Confusion in the administration’s messaging

Confusion in the administration’s messaging

Chinese President Xi Jinping attends the closing session of the National People's Congress in Beijing on March 11, 2025. 

Pedro Pardo/AFP/Getty Images/File

As it has several times, the administration is insisting that its sudden moves and inconsistent messaging were part of the plan all along.“This is just another great example of how President Trump had a detailed plan from the beginning that’s being executed exactly as directed,” White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller said on Fox News’ “Sunday Morning Futures.” He explained the administration’s thinking that such items are vital to US national security and thus required different treatment for “reshoring” factories that make them.

The administration insists its strategy is working, arguing that scores of countries included in the now-paused reciprocal tariffs have rushed to offer stunning deals to Trump to escape American pressure.

The White House is now applying similar logic to China, betting that the might of the US economy will force Xi to offer concessions on long-held grievances that include concerns over market access, intellectual property theft and a vast trade imbalance that Trump insists is proof Beijing is ripping off Washington.

“It’s kind of almost a two-world system. There’s a process about China, and that’s very, very nascent … and then the process for everybody else,” Kevin Hassett, director of the White House National Economic Council, told CNN’s Jake Tapper on “State of the Union” on Sunday. “So the process for everybody else is orderly, it’s clear. People are coming to town with great, great offers.”

The Trump approach is risky, and it may fail to take into account the complexities of the US-China relationship and the political dynamics in Beijing. This is because Xi’s attempt to turn his country into a dominant great power is founded in a conceit that the US and other Western powers have historically adopted colonial-style policies to suppress Chinese influence and deprive it of its rightful place in the world. This makes it almost impossible for Xi to be seen as caving to what China regards as US bullying.

Still, the administration has dismissed warnings that China can hurt the US as badly as Washington can hurt it. “They’re playing with a pair of twos,” Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said last week on CNBC. He argued that since the US exports only a fifth of the total value of goods Beijing sends to the US, its economy would come off worse in a tit-for-tat trade war.

That reasoning and Trump’s confidence that his typical brinksmanship and raising of the stakes to intolerable levels, which he honed as a real estate mogul in New York, will be tested in the days to come.

If Trump does manage to reframe the US trading relationship with China, he will claim a significant achievement in a new era of Washington relations with Beijing. For years, presidents of both parties reasoned that by liberalizing China’s previously controlled economy, the US could usher its rival into the global rule-based trading system and promote political reforms inside the country. But that calculus began to change at the end of the Obama administration, and Xi’s nationalistic rule sharpened the economic and geopolitical showdown between the two sides.

No duty to return illegally deported man to US

 

Trump administration contends it has no duty to return illegally deported man to US

The Trump administration insisted Sunday that it has no legal obligation to arrange for the return of a Maryland man illegally deported from the United States, arguing that a Supreme Court ruling last week only requires officials to admit him into the country if he makes it back from a high-security prison in El Salvador.

Justice Department lawyers told a federal judge that they don’t interpret the Supreme Court’s Thursday ruling — that the administration “facilitate” Kilmar Abrego Garcia’s release — as obligating the administration to do anything more than adjust his immigration status to admit him if El Salvador’s government chooses to release him.

With El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele set to meet President Donald Trump Monday, DOJ attorneys argued the courts have no power to require the administration to engage with the Salvadoran government to reach a diplomatic solution. They contend such a potential order would amount to a violation of the separation of powers and an intrusion into what they allege is unfettered presidential power to conduct foreign relations.“All of those requested orders involve interactions with a foreign sovereign — and potential violations of that sovereignty,” Justice Department attorneys wrote in a seven-page submission to U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis. “[A] federal court cannot compel the Executive Branch to engage in any mandated act of diplomacy or incursion upon the sovereignty of another nation.”

The administration’s position suggests officials do not view the Supreme Court’s order as compelling them to seek Abrego Garcia’s return. The Salvadoran native entered the country illegally around 2011 and had been living in Maryland. The Trump administration has admitted it deported him to El Salvador in violation of a 2019 immigration court order barring his deportation to that country. Though Abrego Garcia was denied asylum, a judge found he could not be sent to his home country because of a legitimate fear of persecution by a local gang.

The administration continued Sunday to flout a Friday order from Xinis to deliver “daily updates” to the court describing its efforts to return Abrego Garcia to the United States. Sunday’s update from Evan Katz, the assistant director of removal operations for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, said the administration had “no updates” for the judge. A day earlier, in a similarly threadbare update, the administration turned to Michael Kozak, the State Department’s senior bureau official in the Bureau of Western Hemisphere Affairs, who said Abrego Garcia was still alive in El Salvador’s CECOT prison.

The administration is also bucking demands from Abrego Garcia’s attorneys that officials detail the arrangement to ship hundreds of foreign nationals to a notorious prison in El Salvador. One of the Sunday filings insists those details are classified and could be subject to attorney-client and state secrets privileges.

Expatriate income reaches $2.7 billion in 24 days

 The first Eid has come to an end since the fall of the Awami League government in August last year. On this occasion, expatriates from abroad are sending more remittances or expatriate income through legal channels than at any time in the past. Bankers say that mainly because money laundering has decreased, expatriates have chosen legal channels to send their income. As a result, a new record has been set in expatriate income during the month of Ramadan. 2.7 billion US dollars came into the banking channel in the first 24 days of this month. In total, expatriate income came in at 2.52 billion dollars in February. This information has been found in the updated statistics of Bangladesh Bank.

If the current trend of expatriate income continues, bankers expect that the amount of expatriate income may exceed 3 billion US dollars by the end of this month. Officials said that the dollar crisis that was going on in banks has largely been overcome due to the increase in expatriate income. They said that the instability that was there regarding the price of the dollar has also reduced. Banks are now buying expatriate income within the maximum rate of 123 taka set by the central bank.

According to Bangladesh Bank data, in the first 15 days of this month, expatriate income came in at 1.66 billion dollars. Four days later, on March 19, the expatriate income coming through banking channels, i.e. legal channels, stood at $2.25 billion. Of this, $130 million came in on March 19 alone. Again, from March 1 to 22, i.e. the first 22 days of the month, the amount of expatriate income stood at $2.43 billion, which increased to $2.7 billion on March 24.

Usually, expatriate income comes in more than any other month of the year before the two Eids. Last year, expatriate income of $450 million came in in the five days before the holy Eid-ul-Fitr. That is, an average of $90 million came in a day. In the first week of this month, it came in at an average of $110 million and in the second week, it came in at an average of $120 million. Over the next four days, expatriates increased their remittances. During this time, they sent an average of about $150 million daily.

Since the political change in the country in August last year, expatriates have sent more than $2 billion every month for seven consecutive months. The most recent was in February, when expatriates sent $2.528 billion, which is 17 percent more than the same period last year. In January this year, expatriate income was 3 percent higher than the same period last year.

In total, expatriates sent $18.49 billion to the country in the first eight months of the 2024-25 fiscal year, July-March, which is 24 percent more than the same period in the previous fiscal year. In the same period of the previous 2023-24 fiscal year, expatriate income was $14.93 billion.

It is known that the purchase of dollars for expatriate income has now decreased significantly due to competition among banks. As a result, the price of the dollar is within 123 taka. This is also reducing the price of the dollar in importing goods. Earlier, the price of each dollar rose to 128 taka.

Expatriate income is the only non-liable source of dollar supply in the country. Because, no foreign currency has to be spent against this income, or there is no need to pay any liabilities. On the other hand, even if dollars come into the country against export income, foreign currency has to be spent again to import raw materials and equipment. Again, dollars are needed to repay foreign loans. As a result, as expatriate income increases, dollar reserves in the country's central bank increase rapidly.