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New research shows Americans are paying almost the entire cost of President Donald Trump’s tariffs, directly challenging his repeated assertion that foreign nations absorb the burden.

Nearly all tariff costs fall on American importers and consumers, underscoring that Americans – not foreign entities – are covering the expense, according to a report from the Kiel Institute for the World Economy, a German think tank.

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In 2019, during his first term, U.S. President Donald Trump expressed a desire to buy Greenland, which has been a part of Denmark for some 300 years. Danes and Greenlanders quickly rebuffed the offer at the time.

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The future of many of Donald Trump’s tariffs are up in the air, with the Supreme Court expected to hand down a ruling on the administration’s global trade barriers any day now.

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President Donald Trump’s first floated the idea that the United States should acquire Greenland, a massive, ice-covered territory controlled by Denmark in the Arctic, in 2019. 

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The United States’ 6 January decision to withdraw from many international organizations risks allowing Beijing and Moscow to further advance their undermining of global stability. To prevent that, Indo-Pacific partners, such as Australia, Japan, Singapore and South Korea, should do more to work with the European Union on international coordination, capacity-building and norm-setting.

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Among the 66 international organizations, the Trump Administration has announced its intent to 

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In the exciting new season of international affairs, the rules have finally been simplified. After decades of tedious debate about sovereignty, international law, and postwar norms, global politics has at last been distilled into a principle simple enough to fit on a bumper sticker: If you can take it, it’s yours.

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Last week, US forces attacked various locations in Venezuela in an operation to capture the loathsome President Nicolás Maduro and bring him to New York to face federal weapons and drug-trafficking charges for which he and other Venezuelan officials were indicted in 2020.

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An image circulated over media the weekend of Jan. 3 and 4 was meant to convey dominance: Venezuela’s president, Nicolás Maduro, blindfolded and handcuffed aboard a U.S. naval vessel. Shortly after the operation that seized Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, President Donald Trump announced that the United States would now “run” Venezuela until a “safe, proper and judicious transition” could be arranged.

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President Donald Trump’s decision to attack Venezuela and capture president Nicolás Maduro ignited a flurry of commentary in the United States about what this would mean for China’s ambitions vis-à-vis Taiwan. Some worried that China could invoke Trump’s unilateral actions as a precedent to snatch Taiwan’s president, while others argued that the United States had lost its moral high ground to intervene on Taiwan’s behalf. In reality, Trump’s actions in Venezuela will have little impact on Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s calculations.

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Imagine a world in which the restraints that once governed great power behavior have collapsed under the weight of ambition, fear, and opportunism. In this world, Russia has completed its conquest of Ukraine and consolidated control over its territory. The United States, under President Trump, has launched a direct military invasion of Venezuela and captured its president. China, observing the erosion of restraint and precedent, moves decisively against Taiwan.

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On December 4, the White House released its National Security Strategy, detailing President Donald Trump’s plans for promoting his “America First” philosophy. The strategy includes a stronger military presence in pivotal regions, bringing countries into Washington’s orbit by negotiating peace settlements, and “securing access to critical supply chains and materials,” among several other priorities.

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It would be a mistake for allies or adversaries to read President Donald Trump’s National Security Strategy (NSS), released late at night on December 4, as a guide to Washington’s moves over the next three years. But it is significant for a different reason: the first MAGA national security strategy previews a new vision of the United States as an illiberal superpower.

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Robert McNamara was considered one of the brightest stars of his generation. He excelled at Harvard Business School, where he went on to teach, rose through the ranks of the Ford Motor Company to become chief executive, and was appointed secretary of defense by president John Kennedy at the age of 44. He capped his career serving for over a decade as president of the World Bank.

In charge of the Pentagon under presidents Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson from 1961 to 1968, McNamara was one of the key architects of the Vietnam war. However, the war also proved to be his personal undoing.

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In 2002, President George W. Bush tried to recite an old proverb: “Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me.” What emerged instead was: “Fool me once, shame on… shame on you. Fool me… you can’t get fooled again” (see video).

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As Russian bombs continued to pound Ukraine, a different conflict has blown up over plans to end that almost four-year-long war. The Trump administration on Nov. 20, 2025, formally presented Ukraine with a 28-point proposal to end the war, and President Donald Trump announced the country had until Thanksgiving to sign it. But Ukraine and its European and U.S.

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The United States should not kid itself. It will not recover its manufacturing position from China in any foreseeable future.

According to World Bank data, in 2024 the US’s GDP of US$29.2 trillion was 60 percent larger than China’s US$18.7 trillion. But China’s manufacturing sector, worth US$4.7 trillion and representing 25 percent of the country’s GDP, was 60 percent larger than the US’s, worth US$2.9 trillion and representing 10 percent of GDP. Simply put, the economic calculus is daunting.

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The 2025 G20 Summit was held in Johannesburg on 22–23 November 2025. The United States (US) abstained from participating in the summit due to its diplomatic rift with the host, South Africa. President Xi Jinping also did not attend the summit, and Premier Li Qiang represented China. Russian President Vladimir Putin also did not participate in the summit. However, this did not dampen the spirit of the deliberations, and at the end of the summit, G20 members adopted the declaration by consensus.

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Deterring China from launching an attack on Taiwan is a central focus of U.S. and allied security planning. This planning encompasses creation and revision of military strategies, the establishment of partnerships with like-minded nations, and the gaming and simulation of conflict scenarios. Restrictive economic measures, such as sanctions, are also part of the deterrence toolkit. However, the timing, effectiveness, and desirability of these measures remain uncertain.

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