Trump's EV, tariff plans bring more uncertainty to an auto industry already in flux

Scrapping the EV tax credit and adding tariffs could be Trump's focus for the auto sector.


Pras Subramanian · Senior Reporter

YAHOO FINANCE
Sat, January 18, 2025

The US auto sector is still finding its footing after a pandemic-era boom.

The incoming Trump administration may add to this uncertainty.

Major US automakers like GM (GM) and Ford (F) spent 2024 curtailing their EV growth plans as the projected demand for EVs waned.

And Trump, even with his close ties to Tesla (TSLA) CEO Elon Musk, appears to be measured at best in his support for a continued push to electrify America's auto fleet.

“I’m all for electric cars, but you have to have all of the alternatives also,” Trump said in an interview with CNBC last year. “First of all they don’t go far, they cost too much, and they’re all going to be made in China.”

“You can’t just go to electric," Trump added, claiming the grid isn't up to the challenges of production and distribution.

At a campaign stop this summer, however, Trump said he had “no choice” but to back EVs after gaining Elon's support.

Electric relationship: Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk with Donald Trump in Pennsylvania last October. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon, File) · ASSOCIATED PRESS

Still, it appears Trump will indeed try to roll back President Biden’s requirements that automakers meet tough emissions targets (which would have benefited EVs), as well as the $7,500 federal EV tax credit.

Despite Tesla having benefited greatly from these credits for years, Musk said in the fall he supports rolling back this program.

“[Removal of the tax credit] would be devastating for our competitors and for Tesla slightly, but long term probably actually helps,” Musk said during the company’s second quarter earnings call.

Legacy automakers like Ford and GM are more dependent on the tax credit than Tesla to bring their retail prices down, without hurting margins.


"[EVs] are a rapidly growing market and relatively new technology, but [loss of the EV tax credit] is not trivial. I mean, $7,500 is not trivial,” Joseph Shapiro, UC Berkeley associate professor of economics, said to Yahoo Finance.

In addition, automakers curtailing EV development to succumb to Trump’s whims may suffer in the long run.

“If the automakers are distracted from the EV transition, they risk falling behind in the technology and losing out long-term as global automakers move on to the next generation of motor and battery advancements,” said Sam Fiorani of AutoForecasting Solutions.

Supply chain woes

A pandemic-era boom in sales in 2020-21 has also left some automakers struggling to manage their inventory levels, while high interest rates and soaring sticker prices have also pressured dealers.

Stellantis, which manufactures the Jeep, Dodge, and Ram Trucks brands, among others, has sought to bring down its inventory levels for some time, with executives saying the company was "grinding through a transition" back in the fall. In December, its CEO quit.


And these production issues are likely to face further complications during Trump's second term given the president-elect's threats to impose tariffs on key US trading partners, including Canada and Mexico.

"Trump is obsessed with tariffs," Council on Foreign Relations senior fellow Heidi Crebo-Rediker told Yahoo Finance this week. "I think we'll most likely see some kind of action [on] day one."

Tariff threats could pressure US automakers with exposure to Mexico and China, in addition to foreign automakers like Toyota, Mercedes (MBGYY), and Volkswagen (VWAGY).

“Currently, GM produces the Silverado and Sierra outside of the US as well as inside,” Fiorani said. “Ford sells the Mexican-made Maverick pickup, Bronco Sport SUV, and Mustang Mach-E, but does not have alternative plants for their production in the US.”

S&P Global projects automakers could lose up to 17% of their annual core profits if Trump imposes tariffs on cars made in Europe, Mexico, and Canada, as he has suggested he will do.

Still, it’s possible a Trump presidency may be helpful to the auto sector, assuming his threats to hurt EV sales and duties on cars made outside the US is limited.

Ford executive chairman Bill Ford told the Detroit Free Press received a phone call from Trump earlier this year, during which Ford claimed the president-elect may strike a different tone.

"He wants to be helpful,” Ford said of Trump, adding that “his knowledge [of the industry] today is way superior to what it was when he came in the first term.”

Pras Subramanian is a reporter for Yahoo Finance. You can follow him on X and on Instagram

 

FDA orders manufacturers to do a better job detecting bird flu in raw pet food

Eduardo Cuevas, USA TODAY
Fri, January 17, 2025 

Manufacturers of raw dog and cat food must do a better job detecting bird flu in products sold to pet owners, federal regulators announced Friday.

Several cats, wild and domestic, in the U.S. have contracted H5N1 avian influenza and died from eating raw food contaminated with bird flu. Raw foods include unpasteurized milk, uncooked meat or unpasteurized eggs. The raw pet food industry has grown rapidly despite recalls and health warnings, according to USA TODAY reporting.

Pasteurization, the established process of heat treatment, can inactivate viruses, including H5N1 and other pathogens in food.

Under the Food and Drug Administration’s update Friday, officials said regulated cat and dog food manufacturers who sell uncooked or unpasteurized products must reanalyze food safety plans to include bird flu as a threat. The update is meant “to ensure that cat and dog food manufacturers are aware of information about the new H5N1 hazard associated with their pet food products,” FDA officials said.

A concern from pets getting sick with bird flu is that they can potentially infect people. Humans infected with bird flu have largely had mild infections, with no spread between others.

Research suggests cats, who can carry bird flu and human influenza viruses, can serve as mixing vessels that would allow the bird flu virus to mutate and become more likely to infect people. In some cases it could even cause more severe disease.

Cats especially can have severe illness and death from bird flu. In Washington, 20 wild cats died at an animal sanctuary from raw food. Domestic cats have died in California, Colorado and Oregon from their owners giving them raw meat or milk products that were subsequently recalled.

Dogs can also contract H5N1, though no cases have been identified in the U.S. so far.

Under an FDA rule, certain animal food companies must have a food safety plan identifying and evaluating hazards for foods they manufacture, process, pack or hold at their facilities.

The rule requires regulated companies to re-analyze their food safety plans when FDA determines it’s necessary, which is the case with the known transmission with bird flu for raw food products.

FDA encouraged pet food manufacturers and others in supply chains to use practices to “significantly minimize or prevent” bird flu transmission via animal food, including with pasteurization. Companies should obtain meat, milk or eggs from flocks or herds that are healthy.

Milk Has Divided Americans for More Than 150 Years

Yasmin Tayag
Thu, January 16, 2025 



For such a ubiquitous beverage, milk is surprisingly controversial. In recent years, the drink—appetizingly defined by the FDA as the “lacteal secretion” of cows—has sparked heated disputes about its healthiness, its safety, and, with the proliferation of milk alternatives, what it even is. The ongoing outbreak of bird flu, which has spread to nearly 1,000 U.S. dairy herds and turned up in samples of unpasteurized milk, is but the latest flash point in the nation’s dairy drama, which has been ongoing for more than 150 years.

To Americans, milk has always been much more than a drink. It is a symbol of all that is pure and natural—of a simpler, pastoral time. In 1910, the writer Dallas Lore Shari rhapsodized in an Atlantic story about the scene that greeted him at his rural family farm after a day’s work in the dirty, lonely city. “Four shining faces gather round on upturned buckets behind the cow. The lantern flickers, the milk foams, the stories flow,” he wrote. Milk was a respite from the coldness and isolation of the modern age. Newer conveniences such as canned condensed milk and milk delivery could save time and money, he acknowledged, but at a spiritual cost.

Nostalgia for the bygone era of family farms and rustic comforts mounted as milk production was revolutionized. In 1859, an unnamed writer lamented the erosion of old farming practices, in one of the earliest mentions of milk in The Atlantic. He commended a new book that criticized “the folly of the false system of economy which thinks it good farming to get the greatest quantity of milk with the least expenditure of fodder.” Others viewed the introduction of technology into dairying with suspicion. “I never see a milk-cart go by without a sense of vats and pipe-lines and pulleys and pandemonium, of everything that is gross and mechanical and utterly foreign to the fields,” one Atlantic writer complained in 1920. “It is no wonder that there is something wrong with their butter.”

In spite of the pushback, milk production continued to industrialize. It simply had to: As America’s growing population demanded more milk, a safe supply became harder to maintain. Milk, in its raw form—that is, straight from the cow—is prone to contamination with potentially deadly pathogens. Stringent regulation was a matter of public health, argued Hollis Godfrey, the former president of the Drexel Institute of Art, Science, and Industry, in 1907. He claimed that, served raw, milk was responsible in some big cities for more than a quarter of deaths among children by age 5 (the drink was a major source of nutrition for young kids). Pasteurization, the process of heating milk to kill pathogens, was first introduced to major American dairies in the 1890s, to great effect. Between 1907 and 1923, New York City’s infant death rate decreased by more than 50 percent, in part a result of mandated milk pasteurization.

As milk grew safer and more accessible, it became a standard part of adult diets. Not everyone agreed that this was a good thing. Soldiers in World War I were furnished with cans of condensed milk—part of the “barbaric” and “uncivilized” meals they endured, one veteran wrote in The Atlantic in 1920. The drink became popular among women too, to the chagrin of the writer Don Cortes, who in 1957 complained in this magazine that the “trouble with the American woman is simply that she is brought up on milk.” The beverage made her so vigorous, so feisty, so “elongated” in height that she took to interests such as activism and lost all sense of femininity—or so his argument went.

All the while, skepticism about industrially produced milk remained. As I wrote earlier this year, critics of pasteurization in the early 1910s argued that it destroyed the nutritious properties and helpful bacteria in milk, a hugely oversimplified claim that raw-milk enthusiasts still make today. Some proposed experimentations with milk must have seemed shocking to the public, such as those described in a 1957 Atlantic report: “vaccinated” milk, which could contain antibodies produced by injecting cows’ udders with vaccines, or milk blended with juice, which would help children “drink their morning milk and fruit juice simultaneously.” With the advent of even newer innovations in milk in recent decades—strawberry-flavored, plant-based, and shelf-stable, to name a few—the drink’s natural connotations seem all but lost.

Milk has come a long way from the family farm; it is now mainly the purview of science and policy. Much of the pushback against innovation in milk today is not just about the milk itself but also about government overreach (indeed, milk-drinking is at its lowest point since the 1970s, but consumption of raw milk has spiked in the past year). Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the most visible raw-milk enthusiast, has vowed to end the FDA’s “aggressive suppression” of products including raw milk if he leads the Department of Health and Human Services. His vision to “Make America Healthy Again” has been embraced by some Americans who believe, just like the pasteurized-milk skeptics a century ago, that such a future represents not only better milk, but a better life.

Voice of America is required by law to report the news accurately. Could Donald Trump change that?

LAURIE KELLMAN and DAVID BAUDER
Fri, January 17, 2025 



Voice of America-What Will It Say
FILE - President-elect Donald Trump talks to reporters after a meeting with Republican leadership at the Capitol on Wednesday, Jan. 8, 2025, in Washington.

 (AP Photo/Steve Helber, File)

LONDON (AP) — It’s called the Voice of America — a storied news outlet that has promised “the truth” since it first broadcast stories about democracy into Nazi Germany during World War II. Now, it’s the voice of a country in which a majority of voters chose incoming presidentDonald Trump, a man famous for insistingthe truth is what he says it is.

What VOA will tell the world about the United States and democracy during a second Trump administration depends heavily on the once and future president. Trump has jolted foreign leaders with statements about somehow adding Greenland, Canada and the Panama Canal to the United States. He wants to project America — and himself — as dominant. And fighting independent reporting that conflicts with this goal — what he considers “fake news” — is one of Trump’s signatures.

During the first Trump administration, his targets included Voice of America in an uglychapter that included firings, a lawsuit, whistleblowers and a federal investigation. Media experts and current and former VOA journalists see this history potentially repeating itself in a landscape of creeping autocracy, rampant misinformation and Russian propaganda..

“I expect that VOA will be put under intense pressure to promote the USA. This seems likely to involve ... only selecting news that paints the country in a positive light,” Kate Wright, associate professor of media and politics at the University of Edinburgh, wrote in an email. Trump, she predicted, will try to correct supposedly “liberal bias” at VOA. “The risk is that this will push journalists to create false balance — treating perspectives or statements as equally valid when they are not.”

This time, Trump knows where the levers of power lie. He is poised to test Voice of America’s statutory “firewall” that protects its editorial operations from interference by any government official. Trump and Kari Lake, his choice to lead the newsgathering organization, have been clear about their intent to “reform the media” in a series of statements that have rattled many of VOA’s 2,000 employees and delighted Trump’s fans.

Lake said in an interview published Thursday that her job won’t be to turn VOA into “Trump TV.”

“But it’s also not our job to go in there and unduly criticize President Trump,” she told The Epoch Times. “I just want to see fair coverage."

Already, Trump’s nomination of Lake has resurrected a question that has shadowed Voice of America from its founding: Can a $260 million, government-funded news outlet ever really operate independently?

The law sets it up that way. President Gerald Ford signed VOA’s charter in 1976. Congress tightened its editorial protections in 1994 and did so again in 2020, after a federal judge ruled that a Trump appointee had infringed on the editorial independence and First Amendment rights of VOA journalists.

That was the clear intent from the first words anyone ever heard from the outlet, when the voice of William Harlan Hale beamed a message into Nazi Germany in 1942. “The news may be good. The news may be bad,” Hale announced, in German. “We shall tell you the truth.” That approach carried the outlet through World War II. It survived hearings in 1953 on allegations that VOA journalists were communist sympathizers.

“Unlike Soviet broadcasts, the Voice of America is not only committed to telling its country’s story, but also remains faithful to those standards of journalism that will not compromise the truth,” President Ronald Reagan said at VOA’s 40th anniversary celebration in 1982. Within a decade, Voice of America was broadcasting inside Russia 24-7.

“If you were interested in hearing something different from propaganda, you would seek out these voices,” said Mark Pomar, head of the Russian Service for VOA in the 1980s and the author of “Cold War Radio.”

Trump and Lake, a former Arizona broadcast journalist and a denier of multiple elections, have described a different approach. “Under my leadership,” Lake posted in December, “the VOA will excel in its mission: chronicling America’s achievements worldwide.”

Lake’s mission statement is a far cry from what VOA’s charter says. But Trump has made his name upending tradition, undermining institutions and seeking to unravel the so-called “deep state.” He views the Voice of America as “disgraceful.”

Under the charter signed into law by Ford, the Voice of America “will serve as a consistently reliable and authoritative source of news.” It goes on: “VOA will represent America, not any single segment of American society, and will therefore present a balanced and comprehensive projection of significant American thought and institutions.”

And finally, the broadcaster will present the policies of the US “clearly and effectively, and will also present responsible discussions and opinion on these policies.” So by law, Voice of America must broadcast editorials.

There, Wright and others say, lie some potential opportunities for Trump. Leading VOA from the news side of the “firewall,” Lake could have wide latitude to appear on air herself, for example, or to steer coverage to topics the administration favors.

Together, those are some of the factors that could open the door to what’s known as “government capture” of an independent agency, in which a government controls what is broadcast to domestic audiences. VOA is legally set up to broadcast news to international audiences, but in reality, anyone can access it. That leaves VOA open to transforming into a news-like organization that speaks to Trump's American constituency.

“These provisions always risked opening the door to any administration which wanted to turn the network into a mouthpiece,” said Wright, the co-author of the 2024 book “Capturing News, Capturing Democracy: Trump and the Voice of America.”

Lake was a broadcast journalist in Arizona for decades, winning two Emmys for her team’s coverage of landmine recovery in Cambodia, a Fox News spokeswoman said. Then Lake quit and ran for governor. She’s falsely denied two election losses — Trump’s loss to Joe Biden in 2020 and her own for governor in 2022. Last year, she ran for Senate in Arizona and lost.

Throughout, Lake built a national profile as an unflinching Trump ally. Her showy on-camera clashes with mainstream reporters — “monsters,” she said — got plaudits online and apparently Trump’s attention as well.

Spokespersons for Lake and for Trump’s transition did not reply to queries about her plans for VOA, including whether Lake intends to appear on air. Current and former VOA journalists who spoke on condition of anonymity to avoid retaliation said there was a sense of resignation that under Trump, Lake could clean house. Many are thought to be looking for other jobs.

___

David Bauder covers media for The Associated Press and reported from New York. Laurie Kellman has reported for the AP from Washington, Israel and London for 27 years. Follow her at http://www.x.com/APLaurieKellman

Trump Just Handed Steve Bannon a Big Weapon in His War With Elon Musk

Greg Sargent
Sat, January 18, 2025 

NEW REPUBLIC


Republicans may not know it yet, but they’re in the process of handing Steve Bannon a powerful weapon to wield in his war with Elon Musk over visas granted to high-skilled immigrants. This could further divide the MAGA coalition over immigration—and badly inconvenience Musk, who is trying to protect those visas from a ferocious assault being waged by Bannon and his allies.

The weapon in question, it turns out, is buried in the Laken Riley Act, the controversial bill that would mandate the detention of undocumented immigrants accused of minor nonviolent crimes. Another provision in the bill—which the Senate advanced in a key procedural vote Friday with Trump’s tacit blessing, putting it on track to become law—would authorize state attorneys general to bring lawsuits to force presidential administrations to deny visas to any particular country that isn’t accepting deportees. That provision has attracted public criticism, but Republicans have been unmoved.

What observers haven’t noticed, however, is that this measure is directly relevant to the Bannon-Musk battle. Bannon can now enlist a right-wing state attorney general—like Ken Paxton of Texas—to bring a lawsuit designed to halt visas to, say, people from India, which supplies many high-skilled tech workers. Under the law, it’ll be perfectly plausible that a handpicked judge could stop the issuance of such visas.

“We’re definitely going to use it, and we’re going to get after attorneys general,” Bannon told me when I contacted him to ask whether he sees the law as useful to him.

Bannon stressed that he fully supports Trump, and that he expects Trump to use all his power on his own to deny visas to countries that don’t accept deportees. But Bannon confirmed that he will seize on the law if Trump’s State Department fails to deny visas. “We certainly will call for state A.G.s to do this,” Bannon said.

Musk and many tech executives adamantly support H-1B skilled-worker visas, arguing that they supply tech talent to fill a real shortage of U.S. expertise. Bannon and his camp strongly oppose H-1B visas, claiming that “globalists” like Musk actively seek to give these jobs to foreigners even though Americans absolutely could fill them.

The opposition’s cause has also attracted racists and “great replacement theory” fanatics, who describe H-1B visas as a Trojan horse for “third-world invaders.” As Vox’s Andrew Prokop details, this issue is fertile soil for those who like to believe America’s supposed white European identity is under siege, not least because high percentages of recent H-1B recipients come from India.

Trump recently sided with Musk in this battle. But when the Laken Riley Act becomes law—which looks inevitable after the Senate voted to end debate on it Friday, with 10 Democrats in support—Trump can’t necessarily control what happens next.

The reason is that the bill grants broad authority to state attorneys general to bring lawsuits against an administration—to force it into compliance with immigration laws—under various circumstances, provided their state can show that federal enforcement failures are minimally damaging to it. One such scenario is triggered if the government tries to deport people to their country of origin but that country refuses them.

If that happens, under the new bill an attorney general from that person’s state of residence can ask a federal judge to apply a Cold War law that empowers the State Department to halt some or all visas to that country’s people. Administrations generally don’t implement blanket visa bans due to diplomatic and international factors. But under this bill, an attorney general can ask a judge to require this. And a judge can do exactly that.

What people have missed is that Bannon can use this against Musk. If a few Indian nationals in Texas are subject to deportation but India doesn’t accept them (India is recalcitrant about this), Bannon can publicly urge Paxton to act. Paxton could argue that these deportation failures damage his state in some tiny way and find a pliant Texas judge who’s willing to require the visa ban on India.

“A federal judge absolutely could invoke the Laken Riley Act to block all visas from India, or even just specific types of visas, like H-1Bs,” Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, senior fellow at the American Immigration Council, told me. The law, which I strongly oppose, is the direct result of Trump’s relentless 2024 elevation of Riley’s awful murder by an undocumented immigrant last February.

It’s possible that a given attorney general might refuse to bring such a lawsuit even if Bannon asks. But at minimum, this gives Bannon a way to pressure pro-MAGA attorneys general to act by mobilizing the base against them via his War Room podcast.

Bannon confirmed that he will bring this sort of pressure. “The populist right, who’s trying to defend American workers’ rights, will be all over these attorney generals,” he told me.

Bannon said he expects the law to be more useful under future administrations, because he thinks Trump will use the visa-denial tool to compel countries to take deportees without lawsuits forcing him to. “I believe strongly that President Trump will have our back,” he said.

But will likely Secretary of State Marco Rubio really undertake mass visa suspensions? If not, Bannon noted, the law empowers attorneys general to make it happen, and he’ll demand as much: “It gives us another avenue.”

Indeed, this possibility apparently has some tech company lobbyists worried. A source familiar with ongoing conversations told me that tech lobbyists have been telling GOP lawmakers that they fear the law could be used to shut down some H-1B visas. Those lawmakers have been responding that state attorneys general won’t use it that way, the source says. But those lawmakers cannot make this promise, since they don’t control what these attorneys general may do.

If Bannon does go this route, such a lawsuit might end with the Supreme Court striking down the provision empowering attorneys general, which many experts believe is unconstitutional. But Bannon absolutely can attempt this, and there’s no telling how the courts will rule or how long it will take them to do so.

Either way, all this could create complicated situations. In Texas, for instance, Musk’s Tesla recently laid off workers while hiring many H-1B visa holders. While it’s not clear whether those things were directly linked, the move stoked controversy. Bannon could use the law to pressure Paxton to act. With Austin emerging as a tech hub even as Texas is ground zero in the immigration wars, Bannon said, the issue will grow in importance there.

“Ken Paxton is one of MAGA’s top attorney generals,” Bannon told me. “So I think Texas is going to be an early test case for this.”

The battle could put other MAGA leaders in a tough spot. The New York Times reports that top Trump adviser Stephen Miller recently told tech oligarch Mark Zuckerberg that he’d better get on board with the Trump agenda, and that Zuckerberg meekly agreed. However, although die-hard nativist Miller opposes H-1B visas, the Times reports that he’s refraining from talking Trump out of supporting them. If Bannon picks up this banner, it could make Miller’s position look awkward—or, dare we say it, positively “globalist” and even cuck-ish.

The bottom line is that the Bannon-Musk battle represents a genuine, deep tension inside the MAGA coalition. Though Musk pushes anti-immigrant social media memes to excite MAGA incels, he and many tech executives really seem to believe dynamic, entrepreneurial outside talent benefits the country—along with their bottom lines, of course.

Many opponents of H-1B visas also operate from a genuinely held worldview. In their reading, they allow globalist corporate oligarchs to hire foreign workers more cheaply, which, critically, relieves society (or the state) of any obligation to better equip Americans to fill such rewarding roles. Bannon recently argued that anger over that national failing helped fuel the rise of Trump.

The schism also reflects bigger arguments on the right over how to achieve the sort of American greatness the MAGA right professes to value—whether skimming the world’s outside talent can help outrace China or, conversely, whether brutal international competition for top tech jobs is producing an elite that’s lacking in patriotism and virtue.

How these conflicts will shake out is unclear. Many Republicans appear to agree with Musk, whom they now dare not cross. It’s perversely amusing that in their rush to give Trump the early victory he craves by passing a terrible immigration bill, Republicans may have inadvertently handed Bannon a potent weapon to use against their new tech overlord—one Bannon appears prepared to wield as aggressively as possible.

Donald Trump and Elon Musk are pushing the H-1B visa. Does it take American jobs?

Daniel de Visé, USA TODAY
 Fri, January 17, 2025 


A recent flare-up over visas for tech workers revealed a rift among Republicans on immigration.

Steve Bannon, once President-elect Donald Trump’s chief strategist, termed the H-1B visa program a “total and complete scam.” Many Trump supporters sided with Bannon. So did Bernie Sanders, the progressive Vermont senator.

Bannon was addressing comments from billionaire Elon Musk, Trump’s corporate ally, who had come out in favor of H-1B visas. Musk tweeted that the visa was “the reason I’m in America,” adding an expletive. “I will go to war on this issue, the likes of which you cannot possibly comprehend.”

The Trump sided with Musk, who was born in South Africa, setting the table for a potential showdown in the second Trump administration.

At issue is a visa program designed to help American companies import skilled workers from other countries.

Steve Bannon, former chief strategist to Donald Trump, is a critic of the H-1B visa.

Does the H-1B visa take away American jobs?

Supporters say the H-1B visa encourages innovation and fires up the American economy. Detractors say the program takes jobs from Americans.

"The main function of the H-1B program is to lower the wages of American workers, and to exploit people from abroad," Sanders said in an interview with USA TODAY.

Before we roll out the arguments from both sides, let’s summarize what research and hard data say about the H-1B:

Yes, the program hurts some American workers, especially in tech. Investigations have revealed cases where employees had to train the H-1B workers who replaced them. Research shows computer scientists would earn more money in a world without visas.

But there’s ample evidence the H-1B helps pretty much everyone else. Workers who enter the country on visas go on to start and run billion-dollar companies. Musk says he entered the country on a visa. He now runs Tesla, which employs more than 100,000 people.

“Bottom line, Americans are better off,” said Gaurav Khanna, an economist at the University of California, San Diego, who has studied the H-1B issue in depth.

The visa allows companies to “obtain high-skilled workers on a temporary basis,” generally to work in specialty jobs, often in tech, according to a recent government report. The visas are typically granted for three years but can be extended to six. Many visa holders become permanent residents.

The number of new visas is capped at 85,000 a year, although the limit doesn’t apply to nonprofit employers. All told, the government approved or extended about 386,000 visas in fiscal year 2023.

The median salary for an H-1B worker was $118,000, which is roughly twice the median income for an American worker.

Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders has spoken out against the H-1B visa.

Critics say companies use the H-1B visa to exploit foreign labor

Yet, critics say corporations exploit the H-1B visa to get cheap labor from abroad.

“The program is designed to allow U.S. companies to bring in foreign guest workers to replace or displace American workers,” said Eric Ruark, director of research and sustainability at NumbersUSA, a group that advocates for immigration curbs. “It isn’t that there aren’t available workers in the U.S. to do these jobs.”

An income of $118,000 doesn’t sound like cheap labor. However, a 2020 report from the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute found that employers generally undercut local wages when they hire H-1B workers, paying them below market rates.

"The way I see it is, this is a program which enables large corporations, often high-tech corporations, to make more money by paying foreign workers lower wages than they pay American workers," said Sanders, the independent Vermont senator.

A more recent report from the economic think tank found that the top 30 H-1B employers hired more than 34,000 new visa workers in 2022, while simultaneously laying off at least 85,000 workers in 2022 and early 2023.

Visa critics point to Census data that show only 28% of U.S. college graduates with degrees in science, technology, engineering, or math (STEM) actually work in STEM jobs.

Meanwhile, H-1B workers are being employed as dog trainers, massage therapists and cooks, Sanders said, in an op-ed for Fox News.

Sanders wrote that many visa workers are effectively indentured servants, who “can have their visas taken away from them by their corporate bosses if they complain about dangerous, unfair or illegal working conditions.”

Academic research seems to confirm that American tech workers would be marginally better off if the visa disappeared. One 2017 study estimated that American computer scientists would earn as much as 5% more if the H-1B didn't exist.

But here’s the caveat:

“Everyone else in the U.S. economy is better off, and meaningfully better off” because of the H-1B, said Khanna, the San Diego economist, who co-authored the study.
Advocates say the H-1B visa is good for the US economy

Supporters say the H-1B visa supercharges the American economy.

“My take is that it’s a benefit to U.S. workers that H-1B workers come here and increase production on goods and services that are extremely valuable to them and improve their standard of living,” said David Bier, director of immigration studies at the libertarian Cato Institute.

A fact sheet from the American Immigration Council, a research and advocacy group, lists five ways visa workers help the economy:

◾ They often have different skill sets than American-born workers and can complement them in the workforce;

◾ They spend and invest in the U.S. economy;

◾ Businesses leverage visas to expand U.S. operations, rather than contract or move overseas;

◾ Visa workers create new companies, expanding the labor market;

◾ Ideas and innovations from visa workers fuel economic growth.

“What’s at stake is that we would have much less innovation, a lot fewer startups, and more work would go abroad” without the H-1B, said Stuart Anderson, executive director of the National Foundation for American Policy, a nonpartisan research organization.

“The H-1B visa, in practice, is the only way for a highly skilled foreign national to come into the United States and work,” he said.

The program is not perfect. In particular, observers on both sides deride the annual cap. Demand for visas often exceeds supply. As a result, visas are awarded by lottery.

“The lottery doesn’t seem to be serving anyone’s interest very well,” said Julia Gelatt, associate director of the U.S. Immigration Policy Program at the nonprofit Migration Policy Institute.

The 85,000-visa annual limit “is totally arbitrary, just made up,” said Bier of Cato.

But Gelatt doesn’t think either Congress or the Trump administration would seriously consider removing it.

“I think that there are a lot of people aligned with the incoming Trump administration who don’t see value in immigration, period,” she said.

Steve Bannon mocks Musk, Zuckerberg and Bezos as Trump ‘supplicants’ making an ‘official surrender’

Phil Thomas
Sat, January 18, 2025 


Steve Bannon speaking to Jonathan Karl on ABC News show This Week (ABC News)


Steve Bannon has intensified the MAGA civil war by comparing the sudden support for Donald Trump from tech titans Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg and Jeff Bezos to the Japanese surrender at the end of World War II.

Trump’s one-time White House chief strategist fired his latest broadside against Tesla and SpaceX CEO Musk in an interview with ABC News the weekend before his former boss is sworn in for a second term.

The two have crossed swords in recent weeks on the subject of H-1B visas, which are used to attract highly skilled foreign workers. Musk, who spent nearly a quarter of a billion dollars helping Trump get elected and is now seen as almost inseparable from the president-elect, supports them; Bannon, and other longtime anti-immigration Trump faithful, fiercely oppose them.

Bannon told ABC News’s Jonathan Karl that the decision of Musk, Meta CEO Zuckerberg and Amazon’s Bezos to attend Monday’s inauguration made them “supplicants.”

He invoked US General Douglas MacArthur receiving Imperial Japan’s unconditional surrender on the deck of the USS Missouri in 1945 to paint a picture of the tech titans bending the knee to Trump.

And he mocked Zuckerberg’s decision to back away from Facebook’s former policy on fact-checking, something that has become a bone of contention in Trump circles because of the freewheeling attitude to facts of the president-elect and his supporters.

“As soon as Zuckerberg said, I’m invited, I’m going – the floodgates opened up and they were all there knocking, trying to be supplicants,” Bannon said.

“So I look at this, and I think most people in our movement look at this, as President Trump broke the oligarchs. He broke them. And they surrendered. They came and said – oh, we’ll take off any constraints, there’ll be no more checking.”

He added: “I view this as September of 1945 – the Missouri – and you have the Imperial High Command … and he (Trump) is like Douglas MacArthur.

“That is an official surrender, OK? And I think it’s powerful.”

Earlier this month Bannon called for a “100 percent moratorium” on all immigration, while upping the rhetoric against Musk, suggesting he would “rip your face off” unless he stopped pushing for more visas.

He said: “We love converts. But the converts sit in the back and study for years and years and years to make sure you understand the faith and you understand the nuances of the faith and understand how you can internalize the faith.”

Bannon told Musk not to “come up and go to the pulpit in your first week here and start lecturing people about the way things are going to be. If you’re going to do that, we’re going to rip your face off.”

Bezos has faced backlash for pulling an endorsement of Kamala Harris from the Washington Post, which he owns, before the election. Other staff have left the paper since the election, including a cartoonist whose drawing of Bezos and others kneeling in front of Trump was pulled. The paper insisted that it was not censoring the cartoon and said it was repeating points made in a column on the subject.

Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk and Mark Zuckberg are putting aside their differences to focus on their current shared interest: supporting Donald Trump (Getty / Getty / AP)

The hostilities represent a growing schism within MAGA ranks that Trump will need to navigate carefully.

Musk – and fellow tech entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy – have been put in charge of a government advisory agency called DOGE which aims to cut billions from federal spending.

The Tesla boss has already flexed his new political muscles when a deal to avert a government shutdown fell apart at his urging last month.

Bannon, while no longer a key figure in the Trump set-up, is seen as representing the views of many of the incoming president’s most loyal supporters.

Bannon’s reference to the three billionaires as “oligarchs” echoes the nickname given to a group of ambitious entrepreneurs in Russia who made their fortunes and accumulated political power amid the collapse of the Soviet Union and during the shaky rule of Boris Yeltsin – only to be forced to bend the knee to Vladimir Putin once he took power, or else face prison or exile abroad.

Greenland's Leader Whacks Trump's Threats With Blunt Message On Territory's Future

Ben Blanchet

HUFFPOST
 Fri, January 17, 2025 


Greenland Prime Minister Múte Egede on Thursday countered Donald Trump’s talk of buying the Danish territory with a “clear” message from the Greenlandic people, who aren’t so warm to the U.S. president-elect’s proposal.

Egede — in an interview with Fox News’ Bret Baier — emphasized that Greenland “will always be” part of NATO and a strong partner to America, which he described as a “close neighbor” that’s cooperated with the territory for the past 80 years.

“I think in the future, we have a lot to offer to cooperate with but we want to also be clear. We don’t want to be Americans, we don’t want to be a part of U.S. but we want a strong cooperation together with U.S.,” Egede said.

Trump, who entertained buying and annexing Greenland during his first term, returned to his interest in controlling the territory again last month.

In the weeks since, Donald Trump Jr. — who has fancied “rare minerals” found in the ground in Greenland — visited the Arctic island just as Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen declared that the territory was “not for sale.”

Greenland officials like Pipaluk Lynge — a member of the territory’s parliament ― also let the U.S. president-elect’s son have it over the trip, which reportedly saw residents getting “Make America Great Again” caps prior to a “staged” photo.

Fox News correspondent Alex Hogan recently reported that people in Greenland’s capital of Nuuk had a “lot of mixed reaction” over Donald Trump’s annexing interest, as well.

Egede, when asked whether residents would vote for “independence from Denmark,” noted that it’s “up to the Greenlandic people” to decide on that.

“I think it’s important to see that if Greenland takes those steps, we will always be a part of the Western alliance and a strong partner for U.S. because your security is our security,” he said.

He later added that Greenland and the future of the territory “will be decided by the Greenlandic people.”

“And the Greenlandic people don’t want to be Danes, the Greenlandic people don’t want to be Americans. Greenlandic people want to be part of the Western alliance as Greenlandic people,” he said.

H/T: Mediaite

Trump threats prompt talk of boosting Greenland security

Brad Dress

THE HILL
Fri, January 17, 2025 

President-elect Trump’s talk of taking over or acquiring Greenland is highlighting bipartisan talks about the need to increase security around the Arctic island and boost defenses in the region.

The GOP views Trump’s desire for Greenland as a negotiating point for enhanced Arctic security linked to his strategy on confronting China. Trump has also discussed taking back the Panama Canal, where China controls two of five ports.

Democrats agree there is room to bolster security in Greenland and the high north, even if they disapprove of Trump’s suggestion he could use military force to take over a nation home to some 55,000 people.

“There’s no question that Russia is much more present up there and China’s now raising their game, and they’re acquiring property in Iceland,” Rep. Joe Courtney (D-Conn.) said.
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“That part of the world is going to be increasingly important,” added Courtney, ranking member of the House Armed Services seapower subcommittee.

The Arctic is becoming more contested as climate change melts ice sheets and opens up new sea paths. China, which describes itself as a near-Arctic power, and Russia, considered an Arctic power along with the U.S., are ramping up activity to compete in the region with American and NATO forces.

Greenland is a strategic island in the northern frontier overseen by NATO ally Denmark that also has rich minerals for critical technology like electric vehicles, a market that China now dominates. Greenland has also seen heavy investment from China in several industries, while Denmark has been criticized for neglecting the island’s security.

Trump, who said he wanted to buy Greenland during his first term, has reiterated his desire to acquire the country and did not rule out using military force to fulfill his aim.

“We need Greenland for national security purposes. I’ve been told that for a long time, long before I even ran,” he said at a press conference earlier this month.

Republicans have supported the broad idea to increase Arctic security, though they have deflected from the question of using military force to seize the world’s largest island.

Rep. Michael McCaul (R-Texas), a former chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said Trump’s comments should not be taken at face value.

“What he’s saying is, like, ‘Look, we got a base there. There are a lot of natural resources. And the Arctic is getting exploited by Russia and China,’” said McCaul, who agreed that one way to boost Arctic defenses is to get Denmark to pay more for security.

Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), who is set to be Trump’s next secretary of State, said at his confirmation hearing that Trump’s Greenland comments were about strategic posture.

“Putting aside all the things that are going on in the media, I think we need to understand that Greenland’s been strategically important to the United States and to the West for a very long time,” Rubio said.

“I think now we have the opportunity to see it for what it is, and that is one, if not the most important, one of the most critical parts of the world over the next 50 to 100 years will be whether there’s going to be freedom of navigation in the Arctic and what that will mean for global trade and commerce,” he added.

The U.S. maintains one military installation in Greenland, Pituffik Space Base, which was built in 1951.

It contains America’s northernmost deep-water port, a 10,000-foot runway and is operated by the 821st Space Base Group, which works on force projection, space superiority, and scientific research in the Arctic region.

The Pentagon, which has an Arctic and Global Resilience Office, released its latest Arctic strategy last summer that largely focuses on improving cooperation with northern allies, increasing training efforts and accelerating communication and intelligence investment.

Experts argue that despite the commitments, the resources have not been put into the Arctic.

A December Center for European Policy Analysis report faulted the U.S. for “persistent gaps” with cold weather gear, radar coverage and aerial domain awareness.

It also said NATO has not properly addressed a strategy in the region, even as the number of Arctic nations in the alliance increased to seven with the recent accession of Finland and Sweden.

“A genuine ‘Arctic awakening’ within NATO structures still awaits.,” the report said. “NATO needs an operational roadmap for the Arctic.”

The U.S. is also aiming to build more icebreaker ships under the Icebreaker Collaboration Effort (ICE) Pact with Finland and Canada. The Coast Guard, which operates icebreakers, has 12 of the ships, but only two are able to operate in the Arctic. By comparison, Russia has 41 and China has five.

Courtney said the U.S. has “dropped the ball in terms of icebreaker recapitalization” but disagreed with Trump’s approach to the situation.

“The ICE Pact between Canada, Finland and the U.S. is the best way to really address the high north, rather than talking about taking Greenland,” the Democrat said.

Trump’s push for Greenland comes as the country, which is self-governed outside of Denmark’s control over security and foreign policy, is moving toward independence.

Copenhagen has said Greenland must make its own decisions on independence and has pushed back against Trump’s desire to buy the island.

Greenland Prime Minister Múte Egede said he was willing to work with the U.S. on defense and trade but on their own terms.

“This is the first time Greenland has been listened to in an intense way. We need to be calm and take advantage of things and stand together,” he said at a press conference this week.

Troy Bouffard, director of the Center for Arctic Security and Resilience at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks, led a November report with other researchers that said Greenland wants a bigger say in foreign policy and defense even if it doesn’t become immediately independent.

The report explained there was a widening opportunity for more U.S. investment to counter historically strong Chinese investment.

On Capitol Hill, lawmakers believe there is a serious opportunity to invest more in the Arctic and work with Denmark to boost Greenland.

Rep. Adam Smith (D-Wash.), ranking member of the Armed Services panel, said the U.S. can work just fine with Denmark or with Greenland if it becomes independent.

“I think it is important. Russia and China certainly are involved in many strategic [areas],” Smith said, but cautioned against threatening Denmark over Greenland. “I don’t think owning Greenland is a strategic necessity, but certainly being engaged in that part of the world is important.”

Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. 

Exclusive-German ambassador warns of Trump plan to redefine constitutional order, document shows

Sabine Siebold and Friederike Heine
Sat, January 18, 2025 

REUTERS

U.S. President-elect Donald Trump at the U.S. Capitol in Washington

BERLIN (Reuters) - Germany's ambassador to the United States has warned that the incoming Trump administration will rob U.S. law enforcement and the media of their independence and hand big tech companies "co-governing power", according to a confidential document seen by Reuters.

The briefing document, dated Jan. 14 and signed by Ambassador Andreas Michaelis, describes Donald Trump's agenda for his second White House term as one of "maximum disruption" that will bring about "a redefinition of the constitutional order - maximum concentration of power with the president at the expense of Congress and the federal states."

"Basic democratic principles and checks and balances will be largely undermined, the legislature, law enforcement and media will be robbed of their independence and misused as a political arm, Big Tech will be given co-governing power," it says.
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Trump's transition team had no immediate comment on the ambassador's assessment.

The German foreign ministry said U.S. voters chose Trump in a democratic election, and it would "work closely with the new U.S. administration in the interests of Germany and Europe."

The outgoing government of Chancellor Olaf Scholz has largely refrained from direct public criticism of Trump since the election, but the ambassador's confidential assessment offers a blunt view from a senior German official.

Ambassadors are not replaced automatically with the formation of a new government, unless a change is deemed necessary for diplomatic or other reasons.

The document cites the judiciary, and especially the U.S. Supreme Court, as central to Trump's attempts to further his agenda, but says that despite the court's recent decision to expand presidential powers, "even the biggest critics assume that it will prevent the worst from happening."

Michaelis sees control of the Justice Department and FBI as key to Trump reaching his political and personal goals, including mass deportations, retribution against perceived enemies and legal impunity.

He says Trump has broad legal options to force his agenda on the states, saying "even military deployment within the country for police activities would be possible in the event of declared 'insurrection' and 'invasion'."

The 1878 Posse Comitatus Act bars the federal military from participating in domestic law enforcement, with some exceptions.

Michaelis also foresees a "redefinition of the First Amendment," saying Trump and billionaire X owner Elon Musk are already taking actions against critics and non-cooperating media companies.

"One is using lawsuits, threatening criminal prosecution and licence revocation, the other is having algorithms manipulated and accounts blocked," he says in the document.

Musk's repeated endorsement of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) ahead of the Feb. 23 national election has drawn ire in Berlin, but the government has stopped short of unanimously leaving his platform.

Berlin endured a particularly difficult relationship with the United States during the first Trump administration, facing costly tariffs and criticism over its failure to meet the NATO target on defence expenditure.

(Reporting by Sabine Siebold; Writing by Friederike Heine; Editing by Daniel Wallis)


German ambassador to US issues stark warning on Trump administration

DPA
Sun, January 19, 2025 

Then US President Donald Trump speaks at the start of a meeting on the sidelines of a NATO summit in Watford. Michael Kappeler/dpa

Germany's ambassador to the United States has issued an unusually stark warning to the government concerning major changes likely to occur in US policy following the inauguration of Donald Trump as president.

In a diplomatic cable addressed to the chancellery, the Foreign Office and the Interior Ministry, seen by dpa on Sunday, Ambassador Andreas Michaelis writes that the Trump 2.0 Agenda will cause "maximum disruption."

The cable refers to a breakup of the established political order and bureaucratic structures and to plans for vengeance, terming them a "redefinition of the constitutional order."

This would imply "maximum concentration of power with the president at the expense of Congress and the states," Michaelis writes ahead of Trump's inauguration on Monday.

"Fundamental democratic principles, along with checks and balances will be undermined as far as possible, the legislature, law enforcement and media robbed of their independence and misused as political arm, and big tech will gain co-governing authority," Michaelis wrote.

In his summary, Michaelis did not explicitly mention Tesla and SpaceX boss Elon Musk, a close adviser to Trump, but he did name him later on in an individual analysis.

The five-page cable carries the lowest of four confidentiality ratings meaning that it is intended for government officials only and not for wider publication.

The Foreign Office in Berlin said it did not comment on internal documents as a matter of principle, but added that the US was one of Germany's closest allies.

"The Americans have voted for President Trump in a democratic election. We will of course cooperate closely with the new US administration in the interests of Germany and Europe," it said.

It added that the German government maintained a network of relations with broader society, in the states and in Congress across party lines.

Blinken tells AP he's worried Trump administration may

abandon key Biden foreign policy initiatives

MATTHEW LEE

Updated Fri, January 17, 2025 

WASHINGTON (AP) — Outgoing Secretary of State Antony Blinken told The Associated Press that he hopes the incoming Trump administration will press forward with key points in President Joe Biden’s foreign policy, including on the Middle East and Ukraine.

But in an wide-ranging interview Friday on his last workday as America’s top diplomat, he expressed concern that the Trump team might abandon all or some of those policies.

Blinken said there is reason to be concerned that the new administration might not follow through on initiatives that Biden’s national security team put into place to end the war in Gaza, help Ukraine get free of Russian interference and maintain strengthened alliances with key partners.

“When we came in, we inherited partnerships and alliances that were seriously frayed," he said. "So if past is prologue, yes, it would be a concern.”

“I don’t know — can’t know — how they approach things,” Blinken added. “I do think that there is, there could and I believe should be, some real continuity in a couple of places.”

Trump's diverging views on foreign policy

President-elect Donald Trump has been skeptical of U.S. alliances, including NATO and defense partnerships in the Asia-Pacific, all of which the Biden team has worked to shore up over the past four years. Trump has also been critical of U.S. military aid to Ukraine and has praised Russian President Vladimir Putin.

But Trump’s incoming Middle East envoy has been deeply involved in helping the Biden administration broker a ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hamas. Both incoming and outgoing presidents claimed credit for the breakthrough this week.

“The best laid plans: There’s, of course, no guarantee that our successors will look to them, rely on them,” Blinken said. “But at least there’s that option. At least they can decide whether this is a good basis for proceeding and make changes.”

Efforts to reach the Trump's transition team for comment were not immediately successful.

Blinken and the Biden administration overall have been heavily criticized for their handling of the chaotic U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021 and, more recently, for their support for Israel in its war against Hamas. Critics accuse them of not imposing meaningful restrictions on weapons shipments to Israel or pushing its ally hard enough to ease a humanitarian crisis in Gaza.

On Thursday, protests accusing Blinken of complicity in Israeli violence against Palestinian civilians interrupted his final appearance in the State Department press briefing room, and demonstrators have routinely gathered outside his home.

Blinken lamented that the Biden administration has been diverted from its central foreign policy priorities by world developments, including the withdrawal from Afghanistan, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the Gaza crisis, all of which took time and energy away from pursuing core objectives, notably in the Indo-Pacific.

These are “not what we came in wanting or expecting to have to be focused on,” he said.

Blinken's legacy has been praised and criticized

Yet, Blinken's time in office will likely be remembered for those three crises, for which he has received both praise and heavy criticism.

The Biden administration decided to move ahead with Trump’s first-term decision to pull U.S. troops out of Afghanistan. Just months after taking office, Blinken was charged with overseeing the withdrawal, marked by a devastating attack outside the Kabul airport that killed 13 U.S. service members and 170 Afghans as people tried to flee the Taliban.

Trump and other Republicans have routinely attacked the Biden administration for its handling of the withdrawal, which had been set in motion a year earlier by Trump.

Later, Blinken and other U.S. officials warned about a possible Russian invasion of Ukraine for months and sought unsuccessfully to prevent it. In early 2022, Blinken devoted much of his time and energy to the situation in Ukraine, traveling to world capitals to make the case to support Ukraine.

After a last-ditch bid in late January 2022 to warn Moscow against proceeding with the war, the Biden administration was able to rally NATO allies and like-minded partners to support Kyiv.

Finally, the administration, in response to the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attacks in Israel, which began the war in Gaza, has been castigated both for being too supportive of Israel and not supportive enough.

Blinken is sensitive to such criticism and said Friday that he and his team endeavored to work in America’s interests in all three instances.

“We, and the State Department in particular, would like to be remembered for setting a new and stronger foundation for the United States in the world for the future — a foundation that allows us to deal with this incredible multiplicity, complexity, interconnectedness of challenges from a position of strength," he said. "And that foundation is this renewal of our alliances and partnerships.”

“I hope that the benefits are such and are so clear that future administrations will in one way or another continue them,” he said.

Blinken bids farewell to the State Department

The interview, conducted in Blinken's office on the seventh floor of the State Department, followed his farewell remarks to the agency's staffers. He urged career personnel to carry on in their mission amid uncertainty about how the incoming administration will handle relationships and rivalries abroad or treat career American diplomats.

Blinken paid tribute to their work over the past four years and called for them to remain resilient.

“Without you in the picture, this world, our country would look so much different,” Blinken told a cheering crowd of several hundred staffers.

Trump has been publicly skeptical of the State Department and its traditional role in crafting administration foreign policy.

Trump once referred to the agency as the “Deep State Department,” and he and his associates have made no secret of their desire to purge career officials who do not show sufficient loyalty to the president. His choice to be Blinken's successor, Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, has said he respects the foreign service, but he has not yet detailed any plans for how the department will be managed.

Opinion

Biden Just Gave Away Netanyahu’s Whole Game. And It’s Bad.

 ‘But Bibi, you can’t be carpet bombing these communities.’ 


Ellie Quinlan Houghtaling
Fri, January 17, 2025

President Joe Biden shared a tidbit of one of his conversations with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu regarding the war on Palestine, though the revelation didn’t leave either country in a particularly good light.

In his final interview in the Oval Office Thursday night, Biden recalled one of Netanyahu’s retorts for refusing to end his country’s war on Palestine. He claimed that the Israeli leader told him in the early days of the conflict that the United States shouldn’t be policing other nations’ warfare strategies in light of the country’s long trail of devastation.

“When I went to Israel immediately after the attack led by Hamas, eight days later or whatever it was, I told him that we were going to help,” Biden told MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell. “And I said, ‘But Bibi, you can’t be carpet bombing these communities.’ And he said to me, ‘Well you did it. You carpet bombed Berlin. You dropped a nuclear weapon. You killed thousands of innocent people because you had to in order to win a war.’”

“I said, ‘But that’s why we came up with the [United Nations],’” Biden continued with a smirk. “New deals by which—how what we do relative to civilians and military.”

“So he was comparing twenty-first-century war tactics, battle tactics, with World War II?” asked O’Donnell.

“Well, what he was really doing was going after me for saying, ‘You can’t indiscriminately bomb civilian areas. Even if the bad guys are there. Even if the bad guys are there, you can’t take out two, 10, 1,500 innocent people in order to get one bad guy,” Biden replied.

“And he made the legitimate argument, his perspective—‘Look, these are the guys that killed my people. These are the guys that are all over in these tunnels. Nobody has any idea of the miles of tunnels that are down there. The only way to get to them is to take out the places under which they got to the tunnels.’”

Biden then likened Israel’s ensuing assault on Palestine to America’s “war on terror” after the 9/11 terrorist attack.

Biden’s response is a particularly damning indictment of how his administration handled ceasefire negotiations. It makes it clear that Biden knew early on that Netanyahu intended to indiscriminately target Gaza—and did little to stop him.