It Sure Looks Like Trump Just Lost a Major Trade Deal

The Trump administration just dashed any chance of a new trade deal with India, imposing a 25 percent tariff on the country Wednesday along with a penalty for buying military equipment and energy from Russia.

The world’s most populous nation has held off on offering new concessions to the U.S., announcing on Tuesday that it was prepared to accept tariffs as high as 25 percent on its exports to American consumers.

But with just two days on the clock to finalize the deal, it doesn’t seem that Donald Trump has a firm handle on India’s jaded approach to the negotiations.

“WE HAVE A MASSIVE TRADE DEFICIT WITH INDIA!!!” he exclaimed on Truth Social Wednesday.

The U.S. imports more goods and services from India than it sells. In 2024, the country’s trade deficit with India was $45.7 billion—a 5.4 percent increase over the prior year, according to the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative.

“Remember, while India is our friend, we have, over the years, done relatively little business with them because their Tariffs are far too high, among the highest in the World, and they have the most strenuous and obnoxious non-monetary Trade Barriers of any Country,” Trump wrote in an earlier post.

“Also, they have always bought a vast majority of their military equipment from Russia, and are Russia’s largest buyer of ENERGY, along with China, at a time when everyone wants Russia to STOP THE KILLING IN UKRAINE—ALL THINGS NOT GOOD!” he continued. “INDIA WILL THEREFORE BE PAYING A TARIFF OF 25 PERCENT, PLUS A PENALTY FOR THE ABOVE, STARTING ON AUGUST FIRST. THANK YOU FOR YOUR ATTENTION TO THIS MATTER. MAGA!”

Historically, it takes U.S. officials roughly 18 months to negotiate a new trade agreement with another country. That boils down to exhaustive reviews of the country’s prior trade, sorting through thousands of line items of products, and analyzing the complex minutiae of local import and export laws.

Despite the fact that India was one of the first countries to open up new trade negotiations with the U.S. in February, even Trump administration officials have acknowledged that the deal with India is still half-baked. U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer told CNBC Monday that India has “strong interest in opening portions of its market” to U.S. products but that the talks require more time. Last week, India’s Trade Minister Piyush Goyal told Reuters that India was making “great progress” with the Trump administration.

But blowing past traditional expectations in favor of baseless projections has not proven to be a strong success strategy for the second Trump administration. Instead, choosing to throw the country into a trading blitz with dozens of its biggest trading partners has effectively forced the U.S. into a regrettable losing position, with American officials constantly having to hedge on what were supposed to be adamant deadlines.

If Trump is to be believed, however, then Friday could be the exception.

“THE AUGUST FIRST DEADLINE IS THE AUGUST FIRST DEADLINE—IT STANDS STRONG, AND WILL NOT BE EXTENDED,” Trump wrote earlier on Wednesday. “A BIG DAY FOR AMERICA!!!”

India isn’t the only country holding out on U.S. trade negotiations. China, Mexico, Canada, South Korea, Taiwan, Brazil, Switzerland, and Thailand have also not finalized their arrangements with the Trump administration, though not all of them face the August 1 cutoff.

Continuing its 4Chanified social media strategy, the White House’s official X account on Tuesday put an appalling twist on the “Jet2 holiday” internet trend.

The trend consists of viral posts in which chaotic video footage is accompanied by an upbeat song and cheerful voiceover, taken from an advertisement for British airline Jet2, which begins: “Nothing beats a Jet2 holiday!”

In the White House’s attempt, the lighthearted audio plays over video clips depicting immigrants being loaded onto a plane for deportation. The immigrants are shown being ushered from vans, walking with shackled hands and feet, holding identification documents, and boarding a plane. Their faces are clearly visible on several occasions, while the faces of all law enforcement agents are blurred out.

It’s the latest example of the White House’s callous digital strategy, which has previously included an ASMR video of shackled immigrants and an AI-generated image of an immigration agent detaining a sobbing woman in the style of Japanese animation studio Studio Ghibli. This social media approach, under Trump staffer Kaelan Dorr, seems guided by a commitment to sharing “banger memes” (in the White House X account’s own eyeroll-inducing words) that are just edgy enough to elicit surprise that they’re actually being posted by the White House.

But such posts, from an increasingly unpopular administration whose immigration agenda faces increasing scrutiny for prioritizing deporting noncriminals, gives one the impression that the Trump White House is guided by sadism rather than a desire to better the country—and cares more about catering to right-wing internet trolls than satisfying the American electorate.

In the replies to the “Jet2” meme, for instance, many right-wingers were relishing the cruelty, while others were put off. “You are not Christians,” wrote one user. Even a self-described supporter of deportation said the meme “is gross” and “feels yuck.”

Others took to counter-trolling, bringing up an inescapable sore subject for the Trump administration: Congressional candidate TJ Adams-Falconer posted a GIF depicting Donald Trump beside notorious pedophile Jeffrey Epstein, with the text, “Fell for it again.” “Nothing beats releasing the files,” wrote another user.

Oklahoma state Superintendent Ryan Walters wants the board members who say they caught him watching porn to “resign in disgrace.”

Last week, two school board members told the press they’d seen Walters displaying a pornographic video on a TV in his office during the closed-door portion of a Board of Education meeting at the time. 

In a video statement shared to X Tuesday night, the Trump fanboy attempting to reshape the Oklahoma school system went on the offensive, claiming the allegations were a “political attack.”

“These are lies by board members, by a corrupt news media, and perpetuated by the teachers union to try and stop the will of Oklahoma voters, and the Oklahoma parents,” Walters said. “What we are going to continue to do is move this education reform for the families of Oklahoma.”

“These board members should resign immediately in disgrace over the lies that they have pushed about me to try to destroy my character.” 

The Oklahoma Office of Management and Enterprise Services (OMES) had opened an investigation into Walters’s actions Friday, and on Monday asked the Oklahoma County Sheriff’s Office (OCSO) to begin a criminal investigation, according to News4. 

When he’s not going after board members or the media or teachers, Walters’s other tactic seems to be straight up lying about what happened. Earlier on Tuesday, Walters claimed that he’d had his name cleared by both OMES and the sheriff’s office—but that wasn’t true at all. 

“That simply isn’t the case,” OSCO spokesperson Aaron Brilbeck told News4. “Our investigation is still ongoing. In fact, I would categorize it as being in its infancy. This is going to be a very thorough investigation. And once the investigation is complete, we’re going to be very transparent with our findings.”

In his video statement Tuesday night, Walters again claimed that he’d already had “two independent groups come in and prove there was no wrongdoing going on,” but he offered no further details.  

Ryan Deatherage and Becky Carson, the two school board members who’d spoken to the press about the incident, released a joint statement Tuesday. “No board member has accused Superintendent Walters of anything, we only brought attention to inappropriate content on a TV—content that would cause a teacher in our state to lose their license. As the investigation continues, we urge Superintendent Walters to cooperate with law enforcement and refrain from smearing the names, characters and reputations of board members,” they said.

Donald Trump might have thrown himself into hot water by admitting that he knew Virginia Giuffre.

Speaking with reporters on Air Force One Tuesday, Trump said that he had confronted Jeffrey Epstein in the early 2000s about abducting underage girls who were on his payroll at Mar-a-Lago, including one of Epstein’s most prominent accusers.

The anecdote partially corroborated Giuffre’s account of being abducted in 2000 by Ghislaine Maxwell at Mar-a-Lago, where she worked at the time as a pool attendant. But admitting to knowing the characters of the chilling story could backfire on Trump in a court of law, according to New York University law professor Ryan Goodman.

“It’s that much of a significant statement,” Goodman told CNN host Erin Burnett Tuesday night. “If he had said he was aware of it from the court documents, then he’s OK in that regard. But I think that’s a very potentially bad situation for him to be in.”

Rather than release the Epstein files and provide the transparency so demanded by Trump’s base, the administration has decided to go in a different direction and accrue a new list of Epstein’s clients from Maxwell. Maxwell, in turn, has directly appealed to the president and the Supreme Court in pursuit of a pardon.

Last week, The Wall Street Journal reported that the Justice Department notified Trump in May that his name appeared several times throughout the “truckload” of documents that are the Epstein files.

Trump has previously claimed he cut off contact with Epstein after the financier was indicted in 2006 for soliciting underage prostitutes, referring to Epstein as a “creep.” But if Trump is taken at his new word, then that means that Trump continued to maintain ties with the pedophilic sex trafficker years after he was aware of Epstein’s criminal activities. Several reporters at The Miami Herald found that Epstein was still on Mar-a-Lago’s membership logs until October 2007, when his account was labeled “closed,” as chronicled in their 2020 book The Grifters Club.

Earlier this month, the former president and chief operating officer of Trump Plaza Hotel and Casino in Atlantic City, Jack O’Donnell, revealed that he had caught Trump and Epstein in the late 1980s shepherding underage girls into the establishment.

“They were pretty good buddies,” O’Donnell told CNN, recalling that he warned Trump against spending more time with Epstein.

After barely six months of leading the nation’s military, embattled Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth wants to hang it up and run for office.

NBC News sources have reported that Hegseth has privately considered running for governor in his home state of Tennessee next year.

While unconfirmed, Hegseth’s exit would be a fitting end to a tumultuous time as defense secretary, in which he somehow successfully endured a confirmation process that aired out allegations of rape, sexual assault, domestic violence, alcoholism, misogyny, and racism—only to enter immediate chaos and dysfunction in the Pentagon. If this is the end, Hegseth will be remembered for SignalGate, Defense Department infighting, and pausing aid to Ukraine without telling the president.

The DOD has vehemently denied any rumors of Hegseth’s exit

“Fake news NBC is so desperate for attention, they are shopping around a made up story … again,” Pentagon chief spokesman Sean Parnell said in a statement. “Only two options exist: either the ‘sources’ are imaginary or these reporters are getting punked. Secretary Hegseth’s focus remains solely on serving under President Trump and advancing the America First mission at the Department of Defense.”

If the rumors are true, Hegseth would face a crowded field. Republican John Rose has already announced his gubernatorial campaign, and GOP firebrand Marsha Blackburn is expected to do the same next week.

The New York Times on Tuesday evening issued a statement announcing that it had updated its report on the starvation gripping Gaza—and particularly afflicting children—due to Israel restricting supplies.

The report touched, among other tragic stories, on that of Mohammed Zakaria Al Mutawaq, a 18-month-old suffering from severe malnutrition, whose photo has circulated widely as international attention turns increasingly to Gaza’s starvation crisis.

“We have since learned new information” about the child, the Times stated, “and have updated our story to add context about his preexisting health problems” and give “readers a greater understanding of his situation.”

The added paragraph is as follows:

Mohammed, according to his doctor, had pre-existing health problems affecting his brain and his muscle development. But his health deteriorated rapidly in recent months as it became increasingly difficult to find food and medical care, and the medical clinic that treated him said he suffers from severe malnutrition.

Contrary to those already claiming that this detail proves Israel is not culpable for the crisis unfolding in Gaza, Al Mutawaq is still being starved to death. (As Nathan J. Robinson of Current Affairs notes, “This actually makes it even more grotesque. Of course the first people to die have pre-existing health problems. Starvation is a eugenic policy which first kills off the weakest and sickest.”)

And the detail doesn’t change the enormity of the crisis in Gaza. Thousands of children are starving—and, it’s worth noting, a doctor cited elsewhere in the Times report observes that “many of the children he sees have no pre-existing medical conditions.” The Times’ description of scenes in Gaza’s strained hospitals—of “hollow-eyed, skeletal children” with “protruding ribs and shoulder blades, and emaciated limbs resembling brittle sticks”—is no less haunting, and no less the result of an Israeli blockade, than it was before.

The man who ordered Justice Department staff to ignore judges to speed up deportations is now a federal judge himself.

On Tuesday, the Senate voted 50–49 to confirm senior Justice Department official Emil Bove, formerly Donald Trump’s personal lawyer, for a lifetime seat on the the Third Circuit Court of Appeals. Republican Senators Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski joined Democrats in voting against Bove.

Last month, it was revealed that Bove, while orchestrating the extrajudicial deportations of hundreds of men to El Salvador, “stressed to all in attendance that planes needed to take off no matter what,” although he was well aware of “the possibility that a court order would enjoin those removals before they could be effectuated.”

“Bove stated that DOJ would need to consider telling the courts ‘fuck you’ and ignore any such court order,” according to whistleblower Erez Reuveni’s report. But instead of having his nomination rescinded for obvious corruption and insubordination, Bove will now hold a powerful judicial position until the day he dies. This is also the same man who fired prosecutors for investigating January 6 and accused the FBI of “insubordination” for not snitching on staffers who worked on the investigation. As a New York state prosecutor, he was described by colleagues as someone who could not “be bothered to treat lesser mortals with respect or empathy.”

“He is a Trumpian henchman—the extreme of the extreme of the extreme. He is openly hostile to the rule of law. He is fundamentally opposed to democratic norms. He lacks the temperament to serve as a jurist,” Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said. “And above all, Mr. Bove is religiously obedient to Donald Trump.”

“Shame on you,” Schumer continued after the vote. “This is a dark, dark day.”

Ahead of the deadly shooting in Midtown Manhattan Monday, Donald Trump’s administration cut more than half of federal funding for gun violence prevention from the Justice Department, Reuters reported Tuesday.  

In April, the Trump administration terminated 69 of the 145 community violence intervention grants awarded through the DOJ, cutting a whopping $158 million in grants that previously totaled more than $300 million. 

The grants provided federal funding to community-based organizations, local governments, and universities working on evidence-based strategies to prevent violence. A DOJ official said that the grants had been among thousands currently under review, and had been terminated because they “no longer effectuate the program’s goals or agency’s priorities.”

The Biden-era White House Office for Gun Violence Prevention was also “dismantled on day one” of the Trump administration, according to its former director, Greg Jackson. 

The Trump administration’s efforts to shift funding and focus away from gun violence prevention is especially concerning given that shootings, and mass shootings, are known to surge in the warm summer months. 

In classic Trump style, the president responded to the deadly Monday night shooting in Manhattan with name calling. “I trust our Law Enforcement Agencies to get to the bottom of why this crazed lunatic committed such a senseless act of violence,” he wrote in a post on Truth Social. “My heart is with the families of the four people who were killed, including the NYPD Officer, who made the ultimate sacrifice. God Bless the New York Police Department, and God Bless New York!”

Other Republicans have issued their own weak responses, with Louisiana Senator John Kennedy winning the award for most idiotic comment of the day. 

The status of the U.S.-Vietnam trade deal allegedly reached four weeks ago remains uncertain, after Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent admitted Tuesday that he hasn’t even seen it.

Trump announced a supposed agreement between the two countries in a July 2 post on Truth Social, claiming that Vietnam’s exports would be subject to a 20 percent tariff and its “transshipped” goods to a 40 percent tariff. In return, Trump said, the United States was getting “TOTAL ACCESS to [Vietnamese] Markets for Trade.”

The announcement, Politico would report days later, shocked Vietnamese negotiators, who thought they’d agreed to a rate of about 11 percent—which Trump reportedly scrapped and nearly doubled during a later phone call with Vietnam’s general secretary, who’d not been involved with initial negotiations.

Complicating the matter was the absence of “any paperwork indicating a final agreement that includes those tariff rates” and the fact that neither country “formally signed off on a deal.”

Accordingly, the day after the alleged agreement, CNBC asked Bessent about its status. He replied: “I haven’t spoken to [Trump trade representative] Jamieson Greer, who’s heading the team. My understanding is that it’s finalized in principle.”

To date, it remains unclear if it’s been finalized in any more meaningful way. Vietnam has yet to confirm the rates about which Trump boasted, leading CNBC to, once again, ask Bessent whether there is an agreement on paper.

Bessent’s answer on Tuesday was similar to the one he gave 26 days ago. “I didn’t work on that deal,” he said. “But I assume that we do.”

“You haven’t seen that paperwork?” CNBC’s Eamon Javers pressed.

“Ambassador Greer, who is a seasoned veteran with an encyclopedic memory and knowledge of all this, keeps all that,” Bessent replied, stumbling slightly over his words.

Bessent based his assumption that there’s a written and signed agreement on the trade deals reached with Indonesia and the Philippines. Notably, Indonesia contests some of Trump’s claims about its deal, and details about the Philippines deal remain scant beyond Trump’s Truth Social posts.

The trade-deal gray area is not just confined to Southeast Asia, as Trump’s approach to his negotiations and announcements has sown widespread confusion.

For instance, the Financial Times reported last week that officials in the U.S. and Japan have significant disagreements over the terms of their deal—which, despite being the “largest deal in history,” according to Trump, is not recorded on paper. In fact, no legally binding one is to be drawn up, the FT reports.

The American Israel Public Affairs Committee was forced to clarify that it had not actually un-endorsed Florida Representative Randy Fine for his grotesque statements wishing starvation on Palestinians.

AIPAC responded Tuesday to a Times of Israel report claiming that the group appeared to have “dropped” its endorsement of Fine, after he went missing from the group’s database of pro-Israel candidates.

“This reporting is based on an unsourced speculative piece,” AIPAC wrote in a statement on X. “We will be endorsing candidates for the 2026 election throughout the cycle. Current endorsees for 2026 so far are listed on the AIPAC-PAC website.

“As Rep. Fine was elected only in April, consideration of his endorsement will take place later in the cycle, as is the case with many other freshmen members of Congress,” the statement continued.

It turns out that it was simply wishful thinking to believe that the pro-Israel action group would ever draw the line at cheerleading famine—or advocating for violence against protesters.

But AIPAC’s response doesn’t quite add up. It’s not clear why the group would choose only to list endorsees for 2026, and why Fine wouldn’t be grandfathered in after earning the group’s endorsement just four months ago. After all, the group did pour more than $126,000 into Fine’s campaign, according to FEC filings. Now they say they need more time to decide?

Fine’s absence on AIPAC’s list was first observed by Usamah Andrabi, the communications director for Justice Democrats, a political action group working to see progressive Democrats elected to office.