‘It’s all trashed everywhere’: Residents of New Jersey community assess the damage after Storm Ida
It has taken 24 hours for the floods around Manville to recede.
At first glance, a place like this doesn’t look too bad, but it’s deceptive.
The mud lining the roads is the only sign that, block after block, all of this community was metres under water.
Physically, financially, psychologically, this extreme weather is testing communities and families.
Outside one house, I met the Shahs – grandparents, their two adult sons and their grandson, a young boy called Moweed.
It was he who wanted to show us inside.
“It’s all trashed everywhere. You can see the sofas. Everything,” he said, showing me around their living room.
The family only moved here eight months ago. The house is gutted. The living area, which is raised a couple of metres from the ground was itself under more than a metre of water.
Moweed Shah showed Sky News around his flood-damaged house in Manville
“We couldn’t see that window yesterday,” Zeb Shah said, pointing to an upper floor window of his parents’ house.
“You go inside you see four feet of water inside. We are standing 15 feet down right now,” he said.
Mr Shah runs a limousine business in New York City. His cars are parked outside and all will have to be written off.
As you’d expect, the small town spirit here is strong.
We passed Jeffrey Leiton with a pickup truck full of bottled water.
“I feel we have a responsibility as a community and no one can be better than the other,” he said.
“You see another person being affected so I just realised that Walmart was closed so I stopped in Edison (a neighbouring town) and filled the car with water.”
Passing in her car, Danielle Ord said she is checking up on neighbours.
“Our family friend, the mother and her daughter, the house completely to the roof submerged. I mean, between all the explosions, I even felt my own house shake.”
Some houses in Manville were ruined by gas explosions due to severe flooding. Pic: AP
“Explosions?” I asked.
“Yeah there were a couple of house explosions,” she said.
Sure enough, around the corner we found two of a number of houses in the town which have been levelled. The floods caused electric and gas explosions. Thankfully everyone here had evacuated.
This small New Jersey community was right underneath Storm Ida as it swept northeast across America, dumping records rains as it went.
This state suffered the worst death toll, with at least 25 dead. At least 62 died across eight states as Ida pushed north and east this past week.
Ralph Macaro said he is devastated after seeing the storm damage
Macaro’s Iron Works is a fencing company that is now ruined
Up the road is Macaro’s Iron Works, family run for two generations. It’s a fencing company that’s now ruined.
“The whole business, everybody. We have got over 80 employees over here, you know. So just devastated,” owner Ralph Macaro said.
“Is anything salvageable?” I asked.
“No. Just memories. That’s it. That’s all you’re gonna save now.”
Inside, it’s obvious that they will have to start again. Mr Macaro’s father Giuseppe Macaro founded the business and we found him clutching awards won at a recent business trade show.
“We’ve built it once, we gonna do it again,” he said, emotional.
Back outside the Shah house, young Moweed wanted the final word.
“I feel very sad for my grandparents. I really wish I can buy them a new one but I don’t have any money.”
US
Financial markets were always going to respond to Trump tariffs but they’re also battling with another problem
Stock markets around the world fell on Thursday after Donald Trump announced sweeping tariffs – with some economists now fearing a recession.
The US president announced tariffs for almost every country – including 10% rates on imports from the UK – on Wednesday evening, sending financial markets reeling.
While the UK’s FTSE 100 closed down 1.55% and the continent’s STOXX Europe 600 index was down 2.67% as of 5.30pm, it was American traders who were hit the most.
Trump tariffs latest: US stock markets tumble
All three of the US’s major markets opened to sharp losses on Thursday morning.
The S&P 500 is set for its worst day of trading since the COVID-19 pandemic. File pic: AP
By 8.30pm UK time (3.30pm EST), The Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 3.7%, the S&P 500 opened with a drop of 4.4%, and the Nasdaq composite was down 5.6%.
Compared to their values when Donald Trump was inaugurated, the three markets were down around 5.6%, 8.7% and 14.4%, respectively, according to LSEG.
Worst one-day losses since COVID
As Wall Street trading ended at 9pm in the UK, two indexes had suffered their worst one-day losses since the COVID-19 pandemic.
The S&P 500 fell 4.85%, the Nasdaq dropped 6%, and the Dow Jones fell 4%.
It marks Nasdaq’s biggest daily percentage drop since March 2020 at the start of COVID, and the largest drop for the Dow Jones since June 2020.
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The latest numbers on tariffs
‘Trust in President Trump’
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told CNN earlier in the day that Mr Trump was “doubling down on his proven economic formula from his first term”.
“To anyone on Wall Street this morning, I would say trust in President Trump,” she told the broadcaster, adding: “This is indeed a national emergency… and it’s about time we have a president who actually does something about it.”
Later, the US president told reporters as he left the White House that “I think it’s going very well,” adding: “The markets are going to boom, the stock is going to boom, the country is going to boom.”
He later said on Air Force One that the UK is “happy” with its tariff – the lowest possible levy of 10% – and added he would be open to negotiations if other countries “offer something phenomenal”.
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How is the world reacting to Trump’s tariffs?
Economist warns of ‘spiral of doom’
The turbulence in the markets from Mr Trump’s tariffs “just left everybody in shock”, Garrett Melson, portfolio strategist at Natixis Investment Managers Solutions in Boston, told Reuters.
He added that the economy could go into recession as a result, saying that “a lot of the pain, will probably most acutely be felt in the US and that certainly would weigh on broader global growth as well”.
Meanwhile, chief investment officer at St James’s Place Justin Onuekwusi said that international retaliation is likely, even as “it’s clear countries will think about how to retaliate in a politically astute way”.
He warned: “Significant retaliation could lead to a tariff ‘spiral of doom’ that could be the growth shock that drags us into recession.”
Read more:
Do Trump’s ‘Liberation Day’ tariff numbers add up?
Tariffs about something more than economics: power
It comes as the UK government published a long list of US products that could be subject to reciprocal tariffs – including golf clubs and golf balls.
Running to more than 400 pages, the list is part of a four-week-long consultation with British businesses and suggests whiskey, jeans, livestock, and chemical components.
Meanwhile, Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer said on Thursday that the US president had launched a “new era” for global trade and that the UK will respond with “cool and calm heads”.
It also comes as Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney announced a 25% tariff on all American-imported vehicles that are not compliant with the US-Mexico-Canada trade deal.
He added: “The 80-year period when the United States embraced the mantle of global economic leadership, when it forged alliances rooted in trust and mutual respect and championed the free and open exchange of goods and services, is over. This is a tragedy.”
Tanking stock markets, collapsing world orders, devastating trade wars; economists with their hair ablaze are scrambling to keep up.
But as we try to make sense of Donald Trumps’s tariff tsunami, economic theory only goes so far. In the end this surely is about something more primal.
Power.
Understanding that may be crucial to how the world responds.
Yes, economics helps explain the impact. The world’s economy has after all shifted on its axis, the way it’s been run for decades turned on its head.
Instead of driving world trade, America is creating a trade war. We will all feel the impact.
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PM will ‘fight’ for deal with US
Donald Trump says he is settling scores, righting wrongs. America has been raped, looted and pillaged by the world trading system.
But don’t be distracted by the hyperbole – and if you think this is about economics alone, you may be missing the point.
Above all, tariffs give Donald Trump power. They strike fear into allies and enemies, from governments to corporations.
This is a president who runs his presidency like a medieval emperor or mafia don.
It is one reason why since his election we have seen what one statesman called a conga line of sycophants make their way to the White House, from world leaders to titans of industry.
The conga line will grow longer as they now redouble their efforts hoping to special treatment from Trump’s tariffs. Sir Keir Starmer among them.
President Trump’s using similar tactics at home, deploying presidential power to extract concessions and deter dissent in corporate America, academia and the US media. Those who offer favours are spared punishment.
His critics say he seeks a form power for the executive or presidential branch of government that the founding fathers deliberately sought to prevent.
Whether or not that is true, the same playbook of divide and rule through intimidation can now be applied internationally. Thanks to tariffs
Each country will seek exceptions but on Trump’s terms. Those who retaliate may meet escalation.
This is the unforgiving calculus for governments including our own plotting their next moves.
The temptation will be to give Trump whatever he wants to spare their economies, but there is a jeopardy that compounds the longer this goes on.
Read more:
Do Trump’s numbers on tariffs really add up?
Trump hits island home only to penguins with 10% tariffs
Could America’s traditional allies turn to China? Pic: AP
Malcolm Turnbull, the former Australian prime minister who coined the conga line comparison, put it this way: “Pretty much all the international leaders I have seen that have sucked up to Trump have been run over. The reality is if you suck up to bullies, whether it’s global affairs or in the playground, you just get more bullying.”
Trading partners may be able to mitigate the impact of these tariffs through negotiation, but that may only encourage this unorthodox president to demand ever more?
Ultimately the world will need a more reliable superpower than that.
In the hands of such a president, America cannot be counted on.
When it comes to security, stability and prosperity, allies will need to fend for themselves.
And they will need new friends. If Washington can’t be relied on, Beijing beckons.
America First will, more and more, mean America on its own.
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