late
Shares of Tesla are up around 190% during the past five years, almost double that of the S&P 500, which has given its CEO, the voluble and volatile, Elon Musk a lot of room to flout convention. The board of the publicly-traded EV company technically works for its shareholders and because of that share price, it has allowed Musk to smoke pot on a podcast, thumb his nose at securities regulators, juggle multiple outside business interests, sell Tesla stock to buy Twitter, become President Trump's 'first buddy,' spend lots of time tweeting, and now — maybe —to start a new political party. I say 'maybe' because Elon's latest side hustle could be where he's gone too far, corporate governance experts and investors tell On The Money. Elon's latest side hustle could be where he's gone too far, corporate governance experts and investors say. Jack Forbes / NY Post Design Elon says he wants to start a new political party dedicated (at least according to a reading of his social media feed) to fiscal discipline, which he believes is missing from the two major parties that currently exist. This latest venture comes after he spent time and millions of dollars getting Donald Trump elected president, working in the White House in its cost-cutting efforts known as DOGE, then famously falling out with Trump over the president's failure to deliver meaningful cuts in his 'Big Beautiful Budget' that still produces a $2 trillion-plus annual deficit. On The Money will leave the merits of his Trumpian tensions and the need for a third-party dedicated to reigning in our obviously perilous fiscal largesse for another column and will instead focus on whether Musk's latest foray could land him in legal peril. The answer according to these people is yes. Finally, Musk might have to conform to some semblance of what is generally regarded as normal behavior for a CEO running a public company. I know what you're saying, why is starting a political party worse than everything else Musk has done? And why would a board known for its acquiescences to an imperial CEO finally grow a pair and exert its legal responsibility as fiduciaries for shareholders? Recall Musk's prior antics were taking place while Tesla's shares were exploding in value, beating every metric as the EV car company became a symbol of the future for transportation. Tesla, from an operational standpoint, looked like a well-oiled machine, hitting its production targets and growing profits. Trump and Musk sit in a Tesla at the White House in March. AFP via Getty Images That was before Musk joined the Trump White House and became a political target, dragging Tesla along with him. The radical left vandalized Tesla dealerships, which is a law enforcement matter. The real problem was that Musk alienated Tesla customers, much of them left-leaning environmentalists who ride EVs as a political statement, and profits nosedived. While Musk was spending so much time in the White House, Tesla has been missing delivery targets; it's placing a big bet on autonomous cars, but that could deprive its staple EV of much needed R&D. The Big Beautiful Bill cuts EV subsidies, which Trump believes is at the heart of their feud, but now that their relationship keeps souring, Tesla could lose other forms of government support. Charlie Gasparino has his finger on the pulse of where business, politics and finance meet Sign up to receive On The Money by Charlie Gasparino in your inbox every Thursday. Thanks for signing up! Enter your email address Please provide a valid email address. By clicking above you agree to the Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. Never miss a story. Check out more newsletters Since the beginning of the year, shares are down around 20%; the S&P is up about 7%. All of which is putting pressure on Tesla's board to intervene and set some ground rules on Musk starting a new political party, On The Money has learned. Veteran tech analyst Dan Ives, a long-time Tesla bull, expects exactly that at the next company shareholder meeting scheduled for November after what appeared to be a long delay that prompted more investor backlash. Ives points out that Musk does have significant control of the company since he's the largest individual shareholder. But that doesn't make him immune from shareholder pressure, and fiduciary responsibility that should be enforced by his board given all of the above, or they too could be on the hook for civil litigation and possible violations of securities laws by not creating some shareholder-friendly behavioral boundaries for their CEO. It's unclear, Ives says, whether this will preclude Musk from his third-party idea, but he says he expects the board to impose more 'oversight…to make sure Musk does his homework assignment.'
