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.
Economy
U.S. President Donald Trump poses with Vice President Mike Pence, first lady Melania Trump and Conan, the U.S. military dog that participated in and was injured in the U.S. raid in Syria that killed ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, while standing with the dog's military handler on the colonnade of the West Wing of the White House in Washington, U.S., November 25, 2019.
While the second season will not officially launch until Jan. 20, 2025, the Donald Trump show has already come to town. Look no further than Trump’s remarks this weekend at his first major post-election rally where he declared it the start of America’s “Golden Age.”
President Joe Biden’s final months in office may go down as the lamest of lame ducks. His administration’s post-election priority to bring peace to the Middle East has landed where so many other such endeavors have – in a pile of hopes and dreams. Instead, with Bashar Assad’s regime collapse in Syria, the conflagration has spread, taking on a seismic significance that is likely to lead to the vast reordering of the region, if it has not already begun.
A new norm
Biden’s presidency, once seen as a restoration from the Trump aberration, now appears more like the last gasp of the (post-)Cold Warriors. Trump is less of a deviation and more of a new norm. His protectionism and adoption of industrial policy are on the rise, reopening the settled debate around globalization. His emphasis on NATO members contributing more to their own collective security has also been internalized across European capitals and in Brussels. Populism and migration anxiety, each key Trump talking points, are pervasive trends.
With the dawning realization that the US will not be returning to a familiar role as the world’s superpower, global government and business leaders are considering what it will take to be Trump’s best friend.
Europe grapples for purchase
Europe received a major clue late last week when Trump took to social media to demand the European Union “make up their tremendous deficit with the US by the large scale purchases of our oil and gas.” Luckily for Europe, Trump’s message dovetails nicely with plansits leadership had reportedly already been developing to purchase more American LNG. Not only would doing so further reduce Europe’s dependence on Russian energy, but it offers a blueprint to avoid falling afoul of a costly trade war with its closest ally.
Also at play for Europe is how to maneuver around Ukraine. Six months ago, when Trump repeatedly suggested on the campaign trail that he would end the war in Ukraine on day one, it was generally met with a shrug and an eye roll. How could Trump unlock a resolution to a war that started on Feb. 24, 2022, but had roots going back decades?
And yet, sitting just months ahead of the third anniversary and with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s newfound willingness to negotiate, it seems more likely than at any previous time in this hot conflict that a deal may be possible. Perhaps the understanding that Trump would make good on promises to curb US support and the depth of the about-face in US policy Ukraine will soon encounter has clarified the stakes. How well Trump can apply pressure on Russia’s Vladimir Putin remains an open question, butPutin’s statements that he is ready for “negotiations and compromise” are telling.
Trump’s neighbors look to keep pace
Elsewhere, the question of how to operate in a world that is already Trump’s dominated Canadian politics in late December. A fragile government suffered a further corporal blow that may soon lead to its collapse after Prime Minister Justin Trudeau sought to shuffle Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland’s cabinet position.
Rather than go along with it, Freeland resigned,citing the need for a “true Team Canada response” to the incoming US administration’s “economic nationalism.” Freeland’s departure reflects not only Canada’s precarious frontline position to Trump’s agenda but also speaks to a wider geopolitical truth: resist the realities at one’s peril. Freeland put it in the plainest terms: “how we deal with the threat our country currently faces will define us for a generation, and perhaps longer.” These are not times for denying the signs flashing 25% incoming tariffs and America First. This is the moment for adapting to what Trump has clearly and repeatedly articulated as the direction of travel for US foreign policy.
Global business heeds the call
Across the business world, recognition of the unfolding realities has quickly taken hold. Sizeable financial commitments are being offered up to the next administration even before its first official day in office. Various multinationals with US headquarters have made donations to Trump’s inauguration committee. The list of donors includes global firms (many of them tech firms) that faced scrutiny during the Trump 1.0 administration. Not to be outdone, one international firmcommitted to $100 billion investment alongside the creation of 100,000 new US jobs. Bold pledges for bolder times, such support from the international business community aligns directly with a number of Trump’splatform positions from “Build[ing] the greatest economy in history” to “Protect[ing] American workers and farmers from unfair trade.”
Trump is on a winning streak, and he has not yet taken a single step into the White House as the 47th president.
From Washington to Wall Street, the effects of the “Trump trade” are already in motion. Around the world too, both leaders in government and business are hoping to find themselves on his “nice list” in the year ahead.
Hard Numbers: Matt Gaetz loved drugs and sex in Congress, Biden commutes death sentences, A deadly year for journalists, Italy’s magnificent mosaics shine again
FILE PHOTO: U.S. Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) nominates former President Donald Trump for Speaker of the House as Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) and Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO) watch inside the House Chamber on the third day of the 118th Congress at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, U.S., January 5, 2023.
20: A leaked draft of the House of Representatives’ ethics report on former member Matt Gaetz showed he paid for drugs and sex at least 20 times while in office, including with a 17 year old girl while he was 35. Gaetz denies the report and is suing to prevent its formal release, but the allegations within were severe enough to derail his nomination to be Donald Trump’s Attorney General.
37: On Monday, President Joe Bidencommuted the sentences of 37 out of the 40 federal prisoners on death row to life in prison in another major act of clemency as he approaches the end of his term. The three prisoners who did not receive commutation were responsible for the Boston Marathon bombing, the Tree of Life Synagogue mass shooting, and the mass shooting at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston.
104: At least 104 journalists died while on duty this year, with the majority, 55, killed in Gaza. An astounding 10% of journalists working in the enclave have lost their lives since Israel invaded, while the rest work in appalling and dangerous conditions. Nearly ten times as many journalists died in Gaza as in the next deadliest countries, Lebanon and Pakistan, where six journalists each were killed on the job.
1.1 million: The stunning mosaics of Monreale Cathedral in Sicily have completed a $1.1 million restoration, bringing them back to a resplendent golden shine nearly nine centuries after they were first created — just in time for Christmas mass. Built by Sicilian artisans for their new Norman overlords, they are the largest Byzantine artworks outside of the Hagia Sophia in Istanbul (then Constantinople), and among the best-preserved artefacts of the early medieval Mediterranean.What would it mean for the US to leave the World Health Organization?
Donald Trump speaks on the last day of Turning Point's four-day AmericaFest conference on Dec. 22, 2024, in Phoenix.
President-elect Donald Trump’s advisors are reportedly urging him to pull the United States out of the World Health Organization on his first day in office, according to a report published Sunday in the Financial Times.
The US currently provides approximately 16% of the WHO’s funding, giving it outsized influence on the institution. Experts say a withdrawal would severely hamper the world’s ability to respond to public health crises like pandemics.
"Politically, Trump’s lack of support could open the door to lowered support from other countries, in an environment of increased skepticism towards international engagement and foreign aid in general—especially among many ascendant right-wing parties in Europe—amid fiscal constraints and pressures to increase defense spending," says Eurasia Group's Laura Yasaitis. "Ongoing pandemic preparedness efforts, such as the pandemic treaty, would be majorly set back, as would other efforts like the polio eradication campaign."
It’s not an empty threat. Trump actually initiated the process of leaving the WHO in 2020, at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, accusing the organization of being controlled by China. He never followed through on the actual withdrawal, however, and Joe Biden re-established ties in 2021.
This time around, Trump has aligned himself with figures whose views on healthcare are well outside the scientific consensus. Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., a vociferous opponent of vaccination, is tapped to lead Health and Human Services, while David Weldon, another anti-vaxxer from the fringe, is set to lead the Centers for Disease Control. Incoming Food and Drug Administration commissioner Martin Makary has also questioned the benefits of certain vaccines, like hepatitis B and COVID boosters. With advisers like these, the WHO would be smart to start planning for a pullout, even if it doesn’t happen on Jan. 20.
Beijing won’t butt in on this one, of course, since they stand to gain the most from US healthcare isolationism. If Trump was worried about Chinese control of the WHO back in 2020, pulling out in 2025 would all but guarantee that Beijing steps into the void.
A view is being seen of the northeast of Tehran at sunrise on August 17, 2012.
After weeks of increasingly severe blackouts caused by massive natural gas shortages in Iran, the state power company warned manufacturers on Friday that they need to brace for power cuts that could last weeks and cost billions of dollars. The government is facing a difficult choice between cutting fuel for power plants or for residential heating — and are taking the first option in a bid to keep a lid on public discontent.
Markets took small comfort, however, with the Iranian rial plummeting to 770,000 to the dollar, its lowest value ever. Ordinary Iranians spent most of last week not knowing whether they would be able to send their children to school or go to work themselves the next day, a situation which seems likely to continue.
Wait, doesn’t Iran have tons of natural gas? Yes, and generous subsidies for consumers to boot, which means the overwhelming majority of Iranians depend on — and arguably overconsume — natural gas for home heating and cooking. But even though the Islamic Republic sits on the world’s second-largest reserves, sanctions and international isolation have left its infrastructure and technology woefully inadequate to supply its own needs.
Iranian producers already burn off huge quantities of natural gas released in oil extraction because they lack the technology to collect it instead. And much of the natural gas Iran does extract is then exported to Turkey and Iraq, where it brings in much-needed hard currency.
The New York Times also reported on Saturday that Israeli strikes against two pipelines back in February forced Tehran to eat into reserves that it was unable to replenish over the summer.
Will the crisis reach a boiling point? With temperatures plunging as low as -20 C in many parts of the country, cuts to gas for domestic heating could put lives at risk. We’re watching for unrest, but keep in mind that hundreds of Iranians lost their lives and thousands more were arrested and abused by regime forces in 2022 and 2023 during the protests over the killing of Mahsa Amini. As long as the regime is willing to kill its own people in the streets, protest may be futile.Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau speaks after signing an infrastructure agreement in Montreal, December 16, 2016.
This is Justin Trudeau’s darkest hour.
Even as he shuffles his Cabinet tomorrow, it will not shuffle his political future. This is the endgame.
Eventually, all successful politicians turn into Dorian Gray — gazing into the mirror and seeing a reflection of beauty they believe voters will find irresistible. All the while, however, somewhere under a parliamentary staircase, a portrait of their political face is being ravaged by time, scandal, and betrayal. That is the bargain leaders inevitably make as they fight to stay in power.
There was President Joe Biden earlier in the year, still seeing the reflection of a robust man ready to govern for another four years despite the fact that he couldn’t get through 40 minutes of a presidential debate. He had to be pried out of the presidential limo by the Jaws of Pelosi.
In 2015, former Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper thought he too saw another big election win in the mirror, but instead, insulated from reality inside his powerful prime minister’s office, he suffered a stunning defeat. The wheel of change is not partisan, but it is powerful.
Trudeau is now seeing the real portrait for the first time. After nine years in power, down 20 points in the polls, he has long refused to look, but his once trusted Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland just swiped the picture from under the stairs, waved it around publicly, and then lit it on fire.
It’s hard to imagine a more shambolic ending. Freeland was told by the PM — on a Zoom call, no less! —that she was going to be replaced as finance minister right after she presented the Fall Economic Statement (a kind of mini-budget in Canada) that would reveal the government blew past its own key deficit target by more than CA$20 billion. In other words, “Please wear this fiscal mess and let me move on to a new thing.”
How was that ever going to work? Naturally Freeland refused, but she didn’t simply quiet-quit and go gently into that good political night. Instead, just hours before she was set to deliver the FES, she chaos-quit with a controlled rage, rage-against-the-dying-of-light letter, dismissing Trudeau’s entire economic agenda as a self-serving “political gimmick.”
It blew the government apart.
It’s hard to declare winners and losers in this carnage, as everyone in the government is a casualty. The PM is now facing an open revolt by a growing number of MPs. Wayne Long, an outspoken Liberal, went on CTV’s ‘Power Play’ to say Trudeau is “delusional” and claimed that up to 40 MPS want him to resign, though that number has yet to be confirmed. Still, his sentiments were reflected in comments MPs told me, one saying bluntly, “I hope he announces he is stepping down.”
Freeland herself says she is running again, which basically kicked off the next leadership race, and she is likely the front-runner. But, as the saying goes, “The hand that wields the knife shall never wear the crown.” Freeland delivered four budgets for Trudeau, and even if she rightly fought back against the $1.6 billion goods and services tax holiday boondoggle, that hardly adds up to the over $20 billion overage on her own targets. If Canada is facing a fiscal reckoning and an angry electorate, isn’t Freeland as responsible as Trudeau? Would Canadians be able to disaggregate the two?
All this could not come at a worse time for Canada, now under direct threat from President-elect Donald Trump. He promises devastating 25% tariffs on Canada the day after he is inaugurated, and, with a hyena’s nose for weakness, he has persistently and publicly tormented Trudeau with the threat of making Canada the 51st state.
Pause on that for a second because it is unprecedented in Canadian-US history, unless you want to go back to … 1812, before Confederation. What started out as a Trump taunt is starting to look more like a Trump trial balloon. Trump’s son Eric has amplified the idea on social media, and now, on places like Fox News, taking over Canada is a topic of genuine debate.
With Trump, the first question is always: Do we take him literally, or seriously, or both?
And the lesson people have learned in the last eight years is: both.
Even as government officials have dismissed the threat as a joke, others are taking it seriously. Ontario Premier Doug Ford is showing up on American news programs defending Canada and threatening to cut off energy exports.
Trump trades in three currencies: power, fame, and loyalty. A lame duck leader of a foreign country who has only one of these three may come to Mar-a-Lago for dinner, but he might well end up on the menu.
The best hope Canada has is for the 35 state governors who depend on Canada as their top trading partner to act as de facto proxies for Canada, and push back against tariffs that will hurt their workers and economies.
Now what?
A few paths:
One, Trudeau stays and runs again after tomorrow’s Cabinet shuffle. There are no polls or signs that would suggest this is the most productive path, but, until he leaves, it has to be an option.
Two, Trudeau leaves, prorogues parliament, and the leadership race kicks off. The rules around that election will be crucial for the Liberal Party.
Can Liberals afford to take three months to elect a leader while Trump launches trade tariffs and the Conservatives consolidate their lead in the polls? It is not advisable.
On the other hand, can they afford to do a short 30-35-day process, in which case very few Canadian voters and new candidates will get involved? That might not end up injecting any fresh blood into the party at all. The Democrats tried it in the US and ended up with a frothy Kamala Harris campaign start and a miserable end.
There are few good options for the leader and the party right now, but if the government falls on a confidence motion in the new year, then the race is one with Trudeau at the helm, which is exactly what the opposition parties want most of all.
Nothing can happen until the prime minister decides what he will do.
It’s coming on Christmas, as Joni Mitchell once sang, the day the prime minister was born, but instead of seeing a star in the sky, even he knows this is his darkest political hour. The only guide he has might be those portraits of other prime ministers that hang in the halls of Parliament, each of whom has had to ask the same impossibly hard question: When is my time up?
Only a few of them got to choose their own answer.
--FILE--Chinese workers check tungsten ore at a factory
Most Americans are likely unaware that the Department of Defense has morphed into a major mining investor but it is becoming a significant backer of Canada’s critical minerals sector. Last Friday, the DoD announced it is investing $15.5 million in a feasibility study at a tungsten mine in eastern Yukon owned by Fireweed Metals. The Canadian government is a partner in the project, upgrading roads and transmission lines.
The investment falls under the Defence Production Act, which is intended to streamline critical defense supply chains. Under the DPA, Canada is considered a domestic source of resources for the US, hence the DoD cash. This is the sixth such investment in a Canadian company and comes at a time when concerns are growing about stockpiles of minerals used in aerospace components, munitions and ground-vehicle armour.
China has dominated the sector, extracting 60 % of rare earth elements and processing 90% of global supply. Prices for many minerals have tanked because of Chinese oversupply, leaving North American companies struggling to attract capital. Canada’s production of minerals such as copper, nickel, cobalt and zinc has declined as a result.
The US and Canada have a new strategy: partner up to address unfair competition and deliberate over-production in the sector. The Fireweed deal is unlikely to be the last.
A drone view shows the Canada-U.S. border between the U.S. state of New York and the Canadian province of Quebec, near Champlain, New York, U.S., December 6, 2024.
0.4: In the third quarter of this year, Canada’s population grew just 0.4%, the lowest quarterly growth rate in two years. Given that immigrants account for almost all of Canada’s population growth, the data suggest that new government measures to slow immigration – including capping foreign student slots and slashing temporary work visas – are having an effect. Immigration skyrocketed during the pandemic, straining housing supply and services, provoking a political backlash.
10: The decision by the BC government last year to make birth control products free has caused a 10% jump in women’s use of contraceptives. Use of pricier options such as IUDs and implants, the cost of which is now fully covered by the state, jumped 14%.
20: China’s arsenal of operational nuclear warheadsgrew by 20% over the last year, reaching 600, according to the Pentagon. At his clip, Beijing will have 1,000 warheads deployed by 2030. That would still trail the roughly 1,600 nuclear warheads deployed by Russia and the 1,800 deployed by the US, but it only takes a handful to inflict unspeakable destruction. So far, China is not party to any agreements with the US and Russia on limiting nuclear arsenals.
50: How do Americans feel about their jobs? So-so. Only 50% say they are extremely or very satisfied with the daily grind, according to a new Pew study. But the generational divide is stark: 67% of workers aged 65 or older viewed their jobs in the best light, a whopping 24 points higher than people aged 18-29.
8: The US government is telling senior officials and politicians to GET OFF THE PHONE. Literally. Authorities want top pols to ditch phone calls and text messages, after at least eight US telecoms companies were hacked by the “Salt Typhoon” group of China-linked cybercriminals. Authorities say it’s safer to use end-to-end encrypted text apps like Signal, WhatsApp, iMessage, Teams, or Zoom.