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Trump Is About to Bet the Economy on a Theory That Makes No Sense

 



Opinion

Guest Essay

Trump Is About to Bet the Economy on a Theory That Makes No Sense

March 31, 2025

By Jason Furman

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/31/opinion/trump-tariffs-economy.html

Dr. Furman, a contributing Opinion writer, is a professor of the practice of economic policy at Harvard University and was chairman of the White House Council of Economic Advisers from 2013 to 17.

 

My local bookstore has been taking advantage of me for years. I have run a trade deficit, giving it money with nothing but books in return. At the same time I have been taking advantage of my employer, running a trade surplus with it as it gives me a salary with nothing but educational services in exchange.

 

Thinking that way about the kinds of exchanges we all engage in is obviously absurd. But that’s precisely the reasoning behind the “reciprocal tariffs” President Trump is expected to announce this week. The details have not yet come into view, but if he does follow through, it’s clear the plan would add to what are already the nation’s highest tariffs since the 1940s. Their effect will be lower economic growth, higher inflation, higher unemployment, the destruction of wealth and a tax increase on American families. It will deal a blow to the rules underlying the global trading system and further empower China.

 

Mr. Trump has cycled through numerous rationales for tariffs: They will raise revenues, with foreigners footing the bill. They will help American manufacturers and national security. They will provide leverage against Mexican fentanyl and Canadian sovereignty. In all of these cases there is a bit of truth and a lot of falsehood.

 

But the one argument Mr. Trump has returned to again and again is that other countries are taking advantage of the United States. He measures the degree to which they are doing so by the magnitude of our trade deficit with them — that is, how much more money we spend on another country’s goods and services than we get from selling it our goods and services.

 

In this reckoning, the reason those deficits arise is that other countries erect tariffs and other trade barriers against the United States. It follows from this analysis that the solution is to reciprocate by erecting our own tariffs, which will either protect the United States or else get other countries to lower their barriers, either way reducing or eliminating the trade deficits.

 

Every step in this chain of reasoning is wrong.

 

Start with the fact that imports are good, not bad. They offer consumers greater variety, such as avocados from Mexico, lower prices on cars from South Korea or greater quality, including Champagne from France. American companies are able to offer better products at lower prices and be globally competitive because they use imported steel, auto parts and precision machinery. Moreover, importing these items frees us up to devote more of our production and employment to higher productivity and higher-wage jobs, including in export industries such as aerospace and software design.

 

Running bilateral trade deficits is generally not an indication of a problem or an abuse. In recent years the United States exported more to Brazil than it imported, a fact that had more to do with Brazil’s appetite for American oil and airplanes than any trade barriers. In fact, Brazil levies an average tariff of 6 percent on goods coming from the United States, well in excess of the 1 percent levied by the United States on imports from Brazil. Same in reverse for the United States and France: We import more than we export despite having a higher tariff on their goods than they do on ours.

 

In fact, there is generally no correlation between a country’s tariff levels and its overall trade balance. A particularly clear example is the 27 countries in the European Union, which have identical tariffs and other trade policies but range from trade deficits to trade surpluses.

 

So if tariffs don’t create trade deficits, what does? The answer has to do with whether a country saves its money or invests it, in things like factories, infrastructure and research. The United States invests more than it saves, which has helped fuel our enviable productivity and growth. To fill the gap, we attract money from overseas. Foreign investors exchange their euros, yen and yuan for dollars to invest in the United States. We can then use those euros, yen and yuan to buy more of what we want from Europe, Japan and China than we sell them. Voilà, a deficit.

 

What then will these reciprocal tariffs do? They will lessen the overall volume of trade. The United States will import less because foreign goods and services will become more expensive. It will also export less, because the tariffs that other countries erect against us will make our stuff more expensive for them.

 

Even if other countries don’t retaliate against our tariffs with a slew of their own, the situation is still bad. Take automobile tariffs on Mexico. They would cause Americans to buy fewer cars from that country, so we would need fewer pesos, the things with which you buy their cars. As demand for Mexican currency goes down, so does its value relative to the dollar. But a strong dollar makes it more expensive for foreign countries to buy our exports. Either way, less trade, which would be bad for both consumers and workers. (As an aside, if the tariffs do succeed in meaningfully lowering trade deficits it would most likely be because they caused a recession, bringing down the amount U.S. consumers buy or businesses invest.)

 

If all reciprocal tariffs are bad in theory, however, Mr. Trump’s seem likely to be even worse in practice. That’s because he’s not just looking to even things out with other countries by raising U.S. tariffs by a percentage point or two, the current difference in tariff rates between the United States and many of its trade partners. Instead, he has been cherry-picking examples of goods where other countries have higher tariffs than the United States while ignoring the many cases where the reverse is true.

 

The president even claimed that foreign value-added taxes, or VATs, discriminate against American exports. It is true that these VATs apply to American goods, from oranges to cars to cosmetics. But they apply in equal measure to European oranges and cars and cosmetics. They don’t discriminate against the United States or any other country. And demanding that European countries change them would mean demanding that they alter core aspects of their tax systems. Why would they ever agree?

 

The consequences of this are serious. In Mr. Trump’s first term he raised average tariffs by about 1.5 percentage points. With all of the trade measures he has already carried out this year, they have gone up another six percentage points — and reciprocal tariffs could add much more. All told, the tariff increases in the first four months of his latest trade war are likely to be five to 10 times as large as those he imposed in the four years of his first term.

 

There’s been a lot of talk about whether that will crash the economy altogether. The enormous increase in business uncertainty that tariffs have engendered means anything could happen. Goldman Sachs, however, estimates that given this new round of tariffs, economic growth will decline by about 0.5 percentage point (largely because imported goods are only one-tenth of U.S. gross domestic product). Not a huge number on its own, though it translates to about $1,000 per household but it would push up inflation by a similar magnitude. All of this is on top of the harm done by all the tariffs that have already been announced.

 

Lower-income families will pay a higher fraction of their income in tariffs, but the revenue will very likely go to tax cuts skewed to high-income households. The stock market has already lost more than $3 trillion since Mr. Trump first dialed up his tariff threats in February. The losses could grow over time as the United States increasingly distances itself from the benefits of imports, exports and global supply chains.

 

The geopolitical realignment this will help engender may be even more profound. The United States has leverage vis-à-vis Canada and Mexico because we are their main trade partner. But China is the largest trading partner for a majority of countries in the world. Give these countries a choice between economic relations with the United States and with China, they would probably choose the latter in a heartbeat. And where economic relations go, political relations will follow. This week’s tariffs are another step toward hurting the U.S. economy and creating a geopolitical system that increasingly has China at its center.

 

Jason Furman, a contributing Opinion writer, is a professor of the practice of economic policy at Harvard University and was chairman of the White House Council of Economic Advisers from 2013 to 2017.

As Tensions Escalate Between Trump and Europe, Meloni Is Caught in the Middle

 



As Tensions Escalate Between Trump and Europe, Meloni Is Caught in the Middle

 

Each new crisis, whether over Ukraine or tariffs, has made the Italian prime minister’s balancing act that much harder.

 

Neil MacFarquhar Emma Bubola

By Neil MacFarquhar and Emma Bubola

Reporting from Rome

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/31/world/europe/italy-meloni-trump-europe-tensions.html

March 31, 2025, 12:01 a.m. ET

 

Amid raucous questioning by opposition members in Italy’s Parliament this month, Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni noted that she had been asked repeatedly: “Are you with Europe or with the United States?”

 

The prime minister responded that she was always with Italy and by extension, Europe. “I don’t blindly follow Europe or the United States,” she said, adding, “But I’m also for the unity of the West, and I think that is necessary for both Europe and Italy.”

 

Just a couple of months ago, when President Trump was inaugurated, Ms. Meloni seemed perfectly positioned to be a bridge between him and Europe. She was the only European leader at his inauguration, matched his hostility toward liberal ideals, befriended Elon Musk and seemed eager to land the role.

 

Instead, as tensions between Europe and Washington escalate, she finds herself caught in the middle, balancing her ideological affinity with Mr. Trump with the need for Italy to help bolster the continent’s security and economy.

 

It is not clear that Mr. Trump, who is openly antagonistic toward Europe, wants a bridge. In addition, the leaders of Britain and France, both outweighing Italy as nuclear powers, have sought the role of liaison between Europe and the White House for themselves.

 

As Europe ratchets up military spending and girds for a potential trade war, Ms. Meloni continues to preach pragmatism while trying to avoid choosing sides. The balancing act could become harder to sustain.

 

Each new crisis with Mr. Trump — over a possible peace deal with Russia, over NATO, over tariffs — further underscores Ms. Meloni’s eroding middle position, analysts said.

 

“She is cleverly not taking sides until she is obliged to do it and hoping that she is never obliged to do it,” said Giovanni Orsina, the head of the political science department at Luiss Guido Carli University in Rome.

 

But he added, “If the Atlantic alliance gets into greater stress and there is a distancing between the U.S. and Europe, this position will be more difficult to hold.”

 

Once a fringe firebrand with political roots in a party born from the ashes of fascism, Ms. Meloni has cast herself as a credible leader in Europe, largely thanks to her unwavering support for Ukraine and NATO.

 

Domestically, she has thrown occasional bones to her hard-line base, including by introducing a “universal” ban on surrogacy, while simultaneously steering a conservative fiscal policy that allayed the worst fears of European leaders. Some called that pragmatism, while others accused her of “doppiezza,” Italian for “duplicity.”

 

On the international stage, Ms. Meloni has become a bundle of contradictions: an Italian nationalist seemingly in tune with Mr. Trump’s hard-right international movement leading a country whose lot is inextricably tied to the fate of Europe.

 

In the past couple of months, her main tool in not alienating either Washington or Europe was a studied silence, or when that proved impossible, anodyne calls for the West to maintain its strength through its traditional unity.

 

Now, she increasingly tries to have it both ways.

 

Ms. Meloni’s comments to the Italian Senate before a late March summit of European leaders in Brussels were some of her most extensive about the multiple controversies stirred up by Mr. Trump and his administration.

 

A staunch supporter of Ukraine, Ms. Meloni endorsed Mr. Trump’s effort to negotiate a cease-fire, calling it “a first significant step in a path that must lead to a just and lasting peace for Ukraine.”

 

But while she has upheld her commitment to providing security guarantees to Ukraine, she has been less vocally supportive of President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine.

 

After he was berated by Mr. Trump and Vice President JD Vance in the Oval Office in early March, she did not, like other European leaders, rebuke the president and express her support for Mr. Zelensky. Instead, Ms. Meloni responded to the fiery exchange by calling for a U.S.-Europe summit. No such meeting occurred.

 

She has criticized the response of some European leaders to the Trump administration as “a bit too political” and suggested that it is “childish” to expect Italy to have to chose between Europe and the United States. While Italy would gladly help Europe avoid a confrontation, she said in an interview with The Financial Times published on Friday: “I’m not interested in saying, ‘I’m the one in the middle, I’m a protagonist.’ Not now. The stakes are too high.”

 

Unlike France and Britain, which have led the effort to organize a European force for Ukraine, Italy rejected the idea of deploying its troops.

 

As Mr. Trump threatens to withdraw the U.S. commitment to Europe, Italy has largely backed the idea that Europe must invest in rearming. Although Ms. Meloni has described the United States as Italy’s closest ally, Rome’s relatively low military spending might create friction with Mr. Trump. It falls below the 2 percent of gross domestic product required by NATO guidelines, not to mention the 5 percent pushed by Washington. One of her coalition partners adamantly opposes any increase.

 

On tariffs, Ms. Meloni has called for moderation and negotiation. She warned that retaliatory tariffs could set off a “vicious circle” in which everyone loses, driving up inflation and restricting economic growth.

 

“I am convinced that we need to work concretely and with pragmatism to find common ground and avoid a trade war that would not benefit anyone,” Ms. Meloni said in Parliament.

 

For now, Ms. Meloni’s relations with Mr. Trump and his team seem good, even if no White House visit has been announced.

 

Mr. Trump praised Ms. Meloni in late February, calling her “a wonderful woman” and noting that “Italy has got very strong leadership.” Ms. Meloni reposted Mr. Trump’s comments on X.

 

In turn, she has lauded both Mr. Trump and Mr. Vance, as she did in a live address by video at the annual CPAC conference near Washington, where she has been a regular speaker for years. She underscored their shared political agenda and characterized Mr. Trump’s re-election as a major development in the rise of global conservatism.

 

How long her balancing act can last is the question dogging her.

 

 

In the seaside town of Viareggio, Italy, the spectacular annual carnival parade is famous for political satire. This year one float featured a 50-foot statue of the prime minister. The float’s creator, Alessandro Avanzini, had dressed the figure of Ms. Meloni in a pink suit jacket, swaying inside a pair of oversize gray jodhpurs of the kind once favored by the fascist dictator Benito Mussolini.

 

Mr. Avanzini said that he had left it deliberately unclear whether Ms. Meloni was donning the jodhpurs or shedding them. Various spectators said that accurately reflected the current political discussion in Italy surrounding the ambiguity at which the prime minister excels.

 

“She is very clever at understanding when she has to wear them,” said Stefania Giusti, 48, an agricultural project manager.

 

“When she is meeting Trump, she puts them on, but when she goes to Brussels, she takes them off,” Ms. Giusti said. “But I do not think that she can go on like this for long.”

 

Elizabeth Djinis and Virginia DiGaetano contributed reporting.

 

Neil MacFarquhar has been a Times reporter since 1995, writing about a range of topics from war to politics to the arts, both internationally and in the United States. More about Neil MacFarquhar

 

Emma Bubola is a Times reporter based in Rome. More about Emma Bubola

‘Couldn’t care less’: Trump embraces price hikes ahead of tariff rollout

‘Liberation Day’ Not a Clearing Event, Says Morgan Stanley’s Wilson

Trump's trade threats: tariff concerns spark economic uncertainty | DW News

Greenland PM Hits Back At US President Trump As VP JD Vance Visits Military Base On Island / Vance’s posturing in Greenland was not just morally wrong. It was strategically disastrous


Vance’s posturing in Greenland was not just morally wrong. It was strategically disastrous

Timothy Snyder

Thanks to Trump’s administration, the US could soon have to fight wars to get things that, just a few weeks ago, were there for the asking

 

Mon 31 Mar 2025 06.00 BST

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/mar/31/trump-greenland-us-morally-wrong-strategy-disastrous

 

No one would allow that he could not see these much-admired clothes; because, in doing so, he would have declared himself either a simpleton or unfit of his office.”

– Hans Christian Andersen, The Emperor’s New Clothes

 

Elon Musk and Donald Trump inherited a state with unprecedented power and functionality, and are taking it apart. They also inherited a set of alliances and relationships that underpinned the largest economy in world history. This too they are breaking.

 

The American vice-president, JD Vance, visited a US base in Greenland for three hours on Friday, along with his wife. National security adviser Mike Waltz and his wife also went along. Fresh from using an unsafe social media platform to carry out an entirely unnecessary group chat in which they leaked sensitive data about an ongoing military attack to a reporter, and thereby allegedly breaking the law, Waltz and Vance perhaps hoped to change the subject by tagging along on a trip that was initially billed as Vance’s wife watching a dogsled race.

 

The overall context was Trump’s persistent claim that America must take Greenland, which is an autonomous region of Denmark. The original plan had been that Usha Vance would visit Greenlanders, apparently on the logic that the second lady would be an effective animatrice of colonial subjection; but none of them wanted to see her, and Greenland’s businesses refused to serve as a backdrop to photo ops or even to serve the uninvited Americans. So, instead, the US couples made a very quick visit to Pituffik space base. (Pete Hegseth, another group chatter, stayed home; but his wife was in the news as well, as an unorthodox participant in sensitive military discussions.)

 

At the base, in the far north of the island, the US visitors had pictures taken of themselves and ate lunch with servicemen and women. They treated the base as the backdrop to a press conference where they could say things they already thought; nothing was experienced, nothing was learned, nothing sensible was said. Vance, who never left the base, and has never before visited Greenland, was quite sure how Greenlanders should live. He made a political appeal to Greenlanders, none of whom was present, or anywhere near him. He claimed that Denmark was not protecting the security of Greenlanders in the Arctic, and that the US would. Greenland should therefore join the US.

 

It takes some patience to unwind all of the nonsense here.

 

The base at Pituffik (formerly Thule) only exists because Denmark permitted the US to build it at a sensitive time. It has served for decades as a central part of the US’s nuclear armoury and then as an early-warning system against Soviet and then Russian nuclear attack.

 

When Vance says that Denmark is not protecting Greenland and the base, he is wishing away generations of cooperation, as well as the Nato alliance itself. Denmark was a founding member of Nato, and it is already the US’s job to defend Denmark and Greenland, just as it is Denmark’s job (as with other members) to defend them in return.

 

Americans might chuckle at that idea, but such arrogance is unwarranted. We are the only ones ever to have invoked article 5, the mutual defence obligation of the Nato treaty, after 9/11; and our European allies did respond. Per capita, almost as many Danish soldiers were killed in the Afghan war as were American soldiers. Do we remember them? Thank them?

 

The threat in the Arctic invoked by Vance is Russia; and of course defending against a Russian attack is the Nato mission. But right now the US is supporting Russia in its war against Ukraine. No one is doing more to contain the Russian threat than Ukraine. Indeed, Ukraine is in effect fulfilling the entire Nato mission, right now, by absorbing a huge Russian attack. But Vance opposes helping Ukraine, spreads Russian propaganda about Ukraine, and is best known for yelling at Ukraine’s president in the Oval Office. On the base, Vance blamed the killing in Ukraine on Joe Biden rather than on Vladimir Putin, which is grotesque. Vance claimed that there is now an energy ceasefire in place between Russia and Ukraine; in fact, Russia violated it immediately. Russia is now preparing a massive spring offensive against Ukraine; the response of Musk-Trump has been to ignore this larger reality completely while allowing Biden-era aid to Ukraine to come to an end. Denmark, meanwhile, has given more than four times as much aid to Ukraine, per capita, than the US.

 

Greenland, Denmark and the US have been enmeshed in complex and effective security arrangements, touching on the gravest scenarios, for the better part of a century. Arctic security, an issue discovered by Trump and Vance very recently, was a preoccuption for decades during and after the cold war. There are fewer than 200 Americans at Pituffik now, where once there were 10,000; there is only that one US base on the island where once there were a dozen; but that is American policy, not Denmark’s fault.

 

We really do have a problem taking responsibility. The US has fallen well behind its allies and its rivals in the Arctic, in part because members of Vance’s political party denied for decades the reality of global warming, which has made it hard for the US navy to persuade Congress of the need to commission icebreaker ships. The US only has two functional Arctic icebreakers; the Biden administration was intending to cooperate with Canada, which has some, and with Finland, which builds lots, in order to compete with Russia, which has the most. That common plan would have allowed the US to surpass Russia in icebreaking capacity. This is one of countless examples of how cooperation with Nato allies benefits the US. It is not clear what will happen with that arrangement now that Trump and Vance define Canada, like Denmark, as a rival or even as an enemy. Presumably it will break down, leaving Russia dominant.

 

As with everything Musk-Trump does, however, the cui bono question about imperialism in Greenland is easy to answer: Russia benefits. Putin cannot contain his delight with US imperialism over Greenland. In generating artificial crises in relations with both Denmark and Canada, America’s two closest allies these last 80 years, the Trump people cut America loose from security gains and create a chaos in which Russia benefits.

 

The American imperialism directed towards Denmark and Canada is not just morally wrong. It is strategically disastrous. The US has nothing to gain from it, and much to lose. There is nothing that Americans cannot get from Denmark or Canada through alliance. The very existence of the base at Pituffik shows that. Within the atmosphere of friendship that has prevailed the last 80 years, all of the mineral resources of Canada and Greenland can be traded for on good terms, or for that matter explored by American companies. The only way to put all of this easy access in doubt was to follow the course that Musk-Trump have chosen: trade wars with Canada and Europe, and the threat of actual wars and annexations. Musk and Trump are creating the bloodily moronic situation in which the US will have to fight wars to get the things that, just a few weeks ago, were there for the asking. And, of course, wars rarely turn out the way one expects.

 

Much effort is spent trying to extract a doctrine from all this. But there is none. It is just senselessness that benefits America’s enemies. Hans Christian Andersen told the unforgettable tale of the naked emperor. In Greenland, what we saw was American imperialism with no clothes. Naked and vain.

 

As a parting shot, Vance told Greenlanders that life with the US would be better than with Denmark. Danish officials have been too diplomatic to answer directly the insults directed at them from their own territory during an uninvited visit by imperialist hotheads. Let me though just note a few possible replies, off the top of my head. The comparison between life in the US and life in Denmark is not just polemical. Musk-Trump treat Europe as though it were some decadent abyss, and propose that alliances with dictatorships would somehow be better. But Europe is not only home to our traditional allies; it is an enviable zone of democracy, wealth and prosperity with which it benefits us to have good relations, and from which we can sometimes learn.

 

So consider. The US is 24th in the world in the happiness rankings. Not bad. But Denmark is No 2 (after Finland). On a scale of 1 to 100, Freedom House ranks Denmark 97 and the US 84 on freedom – and the US will drop a great deal this year. An American is about 10 times more likely to be incarcerated than a Dane. Danes have access to universal and essentially free healthcare; Americans spend a huge amount of money to be sick more often and to be treated worse when they are. Danes on average live four years longer than Americans. In Denmark, university education is free; the average balance owed by the tens of millions of Americans who hold student debt in the US is about $40,000. Danish parents share a year of paid parental leave. In the US, one parent might get 12 weeks of unpaid leave. Denmark has children’s story writer Hans Christian Andersen. The US has children’s story writer JD Vance. American children are about twice as likely as Danish children to die before the age of five.

 

Timothy Snyder is the Richard C Levin professor of history at Yale University, and the chair in modern European history supported by the Temerty endowment for Ukrainian studies at the University of Toronto. His latest book is On Freedom. This post originally appeared on his Substack, Thinking About


Marine Le Pen verdict throws far-right party into chaos two years before election

 


Analysis

Marine Le Pen verdict throws far-right party into chaos two years before election

Angelique Chrisafis

in Paris

Sentence is blow to National Rally even though the core of Le Pen’s electorate is likely to rally behind her

 

Mon 31 Mar 2025 13.07 BST

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/mar/31/marine-le-pen-verdict-throws-far-right-party-into-chaos-two-years-before-election

 

It is a political earthquake that is almost certain to end Marine Le Pen’s ambitions for the 2027 presidential election and throws her far-right party into chaos just as it was setting its sights on taking power in France.

 

Barred from running for political office for five years with immediate effect after being convicted of embezzling European funds for her party, Le Pen’s political future is now thrown into doubt. She will most likely not be able to mount a fourth campaign for the presidency in two years’ time.

 

The conviction of Le Pen and 24 other party members for embezzlement of European parliament funds is a huge blow to a far-right party that has long tried to present itself as the honest, squeaky-clean alternative to old-school politicians with their hands in the till.

 

“Head high, clean hands” was once a slogan of the far-right, anti-immigration Front National – now renamed the National Rally – to distance itself from what it called greedy traditional politicians’ crooked ways. Le Pen’s punishment – which she had earlier likened to a “political death sentence” – is all the more personally damaging because she began her political career styling herself as anti-corruption crusader, saying in a TV debate in 2004: “Everyone has taken money from the till except the Front National … The French are sick of seeing politicians embezzling money. It’s scandalous.”

 

The party president, Jordan Bardella, 29, who is popular but inexperienced, could now become a replacement figure for the presidential race, but nothing is certain. As the party met for crisis talks on Monday, he said French democracy had been “executed” by the “unjust” verdict.

 

Le Pen and fellow party workers have been found guilty of serious charges: the systematic embezzlement of European taxpayer funds.

 

The court found that between 2004 and 2016, the anti-immigration party set up an extensive system of fraud in which they took money intended solely for European parliament assistants to instead pay staff who worked for the party at its head office in France – including a bodyguard and private secretary. The scam cost the European taxpayer – which includes French taxpayers – at least €4m (£3.35m).

 

The French state prosecutor had told the court that Le Pen’s party treated the European parliament like a “cash cow” and set up a centralised, highly organised “war machine” to embezzle European funds, which they used to illegally finance the cash-strapped party “in violation of all basic rules”.

 

During the two-month trial, the court heard how the embezzlement system was brazen. In an email to Marine Le Pen, one party worker, who was supposed to have been employed as a parliamentary assistant for four months, wrote: “I’d like to see the European parliament and that would also allow me to meet the member of the European parliament I’m attached to.”

 

He had apparently never been to the European parliament, where he was supposed to work. Another supposed parliamentary assistant made only one phone call to his member of European parliament in 11 months, and there were no documents showing any work took place.

 

The party showed “contempt for public funds that came from the pockets of their own voters”, a French state prosecutor had told the court during the trial.

 

But it is likely that the core of Le Pen’s electorate will rally behind her. The verdict and sentence could even boost political support for the far right. Le Pen was not accused of personally lining her pockets, but of channelling the money to the party. She has routinely called the case a political attack on her, saying judges wanted her “political death”.

 

The guilty verdict and strong sentence, barring her from running for office with immediate effect, serves her victimisation narrative that there is an elite out to get her and her party and stop her political career.

 

Senior party figures said, before the verdicts, that convictions could actually increase support for the National Rally in France. Certainly, the US’s Donald Trump has shown you can keep political support even with a criminal conviction.

 

For more than a decade, Le Pen has tried to make her far-right, anti-immigration party appear mainstream and respectable to a wider electorate. That endeavour is now damaged, even if she positions herself as a victim.

 

Le Pen’s ideas – including increasing police numbers and banning the Muslim headscarf in all public places – have steadily gained support among the French public, and the National Rally party emerged as the single largest party in parliament after the 2024 snap parliamentary elections, even if a left alliance and tactical voting held them back.

 

The question now is how the 50-year-old party prepares for the 2027 presidential race if it must run for the first time without a Le Pen as a candidate – without Marine, or her late father, Jean-Marie Le Pen.

Rassemblement national : après la condamnation de Marine Le Pen, quelle ...

Marine Le Pen barred from running for French president

 



Marine Le Pen barred from running for French president

 

The sentence was delivered after the French far-right icon was found guilty of embezzling European Parliament funds.

 

March 31, 2025 11:14 am CET

By Victor Goury-Laffont

https://www.politico.eu/article/france-far-right-national-rally-marine-le-pen-court-verdict-embezzlement-case-guilty/

 

PARIS — Marine Le Pen’s plans to run for the French presidency in 2027 were dealt a likely fatal blow Monday after she was found guilty of embezzling European Parliament funds and deemed ineligible to stand in elections for the next five years.

 

Given surging support for her far-right National Rally party, 2027 had widely been seen as a potential breakthrough moment for her populist anti-migration agenda, and several polls put her as a strong contender to succeed Emmanuel Macron in the Elysée Palace.

 

The decision would appear to open the door for Jordan Bardella, the National Rally president and Le Pen’s heir-apparent, to become the flag-bearer for the far right and run for the presidency.

 

Le Pen and 24 other codefendants were accused of illicitly siphoning European Parliament funds to pay for party employees who seldom or never dealt with affairs in Brussels or Strasbourg. The court estimated that the accused had over 12 years embezzled more than €4 million, €474,000 of which Le Pen was held personally responsible for as an MEP.

 

All but one of them, an accountant, were found guilty and handed a mix of fines, ineligibility bans and suspended prison sentences. The National Rally party was also found guilty and handed a €2 million fine, though that can be reduced by €1 million if it does not repeat the crime.

 

The harshest punishment was reserved for Le Pen, as she was convicted of criminal activity both as a former MEP and then running it as party’s ex-president.

 

Prosecutors took the extraordinary step of asking the three-judge panel presiding over the case to immediately enact Le Pen’s ban on running for office rather than wait until the appeals process has concluded, which is usually the norm in France.

 

The judges agreed, citing the gravity of Le Pen’s crime. They also fined her €100,000 and sentenced to four years in prison, two of which were suspended — but those penalties could be delayed by a possible appeal.

 

“Today, it’s not just Marine Le Pen who is unfairly condemned: It’s French democracy that is being executed,” said Bardella.

 

Bardella and other far-right figures in France and across Europe were quick to condemn the verdict. Some, like Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, even weighed in before Le Pen’s sentence was announced. The Kremlin deplored a “violation of democratic norms” and Italy’s far-right Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini condemned the verdict as a “a bad film” and a “declaration of war by Brussels.”

 

The defendants repeatedly professed their innocence over the course of the four-month-long trial, but the prosecution presented damning evidence against them — including text messages from one parliamentary assistant who, months after being hired, asked to be introduced to the MEP he was supposedly working for.

 

Le Pen and the National Rally knew the trial would be a thorn in their side but were relatively sanguine about the process. And the allegations, for now, have done little to affect either Le Pen or the National Rally’s popularity.

 

The defendants were, however, taken aback when prosecutors in November asked that immediate ineligibility bans of various lengths be handed to all of the defendants.

 

If Le Pen is unable to successfully appeal the verdict before the next presidential election, the National Rally is likely to look to Bardella, the party’s loyal 29-year-old president, to step in.

 

Indeed, in a possible prediction of her own departure from the scene, she told the BFMTV network just before the sentence that Bardella had “the capacity to be president of the Republic.”

 

And while the future of populist nationalism in France has rarely looked brighter than it does today, Bardella’s lack of experience during a high-profile presidential campaign has fueled skepticism — even within his own ranks — about whether he is up to the task.

 

This story is being updated.

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Far-right leader Marine Le Pen banned from French presidential race after guilty verdict

Marine Le Pen barred from running for office

Reactions to the ruling against Le Pen.

 


1m ago

13.04 BST

https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2025/mar/31/france-marine-le-pen-embezzlement-verdict-europe-news-live?page=with:block-67ea836a8f08e6b4b7c0784b#block-67ea836a8f08e6b4b7c0784b

 

Far-right politician Marion Maréchal, a European Parliament lawmaker and Marine Le Pen’s niece, just accused judges for “thinking about themselves as above the … people” and claimed that Le Pen was only found guilty because she was on course to lead the nationalists to victory.

 

Here is her post in full:

 

For decades, the national camp and our family have suffered every blow, every attack, every injustice. Judges, thinking of themselves as above the sovereign people, have decided to execute in a court of law the woman they were never able to force back at the ballot box.

 

@MLP_officiel led our side on the path to victory. This is her only culpability, and that is why she is condemned. No one on the right should pretend to be satisfied with this judgment. There was François Fillon before, Marine Le Pen today. Who will be next? I am more than ever by Marine’s side at this time.

 

52m ago

12.14 BST

Le Pen ruling 'bad film' and 'declaration of war by Brussels,' Italy's Salvini says

Another Le Pen ally, Italy’s deputy prime minister Matteo Salvini, has just offered his reaction to the court’s decision too.

 

In a social media post, he said:

 

Those who fear the judgment of the voters often find reassurance in the judgment of the courts.

 

In Paris they condemned Marine Le Pen and would like to exclude her from political life. A bad film that we are also seeing in other countries such as Romania.

 

The one against @MLP_officiel is a declaration of war by Brussels, at a time when the warlike impulses of von der Leyen and Macron are frightening.

 

We will not be intimidated, we will not stop: full speed ahead my friend!

 

20m ago

12.49 BST

Dutch far-right leader Wilders criticises 'tough' verdict, says he hopes Le Pen will win appeal and become president

The Dutch far-right leader Geert Wilders joins Hungary’s Orbán and Italy’s Salvini as he issues a critical reaction to the ruling against Le Pen.

 

He says:

 

I am shocked by the incredible [sic!] tough verdict against @MLP_officiel. I support and believe in her for the full 100% and I trust she will win the appeal and become President of France.

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Marine Le Pen Found Guilty of Embezzlement by French Court

 



Marine Le Pen Found Guilty of Embezzlement by French Court

 

The ruling immediately bars her from running for public office for five years, jeopardizing the far-right leader’s plans to run for president in 2027.

 

Aurelien Breeden Roger Cohen

By Aurelien Breeden and Roger Cohen

Reporting from Paris

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/31/world/europe/france-marine-le-pen-embezzlement-trial.html

March 31, 2025

Updated 6:54 a.m. ET

 

Marine Le Pen, the French far-right leader, was found guilty of embezzlement by a criminal court in Paris on Monday and immediately barred from running for public office for five years, jeopardizing her plans to compete in France’s 2027 presidential election.

 

The verdict was a major blow to the perennial presidential ambitions of Ms. Le Pen, an anti-immigrant, nationalist politician who was widely seen as a front-runner in the 2027 race, despite three past failed bids. Looking grim, murmuring “incredible,” she walked briskly out of the courtroom before the judges had given her exact sentence.

 

She did not address the dozens of camera crews that awaited her outside the courtroom, but she was expected to speak on French television later on Monday evening.

 

Ms. Le Pen, 56, was also sentenced to four years in prison, with two of those years suspended, and a fine of 100,000 euros, or about $108,000. She has long denied any wrongdoing in the case, which involved accusations that her party, the National Rally, illegally used several million euros in European Parliament funds for party expenses between 2004 and 2016.

 

She is widely expected to appeal the verdict, which would put most of her sentence on hold. But the court ruled that her electoral ineligibility is effective immediately. As a result, only a successful appeal before the 2027 deadline to enter the race would allow her to run.

 

That is not impossible, but it will be difficult. The appeals process is slow in France, and even if a new trial took take place before the 2027 election, it is unclear whether the prosecution’s case would be overturned.

 

Some politicians, even those opposed to Ms. Le Pen, have expressed fears that barring her from competing in the presidential race, despite her party’s popularity, could fuel a democratic crisis. The ruling does nothing to prevent her protégé, Jordan Bardella, 29, from running.

 

The verdict could usher in a period of renewed political turmoil if Ms. Le Pen decides to lash out against France’s fragile government or if anger spills over into the streets. The government struggled to pass a budget this year and could still be toppled at any time by lawmakers in the lower house, where Ms. Le Pen’s party is the single largest.

 

This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.

 

Roger Cohen is the Paris Bureau chief for The Times, covering France and beyond. He has reported on wars in Lebanon, Bosnia and Ukraine, and between Israel and Gaza, in more than four decades as a journalist. At The Times, he has been a correspondent, foreign editor and columnist. More about Roger Cohen

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Marine Le Pen banned from running for office with immediate effect • FRA...

Guilty Marine Le Pen awaits sentencing for embezzling EU funds

How Trump Supercharged Distrust, Driving U.S. Allies Away

 



News Analysis

How Trump Supercharged Distrust, Driving U.S. Allies Away

 

Trust is very hard to build and easy to destroy. America and its partners are caught in a spiral of distrust.

 

Damien Cave

By Damien Cave

Damien Cave covers global affairs and is The Times’s Vietnam bureau chief.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/31/world/trump-foreign-policy-trust.html

March 31, 2025

Updated 1:59 a.m. ET

 

The F-35, a fifth-generation fighter, was developed in partnership with eight countries, making it a model of international cooperation. When President Trump introduced its successor, the F-47, he praised its strengths — and said the version sold to allies would be deliberately downgraded.

 

That made sense, Mr. Trump said last week, “because someday, maybe they’re not our allies.”

 

For many countries wedded to the United States, his remark confirmed a related conclusion: that America can no longer be trusted. Even nations not yet directly affected can see where things are heading, as Mr. Trump threatens allies’ economies, their defense partnerships and even their sovereignty.

 

For now, they are negotiating to minimize the pain from blow after blow, including a broad round of tariffs expected in April. But at the same time, they are pulling back. Preparing for intimidation to be a lasting feature of U.S. relations, they are trying to go their own way.

 

A few examples:

 

Canada made a $4.2 billion deal with Australia this month to develop cutting-edge radar and announced that it was in talks to take part in the European Union’s military buildup.

 

Portugal and other NATO nations are reconsidering plans to buy F-35s, fearing American control over parts and software.

 

Negotiations over a free trade and technology deal between the European Union and India have suddenly accelerated after years of delays.

 

Brazil is not only increasing trade with China, it’s doing it in China’s currency, sidelining the dollar.

 

Several allies, including Poland, South Korea and Australia, are even discussing whether to build or secure access to nuclear weapons for their own protection.

 

Some degree of distancing from the United States had already been in motion as other countries became wealthier, more capable and less convinced that American centrality would be permanent. But the past few months of Trump 2.0 have supercharged the process.

 

History and psychology help explain why. Few forces have such a powerful, long-lasting impact on geopolitics as distrust, according to social scientists who study international relations. It has repeatedly poisoned negotiations in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. It kept Cold War tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union burning for decades.

 

So-called realists — who see international relations as an amoral contest between self-interested states — argue that trust should always be assessed with skepticism, because believing in good intentions is risky.

 

But Mr. Trump has sparked more than cautious suspicion. His own distrust of allies, evident in his zero-sum belief that gains for others are losses for America, has been reciprocated. What it’s created is familiar — a distrust spiral. If you think the other person (or country) is not trustworthy, you’re more likely to break rules and contracts without shame, studies show, reinforcing a partner’s own distrust, leading to more aggression or reduced interaction.

 

“Trust is fragile,” Paul Slovic, a psychologist at the University of Oregon, wrote in a seminal 1993 study on risk, trust and democracy. “It is typically created rather slowly, but it can be destroyed in an instant — by a single mishap or mistake.”

 

In Mr. Trump’s case, allies point to a sustained assault.

 

His tariffs on imports from Mexico and Canada, which ignored the North American free trade deal that he signed during his first term, stunned America’s neighbors.

 

His threats to make Canada an American state and send the U.S. military into Mexico to go after drug cartels were brash intrusions on sovereignty, not unlike his demands for Greenland and the Panama Canal. His blaming of Ukraine for the war that Russia started further alienated allies, forcing them to ask: Is the United States a defender of dictators or democracy?

 

Relatively quickly, they have determined that even if Mr. Trump’s boldest proposals — like turning Gaza into a Mideast Riviera — are fantasies, the trend lines point in the same direction: toward a world order less like the Olympics and more like Ultimate Fighting.

 

Perhaps no country is more shocked than Canada. It shares the world’s largest undefended border with the United States, despite their wide disparity in military strength. Why? Because Canadians trusted America. Now, in large part, they do not.

 

Mark Carney, Canada’s prime minister, said on Thursday that his country’s traditional relationship with the United States was “over.”

 

“Trump has violated the deep assumption in Canadian foreign policy that the U.S. is an inherently trustworthy nation,” said Brian Rathbun, a global affairs professor at the University of Toronto. “That is very threatening to basic Canadian interests in trade and security, leading it to cast around for alternatives.”

 

Economic patriotism is somewhat new for Canada, but it has given rise to a Buy Canadian movement that urges consumers to shun American products and stocks. Canadians are also canceling U.S. holidays in large numbers.

 

More significant in the longer term, Mr. Trump’s threats have forged a surprising consensus around a policy that had been contentious or ignored: that Canada should be building pipelines, ports and other infrastructure east to west, not north to south, to reduce its reliance on the United States and push its resources outward to Asia and Europe.

 

Europe is further ahead in this process. After the U.S. election, the European Union finalized a trade deal with South American countries to create one of the world’s largest trade zones, and it has worked toward closer trade ties with India, South Africa, South Korea and Mexico.

 

Japan, America’s largest ally in Asia, has also been prioritizing new markets in the global south, where fast-growing economies like Vietnam’s offer new customers.

 

“There has been the emerging perception in Japan that we definitely have to change the portfolio of our investments,” said Ken Jimbo, a professor of international politics and security at Keio University in Tokyo. For the current administration and those that follow, he added, “we have to adjust our expectations of the American alliance.”

 

On the defense front, what some call “de-Americanization” is more challenging. This is especially true in Asia, where there is no NATO equivalent, and reliance on American support has somewhat stunted the militaries of countries that the United States has promised to defend (Japan, South Korea and the Philippines).

 

On Friday, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth was in Manila, promising to “truly prioritize and shift to this region.” But many of America’s partners are now working together without the United States, signing reciprocal access agreements for each other’s troops and building new coalitions to deter China as much as they can.

 

Europe, too, is years away from being able to fully defend itself without the help of U.S. weaponry and technology. Yet in response to the Trump administration’s tariffs, threats and general disdain — as in the leaked Signal chat in which Mr. Hegseth called Europe “pathetic” — the European Union recently announced plans to ramp up military spending. That includes a 150 billion euro loan program to finance defense investment.

 

The 27-nation European Union is also increasingly collaborating with two nonmembers, Britain and Norway, on defending Ukraine and on other strategic defense priorities.

 

For some countries, none of this is quite enough. Poland’s prime minister, Donald Tusk, told Parliament in early March that Poland would explore gaining access to nuclear weapons, fearing that Mr. Trump could not be trusted to defend a fellow NATO nation fully.

 

“This is a race for security,” Mr. Tusk said.

 

In February, South Korea’s foreign minister, Cho Tae-yul, told the National Assembly that building nuclear weapons was “not on the table, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that it is off the table either.” By some estimates, both South Korea and Japan have the technical know-how to develop nuclear weapons in less than two months.

 

Bilihari Kausikan, a former Singaporean diplomat, said that a little mistrust can lead to healthy caution, noting that Asia has been skeptical of America since the Vietnam War. He said the end result of the Trump era could be “a more diversified world, with more maneuvering space” and a less dominant United States.

 

But for now, distrust is spreading. Experts said it would take years and a slew of costly trust-building efforts to bring America together with allies, new or old, for anything long-term.

 

“Trust is difficult to create and easy to lose,” said Deborah Welch Larson, a political scientist at the University of California, Los Angeles who wrote a book about mistrust’s Cold War role. She added, “Mistrust of the United States’ intentions and motives is growing day by day.”

 

Reporting was contributed by Matina Stevis-Gridneff from Toronto, Jeanna Smialek from Brussels, Choe Sang-Hun from Seoul and Martin Fackler from Tokyo.

 

Damien Cave leads The Times’s new bureau in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, covering shifts in power across Asia and the wider world. More about Damien Cave