Summarize and humanize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in English The self-professed “Make America Great Again” president is yet again reaching back to some bad old days in his chaotic quest for this never-defined national greatness. And yet again, Donald Trump is shaming what actually is (was?) a great nation.With punitive tariffs this week, he’s ushering in not his promised “Golden Age” but a global trade war. Predictably, consumers and businesses are collateral damage, suddenly facing higher prices, layoffs, depressed retirement accounts and fears of recession. Some “Liberation Day.” Separately, Trump is overseeing migrant roundups, detentions and deportations that lack any semblance of constitutional due process. His agents are sweeping up legal residents in their opaque nets, labeling the whole unidentified lot as terrorists and shipping most of them off by planeloads to a Salvadoran megaprison. Scores of families plead that the government is mistaken, and this week the Trump administration uncharacteristically did concede to one “administrative error:” It told a federal judge that it wrongly nabbed a 29-year-old Maryland man after he’d left work and picked up his 5-year-old son, who has autism.And yet the same U.S. government that pays El Salvador millions to do its dirty work — and whose president is a strongman wannabe — told the court that it can’t get Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia out of the foreign prison and back home to Maryland.Less noticed amid the economic chaos and extrajudicial deportations is yet another travesty that strikes at the foundation of the country’s proud legacy as a world leader — the world leader — since World War II: The ever-transactional Trump’s sordid, neocolonial attempt to extort Ukraine of its wealth of oil, gas, critical minerals and rare-earth elements as repayment for the United States’ support in the Ukrainians’ defense against Russia’s invasion.Americans may be distracted but foreigners and global market-watchers have noticed. As Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky resists Trump’s latest one-sided demands, which dropped on Friday, Bloomberg News’ headline was “U.S. Seeks to Control Ukraine Investment, Squeezing Out Europe.” More colorfully, the Telegraph of London reported, “America holds gun to Zelensky’s head with unprecedented reparation demands.” Its article quoted Alan Riley, an expert on global energy law at the Atlantic Council, who damned the proposal as “an expropriation document” and added, “I’ve never seen anything like it before.”Certainly nothing like it has been seen since 1948, when the United States solidified its postwar leadership and banked global goodwill with the Marshall Plan, which rebuilt war-ravaged Europe, including former enemies. Over four years, President Truman and Congress provided bipartisan aid roughly equivalent to $175 billion today. All the while, U.S. politicians persuaded Americans that the aid they were paying for was neither selfless nor a giveaway: In reviving Europe, the United States was recovering markets for its products and stabilizing democratic allies to withstand further world wars.As the law’s advocate, Secretary of State George C. Marshall Jr., stated, the program reflected “a willingness on the part of our people to face up to the vast responsibilities which history has clearly placed upon our country.”How far we’ve fallen. You’d have to go back several centuries — when European powers colonized and plundered Africa, Asia and the Americas — to find the sorry model for Trump’s attempt to extract Ukraine’s resources (and Greenland’s) valued at trillions of dollars. But it’s all the worse considering that Ukraine, a democratic ally, has spilled its own blood and treasure to withstand and weaken Russia, a U.S. adversary, and asks only for aid — not troops — to hold the line against would-be Czar Vladimir Putin’s dreams of empire.In fairness, Trump is arguably following up on overtures from Zelensky last year to the Biden administration for U.S.-Ukraine cooperation in developing his country’s minerals and energy riches. But Zelensky’s offer was always in exchange for a U.S. guarantee of its security, perhaps NATO membership or American peacekeeping troops. Trump has refused to agree to that.The tension over a security guarantee was behind Trump’s and Vice President JD Vance’s February Oval Office pile-on that humiliated Zelensky and sickened U.S. allies. That debacle derailed a minerals deal, but negotiations resumed in recent weeks. After all, Zelensky doesn’t have much choice — “You don’t have the cards,” Trump mocked him.This much is true: Ukraine’s future relies on U.S. help, despite Europe’s talk of filling the void.Trump’s 55-page proposal calls for a U.S.-controlled investment fund to develop Ukraine’s resources, including minerals such as lithium and titanium that are essential for electric cars and other products based on modern technology. From Ukraine’s half of all proceeds, it would have to repay the United States for all past aid — none of which was provided on such terms, and most of which went to U.S. defense plants for weaponry — plus 4% interest.All with no U.S. security guarantee for Ukraine. And, just like Trump’s purported peace talks with Russia, the proposed minerals deal cuts out Ukraine’s more stalwart European allies, who, contrary to his repeated falsehoods, have collectively contributed more to Ukraine than the United States has — asking nothing in return.On Sunday, Trump told reporters that Zelensky is “trying to back out” of a deal. He added, for thuggish effect, “If he does that, he’s got some problems. Big, big problems.”Yes, Zelensky has big problems. But he and his country have their pride. Which is more than America will be left with if Trump has his way.@jackiekcalmes
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