The Trump Administration’s $3 Meal: ‘A Piece of Chicken, a Piece of Broccoli, Corn Tortilla, and One Other Thing’

“What a slap in the face to struggling working families,” Rep. Pramila Jayapal said of Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins’ interview.

Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins “says Americans can afford this delicious $3 meal,” Rep. Ted Lieu (D-Calif.) wrote on social media alongside an image made with artificial intelligence.
(AI image: Rep. Ted Lieu/X)

Jessica Corbett
Jan 15, 2026
COMMON DREAMS

The Trump administration was again blasted for grocery prices this week after Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins discussed the new federal dietary guidelines during a NewsNation appearance.

“We’ve run over 1,000 simulations,” Rollins said in a clip shared on social media by journalist Aaron Rupar on Wednesday. “It can cost around $3 a meal for a piece of chicken, a piece of broccoli, corn tortilla, and one other thing.”

“So there is a way to do this that actually will save the average American consumer money,” Rollins continued, pushing back against host Connell McShane’s inquiry about whether the new guidelines expect people to spend more money on food.

The Guardian noted that “data from the consumer price index, as referenced by McShane, showed that food prices kept rising in December, increasing by 0.7%, the biggest month-to-month jump since October 2022. Prices for produce rose 0.5%, coffee increased by 1.9%, and beef went up 1% over the month and 16.4% compared with a year earlier.”



Responding to the clip, Chasten Glezman Buttigieg, an author and teacher married to former Democratic Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, said, “Private jets and tax breaks for them and their rich friends, and one piece of broccoli *AND* a tortilla for you!”

Noting a similarly mocked statement from President Donald Trump before the holidays, Civic Media political editor Dan Shafer said: “You will eat one piece of broccoli and your child will have one Christmas toy. This is the Golden Age.”

Other critics, including Democratic lawmakers, used artificial intelligence programs to generate images of what they called Rollins’ proposed “depression meal.”

“Due to Trump’s tariffs, last month was the largest spike in grocery prices in three years. So now this is what the Trump administration suggests you can afford for a meal,” wrote US Rep. Ted Lieu (D-Calif.), sharing the image below.

(AI image: Rep. Ted Lieu/X)



Rep. Jason Crow (D-Colo.) said: “Trump gets a gold-plated new ballroom. You get a piece of chicken, broccoli, and one corn tortilla.”

(AI image: Rep. Jason Crow/X)

“MAHA!” declared Democrats on the House Ways and Means Committee, invoking a phrase seized on by Trump after he won the support of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., “Make America Healthy Again.”

(AI image: House Ways and Means Committee Democrats/X)

Sharing an edited video clip of Rollins’ interview, Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) said, “What a slap in the face to struggling working families.”

Marlow Stern, who teaches at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, suggested that “you should eat prison meals” was “prob not the best message” from the Trump administration to the public.

The video went viral as the congressional Joint Economic Committee’s (JEC) Democratic staff on Thursday released a report showing that “a typical American family paid $310 more for groceries” during the first year of Trump’s second term compared to 2024.

Some of the biggest estimated jumps in annual cost documented in the report were for coffee (+$76.06), ground beef (+$70.99), eggs (+$51.66), candy (+$47.21), potato chips and salty snacks (+$22.59), orange juice (+$14.18), whole chickens (+$12.51), and chicken breasts (+$11.55).

“Despite President Trump’s promises that he would lower grocery costs, families across America are paying higher prices at the cash register,” said Sen. Maggie Hassan (D-NH), the JEC ranking member. “This report provides proof of what the American people are experiencing every day: Costs are too high, and Trump’s policies are only making them worse.”

The Dog That Didn’t Bark

Stephen F. Eisenman

 January 16, 2026

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Sidney Paget, Arthur Conan Doyle, “Silver Blaze,” Strand Magazine, Dec. 1892, p.646.

The crime

The crime last week — bombing a foreign country and kidnapping its president* – was nothing new. The U.S. did it in Panama in 1989 and Libya 12 years later, though in the latter case, the president (Muammar Gaddafi) was captured, tortured and killed by allied, local forces. The list of countries attacked, invaded or leaders deposed by the U.S. in the last 75 years is familiar to many Counterpunch readers. I present it here as dark poetry:

Guatemala, Grenada, Pakistan,
Somalia, Cuba, and Sudan.
Panama, Libya, Afghanistan,
Cambodia, Korea, and Vietnam.
El Salvador, Iraq, Iran,
Yemen, Nicaragua, and Lebanon,
Laos, Venezuela, and Republic Dominican.

Excluded are countries where the U.S. plotted coups or assassinations – mere bagatelles compared to the rest: The war against Vietnam killed some 2 million, not including 55,000 Americans. Since 9/11, according to the Brown University Costs of War project, U.S. violence has killed – directly or indirectly – about 4.5 million people in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Yemen and Pakistan.

Except when it showcased enemy body counts early in the Vietnam War to demonstrate battlefield progress, U.S. government officials have generally minimized or denied death tolls. Where obfuscation was impossible, they absolved themselves by claiming that war was thrust upon the U.S., and that the invaded nation: a) was the aggressor; b) colluded with communists, Islamic terrorists or drug traffickers; c) threatened its neighbors and global peace; d) possessed weapons of mass destruction; e) endangered global trade and American prosperity; or f) used civilians as human shields. Never have high ranking U.S. officials admitted moral or legal culpability, even decades after the violence. The conduct of the Vietnam war, according to President Barack Obama, winner of the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize, was marked by “mistakes” not crimes. Indeed, he said, the real “disgrace” was the American failure to adequately honor returning vets. No matter how the Venezuela adventure turns out, don’t expect any administration official to backtrack or apologize.

A surprising confession

The attack on Venezuela was premediated and unsurprising except in one, significant respect: U.S. officials, most notably the garrulous president, did not mask their motives, minimize the violence, or prevaricate – well, not much. The U.S. invaded Venezuela and kidnapped its president, Trump said, half-truthfully, to gain control of its oil industry and repay American companies whose property was “stolen” by the former government. In fact, the nationalization law of 1976 was nothing like a theft. It was uncontroversial at the time, except to those who saw it as a surrender to U.S. and corporate interests. The Venezuelan government paid a billion dollars in compensation to the two major oil producers, Creole Petroleum (USA) and Shell Oil (multinational), and otherwise maintained existing service agreements. In 2007, President Hugo Chavez decreed that foreign oil companies receive a smaller share of Venezuela’s oil revenues. Some petroleum giants – notably ExxonMobil and Conoco/Phillip – were unsatisfied and sued for compensation in international court. Venezuela agreed a smaller settlement than the court decreed, and negotiations continue.

But for anyone who remembers the slogan “no blood for oil” chanted at protests against the first Gulf War (1990-91) and U.S. invasion of Iraq (2003), Trump’s admission was stunning. Here are his exact words, published on his Truth Social website:

“I am pleased to announce that the Interim Authorities in Venezuela will be turning over between 30 and 50 MILLION Barrels of High Quality, Sanctioned Oil, to the United States of America.

“This Oil will be sold at its Market Price, and that money will be controlled by me, as President of the United States of America, to ensure it is used to benefit the people of Venezuela and the United States!”

Reporters, columnists and some U.S. politicians pounced on the divulgence to underline that Trump’s intervention in Venezuela had nothing to do with supposed drug shipments, as he previously claimed. (In fact, the country ships no fentanyl and little cocaine to the U.S.) Instead, it was born of greed and corporate payback. U.S. fossil fuel interests contributed nearly $500 million to Trump’s 2024 election campaign, and the president pledged to return that investment with interest.

Trump’s admission was in effect retrospective as well as prospective. If the current invasion of a major, oil producing nation was a war for oil, so must earlier Mideast, petrostate interventions. Whatever rhetorical justifications deployed by Bush I in 1991 (the sanctity of Kuwait’s borders) and Bush II in 2003 (weapons of mass destruction) they are now admitted to be prevarications. In fact, the entire edifice of U.S. foreign policy, Trump’s confession suggests, has been a tissue of lies: “containment,” “missile gap”, “Islamic terrorism,” “Soviet expansionism,” “pivot to Asia,” “rules-based order” and so on. The only thing exceptional about U.S. foreign policy is its fraudulence and the size of the military budget that underlies it, exceeding every other country in the world combined.

“The curious incident of the dog in the night-time”

In Arthur Conan Doyle’s short story, “The Story of Silver Blaze,” (1892), the mystery of a stolen horse and murdered trainer is solved by “the curious incident of the dog in the night-time” –Sherlock Holmes’ discovery that the dog guarding the horse barn didn’t bark, meaning the criminal was someone known to the canine. The sleuth of Baker Street might make a similar observation today. The most remarkable thing about Trump’s Venezuela confession is that the dog didn’t bark — there has been no mass, public outcry, no demands for investigations, and no cries for impeachment. Opinion polls indicate that slightly more Americans support the president’s actions in Venezuela (43%) than his overall performance (41%). Did Americans already know the truth Trump confessed?

Generations of presidents have been at pains to mask imperial plans out of concern that voters would reject them and punish their authors. But Trump openly acknowledged that the goal of his foreign policy is to bully the weak and increase corporate profits. His mini-me, Assistant Chief-of-Staff Stephen Miller, justified the seizure of Maduro and Venezuelan oil in Nietzschean terms: “We live in a world… the real world, that is governed by strength, that is governed by force, that is governed by power.” The Defense Secretary, Secretary of State, and U.N. ambassador have been equally blunt. How do we explain the sudden emergence of what T.J. Clark recently called “a politics where nothing is hidden?” And what accounts for Americans’ collective shrug?

A possible explanation for the first is that spectacular violence has become the end, not the means of government policy. The surge of U.S. sponsored mayhem – in Gaza, on the high seas, in Iran, Venezuela and at home in ICE targeted communities – may prove to be the terminal expostulation of American, democratic capitalism. Morbid symptoms have been apparent for some time: political parties wholly subservient to corporate interests; voters chosen by their representatives not vice versa (gerrymandering); representatives powerless to tax billionaires and regulate corporations out of fear they will relocate or replace workers with AI. Lacking real power, Trump and his coterie deploy the spectacle of violence and war, “the realm,” Clark writes, “where the state still calls the shots.” Clausewitz famously said: “War is the continuation of policy by other means”. Increasingly, under Trump, policy is the continuation of war by other means. Legislation concerning drugs and immigration takes a back seat to the performance of blowing up supposed drug boats, bombing Caracas, and the horror of masked and armed ICE agents corralling or shooting immigrants (and non-immigrants) in Democratic-led cities.

Two explanations for public indifference to Trump’s confession that he targeted Venezuela to pay back “our oil companies,” present themselves. First, as suggested earlier, that the thrall cast by ExxonMobil, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, Valero Energy, Marathon Petroleum etc., on U.S. politics is old news. You don’t need to have read Adam Smith to recognize monopoly pricing in the oil industry. Dueling corner stations with the exact same price for gas (to the tenth of a penny) offer drivers a daily lesson in price fixing. If Americans have continued to vote for politicians beholden to oil companies, it’s because they understand, correctly, that the deference afforded the latter by the former differs little whether Republicans or Democrats are in charge.

The second reason for the collective shrug is that whatever its rationale, people are waiting to see if they gain or lose from the attack on Venezuela. If prices fall for gas, food, rent, healthcare, education and entertainment, they will support it; if they don’t, they won’t. When domestic circumstances are dire, foreign policy is just background noise.

Prospects for resistance

Nevertheless, it should not just be taken as a given that the mass of Americans will forevermore remain indifferent to the spectacle of violence abroad and at home. It took years, and mounting American dead, for the tide of public opinion to turn against the Vietnam war, but when it did, the U.S. abandoned the field of battle. Reagan’s saber rattling and Star Wars initiative persuaded millions of Americans that their survival depended upon sustained, anti-nuclear protest. The result was a series of nuclear arms reduction treaties with the Soviet Union, partly undone by Republican presidents, including the current one.

Already, signs of mobilization against Trumpian fascism (debate over that term is now over) are apparent. Government support for Israel’s genocide against Palestinians in Gaza prompted mass, student protests last year. The garrisoning of ICE agents – veritable storm troopers – in Democratic led cities, has prompted thousands to join citizen patrols to warn immigrants of impending raids, and harass government forces, mostly with taunts and video recordings. The latter it seems, are especially galling to agents recruited with the promise of becoming action heroes like ones they see on TV.

Though the fascist right has until recently monopolized social media, that has started to change. For every Tucker Carlson, Nick Fuentes, Laura Loomer, and Steve Bannon on X, YouTube, Instagram, Tik Toc and Truth Social, there’s now a Hasan Piker, David Parkman, Ana Kasparian (“The Young Turks”), and Mehdi Hasan on the same sites or with their own channels and podcasts. While the right still commands more eyeballs than the left, the gap is narrowing.

What radicals and progressives in the U.S. need as much or more than social media stars, however, is actual, on the ground activists and organizers. While the best influencers may affect day to day public opinion, and perhaps even cyclical voting habits, they don’t appear to have the kind of long-term impact that leads to structural change. For that, what’s needed is people on the ground, talking to citizens about their anxieties, sense of powerlessness, hopes and desires. Talented organizers – the U.S. has many and I’ve known a few – can establish relationships with community members far more profound and lasting than between influencers and their unseen audience. They can help people understand the path their life has followed, the obstacles they have overcome, and how to achieve more in the future. Those conversations inevitably lead to strategies to join forces with others to intervene into the domain of power.

Only when groups or parties on the left begin to educate and organize — in living rooms, coffee shops, church basements, community centers, school auditoria and in the streets — will they begin to shift politics away from spectacular displays of domination toward the satisfaction of genuine human needs. That’s when aggression like we have seen in Venezuela and on the streets of American cities will raise alarms that cannot be ignored and prompt demands that cannot be refused.

*Whether or not the January 2025 election that returned Maduro to the presidency was free and fair is no more America’s business than the election of Donald Trump in 2016 – when he received 3 million less votes than Hilary Clinton — is Venezuela’s.

Stephen F. Eisenman is emeritus professor at Northwestern University and Honorary Research Fellow at the University of East Anglia. He is the author of a dozen books, the latest of which (with Sue Coe), is titled “The Young Person’s Illustrated Guide to American Fascism,” (OR Books, 2014). He is also co-founder of Anthropocene Alliance. Stephen welcomes comments and replies at s-eisenman@northwestern.edu

Dar Global launches $1bn Trump Plaza project in Jeddah

The development, called Trump Plaza Jeddah, will include executive and premium residences, home offices, retail outlets and curated dining offerings. Photo/Supplied

The development, called Trump Plaza Jeddah, will include executive and premium residences, home offices, retail outlets and curated dining offerings. Photo/SuppliedNext


Arab News
January 12, 2026


RIYADH: A $1 billion Trump-branded mixed-use development has been launched in Jeddah, expanding Saudi Arabia’s pipeline of high-end real estate projects.

Dar Global, a London-listed luxury real estate developer majority-owned by Saudi developer Dar Al-Arkan, said the project marks its third collaboration with the Trump Organization in the Kingdom.

The development, called Trump Plaza Jeddah, will include executive and premium residences, home offices, retail outlets and curated dining offerings, the company said in a statement.

The launch follows the unveiling of Trump Tower Jeddah in December 2024 and comes as Saudi Arabia steps up efforts to attract private capital and foreign buyers into its real estate sector.

Eric Trump, executive vice president of the Trump Organization, said: “Expanding our presence in Saudi Arabia with Trump Plaza Jeddah underscores our commitment to world-class quality and iconic design.”

He added: “This project reflects the strength of our relationship with Dar Global and our confidence in Jeddah as a dynamic, globally relevant city. Trump Plaza Jeddah will set a new benchmark for integrated urban destinations.”

The lifestyle project will also have a 4,000 sq. meter members-only Vitality Club, featuring golf simulators, a spa, sports medicine and recovery facilities.

The Vitality Club will also include swimming pools, fine dining, a cigar and library lounge, a coffee bar, and high-performance wellness spaces.

“The launch of Trump Plaza Jeddah represents a major milestone in our Saudi portfolio. This is not a single-use development, but a carefully curated urban ecosystem designed for global residents who want to live, work, and connect within the best address in Jeddah,” said Ziad El Chaar, CEO of Dar Global.

He added: “Anchored by a private park and supported by world-class amenities, Trump Plaza Jeddah introduces a new model for modern city living in the Kingdom.”

The destination will also feature retail and dining concepts, including Trump Grill, Trump Daily, an artisan bakery, and a fitness pro shop, reinforcing the project’s positioning as a district that operates day and night.

Trump Plaza Jeddah is located within the 1,000,000-sq.-meter Amaya development and is supported by foreign-ownership incentives, a 0 percent capital gains tax and accelerated infrastructure investment, the company said.

Earlier this month, Dar Global unveiled the first of two Trump-branded projects planned for Riyadh, launching a 2.6 million-sq.-meter Trump International Golf Club in Wadi Safar.

This Kew Gardens Botanical Art Exhibition Revealed the British Empire’s 'Darker Side'

John Elliott

12/Jan/2026
THE WIRE

INDIA


Kew invited the artists, the Singh Twins, to explore Kew’s archives and plants, and track the links to colonisation

The Singh Twins, as photographed by Christopher Doyle.

The important role played by Britain’s Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew in the country’s controversial colonial history is being graphically exposed and criticised by an art exhibition that challenges the image of the peaceful green spaces with their rare plants, magnificent trees and iconic glasshouses.

Kew Gardens, as it’s usually known, invited the Singh Twins (below), who are established artists of Indian origin living in Liverpool, to focus their critical approach to the British empire on the institution’s massive and rare botanical collection contained both in extensive archives and as live plants.

The result is an exhibition titled ‘THE SINGH TWINS Botanical Tales and Seeds of Empire’ that is open till April 12 in the Gardens’ Shirley Sherwood Gallery of Botanical Art. It reflects the way that museums and other British institutions have become increasingly willing in recent years to look into their collections and expose what the twins call “the darker side of what is revealed”.

Kew’s role in colonisation comes alive with a dramatic series of large back-lit works of art on fabric. These show how plants such as cotton, spices and dyes played a pivotal role in Britain’s colonial expansion as well as more positively in the transfer of botanical knowledge and experience across continents. There are also smaller works on the symbolism and significance of plants in global trade, and a tough film highlighting the negative message.

“The Singh Twins were a natural choice because of their unique ability to combine rigorous historical research with a powerful contemporary artistic voice,” Maria Devaney the galleries and exhibition leader told me.

“Kew’s history is closely entwined with Britain’s imperial past, and it’s important to acknowledge and respond to those complexities. We have a responsibility to engage honestly with our own history and with the wider histories that shape our collections and our work today. This is part of Kew’s ongoing commitment to inclusion and to presenting, plants, science and culture in their full historical contexts”.



“Imperialism: By the Yardstick and Sword” – the main figure symbolises Western Imperialism surrounded by examples of its impact

The toughest message comes in an allegorical work titled Imperialism: By the Yardstick and Sword that focuses, says the exhibition’s coffee-table style catalogue, on “the impoverishment and enslavement of India under western colonial expansion and in particular British rule”.

The main figure is a female warrior representing Western Imperialism standing above a tiger, piercing it in the mouth. Smaller images surrounding the figure illustrate the exploitation with a quotation saying, “India was ruthlessly conquered as an outlet for British goods”, which actively contributed to the “destruction of India’s industries”.

The Golden Bird: Envy of the West shows an allegorical figure representing pre-colonial India “with the world at her feet” before the British arrived. It was a “fabled land of untold riches and prosperity”.

Dying for a Cuppa deals with the “British colonial history of tea”, highlighting the tea trade’s “links with sugar and opium, commodities inextricably linked to enslavement, conflict, violence, land grabbing, deforestation and drug addiction”.

The Twins say Kew was aware of their work and had seen an earlier exhibition in 2018 on the same theme in Liverpool. This demonstrated, they say, Kew’s “willingness to look at its collections in a different light and bring out those histories….they knew exactly what they were buying into”. When the Twins pointed out that they would be looking at the “darker side” of Imperialism, they were told “this is actually what we want you to do”.

They were “overwhelmed” by the breadth of Kew’s documentation, processing, and archiving of material relating to plants, but they had already done research and “knew what we wanted to get out of it”.

That was to look at colonial links in botany following on from their Liverpool exhibition in 2018 where they focussed on similar narratives connected to India’s historical trade in cotton and other textile links.

“Kew was a central cog in the economic exploitation of plants, playing a key role in the Empire’s collection transportation and cultivation of commercial crops such as cotton, rubber and cinchona,” says Richard Deverell, the Gardens’ director and ceo, in an introduction to the catalogue.




Showing alongside the Twins’ works, under an overall Flora Indica title, is the first-ever public display of 52 rediscovered botanical watercolours (above) by Indian artists who were commissioned by British botanists between 1790 and 1850. Hidden for over a century, the works show how artists helped shape botanical knowledge from India, Nepal, Bangladesh and Myanmar. The Twins studied these and other archived works commissioned by Britain’s East India Company that controlled India for a century till 1858.

Over the past 17 years, the Twins have been exploring and exposing what they describe as the “exploitative nature of colonialism and empire”. They are proud of having “always spoken loudly about things we believe”.

“The Golden Bird: Envy of the West” – India is personified “with the world at her feet”, along with depictions below of European merchants, soldiers and others who invaded her

Born in the UK with a Sikh father who emigrated from India in 1947, Amrit Kaur Singh and Rabindra Kaur Singh are identical twins in their late 50s. They always dress alike and talk together, interrupting and finishing each other’s sentences. Their father, and their Sikh background, flow through many of the works.

The Twins adapt the intricate and colourful style of Mughal miniature paintings into a form of pop art where a series of individual small compositions cluster around a central image, together telling a multi-illustrated story. With up to around 15 images in a single work, the Twins estimate that the Kew exhibition has more than 200 compositions.

That was apparent when I first interviewed them, in 2011, at an exhibition in New Delhi that combined challenging the misuse of power by the Indian and other governments with recording the lives of Indians living in Liverpool and elsewhere in the UK.

“They have been fighting convention since they were at university in Liverpool,” I wrote.

The show included Partners in Crime, Deception and Lies with US president George W. Bush and UK prime minister Tony Blair standing on a burning blood-strewn globe of the world after the invasion of Iraq.

That was the year that they were both awarded an MBE, becoming Members of the Order of the British Empire. Their art had been shown in 2010 at London’s National Portrait Gallery, which describes their work as continuing “a long tradition of artistic interaction and influence between cultures”.

As students in Liverpool, they were told that the Indian miniatures style was no longer relevant and that they should be learning from Matisse, Gaugin and Picasso.

“We said that Gaugin and others had been influenced by India and other foreign works, and that we were being denied our own way of expressing ourselves,” was their reply. “There was pressure to conform to Western ideas, but we were challenging accepted notions of heritage and identity”.


A triptych dedicated to the memory of the Twins’ late father, Dr Karnail Singh, in “The Perfect Garden” with “The Arts of Botany” (left) and “The Science of Botany” (right)

A detailed picture on the “Science of Botany”

Their interest in the negative aspects of colonialism began when they were part of a British Arts Council trip in 2014 to the French city of Nantes in Upper Brittany. There they visited the Château des Ducs museum that has a large section on slavery marking the Atlantic coastal port’s significant role in the international trade, similar to Liverpoool’s.They also found displays of Indian textiles commissioned by French traders to be sold to African tribal chiefs as part of the slave trade, which made them realise the wide range of the trade beyond the transatlantic triangle

That led to the 2018 exhibition, titled Slaves of Fashion, at Liverpool’s Walker Art Gallery where the Twins developed their criticism of empire by focussing on the history of Indian textiles, especially cotton, enslavement and luxury consumerism. That is “a global story of conflict, conquest, slavery, environmental exploitation, cultural exchange and changing fashion,” they say, relating it also to current debates on ethical consumerism, racism and the politics of trade.

Another detailed picture on the “Science of Botany” including the words “Disease, Massacres, Enslavement, Displacement, Conflict

The Kew exhibition’s hard-hitting short film King Cotton: An Artist’s Tale was first shown in Liverpool and focusses on textiles. Set to a poem written by the twins and narrated by Amrit, it pulls no punches with lines like: “Torture was used to enforce taxation, and monopoly of salt caused devastation – to the mases steeped in poverty…..so that England’s exports might expand, thumbs were broken on weavers’ hands… …the tools of their trade were seized and smashed while Indian servants were routinely thrashed”.

The film’s rhyming poetry is good but there will be objections to some of the criticisms, notably weavers’ “thumbs being broken” that was first voiced in 1853 by Karl Marx. An earlier report in 1772 by William Bolts, a Dutch-born British merchant and employee of the East India Company, suggested that winders of raw silk were treated so badly that they cut off their thumbs to avoid being forced to work, though that is also represented in the film.

Critics will say that the show does not illustrate sufficiently the world-wide benefits reaped by early explorers and botanists who faced extreme challenges travelling to Asia and elsewhere centuries ago.

“Cinchona: What’s in a Name” with an “English family unperturbed by the mosquitos encircling their domesticated environment” in the centre, and “competing interests in quinine production” in the surrounding border

The exhibition includes a work, Cinchona: What’s in a Name marking how in 1860 a British expedition to South America smuggled out cinchona seeds and plants that led to the development of quinine to treat malaria.

Planted extensively in British India and Sri Lanka those stolen seeds and plants saved millions of lives, until an artificial synthesis of quinine was developed in 1944, but the Twins introduce it negatively saying it was “significant in the colonisation of tropical countries”.

“Plants are an essential resource for human survival and they are also the foundation of practically all life on earth,” says one prominent habitat conservationist. “Yes, exotic plants were collected clandestinely in colonial times, just as they are today. But the efforts of those early collectors also brought huge benefits, particularly in the field of medicine”.

That does not however reduce from the importance of the Twins work, displaying in masses of intricate and highly colourful works, the links between botany and the negative side of empire.

This article first appeared on the writer’s blog ‘Riding the Elephant’ and has been republished by permission.

ROFLMAO

Navarro sees US ending Chinese dominance of critical minerals

Bloomberg News | January 8, 2026 | 

US trade adviser Peter Navarro. Credit: Victoria Pickering | Flickr, under Creative Commons licence CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.

US President Donald Trump’s White House trade adviser predicted American industrial breakthroughs would help boost domestic production and eliminate China’s market dominance of rare earths.

“China has been flexing its muscles now in Europe, in India, in the United States saying, basically, we’re gonna do what we want, and if you try to stop us, we’re gonna take away your critical minerals,” Peter Navarro said in an interview on Bloomberg’s The Mishal Husain Show. “Because they have, they think they have a monopoly on it, but that’s just a matter of time.”

American innovation would “quickly wipe away” China’s “weaponization,” he continued.

China is the world’s dominant supplier of rare earths, and Beijing’s efforts to withhold supplies last year helped fuel a trade war with the US that saw both sides raise tariffs to astronomical levels.

Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping reached a trade truce last October, but Washington has continued to pursue policies intended to wean the nation off Chinese supplies of magnets used in a wide variety of consumer products, including autos and electronics.

“So what do you do in the meantime? You do diplomacy. And if people want to call that soft, then they don’t understand the chessboard,” Navarro said.

Under the agreement, China consented to a one-year suspension of tighter export controls. In return, Trump halved tariffs on Chinese goods that were enacted in response to the flow of chemical ingredients for fentanyl into the US to 10%.

Navarro said it was critical to Trump’s efforts to maintain open lines of communication with “vicious dictators,” a group that the aide said included Xi, Russian President Vladimir Putin and Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

China is home to more than 90% of global rare earths and permanent magnets refining capacity, compared with just 4% for second-place Malaysia, according to the International Energy Agency, a Paris-based intergovernmental organization.

The US has sought out agreements with eight allied nations as part of a broader effort to strengthen supply chains and reduce Western dependence on China for critical minerals. US officials met with their counterparts from Japan, South Korea, Singapore, the Netherlands, the UK, Israel, the United Arab Emirates and Australia in December to strike agreements on energy, critical minerals, advanced manufacturing, semiconductors, AI infrastructure and transportation logistics.

Trump and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick suggested to reporters aboard Air Force One on Sunday the US could also tap into supplies of rare earths in Venezuela following the capture and arrest of leader Nicolas Maduro.

EU pressure

In his interview with Husain, Navarro also urged the European Union to impose higher tariffs on China, a request that could raise fresh tensions in the transatlantic trade relationship that has already been marred by a dispute over digital taxes on American firms.

“We are strongly encouraging Europe to adopt exactly the same level of tariffs that we adopt for the simple reason that when the president puts up tariffs to defend America from Chinese cheating, China can’t sell as much here,” he said. “Where does it sell it? Dumps it in Europe, dumps it in Mexico.”

As the 2026 midterm elections approach, Navarro acknowledged that the White House bears responsibility in alleviating economic pain felt by Americans. He said the president’s tariff regime would eventually boost US manufacturing and create jobs.

He likened the scenario to former President Ronald Reagan inheriting his predecessor Jimmy Carter’s economy, suggesting it took time for the Republican’s policies to take hold. When faced with voters during the 1982 midterms, Democrats won back the House and “paralyzed government,” he said. Trump, he added, faces a similar predicament.

“We understand that history and we’re trying to make sure we don’t get caught in that same vise,” he said. “So what we have to do is explain very clearly to the American people.”

Price concerns

The administration in recent months has focused on addressing affordability, a major voter concern that propelled Democrats to office in November’s state and local elections in Virginia, New Jersey and New York.

Navarro conceded that the administration’s tariff policy on some kitchen-table products has added to economic pressures facing American households. The administration has since reduced tariffs on more than 200 food products including staples such as beef, tomatoes, coffee, orange juice and bananas.

“I’m totally supportive of no tariffs on products we don’t make,” Navarro said. “It happened and now we make adjustments.”

The administration’s shifting trade policy throughout its first year has added to the economic uncertainty. US manufacturing activity shrank in December by the most since 2024, capping a rough year for American factories.

The Institute for Supply Management’s manufacturing index edged down to 47.9 from 48.2, according to data released Monday. The measure has been below 50, which indicates contraction, for 10 straight months.

(By Courtney Subramanian and Mishal Husain)