Trending Now
We have updated our Privacy Policy and Terms of Use for Eurasia Group and its affiliates, including GZERO Media, to clarify the types of data we collect, how we collect it, how we use data and with whom we share data. By using our website you consent to our Terms and Conditions and Privacy Policy, including the transfer of your personal data to the United States from your country of residence, and our use of cookies described in our Cookie Policy.
Europe
France's President Emmanuel Macron speaks during a press conference following a summit for the "coalition of the willing" at the Elysee Palace in Paris on March 27, 2025.
The reassurance force has its share of supporters, notably British PM Keir Starmer. But Italian PM Giorgia Meloni offered “no national participation,” while Czech PM Petr Fiala dubbed the discussion “premature” until ceasefire conditions become known.
Moscow’s response?A hard nyet.Maria Zakharova, spokesperson for the Russian foreign ministry, claimed that the UK and France are “hatching plans for military intervention in Ukraine” under the guise of peacekeeping. She added, “Russia categorically opposes such a scenario, which threatens a direct conflict between Russia and NATO.”
So far, there has been no formal response from the Trump administration, although special envoy Steve Witkoff referred to the plan as “simplistic” and “posturing” in an interview with Tucker Carlson on March 21. We’re watching to see if there will be further reaction – and whether this will impact ceasefire talks.
The Canadian flag flies on Parliament Hill in Ottawa.
Canada’s foreign interference watchdog is warning that China, India, and Russia plan on meddling in the country’s federal election. The contest, which launched last weekend, has already been marked by a handful of stories about past covert foreign interventions and threats of new ones.
This week, the Globe and Mailreported allegations that India interfered in 2022 to help get Conservative Party leader Pierre Poilievre elected, though he was not aware of the efforts. They also broke news that former Liberal Party leadership candidate and member of Parliament Chandra Arya was banned from running for leader and reelection because of alleged interference tied, once again, to India.
Now, Canada’s election interference monitoring group is warning that China, India, and Russia will try to interfere in the current election.
Poilievre also accused Liberal leader Mark Carney of being cozy with Beijing due to a $276 million loan Brookfield Asset Management secured from the Bank of China when Carney was Chair of Brookfield’s board. Carney rejected those accusations and, on Wednesday, said that Canada should not pursue greater economic ties with China but should prioritize other Asian nations and Europe.
Other Canadian critics have complained that the US is interfering, citing Donald Trump consigliere Elon Musk’s public statements about the country. But officials say this doesn’t meet the bar for foreign interference. Neither, apparently, do the actions of Alberta Premier Danielle Smith,who recently admitted to Breitbartthat she pressed Trump administration officials to delay tariffs to help elect the Conservatives over the Liberals, since Poilievre would be “the best person” for the White House to deal with given that he would be “very much in sync with the new direction in America.”Volkswagen export cars are seen at the port of Emden, Germany, beside a VW plant.
On Wednesday, ahead of what Donald Trump is calling “Liberation Day,” when the administration plans to unveil a series of “reciprocal” tariffs, the president signed an executive order levying 25% tariffs on automobiles and auto parts made outside the United States. The tariffs will come into effect on April 2.
The new tariffs will be applied on top of existing duties on materials such as steel. For Canada and Mexico, which are party to a free trade deal with the US and whose auto manufacturing industries are intimately connected to their American partners, the tariff will only be applied to the non-US content of a vehicle or its parts. Economist Jim Stanfordpoints out, however, that this means every consumer car and truck in the US will be tariffed since no vehicle is uniquely and entirely made in America.
Trump says his goal is to permanently shift auto manufacturing to the US. But countries affected by the tariffs are pushing back. After the announcement, Canada, the European Union, Japan, China, the United Kingdom, and Germany decried the move. Japan says it’s “putting all options on the table” in response, and the German economy minister is promising “a firm response” from the EU.
In Canada, Prime Minister Mark Carney, who is on the campaign trail, called the tariffs a “direct attack” and said the country will defend its workers and industry, which accounts for over 600,000 direct and indirect domestic jobs. Carney canceled a Thursday campaign event to return to Ottawa to convene a meeting of his Cabinet Committee on Canada-US Relations. Earlier in the day, he promised that a reelected Liberal government would create a CA$2 billion fund to protect workers in the industry and to boost domestic manufacturing capacity, creating a “made-in-Canada” supply chain as the future of the continental auto industry remains in doubt.South Korean flag.
170,000: A report released Wednesday by the independent Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Korea pointed blame at Seoul for human rights violations related to a decades-long adoption program. Lack of oversight, according to the report, led to the “mass exportation of children” — to the tune of at least 170,000 kids — by private firms that were driven by profit. South Korea has been the global leader in sending children abroad for adoption since the 1950s but has worked to tighten its adoption processes.
25: On Wednesday, Donald Trump announced that a 25% tariff would be placed on all automobiles and automobile parts imported into the United States. The new tariff, set to take effect on April 2, will apply to both finished cars and trucks, including American brands manufactured abroad. This policy could lead to significant price increases for consumers as nearly half of the vehicles sold in the US are imported. Shares in Toyota, Honda, and Nissan fell about 2% in Asia on Thursday. Japan, South Korea, and the EU will all be heavily impacted, and Germany – the bloc’s automobile powerhouse – is urging countries to “respond firmly” with “far larger” tariffs.
4: Four US soldiers have died in a training accident in Lithuania. According to the US Army Europe and Africa public affairs office in Germany, the soldiers were involved in scheduled tactical training, and Lithuania’s public broadcaster LRT said the four had been reported missing on Tuesday in Pabradė, a town located less than six miles from the Belarusian border.
12 billion: The Trump administration this week cut billions in funding for state-run health services. Health and Human Services started informing state health departments on Monday that more than $12 billion in federal grants to states was being cut with immediate effect. Layoff preparations began as early as Tuesday in some areas. The funds had been used for tracking infectious diseases, mental health services, addiction treatment and other urgent health issues, and the cuts are expected to further hamper struggling state health care facilities.
72: In some older European homes, you can still find bomb shelters-turned-wine cellars — reminders of the horrors of war. Those shelters may soon be lined with survival kits, after the EU announced Wednesday that it wants all of its member states to create 72-hour survival kits for their citizens. The idea behind the Preparedness Union Strategy? To be ready for any future disasters, whether they’re natural or man-made.
12: They led the fight for Mariupol at the beginning of the Russian invasion, and now 12 members of Ukraine’s Azov regiment – who were captured when Russia won the siege of the city – are facing long prison sentences in Russia. A military court on Wednesday handed them sentences ranging from 13 to 23 years for alleged terrorist activity and violently seizing or retaining power.
Ian Bremmer's Quick Take: A Quick Take on the back of the full transcript of these Signal chat that's going on about the bombing of the Houthis. A few things here. First of all, are we surprised that a journalist is actually publishing what is clearly classified data? And there's no question, it's classified data. I mean, you're talking about the targets, the exact timing in advance of US military strikes, incredibly sensitive information, against people that are described as terrorists in the chat. And clearly, if that information had gotten out in advance when Jeffrey Goldberg had received it in real time, it would have put the operation at risk. It would have prevented it from going on. It would have been denounced as leaking classified information, and he would be facing some legal charges from the administration. So I don't think it's credible to say that this is not classified.
But since Trump and members of administration have now said that it isn't classified, there was nothing classified in it, I guess that provides legal cover since it is ultimately in the charge of the president to be able to determine, as president, whether or not something is classified. That there's nothing illegal in Goldberg and the Atlantic Magazine now taking all of that information and putting it out to the public. So is that embarrassing for the US with its allies in terms of how they're handling such a chat? The answer is of course, yes. And I expect that we're going to see a significant amount of continued focus on this topic. A lot of people are going to be asking questions about how it was that this conversation could have been had on Signal and also how it was that Goldberg could have been brought on board. But say that as it may. I mean if you are the Trump administration here, it is age-old tactic, full denial responsibility is actually of your political adversaries so blame Goldberg. Imply that maybe he tried to get on the call through nefarious ways.
It's all his fault. It's overstated. He's a fake news, no news journalist. No one should pay attention to him. He's a bad guy. I mean all of that stuff. And I was particularly bemused by Elon Musk sharing a post from the Babylon Bee saying that, "If you wanted to ensure that nobody ever saw information you'd put it on page 2 of the Atlantic." And of course, that is true for Elon, and it's true for Trump supporters. And this is why the strategy works, is because the Atlantic and the people that read the Atlantic and support the Atlantic are all considered disinformation by those that are loyal to Trump. And vice versa. Fox, and Newsmax and all of the right-wing podcasts. Those are considered fake news by people that don't support, that dislike Trump. And that allows a strategy of full denial, not engaging with the facts and blaming those that are coming after you to be successful. Now, I still think that there are interesting pieces of information here.
Perhaps the most important is that the actual policy conversation, not the details of the war fighting itself, but rather whether or not it was a good idea to be attacking the Houthis, in a big way that was potentially going to increase energy prices. And that was much less of a fight of the Americans than it would be of those in the region that are engaged in the direct proxy war with Iran or the Europeans who have a lot more directly at stake, in terms of their trade in transit. And that was a very reasonable question, and it was strongly, in other words, Vice President Vance opposed these strikes and he's the most important person. He's the most senior ranking person in this chat. Trump isn't on the chat. And he's not saying the president is wrong. He's saying, "I don't believe the president is fully informed and this clearly is not in his interest, in his policy interest."
Now, the reason this is important is because in Trump's first term, I think you would have had a very similar conversation from people like Mike Pence and Mike Pompeo and others that would have been on this chat, but then they would have brought it to the president. And many, many instances in the first term of policy disagreements that then came up and said, "Mr. President. Respectfully, we think we've got additional information and we can better carry out your will by doing X, Y, and Z." And there were checks. There were internal checks on executive authority. What we see this time around is we see JD Vance, who's obviously a very smart guy saying, "I think this is a really bad idea. We shouldn't be doing it, but I'm prepared not to raise it to the president unless I have everybody around me supporting me because I can't do this by myself. I'm just going to get my head chopped off." And there's a little bit of back and forth.
And Stephen Miller, the deputy chief of staff for policy in the White House and a full-on Trump loyalist, says, "Nope, the president wants this. I'm ending the conversation." And that's the end of the conversation, and it never gets to Trump. And then they go ahead and they bomb. So whatever you think about whether this was a good or a bad decision, the challenge here is that we have a big cabinet, some of whom are very capable, some of whom are absolutely not capable. But first and foremost is not getting the best information to the president because he's extremely confident. He believes that his policies are always the right ones, and he is absolutely punishing anything that feels like disloyalty, inside or outside of his team. That's why Pompeo, for example, John Bolton, have had their security details stripped away. Even though the Iranian government has been trying to assassinate them, right? Why? Because they were disloyal to Trump. That's not why they're trying to assassinate him. That's why Trump took away their security detail and that is a very strong message to everybody that is on this chat.
And I do worry, I worry that the three most powerful men in power today around the world, all in their 70s, Trump, Putin, and Xi Jinping, are also men that are incredibly confident about the rightness of their views. That loyalty is the key to the most important currency of power that exists inside those systems. And increasingly, they're not getting good information from their own advisers. That's a dangerous place for the world to be. It's a dangerous place for the world to be heading, and that's frankly the most important thing that I took out of this chat. So that's it for me. I'll talk to you all real soon, thanks.
Donald Trump’s second term is having considerably more impact on the global stage than his first. Trump may have been a largely transactional president last time around, when he was more constrained at home and faced relatively more powerful counterparts abroad. But the first two months of Trump 2.0 have shattered the illusion of continuity. No American ally faces a ruder awakening than Europe, whose relationship with the United States is now fundamentally damaged.
Core partners in Asia like Japan, South Korea, India, as well as Australia worry about being hit with tariffs and will do what they can to defuse conflict, but they also know their geostrategic position vis-à-vis China means Trump can’t afford to alienate them entirely. Accordingly, their relations with Washington should remain comparatively stable over the next four years.
America’s largest trade partners, Mexico and Canada, are facing more significant trade pressures from the Trump administration, but the imbalance of power is such that they have no credible strategy to push back. Everyone understands they’ll have to accept Trump’s terms eventually; the only question is whether capitulation comes before or after a costly fight. Riding an 85% job approval, Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum has enough domestic political space to yield to Trump’s demands to keep Mexico in his good graces, as she is already doing. By contrast, Canadian leaders have a political incentive to put up a bigger fight because Trump’s threats toward Canada’s economy and sovereignty have sharply inflamed nationalist sentiment north of the border in the run-up to the April 28 elections. However, I expect Ottawa will quietly fold shortly after the vote to ensure that ongoing relations with the US remain functional.
Most US allies have no choice but to absorb Trump’s demands and hope for a reset after he’s gone. But Europe is different. It possesses both the collective heft to resist Trump’s demands and the existential imperative to do so.
Three structural forces render the transatlantic rupture permanent.
First, the European Union has the trade competency and market size to punch back against the Trump administration’s aggressive tariff blitz. Unlike most other US trading partners who lack the economic leverage to go toe-to-toe against Washington and have little choice but to fold under pressure, Brussels’ defiance ensures a protracted trade war with no easy resolution.
Second, most Europeans view the Trump administration’s unilateral pursuit of rapprochement with Russia as a direct threat to their national security. While President Trump would still like to end the war in Ukraine as he promised on the campaign trail, he is prepared to do so on the Kremlin’s terms – and he’s even more interested in business deals with Moscow. He won’t be deterred by a collapse of the Ukraine peace talks, even though it’s Vladimir Putin who’s shown no interest in softening his maximalist demands. Nor will Trump care that the Europeans stridently oppose US normalization with their principal enemy. After all, the United States is protected by two oceans from Putin’s army, and Trump’s embrace of Euroskeptic movements reveals their shared aim: a fragmented and weakened Europe that is easier to dominate.
The president’s rhetoric – echoed by the Signal-gate private texts, Special Envoy Steve Witkoff’s recent interview with Tucker Carlson, Vice President JD Vance’s Munich speech, and so many other pieces of evidence – makes clear that the current administration sees Europeans not as allies but as “pathetic freeloaders” who shouldn’t be “bailed out” as a matter of principle. Even if Washington begrudgingly agrees to provide them with transactional security, Europeans now realize that relying on a hostile US for survival is strategic suicide.
Which brings us to the third and final driver of the definitive US-Europe break: common values … or lack thereof. From free trade and collective security to territorial integrity and the rule of law, Europe’s foundational principles are now anathema to Trump’s America. Just look at Trump’s repeated threats to annex Greenland, to say nothing of his willingness to recognize illegally annexed Ukrainian territories as Russian and support Israel’s annexation of parts of the West Bank and Gaza. For an EU built from the ashes of World War II, it's hard to compromise with a worldview in which borders are mere suggestions and might makes right.
After years of complacency, European leaders seem to have finally gotten the message that the United States under Trump is not just an unreliable friend but an actively hostile power. They understand they need to drastically increase Europe’s sovereign military, technological, and economic capabilities – not just to survive without America but also to defend their borders, economies, and democracies against it. Whether they can muster the political mettle to act on this realization, however, is Europe’s greatest test since 1945.
Recent moves – Germany’s historic debt brake reform and Brussels’ fiscal and financial maneuvers to boost defense spending – hint at urgency. Yet half measures won’t suffice. If Europeans refuse to commit troops to guarantee Ukraine’s post-ceasefire security absent an American backstop and continue to balk at seizing Russia’s frozen assets and overriding Hungary’s veto, it will confirm my view that the bloc lacks the nerve to survive in a jungle-ruled world where Trump and Putin refuse to play by any rules.
The irony is that Europe has the resources and capacity to stand up for itself, its values, and its fellow Europeans. What’s missing is the collective courage to act like it’s 1938, not 1989. For Ukraine’s sake and its own, that needs to change.
Protesters take part in a demonstration march ending in front of the US consulate, under the slogan, “Greenland belongs to the Greenlandic people,” in Nuuk, Greenland, on March 15, 2025.
US Second Lady Usha Vance canceled plans to attend Greenland’s biggest dog-sledding race and visit historical sites after officials in Nuuk and Copenhagen balked at an uninvited trip from an official delegation as President Donald Trump pressures Denmark to cede its autonomous Arctic territory to Washington.
Instead, Vice President JD Vance is set to join his wife on Friday at a remote US military base on the Arctic island to “check out what’s going on with the security there of Greenland.”
Denmark’s Foreign Minister Lars Løkke Rasmussensaid the US cars shipped as part of an enhanced security detail were being sent home. Danish police ordered extra personnel to Greenland ahead of expected protests against the American delegation.
“It’s very positive that the Americans have canceled their visit among Greenlandic society,” Rasmussen said. “They will only visit their own base … we have nothing against that.”
Still, Rasmus Jarlov, the Danish lawmaker from the conservative opposition party who chairs the parliament’s defense committee, called for the “immediate” shuttering of Washington’s diplomatic mission in the Greenlandic capital. “The American consulate in Nuuk must be closed as soon as possible,” hesaid on X. “No other country would accept people who have openly declared that they are there to annex part of the country.”
An opening for the Danish right? Denmark is set to hold nationwide local elections in November, and a general election in October 2026, where conservatives hope to oust the ruling center-left Social Democrats by pitching themselves to voters as tougher defenders against US aggression.
Greenland’s center-right election victors, meanwhile, are negotiating a ruling coalition for the next government. The only party so far booted from the talks? The populist Naleraq party – considered the most pro-American. The Vances’ visit is unlikely to upend the discussions, particularly as the likelihood of major protests recedes.