LONDON — Prime Minister Keir Starmer usually goes out of his way not to annoy Donald Trump. So he better hope the windmill-hating U.S. president doesn’t notice what the U.K. just did. In a fillip for the global offshore wind industry, Starmer’s government on Wednesday announced its biggest-ever down payment on the technology. It agreed to price guarantees, funded by billpayers to the tune of up to £1.8 billion (€2.08 billion) a year, for eight major projects in England, Scotland and Wales. The schemes have the capacity to generate 8.4 gigawatts of electricity, the U.K. energy department said — enough to power 12 million homes. It represented the biggest “wind auction in Europe to date,” said industry group WindEurope. It’s also an energy strategy that could have been tailor-made to rankle Trump. The U.S. president has repeatedly expressed a profound loathing for wind turbines and has tried to use his powers to halt construction on projects already underway in the U.S. — sending shockwaves across the global industry. Even when appearing alongside Starmer at press conferences, Trump has been unable to hide his disgust at the very sight of windmills. “You are paying in Scotland and in the U.K. … to have these ugly monsters all over the place,” he said, sitting next to Starmer during a visit to his Turnberry golf course last year. The spinning blades, Trump complained, would “kill all your birds.” At the time, the prime minister explained meekly that the U.K. was seeking a “mix” of energy sources. But this week’s investments speak far louder about his government’s priorities. The U.K.’s strategy — part of a plan to run the British power grid on 95 percent clean electricity by 2030 — is a clear signal that for all Starmer’s attempts to appease Trump, the U.K. will not heed Washington’s assertions that fossil fuels are the only way to deliver affordable bills and secure supply. “With these results, Britain is taking back control of our energy sovereignty,” said Starmer’s Energy Secretary Ed Miliband, a former leader of the Labour party. “With these results, Britain is taking back control of our energy sovereignty,” said Energy Secretary Ed Miliband. | Pool photo by Justin Tallis via Getty Images While not mentioning Trump or the U.S., he said the U.K. wanted to “stand on our two feet” and not depend on “markets controlled by petrostates and dictators.” WIND VS. GAS The goal of the U.K.’s offshore wind drive is to reduce reliance on gas for electricity generation. One of the most gas-dependent countries in Europe, the U.K. was hit hard in 2022 by the regional gas price spike that followed Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The government ended up spending tens of billions of pounds to pay a portion of every household energy bill in the country to fend off widespread hardship. It’s a scenario that Miliband and Starmer want to avoid in future by focusing on producing electricity from domestic sources like offshore wind that are not subject to the ups and downs of global fossil fuel markets. Trump, by contrast, wants to keep Europe hooked on gas — specifically, American gas. The U.S. National Security Strategy, updated late last year, states Trump’s desire to use American fossil fuel exports to “project power.” Trump has already strong-armed the European Union into committing to buy $750 billion worth of American liquefied natural gas (LNG) as a quid pro quo for tariff relief. No one in Starmer’s government explicitly named Trump or the U.S. on Wednesday. But Chris Stark, a senior official in Miliband’s energy department tasked with delivering the 2030 goal, noted that “every megawatt of offshore wind that we’re bringing on is a few more metric tons of LNG that we don’t need to import.” The U.K.’s investment in offshore wind also provides welcome relief to a global industry that has been seriously shaken both by soaring inflation and interest rates — and more recently by a Trump-inspired backlash against net zero and clean energy. “It’s a relief for the offshore sector … It’s a relief generally, that the U.K. government is able to lean into very large positive investment stories in U.K. infrastructure,” said Tom Glover, U.K. country chair of the German energy firm RWE, which was the biggest winner in the latest offshore wind investment, securing contracts for 6.9 gigawatts of capacity. A second energy industry figure, granted anonymity because they were not authorized to speak on the record, said the U.K.’s plans were a “great signal for the global offshore wind sector” after a difficult few years — “not least the stuff in the U.S.” The other big winner was British firm SSE, which has plans to build one of the world’s largest-ever offshore wind projects, Berwick Bank — off the coast of Donald Trump’s beloved Scotland.

BRUSSELS — On Greenland’s southern tip, surrounded by snowy peaks and deep fjords, lies Kvanefjeld — a mining project that shows the giant, barren island is more than just a coveted military base. Beneath the icy ground sits a major deposit of neodymium and praseodymium, rare earth elements used to make magnets that are essential to build wind turbines, electric vehicles and high-tech military equipment. If developed, Greenland, a semi-autonomous part of Denmark, would become the first European territory to produce these key strategic metals. Energy Transition Minerals, an Australia-based, China-backed mining company, is ready to break ground. But neither Copenhagen, Brussels nor the Greenlandic government have mobilized their state power to make the project happen. In 2009, Denmark handed Greenland’s inhabitants control of their natural resources; 12 years later the Greenlandic government blocked the mine because the rare earths are mixed with radioactive uranium. Since then the project has been in limbo, bogged down in legal disputes. “Kvanefjeld illustrates how political and regulatory uncertainty — combined with geopolitics and high capital requirements — makes even strategically important projects hard to move from potential to production,” Jeppe Kofod, Denmark’s former foreign minister and now a strategic adviser to Energy Transition Minerals, told POLITICO. Kvanefjeld’s woes are emblematic of Greenland’s broader problems. Despite having enough of some rare earth elements to supply as much as 25 percent of the world’s needs — not to mention oil and gas reserves nearly as great as those of the United States, and lots of other potential clean energy metals including copper, graphite and nickel — these resources are almost entirely undeveloped. Just two small mines, extracting gold and a niche mineral called feldspar used in glassmaking and ceramics, are up and running in Greenland. And until very recently, neither Denmark nor the European Union showed much interest in changing the situation. But that was before 2023, when the EU signed a memorandum of understanding with the Greenland government to cooperate on mining projects. The EU Critical Raw Materials Act, proposed the same year, is an attempt to catch up by building new mines both in and out of the bloc that singles out Greenland’s potential. Last month, the European Commission committed to contribute financing to Greenland’s Malmbjerg molybdenum mine in a bid to shore up a supply of the metal for the EU’s defense sector.  But with United States President Donald Trump threatening to take Greenland by force, and less likely to offer the island’s inhabitants veto power over mining projects, Europe may be too late to the party. “The EU has for many years had a limited strategic engagement in Greenland’s critical raw materials, meaning that Europe today risks having arrived late, just as the United States and China have intensified their interest,” Kofod said. In a world shaped by Trump’s increasingly belligerent foreign policy and China’s hyperactive development of clean technology and mineral supply chains, Europe’s neglect of Greenland’s natural wealth is looking increasingly like a strategic blunder. With Donald Trump threatening to take Greenland by force, and less likely to offer the island’s inhabitants veto power over mining projects, Europe may be too late to the party. | Jim Watson/AFP via Getty Images A HOSTILE LAND That’s not to say building mines in Greenland, with its mile-deep permanent ice sheet, would be easy. “Of all the places in the world where you could extract critical raw materials, [Greenland] is very remote and not very easily accessible,” said Ditte Brasso Sørensen, senior analyst on EU climate and industrial policy at Think Tank Europa, pointing to the territory’s “very difficult environmental circumstances.”  The tiny population — fewer than 60,000 — and a lack of infrastructure also make it hard to build mines. “This is a logistical question,” said Eldur Olafsson, CEO of Amaroq, a gold mining company running one of the two operating mines in Greenland and also exploring rare earths and copper extraction opportunities. “How do you build mines? Obviously, with capital, equipment, but also people. [And] you need to build the whole infrastructure around those people because they cannot only be Greenlandic,” he said.  Greenland also has strict environmental policies — including a landmark 2021 uranium mining ban — which restrict resource extraction because of its impact on nature and the environment. The current government, voted in last year, has not shown any signs of changing its stance on the uranium ban, according to Per Kalvig, professor emeritus at the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland, a Danish government research organization. Uranium is routinely found with rare earths, meaning the ban could frustrate Greenland’s huge potential as a rare earths producer. It’s a similar story with fossil fuels. Despite a 2007 U.S. assessment that the equivalent of over 30 billion barrels in oil and natural gas lies beneath the surface of Greenland and its territorial waters — almost equal to U.S. reserves — 30 years of oil exploration efforts by a group including Chevron, Italy’s ENI and Shell came to nothing. In 2021 the then-leftist government in Greenland banned further oil exploration on environmental grounds.  Danish geologist Flemming Christiansen, who was deputy director of the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland until 2020, said the failure had nothing to do with Greenland’s actual potential as an oil producer. Instead, he said, a collapse in oil prices in 2014 along with the high cost of drilling in the Arctic made the venture unprofitable. Popular opposition only complicated matters, he said. THE CLIMATE CHANGE EFFECT From the skies above Greenland Christiansen sees firsthand the dramatic effects of climate change: stretches of clear water as rising temperatures thaw the ice sheets that for centuries have made exploring the territory a cold, costly and hazardous business. “If I fly over the waters in west Greenland I can see the changes,” he said. “There’s open water for much longer periods in west Greenland, in Baffin Bay and in east Greenland.” Climate change is opening up this frozen land. Climate change is opening up this frozen land. | Odd Andersen/AFP via Getty Images Greenland contains the largest body of ice outside Antarctica, but that ice is melting at an alarming rate. One recent study suggests the ice sheet could cease to exist by the end of the century, raising sea levels by as much as seven meters. Losing a permanent ice cap that is several hundred meters deep, though, “gradually improves the business case of resource extraction, both for … fossil fuels and also critical raw materials,” said Jakob Dreyer, a researcher at the University of Copenhagen.   But exploiting Greenland’s resources doesn’t hinge on catastrophic levels of global warming. Even without advanced climate change, Kalvig, of the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland, argues Greenland’s coast doesn’t differ much from that of Norway, where oil has been found and numerous excavation projects operate.     “You can’t penetrate quite as far inland as you can [in Norway], but once access is established, many places are navigable year-round,” Kalvig said. “So, in that sense, it’s not more difficult to operate mines in Greenland than it is in many parts of Norway, Canada or elsewhere — or Russia for that matter. And this has been done before, in years when conditions allowed.”    A European Commission spokesperson said the EU was now working with Greenland’s government to develop its resources, adding that Greenland’s “democratically elected authorities have long favored partnerships with the EU to develop projects beneficial to both sides.” But the spokesperson stressed: “The fate of Greenland’s raw mineral resources is up to the Greenlandic people and their representatives.” The U.S. may be less magnanimous. Washington’s recent military operation in Venezuela showed that Trump is serious about building an empire on natural resources, and is prepared to use force and break international norms in pursuit of that goal. Greenland, with its vast oil and rare earths deposits, may fit neatly into his vision. Where the Greenlandic people fit in is less clear.

The U.S. intervention in Venezuela is forcing a geopolitical reckoning — in Washington, throughout the Western Hemisphere and around the world. President Donald Trump’s decision to launch a surprise military action and extract Nicolás Maduro ended a years-long standoff with Caracas in a matter of hours — but the move has opened up a new set of questions. What does this mean for the rest of Latin America? How will adversaries like Russia, China and Iran recalibrate? What will be the impact on the global energy markets? And does this mark a permanent shift in the U.S.’s projection of power? In his statements since the operation began,Trump has provided few hints about what comes next beyond the assurance that the operation was decisive and the United States will be “running” Venezuela for at least some period of time. To assess how the fall of Maduro — and the manner of his removal — could reshape global politics, POLITICO Magazine asked a range of experts, from regional analysts to national security veterans, to weigh in on this decision by the Trump administration and forecast how it will reverberate in the rest of the world. Here’s what they said. ‘THE AXIS OF AUTHORITARIANS… MAY FEEL ADDITIONAL URGENCY TO PROVE THEIR VALUE’ BY RYAN BERG Ryan Berg is director of the Americas Program and head of the Future of Venezuela Initiative at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. The Trump administration is serious about the Western Hemisphere strategy outlined in the recent National Security Strategy document, with a Trump Corollary over the hemisphere. The fact that President Trump launched this operation hours after Nicolás Maduro met with China’s special envoy sends a clear and unequivocal message to China and its role in the Americas. It also sends the message that the ‘axis of authoritarians’ is strong during peacetime, but not decisive for one another in moments of greatest need, when it comes to questions of regime security. Trump already pointed it out in his remarks on the military operation today, where he specifically drew attention to other successful U.S. attacks on adversaries, including against Iran. The axis of authoritarians, and especially Russia and China, may feel additional urgency to prove their value in the face of pressure against their allies such as Venezuela. ‘ONE COULD EASILY IMAGINE A CHINESE INDICTMENT OF A TAIWANESE LEADER’ BY JUSTIN LOGAN Justin Logan is the director of defense and foreign policy studies at the Cato Institute. The geopolitical impacts of the Venezuela raid and the capture of its dictator Nicolás Maduro and his wife will be limited because its impact on the global balance of power will be limited. Still, one can foresee two small but potentially significant consequences. First, other major powers could seize in the future on the administration’s claim that the attack was legal because Maduro was under indictment in the United States. One could easily imagine a Chinese indictment of a Taiwanese leader, under specious grounds, as lubricating a Chinese attack on Taiwan. Then the United States would be left arguing the analogy is unsound because the U.S. indictment was legitimate, whereas the Chinese indictment was not. Second, President Trump prides himself on being unpredictable, and this attack will only deepen other countries’ belief in the volatility of U.S. foreign policy. Leaders crosswise with the Trump administration will likely think more carefully about how they can hedge their bets, whether that means developing closer relationships with China or Russia, or coming up with better and clearer plans for avoiding similar campaigns as the one in Caracas. More fear will be coupled with more careful thinking about how to counter a capricious United States. ‘WITHOUT VENEZUELAN OIL, CUBA’S POLITICAL SYSTEM WILL FINALLY COLLAPSE’ BY STEPHEN KINZER Stephen Kinzer, a longtime foreign correspondent for the New York Times, is a senior fellow at the Watson School for International and Public Affairs at Brown University. Trump is the most resource-focused American president since Eisenhower. He sees Venezuelan oil as a grand prize. When he demands that countries stop buying oil from Russia and Iran, and they ask him what alternative they have, he would love to be able to answer: “I’ll give you oil from Venezuela.” It is a considerable geopolitical weapon. That, however, is a long-term dream. Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s motive is more immediate. He comes out of a communal background centered on a 65-year-old dream: overthrowing Fidel Castro. The fact that Castro is dead doesn’t matter — Rubio and his Florida cheering squad still want to destroy him. They see intervention in Venezuela as important not for itself, but as a way to cut Cuba’s lifeline. Rubio hopes that without Venezuelan oil, Cuba’s political system will finally collapse. That would turn both countries into submissive clients — or into bloody battlegrounds where a new generation of Latin Americans will seek to defy what the Nicaraguan rebel leader Augusto César Sandino called “the eagle with larcenous claws.” ‘A SYNONYM FOR OVERCONFIDENT FAILURE’ BY EMMA ASHFORD Emma Ashford is a senior fellow with the Reimagining U.S. Grand Strategy program at the Stimson Center. America has always made an exception for Latin America. Even as the founding fathers clearly stated their desire for the United States to stand apart from European power politics, they acknowledged America’s special interests — and willingness to act upon them — in its own hemisphere. Later presidents would claim the mantle of the Monroe Doctrine to justify repeated military interventions and regime change in the region. The seizure of Nicolás Maduro from his country in the middle of the night might have violated various domestic and international laws. But it was not at odds with America’s historic willingness to bend all kinds of rules in its own backyard. In geopolitical terms, then, the most important aspect of this strike may be to show that the administration is serious about the so-called “Trump Corollary” to the Monroe Doctrine. Outlined in the recently published National Security Strategy, this corollary promises to “deny non-Hemispheric competitors” like Russia and China access to the region. That message could not have been displayed more clearly than last night, when a Chinese delegation, recently arrived for talks with Maduro, was awakened like the rest of Caracas by the sound of airstrikes. America is reasserting its traditional role in the region and signaling that the Western Hemisphere is closed to outside powers. In reality, this might end up signaling instead that America’s addiction to regime change is just as disastrous in the Western hemisphere as it was in the Middle East. Right now, the Trump administration’s plan appears to be a relatively modest leadership change: the removal of Maduro and his replacement with someone inside the regime who will be more cooperative. Donald Trump explicitly rejected the notion of democratic regime change when he told journalists that María Corina Machado could not summon enough support to lead the country. But this vision of a U.S.-coopted government in Venezuela could very easily go wrong, from a military coup to open chaos in the streets and a much larger U.S. intervention. It is simply too early to tell — and history suggests that our ability to predict the aftermath of targeted regime change is poor. If the worst does happen, what then will be the message received in Beijing or Moscow? Will it be a message of strength and security, one that encourages them not to meddle in Latin America? Or will it instead be a reminder that American presidents can always be trusted to act against our own worst interests? If Donald Trump’s luck does not hold, then the “Trump Corollary” may end up as little more than a synonym for overconfident failure. ‘LONGER TERM, VENEZUELA COULD PLAY A MUCH BIGGER ROLE IN THE GLOBAL OIL MARKET’ BY BOB MCNALLY Bob McNally is the founder and president of Rapidan Energy Group, an independent energy market, policy and geopolitical analysis firm based in the Washington, D.C. area. From an energy perspective, near-term U.S. pressure on Venezuela is a relatively minor factor. Global oil markets have ample supply, with Venezuela contributing only about 4 percent to China’s and the U.S.’s crude imports. Yes, Chinese “teapot” refineries would lament the loss of cheap barrels if that happened. But it’s not a major threat to China’s oil sector, much less its economy or national security. Longer term, Venezuela could play a much bigger role in the global oil market given its enormous, if costly, reserves. However, it is essential to recognize that achieving long-term potential will be a long and winding road, with numerous political, commercial and market risks. Many ask us if Washington would ask a post-Maduro, pro-U.S. government to leave OPEC. Venezuela was a founder of OPEC. We doubt it because it would anger Saudi Arabia and the UAE, and in 2020, President Trump learned to appreciate OPEC’s supply management after he begged it to cut production to save U.S. shale. Rapidan has told clients for weeks that odds were 70 percent that President Trump would successfully replace or co-opt Maduro. While Maduro was successfully removed to U.S. custody, this transition is not yet complete. It’s unclear who will succeed the current government, when it will happen, and how it will relate to the U.S., other alliances, and energy markets. What remains clear is that President Trump is determined to make Venezuela his first concrete manifestation of the Trump Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine. U.S. pressure and diplomacy will continue until the U.S. is satisfied that its foreign policy, national security, anti-narcotics and energy interests are met. ‘THREATEN THE LEADERS OF RECALCITRANT ALLIES AND WEAK ADVERSARIES’ BY DANIEL W. DREZNER Daniel W. Drezner is academic dean and distinguished professor of international politics at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University. He is the author of Drezner’s World. In the summer of 2024, I cautioned in POLITICO that a second Trump administration would be likely to increase, not decrease U.S. military adventurism: “Even though the term is directed at him a lot, Trump is not an isolationist — he is a mercantilist who prefers using force in this hemisphere.” The use of force to depose Nicolás Maduro is a pretty strong data point supporting this contention. Going forward, one interesting effect to look for from this U.S. action is how other heads of state and heads of government respond. A constant of Trump’s foreign policy has been to focus on pressuring or flattering the individual leaders of other countries. Some of my colleagues have labeled this a “neo-royalist” worldview, focusing on individual elites rather than laws or institutions. The obvious implication of this action is that the Trump administration is unconcerned with international laws or norms when it comes to attacking foreign leaders. I strongly suspect that the Trump administration will use this Maduro action to threaten the leaders of recalcitrant allies and weak adversaries that they might be next on the chopping block — and such threats might actually work. Just as U.S. members of Congress have expressed fears of personal attacks during the Trump years due to his violent rhetoric, countries that lack great power patronage might prove to be more pliable to continued U.S. pressure. Of course, the other effect could be for other country leaders to bind themselves more closely to other great powers as a form of political insurance against the United States. Stay tuned. ‘COMPLICATING HIS OWN GRAND STRATEGY’ BY DANIEL R. DEPETRIS Daniel R. DePetris is a fellow at Defense Priorities and a syndicated foreign affairs columnist at the Chicago Tribune. The nighttime U.S. air assault and special operations raid that nabbed Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro and his wife was impeccably planned and executed. President Trump is rightly proud of the results; Maduro, a man who outlasted the first Trump administration’s maximum pressure strategy, will soon find himself in a U.S. courtroom as a criminal defendant. If Maduro’s capture tells us anything, it’s that Trump is dead serious about implementing his so-called Trump Corollary in the Western Hemisphere. In less than a year, Latin America has transformed from a perpetual backwater of U.S. grand strategy to one of its main theaters. The Trump administration’s National Security Strategy codified the Western Hemisphere as not only a core U.S. security priority but Washington’s exclusive domain, where non-hemispheric powers aren’t welcome. Latin American leaders who cater to U.S. demands like Argentine President Javier Milei and El Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele will be rewarded; those who don’t, like Maduro, Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel and Colombian President Gustavo Petro, will face intense U.S. economic and rhetorical pressure — including the looming threat of a snatch-and-grab operation in the middle of the night. The current U.S. policy is driven less by spreading democracy and instituting regional economic integration and more about exercising raw power. Of course, the United States is not the first country on the planet to want to preserve its advantage in its own near-abroad — and yet maintaining hegemony through coercion is not without costs. Even small powers don’t like to be dictated to, and if the pressure gets too intense or if the demands become intolerable, they may choose to enact strategies of hedging or outright balancing to defend their own security interests. With respect to Latin America specifically, the most likely alternative waiting in the wings is China, which is already the top trading partner of choice for many of the region’s governments. It would be the height of irony, then, if Trump’s military operation in Venezuela winds up complicating his own grand strategy over the long term. ‘A MAD DASH FOR VENEZUELA’S RESOURCES’ BY LELAND LAZARUS Leland Lazarus is founder and CEO of Lazarus Consulting, a geopolitical risk firm focusing on U.S.-China and China-Latin America relations. The U.S. ousting Maduro potentially kills multiple birds with one stone: It could increase oil supply in the U.S. and reduce oil prices, curb drug trafficking, dislodge China, Russia, and Iran from their strategic beachhead, and weaken other regional adversaries like Cuba and Nicaragua. But it may also precipitate a mad dash for Venezuela’s resources. China in particular risks losing oil flows, more than $60 billion in sunk loans, and one of its reliable political footholds in the Western Hemisphere. Two specific examples illustrate this: The House Select Committee on the CCP recently identified that the oil tanker SKIPPER, seized by the U.S., had ties to China. And in November last year at a business forum in Miami, María Corina Machado said that, in 2012, China’s state-owned CITIC company conducted the only full geological survey of Venezuela’s critical mineral resources, and it is the only company that has that survey to this day. I’m concerned that the U.S. ostentatiously invoking the Monroe Doctrine may actually cause pushback across the region, because local people don’t want a return to unfettered U.S. imperialism. Moreover, I’m concerned that the administration doesn’t have a well thought out Day After plan. President Trump said the U.S. will “run” Venezuela until there’s a peaceful transition. How do we ensure that Machado doesn’t return to a Venezuela full of factions? What if members of Maduro’s inner circle engage in a protracted guerrilla war, with weapons supplied from Cuba, Nicaragua, China, Russia or Iran? These are issues that must be worked out now to avoid an Iraq or Afghanistan repeat. ‘UKRAINE AND TAIWAN SHOULD BE VERY AFRAID’ BY RYAN CROCKER Ryan Crocker was a career foreign service officer who served as ambassador in Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Syria, Kuwait and Lebanon. The immediate comparison that comes to mind is Operation Just Cause, the overthrow and arrest of Manuel Antonio Noriega in Panama in December 1989. A more costly military operation (23 U.S. soldiers killed in action), but with a clear outcome: Within a week, the Panamanian electoral commission had declared the winning candidate in the contested May 1989 elections as the rightful president. It is much less clear what happens next in Venezuela. Maduro is gone, but the regime endures — his vice president has been sworn in as president. With no boots on the ground, how do we shape events? The international reaction to Operation Just Cause included a UN Security Council resolution of condemnation introduced by the Soviet Union, supported by China — and vetoed by the U.S., UK and France. It will be very interesting to see what happens this time. If Russia and China are silent, it will be a huge step towards the emergence of a balance-of-power world. Ukraine and Taiwan should be very afraid. ‘LATIN COUNTRIES WILL REASSESS THEIR VERY LIMITED ABILITY TO DETER U.S. MILITARY ATTACKS’ BY STEPHEN MCFARLAND Stephen McFarland is a retired U.S. diplomat who was ambassador to Guatemala. He served twice in Venezuela, and in Iraq and Afghanistan, and in eight other posts in Latin America. This is a watershed moment for U.S. relations with Latin America, a new “Monroe Doctrine” era. The U.S. did not just capture Maduro and sweep aside the Venezuelan military; it also announced the U.S. will “run” Venezuela until there is a democratic transition, recover property and interests that Venezuela seized from U.S. companies, and rebuild the oil industry there to protect U.S. access to energy. Inexplicably, President Trump has also minimized the role in the future Venezuelan government of María Corina Machado, who had unified the opposition and led it to victory in the 2024 presidential elections. The message is that the U.S. will do whatever it wants in the hemisphere to maintain access to natural resources, and that it has the military force to do so. In response, there is little most countries in the region — which largely oppose Maduro, but worry about their sovereignty in the face of an omnipotent U.S. — can do right now beyond criticize the Trump administration. Indeed, some nations will hope for a reduction in Venezuelan migration to their countries, while others will keep quiet to avoid U.S. trade sanctions. Cuba and Nicaragua must fear they are next on the regime change list, and Colombia and Mexico must fear U.S. military attacks against narcotics traffickers. Outside the continent, Russia might seek to trade acquiescence on Venezuela for U.S. accommodation regarding Ukraine. Longer term, Latin countries will reassess their very limited ability to deter U.S. military attacks; a generation from now, the region may be less beholden to the U.S. and have more, not fewer, links to extra-regional players. A continent that fears the U.S., rather than sees it as a powerful partner, bodes ill for America’s long-term strategic interests. A critical variable is whether the U.S. can direct a stable and sustainable democratic transition in Venezuela. Will Venezuelan migration drop, and will emigres return to Venezuela? Will Venezuelans accept the U.S. rules for oil production and exports? Regime change and nation rebuilding are extremely difficult, prolonged and require much more than military supremacy. If the U.S. does not achieve a democratic transition in Venezuela, if it gets bogged down like in Iraq and Afghanistan and is distracted from other hemispheric issues, it will have lost its big bet on regime change in Venezuela. ‘THE U.S. JUST CEDED THE HIGH GROUND TO RALLY WORLD SUPPORT TO DEFEND TAIWAN’ BY CURT MILLS Curt Mills is executive director of The American Conservative magazine. Probably the most significant result of Jan. 3 is that the U.S. just ceded the high ground to rally world support to defend Taiwan. It is pretty telling that Trump’s White House bled allies even on the global hard right with this maneuver. What is also distressing is the clear lack of a plan from the administration. Speaking at Mar-a-Lago, President Trump seemed open to allowing heretofore Maduro’s henchwoman, the apparent acting President Delcy Rodríguez, to succeed Maduro. But Rodriguez seemed less than cooperative, demanding her boss’s release and affirming that only Maduro is legitimate in her eyes. Does America now have to go back in? Finally, it was depressing to hear how much the Global War on Terror legacy hangs over the American military. It’s all well and good that the U.S. perfected special operations during the Middle East wars, as the Joint Chiefs chair Dan Caine said, but America famously also lost those wars in the end despite all the tactical successes. The only redeemable macro justification for hawkishness in Latin America is driving China out of our backyard. But, bafflingly, Trump promised China: “There’s not gonna be a problem. They’re gonna get oil.” Oil, that is, presumably plundered from the Venezuelan people. ‘TOO EARLY FOR ANYONE TO CELEBRATE A POTENTIAL OIL-BACKED RESOURCE BOOM’ BY DIEGO RIVERA RIVOTA Diego Rivera Rivota is a Senior Research Associate at the Center on Global Energy Policy at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs. The U.S.-led operation that occurred today in central Caracas and in some key Venezuelan security facilities is nothing short of historical. While it indeed represents the end of the Nicolás Maduro regime, we don’t know who will rule Venezuela from now — whether it’s a U.S.-led transitional regime, Vice President Delcy Rodríguez and other Maduro’s apparatchiks, or somebody else. In this context, the geopolitical implications of extracting the leader — albeit illegitimate and deeply unpopular — of the country with the largest crude oil reserves are quite complicated and may have deeper ramifications across the globe. Indeed, today’s and the coming days’ developments may be received in other capitals as a signal of a transition to an international system in which powerful countries can run spheres of influence, as happened in most of the 19th and the early 20th century. With regards to global oil markets, it is important to note that holding the largest reserves of crude oil by no means translates into the ability to swiftly bring enormous production of oil to the world’s market. Venezuela’s oil production peaked in 1997 at over 3.5 million barrels per day , only to collapse to 0.9 million barrels per day in 2024, following years of mismanagement and corruption. Reversing an almost two-decade-long trend is not impossible, but it would require enormous amounts of financing, clear incentives for oil and gas companies, and time. This would only be possible with some minimal preconditions of governance, stability and clear incentives for companies to invest in Venezuela — something easier to say than to do. On top of that, the world has also changed since 2006. The global demand outlook looks very uncertain, with very limited growth and plateauing sometime in the 2030s. On top of that, to stay only in the Latin American neighborhood, Brazil and Argentina have significantly increased their oil production in the last five years, while Guyana has emerged from zero to almost surpassing Venezuela’s current production, according to preliminary data from 2025. In sum, it would be too early for anyone to celebrate a potential oil-backed resource boom for the U.S. ‘STRONG INCENTIVES TO QUIETLY APPEASE WASHINGTON’ MIE HOEJRIS DAHL Mie Hoejris Dahl is a Danish freelance journalist based in Mexico City and Bogotá. She has reported inside Venezuela and covered the 2024 presidential elections and its aftermath. The U.S. attacks on Venezuela and capture of Nicolás Maduro on January 3 sent shock waves through Latin America and the world. Within hours, world leaders began staking out positions that laid bare growing dividing lines. The presidents of Colombia, Brazil and Mexico all rushed to condemn the U.S. attacks on Venezuela. They have each been on the receiving end of U.S. President Donald Trump’s threats and rhetorical bullying in recent months — and may worry about being next, in one form or another. The U.S. attacks on Venezuela have sharpened global and regional divides. One line runs between authoritarian allies of Maduro — such as Cuba, Iran and Russia — that denounce the operation as imperial overreach, and democratic actors that long pushed for an end to Maduro’s rule but are uneasy with regime change by force. Within Latin America, another divide is emerging between Trump‑aligned, mostly right‑wing leaders who applaud the ouster, and non‑aligned — often leftist — presidents who condemn it on sovereignty grounds. In the weeks ahead, Latin American leaders — especially those not politically aligned with Trump — are likely to double down on calls for peace, respect for sovereignty and adherence to international law in multilateral forums. At the same time, even the loudest critics of the operation will have strong incentives to quietly appease Washington. Many Latin American governments are likely to invest more in counternarcotics and migration control.

The European Commission has proposed giving itself legally-enshrined power to plan the expansion of European electricity grids, as it scrambles to update an ageing network to meet the soaring demands of the clean energy transition. The proposed changes to the Trans-European Networks for Energy, or TEN-E, regulation, would give the Commission power to conduct “central scenario” planning to assess what upgrades are needed to the grid — a marked change from the current decentralized system of grid planning. The Commission would conduct this planning every four years. Where no projects are planned, the Commission would have power to intervene. The proposal was part of the European Grids Package, a sweeping set of changes to EU energy laws released Wednesday. Electrification of everything from transport and heating to industrial processes is essential as Europe moves away from planet-warming fossil fuels. But that puts huge strain on networks, and the Commission estimates electricity demand will double by 2040. An efficient, pan-European electricity grid is essential to meeting this demand. “The European Grids Package is more than just a policy,” said Teresa Ribera, the EU’s decarbonization chief, in a statement Tuesday. “It’s our commitment for an inclusive future, where every part of Europe reaps the benefits of the energy revolution: cheaper clean energy, reduced dependence on imported fossil fuels, secure supply and protection against price shocks.” Along with centralized planning, the Grids Package proposes speeding up permitting of grids and other energy projects to get the infrastructure faster, including relaxing environmental planning rules for grids. Currently planning and building new grid infrastructure takes around 10 years. It would do this by amending four laws: the TEN-E regulation, the Renewable Energy Directive, the Energy Markets Directive, and the Gas Market Directive. The package also proposes “cost-sharing” funding models to ensure those countries that benefit from projects contribute to its financing, and speeding up a number of key energy interconnection projects across Europe.

President Donald Trump has changed his position on more than a few things over the years, but in at least one area he’s been consistent: tariffs. The president is a tariff man, as he’s fond of saying. And the man behind the man in this instance is U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer. A longtime trade lawyer who served in the first Trump administration, Greer is now working to help revamp the global trading system at the president’s behest — and he rejects the widespread criticism that Trump’s sweeping tariff regime has been rolled out haphazardly. “Yes, there’s a strategy,” Greer said in a new interview with The Conversation. “First of all, you don’t change 70 years of trade policy overnight. And second of all, when some people say, ‘Oh, well, this is chaos. What’s your strategy?’, what they really want to know is can we go back to how it was before? And that’s not going to happen.” Much of the president’s tariff agenda is currently at risk amid a seemingly skeptical Supreme Court, though Greer professed confidence and said the White House had backup options if need be. Perhaps most worrisome for the administration is the politics of higher prices, and Greer was eager to bat down charges that tariffs were to blame. “People are worried about housing, they’re worried about healthcare — things we don’t import,” he said. This conversation has been edited for length and clarity. You have probably the most important portfolio of this administration given just how big of a priority trade has been for the president. I was at many a Trump rally when he talked about how “tariff” is his favorite word, now his fifth favorite word, “God, love, wife,” something else. Yeah, he had to moderate a little bit on that. You are a veteran trade lawyer. You served in Trump’s first term as chief of staff to then-U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer. What is different about the approach this time around? In the first Trump administration, we were charting new waters, right? We were coming into the so-called Washington consensus that tariffs were bad and we shouldn’t protect domestic industry and we shouldn’t try to make tough deals with our friends and foe alike. Now having laid the groundwork in the first term, showing we could use tariffs effectively while having a booming economy, the president was able to move to his true vision, which he’s had for many years, which is to protect the American economy with tariffs, use them as leverage where needed to get foreign market access, and otherwise use them for geopolitical issues. So where we were walking in the first term, now we can run and fly, frankly. One of the narratives around the tariffs is that the strategy is chaos, that this has been really unpredictable. I’ve heard from businesses that it’s been a challenge because they’re just not sure where all of this is going to land, plus you have all of the legal cases on top of that. So is the strategy chaos? Is there a strategy? So yes, there’s a strategy. First of all, you don’t change 70 years of trade policy overnight. And second of all, when some people say, “Oh, well, this is chaos. What’s your strategy?”, what they really want to know is can we go back to how it was before? And that’s not going to happen. A lot of people focus on April 2 Liberation Day. We announced potentially very, very high tariffs. But I would focus people more on Aug. 1, and I use that date because that is the date where the president really set the tariff rates, and where we announced a bunch of deals. And from there, the structure that has played out demonstrates the strategy that we have. If you look at the tariff setup in the world that’s come out of the president’s program, the highest tariffs are on China. Again, not because we bear China any ill will, but because we have a giant trade deficit with them and they have a lot of unfair trading practices. The next set of highest tariffs is Southeast Asia, India, these other areas that use a lot of Chinese content, Southeast Asia in particular, and we have giant trade deficits with them, Vietnam, for example. And then the next highest tariff rates, and these are usually about 15 percent, folks who are allies but with whom we have big trade issues: Korea, Japan, Europe, etc. And then the lowest tariff rates are really in the Western Hemisphere, where we want our supply chains to be, where it’s very secure. So you can really see almost like concentric rings going out from China, what the tariff rates are like. We have a couple outliers right now. India has a higher tariff for some geopolitical reasons. They buy Russian oil. Brazil has some higher tariffs. Economy & Education: U.S. trade rep. Greer and teacher’s union head Weingarten | The ConversationSharePlay Video We were close to a deal there over the summer and it got derailed. What happened there? The president wants deals but he only wants good deals. And so whenever you present a deal to the president, the question is, am I better off with just having the tariff? And the assessment of the deal in the summer with India was, well, I think we’re just better off with the tariff than with the potential deal. But that has not stopped us from continuing conversations. It’s still going quite well, I would say, with the Indians. There’s a separate issue where they were buying Russian oil. They’ve stopped doing that largely now. So I think we could see some tariff modification at some point for them. But I’m confident that we’ll get a deal with India at some point in the future, maybe the near future. It’ll be up to the president and Prime Minister Modi. Have you been involved at all in talking about a potential future trading partnership with Russia after the end of the war? Not very much. Even before the war, we didn’t have a huge trading relationship with Russia. We would get oil and steel and some fertilizer from them. We’d ship them cars and some ag products. So it was never a giant trading relationship. If the war ends then obviously there may be opportunity there. But we’re really focused on big export markets. There’s been a ton of debate about the short, medium and long term impact of these tariffs. The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development just released a report saying the world economy has been surprisingly resilient in the face of Trump’s trade wars, but they added that they expect higher tariffs to gradually result in higher prices and reduce growth in household consumption and business investment. How do you respond to that assessment and are you worried about some economic pain in the short term? I just look at the data, right? They’re saying we think it’ll lead to lower growth in the future or higher prices or something, but they’ve been saying that for a long time. And the data show that last quarter was 3.8 percent [annual] growth. The Atlanta Fed is projecting 4.2 percent growth next year. We’ve seen inflation in check. We’ve seen imported goods remain relatively low-priced. Where we see prices high are things like housing and health care, because Obamacare is a disaster. The Supreme Court is weighing whether to narrow the president’s use of the International Emergency Economic Powers Act — IEEPA — which is the 1970s-era law that the administration has cited for imposing many of these tariffs. How are you preparing for the possibility that one of these main tariff authorities you’ve been using could be constrained? First of all, we believe the law and the facts are on our side. This Supreme Court has talked about how important it is to simply analyze the plain text of the law. And if you look at the plain text, it says the president, if he determines there’s an emergency, he can regulate imports. And he’s determined there’s an emergency and he’s regulating imports, which is the tariff. Now, we’ve been thinking about this plan for five years or longer. Since the first term. So you can be sure that when we came to the president at the beginning of the term, we had a lot of different options. IEEPA is the most appropriate because there is an emergency with the trade deficit and the loss of manufacturing, and it has the flexibility that you need to respond to the type of emergency that there is. My message is tariffs are going to be a part of the policy landscape going forward. Are there other ways to do it? Courts during this process have actually cited those different tools. And while we certainly can use those, IEEPA is the best tool. It fits the situation, and we’re looking forward to hearing back from the Supreme Court soon. But you’re prepared for alternative measures if they do decide to constrain IEEPA? Well, I’m not going to go into too much detail about that, or else I’ll get in trouble with my general counsel. But you’ve got something in your back pocket. Of course. Regardless of how the Supreme Court rules on this, the administration’s reciprocal tariffs could be reversed by a future president. Is there any plan to go to Congress to try to codify any of this stuff? Well, if I were Congress, I would codify it. I have heard from a handful of members of Congress from all over the ideological spectrum, whether left or right or progressive or conservative, free trader or protectionist — however you want to characterize it. I’ve heard a lot of interest in this and for a lot of reasons. People have seen what I just described, which is that you can implement tariffs and have growth at the same time. You can protect your supply chains and have wages increase. You can do all of these things together, especially if you couple it with good energy policy, etc. I’ve also had members of Congress come to me, people who maybe weren’t fans of tariffs two years ago, and they said, “This is actually real money that’s coming in that can be used to pay down the debt or pay for other things or finance our reindustrialization.” Who are those members? Well, I won’t betray their confidences. You said that some members are telling you, “Hey, I’ve changed my mind on tariffs.” There are other members that have spoken privately or publicly, saying “These tariffs are hurting my constituents,” particularly people in farm states. I’m thinking GOP Sens. Chuck Grassley and Rand Paul and a number of folks that have come out and said they’re concerned. What do you say to members of Congress who feel that this is not beneficial for their folks? Well Sen. Paul is a little bit of a man on an island on this issue. Well sure, but Rep. Don Bacon — He [Paul] compared me to a Soviet commissar in some comments. All right, we’ll leave Rand Paul on the side here, but there are others like Bacon and Grassley and other folks that have voiced some concerns. I’ve talked to Sen. Grassley a lot, and he knows a lot about trade. He’s been around a long time and as a general matter, it sounds to me frequently that he is quite aligned with the president in terms of wanting to get foreign market access, particularly for his folks who are trying to sell pork and soybeans overseas. We have made sure, in addition to securing soybean purchases from China, who’s a big customer, to open markets in Southeast Asia in particular for soybeans. Markets that were never open before. Now these countries are taking down their tariff, they’re taking down their non-tariff barriers. And so on that, I think we’re aligned. There’s always concern when you’re changing what’s a 70-year trade policy to something new, and there can be frictions. But we are careful to listen to these folks again, from both sides of the aisle, find out what their concerns are and respond to them. The president did exempt some agricultural imports from tariffs amid ongoing concerns about higher prices. Why didn’t he do that from the beginning? How did that shift come about? First of all, inflation’s been in check. So let’s just clear the air on that. Secondly, in early September, the president signaled, he put out an executive order, and we made a list of all the — whether it’s agricultural goods or minerals or things that physically can’t be grown in the United States or extracted from the United States. The rocks aren’t here, or you can’t grow a banana here, on any scale. So in early September, he put out an executive order. He said, as I do deals with countries, I will release tariffs on these items. Why? Because we get them from those countries. There seems to be a real resistance in the language around tariffs to say that tariffs are causing higher prices. Nobody wants to really say that. But in making the exemptions, aren’t you basically acknowledging that tariffs do lead to higher prices on products? No. Okay. Can you explain? There’s never really a 1-to-1 with a tariff. In the first term, when we put tariffs on China, inflation actually went down. As we were putting tariffs in place, inflation went down. We’ve seen a similar effect here. When the president says, “We’re going to have deals with you folks,” you have to have leverage, right? And so you keep tariffs on folks for all kinds of things and it becomes a carrot. So it’s a lot easier for me to go to Ecuador or Indonesia or Vietnam and say, “Listen, if you do a deal with us and we’ve announced frameworks or full agreements with all these countries I just mentioned, then at a given time, we will release these things because obviously we don’t make them.” When you have a tariff, it doesn’t necessarily go through to the consumer. I don’t want to get too technical here for you, except I’m kind of nerdy about it. But sometimes does it? I mean it can, right? Like on those things that you mentioned, like coffee and bananas and all of that stuff? It depends on what the production economy is like. And when I say production economy, say bananas, if you have a hundred banana producers overseas, they’re all going to compete for market share in the U.S. because we’re the biggest consumer of a lot of these things. And so they will compete to eat the tariff. Do you see what I’m saying? I do, but when voters who don’t understand this are going to the grocery store and seeing that prices haven’t gone down, how do you tackle that with all the leverage that you’re talking about? Well, I can’t control the weather in Brazil with a tariff. Coffee prices, for example, have been going up for two years. Before there was ever a tariff on coffee for six months or whatever we had. And there are secular pricing trends in coffee and cocoa that were going on well before. And beef, these kinds of things. All that being said, we don’t have to have a tariff on these things. We don’t make them here. We can have a tariff on them for leverage, which is how the president used them. It’s how he said he was going to use it. He signaled in September, these are for leverage to finish the deals. So we were well placed two months later once we announced the rest of our deals to take the tariff off. The US-Mexico-Canada agreement — USMCA — that Trump negotiated in his first term is facing a mandatory review next year. What are the top changes that the administration is looking to make? When you think about the U.S., Canada, Mexico agreement, there are a few things we trade among us in a massive way. One of them is automobiles, another’s agriculture, another is energy. With respect to the auto trade, the goal is to make more autos in the United States of America. Mexico has been a huge beneficiary of NAFTA and then of USMCA. And so the president, earlier in his second term, imposed tariffs on autos globally, including on Mexico. So there’s an overlap between those tariffs and our agreement and USMCA. And those tariffs, which are about 25 percent, are layered over USMCA. Now all of that being said, we can look at the underlying rules of USMCA. If something comes in and gets special duty treatment or a lower tariff, there’s usually a rule of origin associated with it that says a certain amount of this widget has to come from the region. Otherwise you have to pay a higher tariff. We can change some of those rules to make them tighter, to have a higher percentage have to come from the United States. Those are the kinds of things we can do. There’s also a bunch of stuff in Mexico and Canada where maybe they discriminate against our companies. It could be telecom companies or it could be our corn exports. There are a variety of little things like that that may seem small and don’t lend themselves to sound bites, but they mean a lot for agricultural producers. Is there still a scenario where the U.S. could walk away from USMCA or is that off the table at this point? I mean that’s always a scenario, right? The president’s view is he only wants deals that are a good deal. The reason why we built a review period into USMCA was in case we needed to revise it, review it or exit it. I have heard from a lot of folks how important USMCA is. Canada and Mexico are huge export markets for us. I was in the White House yesterday, and we were talking about USMCA. What about Mexico? What about Canada? You know, the possibility that we kind of negotiate separately with them, right? Their economies are subject to it. Yeah, where’s his head at right now? Listen, our relationship with the Canadian economy is totally different than our relationship with the Mexican economy. The labor situation’s different, the stuff that’s being made is different, the export and import profile is different. It actually doesn’t make a ton of economic sense why we would marry those three together. The actual trade between Canada and Mexico is much smaller than the trade between the U.S. and Canada and U.S. and Mexico. Sometimes you’ll hear people say, “Oh, well, you know, USMCA, it’s a $31 trillion agreement.” It’s like, well, yeah, but like $29 trillion is us. So I think it makes sense to talk to them separately about that agreement. A lot of the underlying rules are helpful and you know our exporters benefit from them, but we have to make sure that we are getting the benefit of our bargain on USMCA. You were in Brussels recently, talking about deals. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said when he was over there that the U.S. could modify its approach on steel and aluminum tariffs if the EU reconsidered its digital rules. Some European officials were a little irked by that and interpreted it as targeting the EU’s flagship tech regulations, including the Digital Markets Act. Europe’s antitrust chief, Teresa Ribera told POLITICO that Washington is using “blackmail” to strong-arm the EU. What’s your response to that? That’s a totally extreme thing to say. The problem is the Digital Markets Act and other European digital regulations and regulations outside of digital, they actually target U.S. companies. And how do we know that? First of all, when all these laws were being passed, all the European parliamentarians and all the leaders in Europe were saying, “We’re going to implement these laws to get Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon and Microsoft.” In fact, they have certain taxes over there, and they call them GAFA tax. The acronym is for American companies. And then they have these thresholds built into these laws where if you meet a certain global revenue threshold or you have a certain business model, and just magically they only capture U.S. companies. We reported last month that the European Commission was set to present a list to you of sectors that it wants to be exempted from U.S. tariffs. The list was expected to include medical devices, wine — which is very important to me — spirits, beers and pasta. Where do those deliberations stand? Well, they did not present such a list. Ah! And the reason why is because under our deal from the summer, the United States has already adjusted its tariff levels for Europe, and Europe is still adjusting its tariffs. And I don’t say this to be critical. They have a legal process they have to go through, and they’re proceeding through it as quickly as they can, I think. So it would be weird for them to come and say, “We haven’t finished making our tariff adjustments yet, and we want more from you.” Listen, if they want to come and talk about other tariff adjustments, that’ll be up to the president and that kind of thing. But it’s a sequencing issue. Like why would I give them more tariff relief before they’ve done their part of the bargain, right? That doesn’t make sense. Trump talked about tariffs on the campaign trail, but I don’t think a lot of the world, particularly our allies in Europe, were necessarily prepared for the scale, as you mentioned earlier. When you were in Brussels, for example, can you give me a little bit of a behind-the-scenes on what those conversations are like when you sit across a table? Sure. So we are eleven months into this presidency. And I would say that most of our European partners have frankly become quite pragmatic. In the first term, when we talked about tariffs and changing the global structure, there was a lot of almost religious-sounding sermonizing from the Europeans. For them, international institutions and what they believe is international law, this is like religion. It’s their religion, and they have these high priests and the European Commission, all these places. But the folks we’re dealing with right now in the European Commission, President von der Leyen, the trade commissioner, these are pragmatic folks. They understand the facts on the ground. They understand the U.S. view. They understand we have these huge trade deficits that are not sustainable. And so the conversations are constructive. We’re not fighting about policy, we’re talking about implementation. So that’s all positive. All that being said, there are two or three countries that still like to sermonize a little bit about this. The ambassador from one country came to me and said, “Well, how can you use these tariffs against us? You know, tariffs are bad, blah, blah, blah.” I said, if tariffs are so bad, then how come your tariffs on us are so high still? And he said, “Well, I’m not trying to negotiate.” But I mean, that’s my point. They come and they say, “Well, you shouldn’t have tariffs,” but European tariffs have been higher on the U.S. historically for many years. You said the conversations are productive and pragmatic now. Is that a shift from early this year? Yes. Yes, a hundred percent. So where does the EU deal stand? We had our joint statement in August. We’ve adjusted our tariffs to be a little bit lower for them. They’re in the process of adjusting theirs. We have a lot of non-tariff barriers that we face in Europe, regulatory constraints, certifications, inspection regimes, things that are duplicative, things that gum up trade between the United States and Europe. Did Brussels move that all forward? I would say so. It was less of a negotiating trip and more of taking stock of where we are, where we’re divergent and next steps. We have a small team coming over from the Europeans next week to really talk about how we can better memorialize changes in these non-tariff barriers going forward. Because even though the Europeans are taking down most of their tariffs for us, if you take down the tariff but there’s still non-tariff barriers, it’s not effective market access. So we have to do both the tariffs and the non-tariff barriers. We can’t talk about trade without talking about China. What is the administration’s endgame with China? Is it coexistence? Is it decoupling? Is it selective engagement? What is it? Well, it’s funny because Washington creates these kind of fake categories. They’ll say, “Oh, well, either you’re a China hawk or a China dove.” The way we think about it in the administration is we’re pro-American. We’re not anti-China. We’re not China doves. We’re not China hawks. We are pro-American. I think you meant to say America First. Well, yes, America First. Thank you. And sometimes you hear people saying, “For America to win, China has to lose.” I just don’t think that’s the case. I mean, the reality is we are going to do what’s right for America in terms of trade. And in some cases, it means we have to have a tariff on countries, higher tariffs on some, like China, because they’re a bigger issue with respect to trade. They have more trade cheating, they have more subsidies and that kind of thing. If China still manages to be successful? Fine. We’re not here to try to contain China. We’re here to make sure that America has a strong national security, strong economic security, that our workers have jobs that are good for them in the towns and cities where they live, that they can raise a family. That’s what we’re trying to do. If China rises or falls on that, that’s kind of up to them. We’re happy to work with them. They have their own plans. One thing I will say is people act like American policy drives Chinese reaction, that China’s just always reacting to us. And I think they want us to think that, but they’re agents unto themselves. They publish a new policy every five years. They announced this Made in China 2025 project in 2015, well before President Trump was the president. So they have their own economic plans, which are oftentimes adverse to our interests, and so we will control for that, whether through tariffs or other measures. We just saw voters in this last election in November clearly send a message that affordability, cost of living really, really matters. What can you tell the American people about what they can expect to see going into next year? How will all of this impact not the markets, but their day-to-day? What I would say is trade, it’s not a big factor in the affordability discussion. When you look at affordability, it’s really about the crazy high expenses for health care that were engendered by Obamacare, which was a disaster. It’s about housing expenses that went way up during the Biden years and are still — But some people, as they’re shopping for Christmas, are connecting prices at Walmart and at the grocery store to the affordability conversation. I’ve talked to Walmart officials, I’ve talked to all kinds of officials, and they have said that they’re not raising prices. At back-to-school time in September, they say we’re not raising prices. They’re still doing their rollback. I know that’s a press narrative, but it’s actually not a true narrative. When you talk about affordability, people are worried about it. People are worried about housing, they’re worried about healthcare — things we don’t import. But where trade comes into it is when you have a trade system in place that protects U.S. jobs, you get higher incomes. So the blue collar wages are up this year. That’s what matters. In the first term, we had real income increase, up until the pandemic, which was like this black swan event. That’s what we’re trying to do with trade. Trade is not, “Let’s manage affordability through trade.” Trade is, “Let’s make sure we have good paying jobs here, especially for that working class whose jobs went away to Mexico or Vietnam or China. And so if you have blue-collar wages going up, whatever price effects are going on from all kinds of things in the economy — as long as the real income is outpacing whatever price effects there are — that’s what we’re looking for. That’s what we’re seeing. What about those tariff dividends that the president has floated? Well, you can talk to Scott Bessent. I don’t control the money. I just put the tariffs on to make the deals.

BRUSSELS — The EU will begin to ban all Russian gas imports to the bloc early next year after lawmakers, officials and diplomatic negotiators struck a last-minute deal over a key piece of legislation set to reshape Europe’s energy sector. Put forward over the summer, the bill is designed to kill off the EU’s lingering Russian energy dependency at a critical juncture in the Ukraine war, with Russia advancing steadily and Kyiv fast running out of cash. While Europe’s imports of Russian gas have fallen sharply since 2022, the country still accounts for around 19 percent of its total intake. The EU is already set to sanction Russian gas imports, but those measures are temporary and subject to renewal every six months. The new legislation is designed to make that rupture permanent and put member countries that still operate contracts with Russia on a surer footing in the event of legal action. “We were paying to Russia €12 billion per month at the beginning of the war for fossil fuels. Now we’re down to €1.5 billion per month … We aim to bring it down to zero,” European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen told reporters on Wednesday. “This is a good day for Europe and for our independence from Russian fossil fuels — this is how we make Europe resilient.” “We wanted to show that Europe will never go back to Russian fossil fuels again — and the only ones who lost today are Russia and Mr Putin,” Green MEP Ville Niinistö, one of the Parliament’s two lead negotiators on the file, told POLITICO. The law will enter into force on Jan. 1 next year and then apply to different kinds of gas in phases. Spot market purchases of gas will be banned almost immediately, while existing short- and long-term contracts will be banned in 2026 and 2027. A prohibition on pipeline gas will come into effect in September 2027, owing to concerns from landlocked countries reliant on Russian gas, such as Slovakia and Hungary. Finalized in barely six months, the law was the subject of fierce disagreements in recent weeks as the European Parliament’s more ambitious stance irked member countries concerned about the legal risks and technical difficulties of the ban. But despite fears that talks would be prolonged and even spill over into the new year, negotiators reached a compromise on key aspects of the law at the last minute. Now both sides can claim victory. Lawmakers, for instance, repeatedly pushed for an earlier timeline and ultimately ensured that none of the bans would enter into force later than 2027. The Parliament also secured commitments from national capitals to impose one of three penalties on companies that breach the rule: a lump sum penalty of €40 million, 3.5 percent of a company’s annual turnover, or 300 percent of the value of the offending transaction. Where the Council included its demands, the Parliament was able to water them down. For instance, lawmakers convinced member countries to tighten a controversial clause allowing countries facing energy crises to lift the ban — suspensions will only last four weeks at a time and will need to be reviewed by Parliament and the Commission. The Parliament also backed down from a push for a parallel ban on Russian crude imports in the same file after the Commission promised a separate bill early next year, as first reported by POLITICO. The Council did push through its controversial list of “safe” countries from which the EU can still import gas without rigorous vetting. Lawmakers complained that the list includes Qatar, Algeria and Nigeria, but have now accepted it, so long as countries can be excised from the list if they offend. MEPs gushed that they got far more than they expected and weren’t trampled by seasoned diplomats, as some had feared. “We have strengthened the European Commission’s initial proposal by introducing a pathway towards a ban on oil and its products, ending long-term contracts sooner than originally proposed, and secured harmonized EU penalties for non-compliance,” European People’s Party MEP Inese Vaidere, who also led the file, told POLITICO. “We achieved more than my realistic landing scenario — earlier phase-outs, tougher penalties, and closing the loopholes that let Russian gas sneak in,” said Niinistö. “This was about proving European unity — Parliament, Council and Commission on the same side — and showing citizens that we can cut Russia’s revenues faster and more decisively than ever proposed before.”

BRUSSELS — A weeks-long stalemate holding up the latest package of sanctions against Russia was ended Wednesday night after Slovakia lifted its veto, the Danish presidency of the Council of the EU confirmed. The bulk of the package — the 19th to be imposed on Moscow since the start of its full-scale invasion of Ukraine more than three years ago — focuses on sapping the Kremlin’s war chest by imposing restrictions on energy traders and financial institutions, many of them in third countries. Companies helping the Russian war effort will be targeted, in addition to 117 new tankers considered to be part of the shadow fleet that ships Russian fossil fuels in violation of the oil price cap. Earlier this week, energy ministers from 27 member countries agreed by qualified majority to a landmark phaseout of Russian gas, against the objections of Slovakia and Hungary. Slovakia had vowed to hold up the sanctions package unless it was given assurances on how to combat high energy prices and aid heavy industries like car making. Austria and Hungary had also expressed concerns over the sanctions package but lifted their veto in recent days. Slovakia was the last country blocking the new restrictions — and had sought concessions in the statement to be agreed at Thursday’s summit of EU leaders in Brussels. “All our demands … were included [in the statement],” a Slovak diplomat confirmed to POLITICO. The summit will seek to stress the EU’s support of Ukraine, in light of U.S. President Donald Trump’s pressure on Kyiv to cede territory to Russia. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is expected to join parts of the meeting in Brussels. Leaders are expected to emphasize the need to further hit Moscow with hefty sanctions over its war against Ukraine. Defense spending as well as the use of frozen Russian assets to support Kyiv are all on the agenda. The sanctions package will also significantly expand the number of non-Russian companies banned from doing business with the bloc in a bid to prevent Moscow from circumventing the restrictions. Defense spending as well as the use of frozen Russian assets to support Kyiv are all on the agenda. | Sergey Shestak/EPA Specifically, the bloc seeks to add export controls on another 45 companies that are deemed to be working together to evade sanctions. Those include 12 Chinese, two Thai and three Indian entities that have enabled Russia to circumvent the bloc’s sanctions. The package also restricts the movement of Russian diplomats within the EU. They will have to notify other EU governments of their movements before crossing the border of their host country. The package will now go through a so-called written procedure, where capitals have until Thursday morning to speak up. If no one does, the text is approved.

The European Union can continue to count nuclear power, and in some cases fossil gas, as “environmentally sustainable,” after the EU’s top court ruled the European Commission was not breaching its obligations to tackle climate change. The General Court on Wednesday found against a complaint from Austria, which sought to overturn the decision to include the two energy sources in the EU’s taxonomy regulation, which determines which investments can be considered as green. The General Court, part of the Court of Justice of the European Union, said in its judgment the Commission “was entitled to take the view that nuclear energy generation has near to zero greenhouse gas emissions and that there are currently no technologically and economically feasible low-carbon alternatives at a sufficient scale.” The court added it “endorses the view that economic activities in the nuclear energy and fossil gas sectors can, under certain conditions, contribute substantially to climate change mitigation and climate change adaptation.” The case was brought by Vienna in 2022, arguing that the inclusion of nuclear power and fossil gas breached EU law and that the Commission had neglected to carry out an impact assessment or public consultation and bypassed normal legislative processes. Leonore Gewessler, who was then Austria’s climate and energy minister and now leads the opposition Green Party, launched the legal action after the list of green investments was published almost three years ago. “What I oppose with all my might is the attempt to greenwash nuclear power and gas via the backdoor of a supplementary delegated act,” Gewessler said at the time. “I think it is irresponsible and unreasonable. From our point of view, it is also not legal.” The government of Luxembourg also expressed support for the case. The ruling means that a deadlock over EU funding for conventional nuclear reactors could come to an end, and is a boon to French efforts to unlock such investments. It also comes just after Germany last week penned an agreement with France to develop a coherent policy accepting the inclusion of atomic power in a low-carbon energy mix. The move has created speculation that Berlin, which shuttered its own reactors in the wake of the 2011 Fukushima disaster, may stop blocking efforts to direct EU funds toward the technology.

The European Commission president’s big set-piece speech of the year is upon us. The State of the Union address is where Ursula von der Leyen sets out her vision for the year ahead, and it promises to be a very challenging 12 months, for her and for Europe. So we tapped into the POLITICO newsroom’s deep knowledge of the political and policy realms and have attempted to preempt her speech by writing our own version. This is what we think she’ll say. Remember, this is not the actual State of the Union but our version of it. As it says on all speeches sent to journalists ahead of time, “please check against delivery.” Madam President, Honorable members, My fellow Europeans, This comes at a pivotal moment for Europe. We live in a world that presents many challenges for our Union; challenges that we as Europeans will have to face together. It is also a time for Europeans to decide which kind of future they wish to embrace; one of unity, one of strength, one of making our continent a better, more secure place; or one of conflict and dissent, in which we let external forces dictate the direction of our lives. There are people out there who want to destroy Europe; who side not with those of us who want a peaceful, prosperous Europe, but with our enemies. I know which path I will choose. And I believe, as I am sure you do too, that the people of Europe will take the right road. That is why, as we reflect on the State of our Union, we must acknowledge the advances we have made but also build the foundations of a more stable Europe, one that is less reliant on others in critical areas. UKRAINE AND DEFENSE Mesdames et Messieurs, les députés, Russia’s brutal war against Ukraine has presented us with challenges not seen since World War Two. As a result, we must take greater responsibility for our own security. That means investing in robust defense, safeguarding our people, and ensuring we have the resources to act when needed.  The EU’s likely message to Ukraine? We are at your side. | Olivier Hoslet/EPA Investing in European defense means investing in peace and long-term stability for current and future generations. It also means boosting technological innovation, supporting European competitiveness, promoting regional development, and powering economic growth.   Our ReArm Europe plan gives member states greater flexibility to spend more on defense while ensuring that the European defense industry can produce at speed and volume. It will also allow the rapid deployment of troops and assets across the EU. Red tape needs to be slashed to reach these aims. In a first step to simplify regulations, the Commission has already proposed a Defence Readiness Omnibus that will help untangle investment rules. However, simply spending more is not enough. Member states need to spend better, work together, and prioritize European companies. The EU will support this by helping coordinate investments and making sure that defense equipment is ‘Made in Europe’.  Yet the challenges caused by Russia are great and varied, including the threats caused by hybrid warfare attacking European infrastructure, and the increasing spread of disinformation online. We already have plans for an early-warning system and rapid response teams to help hospitals fight off cyberattacks. We can only overcome these problems by working together and, rest assured, Europe will also maintain diplomatic and, in particular, economic pressure on Russia. This week we will publish the 19th package of sanctions, as we tighten the net on those who do business with Russia. Working with our partners in the U.S., we are continuing to limit Russia’s potential and showing Vladimir Putin that we are serious about bringing an end to this war. Because a predator such as Putin can only be kept in check through strong deterrence. Our boost to defense is not just for our own security but for that of our allies and neighbors, and those who share our European values and wish to join the bloc. That is why our message to Ukraine is clear: Your future is in the European Union and we have been, and will continue to be, at your side every step of the way. REVIVING THE EUROPEAN ECONOMY Meine Damen und Herren Abgeordnete, As we look to advance our goals to boost European competitiveness, we have strong foundations such as our potential to unleash vast resources and latent technological and industrial power. I asked Mario Draghi to deliver a report on how to revive the European economy. One year ago, he delivered that report and we have been delivering on his recommendations. The year since the publication of Mario Draghi’s report has been all about cutting red tape and … boosting European competitiveness. | Olivier Hoslet/EPA As part of the Commission’s plans for the next multiannual financial framework — an ambitious and dynamic budget that will help us meet the challenges of the future — we created a €409 billion cash pot to fund Europe’s industrial revival, allowing European firms to rapidly scale up and cut red tape when accessing EU funds. And after a very clear signal from the European business sector that there is too much complexity in EU regulation, we launched the Omnibus Package to simplify legislation for sustainable finance, due diligence and taxonomy rules, and save companies €37 billion a year by 2029.   Mr. Draghi also recommended a single market for investment in the EU, and we have pushed forward plans for a Savings and Investments Union that would integrate supervision of capital markets and break down national barriers for the likes of stock exchanges and clearinghouses. The other major challenge we face is trade. The Commission has taken steps to deepen partnerships with trusted allies, partners and friends, which is an essential step in today’s uncertain geopolitical climate. We have in recent weeks secured trade deals with the United States as well as with Mexico and the Mercosur bloc of Latin American countries. I urge everyone in this House who believes in making our Union stronger to support these trade deals as they, and others, will help businesses across the continent, opening up our markets and diversifying our exports. The Mercosur deal alone opens up a market of over 280 million people for European exports, while the U.S. trade deal saves trade flows, saves jobs in Europe and opens up a new chapter in EU-U.S. relations. MIGRATION Señoras y señores diputados, Europe remains a place of safe refuge for those fleeing conflict and climate change. But I am of the firm belief that migration needs to be managed. That is why, after the launch of the Migration and Asylum Pact, we created a plan to streamline deportations, toughen penalties for rejected migrants who do not leave the bloc, and create hubs in countries outside the EU to house people awaiting deportation. Migration is often exploited by populists for political gain. But we want to create a system that supports those with a genuine asylum claim while making clear the rules on forced returns, and incentivizing voluntary returns. We also want to continue attracting talent from across the globe in areas where Europe is a world leader, such as in the life sciences and biotech spheres. Migration is a key issue for European citizens, but there are others. The latest Eurobarometer survey shows that the No. 1 issue Europeans want the EU institutions to resolve is the cost of living crisis. Across the continent, families are struggling to pay for homes, and this Commission is determined to do everything in its power to ease the pressure they are facing.  Migration is a key issue for European citizens. | Gene Medi/NurPhoto via Getty Images Early next year, we will present Europe’s first-ever European Affordable Housing Plan, which will aim to accelerate the construction of new homes, the renovation of existing buildings, and ensure no one sleeps on the streets by 2030. To do so, we will move to put in new measures to limit speculation, introduce regulations for short-term rentals in stressed housing markets, and cut red tape to boost public and private investments in the construction of new homes. People are also concerned about their energy bills and, here, the Commission is taking action. We must never forget Putin’s deliberate use of gas as a weapon, and that is why the EU will phase out Russian gas by 2027 thanks to the REPowerEU roadmap. As part of our deal with Washington, we will increase our energy imports from the U.S. over the next three years, a plan that is fully compatible with our medium- and long-term policy to diversify our energy sources and part of our commitment to the green agenda that so many in this House, myself included, fully support. That is why we have drawn up the Grids Package, which will come out later this year and aims to turbocharge investment in power networks, which is the key bottleneck in the uptake of more renewables. ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE Signore e signori, deputati, The time is coming when artificial intelligence will match human thinking. That is why this week we published a report looking at the challenges and opportunities of AI. In Europe, we must take a leading role in shaping high-impact technologies. We will make sure there is smart yet strategic regulation while creating the right incentives, including funding and investment, to prevent AI and other technologies from becoming destabilizing forces. But we must not forget our traditional industries. The automotive sector is a critical pillar of the European economy, supporting more than 13 million jobs. The industry is facing increased competition from those who have benefited from unfair subsidies, and we have taken big steps to ensure this critical sector remains competitive and made in Europe. With our Automotive Action Plan, we set a strong course for building European batteries and ensuring our companies are the technological leaders in autonomous driving. At the same time, we have made big strides in maintaining our climate goals while giving our companies the necessary flexibility to stay competitive. THE EU BUDGET Panie i panowie, posłowie, We want a stronger European Union, stronger member states, and stronger regional and city governments, and we will work with local leaders — those closest to Europe’s citizens — to ensure they get the funds they need.  Cohesion Funds have helped build our Union with bridges and railways, public sports halls and libraries. Our cohesion policy is a central pillar of the European Union, and we will ensure that it continues to bridge gaps between regions, while also earmarking funds for the cities in which nearly three-quarters of all Europeans live. But we also want to protect and promote one of the most important elements of Europe, its agriculture and farmers. With our budget proposal we are safeguarding direct payments to farmers, boosting the funding available to rural communities, and giving more money to national governments to spend on agriculture. Farmers are essential to Europe, and what matters to Europeans matters to Europe. We need a continent that is united, safe and prosperous. I believe we can rise to the challenge. Long live Europe. Thanks to Victor Jack, Sam Clark, Max Griera, Pieter Haeck, Jordyn Dahl, Aitor Hernández-Morales and Helen Collis.

Slovakia could back a new EU sanctions package against Russia on Tuesday, Prime Minister Robert Fico said, as long as it first reaches a deal with European partners to cushion the effect of a proposed ban on Russian gas entering the bloc. Slovakia has blocked the sanctions package over Bratislava’s concerns that a European Commission proposal to end Russian gas imports from 2028 could damage the country’s economic interests. Slovakia gets the majority of its gas from Russia. “We need to win something in this fight, though it will not be a 100-0 result,” Fico told reporters in the Slovak capital on Saturday. His remarks were reported by Reuters. “We want political commitments, guarantees from partners and the Commission that this problem will not remain only on Slovakia’s back.” “We want to resolve this by Tuesday because tensions are rising on all sides,” he added, according to Bloomberg. He said a deal on the gas ban could mean Slovakia lifts its block on the sanctions deal when EU foreign ministers meet in Brussels on Tuesday. He noted that he had spoken to the leaders of Germany and Poland in recent days. He said the talks were exploring a cap on the fees Slovakia would pay for alternate supply routes. The new EU sanctions round, which was proposed last month by the Commission, targets Moscow’s revenues from energy, banking and its military industry.