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U.S. President Donald Trump shakes hands with European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, after an announcement of a trade deal between the U.S. and EU, in Turnberry, Scotland, Britain, July 27, 2025.
HARD NUMBERS: Trump pitches Europe on joint tariffs, Mexico nabs uniformed diesel smugglers, Hong Kong lawmakers veto same-sex bill, Apple holds prices steady
14: Mexican authorities have detained 14 people, including several active duty Marines, for smuggling diesel fuel into the country from the United States. The scandal could put further pressure on an already-strained relationship between the US and Mexico, key allies in Washington’s “War on Drugs.”
71: Hong Kong’s legislature vetoed a government-backed bill that would have granted some additional marital rights to same-sex couples registered overseas. Seventy-one lawmakers voted against the bill, with 14 in favor.
5.6: Apple on Wednesday introduced a new, slimmer iPhone “Air” model which is just 5.6mm thick. But the fatter news from the event is that the company has decided not to increase prices for iPhones, despite the impact of new US tariffs, which are currently costing the tech giant more than $1 billion per quarter.
Graph showing the rise of the missing persons in Mexico from 2000-2024.
Mexico’s missing are a growing issue
Last Saturday, thousands of Mexicans marked the International Day of the Disappeared by taking to the streets of the country’s major cities, imploring the government to do more to find an estimated 130,000 missing persons. The growing movement has put pressure on President Claudia Sheinbaum, who made addressing this issue a pillar of her campaign.
Much to Sheinbaum’s and the country’s dismay, the problem seems to be getting worse. The total number of missing people in Mexico increased 12% in 2025, after growing 6.3% in 2024 and 7.3% in 2023, according to the Mexican Institute of Human Rights and Democracy.
While missing people have been a serious issue in the North American country of over 130 million people since the 1950s, the problem became much more widespread beginning in 2007 after then-President Felipe Calderón declared a “war on drugs.”
Calderón’s proclamation – and subsequent military crackdown on the drug cartels – created power vacuums between these crime groups, as smaller ones battled one another to fill the void left by the largest groups that government forces took out.
“The violence erupted very quickly once the war on the cartels began,” said Eurasia Group’s Mexico analyst Andrea Villegas. “So that leads to more inter cartel violence as well, because when one group is dismantled, rival organizations fight to seize its territory and establish control.”
Violence has continued between the cartels, says Villegas, and the fighting has contributed to the dramatic rise in disappearances.
It isn’t just cartel-on-cartel violence, though. These criminal organizations also lure young recruits through false job ads, then use killing or disappearances as a means of punishment to keep order within the camp. They also want to maintain social control in areas where they already enjoy a great deal of power, like Guadalajara, a major city in western Mexico. And they use this violence as a preventative or retaliatory measure, once murdering a group of young police recruits training for a special unit whose purpose was to combat the cartels.
One of the most famous cases of cartel-on-civilian violence occurred in 2014, when one crime organization – with the help of corrupt police officials – seized 43 students from Iguala in southern Mexico. Eleven years on, only three of these students’ remains have been found.
Why can’t the authorities find these people? Those murdered are often buried by the cartels in mass graves, with their remains contaminated to make it extremely difficult to identify the bodies or determine the cause of death. The existence of these horrific sites has become so frequent that Mexicans are no longer as shocked by their discovery.
But in March, the country was shaken again. When volunteers searching for their missing relatives were given a tip about another mass grave site outside of Guadalajara, they instead found something resembling an extermination camp. It was replete with cremation ovens and burnt remains.
Mexico isn’t the only Latin American country to face this issue. Argentina’s military junta killed or disappeared an estimated 30,000 people during the late 1970s and early 1980s, often by dropping them from planes. Guatemala’s 36-year civil war included the disappearances of some 40,000 people. Brazil’s military dictatorship of 1965 to 1984 quashed dissent by seizing, killing and disappearing the dissidents of the regime – this was memorialized in last year’s Oscar-winning film “I’m Still Here.”
But Mexico’s issue is a current one, and the numbers are even greater.
What is the government doing about it? Elected last year, Sheinbaum has abandoned her predecessor Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s (AMLO) policy of “Abrazos, no balazos” (hugs, not bullets), which prioritized economic development as a means to diminish cartel power. She has taken a more aggressive approach to confronting the issue.
“Sheinbaum is trying to do this coordination between states and police forces in order to be able to trace why a body started in Chiapas [in the South] and ended in Sinaloa [along the West Coast],” said Villegas.
Sheinbaum’s government has claimed that the approach is working, saying that homicides in the country have fallen 25%. However, the data for this stat isn’t publicly available. What’s more, the spiking number of disappearances tells a different story.
This could have political consequences for Mexico’s first female president. By identifying this issue a key part of her campaign, Sheinbaum has made the number of cartel disappearances a key metric for whether she can be deemed a successful leader. Right now, the data isn’t going in the right direction.
“Every single mass grave and data that comes out kind of points that this is going to be a much larger [issue],” said Villegas. “I think that it’s more a cause of the lack of security strategy that AMLO had, and she’s going to be reaping the consequences of this, but it is going to be her responsibility to respond.”
South Korea's former first lady Kim Keon Hee, wife of impeached former president Yoon Suk Yeol, arrives at a court to attend a hearing to review her arrest warrant requested by special prosecutors at the Seoul Central District Court, in Seoul, South Korea August 12, 2025.
Hard Numbers: South Korea’s ex-first lady jailed, Mexico transfers cartel members to US, Europe threatens to re-sanction Iran, Poland rearms
800 million: South Korea sent Kim Keon Hee – the 52-year-old wife of former President Yoon Suk Yeol – to solitary confinement on Tuesday, after arresting her for stock manipulation, bribery, and election meddling. Prosecutors accused Kim of making over 800 million won ($580,000) by manipulating the stock price of local BMW dealer, Deutsch Motors. Her husband President Yoon was impeached and detained after he tried to impose martial law in December last year.
26: Mexican authorities extradited 26 suspected cartel members to the US, at the Department of Justice’s request on Tuesday. The move comes as the Trump administration ramps up pressure on Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum to crack down on cartels and drug smuggling. A similar transfer of 29 prisoners was made last February.
3: The E3 – France, Germany, and the United Kingdom – threatened to reimpose previous sanctions on Iran at the end of this month unless Iran agrees to restart negotiations over its nuclear program. US-Iran nuclear talks were previously suspended after Israel and the US struck Iran’s nuclear facilities in June. Analysts observe that Iran faces some tough tradeoffs ahead.
$3.8 billion: Poland – which borders both Russia and Belarus – signed a $3.8 billion deal with the US on Wednesday to modernize its fleet of F-16 fighter jets. The deal is part of a broader rearmament push in the country, which was launched after Russian President Vladimir Putin’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
A demonstrator burns mock dollar bills with the face of US President Donald Trump during a protest against the US tariffs imposed on Brazilian products, in front of the United States Embassy in Brasilia, Brazil, on August 1, 2025.
What We’re Watching: Another US tariff announcement, El Salvador leader can now rule indefinitely, Indonesian president pardons opponents
US hits the world with fresh wave of tariffs
US President Donald Trump slapped new tariffs on 92 countries, including key allies. Canada, the US’s number two trade partner, was hit with a 35% rate. Taiwan, a critical semiconductor supplier, also faces fresh levies that could ripple through global tech supply chains, and India now faces a 25% rate. For some countries, Trump’s latest threats are actually a reprieve, as he lowered previously threatened rates: tiny Lesotho, which Trump once said “nobody has ever heard of,” will now face a 15% duty, down from 50%. The new levies take effect on Aug. 9, but Mexico, the US’s largest trade partner, won a 90-day extension. Trump reached a deal with the EU earlier this week, and is still negotiating with China.
El Salvador’s Bukele can now stay in power forever
El Salvador’s legislature has voted to scrap presidential term limits, clearing the way for President Nayib Bukele to run for a third term, and potentially to stay in power indefinitely. Bukele – who once called himself the “world’s coolest dictator” – remains wildly popular after jailing thousands in a gang crackdown, but critics warn he’s dismantling a fragile democracy. Analysts say that the move may have spurred backlash from the US under previous administrations, but that Bukele is emboldened because of his close relationship with Trump.
Indonesia’s president pardons pair of political opponents
Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto granted clemency on Thursday to two opposition figures who were recently convicted of corruption. He framed the move as a bid to increase national unity ahead of the country’s 80th anniversary later this month, but critics say it undermines the justice system. Some observers have also suggested it may signal a rift between Prabowo and his predecessor, two-term president Joko Widodo, a one-time rival who backed Prabowo in last year’s election and remains hugely influential.Graphic Truth: Trump increases tariff threats on top trade partners
US President Donald Trump is threatening to impose 30% tariffs against the United States’ top two trading partners, the European Union and Mexico, demanding that Europe open its markets more to US products and that Mexico combats local drug cartels. Without new trade deals, the levies would come into effect on Aug. 1, and are higher than the previous duties that Trump had threatened. The announcement has put both Mexico and the European trading bloc on their heels: they have each now scrapped earlier plans to retaliate, favoring negotiations to smooth things over in the next two weeks. However, as Trump continues to drive an extremely hard bargain with even the US’s closest trading partners, he increases the risk that they will look elsewhere for alliances – for some, this process has already begun.
Graphic Truth: Mexico and Brazil seek to boost trade ties
Mexico and Brazil are exploring ways to boost their trade ties, and there’s certainly room for improvement: bilateral commerce between Latin America’s two largest economies amounted to just $13.6 billion last year. That’s less than 10% of Brazil’s trade with China, and not even 2% of Mexico’s trade with the US. While the two countries have historically competed for dominance, the Trump administration’s latest tariffs and the election of left-wing leadership in both Brazil and Mexico have motivated closer cooperation.
Here’s a look at where trade between Brazil and Mexico currently stands.
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen during the European Council summit at the headquarters of the European Council, in Brussels, Belgium, on June 26, 2026.
Hard Numbers: European leader faces no confidence vote, Sheinbaum wants to sue SpaceX, & more
401: European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen faces a no-confidence vote over “Pfizergate,” a scandal over how she secured vaccines in 2021 by personally texting Pfizer’s CEO. It would take an unlikely 401 votes in the 720-strong European Parliament to oust her, but the vote may push her to make political concessions to both the left and right to shore up support.
25: Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum is threatening to sue Elon Musk’s SpaceX for debris from ground tests near the Mexican border. Her move comes after the US government in May increased the permitted number of annual SpaceX launches from 5 to 25, despite concerns about adverse effects on the environment.
2: Two Chinese international students studying in South Korea were arrested on Wednesday for using drones to film a US carrier at a naval base. They were accused of violating the Protection of Military Bases and Installations Act, and it’s the first time foreign nationals have been detained on such charges. South Korea’s new left-leaning president has sought to distance Seoul from Washington somewhat, raising the prospect of greater tension between its largest security partner, the United States, and its largest trading partner, China.
6-3: In a 6-3 vote, the US Supreme Court ruled on Thursday that Planned Parenthood cannot sue the state of South Carolina over its effort to defund the reproductive health clinics. Abortion is legal in South Carolina only during the first six weeks of pregnancy, but the decision is expected to diminish Planned Parenthood’s ability to provide other healthcare to patients, like physical exams and cancer screenings.
Trump-Musk rift over Trump's "big, beautiful bill"
On Ian Bremmer’s World In 60 Seconds: Ian breaks down the rift between President Trump and Elon Musk over Trump’s “big beautiful bill”, Mexico’s democratic backslide, and South Korea's new leadership.
Ian's takeaways:
On Trump-Musk feud: “I think Elon is mad at a bunch of stuff right now. And as we know, he's not exactly stable in how he puts his views out as he has them.”
On Mexico’s judicial reform: “It’s really bad for democracy… and leads to a lot more corruption.”
On South Korea’s new leadership: “He (Lee Jae-myung) says he wants to govern as a centrist, but I suspect he’s going to govern more to the left.”