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      Trump says he wants to meet with Kim Jong-un as South Korea’s Lee Jae Myung visits US

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      Donald Trump said on Monday he wanted to meet with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un and that he was open to further trade talks with South Korea even as he lobbed new criticisms at the visiting Asian ally.South Korea’s new president, Lee Jae Myung, arrived for talks just after the US president criticized the South Korean government, apparently over its handling of investigations related to his conservative predecessor’s December attempt to impose martial law.The remarks cast a dark mood over high-stakes talks for Lee, who took office in June after a snap election that followed Yoon Suk Yeol’s impeachment and removal.Welcoming Lee to the White House’s Oval Office, Trump said he was open to negotiating aspects of the US-South Korean trade deal and to meeting Kim.“I’d like to have a meeting,” Trump told reporters. “I look forward to meeting with Kim Jong-un in the appropriate future.“Trump and Lee held their first meeting in tense circumstances. The US president lodged vague complaints about a “purge or revolution” in South Korea on social media before later walking the comments back as a likely “misunderstanding” between the allies.Despite clinching a trade deal in July that spared South Korean exports harsher US tariffs, the two sides continue to wrangle over nuclear energy, military spending and details of a trade deal that included $350bn in promised South Korean investments in the United States.North Korea’s rhetoric has ramped up, with Kim pledging to speed his nuclear program and condemning joint US-South Korea military drills. Over the weekend, Kim supervised the test firing of new air defense systems.Since Trump’s January inauguration, Kim has ignored Trump’s repeated calls to revive the direct diplomacy he pursued during his 2017-2021 term in office, which produced no deal to halt North Korea’s nuclear program. In the Oval Office, Lee avoided the theatrical confrontations that dominated a February visit by Volodymyr Zelenskyy, the Ukrainian president, and a May visit from Cyril Ramaphosa, the South African president.Lee, deploying a well-worn strategy by foreign visitors to the Trump White House, talked golf and lavished praise on the Republican president’s interior decorating and peacemaking. He told reporters earlier that he had read the president’s 1987 memoir, Trump: The Art of the Deal, to prepare.As the leaders met, the liberal South Korean encouraged Trump to engage with North Korea.“I hope you can bring peace to the Korean Peninsula, the only divided nation in the world, so that you can meet with Kim Jong-un, build a Trump World [real-estate complex] in North Korea so that I can play golf there, and so that you can truly play a role as a world-historical peacemaker,” Lee said, speaking in Korean.South Korea’s economy relies heavily on the US, with Washington underwriting its security with troops and nuclear deterrence. Trump has called Seoul a “money machine” that takes advantage of American military protection. More

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      ‘Debilitating consequences’ in Uganda after USAID cuts – photo essay

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      In northern Uganda, the unfolding consequences of US funding cuts to international humanitarian aid are palpable. Thousands of families have been living in refugee camps along the border with South Sudan for almost a decade, and newcomers are reported every day as the never-ending conflict within the country intensifies.Uganda has long been a crossroads of migration, shaped by historical and contemporary population movements. Today, it hosts over 1.9 million refugees and asylum seekers – one of the largest refugee populations in the world. Persistent violence in South Sudan and the eruption of armed conflict in Sudan have displaced millions. As both countries spiral further into instability, Uganda remains one of the few safe havens in the region.The decision by Donald Trump’s administration to cut support to USAID, a giant in the international humanitarian assistance network, disrupted the lives of millions of people across the continent, and other humanitarian groups were impacted. In March, the World Food Programme (WFP), an international non-profit, announced a cut to food distribution to 1 million refugees in Uganda.The AVSI Foundation, along with many other humanitarian actors, was forced to abandon a project that employed more than 200 local field officers, leaving their families without a steady income, and thousands of refugees unable to enroll in agricultural training, schools, or start small businesses. Before the end of 2024, they had identified 13,000 households to receive support that vanished just a few days after Trump’s inauguration day.View image in fullscreenView image in fullscreenAmong a slew of executive orders, and actions by the “department of governmental efficiency” (Doge), led then by Elon Musk, the funding cuts dashed people’s hopes and expectations of leaving extreme poverty. A general sentiment of failure and retreat spread among the refugee and host communities. In the following months, a consequent rise in suicides was reported, as Jatuporn Lee, a UNHCR local representative, explained.“Families are struggling to cope with the impact of reduced support, increased food insecurity, higher land rental costs, growing mental health and psychosocial challenges, surges in gender-based violence, school drop-outs, child neglect, abandonment, and child labor,” she said. “We would be cautious about drawing a direct link between funding cuts and suicide rates. As a non-clinical specialist, drawing such a correlation can be misleading. However, these concerning vulnerability trends are clear indicators of growing vulnerability and underscore the urgent need for sustained donor support to promote refugees’ protection, welbeing, and social and economic inclusion.”View image in fullscreenView image in fullscreenIn April and May, I spent two weeks in several northern Ugandan districts, including Lamwo, Kitgum, Madi-Okollo and Terego, at the very time when new refugees from South Sudan and Sudan were arriving at the border seeking safety. Olive Ngamita, the representative of AVSI Foundation in Kampala, said that 200 humanitarians in Kitgum had to leave, and that they had paid several months of rent in advance, relying on their upcoming salaries.The absence of international humanitarian support left a vacuum in the ecosystem of refugee settlements and host communities. Teachers who stop receiving their salary volunteer to maintain continuity in their students’ education, but struggle to support their families. Since the beginning of 2025, children and youth have been abandoning schools in large numbers, unable to afford the enrollment fees that were once subsidized. Small restaurants and street food vendors, who had looked forward to expanding their activities through loans and microcredit initiatives, have instead scaled back their operations.View image in fullscreenView image in fullscreenIn the quiet corners of these settlements, there is a visible loss of rhythm – routines once built around schooling, training sessions and market days have been disrupted. The absence of humanitarian programming leaves young people idle, exposing them to greater risks of recruitment, trafficking or exploitation.Trump and his cohorts replied to harsh criticism of the cuts from the agency’s officials and the humanitarian world, saying they would not cut life-saving aid. Massive humanitarian operations in critical situations have the primary goal of providing food and access to healthcare, indeed. But the bigger picture is to sustain a community, not to let it free fall.One of the first people I met in the Palabek camp in Lamwo was Viola, a 23-year-old pregnant woman who, unable to treat malaria and lower her fever, miscarried. Antimalarials were not delivered to the camp’s clinic. The supply chain, because of the freeze on international aid, had been interrupted. Her story is not an exception. In places where disease can spread fast, even short interruptions in supplies can be fatal.View image in fullscreenUSAID was meant to secure the United States’s dominance as part of a system aimed at stabilizing countries and strengthening diplomatic relations through cooperation. The long-term ramifications of this policy shift are only beginning to emerge. What is unfolding in Uganda today may soon reflect broader regional patterns, where donor disengagement risks creating power vacuums ripe for instability.As Nicholas Apiyo, a Ugandan lawyer and human rights defender, explains: “There is an absolute uncertainty in the future. National and international organizations that depended on USAID have either closed or scaled down their operations. People are left with no continuous care, and many have already lost their lives.“The USAID office in Kampala, is now closed, with debilitating consequences. Although funding for life-saving aid partially resumed, the disruption left a heavy toll on the beneficiaries of treatment to cure Ebola, HIV and malaria. A restoration enabling the supply chain to resume will take time, and lives will be lost in the process.”View image in fullscreenView image in fullscreenUganda will have to adjust to a new funding mechanism, which, according to Apiyo, must increase its national budget for assistance. African countries could now strengthen their ties with Russia, India, Iran and China – those countries are seen as more predictable and less “schizophrenic”, as Apiyo puts it.“You need soft power to rule the world. The colonial roots of the humanitarian system have always had their negative consequences in the majority world as a way to extend its dependency on the donor.”An example of successIn the Madi-Okollo and Terego districts, located near a triple border, hundreds of refugees from the DRC and South Sudan cross into Uganda daily at unofficial border crossing points, converging to form a growing community in established refugee settlements. There, interventions that received funding before the imposition of the new policies remain operational, promoting sustainable economic practices and creating job opportunities. However, educators are concerned that without further funding, those children, out of school without job opportunities, could be driven to illegal survival strategies and be at higher risk of forced recruitment in their country of origin, contributing to internal instability. Local teachers and social workers spoke of “a race against time”, where every month of consistent support can be the difference between a child learning to read or joining an armed group.View image in fullscreenView image in fullscreenAVSI Foundation implemented the Step – Transition from Emergency to Sustainable Development Program, a project funded by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation through the Italian Agency for Development Cooperation, in collaboration with the Office of the Ugandan Prime Minister, UNHCR, local leaders and partners. It aimed at improving the socioeconomic stability of refugees and host communities by addressing their priority needs through a multisectoral approach. The project reached 600 direct participants.The project promoted the use of renewable technologies among households, increasing adoption from 0% to 61%. These included briquette production, small-scale irrigation, water harvesting, energy-saving cooking solutions, and partnerships with private renewable energy providers.View image in fullscreenBy the end of the initiative, 92% of families reported higher agricultural production. This was supported through training, access to farming tools and seeds, and the establishment of backyard gardens with a reliable water supply. The program also formed 24 production and marketing groups, bringing together refugees and host community members to improve cooperation and create income opportunities.Support systems for the most vulnerable were strengthened, offering mental health and psychosocial services, gender-based violence prevention, and legal assistance through community dialogues, legal clinics and coordinated referral pathways. Cases of abuse and neglect were promptly referred as a result of child protection and birth registration initiatives.Special focus was placed on pregnant adolescents, young women and youth, who received life skills training, mentorship and sport therapy, resulting in 80% showing positive behavior change. Positive parenting sessions also improved family relationships, with follow-up home visits and group mentoring helping communities sustain these changes. These models – holistic, inclusive, and locally adapted – should guide future international efforts. What they demonstrate is clear: when investments are sustained, results follow.View image in fullscreen More

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      Russia says Europe’s leaders don’t want peace in Ukraine as Vance says US will keep trying

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      Russia accused western European leaders on Sunday of not wanting peace in Ukraine, as Moscow’s most senior diplomat praised efforts by Donald Trump to end the war, while Vice-President JD Vance said the US would “keep on trying” to broker talks in the absence of a deal.Sergei Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister, made the comments during a sometimes contentious interview on NBC on Sunday morning, during which he denied his country had bombed civilian targets in Ukraine.Trump, he said, had set himself above European leaders who accompanied Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelenskyy for talks at the White House last week, immediately after the summit between the US president and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin in Anchorage, Alaska, on 15 August.“We want peace in Ukraine. He wants, President Trump wants, peace in Ukraine. The reaction to [the] Anchorage meeting, the gathering in Washington of these European representatives and what they were doing after Washington, indicates that they don’t want peace,” Lavrov said.The Alaska talks produced neither a ceasefire nor an agreement for Zelenskyy and Putin to meet, and was widely considered to be a public relations triumph for the Russian leader.Lavrov brushed aside Trump’s apparent frustration at the outcome and the US warning of “massive sanctions or massive tariffs or both” against Moscow. He said “yes” when asked if Putin wanted peace and said Putin and Trump respected each other, while assailing the alliance of leaders such as France’s Emmanuel Macron, Germany’s Friedrich Merz, Britain’s Keir Starmer and European Union president Ursula von der Leyen who came to the White House last week to bolster Zelenskyy’s visit.European leaders in recent days have pledged to support security guarantees as part of a peace agreement, although Russia has flatly rejected the prospect of troops from countries in Europe being positioned in Ukraine.Trump has ruled out sending the US military, and on Friday it was reported that his administration had blocked Ukraine’s use of US-supplied long-range missiles to attack Russia.Meanwhile, Canadian prime minister Mark Carney told Zelenskyy on Sunday that he backed Ukraine’s calls for robust security guarantees and that Canada would not rule out sending troops.Earlier, Lavrov became defensive when NBC asked him if Putin was “stringing along” Trump by appearing conciliatory to his peace overtures but continuing to bomb Ukraine, attacks which last week included an airstrike on an American electronics manufacturing company in the west of the country.“It is not for the lawmakers or for any media outlet to decide what President Trump is motivated by. We respect President Trump because President Trump defends American national interests. And I have reason to believe that President Trump respects President Putin because he defends Russian national interests,” he said.Critics, including some conservative voices, are alarmed by what they see as Putin manipulating Trump over Ukraine and US elections.Lavrov meanwhile denied that Russia attacks civilian targets including schools, hospitals and churches, hinting at Russia’s extraordinary claims throughout the war that Ukraine is attacking its own people.“Our intelligence has very good information, and we target only military enterprises, military sites or industrial enterprises directly involved in producing military equipment for [the] Ukrainian army,” he said.Vance appeared separately in the same Sunday morning program and insisted Russia deserved credit for indicating it was ready to end a conflict that Trump has said more than 50 times he would solve “in one day”, while in contrast the vice-president warned of a longer process.“I think the Russians have made significant concessions to President Trump for the first time in three and a half years of this conflict,” Vance said.“They’ve recognized that they’re not going to be able to install a puppet regime in Kyiv. That was, of course, a major demand at the beginning. And importantly, they’ve acknowledged that there is going to be some security guarantee to the territorial integrity of Ukraine.”Vance said historically that peace negotiations go “in fits and starts” and warned that he did not think ending the war was “going to happen overnight”.Vance said of Russia, in a comment that was not further clarified: “Should they have started the war? Of course, they haven’t. But we’re making progress”. Trump in February blamed Ukraine, saying, “you never should have started it.”Any sanctions against Russia, Vance said, would be on a “case by case basis”, but he remained hopeful that US efforts could bring Zelenskyy and Putin together.“It’s complicated, but we’re going to keep on trying to convince these parties to talk to each other and continue to play the game of diplomacy, because that’s the only way to get this thing wrapped up.”Lavrov remained adamant that Russia also wanted peace, and acknowledged “Ukraine has the right to exist”. But he said it “must let people go”, referring to Putin’s demand that it give up Crimea, the Ukrainian peninsula seized by Russia in 2014, as well as southern and eastern parts, such as the Donbas, captured since 2022, as part of a peace agreement.“In Crimea [they] decided that they belong to the Russian culture,” he said, citing a disputed 2014 referendum condemned by most of the world as illegal.On Friday, Senator Chris Coons, a Democrat of Connecticut, said on CNN that stronger US action was needed because “Putin is not going to stop until we stop him.”

      Reuters contributed reporting More

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      Trump’s presidential philosophy is government by shakedown | Steven Greenhouse

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      Americans have long glorified their constitution and the rule of law. But Donald Trump’s volatile and vindictive presidency has increasingly replaced that philosophy with something very different – call it “governing by shakedown”.Trump has often violated federal law, and sometimes the constitution, as he has sought to throttle his targets – whether universities, law firms or US trading partners – in the hope that they will cry uncle and agree to his demands. This style of governance would make any caudillo proud. But it should make anyone who cares about the rule of law – and avoiding authoritarian rule – very worried.By threatening to cripple this university’s finances or that country’s exports, Trump has become the global emperor of shakedowns. It has been great for him and his ego. He dominates negotiations and news cycles, and his White House cheerleaders rush to proclaim victory whenever he reaches a deal with one of his targets.Claiming that many universities haven’t done enough to combat antisemitism, Trump has demanded that Harvard, Columbia, Brown and other schools submit to his rightwing vision. Furious that some law firms have hired people or filed lawsuits he didn’t like, Trump has taken unprecedented steps to attack them unless they submitted to his demands. Trump has wreaked havoc on global diplomacy and supply chains by threatening America’s trading partners with stratospherically high tariffs unless they reached trade deals with Washington.Far too many Americans – whether senators, the media or the public – fail to realize that Trump’s attacks on these institutions evidently violate the law. Federal district courts have ruled in four cases that Trump’s broadsides against law firms violate their free speech rights. The US court of international trade ruled that Trump’s across-the-board tariffs against dozens of countries were illegal, concluding that Congress hadn’t given him “unbounded authority” to slap tariffs on nearly every country. (The administration is appealing that ruling.)As for Trump cutting off billions in aid and research grants to universities because of their alleged failures in responding to antisemitism, many legal experts say his administration has plainly failed to comply with anti-discrimination laws that require the government to follow specific procedures before penalizing universities, such as giving schools an opportunity for a hearing. Moreover, federal law says the government can halt funding to only particular university programs where noncompliance has been found, and not, for instance, to scientific research far afield from that.Last week, Trump expanded his shakedown efforts. He told the chipmaker Nvidia that he would let it sell high-end AI computer chips to China only if it paid 15% of the revenue from those sales to the US treasury. Nvidia agreed, even though Trump’s demand was of dubious legality; the constitution prohibits the government from placing a tax on exports.Trump also threatened Brazil with a 50% tariff unless it stopped prosecuting its rightwing former president, Jair Bolsonaro, for allegedly seeking to overturn Brazil’s presidential election. When Brazil’s current president rejected that demand, saying that Trump shouldn’t be telling a sovereign democracy how to run its justice system, Trump imposed the 50% tariff. Trump’s move is an outrage because he’s seeking to strong-arm a longtime US ally over how to run its justice system and because, as Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon said, this is “far outside his legal authority”.Many lawyers voiced shock and dismay when the law firm Paul, Weiss, a litigation powerhouse, reached a deal with Trump instead of fighting him. Paul, Weiss promised to provide Trump with $40m in pro bono legal services after he sought to cripple the firm by suspending its security clearances and barring its lawyers from federal buildings. All told, nine law firms have reached deals with Trump, promising nearly $1bn in pro bono services . Some legal experts call these deals illegal – one Yale law professor said “a contract that you make with a gun to your head is not a contract”.Columbia has reached a $221m settlement with the Trump administration, while Brown reached a $50m deal. While denying any liability, Columbia vowed to “work on multiple fronts to combat” antisemitism and other “forms of hatred and intolerance at Columbia”. The university also pledged not to use “race, color, sex, or national origin” in hiring decisions and said its admissions policies would be merit-based and wouldn’t “unlawfully preference applicants based on race, color, or national origin”.Columbia officials hailed one part of the deal – the Trump administration agreed to unfreeze $1.3bn in funding. That freeze was devastating Columbia’s research programs.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionBut David Pozen, a constitutional law professor at Columbia, denounced the deal, saying it “gives legal form to an extortion scheme”. Pozen described it as the “first-ever cutoff of congressionally appropriated funds to a university, so as to punish that university and impel it to adopt sweeping reforms, without any pretense of following the congressionally mandated procedures”. Pozen slammed this deal-by-deal style of governance as “coercive”, “arbitrary”, “deeply susceptible” to “corruption” and “corrosive to the democratic order and to law itself”.We shouldn’t be shocked that Trump acts this way. He loves dealmaking and lording it over others and he has long paid scant heed to following the law. But we should be shocked by the way the two other supposedly co-equal branches of government, Congress and the supreme court, have behaved. They have essentially rolled over in the face of Trump’s ruling by shakedown.Republican lawmakers in Congress have cravenly sat on their hands while Trump has boosted inflation and sabotaged economic growth by forcing tariffs on more than 90 countries, notwithstanding the strict restrictions Congress set on when and how a president can impose tariffs. Republicans have vowed never to raise taxes, but let’s not fool ourselves: Trump’s tariffs are a regressive sales tax that hits non-affluent Americans hardest. Republican lawmakers have also been quiet as mice while Trump has used a wrecking ball to threaten leading universities – institutions that played a vital role in making the US a world leader in medicine and many other fields of research.The supreme court has been strangely, worrisomely silent while Trump rules by shakedown, even as many district court judges have shown plenty of spine, ruling, for instance, that Trump’s across-the-board tariffs and assaults on law firms are illegal. When the supreme court wants to move quickly, it often finds a way. It would be great if the court moved to protect the rule of law, universities and academic freedom from Trump’s shakedowns. The court could and should issue a ruling as soon as possible that Trump violated Title VI of the Civil Rights Act by egregiously failing to follow its requirements before freezing universities’ funding. Similarly, the court could greatly reduce the economic mayhem that Trump’s tariffs are causing by quickly upholding the US court of trade’s ruling that Trump has far overstepped his authority to impose tariffs. But the high court been shamefully passive, even submissive.Congress and the supreme court need to wake up, step up and lay down the law. They must stop Trump’s rule by shakedown, which far too often involves capricious, vindictive dealmaking and ignores our legal rules and standards. Americans need to realize that Trump’s style of governance is dangerously eroding our rule of law and democracy.

      Steven Greenhouse is a journalist and author, focusing on labor and the workplace, as well as economic and legal issues More

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      US imposes sanctions on international court officials in ‘flagrant attack’

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      The Trump administration has ramped up its efforts to hobble the international criminal court in what the ICC has denounced as a “flagrant attack against the independence of an impartial judicial institution”.The US state department on Wednesday announced new sanctions on four ICC officials, including two judges and two prosecutors, saying they had been instrumental in efforts to prosecute Americans and Israelis. As a result of the sanctions, any assets that the targets hold in US jurisdictions are frozen.The sanctions were immediately denounced by both the ICC and the United Nations, while Israel welcomed the move announced by the secretary of state, Marco Rubio.It is just the latest in a series of steps the Trump administration has taken against the Hague-based court, the world’s first international war crimes tribunal. The US, which is not a member of the court, has already imposed penalties on the ICC’s former chief prosecutor, Karim Khan, who stepped aside in May pending an investigation into allegations of sexual misconduct, and four other tribunal judges.The new penalties target the ICC judges Kimberly Prost of Canada and Nicolas Guillou of France and prosecutors Nazhat Shameem Khan of Fiji and Mame Mandiaye Niang of Senegal.“These individuals are foreign persons who directly engaged in efforts by the international criminal court to investigate, arrest, detain or prosecute nationals of the United States or Israel, without the consent of either nation,” Rubio said.He added that the administration would continue “to take whatever actions we deem necessary to protect our troops, our sovereignty and our allies from the ICC’s illegitimate and baseless actions”.In a separate statement, the state department said Prost was sanctioned for a ruling to authorize an ICC investigation into personnel in Afghanistan, which was later dropped. Guillou was sanctioned for ruling to authorize the ICC’s issuance of arrest warrants for Benjamin Netanyahu and Israel’s former minister of defense Yoav Gallant related to Israel’s war in Gaza.France – whose president, Emmanuel Macron, was in Washington two days earlier – expressed “dismay” over the action.The sanctions are “in contradiction to the principle of an independent judiciary”, a foreign ministry spokesperson said in Paris.Khan and Niang were penalized for continuing Karim Khan’s investigation into Israel’s actions in Gaza, including upholding the ICC’s arrest warrants for Netanyahu and Gallant, according to the statement.In response, the ICC issued a statement calling the sanctions “a flagrant attack against the independence of an impartial judicial institution” and “an affront against the Court’s states parties, the rules-based international order and, above all, millions of innocent victims across the world”.A UN spokesperson, Stéphane Dujarric, said the ICC had the full support of the world body to carry out its work. The UN was “very concerned” about the US continuing to target the international court, he said.“We firmly believe that the ICC is a key pillar of international criminal justice, and we respect their work,” Dujarric said. “The decision imposes severe impediments on the functioning of the office of the prosecutor in respect for all the situations that are currently before the court.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionNetanyahu welcomed the US move.“This is a firm measure against the mendacious smear campaign against the State of Israel and the IDF, and for truth and justice,” he said in a statement, using an acronym for the Israeli military.Wednesday’s move carries on a history of Trump administration actions against the ICC dating back to his first term in office. During Trump’s first term, the US hit the ICC with sanctions, but those were rescinded by Joe Biden’s administration in early 2021.Danya Chaikel, the International Federation for Human Rights’s representative to the ICC, said the escalation in US sanctions amounted to “a continued attack on the rule of law and a blatant attempt to intimidate those pursuing accountability for atrocity crimes”.She said the new sanctions were a “defining test” for the ICC’s 125 member states. “Will they defend the court’s independence and the rights of victims of international crimes, or allow intimidation by powerful states to dictate who deserves justice?” she added. More

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      Trump’s tariffs replace diplomacy as other US tools of statecraft are discarded

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      On the campaign trail, Donald Trump pledged to use tariffs to revitalise American industry, bringing jobs home and helping to make America great again. But more than six months into his administration, experts say the president’s trade war is increasingly being wielded as a political cudgel, in lieu of more traditional forms of diplomacy.The president’s current target, India, has been unable to reach a trade agreement, and Trump appears ready to follow through with his threat to impose a further 25% tariff on Delhi – bringing the total to 50% – the joint highest levy on any country, along with Brazil.It is a whiplash-inducing turnaround from a few months ago, when the newly minted Trump administration seemed intent on continuing a years-long bipartisan effort to deepen ties with India as a geopolitical counterweight to China. It’s part of a trend that highlights how tariffs are used as threats against countries perceived to be recalcitrant. Rather than a tool of economic coercion, Trump instead wields tariffs as a political weapon.Five rounds of trade talks between the two sides have brought India no closer to conceding to US demands that it open up its vast agriculture and dairy sectors. Negotiations planned for early next week have been abruptly called off, as India’s prime minister, Narendra Modi, grapples with Trump’s demand that India cease to buy oil from Russia; sales that the US says are helping to fuel Vladimir Putin’s war against Ukraine.The demand – that India wean itself off the Russian oil, which accounts for about 35% of its total supply – sits at odds with the original stated purpose of Trump’s tariff regime: to bring manufacturing back to the US and rebalance trade deficits.“Tariffs have a very specific purpose of protecting domestic industry from competition,” says Dr Stuart Rollo from the Centre for International Security Studies at the University of Sydney. “That’s not really what this is about … It’s kind of pivoted to a tool of geopolitical compulsion.”Trump himself has come to admit this. Along with the threatened additional 25% tariff on India in retaliation for continuing to purchase Russian oil, the president has tied Canada’s 35% tariff to its recognition of Palestinian statehood.In the case of Brazil, which has a rare trade surplus with the US, meaning it buys more than it sells, Trump has said that the huge 50% tariff is due to the trial of his political ally, Jair Bolsonaro, who is charged with plotting a military coup after he lost the 2022 presidential election.The president’s top trade adviser, Peter Navarro, even has a new term for these explicitly political trade threats: “national security tariffs”.The Democratic senator Chris Murphy put it more bluntly, writing in the Financial Times in April that the tariffs are not designed as economic policy but as a “means to compel loyalty to the president”.Rollo says: “It’s a way of the United States to compel as much of the world as possible into realignment with its global leadership at a time when its actual weight and gravity is diminishing.”In some ways, this is not new; the Biden administration used trade restrictions to limit China’s access to state-of-the-art semiconductors at a time of heated geopolitical tensions.But Devashish Mitra, a professor of economics at Syracuse University, says that for many in India, the threat faced over Russian oil purchases seems incoherent, ill thought out, and could push India closer to China.“India did consider the US an ally,” says Mitra. “It was a country that the US was relying on as a counter to China in that region. So it had a huge geopolitical importance, but it doesn’t seem like Trump values any of that.”This week, China’s foreign minister has been in Delhi for talks, and Modi is expected in Shanghai at the end of the month, his first visit in seven years. It’s a part of a recent pattern of tightening relations between the Brics countries – Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa, which make up 40% of global GDP – that experts say is a response to Trump’s aggressive trade policies.For future US administrations, winning back the trust of some of these countries could be difficult, as Trump’s escalating trade war comes at the same time as his administration dismantles its instruments of global statecraft. From mass firings at the state department to the slashing of foreign assistance programmes at USAID, America’s diplomatic toolbox is vastly diminished.Tariffs have “come to replace diplomacy”, says Rollo.And so with his attention divided between crises at home and abroad, the president has left himself armed with only a hammer, with every global flashpoint looking to him like a nail. More

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      There is no ‘Trump Doctrine’ in foreign policy. Just chaos | Sidney Blumenthal

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      All the elaborate efforts of the European allies to prevent Donald Trump from prostrating himself before Vladimir Putin came to naught at their summit meeting in Alaska. Flattering, coddling and petting the big baby appeared to have been in vain. Before the 15 August summit, the Europeans persuaded Trump to impose new sanctions if Putin would not agree to a ceasefire, which would serve as a prerequisite for any negotiations. But Trump willfully tossed policy like a stuffed animal out of the window of “the Beast,” the presidential car as he eagerly invited Putin to join him for a triumphant chariot ride.The Europeans scrambled once again, trying to get the addled Trump back on the page he was on before the summit. Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, sped to Washington to confer with Trump to try to pick up the pieces. At their last encounter, Trump jibed: “You don’t have any cards.” But Trump had just handed over his cards to Putin. Zelenskyy was not about to play the appeasement card. The European leaders gathered in an extraordinary posse to accompany Zelenskyy in an attempt to restore a unified western position. Unlike the last Zelenskyy meeting with Trump, he was not hectored. With the Ukrainian leader urrounded by a protective phalanx, Trump made agreeable sounding but vague gestures about a future summit with both Zelenskyy and Putin. Trump seemed favorable, if indefinite and imprecise, about western forces stationed in Ukraine to maintain its sovereignty. But the notion of a ceasefire, pressed again by the French president, Emmanuel Macron, and German chancellor, Friedrich Merz, had evaporated. While the European recovery effort took place at the White House, Russian bombs rained down. Trump dreams of receiving the Nobel peace prize. Before the summit, he called the Norwegian finance minister to lobby him.In Alaska, Trump melted again in the presence of Putin while the whole world was watching. The self-abasing embarrassment of his previous meeting in Helsinki in 2018 did not serve as a cautionary precedent. Now, he invited the sanctioned war criminal to US soil. He ordered uniformed US soldiers to roll out the red carpet, “the beautiful red carpet” as the Russian foreign ministry called it. He applauded when Putin stood next to him. He patted Putin’s hand when he clasped it with an affectionate gesture. Then the door of “the Beast” opened for Putin.Trump’s personal negotiator for the summit, Steve Witkoff, a New York real estate operator whose knowledge of Russian culture to prepare him for his delicate role may had been a bowl of borscht at the Russian Tea Room on 57th Street, was easy prey for Putin. Bild, the German newspaper, reported on 9 August that Witkoff had committed an “explosive blunder”. According to Bild, Putin “did not deviate from his maximum demand to completely control the five Ukrainian regions of Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia, Kherson and Crimea before the weapons remain silent … And even worse: Trump’s special envoy Witkoff is said to have completely misunderstood some of the Russians’ positions and misinterpreted them as an accommodation by Putin. He had misunderstood a “peaceful withdrawal” of the Ukrainians from Kherson and Zaporizhzhia demanded by Russia as an offer of “peaceful withdrawal” of the Russians from these regions”.“Witkoff doesn’t know what he’s talking about,” a Ukrainian government official told Bild. An assessment that, according to Bild information, is also shared by German government representatives.Bild further reported: “There was a telephone conference on Thursday evening between representatives of the US government – including the special envoy Witkoff and Foreign Minister Marco Rubio and Vice President JD Vance – and the European partners. As BILD learned, the American side was perceived as chaotic and ununited. This was primarily due to Witkoff, whose remarks about his conversation with Putin on Wednesday in the Kremlin were perceived as confusing. He himself seemed overwhelmed and incompetent to the Europeans when he spoke about the territorial issues in Ukraine.”The German newspaper also reported friction between Rubio and Vance, with the vice-president seeking to shut the European allies out of the process and Witkoff taking his side against the secretary of state. “Apparently, there was also disagreement about the further course of action between Witkoff and Rubio, as the foreign minister emphasized that the Europeans should be involved in the further process, while Vance and Witkoff only wanted to inform Europe of the results of the further Trump steps.”Bild’s report on Putin’s position turned out to be completely accurate and its description of the Trump administration’s unsettled position prophetic of the fiasco that would unfold.Little noticed in the US media accounts, Trump had presented Putin with enormous economic advantages, according to the Telegraph. He offered access to valuable Alaskan natural resources, opportunities to tap into the US portion of the Bering Strait, which would boost Russia’s interests in the Arctic region. Trump promised to lift sanctions on Russia’s aircraft industry, which would permit Russian airlines (and by extension the Russian air force) to return to US suppliers for parts and maintenance. Trump would give Putin approval for access to rare earth minerals in Ukrainian territories currently under Russian occupation.In Trump’s new world order, Putin would be his partner, especially on the frontier of the Arctic, while Trump waged a trade war imposing harsh tariffs on every other nation. Ukraine stood as an obstacle to the gold rush.According to the Telegraph, Witkoff suggested to the Russians: “Israel’s occupation of the West Bank could be used as a model for ending the war. Russia would have military and economic control of occupied [parts of] Ukraine under its own governing body, similar to Israel’s de facto rule of Palestinian territory.”Then, after Trump laid on lavish treatment for the Russian dictator at the US military base, marking his indifference to international condemnation, came the joint appearance, which exceeded the Helsinki disaster. An elated Putin and dejected Trump appeared on stage together.The announced joint press conference was a theater of the absurd. Its brevity contributed to the farce. There was no agreement, no plan for an agreement, and no press conference. Trump deferred to Putin to speak first, to set the tone and terms after which he would come on as the second banana to slip on the peel.A clearly delighted Putin reiterated his belief that Ukraine was a security threat to Russia, and that “we need to eliminate all the primary roots, the primary causes of that conflict,” which was his language for the elimination of an independent and democratic Ukraine. He blamed Biden for the war he had launched. He affirmed Trump’s presumptuous boast that there would have been no war had he been president. “Today, when President Trump is saying that if he was the president back then, there would be no war, and I’m quite sure that it would indeed be so. I can confirm that.”A clearly glum Trump stepped to his podium. “So there’s no deal until there’s a deal,” he said. He had pledged during the 2024 campaign that he could and would end the war on “day one”. It had taken him 210 days to reach the “No Deal”.Trump wistfully talked about doing business with Russia, his will-o’-the-wisp ambition since he attempted for decades to build a Trump Tower in Moscow even through the 2016 election. He threw Putin a bouquet. “I’ve always had a fantastic relationship with President Putin, with Vladimir.” He blamed their inability to monetize their relationship to the inquiries that extensively documented Putin’s covert efforts in the 2016 election to help Trump. “We were interfered with by the Russia, Russia, Russia hoax,” Trump complained. He would not let it go, drifting incoherently into his grievances. “He knew it was a hoax, and I knew it was a hoax, but what was done was very criminal, but it made it harder for us to deal as a country, in terms of the business, and all of the things that would like to have dealt with, but we’ll have a good chance when this is over.”Then, Trump praised the Russian officials accompanying Putin. Chief among them was the foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, who had arrived wearing a sweatshirt embossed with the Cyrillic letters “CCCP”, standing for the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, signaling Putin’s ultimate objective to restore the empire of the Soviet Union. The message was more than nostalgia; it was a mission statement. And Trump called Putin “the Boss”, not a reference to Bruce Springsteen. “Next time in Moscow,” said Putin.The press conference was over. There were no questions. There were no answers. Trump fled from the stage.Before the summit, Trump threatened new sanctions if Putin did not agree to a ceasefire, but now he forgot he had ever said that. He spoke loudly and carried a tiny stick. On Air Force One, on the return to Washington, he gave an exclusive interview to his lapdog, Sean Hannity of Fox News, along on the ride for this purpose. Trump reverted to his tacit support for Putin’s position. He put the burden on Zelenskyy to accede to Putin’s demands, which were unchanged.Then, Trump spiraled down a wormhole, obviously anxious about his growing unpopularity and the prospect of the Democrats winning the congressional midterm elections, which has prompted him to prod the Texas Republicans to gerrymander districts and California Democrats aroused to counter it in their state. “Vladimir Putin, smart guy, said you can’t have an honest election with mail-in voting,” said Trump. “Look at California with that horrible governor they have. One of the worst governors in history. He is incompetent, he doesn’t know what he is doing.”Is this a subject that Putin actually spoke about in their discussion? Has he had experience with mail-in voting or even know what it is? Was it brought up by Trump during their car ride? Or was Trump simply making it up for his gullible Fox News audience? Whatever the reality, Trump’s fear about losing control of domestic politics was at the top of his mind as he flew away from his charade in Anchorage.The shambolic scene left in Alaska represented the wreckage of Trump’s attempt at diplomacy. Setting the stage himself, Trump babbled, whined and weakly sided with Putin. Trump’s foreign policy team was exposed as incompetent, confounded and feckless. This was no best and the brightest, no rise of the Vulcans, but the circus of the Koalemosians, after Koalemos, the Greek god of stupidity.Apologists for Trump, in advance of this exemplary event, had suggested that there was such a conceit as a Trump doctrine. A former Trump official from his first term, A Wess Mitchell, has called it “The Return of Great Power Diplomacy” in the May/June issue of Foreign Affairs. He described “a new kind of diplomacy” that is “diplomacy in its classical form” and “an instrument of strategy”. He cited an ancient Spartan king, Archidamus II, the Roman Emperor Domitian, Cardinal Richelieu, and in his mélange did not neglect to throw in Metternich and Bismarck. (Kissinger, in his grave, must be weeping over the parading of Metternich’s mannequin as a forerunner of Trump. Mitchell, in any case, dismisses Kissinger as a fake realist and an “idealist”, which would have been a revelation to Kissinger.) Left out of Mitchell’s pantheon of great diplomatic influences through the ages is the influencer Laura Loomer, the loony far-right troll who has an open door to Trump, feeding him lists of national security officials he must purge.In Putin’s shadow, Trump was bared as having no larger or smaller concept or strategy of Great Power politics. It would be unfair to accuse Trump of having an idea beyond his self-aggrandizement. If anything, he aspires to be like Putin, whom he called a “genius” after his invasion of Ukraine. Putin has created and controls a vast kleptocracy. In 2017, Bill Browder, an American businessperson who had invested in Russia and has been targeted for assassination by Putin for exposing his corruption, testified before the Senate judiciary committee that Putin was “the biggest oligarch in Russia and the richest man in the world”. Nobody, however, knows Putin’s true personal wealth.Trump, the Putin manqué, is trying to turn the United States into a kleptocratic system. According to the calculations of David D Kirkpatrick in the New Yorker, in just six months of his second term his alleged personal profiteering, “would disappoint the haters who saw Trump as a Putin-level kleptocrat. Yet some three and a half billion dollars in Presidential profits – even though my accounting is necessarily approximate – is a dizzying sum.”Meanwhile, three days before the Trump-Putin summit, the Trump family crypto business, World Liberty Financial, raised $1.5bn to buy the Trump family token. The CEO of World Liberty Financial, Zach Witkoff, son of Steve Witkoff, along with Eric Trump of WLF, will join the board of the investing company. That is the Trump doctrine.

      Sidney Blumenthal, former senior adviser to President Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton, has published three books of a projected five-volume political life of Abraham Lincoln: A Self-Made Man, Wrestling With His Angel and All the Powers of Earth. He is a Guardian US columnist More

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      Zelenskyy’s European ‘bodyguards’: which leaders joined Trump talks in Washington?

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      European leaders gathered in Washington on Monday for Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s meeting with Donald Trump in the Oval Office, in a show of support for the Ukrainian president. Their presence came amid expectations that Trump would try to bully Zelenskyy into accepting a pro-Russia “peace plan” that would include Kyiv handing territory to Moscow. The Europeans have been described as Zelenskyy’s “bodyguards”, with memories fresh of the mauling he received in February during his last Oval Office visit. So, who are they?Mark RutteSecretary general of NatoRutte has a proven record of flattering Trump for strategic purposes, using language that some allies find cringe-making. In June he referred to the capricious US president as “Daddy” in an attempt to avoid disastrous outbursts at the Nato summit. Rutte has repeatedly praised Trump in public, including in a recent interview on Fox News, and credits him for pushing Nato members to spend 3.5% of their GDP on defence. The US had carried the burden of European security for too long, Rutte has said – music to Trump’s ears.Ursula von der LeyenPresident of the European CommissionVon der Leyen is a staunch supporter of Ukraine who backs Kyiv’s EU membership. For Trump, she is a reminder of Europe’s combined importance as an economic bloc. The US struck a trade deal with the EU three weeks ago, and Trump hailed the relationship as “the biggest trading partnership in the world”. On Sunday she hosted Zelenskyy in Brussels. She said a post-peace-deal Ukraine had to become “a steel porcupine, indigestible for potential invaders”, with no limits on its armed forces.Keir StarmerUK prime minister Starmer has performed a balancing act when it comes to Trump, keeping him on side while advocating for Ukraine. So far, this tactic has worked. The US president has gone out of his way to emphasise their good relations, despite Starmer’s “liberal” outlook. Both men have an incentive to preserve this rapport ahead of Trump’s state visit next month to the UK. Meanwhile, Starmer and Zelenskyy have developed a warm personal relationship, hugging in February outside Downing Street after Zelenskyy’s previous, disastrous Oval Office meeting, and again last week. The prime minister stresses territorial integrity, which contradicts Trump’s “peace deal” that involves Russia taking more Ukrainian land.Alexander StubbPresident of Finland Stubb represents a small European state but he will be in Washington because he has managed to establish an unexpectedly warm relationship with Trump. The Finnish leader cultivated his access to the US president by hastily polishing his rusty golfing skills before an impromptu trip to Florida in March for a round with Trump, on the recommendation of the Republican senator Lindsey Graham. Stubb’s message on the putting green: you can’t trust Vladimir Putin. Finland sees parallels between Ukraine’s plight and its own history, the Soviet Union having invaded in 1939, saying it needed Finnish territory.Emmanuel MacronFrench presidentMacron combines French economic and military clout with a proven ability to get on with Trump, symbolised by their intense handshakes. In the lead-up to Russia’s 2022 invasion, Macron flew to Moscow to reason with Putin. He has since become a key diplomatic ally for Ukraine. Asked on Sunday whether Putin wanted a genuine peace deal, Macron replied: “No.” He said Ukraine needed a strong army and security guarantees if a lasting settlement was to be achieved. The French president will want to persuade Trump that his post-Alaska-summit plan to stop the fighting is a non-starter, and against Ukraine and Europe’s long-term security interests.Friedrich MerzGerman presidentMerz has cut a sure-footed figure on the world stage since taking office in May, including largely holding his own in an Oval Office face-off with Trump over the summer. He has emerged as a crucial partner for Zelenskyy, who was often frustrated with Merz’s slow-moving predecessor, Olaf Scholz. Berlin has clout as one pillar of the French-German axis at the heart of the EU. It is also a major financial donor to Kyiv. Merz’s task in the Oval Office is to persuade Trump not to act hastily and “over the heads of Ukrainians and Europeans”, as he put it last week.Giorgia MeloniPrime minister of ItalyMeloni has broken off from her holiday to fly to Washington, a sign that Trump’s Russia-friendly “peace plan” marks a moment of danger for Europe. She will be a useful bridge in the Oval Office meeting, as a European far-right leader whom Trump counts as a friend. Meloni has spent time at Mar-a-Lago, the US president’s Florida home, and was the only European leader invited to his inauguration in January. At the same time, she strongly supports Kyiv’s sovereignty. In July she hosted a Ukraine recovery conference in Rome, designed to help the country rebuild when Russia’s war finally ends. More