WASHINGTON/BRUSSELS (own report) – The EU is still not responding with countermeasures to the latest tariff threats from US President Donald Trump. Indeed, Brussels is acting to block demands for an effective counter-offensive coming from France, the European Parliament and other quarters. In response to Trump’s latest announcement that he would impose tariffs of 30 per cent on all imports from the EU from 1 August, Commission President Ursula von der Leyen announced that Brussels would be “extending the suspension of our countermeasures until early August”. Von der Leyen had already ensured that a package of retaliatory tariffs on imports from the US worth some 21 billion US dollars would not be implemented. In adopting this passive stance she took into account the demands of the German government. Berlin wants to avoid an escalation of the conflict at all costs in order not to jeopardise German industry’s business relations with the US. Germany’s trade with the US far exceeds its trade any other country. Von der Leyen has even stepped back deliberately from planning other ways of giving the EU leverage, not least the introduction of EU digital taxes and expanding trade relations with China. Trump is now ruthlessly exploiting the resulting dependence. Read more

BERLIN/BRUSSELS/WASHINGTON (own report) – In the face of the Trump administration’s escalating tariff offensive, foreign policy advisors and economic experts in Berlin are urging significantly tougher countermeasures by the EU. While US tariffs on steel and aluminium imports are set to double this Wednesday, Brussels continues to limit itself to threats without actually implementing the counter-tariffs. This is completely inadequate, according to foreign and economic policy researchers at the German Council on Foreign Relations (DGAP). In order to put a stop to the US trade warfare it is, they say, necessary to “meet force with force”. The situation demands not only the implementation of counter-tariffs but also export restrictions on vital products. For example, the United States depends heavily on Dutch-made lithography equipment used in semiconductor production. The EU must, they say, even take the risk of causing widespread instability on the financial markets. This may be the only scenario that can make the Trump administration back down. These calls for a more aggressive response go hand in hand with ambitious long-term demands: the EU should assume the role of an independent global power. Read more

BERLIN/BRUSSELS (own report) – Thanks to the recent weakness of the US dollar the euro could “play a greater international role” as it gains importance in the global financial system. This view is being advanced by Christine Lagarde, President of the European Central Bank (ECB). As Lagarde stated last week, the US dollar’s share of global currency reserves has fallen to 58 per cent, the lowest since 1994. In the current weakness of the dollar she sees as an opportunity for the euro. Bewildered by Donald Trump’s economic policies, both private investors and governments may be motivated to keep their reserves in euros. However, the Eurozone would still need, said Lagarde, a “solid and credible geopolitical foundation” for this enhanced role – a foundation cemented with strong military capabilities. She went on to say that the European Union would finally have to create the long-promised single capital market and gain greater effectiveness by widening the scope of majority decision-making. Parallel to Lagarde’s ambitious plans for Europe’s economy, EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen is advocating “European independence” from the United States as the next “major European project”. This, again, would mean “a leading role in the global economy of tomorrow”. Read more

WASHINGTON/BRUSSELS/BERLIN (own report) - Internal contradictions are hampering an EU response to the unprecedented tariffs being imposed by the United States. The first tranche of import tariffs came into force on Saturday and more are to follow on Wednesday, hitting stock markets very hard. Share prices have plummeted not only in economies that are key trading partners of the US, such as Japan and Germany, but also in the United States itself. In fact more than six trillion US dollars have been wiped out in just two days. The dollar is also weakening. President Donald Trump has made a “huge mistake” with his tariff wall, says the President of the German Institute for Economic Research (DIW), Marcel Fratzscher. Trump will, he argues, “get the short straw,” which is why he advises the EU to stand together and fight back. However, Brussels has so far showed little inclination, having postponed the implementation of retaliatory tariffs it announced not even against the latest steel tariffs but against those already imposed earlier on Europe. The backsliding results not least from objections to countermeasures by several member states that fear significant losses. Their position is that they would have more to lose than the United States in the event of an escalation. Other countermeasures targeted at US tech corporations are being considered. These, too, have so far been blocked, especially by Italy. The Meloni government maintains particularly close relations with the Trump administration. Read more

BERLIN/WASHINGTON (own report) - The outgoing German government sees the mass dismissal of scientists in certain fields by the Trump administration as an opportunity to bring “the best minds in the world” to Germany. As the Minister of Education and Research, Cem Özdemir, explains, Berlin must “make it clear” that leading researchers from the United States are “welcome in Germany” if they “no longer see any prospects for themselves to research freely” in the United States. Özdemir does not want this invitation to be understood as “poaching”. He prefers the term “brain circulation”. In the US, thousands of academics have now been fired because they are working in research fields that the Trump administration does not want to be addressed, such as climate or vaccination research. According to the Max Planck Society, there has already been a significant increase in applications from American scientists. The attempt to attract these specialists to Germany comes at a time when major German science organisations are warning that they are falling behind internationally due to insufficient funding and excessive bureaucracy. In addition, German academics are worried about their freedom of expression. Especially in connection with conflict in the Middle East, heavy-handed pressure to conform is being exerted by the Germany authorities. Read more

WASHINGTON/BERLIN (own report) – Now in power, the Trump team continues to support the AfD and other far-right parties across Europe. And the new administration in Washington is openly threatening to annex territory belonging to Denmark, an EU member state. While tech oligarch Elon Musk, a close backer of US President Donald Trump, was cheering on the AfD’s election campaign at the party’s kick-off event on Saturday, news spread that Trump has already warned Copenhagen of concrete coercive measures if it does not voluntarily cede Greenland to the United States. Trump has also floated the idea of mass deportations to “clean out” the Gaza Strip. The territory would then be open to integration into a “Greater Israel”. Resistance by Colombia to receiving mass deportations of Latin American refugees fleeing poverty was quelled by Trump, at least temporarily, after he threatened to ruin the Colombian economy by imposing coercive measures. However, an emergency Latin American summit has been convened for Thursday to discuss possible countermeasures. Germany, economically now highly dependent on the US export market, is so far signalling compliance. Washington’s policy of brute force against friend and foe alike is driven by the desire to maintain its dwindling global dominance. Read more

WASHINGTON/BERLIN (own report) - In his video address to the World Economic Forum in Davos, newly incumbent US President Donald Trump reiterated his threat to impose painful tariffs on imports into the United States. Indeed, he now declares that businesses from other countries should invest in the US. Anyone who refuses to do so but wants to sell products manufactured outside the US will, he declares, have to face high tariffs. While Canada, for example, is discussing serous retaliation, including an oil embargo, German politicians and business representatives along with the EU leaders have been arguing for concessions to Washington. The reason for this stance is that German industry is highly dependent on doing business with the US. The major alternative would be to ramp up trade relations with China. But this path has been closed by the EU on political grounds. Several economic think-tanks have been predicting serious damage to German industry if the tariffs are indeed imposed and warning that a tariff scenario should be avoided at all cost. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen is particularly keen to appease Trump. She wants to avoid confrontation by welcoming even greater imports of US liquefied natural gas. This coincides with the new US administration’s goal to achieve a massive hike in LNG output as part of a strategy aimed, in the words of Secretary of State Marco Rubio, at “energy dominance”. Read more

WASHINGTON/BERLIN (own report) - The new US administration has offered the AfD and other extreme right-wing parties from around Europe a stage for their further normalisation and for transatlantic networking. This is the significance of their invitation to President Donald Trump’s inauguration. Of the many heads of state and government in the European Union, only the most right-wing, Giorgia Meloni, was invited to the major event, which attracted worldwide attention. Trump’s team also welcomed representatives from the Belgian Vlaams Belang, the Spanish Vox party, the French Reconquête! party and, from outside the EU, the British Reform UK party. The AfD was also represented in the US capital with two of its senior functionaries. Their presence at Trump’s inauguration will effectively counteract attempts by the political establishment to ostracise them. Indeed, they will also be integrated to some extent into the network of transatlantic relations. We can see the emergence of the vague outlines of a transatlantic hard right. The Trump administration, now the driving force behind this trend, is backed by tech oligarchs such as Elon Musk. These supporters are among the richest people in the world and some of them openly espouse anti-democratic ideologies. Read more

WASHINGTON/BERLIN (own report) - US high-tech oligarch Elon Musk is topping his interventions in support of the AfD election campaign with a live chat with AfD spokesperson Alice Weidel this Thursday. The subject of the discussion, which Musk and the AfD are unanimously promoting, is above all “the AfD’s ideas for getting Germany fit for the future”, a Weidel spokesperson is quoted as saying. Musk has previously openly backed the party, just as he has spoken in support of ultra-right forces in other European countries, including the UK and Italy. The European far right had already enjoyed support from Donald Trump’s circle during Trump’s first presidency. The then US ambassador to Germany, Richard Grenell, for instance, abandoning all diplomatic reserve, declared in June 2018 that he “absolutely wants to strengthen other conservatives across Europe”. And, again in 2018, Trump’s former ‘chief strategist’ Steve Bannon tried to coordinate larger parties of the far right across Europe and help them achieve greater electoral success. Bannon may have failed back then, but since 2022, the US Republican’s Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) has become systematically rooted in Europe, linking European far-right forces to the US right via an offshoot based in Hungary. Read more

BERLIN/WASHINGTON/SAIPAN (own report) - The specifics of Julian Assange’s release turn a spotlight not only on the state of media freedom in the West but also on the continuation of Western colonial rule in parts of the Global South. The condition for dropping the legal case against Assange is that the founder of WikiLeaks pleads guilty to a violation of the 1917 US Espionage Act. This arrangement is unprecedented insofar as it is the first time that this act has been applied to journalistic publication of confidential US information. Assange pleaded in person before a US court in Saipan, the capital of the Northern Mariana Islands. This group of Pacific islands form a US territory whose inhabitants do not have the right to vote in presidential elections. Nor do they have a political representative in Washington entitled to vote in Congress. The same lack of suffrage is found on Guam, the southernmost of the Mariana Islands. Historically, Guam has been administratively separated and is still listed by the United Nations as a “Non-Self-Governing Territory”. These islands remain colonies to this day. Guam is a key US military base for its strategic deployment against China. Base Guam is also used by the German Bundeswehr. Read more