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Quick Take
Ian Bremmer's Quick Take: A Quick Take to kick off your week and what a week it is going to be. An extraordinary downturn in US and global markets. The reaction to 'Liberation Day' where American citizens will be liberated from the highest performing economy in the world. Now, globalization, of course, is what is being undone here by the United States. The US benefited massively from globalization, from cheaper goods and services and capital and people moving more easily across borders all over the world. But the fact that the United States economy as a whole benefited did not mean that the average American benefited. They did not. And indeed, while the top 10% did much, much better in the US over the last 40 years, the top 1% even better, the top 0.001%, not only extraordinarily well, world leading well, but also had the money to capture the US political system and ensure that the policies were exactly what they wanted.
And that has led to a massive backlash in the United States where most voters no longer support free trade. Most voters no longer support collective security. Most voters no longer support US leadership on the global stage. They voted in Trump, and Trump is giving them what they voted for, which is a "tariff wall" around the United States that at least for the first few days, he is not backing down. And the implications of that are going to be significant destruction of wealth in the United States and in markets all over the world. And you saw it this morning, Hong Kong, Hang Seng down 13%. Other markets across Asia down 6%, 7& to 10%. The Europeans now following suit, though not quite as dramatic and same in the United States with the opening for the Dow and the Nasdaq. Now, look, I'm not a market watcher. I'm a political scientist.
As a political scientist, what I find very interesting here is this fight between "Deep MAGA" and "Dark MAGA." And Deep MAGA being the people that really do believe that the US has not represented them for a very long time. And what they want is a fair shake from people that are more representative. They want the ability for working and middle class to have better lives and not be taken advantage of. They want non-predatory policy domestically. Dark MAGA, globalism, free trade, and capturing the policies of a smaller state that do their bidding. And this last weekend has been a repudiation, at least tactically of Dark maga by Deep MAGA. This was the fight you saw between Elon Musk and who runs DOGE, and this happens to be the richest man in the world and the second most powerful heretofore in the Trump administration. And Peter Navarro, who is trade and manufacturing counselor for the White House and nowhere near as powerful as Elon, and yet told Elon to stay in his lane, said, "You're interested in selling cars, and what we are doing is making America great again."
Navarro's not in a fight with Elon to be clear. Navarro is supporting a policy that he knows Trump wants. And so Trump has decided that on this one, which is the most impactful policy he's put in place globally in this or in his previous administration, that he is decisively going against the globalists and he's going in favor of using American power to have manufacturing and capital in the US. Now, nevermind the fact that this is going to take a long time. That if it were to work, and if it were to work, you'd want it to be consistent. You'd want to build up American reputational capital. You'd want rule of law to be strong. You'd want people to think that they could come to US universities and prosper, that the US would be the most attractive place to send their kids to have jobs, and Trump isn't doing any of those things, so that's a problem, right?
The fact that the US is making itself less attractive as a destination and less predictable as a destination really undermines US putting massive tariffs on highest you've seen in over a hundred years to make other countries pay. But politically, what Trump could benefit from doing here is actually leaning in against the globalists. In other words, if he were to say, "Yes, this hit to the markets is a feature, it's not a bug. Portfolios, they're going to get hit. And the rich people that have benefited on the backs of the average Americans, I don't care if they don't make a lot of money. Just like the foreign governments that have been taking advantage of American free trade policy," which is overstated. But nonetheless, the politically smart thing for Trump to do domestically would be to then say, "I'm going to snap back the tax breaks that I gave to the highest bracket.
You guys are going to start paying again, and I'm going to take the money from the tariffs. Take these effectively a sales tax, all the money that the US government will be collecting from these higher goods, and I'm going to redistribute it to the average American. I'm going to give that money to the workers so that they can deal with the fact that their pensions have just blown up by 10%, by 20% or more over the coming weeks. I'm going to give them an opportunity because they're going to have to pay higher prices in a more inflationary environment where you can't actually substitute away from imports because all goods are so interconnected, whether it's automotive or it's a plane ticket or it's just a cup of coffee at your local Starbucks."
All of those things, Trump has the opportunity to lean in to the Republican base, which is also a lot of the former progressive base among Democrats who they have lost, in part because they have moved away from policies that have very popular under Trump in firming up the border against illegal immigrants, and also in opposing overly progressive woke policies that are very unpopular across the United States. Having said that, I don't think that's what he's going to do. And the reason for it is because I think that ultimately Trump is more interested in kleptocracy than he is in taking power for himself. I think he's much more transactional. He's much easier to buy off as an individual. If you give him money, he will give you the policies he wants. He's not going to throw Elon away.
Elon's already given over $250 million to the campaign, and we'll give a lot more and we'll find ways to benefit Trump and his family. A lot of people like that, that want lower taxes for the rich. A lot of people like that, that want lower regulations that allow their companies to benefit more, that ultimately screw the average person in the United States. And I think Trump is more interested in that. If you really wanted to ensure that you could benefit the poor people, you wouldn't be taking away so many of the capacities of the IRS for example. You'd want audits on wealthy people instead of wealthy people being able to avoid taxes because the IRS doesn't even have the capacity to do the most complicated audits out there.
You would have a group of policies that would be much more focused towards ensuring that the wealthy actually pay their fair share, that legal and tax policies are not buyable by special interests, and ultimately that the swamp could be drained. And that just, even though I think that's where JD Vance is more oriented, and I think that's where increasingly house Republicans are more oriented. Lord knows that's the Republican base, which today are less educated men, working class and middle class. The Democrats have lost almost all those voters, but that's not where Trump is. And I think as a consequence, the political opportunity that he has will be constrained.
That ultimately also means that there'll be more of a balance and probably more of a snap back eventually in reducing these tariffs and finding deals earlier than you would otherwise expect. So maybe the market hit long-term is not as bad as it could be in a full-on anti-globalist push by the Trump administration. But ultimately, one thing we've learned by Trump, who again used to be a Democrat before he was Republican, he's fundamentally not ideological. He's fundamentally about Trump. And here navigating that probably means less pain as opposed to more. Even though in the near term today, this week, there's going to be plenty of carnage in the United States and around the world. That's it for me, and I'll talk to you all real soon.
Ian Bremmer's Quick Take: It is the day after 'Liberation Day,' April 2nd. I'm not sure that day is going to stick. It was good not to do on April 1st. Not only because it's April Fools, but also because you had a couple of key elections in the US, in Florida and in Wisconsin. And Trump clearly wanted to go after that because he knew that these weren't going to be super popular. And yet, this is exactly what he was promising.
He has been promising tariffs. He's been promising securing American borders, securing borders from people coming into the US illegally, also securing US borders from unfair trade practices. And that is precisely what we're seeing right now. Overnight, the United States is moving to having the highest tariffs against countries of any major economy in the world by a very long margin, and also the largest average trade tariff in over a hundred years.
This is a new era. It's a post globalization era. It's a post post-war era. It's kind of the equivalent of what the Brits did with Brexit just on a global scale. Now, why these tariffs and what's behind the percentages? Because Trump's been talking about reciprocal tariffs for a very long time, and yet these aren't reciprocal. There are no countries that have the percentage tariffs on the US that the US is now putting on them in terms of goods. So how did they do that? That's the extraordinary thing, is the calculation wasn't based on the tariffs that are imposed on US goods. Rather, it was a look at the trade deficit that the US runs against those countries and taking the percentage of what the trade deficit is and applying a tariff that would get you to parity. In other words, what reciprocal from Trump's perspective is whatever would actually bring that trade deficit into trade neutrality and then just impose half of that, which makes no sense economically whatsoever.
Why not? Well, first of all, because there are a lot of poor countries around the world that have trade deficits with the US because they can't afford American goods, and the US wants to buy commodities, for example, from those countries or low tech manufacturer like from Bangladesh. And are you angry because the Bengalis aren't capable of buying Teslas from the US or buying smartphones? And the answer is, of course not. And all that's going to be is a tax. The US government will pick up revenue and the Americans will have to pay more for inexpensive goods that the US isn't going to produce. Some cases, these are goods that the Americans not only wouldn't want to produce because the labor quality and cost is really, really low and no one's going to do that work, especially when you're closing borders and taking illegals out of the population. But also, because the US economy couldn't produce them.
I mean, your tropical fruits, I mean some of them can be in the United States, but most of them need to come from other places. Coffee beans, I mean all sorts of things that the Americans are just not going to be substitution effect producing that now are just going to be higher costs for the United States, for average Americans. And then in places where the US was not in deficit, then you're just throwing a 10% tariff against. Why? Is that about fair trade? No, that's just about the Americans wanting to ensure that there are tariffs on absolutely everyone. It reminds me of the January 6th conversation where originally Trump was talking about, "Well, maybe we've got to look more carefully at all the really violent types and we're not going to want to give them amnesty. But there are a lot of people that were treated very badly, very unfairly, and so they should have amnesty and they should be pardoned."
And as the details and the debates on who should and shouldn't get a pardon came out, Trump got sick of the debate, got sick of the nuance, and said, "I'm just giving it to everybody." And I think that's what happened with tariffs. There were debates going on with large numbers of advisors around Trump, right until the last minute and he just said, "Ah, I'm just putting tariffs on everybody." And that's what's happened. And now there will be individual deals that will be cut with a bunch of countries to try to get out of that. But the reality is that the biggest trade partners of the United States, there's no quick fix. Not with Europe, not with Mexico, not with Canada, not with China. And given that, we are clearly not only out of a US-driven globalization era... That's been gone for some time now. Globalization has been moving apace, but the US has not been driving it.
The US had been kind of standing on the sidelines and pushing their own industrial policy. But now you have the United States actively unwinding globalization. And the question will be how effective will other countries be in playing defense, in hedging, and in bringing some production, more production to the United States? Because in the near-term, you expect to see a lot of countries will try to limit the damage that's being done. And the US economy is, of course, stronger and more powerful. So that will mean that a lot of countries won't immediately do reciprocal tariffs, but will try to cut deals with the Americans. A lot of companies will try to find ways to manufacture more in the US. That's near-term.
In the medium and long-term, there will be hedging. There will be efforts to find ways to de-risk their economies from the United States, from the uncertainty, the volatility, the high costs. And sure, you'll want to produce things in the US for US consumers, but most things are not being consumed by Americans. And that is increasingly true around the world. And therefore you wouldn't want to produce most things in the US in that environment. So you'll see more hedging of the Europeans towards other countries, including in some non-AI fields towards China. And I think you'll see that in bigger ways in the Global South who already have their principal trade partners as China anyway.
And then final point is keep in mind that the Americans are not really good at being patient. And Trump has been talking the entire way, not one of the most patient people in the world that, "Look, I mean, yeah, they're going to be costing in the near-term, and I don't care if the cost of cars go up. But long-term, this is good for Americans." And certainly near-term there's going to be a significant economic hit, not just in the stock market, but also in US GDP and also in inflation. And Americans, I suspect are going to be pretty angry about that because Americans are very short-term in orientation. It's a nature of free market capitalism, kleptocratic or not in the US and it's also the nature of the political system.
So that's where we are. A lot to think about on the back of these unprecedented policy moves. And remember, it is a marathon, not a sprint. We are only a couple months in. Trump has four full years, and a lot is going to happen over the course of that administration. And I'll be here to talk to you about it. Thanks a lot, and I'll talk to you all real soon.
Ian Bremmer's Quick Take: A Quick Take to kick off your week. Turning to France where Marine Le Pen, who has long been the leader of the National Front, now renamed National Rally Party, and principal contender her party to win French elections in 2027, which would be an absolute turning point in French elections, as meaningful for France as Trump's second win in 2024 in the United States, has been found guilty in a criminal court in France of embezzlement charges up to $500,000 directly and millions of dollars in terms of mishandling the way European funds were being used for staffers, including her sister and her best friend and a bodyguard. Not a political case at all, actually just a criminal court. Nobody arguing that the judge is particularly politicized here. And while two of the years of the jail term's suspended, the first two years, she has to wear an ankle bracelet. So we'll probably get a video of that real soon. I'm sure it'll be fashionable, since it's France.
But the point is, this would prevent her from running in 2027. And that would mean that Bardella, who is number two essentially in that party, all of 29 years old, nowhere near as popular as Le Pen and would completely tank the ability of the National Rally to win, would become the candidate. It is too early to say that this ban is going to stand up. She has an appeals process. She can bring it to the French equivalent of the Supreme Court, a constitutional counsel, to answer what'll be called a priority question of whether her immediate five-year ban from politics before her appeals against the conviction can stand as valid. And there's a very good argument that has been made in the plaintiff's favor in recent cases that this would not stand. And that while her appeals are going on, she would still be eligible to run, and indeed, she'd be able to go through this appeals process through 2027.
So what now looks like and is being reported in the English language press as she's being thrown out of politics probably isn't going to stand. So in other words, Le Pen out for now. Le Pen probably back soon. And France, in 2027, a really significant, maybe watershed moment from where European politics are going to go. Because if you look at politics right now, you have Friedrich Merz, probably shortly after Easter going to be putting together his grand coalition government, very strongly pro-Europe, very centrist government. You have Meloni, who certainly has a good relationship with Trump, but nonetheless, very strongly pro-EU and very much wanting to act as a bridge to support the EU in using her relations in the United States to be effective in that regard. Macron same, and even Keir Starmer in the UK, post-Brexit, yes, but wanting to be seen as a European leader. Hence taking the lead with Macron in all of these Ukraine summits. That's for now.
But as we look forward to what politics in 2027, '28, '29 look like in Europe, we could easily see that in Germany, suddenly Alternative für Deutschland could do better. Especially if the economy is not doing well. And could force the Germans to be in a position where they would have to enter a coalition with them. In France, very much the National Rally Party and Le Pen still in contention. In the UK, the Reform Party in contention too. So the end of Trump's term for Europe and the transatlantic relationships looks radically different than the beginning of Trump's term. And today's news headlines on France are a blip, not a structural shift. Watch this space as Le Pen is still very relevant indeed. That's it from me, and I'll talk to you all real soon.
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.
Ian Bremmer's Quick Take: Hi everybody. Ian Bremmer here, and a Quick Take on this extraordinary story in The Atlantic. Jeffrey Goldberg, editor-in-chief of this magazine, invited into a Signal chat, the Signal app, by the national security advisor, Michael Waltz, with all of the major national security related principles in the Trump administration, to discuss imminent attacks by the United States on the Houthis in Yemen, the single biggest war fighting that the Trump administration has been involved in the first two months of their term. A lot to think about here, a few points I think worth mentioning.
The first point, it's pretty clear this should not have happened. A discussion of this sort, classified, involving direct war preparation, should not have been happening on Signal, but clearly everyone in the conversation was aware and okay with that. So, I don't think you blame singularly Mike Waltz for the fact that he was the guy that happened to bring the outsider inadvertently in. This collective responsibility, everyone, this is the way the Trump administration is handling these sensitive national security conversations, that is what needs to be looked into and rectified going forward. Mike definitely made a mistake here, and what seems almost certainly to be the case is that he thought he was including the US trade representative, Jamieson Greer, JG, same initials as Jeffrey Goldberg - and The Atlantic editor-in-chief, and he's the only obvious person, Greer, that otherwise wasn't on this broader conversation. So, I would bet my bottom dollar that is the way this happened. And I think all the people that are calling for Mike Waltz to be fired, I certainly wouldn't let him go for that. The issue is the broader lack of operational security around war decisions and fighting.
Now, as to the actual content of the conversations, frankly, I found all of the people involved to be pretty reasonable, especially in the context of how generally unprepared President Trump himself is on matters of national security. So, the fact that Vice President JD Vance was worried about the inconsistency of going to war for something that he doesn't think is a clear and direct US interest, that the US economy would be limited in terms of the impact of it, and this isn't really an American issue in the way that Trump defines American issues and war, that strikes me as not disloyal, but indeed the reality that Vance is aware of the fact that Trump doesn't know a lot of these details. But he doesn't want to bring it to Trump individually. Why not? Because he's going to get his head handed to him if he brings bad news to Trump unless everybody is on board, and of course, everybody isn't on board. There's some reasonable discussion around that, including with the defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, and then finally Stephen Miller, deputy chief of staff and head of policy in the White House, is the one that cuts it off because, why? He's the guy that is saying, "Trump says he wants it, we're going to do it." In other words, you've got to be completely loyal to Trump, that's it. And that's exactly what we've seen from this second administration, what Trump wants, Trump gets.
Now, another interesting point here is that the Europeans are not considered allies by this group across the board. Should be clear from anybody that has seen Vance in Munich, anyone that has seen the recent interview between the US Special Envoy Witkoff and Tucker Carlson, a number of other places where that's happened. But the point is that the entire Trump cabinet is basically saying, "We shouldn't be helping the Europeans, and if we have to help the Europeans, and Lord knows we shouldn't, we have to ensure that they directly pay for American help, American assistance." This is not collective security. This is completely transactional. Also, you got a lot of that about el-Sisi in Egypt, someone that Trump has been very supportive of, and indeed the US provides more support to Egypt than any other country militarily in the world except Israel. So the last few months you would've thought that Egypt would've been an exception there. From what we've seen from the cabinet, apparently not. Certainly a concern in terms of what Egypt is and is not willing to do on the ground in Gaza for Trump. That relationship seems pretty dicey.
Final point here, Jeffrey Goldberg deserves credit. I know that Elon in particular likes to say a lot that the public is now the media, but it turns out that well-trained journalists have standards and those standards are important. I have had my disagreements with what Goldberg has had to say. Some of his positions over the years, support for the Iraq War, for example, lots of other things, but in terms of his professionalism, as soon as he realized that he had been invited into something that was an authentic conversation about actual war plans and fighting, he got out and he told Waltz that he had been mistakenly invited. He made the public aware of what was going on without divulging any of the direct war plans or outing intelligence, active intelligence member that was part of it, all of those things, it was absolutely the right thing to do. He's now getting smeared by Hegseth, the secretary of defense, who was clearly embarrassed by his own mistake and his participation and culpability in all of this. He personally won't take responsibility as we so frequently see with our political leaders and never should have gotten confirmed, in my view and in the view of many Republican senators who weren't willing to go out publicly because of course they were fearful for their own careers. But Jeff Goldberg has done the right thing in terms of his career and I commend him for it.
That's it for me. I'll talk to y'all real soon.
Ian Bremmer's Quick Take: I want to talk about the transatlantic relationship. The US relationship with Europe. Because of all of the geopolitics in the world, this is the one that I think has been impacted in a permanent and structural way in the first two months of the Trump administration. I wouldn't say that, for example, look at the Middle East and US relations with Israel, the Saudis, the Emiratis, the rest of the Gulf States, frankly, all very comfortable with Trump. If there's a significant change, I would say it's incrementally more engaged, and in terms of worldview than under the Biden administration. Japan, South Korea, Australia, India, you look at Asia relations and certainly Trump and the US on trade worrying them, making them sort of react in a more defensive posture. Seeing how much, how more quickly, they can get something to the US that will lead to trying to diffuse potential conflict there. But not radically different from the way they thought about the United States in 2017 in the first Trump term.
Mexico, Canada, Panama, here you've got countries that are facing very significant challenges from the United States, but also ultimately understand that they have no other options. Now, in Canada, that's a bigger fight because there are elections coming up at the end of April. But after those elections are over, I certainly expect that they will move quickly to try to ensure that ongoing relations are functional and stable. That's already true for the Mexican government with a president who has 85% approval, can do pretty much everything necessary to ensure that US-Mexico relations aren't dramatically impacted by everything Trump is demanding. So that's everywhere else.
But in Europe, that's just not the case. Three different reasons why the Europeans are facing a much more permanent impact. The first is on the trade side, like everybody else, and trade is well within the European Union's competency. They understand that they have leverage. If the Americans are going to hit them with significant tariffs, they're going to hit back with the same numbers. But that doesn't mean it's going to be relatively difficult and take a long time to resolve it, as opposed to places that are much weaker where they just fold quickly to the United States. Okay, fair enough. But still, that's not all that dramatically different from first term. Second point is there's a war going on in Ukraine, and the United States has made it very clear that they want to engage, to re-engage with Putin, who is Europe's principal enemy. And they're going to do that irrespective of how much the Europeans oppose it, and they're not going to take any European input in those conversations.
Trump would like a rapprochement with Russia to include a Ukrainian ceasefire. But if that doesn't happen, he is oriented towards blaming the Ukrainians for it, towards taking Kremlin talking points on Ukraine not really being a country, and then on moving to ensure that US-Russia relations are functional again. All of that is deeply concerning, is existentially concerning, particularly for a bunch of European countries that are on the front lines spending a lot more in defense, not because the Americans are telling them to, but because they're worried about Russia themselves, feel like they have to be more independent. Then finally, because Europe is the supranational political experiment that relies most on common values and rule of law, and the United States under Trump is undoing that component of the US-led order specifically.
I wouldn't necessarily say that about collective security or existing alliances and willingness to provide some sort of defense umbrella, but I would certainly say that in terms of rule of law and territorial integrity. And here, the fact that the United States no longer really cares about territorial integrity, is prepared to tell Denmark, "Hey, you're not a good ally. You're not defending Greenland. We're interested in moving forward ourselves, and we don't care how you've treated us historically. We're going to send our leaders and we're going to cut our own deal inside your territory." That's exactly the way the Germans felt when JD Vance said that he wanted to engage directly with the Alternatives für Deutschland, who the Germans consider to be a neo-Nazi party.
Everything that's core to the Europeans in their statehood and in the EU, the United States under Trump is on the other side of that, and it's increasingly conflictual. It's directly adversarial. And so I would say number one, the Europeans are aware of these problems. Number two, they're taking them late, but nonetheless finally very seriously. And so they understand that the Europeans are going to have to create an independent strategy for their own self-defense, for their national security, for their political stability, for their democracies, and they have to do that outside of the United States. In fact, they have to do that and defend themselves against the United States.
Now that reality doesn't mean they're going to be successful. And indeed, the more summits I see on Ukraine, frankly the less I have been convinced that the Europeans will be able to do enough, quick enough to really help Ukraine dramatically cut a better deal with the Russian Federation that is very uninterested in doing anything that is sustainable for the Ukrainians long term. It makes me worry that the EU longer term is not fit for purpose in an environment where the principle, the most powerful actors don't care about rule of law. The United States, China, and for Europe, Russia right on their borders. So for all of those reasons, I mean, the European markets have gone up recently. European growth expectations have gone up because the Germans and others are planning on spending a lot more, that's short-term. Long-term here. I worry that the Europeans are in an awful lot of trouble. So something we'll be focusing on very closely going forward over the coming weeks and months. I hope you all are well, and I'll talk to you all real soon.
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Ian Bremmer's Quick Take: The Putin-Trump call, some 90 minutes long, now over. And I would call this a win for both sides, for the Americans and the Russians, and not horrible for Ukraine and Europe, but kicking the can on what's going to be some big problems down the road and setting out where those challenges are going to be. Why is that?
Well, first of all, Putin said, "No," to the 30-day complete ceasefire, but did give a win to Trump, having accepted a 30-day ceasefire with no conditions with the Ukrainians. The Russians are saying they're prepared to do that, with no gives, as long as it's about targeting energy infrastructure, and in principle, still some discussions around maritime attacks around the Black Sea. Places that frankly the Russians have been irritated with what Ukraine has been able to do with air drones and with sea drones. And also allows the Russians to continue to press for territorial gains over the course of the coming weeks, depleting Ukraine's military capabilities. Plus, the weather's getting warmer, how much damage are you going to do to Ukraine, how miserable you can make them when you're no longer dealing with the freeze is not quite as relevant. So, not a particular loss for the Russians.
The fact that you're going to have less engagement militarily means fewer people will get killed. That's good for everybody involved, frankly. So that's where we are. Did you need 90-minutes to get that going? Not really, because the Russians also want to ensure that they have lots of conversations with the Americans about building business between the two sides, about people-to-people engagement, about finding a way to ensure that there is an ongoing bilateral channel where the Europeans aren't involved, where the Ukrainians aren't involved, that's essential for Putin and that he got. So yes, you have a meaningful, relatively contained ceasefire that maybe you can build on, but you also have a meaningful bilateral channel for broader engagement between the Americans and the Russians that the Ukrainians and the Europeans aren't going to be a part of, and that the Americans have no interest in having the Ukrainians Europeans being a part of.
Now, what Trump has heard from Putin in terms of red lines is that to actually have a comprehensive ceasefire ongoing, that the Russians are demanding, that there is no further intelligence or military support to Ukraine from the United States or Europe. That's obviously a non-starter for the Ukrainians because it means they won't be able to defend themselves as the Russians rebuild. It's a non-starter for the Europeans for similar reasons. Trump might be willing to negotiate that, and if he is, then he and Putin can blame Ukraine and the Europeans for not being able to take a 30-day limited ceasefire and expand it, which is exactly the position that Putin wants to be in. So, Putin giving a little bit in the near-term with the hopes of getting a lot more in the longer-term, getting Trump as it were, a little bit pregnant around a deal so that he's more engaged with the Russians in areas that's going to be more consequential and more costly for Europe and for the Ukrainians.
So that's where we are. We don't know yet whether the Ukrainians are going to accept these limited 30-day terms. I expect they will, because Trump wants them to. And when that happens, the Europeans will be onboard, too. The intention will be to try to use that by the Ukrainians, the Europeans, to try to get a longer, broader ceasefire. But there, the working level conversations between the US and Russia, between the US and Ukraine, are going to be far more difficult and they're probably not going to hold.
It feels a little bit like what we have in Gaza. Relatively easy to get the first iteration of a deal in place where no one's really giving anything up, but as you go into the second phase, you find that the fundamental interests don't actually overlap, and that's why we're fighting again on the ground in Gaza, with the Israelis killing hundreds of people there in the last 24-hours, and it's why I expect ultimately we are not heading towards peace, even though we do get a temporary ceasefire with Ukraine.