supplement existing stretches of barriers. To complement the palisade of steel beams, orange buoys connected by underwater netting will deter migrants from trying to swim across the Rio Grande. Vehicle barriers, sensors, cameras and surveillance towers will fill any gaps. Funds for the wall must be spent by October 2029, but the White House wants to build as much as possible before Mr Trump leaves office. At the Border Security Expo, a conference in Phoenix in May, officials explained their spending strategy. “We’re front-loading it,” said Jaclyn Rubino, who until recently oversaw the bill’s disbursement with the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), the agency that includes CBP. “By the end of September in this fiscal year, we are going to be obligating at least 75%, if not more, of the funding that has been given to us.” This has unleashed a frenzy of bidding for contracts. In Phoenix, sales reps hawked tactical gear, drones and solar panels disguised as rocks, to power cameras and sensors. The boom has a few clear winners. Nearly 65% of the roughly $22bn awarded by CBP for wall construction in this fiscal year went to just two firms: Fisher Sand & Gravel and Barnard Construction. Their bosses have previously donated to Mr Trump or other Republicans. It is unclear, however, that the wall will be the permanent deterrent that Mr Trump wants. Despite all the frenetic building, it may not be completed by the time he leaves office. CBP says it plans to finish construction in 2028, but as of August 19th just 11% of the planned new wall had been built. In August bulldozers trundled into Big Bend National Park in Texas, where the Rio Grande cuts through towering canyons. Watching heavy machinery tear through the park outraged locals, Democrat and Republican, whose lobbying convinced CBP to halt work temporarily. Even if the wall is erected precisely as planned, asylum policy, if loosened once more, would give migrants a route into America, by encouraging them to present themselves at legal points of entry. And migrants who are most desperate to enter America will find ways to do so. Smugglers already use cutting torches to slice the wall’s steel beams and sledgehammers to knock out concrete, explains Jesse Mitchell, a Cochise County sheriff’s deputy. “They try to cut it real smooth, so agents don’t see it when they’re patrolling the line, so they can keep on crossing bodies.” CBP is already warning that
cartels, which do most cross-border smuggling of people and drugs, will try tunnels, drones and maritime routes. Those attempts may inspire future politicians to introduce new deterrents. In 2011 Barack Obama, then investing in more modest construction along the border, predicted that Republicans would always demand tougher defences. “Now they’re going to say we need to quadruple the Border Patrol,” he told a crowd in El Paso, Texas. “Maybe they’ll need a moat. Maybe they want alligators in the moat.” In the meantime, border communities are bracing for change. Despite the delay in Big Bend, construction is under way even in rugged areas where very few migrants cross. “If you’re gonna come across this way, you’re gonna suffer the elements of Arizona,” says Mr Mitchell in the San Rafael Valley. “Everything out here will bite you or poke you or stab you.” What is treacherous to humans is treasure for wildlife. The Centre for Biological Diversity, a conservation outfit, sued the administration to try to stop construction, but was stymied by waivers, authorised decades ago, that allow the government to build even in habitat for endangered species such as jaguars and ocelots. “This is like the biological gem of southern Arizona,” laments Russ McSpadden, an advocate with the group. The Tohono O’odham Nation has sued to stop the wall, too, arguing that building it would violate tribal sovereignty. The Nation was split by the Gadsden Purchase of 1854, which created the modern boundary between America and Mexico. New wall would separate about 2,000 members in Mexico from their American counterparts. “We didn’t cross the border, the border crossed us,” says Mr Jose, the Nation’s chairman. A federal judge declined to block construction, and on August 25th wall contractors showed up for work. As building continues, Border Patrol remains on high alert. Mr McSpadden regularly passes agents patrolling the San Rafael Valley’s grasslands. On one recent evening, he spotted an officer standing on the roof of a truck, staring at something in the direction of the wall. Mr McSpadden prefers to view the landscape with wonder, rather than vigilance. “I’d like to think they were just looking at the moon.” ■
Stay on top of American politics with The US in brief, our daily newsletter with fast analysis of the most important political news, and Checks and Balance, a weekly note that examines the state of American democracy and the issues that matter to voters. This article was downloaded by zlibrary from https://www.economist.com/interactive/united-states/2026/08/27/donald-trump-is-at- last-building-his-border-wall
From battleships to catapults, Trump keeps messing with the navy His obsessions will prove costly Aug 27th 2026 Presidents from George Washington to Franklin Roosevelt have built up America’s navy, but few American leaders have taken so keen an interest in ship design as Donald Trump. He loves “Victory at Sea”, a 1950s documentary about the American navy’s exploits in the second world war, with battleships firing big guns and planes taking off from the pitching decks of aircraft-carriers. During his speech at the Republican National Convention in 2024, the most important speech in his presidential campaign, he went off script to boast about his redesign of a warship’s bow in his first term so they “look like yachts”. The reaction in the shipyard, he claimed, was “This guy sort of knows what he’s doing.”
That is debatable. The navy has a ship problem, with fewer than 300 operational despite a congressional mandate to have 355. China has more than 370. So Mr Trump is taking action. In December he ordered the construction of outsize new “Trump-class” ships, bristling with missile launchers, laser weapons and electromagnetic rail-guns. This design may not be wise—the size of each battleship in Mr Trump’s new “Golden Fleet” may make them a riskier bet than having a larger number of smaller vessels. But his newest demand, to replace electromagnetic catapults on new aircraft- carriers with outmoded steam-driven ones, is definitively retrograde. Catapults are how planes take off from a carrier’s short flight deck. On August 13th Mr Trump ordered the Pentagon to present a plan for steam- driven catapults within 60 days. He thinks EMALS, the electromagnetic catapults, are too complex. The system has suffered teething problems but appears to have stabilised. The USS Gerald R. Ford concluded a 326-day deployment, operating off Venezuela and Iran, with 12,000 successful launches. Bryan Clark of the Hudson Institute, a think-tank, reckons EMALS enables a sortie rate 20% higher than steam-based launchers. It delivers a smoother acceleration, reducing strain on aircraft, and can launch flimsier drones without the thump of a steam piston. China and France are fitting their new carriers with electromagnetic launchers. In Mr Trump’s view, the fourth vessel of the Ford class, the USS Doris Miller, under construction, should be the first to revert to steam. This would require a redesign to run new pipework from the engine room to the catapult and rearranging internal spaces. If the weight and balance of the ship change —particularly if Mr Trump insists on moving the “island” on the deck, which houses the command post—further redesign will be needed. The nuclear-power plant, optimised for electricity, may not last as long if it must generate more steam. The bill for the redesign alone would come to hundreds of millions of dollars, and the actual conversion could add billions to the $15bn cost of the USS Doris Miller, reckons Mr Clark. The admirals are quiet for now, perhaps hoping to slow-roll the process until Mr Trump departs. As happens with Mr Trump, some good sense mixes with the bizarre. His memorandum allows foreign firms to build warships if they invest in, and
later bring production to, American shipyards. It notes, rightly, that naval programmes suffer from “overly complex designs” and directs the Pentagon to use “proven, reliable, and affordable technologies”. Yet EMALS is now the proven technology, whereas steam would perpetuate the bad habit of continuously redesigning ships. Most important, new ships would take longer to come online, creating a gap as older ships go out of service. The war in Iran has underscored the value of floating air bases. But the fleet is stretched. The USS Abraham Lincoln is homebound from the Middle East after more than 270 days at sea, amid reports of food shortages and attempted suicides. It will be replaced by the USS George Washington, which had been stationed in Japan, leaving the western Pacific without a carrier at a time of jitters about China’s power. Traditionally, the benefit of redesigning a ship had to outweigh the costs of removing it from action. This master builder seems to have a different calculus. ■ Stay on top of American politics with The US in brief, our daily newsletter with fast analysis of the most important political news, and Checks and Balance, a weekly note that examines the state of American democracy and the issues that matter to voters. This article was downloaded by zlibrary from https://www.economist.com/united-states/2026/08/26/from-battleships-to-catapults- trump-keeps-messing-with-the-navy
Does Donald Trump deserve credit for a manufacturing revival? Assessing the president’s promise to bring back factory jobs Aug 27th 2026 ON THE CAMPAIGN trail in 2024, Donald Trump promised a tariff-fuelled revival of America’s industrial towns. In Latrobe, Pennsylvania, he vowed to “bring back our manufacturing jobs, our energy jobs...and our dreams”. In Detroit he talked about manufacturing jobs moving from Mexico to Michigan. The promise was not simply more American-made goods, but more Americans making them. Has the president delivered?