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Analysis
Test of a Russian ICBM, launched on October 26, 2024. Since invading Ukraine, Russia has placed its nuclear forces on ready and has increased testing and development of its ICBMs.
Anyone who watches soccer — “football”, whatever — knows that the wildest part of the game is always the last five minutes.
That’s when both teams, knowing that the end is near, take bigger risks. They open up on the field. They make longer passes, attempt crazier shots. And they usually score more goals.
There’s actually data to support this. One guy ran the numbers on more than forty thousand goals scored in international matches since the 19th century and found that yes, there is more scoring in the final moments of a game. After all, with the whistle about to blow, what’s a team got to lose?
That’s what’s happening in Ukraine right now.
Just over a thousand days since Vladimir Putin launched his unprovoked, full-scale assault on the country, the whistle on this phase of the conflict will sound soon — and by soon, we mean on January 20, 2025. That’s when Donald Trump will be back in the White House.
Trump, of course, has questioned Washington’s massive support for Ukraine and promised to end the war in “24 hours.”
Nobody knows what that really means, but everybody understands that whatever the battlefield looks like in mid-January will be the baseline for whatever Trump tries to do.
That’s why the past week or so in the Ukraine war has felt so much like the 85th minute of a deadlocked World Cup match. All sides are pulling out the stops to maximize the territory they control and the deterrent fear that they instill in their opponents.
The US and UK have now — after months of cautious restraint — finally given permission to Ukraine to use Western made long-range missiles to knock out military installations deeper inside of Russia. Washington also began shipping anti-personnel landmines to Kyiv, so that Ukraine could mine the frontlines that Russian troops are gradually pushing back every day now.
The Ukrainians wasted no time trying out their new Western weapons, firing at least two barrages of the long range missiles at Russian military installations.
Not to be outdone, Russia fired an “experimental” new intermediate range missile of its own into Ukraine. There was some dispute about whether it might count as an “intercontinental” ballistic missile or not, but experts noted that whatever you call it, the weapon was far better suited to nuclear payloads than to the conventional ones that it carried into Dnipro.
The unspoken signal was clear: we didn’t split the atom on you this time, but we are readying the tools to do so in the future.
Later in the day, Putin also declared that Russia has “the right to use our weapons against the military facilities of countries that allow the use of their weapons against our facilities.”
Translation: we have the right to strike military facilities in NATO countries.
Since the earliest moments of the war, many in the West have wondered — with frequent reminders from the Kremlin — if a cornered or slighted Putin might in fact use a tactical nuclear weapon against Ukraine. And if so, wouldn’t that invite a response from NATO that could escalate to a more direct confrontation between the world’s two largest nuclear powers?
A terrifying thought. And one that Putin revived this week by signing a new, looser nuclear weapons doctrine. Russia is now prepared to use its atomic arsenal in response even to certain conventional attacks.
The good news is: it’s hard to see anyone deliberately choosing the very worst and most radioactive outcomes right now. Putin is, after all, doing relatively well at the moment. Russia’s forces are advancing slowly but daily. A friendlier US president is about to take power. And breaking the nuclear taboo would risk a huge backlash, not only from Russia’s adversaries in the West, but from its friends in the Global South and China too. It just wouldn’t make sense.
The bad news is this: sense sometimes goes out the window in the final rush of a game. Miscalculations or miscommunications become more likely. When that’s on the soccer pitch, it means a turnover, a counterattack, a heartbreaking/exhilarating last minute goal.
But when it happens during a major war in Eastern Europe involving the world’s two largest nuclear powers, it can lead to a dangerous escalation that quickly takes on a life of its own.
The next two months are going to be the longest, and most dangerous, five minutes in the world.
World leaders assemble for a group photo at the G20 summit in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil on November 19, 2024. The gathering was overshadowed by Donald Trump's impending return to the White House.
At the G20 gathering this week in Brazil, a key question emerged: Has Donald Trump already cowed world leaders, two months before he even takes power? It certainly seems like it.
The G20 leaders arrived in Rio de Janeiro to deliver their best ideas for how, collectively, to solve urgent global problems like poverty, climate change, inequality, and war.
These summits are always a little about the old ultra-verbiage, sure, but they are also meant to burnish the legitimacy and importance of multilateral approaches to global challenges.
This time, the G20 got Trumped. Loudly. The president-elect’s America First 2.0 agenda hung over the proceedings like the fearsome black cloud in Don Dellilo’s novel White Noise.
How do we measure the Trump cloud’s impact? Just look at the summit’s final communiqué, the pre-negotiated summary these gabfests always release. They merit attention not only for what they say, but also for what they don’t. This time, what it didn’t say was a lot.
Take Russia’s illegal invasion of Ukraine, for example. With Kyiv now using Western-made long-range missiles, and Putin responding by hinting at a nuclear response and flinging larger and larger missiles of his own, the communiqué’s authors played dentist, carefully extracting any teeth that might nip at the Russian leader, who of course did not attend.
“We highlight the human suffering and negative added impacts of the war with regard to global food and energy security, supply chains, macro-financial stability, inflation and growth,” it said, clearly using the secret diplomatic formula for verbal vanilla. If that alone weren’t enough for the toothless, it continued by calling for “the promotion of peaceful, friendly, and good neighborly relations among nations.”
No mention of Russia by name.
No mention of the illegal invasion.
No reminder that Putin continues to slaughter civilians and wreck critical infrastructure.
Nothing about human rights abuses.
This alone was a triumph for Putin as he eagerly awaits the return of Trump, who ran in part on questioning support for Ukraine and pledging to end the war in “24 hours.”
No one saw this more clearly than Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
“G20 countries are sitting in Brazil. Did they say something?” he asked. “Nothing.”
The impotence of the G20s Ukraine statement was probably best summed up by a man who is himself hanging by a thread politically these days: German Chancellor Olaf Sholz, who muttered, “It is too little when the G20 cannot find the words to make it clear Russia is responsible.”
Too little.
That might be the epitaph of this pre-Trump G20.
Knowing that Donald Trump will not continue support for Ukraine, and highlighting the truth that the Global South has never supported the US and EU’s hardline views of the Russian invasion, the G20 slinked away from calling out Moscow, just as they did last year. This signals that a Trump-brokered ceasefire, which will likely give Russia much of what it wants in terms of Ukrainian territory and neutrality, looks much more likely.
But Ukraine was just the start of the smallness.
The language on the Israel-Gaza war was a boilerplate call for a two-state solution and more humanitarian aid, without a mention either of the Hamas-held hostages, the Oct. 7 attack, or the 40,000 dead in Gaza. The statement on a global billionaire tax — a decades-old idea that was particularly dear to summit host and Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva — was equally eye-glazing: “We will seek to engage cooperatively to ensure that ultra-high-net-worth individuals are effectively taxed.” OK … and then what?
Perhaps the only real positive was the launch of the Alliance Against Hunger and Poverty, in order to deal with the stunning fact that over 733 million people face food shortages every year. That could mean microfinance, food programs, and investment in sustainable food production. It is a good thing to see countries sign on to this even if the failure to eradicate hunger and poverty is, sadly, perennial.
Watching the leaders try to spin the summit’s accomplishments was like watching Rafael Nadal retire from tennis: a once-powerful champion reduced to swatting at balls he can’t reach, limping off the court to applause not for what he just did, but for what he no longer can do.
Like Nadal, these leaders know they are ceding the world to a new champion for the next four years, and they still have no idea what to do about it, except duck, stall, evade, and suck up.
Was there any pushback from these multilateral champions against a world shifting toward strongman isolationism, tariffs, and an American president who will begin the great retreat from the global stage of cooperation?
Not much.
The next G20 will be very different from this one, where leaders gazed up to see Rio’s famous Christ the Redeemer statue overlooking their meeting.
At the next one, they might need to find the Patron Saint of Lost Causes.
Trump and Trudeau on opposite sides of a border wall.
Donald Trump’s radical plan to crack down on undocumented immigration has sparked widespread concerns across the US. Beyond the human rights implications, there are serious questions regarding the potential economic toll of Trump’s immigration proposals. Trump has promised mass deportations and this week confirmed plans to involve the military. He has vowed to begin deportations on his first day in office.
State and municipal leaders are already taking steps to protect immigrants ahead of Trump’s inauguration. Earlier this week, Los Angeles passed a sanctuary city ordinance codifying the rights of migrants. Governors in California, Massachusetts, and Illinois are considering plans of their own to protect migrants at the state level, setting up a showdown between the federal government and state and local governments.
Rights groups have raised the alarm about the potential for violations and abuse if Trump’s plan moves forward, as economists warn that the president-elect’s immigration plan would lead to higher prices for food and other goods, alongside labor shortages. In 2022, undocumented workers made up nearly 14% of the construction industry, 13% of the agriculture industry, and 7% of the hospitality industry. On top of all that, it’s estimated that Trump’s plan could also take a decade and cost nearly a trillion dollars.
Trump’s push to deport millions comes amid shifting public sentiment toward immigration. Gallup’s tracking poll has seen a sharp increase in recent years in the share of Americans who want to see lower immigration levels — from 28% in 2020 to 55% in 2024. A similar trend is emerging to the north.
Canada watches closely — and faces its own migration problem
Canada is keeping a particularly close eye on what happens next in the US, especially with regard to Trump’s immigration plan. The two countries share the world’s longest undefended border and a trade relationship worth a trillion dollars a year.
Experts have warned that Trump’s push for mass deportations could lead undocumented immigrants in the US to flee to Canada and trigger a migrant crisis, destabilizing the country at a time when it’s already turning against newcomers domestically.
After decades of a strong pro-immigration consensus in the country, Canadians have recently begun to oppose higher levels of immigration. A fall poll found that roughly three-quarters of Canadians want to reduce immigration until housing gets cheaper. The shift in support has been building for some time as politicians point to a growing rate of immigrants — which federal and provincial governments control — as a source of pressure on housing affordability, healthcare resources, and jobs.
In recent months, Justin Trudeau’s Liberal government has introduced changes to immigration policy aimed at curbing numbers. In the fall, the government moved to limit the number of international students the country would admit. It also reformed the country’s temporary foreign worker program, scaling it back. More recently, the Liberals introduced a plan to cut immigration levels by roughly 20% next year and more in the following two years — after raising those targets as recently as last year. Economists warned the moves could slow the economy.
Managing a mercurial Trump
Trump’s mass deportation plan puts Canada in a precarious position. The Trudeau government will have to manage the logistics of regular and irregular crossings along with a potential spike in asylum claims. Meanwhile, Ottawa will face the more general challenge of maintaining strong relations with Washington under a president who often blindsided Canada on issues like trade during his first term in office.
Some of Trump’s appointees have already ripped into Canada over border security, painting the country as a laggard and a threat — particularly incoming border czar Tom Homan, who cites concerns about terrorists crossing between the countries. Homan says there is an “extreme national security vulnerability” along the US-Canada border and expects “tough conversations.”
For its part, the Canadian government says it’s prepared to “do the work” in response to US border concerns, particularly as irregular crossings at the northern border are up. But that work could become complicated if Trump proceeds with his plan for mass deportations — especially if Canadian police and border officials lack the resources to manage what may come.
An uncertain path ahead
The word “unprecedented” gets thrown around a lot lately, but what follows next on immigration, border policy, and the relationship between Canada and the US could indeed be unprecedented. A mass deportation program, combined with softening support for immigration on both sides of the border, politicians ready to scapegoat migrants, and the economic consequences of bringing in fewer newcomers — at a time when people are just beginning to see the early stages of relief from a years-long housing affordability crisis — will be, to say the least, a mess.
It’s an extraordinary, and dangerous, moment of realignment.
Graeme Thompson, a senior analyst with Eurasia Group’s global macro-geopolitics practice, notes that the US and Canada have “traditionally been highly welcoming of new immigrants, at least compared to other countries.” However, he points out, there’s been a dual shift lately driven by two different sources.
He argues that Canada doesn’t necessarily have to harmonize its immigration policy with the US under Trump, but it will face pressure to tighten border security and screening processes for newcomers.
Nonetheless, Canada doesn’t have to follow Washington’s lead, he says, since the two face different challenges.
“The immigration pressures in each country are very different. In Canada, the primary focus is on bringing down numbers of international students and temporary foreign workers, in large part due to cost-of-living pressures, whereas in the US, the emphasis is on undocumented immigrants who entered the country illegally, which is not a significant problem north of the border.”
But the question remains: What will Canada do if and when Trump proceeds with his mass deportation plan and the northern border becomes a focal point for migrants, particularly as the country worries about Trump on trade and defense? And as the Liberal government, down 20 points in the polls, faces an election due by October 2025?
The Trudeau Cabinet says it’s focused on the matter and has a plan for the border, but details have been scant so far, leaving Canadians — and migrants — left to wonder what comes next.
Donald Trump on a throne spinning a globe on his finger.
The global response to Donald Trump’s imminent return to power has been nothing short of remarkable.
From Israel's Benjamin Netanyahu hinting at a potential Lebanon cease-fire as a "gift" to the president-elect, to Ukraine's Volodymyr Zelensky saying the war will “end faster” under the incoming administration, to European and Asian leaders expressing Stockholm syndrome-levels of excitement to work with him, foreign leaders have been lining up to kiss the president-elect’s ring since his election victory two weeks ago.
To be sure, most US allies and adversaries still dislike and mistrust Trump. But with memories of the clashes, chaos, and unpredictability of his first term still fresh, they know that they get crosswise with Trump at their own peril. The president-elect still believes America is being taken for a ride, values are something other countries use to constrain US power, and allies are only as good as the money they spend on US goods and protection. And Trump is willing to flex Washington’s full military and economic muscle – whether in the form of high tariffs or the withdrawal of US security support – to extract gains from other nations.
World leaders are accordingly doing everything they can to avoid becoming a target of his wrath, using flattery and favor to appeal to Trump’s ego and transactional nature in the hopes of getting in his good graces. After all, they know Trump is nothing if not willing to sit down with anyone – whether a longstanding democratic ally or a brutal dictator – to try to cut a deal that makes him look good at home.
The upshot is that at least in the early days of his presidency, Donald Trump is poised to rack up far more foreign policy wins than many people appreciate. Not because he’s a “stable genius” or a particularly gifted negotiator, but because he’ll be running the world’s largest economy and most powerful military, with leverage over virtually every country and less aversion to wielding it than any US president that came before him.
But that’s table stakes for Trump. There are three reasons why his ability to get concessions from other countries and put points on the board early on will be greater than during his first term.
First, Trump is no longer isolated, with a growing number of world leaders eager to welcome him to the international arena. Eight years ago, the president-elect was an outlier, with few true friends on the global stage apart from Netanyahu, Gulf leaders, Hungary’s Viktor Orban, Japan’s Shinzo Abe, India’s Narendra Modi, and a handful of others. But things have changed since.
Italy's Giorgia Meloni, currently the most popular G7 leader, shares Trump's views on immigration, social policy, and economic nationalism. Argentina’s Javier Milei, the chainsaw-wielding “Trump of the Pampas,” was the first foreign leader to meet with him after the election. In Canada, the Conservative Party's Pierre Poilievre is poised to replace Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, promising a much more Trump-aligned relationship. Germany’s Olaf Scholz will likewise soon be replaced, probably by the opposition conservative Christian Democrat leader Friedrich Merz, a wealthy former businessman who is ideologically closer to the incoming American president. South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol is strategically positioning himself to become the new Shinzo Abe, going as far as taking up golf again to establish a closer relationship with Trump. The list goes on.
Trump is no more a fan of multilateralism than he was eight years ago. He remains mistrustful of alliances and indifferent to other countries’ values and political systems. But whenever he attends gatherings of the G7, G20, and NATO now, the president-elect will at least be surrounded by like-minded leaders who will be much more receptive to his “America First” agenda and inclined to play by his rules.
Second, the world is much more dangerous than it was in 2017, raising the stakes of misalignment with Trump. Major wars raging in Europe and the Middle East, heightened US-China tensions, and a more fragile global economy make the costs of being on the wrong side of the president-elect exponentially higher than they were during Trump’s first term.
And third, Trump’s domestic political power is significantly more consolidated this time around. The president-elect has unified control of Congress and a pliant Republican Party, knows his way around Washington, DC, and is surrounding himself with far more ideologically aligned loyalists than in his first term. Gone are the institutionalist career staffers and establishment Republicans who often checked Trump’s most disruptive impulses. For world leaders, this means alternative backchannels to get around the president-elect’s foreign policy preferences won’t be nearly as available or effective. Whether or not they like it, it’s Trump’s way or the highway now.
It’s no wonder that we’re seeing so many countries preemptively bend the knee, desperate to find common ground with Trump before he takes office. China, for instance, is floating potential concessions to avert an economically destabilizing trade war, from organizing a Ukraine peace conference to buying US Treasuries and increasing purchases of American goods. Iran granted a meeting to Trump advisor-extraordinaire Elon Musk in an apparent effort to facilitate a de-escalatory deal. Taiwan’s leadership is planning a massive new American arms purchase offer to show Trump they’re serious about paying more for US protection. Meanwhile, Ukraine is not only expressing readiness to negotiate a cease-fire but is also weighing several sweeteners – including potential business deals, access to the country’s natural resources, and Ukrainian troop deployments to replace US forces in Europe after the war – to convince Trump that continued US support is in his personal and political interests.
None of this means that every effort to appease Trump will succeed, or that Trump’s mere presence in the White House will end every war, de-escalate every conflict, and resolve every disagreement. If history is any guide, most attempts to strike a lasting deal with the president-elect will fail. In the long run, his approach will erode America’s influence on the global stage, deepen the G-Zero vacuum of leadership, and make the world a more dangerous place.
In the near term, however, Trump’s penchant for bilateral deal-making, disregard for longstanding American norms and values, reputation for unpredictability, and unrestrained leadership of the world’s sole superpower will increase the odds of improbable breakthroughs.
Welcome to Trump’s international honeymoon – it may not last long, but at least nobody’s having any fun.
People hold signs reading "Trump, we will not pay for the wall" and "Trump, stop the mass deportations" near the border fence between Mexico and the U.S., in Tijuana, Mexico March 13, 2018.
The president-elect has promised to deport between 15 and 20 million people, which is more than the roughly 13.3 million undocumented people estimated to be residing in the US. “There's a lot of uncertainty around how high deportations could go under Trump,” says Eurasia Group’s US analyst Noah Daponte-Smith. “I'd roughly estimate he will deport between 500,000 and 600,000 in 2025.” That would mark an increase from the current number of approximately 200,000 annually. But, Daponte-Smith added, “there's room for that number to move upward.”
What are Trump’s immigration plans? On the campaign trail, he promised to deport millions of immigrants living in the country illegally. So far, the president-elect has tapped immigration hardliners likeStephen Miller, Tom Homan, and Gov. Kristi Noem to serve as his deputy chief of staff, border czar, and chief of Homeland Security, respectfully – key positions for immigration and border security.
In a Fox News interview, Homan said deporations would prioritize “public safety and national security threats” as well those who disobeyed court orders to leave the country. For logistical ease, ICE would likely begin with single adults – although Homan defended Trump’s family separation policy and said that families “can be deported together.”
ICE would also likely prioritize immigrants from countries with Temporary Protected Status, because it has reliable biometric data on recipients, making them easier to find. TPS authorizes immigrants to live and work legally in the US when their home country has been deemed unsafe for return. Within TPS recipients, ICE would probably start with countries that accept the most return flights of deportees. However, Venezuela, which has the most people in the program, does not accept deportees. So Trump’s only option would be sending them to a third-party country, which would likely be met with legal battles. The TPS countries accepting the most removal flights are Haiti and Honduras.
Trump faces headwinds. On the logistics side, ICE already has 38,863 people in custody, and it “simply doesn’t have the capacity to handle one million deportations a year right now,” says Daponte-Smith. “If Republicans beef up funding for ICE and other enforcement agencies next year, that would help significantly,” and a united Congress will make this easier for them. But he also doesn’t buy that deploying the military would be much help picking up the slack. “The National Guard has no experience with deportations, and I doubt it would be easy to convert them to that purpose,” he says. Still, declaring a national emergency would also give the president more power to devote funds to the issue without congressional approval.
The other big headwind is political. “Mass deportations will create a huge political blowback, potentially involving large-scale street protests,” says Daponte-Smith. Even if Trump and his team are not responsive to this, it “could be an issue for congressional Republicans” ahead of the 2026 midterms.Donald Trump isn’t finished nominating his presidential Cabinet — and some of his top candidates might have a tricky time getting confirmed, even by a Republican-controlled Senate. Still, Trump’s early picks already offer signs about how he might direct his federal government’s approach to artificial intelligence.
Duane Pozza, a former Federal Trade Commission assistant director in the first Trump administration who is now a partner at the law firm Wiley Rein, said the government’s approach to AI is at an “inflection point,” and Trump has big decisions to make about how much of Joe Biden’s AI legacy he wants to undo. “The next administration will decide whether to roll back any part of the executive order,” he said, referring to Biden’s sweeping executive order on AI from October 2023, “and how to best implement policies to support AI innovation for US global competition.”
Antitrust the process
Trump’s selection of Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz could also have implications for AI. Gaetz’s nomination has drawn intense bipartisan scrutiny over his professional inexperience and brash demeanor, and allegations of sexual misconduct and illegal drug use that were the subject of a House Ethics Committee investigation, the findings of which have not yet been released. If confirmed, Gaetz could carry out Trump’s prosecutorial whims by targeting the president’s enemies in Silicon Valley — over the years there have been many, including Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg and Amazon’s Jeff Bezos.
But the Justice Department is also one of two antitrust authorities in the United States alongside the Federal Trade Commission. And while we don’t know who Trump will pick to succeed Lina Khan as chair of the FTC — she might resign, but she can technically stay under a successor is confirmed — Gaetz, along with Vice President JD Vance, has signaled sympathies for Khan’s tough-on-tech outlook in the past and even suggested she should stay on under Trump.
Benjamin Sirota, a former Justice Department antitrust prosecutor and current partner at the law firm Kobre & Kim, said the lines between traditional Democratic and Republican stances in antitrust law have blurred. He expects Trump will usher in “a retrenchment from some of the most aggressive policies and priorities of the current regime, but not a wholesale retreat.”
“We could see Trump enforcers seek to rapidly resolve large, pending digital monopolization cases,” especially if they’re looking to cut costs, said Diana Moss, vice president at the Progressive Policy Institute, alluding to cases filed against Google and Amazon under Biden. While she said Trump’s antitrust chiefs may single out disfavored companies, she otherwise expects a return to more traditional methods of determining market power than Khan’s Neo-Brandeisian principles, which look beyond price increases toward broader standards of consumer harm.
With federal investigations into AI companies having started under Biden, it’s unclear whether Trump might target political enemies. One potential target is OpenAI, whose CEO, Sam Altman, is a consistent Democratic Party donor and whose relationship with Microsoft is already reportedly the subject of a federal antitrust investigation.
Keeping China at bay
Trump and Biden both have aggressive stances toward China, so there should be some continuity in litigating the ongoing trade war. The focus under Biden has been pouring funds into chip companies building manufacturing facilities in the United States while enacting export controls to limit China’s ability to get powerful US-made chips.
Hanna Dohmen, a research analyst at Georgetown University's Center for Security and Emerging Technology, expects the administration to “continue using the expansive international trade toolbox to restrict China's ability to buy, make, and access AI chips.”
“The Trump administration likely will not try to roll back the CHIPS and Science Act because there is bipartisan support for onshoring semiconductor manufacturing,” she added, noting that the administration is more likely to favor deregulation and tax credits in the future rather than additional CHIPS Act spending.
There are more unknowns than knowns
Plans for the second Trump administration are still coming together, but the proposed Cabinet is full of outsiders without deep track records on artificial intelligence. Former Rep. Lee Zeldin, Trump’s pick to helm the Environmental Protection Agency, said it’s his focus to “make the United States the artificial intelligence capital of the world,” likely through deregulatory efforts at a time when liberals and climate change activists are deeply concerned by the energy consumption of data servers needed for AI.
Brendan Carr, a Federal Communications Commission member who Trump has nominated to chair the bipartisan agency, has been particularly aggressive toward social media companies, which have long depended on artificial intelligence for content moderation efforts. And much of the government’s involvement with AI will fall under the jurisdiction of Pete Hegseth, a Fox News anchor nominated for defense secretary, and former Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, nominee for director of national intelligence, neither of whom have fleshed out their positions on AI.
But of course, the real influence behind Trump’s AI decision-making — at least while the two are still cozy — may be Elon Musk, who has been tapped to run something called the Department of Government Efficiency, aka DOGE, alongside businessman Vivek Ramaswamy, and has Trump’s ear.
Musk has been deeply critical of government regulation over the years, frequently feuding with agencies including the Securities and Exchange Committee and the FTC. And while Musk has expressed public concerns about the risks of AI, once calling for a pause on AI development, he has also built his own AI company called xAI that developed the chatbot Grok. Musk has supported California’s proposed AI safety bill but also sued to block the state’s deepfake law. If Musk becomes an influential member of Trump’s team, even outside of a formal Cabinet post, the government’s AI policy may be, well, whatever Elon wants it to be.FILE PHOTO: Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Republican presidential candidate and former U.S. President Donald Trump greet each other at a campaign event sponsored by conservative group Turning Point USA, in Duluth, Georgia, U.S., October 23, 2024.
With world leaders descending upon Brazil this week for the annual G20 summit, the specter of Donald Trump’s return looms all around. The summit, along with this month’s COP29 climate summit, bookend the Biden interregnum - a period that opened with a deadly global pandemic and saw the start of two wars.
As we now know, foreign policy did not determine the 2024 election outcome. The pivotal question voters wrestled with was the one Trumpput to them: “Are you better off now than you were four years ago?” A majority of voters across the electoral map answered this question in the negative. Despite the hyper-polarized political moment, and all the fault lines in US politics – gender, generational, racial, party identification – it was the economic one that proved most salient.
Yet, when Trump is inaugurated in January, he will take the helm of the United States at a moment of vast geopolitical uncertainty. By Trump’s own assessment, the world is on the brink of World War III. Inan interview earlier this year, Yuval Noah Hariri suggested that WWIII may have already started with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and “we just don’t know it yet.” Certainly, reports of North Korean troop deployment to the Russia-Ukraine war theater do little to assuage these fears. Nor does US President Joe Biden’s late-in-the-game policy shift this weekend to allow Ukraine to deploy US-provided, long-range missiles to strike inside Russian territory.
Since his resolute victory two weeks ago, Trump has made quick work assembling the team he wants around him for the challenges ahead. It is a team of loyalists and Trump-world insiders (many Washington outsiders)tasked with preventing World War III, restoring peace in Europe and the Middle East, and putting the world together again.
With his cabinet and leadership selections, Trump makes clear that direction will come from the very top. Appointees will be expected to execute the president’s agenda. The pick of veteran and television host Pete Hegseth to lead the Department of Defense is perhaps the clearest indicator of the model to come.
With Europe deeply on edge about whether the US will remain steadfastly committed to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, Ukraine, and Europe’s common defense, Hegseth’s bureaucratic inexperience offers little clarity or comfort. Known more for his television work and pardon advocacy than any particular security policy position, Hegseth’s promotion to American dignitary has left Europe scratching its collective head. It signals to European leaders that Trump’s transactional, unpredictable approach will dictate the next four years.
Elsewhere, in the Indo-Pacific, a giant question mark hangs over how the second Trump administration plans to engage with a host of partnerships and plans initiated by Biden. Outgoing Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin met with his counterparts in Australia and Japan this weekend for a Trilateral Defense Ministers’ Meeting. In a joint statement following the session, the leaders affirmed the longevity and enduring commitment of the partnership.
With the US-China relationship the essential quandary of our times, will Hegseth (and Trump) remain committed to these relationships? What happens to AUKUS, the trilateral partnership between Australia, the United Kingdom, and the US that’s viewed by Australians as so critical to their security? What about the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue with members of the same group plus India? Each of these pillars is viewed by Biden as foundational for the region’s geopolitics, and yet incoming Trump personnel have provided scant details of their plans.
While much is being made of Trump’s flashier picks – Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy to lead a newly formed Department of Government Efficiency – it is the repeat performers who telegraph Trump’s policy priorities. As he said every day on the campaign trail, these are immigration, trade, and the economy.
The return of former Immigration and Customs Enforcement Director Thomas Homan, now as “border czar,” coupled with Stephen Miller as Trump’s deputy chief of staff, confirm Trump 2.0 will be ideologically tough and swift-acting on immigration. Trumpimplemented 472 executive orders on immigration during his first term. Homan and Miller will be hard at work over the next few months readying actions for Trump’s signature on his first day back in the Oval Office.
On trade, everyone overseas is on pins and needles over Trump’s tariff threats. European political leaders and business executives are kept up at night worrying over whether Trump will seek to impose a universal tariff of 10-20% on imported goods, and, if so, under what authority. Against this backdrop, the reported return of former US Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer to an expanded “trade czar” role is being closely watched. Both Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974 and the International Emergency Economic Powers Act will be relevant channels for Trump’s tariff ambitions. Having Lighthizer by his side provides the president with a dedicated co-pilot.
Finally, that Trump has seemingly taken the most time to land on his picks to lead the Treasury and Commerce departments is unsurprising. Trump’s election, his mandate, and his plans both at home and abroad in his next term each depend on his administration’s ability to execute its economic vision. Trump’s tax extensions, corporate tax cuts, and economic tools of national security like tariffs and sanctions, must also take action on the pivotal question Trump asked voters in November – they must feel better in four years than they do today.
The pace of Trump’s appointment decisions is evidence that he is ready to get to work. The sooner he can roll back Biden’s initiatives and implement the policies he has been discussing again and again over the last four years, the sooner he can remake the US and America’s role in the world in his image.