அநுரா ஆட்சியில் செல்வினின் பனை அபிவிருத்தி சபைத் தலைவர் பொறுப்பு பறிப்பு!
பனை அபிவிருத்தி சபைத் தலைவராக இரானியேஸ் செல்வின் அவர்களைப் பொறுப்பேற்குமாறு பல சமாசங்களும் தனி நபர்களும் வேண்டிக் கொண்டதற்கு அமைய பனை அபிவிருத்தி சபை தலைவராக இரானியேஸ் செல்வின் 21-10-2024 அன்று பொறுப்பேற்றார்.
கைதடியில் உள்ள பனை அபிவிருத்தி சபை அலுவலகத்தில் இரானியேஸ் செல்வின் தனது கடமைகளை பொறுப்பேற்றார்.
சுற்றாடல், வன ஜீவராஜிகள் பெருந்தோட்ட உட்கட்டுமான அமைச்சர் விஜித கேரத் அவர்களினால் குறித்த நியமனம் வழங்கப்பட்டு அதிகார பூர்வ கடிதம் மூலம் அறிவிக்கப்பட்டதையடுத்து செல்வின் இப்பொறுப்பை ஏற்றுக்கொண்டார்.
இவர் இலங்கை நிர்வாக சேவையில் முதல் தர தகமை பெற்றவர். இதன் நிமித்தம் பல்வேறு பதவிகளை வகித்தவர்.ரணில் மைத்திரி ஆட்சிக்காலத்தில் இச்சபையிலும் பணி ஆற்றியவர். இந் நிலையில் புதிய அரசாங்கத்தினால் பனை அபிவிருத்தி சபை தலைவர் பதவிக்கு நியமிக்கப்பட்டார்.
எனினும் அனுரா ஆட்சி, செல்வின் பொறுப்பேற்று 24 மணி நேரத்தில் அவரது பொறுப்பைப் பறித்து பதவி நீக்கம் செய்துள்ளது.
இது குறித்து திரு.செல்வின் அவர்கள் ஊடறுப்பு நிகழ்ச்சியில் வழங்கிய கருத்துக்களின் சுருக்கத்தை ENB வீடியோவில் காணலாம்.
இதற்கு மத்தியில் செல்வின் நியமனம் தொடர்பாக விசாரணை நடத்துமாறு ரான்ஸ்பரன்சி இன்ரனஸனல் சிறீ லங்கா உடன் விசாரணை நடத்துமாறு அரசாங்கத்தைக் கோரியுள்ளது.
Illustrative: A surfer attends a surfing competition organized to revive local tourism on the island at Arugam Bay in the east of Sri Lanka on September 27, 2020. (Ishara S. Kodikara/AFP)
Monday, 4 November 2024 Daily FT
On 23 October, the United States embassy in Sri Lanka issued a travel advisory warning of a potential attack targeting tourist sites in Arugam Bay, a popular surfing destination in the Eastern Province of Sri Lanka. The embassies of the United Kingdom and Russia soon followed suit. Given the mysterious circumstances of the 2019 Easter attacks that occurred following a warning by Indian intelligence services, this has understandably stirred much anxiety and speculation among Sri Lankans.
What the recent travel advisories did not mention is the operation of illegal businesses by Israeli tourists in the Arugam Bay area, and the opening of Jewish places of worship in close proximity to local Muslim mosques. To make matters worse, it is reported that many of these tourists are possibly IDF soldiers engaging in the proliferation of Zionist propaganda.
While there is much to be said about these developments, there is also an opportunity here to discuss the more general shortcomings of tourism as an economic sector and Sri Lanka’s toxic dependence on it.
Integrated development
In a 1975 essay on class contradiction in Tanzania, the Guyanese historian and political activist Walter Rodney wrote about how university students in the newly independent United Republic of Tanzania debated the place of tourism in economic development. Rodney summarised the views of the opposing camp thus:
“They were saying that our workers and our peasants are not concerned with those who want to come and watch the lions and gazelle and to watch the Masai and so on, and call themselves tourists: that this will not do anything for the mass of our population. On the contrary it will inhibit a development of serious economic options which could lead to real integrated development.”
Rodney’s use of the words “integrated development” is key. Tourism is at best a stop-gap measure in conditions of serious economic and technical backwardness to raise foreign currency. The barriers to entry in tourism, in terms of skills and technology, are fairly low. While tourism can raise revenue, it historically has been incapable of re-investing resources into more dynamic economic activities.
Like agriculture, tourism is subject to diminishing returns. It is a classic rentier activity dependent on natural endowments like land and its proximity to ‘attractions’. The scope for value-addition in tourism is also fairly low. Tourism lacks the economies of scale, division of labour, and capital deepening that are characteristic of manufacturing and large-scale industry. At best, it may help augment the home market for domestically produced goods. However, this in turn requires activist policies to improve local content.
The lobbies and interest groups surrounding the tourism sector have congealed to such an extent that it seems impossible to have a productive conversation on the place of tourism in a national development strategy. A whole public-private institutional nexus exists to support the tourism sector. Every political party, left or right, must pay heed to the sector.
There is a case to be made that Sri Lanka’s overreliance on tourism diverts productive resources such as land, labour, and even state capacity (if we wish to view it as a precious resource) away from productive economic activities that could have a more long-term impact on developing the country. Revenues from tourism, rather than being invested in new industries, tend to perpetuate a speculative cycle of underdevelopment.
The missed wake-up call
The pandemic should have been a wake-up to Sri Lankan policymakers that non-tradable services such as tourism, are no foundation on which to build a modern economy. It is instructive that the economies of our regional competitors in tourism, such as Vietnam, Malaysia, and Thailand, did not collapse the same way Sri Lanka did during the pandemic. This is because they are rising manufacturing powers first and tourist attractions a distant second or third.
One measure of dependence on tourism is the share of international tourism receipts in exports. In 2019, on the eve of the pandemic, tourism receipts accounted for nearly a quarter of Sri Lanka’s exports (24%). By contrast, the figure was 20% for Thailand, 9.3% for Malaysia, and only 4.2% for Vietnam. While the Sri Lankan economy imploded during the pandemic, Vietnam boomed, as its dynamic industrial sector was able to adapt to shifts in global demand for manufactured goods. Vietnam was also agriculturally self-sufficient enough to feed its own population.
Aside from the economic case to be made against tourism as a core component of development strategy, there are also social and cultural arguments that warrant consideration. Is tourism a dignified way to rebuild a country after the ravages of 500 years of colonialism? Should we not have the clear-eyed and sober goal of developing our productive and technological capabilities so that our people can partake in world trade as equals, and not just beggars and debtors?
I am reminded of a quote by the freedom fighter Philip Gunawardena, who said that the need to industrialise was not simply to attain power but to get rid of poverty, improve living standards, “and to give our people, when they are free from the pursuit of inadequate food and shameful housing, the leisure and serenity to enjoy our beautiful country; to develop their culture in their own way.”
Our collective dependence on tourism amounts to a perverse inversion of this dream. Foreigners enjoy our beautiful country, and our culture debases itself in order to entertain them. Yet the majority of our people remain in poverty and in search of food, housing, and, most shamefully, better countries in which to raise their children⍐.
(The writer is a researcher at Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research. He holds an MSc in Economic Policy from SOAS University of London. He can be reached at shiran.illanperuma@gmail.com.)
For two weeks in late July and early August, said Mohammed Saad, 20, he and two other Palestinian men were forced by an Israeli army unit in Gaza to enter buildings feared to contain explosives and photograph every inch before troops were given the all clear to enter.
By Louisa Loveluck, Hajar Harb and John Hudson November 3, 2024
When the soldiers were done with him, he said, someone shot him in the back.
Saad was among four Palestinian men who spoke on the record to provide vivid accounts of what they described as Israel employing detained Palestinians as human shields in Gaza — defined by the Geneva Conventions as using civilians or other detainees to shield military operations from attack — in this case, by forcing them to carry out life-threatening tasks to reduce risk to Israeli soldiers.
Their nearly contemporaneous accounts are detailed, corroborated by other witnesses, and consistent with testimony by an Israeli soldier who fought in Gaza, and with interviews collected by Breaking the Silence, an organization that works with troops who have served in the occupied Palestinian territories. They described a practice in which Palestinians are detained, interrogated and ultimately released, indicating the Israeli army did not believe them to be militants. They described events that took place between January and August.
“This wasn’t something that happened just here and there but rather on a large scale throughout a number of different units, at different times, throughout the war and in different places,” said Joel Carmel, advocacy director of Breaking the Silence, an organization that collects and verifies testimonies from troops who have served in the occupied Palestinian territories.
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Under international law, the use of civilians and other protected people as human shields is a war crime. Israel’s high court has ruled the practice is illegal. On Oct. 16, in response to a New York Times article, State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said reports that the Israeli army is using human shields were “incredibly disturbing” and that perpetrators need to be “held accountable,” but did not comment on whether the United States was examining the reports independently. American law requires that the U.S. government suspend military support for Israeli units credibly implicated in gross human rights violations.
The Israel Defense Forces did not respond to any of the specific allegations made by the men in this story, but said in a statement that the use of civilians as human shields was prohibited. “The IDF works to address concrete allegations of violations that deviate from the directives and values expected of its soldiers and address them accordingly,” the statement said. The military would not say if any of its forces had been investigated or disciplined for using Palestinians as human shields, or if steps had been taken to eliminate the practice.
Under international law, the use of civilians and other protected people as human shields is a war crime. Israel’s high court has ruled the practice is illegal. On Oct. 16, in response to a New York Times article, State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said reports that the Israeli army is using human shields were “incredibly disturbing” and that perpetrators need to be “held accountable,” but did not comment on whether the United States was examining the reports independently. American law requires that the U.S. government suspend military support for Israeli units credibly implicated in gross human rights violations.
Washington Post reporters interviewed the four named Palestinians in this story within days or weeks of the events they described. They spoke by phone from Gaza. The Post corroborated elements of Saad’s story through medical records and with a U.S. physician who treated him in Gaza during a follow-up appointment to care for his wounds. Three other Palestinians, who described an incident inside Gaza City’s al-Shifa Hospital complex, spoke to The Post separately and confirmed the presence of one another.The Post was connected with the Israeli soldier through Breaking the Silence, and a reporter interviewed him in person.
Breaking the Silence also provided what it said was visual evidence of the practice. A photograph from northernGaza shared by the group shows soldiers standing next to two prisoners the group says were being used as human shields. The men sit on the ledge of a blown-out window in a shattered building — wrists tied, eyes covered and heads bowed.
A photograph shared by Breaking the Silence shows Israeli soldiers with two Palestinian detainees used as human shields in Gaza. (Courtesy of Breaking the Silence)
‘Our hands were tied and our eyes were covered’
More than 43,000 Palestinians have been killed during Israel’s military operations in Gaza, according to the local Health Ministry, which does not distinguish between civilians and combatants but says the majority of the dead are women and children. The Israeli army says more than 350 soldiers have been killed in its war against Hamas, some by booby traps or ambushes laid by militants in urban areas.
The Israeli soldier, who is in his 20s and served in northern Gaza, recalled the moment his commander brought two Palestinians to him, cuffed and blindfolded, to be used as shields. One was a teenager, he said, while the other appeared to be in his 20s. “I asked why we need them,” the soldier said, speaking on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to the media.
He remembers his commander replying that it would be better if the Palestinians were killed by any potential booby traps and that the lives of Israeli soldiers were more important.
For Saad, the ordeal began in June, he said, when he was detained near the Kerem Shalom border crossing, in southern Gaza, where he had been working as a paid guard protecting humanitarian aid from looters. “Without warning, five military jeeps surrounded us,” Saad said. “Our hands were tied and our eyes were covered.”
The soldiers interrogated Saad for several days, he said, before taking him and two other Palestinians to an Israeli army base near an abandoned U.N. warehouse near Rafah, along the Egyptian border. “You are here to perform some tasks for us, ” Saad recalled one of them saying. “You will be in front of us every time we storm a house.”
He said he was given an Israeli military uniform with a camera attached to the helmet. For 14 days, Saad recounted, he was the first one sent into buildings, ordered to film as he went, often with a drone buzzing over his head. The soldiers outside monitored the footage and told him where to go through an earpiece.
“I finished the first mission in about half an hour, and then they asked me to leave,” he said. “I was very afraid because I did not know who was in the house, and I was wearing a military uniform.” If there were militants inside, he thought, “I would surely die.”
He said he was blindfolded and cuffed each morning, then transported to the next location. On the second day, an explosion rocked a building after Saad checked it. The soldiers believed he had misled them on purpose.
“They tied my hands and threw me on the sand,” he said. “They took turns beating me. I still don’t know where the explosion came from.”
Once, Saad said, the captain of the unit showed him a photograph of his destroyed family home in Khan Younis. “If you do not cooperate with us, we will kill all your family members like this,” he recalls the man telling him.
The 15th day was different, he said: He was handed civilian clothes and instructed to start walking. Soon after came the blinding pain in his back.
He remembers waking up in an ambulance, which ferried him across the Israeli border to the Soroka Medical Center in the southern city of Beersheba. It was the first time he had ever left Gaza. He doesn’t know who shot him, or who decided to save his life.
“An unknown man was received by the IDF from Gaza after a gunshot wound,” read the hospital’s medical report, a copy of which was obtained and reviewed by The Post. The physician detailed “extensive pulmonary contusions” and a fractured rib, among other injuries.
Saad said he was still bleeding two days later when he was returned to Gaza in an ambulance and dropped off at Kerem Shalom.
“They told me not to look back,” he said.
Palestinians sit next to a fire in the rubble of their destroyed home in Khan Younis, in the southern Gaza Strip. (Haitham Imad/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock)
International law ‘was not important’
According to accounts provided to Breaking the Silence, Palestinians have been used as human shields throughout the conflict. “The earliest testimony we have on it is from a soldier who was aware of it just a few weeks after the ground invasion began,” Carmel said. “The latest testimony we have on this is from the summer.”
The reservist who spoke with The Post said his unit received two Palestinian men during his tour of Gaza. He recalls questioning whether they were militants and being assured by his commander that they were.
One of the detainees, a teenager, spoke little in the 24 hours he spent with the unit, which the soldier believed was because he was in shock. Blindfolds were removed from the men only when they reached the next building the military had designated for clearance.
The soldier’s recollections line up with the accounts of three Palestinian men interviewed by The Post, all of whom independently described being used by the IDF as human shields over a similar period — in their cases, in the immediate aftermath of Israel’s late March raid on al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City.
Omar al-Jadba, a vascular surgeon, said he was detained by soldiers as they entered the hospital, having stayed behind to look after patients who could not easily be moved. The soldiers assigned him a number, and called it out to summon him to the courtyard. There were other detainees there, including Mohamed al-Sharafa, 48, and Mohamed Hassouna, 24, who said they were taken from their homes near the hospital.
Jadba was ordered to call out through a megaphone that the army had set a deadline for militants to leave the area. The men were told what was expected of them: “To remove any obstacles to the troops, such as curtains and doors” inside the hospital, Hassouna said. “They told us that we should photograph every place we entered and that the pictures would reach them immediately via their wireless internet,” he continued.
Detainees who refused were beaten, the three men said. “I was telling them that my hands are precious for my work; I am the only vascular surgeon here,” Jadba said. “My hospital was turning into rubble, and they were asking me to demolish it with my own hands.”
The men were terrified that they would be mistaken for soldiers and shot by militants, they said, although they encountered none in the end. When the job was done, they called out through the loudspeaker and waited. Eventually, they said, they were allowed to leave, exhausted but relieved, with their hands in the air.
The reservist said a group of soldiers in his unit questioned the use of human shields. One told a more senior commander, he said, that the practice violated international law.
“He told us that international law is not important and the only thing that simple soldiers need to think about is the ethical code of the IDF,” the soldier said.
In its statement to The Post, the Israeli military said: “The use of civilians as human shields, or coercing them in any other way to participate in military operations, is strictly prohibited by the IDF’s orders. These directives and orders are regularly emphasized and clarified to the forces on the ground. The IDF is fully committed to international law.”
Brian Finucane, a former legal adviser at the State Department and now a senior adviser at the International Crisis Group, described the soldier’s recollection as “pretty damning evidence for prosecution,” saying his account sounded like “prohibited and indeed criminal human shielding.”
When the reservist asked his commander what to do with the Palestinians once the mission was over, he said he was told to release them.
“At this point we understood that if we could release them, then they were not terrorists,” the reservist said. “The officer just lied to us.”
Palestinians said they have also been forced to enter Hamas’s sprawling network of tunnels ahead of Israeli troops, in case they are booby-trapped. Hakim, whom The Post interviewed in January, described being sent underground in the western part of Gaza City with a camera around his waist and a rope that he was told to pull on if he needed to stop.
“Before I went down there, they asked me if I wanted to say goodbye to any family members,” said Hakim, who spoke on the condition that he be identified only by his first name for fear of reprisals. “I didn’t think there was any need if I was going to return safely,” Hakim recalled telling the soldiers, but a man told him, “No, you will only return in pieces,” he said.
At the mouth of the tunnel, Hakim remembered freezing in fear and told the soldiers he couldn’t do it. “One opened fire around my feet, and then pushed me into the hole,” he recounted.
Hakim survived his mission. As the soldiers returned him to their base, inside an abandoned school, he said, he heard them calling a 15-year-old from the detainees gathered there. He was being sent to the tunnels⍐.
Harb reported from London and Hudson from Jerusalem.
srael informed the United Nations on Monday that it has terminated the decades-old agreement legally recognizing the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees, which provides a humanitarian lifeline for people in the Gaza Strip.
In a letter addressed to U.N. Secretary General António Guterres, Foreign Minister Israel Katz said Israel was withdrawing from the 1967 agreement that forms the legal basis for its relations with the U.N. Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), though the impact of the move was not immediately clear.
On Monday, UNRWA spokeswoman Juliette Touma said the agency expected to continue its work coordinating the distribution of aid in Gaza and the West Bank at the operational level. Israeli authorities were not communicating directly with UNRWA about terminating the agreement, she said.
The move comes a week after Israel’s Knesset passed two laws that would severely imperil UNRWA’s activities and diplomatic privileges by blocking any activity on Israeli territory and forbidding government authorities from directly communicating with the agency.
Israel has long been critical of UNRWA and accused it of being infiltrated by Hamas, a claim the agency has denied. UNRWA says it distributes food aid to more than a million Palestinians in Gaza who depend on humanitarian aid.
Here are other key developments
Health workers administered second-round polio vaccines to over 35,800 children in northern Gaza on Sunday, UNICEF and COGAT, the Israeli military body in charge of civilian affairs, said Monday. Officials hope to vaccinate 90 percent of children in the north this week, UNICEF spokeswoman Rosalia Bollen said.
Israel’s military said its forces conducted a raid in southern Syria “in recent months,” capturing a Syrian man they described as an Iranian operative. The Israel Defense Forces said the man was gathering intelligence on Israeli troops near the border and was taken to Israel for interrogation.
At least 43,374 people have been killed in Gaza during the war and 102,261 injured, according to the Gaza Health Ministry. At least 2,986 people have been killed and 13,402 injured in Lebanon, the country’s Health Ministry says. Neither agency distinguishes between civilians and combatants.
Israel estimates that about 1,200 people were killed in Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, attack, including more than 300 soldiers. It says 368 soldiers have been killed in its military operation in Gaza⍐.
Where Trump and Harris stand on global issues ahead of the U.S. election
(Illustration by Kat Brooks/The Washington Post; iStock)
The new president will face a host of foreign policy challenges including immigration, climate change and wars in Ukraine and the Middle East.
By Annabelle Timsit, Kelsey Ables, Niha Masih and Adela Suliman November 4, 2024 WPost
Presidential candidates Kamala Harris and Donald Trump have presented two vastly different visions for the United States’ place in the world, and the American people are poised to make a decision on Election Day that will ripple far beyond their borders.
Whoever wins, the new president will be faced with the world’s most intractable issues. The conflict in the Middle East continues to rage. Funding for Ukraine hangs in the balance. And climate change poses a global threat. Trump promises to reverse what he sees as a lack of respect for the United States on the world stage with his “America First” approach. Harris has cast herself as the candidate who will “strengthen, not abdicate, our global leadership.”
Here’s what to know about where each candidate stands on some of the most pressing global issues.
Animmediate challenge for the next president will be containing the widening war in the Middle East and achieving a cease-fire to free thehostages seized from Israel and held by militantsin Gaza while ramping up aid to Palestinians living in conditions top United Nations officials have described as “apocalyptic.”
Trump has broadly called for an end to the war in Gaza but has not been explicit about a path to achieve it. Privately, he has offered support for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his country’s offensives against Hamas and Hezbollah — telling him in a recent call to “do what you have to do.” James Carafano, a fellow at the right-wing think tank Heritage Foundation and who was part of the first Trump administration’s presidential transition team, said that “I don’t think the cease-fire [in Gaza] is his priority” and that Trump will probably “not constrain Israel in any way in how it responds or threatens to respond” to Iran, Hezbollah or Hamas.
Harris has spoken forcefully about the suffering of Palestinians during the war. The Washington Post has reported that if she wins, she is likely to conduct a “full analysis” of U.S.-Israel policy and imposing conditions on some aid to Israel could be on the table. But Israeli officials are divided on how much they think Harris would change President Joe Biden’s policy of military support. Israel is likely to continue “largely as it sees fit” if there is a Harris win, Brian Katulis, senior fellow for U.S. foreign policy at the Middle East Institute, told The Post.
Harris’s campaign said that she will defend U.S. alliances, including the NATO military bloc, which she called “ironclad.” Yet European officials say they see Harris, despite four years as vice president, as a relative unknown who may not have the same substantive and emotional attachment to NATO as Biden, who was born during World War II and has experience dealing with Russia as a U.S. senator during the Cold War.
Trump took a more adversarial approach with the transatlantic military alliance as president, hammering members for what he called their financial overreliance on the United States. He suggested on the campaign trail that he would encourage Russia to attack NATO countries that don’t increase their defense spending and may consider leaving the 75-year-old alliance originally designed to counter the Soviet Union.
European policymakers largely don’t believe Trump would withdraw, though his former national security adviser, John Bolton, has told The Post that “he’s never lost the desire to get out.” But few think he will maintain the status quo, either, and NATO members have quietly moved to Trump-proof the organization. Trump called for “fundamentally reevaluating NATO’s purpose and NATO’s mission” on the trail.
The words Harris and Trump use when talking about climate change show vastly different views: To Harris, it’s an “existential threat.” To Trump, who has long rejected climate science, it’s a “hoax.”
Harris has committed to tackling it with international cooperation, and experts expect Harris to pursue an array of climate actions with potential global impact. Harris backs the U.S. pledge to slash planet-warming emissions by at least 50 percent by 2030, compared with 2005 levels. The landmark 2022 Inflation Reduction Act, which passed with Harris’s tiebreaker vote, poured billions in federal funds into speeding up the green energy transition.
“I expect that a Harris administration would issue stronger emission standards for passenger cars and for heavy-duty vehicles like trucks and buses and expand the electric vehicle charging network,” said Michael Gerrard, founder of the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law at Columbia University.
Politicians seeking to tackle climate change globally fear such efforts could stall under Trump. As president, he rolled back or eliminated more than 100 regulations designed to protect U.S. land, air and water. Now he is pledging to immediately reverse dozens of Biden’s environmental rules and policies and stop new ones from being enacted.
Trump has also promised to once again exit the landmark Paris climate accord, arguing it places an unfair burden on the United States. His pullout from the deal to reduce carbon emissions alarmed climate scientists and experts, and Biden rejoined after his 2020 election. “We’re gonna do it again,” Trump said in a recent TV interview.
“Strategic competition between the United States and China is poised to intensify no matter who assumes the U.S. presidency in January 2025,” Ali Wyne, an expert on U.S.-China relations at the International Crisis Group, told The Post.
Trump has threatened to scale up economic attacks on Beijing and is considering measures that are widely viewed as likely tospark a global trade war. He has publicly floated the idea of enacting a 10 to 20 percent tariff on nearly all imports, in addition to privately discussing significantly increasing tariffs on Chinese imports, by as much as 60 percent.
Economists from both parties say this could drive huge disruptions in the United States and global economies far exceeding the impact of the trade wars during Trump’s first term. Proponents of Trump’s approach say tariffs can help return manufacturing jobs to the United States, but in the past, some experts have found they resulted in net job losses.
Harris, who also views Beijing as a strategic and economic threat to the United States, is largely expected to continue the policies of the Biden administration, which maintained many of the protectionist measures from Trump’s term and finalized regulations last month limiting U.S. investment in Chinese development of technologies with military applications.
While Harris has stressed that she does not seek conflict with Beijing and has hit Trump for the cost of the tariffs imposed on China when he was president, her platform suggests that she would go after what the United States considers to be “China’s unfair trade practices.” This could include punitive measures such as tariffs, as well as investing in domestic production and alternative supply chains to reduce U.S. dependence on Chinese goods.
Trump and his running mate, Sen. JD Vance of Ohio, have expressed deep skepticism over continuing the United States’ financial aid to Ukraine, while Harris has promised “unwavering” support for Kyiv and met with President Volodymyr Zelensky a half-dozen times since Russia invaded in 2022.
Ukrainian officials told The Post that they believe Harris would maintain the status quo if elected. But they’re increasingly lamenting that this White House is too cautious about avoiding escalation with Russia, and that their requests for stronger weapons and looser restrictions on their use have been delayed or rebuffed.
On the other hand, some in Zelensky’s government worry Trump would push for Ukraine to make territorial concessions — which they have been adamantly against and would drive fresh splits within Europe. Trump has also boasted of being able to settle the conflict — now lurching into its third year — “as president-elect before I take office on January 20th.” He has offered no detailed plan.
The Kremlin has been outwardly cool about whom it wants in the White House, but Russian state media has been overwhelmingly flattering of Trump, who has touted a “very good relationship” with Russian President Vladimir Putin and may have spoken with him as many as seven times since leaving office.
Immigration was central to Trump’s campaign as polls showed voters broadly disapproving of the Biden administration’s handling of the border with Mexico. He aggressively pursued policies to limit legal immigration in his first term — and his 2024 platform signals that he would do it again. Near the top of the Trump campaign’s agenda is a promise to “carry out the largest deportation operation in American history.” U.S. authorities lack the capacity to round up and deport millions of immigrants, but Trump said he’ll use National Guard troops.
The United States and Mexico, in particular, could feel “devastating effects” as a result of massive deportations, according to a research paper written in part by the North American Integration and Development center at the University of California at Los Angeles. The paper notes the two countries are “highly interdependent through dense migration, remittance and trade relations.”
Harris’s immigration role for the Biden administration has included boosting U.S. aid to Central America and discouraging potential migrants in that region from making the dangerous journey to the United States. Efforts to address the root causes of migration were overcome by a surge of illegal crossings at the southern border during much of her vice presidency. Harris pledged to revive the push for a bipartisan border security bill that Trump opposed and Republicans torpedoed this year. The legislation would have invested billions of dollars in border security, allowed U.S. officials to suspend asylum processing when crossings surge and deployed technology to detect and intercept fentanyl and other drugs.
Christian Shepherd, Loveday Morris, Steve Hendrix, Kate Brady, Anthony Faiola and Ellen Francis contributed to this report.
