Just what we need, 5 trillion I'm tax cuts for the wealthy. Hopefully the house is unable to pass it with their slim majority.

I think it’s incredibly important that we collectively read and digest precisely what is being pumped out by the right wing media concerning Trump’s tariffs and the economy writ large. While I squarely believe that Trump doesn’t understand the material consequences of his actions, the justifications that Republican acolytes build are both interesting and possibly revelatory. So, here’s a nice Saturday opinion piece from Trump’s media mouthpiece.

Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) will pause shipments of its UK-made cars to the US for a month as it considers how to mitigate the cost of Donald Trump’s tariffs.

The 25% tariff imposed by the US on imported cars and light trucks took effect on 3 April.

A JLR spokesperson said: “The USA is an important market for JLR’s luxury brands. As we work to address the new trading terms with our business partners, we are enacting our short-term actions including a shipment pause in April, as we develop our mid to longer-term plans.”

JLR, which is owned by India’s Tata Motors, is one of Britain’s biggest producers, selling 400,000 Range Rover Sports, Defenders and other models annually.

Exports to the US account for almost a quarter of those sales and JLR is at the centre of Britain’s car industry, accounting for £1 in every £8 of the country’s exports.

The Sunday Times reported that JLR is thought to have a couple of months’ supply of cars already in the US, which will not be subject to the new tariffs. Shipping vehicles across the Atlantic takes about 21 days.

A pause in shipments will add to fears over the impact of tariffs on Britain’s car industry, which employs about 200,000 people in manufacturing.

The Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) thinktank has said more than 25,000 direct jobs in the car manufacturing industry could be at risk as exports to the US are predicted to fall.

Obviously there are many critiques of Trump's tariff policy, but one I keep hearing repeated is that billionaires are behind it all so that they can profit off short selling. It sounds very conspiratorial to me, as I always assumed big companies losing customers would outweigh any benefits of tariffs, but regardless I'd like to be more informed about the feasibility of this.

Spain this week stopped allowing non-EU citizens who make property investments access to residency visas, closing off a pathway to Spanish citizenship. The government said it introduced the measure to help ease Spain’s housing shortage that could reach a deficit of 600,000 homes in 2025.

Prime Minister Donald Tusk has announced that Poland will launch a campaign aiming to discourage migrants from trying to enter the country across the border with Belarus. It will warn them that Poland has suspended the right to claim asylum and strengthened the border to prevent irregular crossings.

Since 2021, tens of thousands of migrants and asylum seekers – mainly from the Middle East, Asia and Africa – have tried to cross into Poland and other EU countries with the encouragement and assistance of the Belarusian authorities.

In a video on social media, Tusk on Friday announced that Poland “will soon start an information campaign in the seven countries where the largest number of migrants trying to illegally cross the Polish border come from”.

He did not specify which countries those would be. However, Polish border guard data show that, in 2024, the seven nationalities that most often submitted asylum claims after crossing from Belarus were Ethiopians, Eritreans, Somalis, Syrians, Sudanese, Yemenis and Afghans.

“Our message will be simple,” said Tusk. “The Polish border is sealed. Don’t believe the smugglers. Don’t believe Lukashenko, don’t believe Putin [the presidents of Belarus and Russia]. They lie to you when they say that this is the way into Europe.”

“You won’t apply for asylum here anymore,” continued Tusk, referring to a law introduced last week that suspends the right to apply for asylum at the border with Belarus. Those who are caught crossing are sent back to Belarus.

“But above all, you won’t cross the Polish border illegally,” warned the prime minister. “Thousands of soldiers, border guards and policemen, cameras and drones, guard every meter of it 24 hours a day.”

He then invited potential migrants to “see for yourself”, showing a video of a group who had tried to cross the border but were apprehended by Polish officers.

Both the former Law and Justice (PiS) government and Tusk’s current ruling coalition, which replaced PiS in power in December 2023, have taken tough measures in response to the security and migration crisis at the Belarus border.

Those have included introducing exclusion zones along the border to prevent people from entering the area, as well as building physical and electronic barriers along the frontier.

A conservative legal group is suing the Trump administration over the president’s tariffs on Chinese imports, alleging that they were imposed through an “unlawful” use of emergency executive power.

The 29-page complaint filed Thursday by the New Civil Liberties Alliance (NCLA) in the Northern District of Florida alleges that the authority to impose tariffs lies with Congress, not the president.

“By invoking emergency power to impose an across-the-board tariff on imports from China that the statute does not authorize, President Trump has misused that power, usurped Congress’s right to control tariffs, and upset the Constitution’s separation of powers,” NCLA senior litigation counsel Andrew Morris said in a statement accompanying the lawsuit.

According to the nonprofit group, the statutes under which Trump purported to issue the levies — the International Emergency Economic Powers Act of 1977 (IEEPA) — grants the executive sweeping authority to quickly combat international economic crises, permitting the president to “order sanctions as a rapid response to international emergencies.” However, the NCLA asserts that the emergency statute does not allow the president to usurp the legislative branch’s control of the country’s purse strings through the unilateral imposition of tariffs.

“Congress passed the IEEPA to counter external emergencies, not to grant presidents a blank check to write domestic economic policy,” the complaint states.