Editorial: Balancing Britain’s interests with nurturing the US-UK special relationship is going to require every ounce of clearheadedness the prime minister can muster

The US president has expelled his own country from the rules-based global trade system that America itself created

For the world’s already embattled trading system, it is as though an asteroid has crashed into the planet, devastating everyone and everything that previously existed there. But there is this important difference. If an asteroid struck the Earth, the impact would at least have been caused by ungovernable cosmic forces. The assault on world trade, by contrast, is a completely deliberate act of choice, taken by one man and one nation.

Donald Trump’s decision to impose tariffs on every country in the world is a monstrous and momentous act of folly. Unilateral and unjustified, it was expressed on Wednesday in indefensible language in which Mr Trump described US allies as “cheaters” and “scavengers” who “looted”, “raped” and “pillaged” the US. Many of the calculations on which Mr Trump doled out his punishments are perverse, not least the exclusion of Russia from the condemned list. The tariffs mean prices are certain to rise in sector after sector, in the US and elsewhere, fuelling inflation and perhaps recession. Mr Trump will presumably respond as he did when asked about foreign cars becoming more expensive: “I couldn’t care less.”

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Impunity over Palestinian deaths in Gaza will lead to further cases like this massacre of rescue and healthcare workers

After 18 months of slaughter, it is still possible to be shocked by events in Gaza. More than 50,000 people have been killed, according to Palestinian health authorities. More are starving because Israel has cut off aid. The offensive is intensifying again – with 100 children killed or maimed each day since Israel resumed heavy strikes last month, the UN reports.

Even so, Israel’s killing of 15 Palestinian paramedics and rescue workers is particularly chilling. Though they died on 23 March, it took days for Israel to grant access to the site, the UN said. Another man was last seen in Israeli custody. Two grounds for seeing this not only as tragic but as a war crime stand out. The first is that the UN says the men were shot “one by one”, and a forensic expert said that preliminary evidence “suggests they were executed, not from a distant range”, given the “specific and intentional” locations of bullet wounds. Two witnesses said some of the bodies had their hands or legs tied. Prisoners are protected by the Geneva conventions. The second is that medics also enjoy specific protections.

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Editorial: Decades of painstaking work to establish rules for international trade are being undone by the stroke of a presidential Sharpie. To restore order, something akin to a peace process will be needed

Editorial: There are things to be optimistic about and the government should highlight them, as well as continuing to make the case for placing the public finances in a secure foundation in a troubled world

The US president wields tariffs not as a policy tool but as an instrument of pressure, rewarding loyalty and punishing defiance – even among allies

Donald Trump has probably not read much Michel Foucault. But he appears to embody the French philosopher’s claim that “politics is the continuation of war by other means”. Nowhere is this more apparent than in his fondness for tariffs. He presents taxing foreign imports as a way to rebuild the American economy in favour of blue-collar workers left behind by free trade and globalisation. Yet he plainly thinks that politics is not about truth or justice. It is about leverage and supremacy.

Britain is learning first-hand that Mr Trump, with his us-versus-them framing and taste for spectacle, is an accidental Foucauldian – using tariffs as tools of loyalty and dominance, even against allies. If Mr Trump follows through on his threat to impose a 20% tariff on all imports, UK growth will suffer. The effect depends on the response. No British retaliation would mean GDP 0.4% lower this year and 0.6% next. A global trade war would push that to 0.6% and 1%. Either outcome would wipe out the government’s fiscal headroom. But while British policymakers fret over the shrinking margins of fiscal rules, Mr Trump sees no need to cloak power in objectivity.

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His foolish foreign trip and the response to the Signal chat leak reflect the irresponsibility of White House team

Not for the first time, JD Vance, America’s outspoken vice-president, has made a public fool of himself. He insisted on visiting Greenland despite unequivocal statements by the territory’s leaders and Denmark’s government that he was not invited and not welcome. Vance’s trip was confined to a remote Arctic base, where he briefly spoke to a few Americans. Plans to make a wider tour and speak to Greenlanders were cancelled – because Greenlanders did not want to speak to him.

Such hostility is entirely understandable, given the repeated, provocative and disrespectful declarations by Vance’s boss, Donald Trump, that the US plans to annex Greenland and may do so illegally and by force. Greenland is a semi-autonomous territory within the kingdom of Denmark. Election results this month showed the vast majority of local people back expanded self-rule or outright independence. They do not want to be Americans.

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