Neue Zürcher Zeitung, 24. Februar
«Dem tollpatschigen Deal-Maker Trump sind die Autokraten allemal überlegen, weil sie schon immer mit den Mitteln des Austricksens und Betrügens gespielt haben», sagt Herfried Münkler
Der Berliner Politologe sieht «den Westen» am Ende. An der Münchner Sicherheitskonferenz hätten die Amerikaner deutlich gemacht, dass sie die Europäer nur noch als Vasallen betrachteten.
Full text : https://kinzler.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/23-fevrier-1.pdf
The Economist, February 21
How far will he go : Donald Trump: the would-be king
America is fated to wage a titanic struggle over the power of the president
Full text : https://kinzler.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/21-fevrier-2.pdf
Link: https://www.economist.com/leaders/2025/02/20/donald-trump-the-would-be-king
The Wall Street Journal, February 21
Elon Musk’s Secret Conversations With Vladimir Putin
Regular contacts between world’s richest man and America’s chief antagonist raise security concerns; topics include geopolitics, business and personal matters
Extraits:
Elon Musk, the world’s richest man and a linchpin of U.S. space efforts, has been in regular contact with Russian President Vladimir Putin since late 2022.
The discussions, confirmed by several current and former U.S., European and Russian officials, touch on personal topics, business and geopolitical tensions.
At one point, Putin asked the billionaire to avoid activating his Starlink satellite internet service over Taiwan as a favor to Chinese leader Xi Jinping, said two people briefed on the request. (…)
Musk has forged deep business ties with U.S. military and intelligence agencies, giving him unique visibility into some of America’s most sensitive space programs. SpaceX, which operates the Starlink service, won a $1.8 billion classified contract in 2021 and is the primary rocket launcher for the Pentagon and NASA. Musk has a security clearance that allows him access to certain classified information. (…)
Musk didn’t respond to requests for comment. The billionaire has called criticism from some quarters that he has become an apologist for Putin “absurd” and has said his companies “have done more to undermine Russia than anything.”
On Friday, Musk responded derisively on X to the Journal’s story, without denying it. In one instance, he used two laughing emojis in response to a tweet that said, “Welp, the Swamp’s ‘Trump is Hitler’ didn’t work. Might as well give ‘Elon is a Russian agent’ a whirl.” (…)
One person aware of the conversations said the government faces a dilemma because it is so dependent on the billionaire’s technologies. SpaceX launches vital national security satellites into orbit and is the company NASA relies on to transport astronauts to and from the International Space Station.
“They don’t love it,” the person said, referring to the Musk-Putin contacts. The person, however, said no alerts have been raised by the administration over possible security breaches by Musk.
NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said Friday the WSJ report should prompt an investigation.
“If the story is true that there have been multiple conversations between Elon Musk and the president of Russia then I think that would be concerning, particularly for NASA, for the Department of Defense, for some of the intelligence agencies,” he said, speaking at a Semafor’s World Economy Summit. (…)
Musk has long had a fascination with Russia and its space and rocket programs. Walter Isaacson’s biography of Musk said the businessman traveled to Moscow in 2002 to negotiate the purchase of rockets for his fledgling space program, but passed out during a vodka-heavy lunch. The sale ultimately failed, though his Russian hosts gave Musk a bottle of vodka with his likeness superimposed on a drawing of Mars.
The billionaire’s conversations with Putin and Kremlin officials highlight his increasing inclination to stretch beyond business and into geopolitics. He has met several times and talked business with Javier Milei of Argentina, as well as former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, whom he defended in an acrimonious online debate.
Putin is on a different order of magnitude. The Russian leader has created an authoritarian system that oversees fraudulent elections and the assassinations of political opponents, for which President Biden called him a “killer.” With keys to one of the world’s most powerful nuclear arsenals and growing territorial ambitions in Europe, Putin has become the U.S.’s chief antagonist.
Labeling him a “despot,” the Treasury Department took the unusual step in 2022 of blacklisting him for invading Ukraine, putting him in the same company with North Korea’s Kim Jong Un, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and Alexander Lukashenko of Belarus.
In October 2022, Musk said publicly that he had spoken only once to Putin. He said on X that the conversation was about space, and that it occurred around April 2021.
But more conversations have followed, including dialogues with other high-ranking Russian officials past 2022 and into this year. One of the officials was Sergei Kiriyenko, Putin’s first deputy chief of staff, two of the officials said. What the two talked about isn’t clear. (…)
After the Russian invasion in February 2022, Musk at first made strong public statements of support for Kyiv. He posted “Hold Strong Ukraine,” flanked by Ukrainian flags on what was then still known as Twitter. Shortly after, he jokingly challenged Putin to one-on-one combat over “Україна,” the Ukrainian language name for the country.
He followed up by donating several hundred Starlink terminals to Ukraine. By July some 15,000 terminals were providing free internet access to broad swaths of the country destroyed by the Russian attacks.
Later that year, Musk’s view of the conflict appeared to change. In September, Ukrainian military operatives weren’t able to use Starlink terminals to guide sea drones to attack a Russian naval base in Crimea, the Black Sea peninsula Moscow had occupied since 2014. Ukraine tried to persuade Musk to activate the Starlink service in the area, but that didn’t happen, the Journal has reported.
His space company extended restrictions on the use of Starlink in offensive operations by Ukraine. Musk said later that he made the move because Starlink is meant for civilian uses and that he believed any Ukrainian attack on Crimea could spark a nuclear war.
His moves coincided with public and private pressure from the Kremlin. (…)
In the fall of 2022, political scientist Ian Bremmer, founder of New York-based consulting firm Eurasia Group, wrote on Twitter that Musk had told him he had spoken with Putin and Kremlin officials about Ukraine. “He also told me what the Kremlin’s red lines were,” he wrote.
Bremmer wrote in a newsletter to subscribers that Musk had relayed to him a message from Putin that Russia would secure Crimea and Ukrainian neutrality “no matter what,” and that it would respond to a Ukrainian invasion of Crimea with a nuclear strike. Musk said that “everything needed to be done to avoid that outcome,” Bremmer wrote.
Musk has publicly denied he said any of those things to Bremmer. (…)
n the past year, Musk and Russia’s interests have increasingly overlapped. Apart from Russia’s use of X for disinformation and Musk’s outspoken opposition to aid to Kyiv, Ukrainian officials said earlier this year that Russian forces occupying the country’s eastern and southern swaths had started using Starlink to enable secure communications and extend the range of their drones.
Russian troops also began using Starlink terminals, brought in through third countries, at a massive scale, undermining one of Ukraine’s few battlefield advantages. Musk has said on X that to the best of his knowledge, no terminals had been sold directly or indirectly to Russia, and that the terminals wouldn’t work inside Russia.
Pentagon officials have said the military was working with Ukraine and Starlink to address the issue, and described SpaceX as a great partner in those efforts. People familiar with the situation have said controlling who is using Starlink in Ukraine is difficult. (…)
As the year progressed, Musk became more preoccupied with the presidential election. (…)
https://www.wsj.com/world/russia/musk-putin-secret-conversations-37e1c187
The Kyiv Post, 20 février
ANALYSIS: Untested Trump Team Given Lesson in Diplomacy By Elite Kremlin Negotiators
The Russian delegation brought a collective 76 years of high-level government service to the table in Riyadh compared to that of the US representatives whose experience was measured in weeks.
Full text :
The first-ever formal face-to-face talks between top Kremlin officials and US President Donald Trump’s negotiating team in Saudi Arabia ended in a diplomatic defeat for Washington as Russia doubled down on demands that amounted to a call for Ukrainian capitulation to end its three-year-old full-scale invasion while flatly rejecting mild concessions the US asked for.
During the talks, US delegation leader Secretary of State Marc Rubio proposed a moratorium on civilian energy grid strikes by both Russia and Ukraine.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov in comments following the meetings said the US suggestion was unnecessary as Russia’s armed forces hit only Ukrainian military targets and have never attacked Ukrainian civilian infrastructure.
Less than 12 hours after the talks had ended, Russia launched almost 150 kamikaze drones aimed at Ukraine’s energy grid, of which Ukraine’s Air Force said 143 were brought down by its air defenses and electronic warfare jamming.
Ukrainian news media reported some drones penetrated air defenses striking power grid infrastructure in Ukraine’s southern Odesa region, leaving at least 160,000 people without electricity and water. News reports said a hospital and a daycare center were hit but no injuries were reported.
Trump called a quick end to fighting in Ukraine a top priority for his administration before and after his re-election as US President. The failure of the US to engage with the Kremlin in the past, combined with Trump’s allegedly unique negotiating skills, would convince both Russia and Ukraine to make concessions for the sake of peace, Rubio said in later comments.
US media said Hegseth directed senior Defense Department leaders to plan for cuts that could slash the defense budget by eight percent annually, or some $290 billion within the next five years.
But Lavrov, speaking to the Ria Novosti Russian state media outlet on Thursday, signaled little willingness from the Kremlin even to consider terms US officials have proposed. A critical feature of the Trump administration’s plan for a ceasefire – an international peacekeeping force, drawn mostly from NATO members and deployed to Ukraine at European expense – is absolutely unacceptable to Russia, Lavrov said.
Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova signaled a hardening of a longstanding Kremlin position that Ukraine must never become a NATO member during a Wednesday press conference, telling reporters that Russia would not be satisfied with a peace treaty simply banning Ukraine from ever joining the Atlantic alliance.
If America wants Russia to cease hostilities in Ukraine, then NATO must formally cancel its Bucharest 2008 declaration that said Ukraine could be considered for membership, once its military improved its operations and equipment to NATO standards, Zakharova said. There was no immediate public response to the Kremlin demand from the alliance’s Brussels HQ.
On Tuesday the Russian representative to the UN, Vasily Nebenzya, expanded Russian claims to Ukrainian territory during a speech in New York. He demanded Kyiv “must cede” those parts of the Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia, Luhansk, and Kherson regions not yet occupied by Russia, become a “totally demilitarized” state and agree not just to stay out of NATO, but never to enter a defensive alliance with any country.
US officials in the run-up to the Riyadh talks had suggested future Ukrainian security might be maintained by peacekeepers plus arms transfers and training that would make the Ukrainian army powerful enough to deter a repeat Russian invasion supported by security guarantees from allied states, other than the US.
Russia dispatched a “blue ribbon” delegation to Saudi Arabia led by Lavrov alongside President Vladimir Putin’s senior international affairs advisor, Yuri Ushakov, and national sovereign wealth fund manager Kirill Dmitriev.
Lavrov has been Russia’s senior diplomat and Putin’s top international advisor for more than 30 years – one of Putin’s longest-serving associates. Ushakov and Dmitriev are the Kremlin’s senior advisors for diplomatic protocol and foreign energy negotiations respectively.
Images from Wednesday’s Riyadh meeting showed Russian businessman Dmitry Rybolovlev, an oligarch responsible for helping Trump out of a debt crunch by purchasing a Trump Palm Beach property valued at $40 million for $95 million in 2008, was a member of the Kremlin delegation and present at the talks.
The three Americans sent by the White House were, compared to their Russian counterparts, untested and unseasoned in top-level diplomatic practice.
The leader of the US delegation, Secretary of State Marc Rubio became America’s senior diplomat in late January 2025, and before that had never represented the US President in any capacity. Trump’s National Security advisor, Mike Waltz, and his designated Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff, similarly, have limited experience in international negotiations and none in top-level state-to-state talks.
Kyiv Post reported on this potentially yawning experience gap before the Riyadh talks.
The Russian Resumés:
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov
The 73-year-old career diplomat was born in Moscow and graduated from the most elite university of the Soviet Union, the Moscow State Institute of International Relations (MGIMO) in 1972. He speaks English fluently and reportedly has a good command of Sinhala, Dhivehi and French.
He served in various UN posts and at Foreign Ministry headquarters from 1981 to 1994 and then became the Russian Federation ambassador to the UN. He was named by Putin as Minister of Foreign Affairs in March 2004 – making him one of the most experienced foreign ministers in the world. Lavrov oversaw Kremlin foreign policy during Russia’s invasion of Georgia in 2008, Ukraine in 2014, intervention in Syria in 2015, and Ukraine in 2022.
Lavrov’s most significant career successes are probably preventing Western intervention in Georgia and Ukraine and keeping China neutral in Russia’s wars against Ukraine. Russian diplomatic defeats during his tenure include the loss of Kremlin influence over Georgia and Ukraine in the early 2000s, the sidelining of NATO-led recognition of Kosovo’s independence and its expansion eastward. He comes to the Saudi Arabia talks with close to 30 years of experience in top-level diplomacy.
Putin’s Aide for Foreign Policy Yuri Ushakov
The 77-year-old was born in Moscow and also graduated from the Moscow State Institute of International Relations (MGIMO) in 1972. He speaks English at a diplomatic level and reportedly understands Danish.
He served in various diplomatic posts in Western Europe up to 1998 when he was appointed Russia’s ambassador to the US, in which capacity he served ten years. After four years in Kremlin assignments, Putin appointed Ushakov as chief aide for international affairs. A key role that has acted as Putin’s institutional memory during summit talks. Ushakov has held that job since 2012. He comes to the Saudi Arabia talks with 22 years of experience in top-level diplomacy.
Russia’s sovereign wealth fund chief Kirill Dmitriev
Dmitriev, 49, is a native of Kyiv. He studied at Harvard (MBA, Business) and Stanford (BA, Economics) in the 1990s, the latter degree with honors. He speaks English not only fluently but to a professional standard in academic and financial areas. He worked at the trading company Goldman Sachs and McKinsey before returning to Moscow in 2000.
In 2011 Putin recruited Dmitriev to run Russia’s sovereign wealth fund with the mandate to diversify Russian national earnings beyond petroleum products. Russian state capital has been used in institutional investments worldwide, but especially in developed nations and in oil-producing countries in the Middle East. According to the Reuters news agency, he led Kremlin links with Trump’s team when Trump was first elected president in 2016 and has met several times with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. He comes to the Saudi Arabia talks with 14 years of top-level diplomatic experience.
The US Team
US Secretary of State Marc Rubio
Rubio, 53, is the son of Cuban immigrants and the only senior member of the US delegation speaking a foreign language fluently (Spanish). He is a graduate of regional universities in Florida and first worked as a lawyer. In 2000 he was elected to the Florida legislature and in 2010 was elected to the US Senate. He was a member of the Foreign Affairs Committee and, during that tenure, advocated US opposition to authoritarian regimes and particularly the normalization of US relations with Cuba.
During a failed 2016 Presidential bid he was an outspoken Trump critic, at one point calling Trump “the most vulgar person to ever aspire to the presidency.” He has since reversed that position and as Secretary of State has stuck closely to Trump’s rhetoric. In early February he said a Trump suggestion to evict 2.2 million Palestinians from Gaza so that their former homes might be developed as boutique real estate made excellent sense, calling the idea “Make Gaza Beautiful Again.”
In a Monday opinion piece, Politico said that Rubio’s subordination of long-held principles in the current Trump administration has undermined his influence with the White House, leading the article with: “It is becoming increasingly clear that Marco Rubio is Secretary of State in name only… Democrats, who backed Rubio for secretary of State hoping he would be a moderating force in the administration, say they increasingly worry Rubio does not have the president’s ear and almost no sway over (world’s richest man and close Trump associate Elon) Musk.”
Rubio has served in his senior US executive branch foreign policy position for less than a month.
US National Security Council Advisor Mike Waltz
Waltz, 51, like Rubio, also is from Florida. He was educated at the Virginia Military Institute and served in the Army for 26 years, primarily in the National Guard. When not on duty as a guardsman he worked as an advisor to the US Defense Secretary. His main research specialization areas were Southeast Asia and narcotics trafficking, in which capacity he from time to time attended Defense Department meetings with international representatives.
In 2018 he was elected to Congress as a Florida representative and served three consecutive terms, including on the Foreign Affairs and Intelligence Committees. In debate, he advocated strong US opposition to China, US military intervention in Mexico to deter narcotics smuggling, and opposed substantial US assistance to Ukraine. A book he wrote about his military experience details negotiations as an on-the-ground “Green Beret” working with Afghan tribesmen. Before the Riyadh meetings, he had never represented the US at top-level talks.
White House Senior Middle East Envoy Steve Witkoff
The third member of the US delegation, real estate billionaire Steve Witkoff, is a longtime Trump associate, campaign contributor, and golfing partner. He helped broker a shaky ceasefire in Gaza with leaders of Hamas and Israel in talks brokered in Qatar.
In mid-February Witkoff went to Moscow to help facilitate a prisoner swap trading Russian cybercrime kingpin Alexander Vinnik for US school teacher Marc Fogel. Vinnik had been under arrest and was facing possible decades of prison time for major fraud charges. Fogel was serving a 14-year Russian prison sentence on marijuana possession charges.
Trump claimed the exchange as a diplomatic victory for the US and praised Witkoff for skilled negotiations. Before the Gaza talks and the Vinnik-Fogel prisoner trade, Witkoff had never represented the US government at top-level international talks.
https://www.kyivpost.com/analysis/47435
The Wall Street Journal, February 18
Has Elon Musk Become Too Big to Tame?
With President Trump in his corner, the world’s richest man seemingly has few checks and balances these days
Extraits:
The word of the day around Washington has become “accountable.”
For Elon Musk, the word refers to taming a federal bureaucracy that has run amok.
For others, it is about Musk himself: Has the world’s richest man, adviser to President Trump, leader of six companies from Tesla to SpaceX, become too big to be held accountable?
The question arises as he stands in the West Wing victoriously beside the president, after having written big checks to support Republicans, successfully fought their political battles and amplified their messages on his social-media platform, X.
The debate takes on greater urgency after he joined Vice President JD Vance in questioning the legitimacy of the courts’ power to rule on actions taken by Musk’s government efficiency efforts at DOGE. And as Musk challenges the integrity of Democratic members of Congress voicing concerns he is overstepping.
“All aspects of the government must be fully transparent and accountable to the people,” Musk posted on X this past week, one of many tweets about the government, including many that dealt with rooting out supposed “fraud.”
Since Trump entered office last month and Musk’s role leading DOGE took center stage, the president has been asked often about what steps are being taken to ensure there aren’t conflicts of interest for the “First Buddy,” whose companies operate in heavily regulated industries and benefit from government spending and incentives.
And Trump’s response remains the same: Musk knows to avoid conflicts. “First of all he wouldn’t do it,” Trump told reporters Thursday. “And second of all, we’re not going to let him do anything where there’s a conflict of interest.”
Trump added that he is personally checking Musk’s work to make sure there aren’t conflicts.
Democrats aren’t so confident.
“Given the scale of your power to carry out sweeping administrative policies and your vast personal financial interests, the American people deserve to know how you stand to profit from your role in the Trump Administration,” several Democratic members of the Senate and House wrote in a letter this past week calling on Musk to be more transparent. (…)
“The louder that any given politician yells about cutting government waste, the more corrupt they are,” Musk posted. “Good rule of thumb.”
When it was noted on X that Musk wore a black “Make America Great Again” hat during his Oval Office appearance in apparent violation of the Hatch Act, a federal law that limits political activities of federal employees, a supporter responded with a meme involving a pacifier and the message: “Shhhhh…Here’s your binky.” (…)
To which Musk replied with one of his favorites: a laughing tears emoji.
The question of Trump’s power to go through with Musk’s proposed cuts is at the center of a growing political and legal fight. As judges pause the administration’s actions, Musk has lashed out to his more than 200 million X followers. “We are witnessing an attempted coup of American democracy by radical left activists posing as judges!” Musk posted. (…)
Conservatives in general have rallied to support Musk as unassailable, often suggesting that he is unimpeachable because of his wealth, estimated at around $400 billion. They note Musk personally campaigned for Trump on the commitment of helping slash the government.
“He’s so rich, he’s so removed from the potential financial influence of it,” Chris Sununu, the former Republican governor of New Hampshire, told CNN late last year
Influential podcaster Joe Rogan, an ally of Musk, said something similar this past week, dismissing concerns being raised about Musk’s intentions.
“He has $400 billion, I’m telling you, he’s not going to steal your money—that’s not what he’s doing,” Rogan said. “He’s a super genius that has been f—ed with, OK, and when you’ve been f—ed with by these nitwits that hide behind three-letter agencies, and you’re dealing with one of the smartest people alive and he helps Donald Trump get into office and he goes, ‘I want to find out what kind of corruption is really around.’” (…)
Among the lawsuits challenging Trump’s actions, is one filed by 14 state attorneys general looking to stop Musk, claiming the president has “delegated virtually unchecked authority” to him without Congress’s authorization and “meaningful” supervision.
Early Friday, Musk responded: “I’m just a volunteer tech support guy and have the T-shirt to prove it.”
The Economist, February 17
Hungary for it : Will Europe return to Putin’s gas?
A deal with the devil would boost the continent’s miserable economy
Full text :
The first proper winter in three years had already reignited energy debates. With temperatures frigid and Asian competition for supplies fierce, the spot price at the Dutch Transfer Title Facility (TTF), Europe’s gas-trading hub, hit €58 ($61) per megawatt hour (MWh) on February 10th, its highest in two years (see chart). Then, on February 12th, came Donald Trump’s announcement that negotiations over an end to Russia’s war in Ukraine would start “immediately”—a statement that financial markets appear to be taking seriously.
Little surprise, therefore, that some European officials are greedily eyeing Russian gas. Lower energy bills might revive moribund European industry and placate households. Jari Stehn of Goldman Sachs, a bank, has forecast that an end to the war could produce a 0.5% rise in European GDP, with most of that coming from cheaper natural gas. Renewed flows could also encourage Vladimir Putin to negotiate a peace deal and then stick to it, proponents suggest. Hungary and Slovakia are making the case. In a recent interview with The Economist, Friedrich Merz, who is likely soon to be chancellor of Germany, said that there would be no return to Russian gas “for the time being”, but conspicuously failed to rule out the possibility.
Any such deal would represent an astonishing turnaround. The European Commission’s position is that it is “not making any links” between the restart of Russian flows and any Ukrainian peace talks. Indeed, its stated ambition is to import no Russian gas or oil at all by 2027, so as to reduce dependence on its hostile neighbour. Most gas deliveries ceased in 2022, when Russia closed down Nord Stream 1, its main pipeline to Europe; another conduit, running through Ukraine, ceased to flow on January 1st this year. The EU now receives just 10% of its gas from Russia, down from 45% in 2021. Russia, meanwhile, cannot redirect most of its supplies, which leads to a heavy financial toll. In 2022 sales of the fuel accounted for 13% of its federal budget. Now they account for just 8%. In 2023 Gazprom, the country’s state-owned gas giant, posted its first loss since 1999.
Ultimately, the decision about whether to turn on the taps will be made by countries at both ends of the pipelines and those the conduits traverse: Russia, Germany and Ukraine, as well as a few other eastern European states. Their leaders will come under severe pressure from other countries, too. Who is likely to prevail?
At cruise speed the European Union consumes about 320bn cubic metres (bcm) of gas a year. The bloc’s storage capacity, at around 115 bcm, is equivalent to a third of that. These reserves were nearly full when winter started. Since then, cold weather and supply snags have forced the EU to burn more gas than expected. Its storage is now only 48% full, compared with 66% at the same time last year. High prices are pushing heavy users, such as chemical makers and smelters, to scale back. Industrial output across the bloc, already weak, is contracting further.
A bigger problem will arrive this summer. EU rules require storage to be 90% full by November 1st. It is typically replenished between April and October. This year Europe will have to buy more than usual—just when Asian importers are also rushing to restock. Little extra supply exists: a wave of liquefied natural gas (LNG) from America and Qatar is expected, but most will arrive next year. As a result, the price of gas to be delivered this summer is above that for next winter, an anomaly that makes it unprofitable to store the fuel. Germany’s gas regulator is mulling subsidies to encourage storage. Some countries want to relax the EU‘s storage target.
Hungary and Slovakia still receive piped Russian flows from Turkey; they and a few others, including Austria, probably also get regasified Russian LNG that flows through northern Europe. But they pay more for their fuel, supply of which is less certain than before. Resuming flows via Ukraine, which were paused at the start of the year, would help them. It would also push down prices across Europe by reducing competition for supplies. Since Mr Trump’s remarks about a negotiated peace, prices on the TTF have fallen by 9%. Just reinstating the 15bcm the Ukrainian conduit carried in 2023—well below its maximum—could bring TTF prices down by a third from their recent peak, says Anne-Sophie Corbeau of Columbia University. MUFG, a bank, suggests prices could halve again by 2026 were flows through Ukraine to rise from their low level in 2023.
Ukraine is adamant it will not renew its deal with Russia, but workarounds are being studied. Slovakia’s national gas firm is establishing a subsidiary in Ukraine and applying for a transport licence, which would enable shipments from Russia. There is a more extreme option, too: resuming sales via the Nord Stream 1 pipeline, which once transported 55 bcm a year to Europe, and perhaps even Nord Stream 2, a conduit of the same capacity that has never entered operation. The obstacles are formidable. Germany, which has been badly burned by its previous openness to Russian energy, would have to give its go-ahead. After sabotage, attributed to Ukrainian divers, three of Nord Stream’s four pipes require repair. This would cost hundreds of millions of dollars, says Mike Fulwood of the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies. The EU’s most Russia-wary members would lobby hard against greater dependence on the country’s energy.
Then there is the Trump factor. On the one hand, America’s president wants Europe to purchase more LNG from his country, as would happen in the absence of a Russian restart. The full return of Russian supplies might crush prices around the world, meaning that many American drillers would become unprofitable and billions of dollars of investment in LNG projects would suddenly be worthless. On the other hand, Donald Trump would like a Nobel peace prize, and the return of some Russian gas as part of a peace deal might seem a price worth paying. ■
https://www.economist.com/finance-and-economics/2025/02/16/will-europe-return-to-putins-gas
The Economist, February 17
Stand and deliver : Team Trump’s shakedown diplomacy
America has just tried to grab Ukraine’s vast mineral wealth
Extraits:
THE AMERICAN demand was brutal. President Volodymyr Zelensky had hoped to present his offer to give America access to Ukraine’s rare minerals directly to Donald Trump. When America’s treasury secretary, Scott Bessent, turned up in Kyiv a few days ahead of this weekend’s Munich Security Conference, Mr Zelensky then hoped he’d be talking about continued financial support. Instead, the Ukrainian president unexpectedly found himself presented with a memorandum. The proposal demanded his country’s mineral wealth in its entirety. Mr Zelensky had “an hour” to agree, according to three sources with knowledge of the exchange.
Unaccustomed to such blunt treatment, the Ukrainian president declined, and pushed the discussion to the Munich conference. There, the Americans pressed once more, demanding Ukraine pledge “$500bn worth” of natural resources as a back payment for military aid supposedly already delivered. By the end of Saturday, February 15th, the Ukrainian team had negotiated a stay of execution, and agreed to start a process of negotiation. At a press huddle in Munich, Mr Zelensky cautioned that the American proposal contained none of the security guarantees that Ukraine needs. “We can think about how to divide resources once security guarantees are clear,” he said.
The idea of opening up Ukraine’s rare-earth minerals to American companies originated in Mr Zelensky’s “victory plan”, a five-point vision he presented to then-President Joe Biden and candidate Mr Trump in October. The plan included a quid pro quo: Ukrainian resources in return for America helping Ukraine to build what it called “non-nuclear strategic deterrence”. The Biden administration viewed the plan as wildly unrealistic, not least its request for Tomahawk cruise missiles, and rejected it. Mr Trump, as it now transpires, was more enthusiastic about the idea, though he appears to have read only its first half.
Sitting on a geologic rock shield the size of Britain—it stretches from near the Belarusian border in the north-west to the Donbas in the east—Ukraine is thought to hold vast reserves of rare-earth minerals, now vital to high-tech manufacturing. The geology suggests rich deposits of beryllium, graphite, hafnium, germanium and gallium, which are used to make semiconductors, batteries, reactors and other high-tech equipment such as medical imagers. For the Trump administration, the main draws appear to be titanium and lithium.
Ukraine already supplies 4-7% of the world’s titanium, used for paint dyes and aerospace manufacturing, and holds as much as 10-20% of global reserves. The ore is mined from Soviet-era mining towns like Irshansk in Zhytomyr province (pictured). There are meanwhile four known deposits of lithium, critical for electric-vehicle battery production, within the territory Ukraine still controls. The most useful of these deposits, however, is located in Shevchenkivske in Donetsk province, just 5km from the current front line. Another sits in Berdiansk in Zaporizhia province, which is under Russian occupation. The Economist understands Russia may have offered a backchannel proposal to the Trump team for access to those resources.
Ukrainian metals like titanium could help America reduce its reliance on China and Russia. But extracting from new sites will require serious investment—and not all of it will be cost-effective. (…)
It is not immediately clear how Ukrainian law might allow for American control over mineral resources. According to the constitution, these belong to the Ukrainian people. (…)
All of this means that even if Ukraine does agree to Mr Trump’s demands, it will be some time before the American president could begin to see a dividend. “A very-best-case scenario for new extraction projects would be the end of his four-year term,” says Mr Nikolayenko. “That’s not to say that existing projects couldn’t be taken away from oligarchs, though they might have something to say about that.” ■
https://www.economist.com/europe/2025/02/16/team-trumps-shakedown-diplomacy
The Economist, February 17
Present at the destruction : Donald Trump’s assault on Europe
His invitation to Vladimir Putin to make a deal over Ukraine has thrown the transatlantic alliance into turmoil
(…) The paradox is that, despite these swirling anxieties, Europe and America both need each other. The Europeans are grappling with the fact that their principal security guarantor of 75 years is not just growing more distant, but, in some ways, is actively hostile. They are increasingly hedging against American retrenchment. But that is not something they will seek to bring about, if only for the cost of mounting a European-only defence against Russia, which one insider puts at 5-6% of GDP. The first course of action is, therefore, still to engage with Mr Trump, however madcap and rash his diplomacy.
More importantly, if Mr Trump truly wants a deal that will stick, he will need European aid and, perhaps, troops. And to give Europe the confidence to provide those, he will need to commit America to Europe’s security, rather than sign up to a Yalta-like carve-up. Rarely has the Munich conference seen such a frenzy. And yet the haggling, bullying and nail-biting that will determine the future of Ukraine and Europe has only just begun. ■
Full text : https://kinzler.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/17-fevrier-1.pdf
Link: https://www.economist.com/international/2025/02/16/donald-trumps-assault-on-europe
The Wall Street Journal, February 12
Is There a Constitutional Crisis?
Trump’s actions are aggressive, but they aren’t an executive coup.
Extraits:
Well, that was fast. The same people who predicted Donald Trump would be a dictator now say a “constitutional crisis” has already arrived, barely three weeks into his Presidency. They’re overwrought as usual, and readers may appreciate a less apocalyptic breakdown about Mr. Trump’s actions and whether they do or don’t breach the normal checks and balances.
Mr. Trump’s domestic-policy decisions so far strike us as falling into three categories. Most rest on strong legal ground. Some are legally debatable and could go either way in court. In still others Mr. Trump appears to be breaking current law deliberately to tee up cases that will go to the Supreme Court to restore what he considers to be constitutional norms. None of these is a constitutional crisis.
The first category includes the Administration’s decision to pause discretionary spending to ensure it complies with the President’s priorities. Democratic state Attorneys General say this is illegal, and Judge John McConnell on Monday agreed. The Administration is appealing, and judges can’t force a President to spend money that Congress has left to his discretion. (…)
A second category are decisions on more debatable legal ground, such as effectively dismantling the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and U.S. Agency for International Development. Congress established these agencies and it would have to act to eliminate them. Less clear is whether a President can order employees to cease doing their jobs.
Harvard law professor Hal Scott recently argued in these pages that the CFPB is operating illegally because Congress funded the agency with earnings from the Federal Reserve. Because the Fed has incurred losses since September 2022, Mr. Scott says the bureau should close unless Congress appropriates money for it. This argument is plausible.
As for USAID, a federal judge has temporarily blocked the Administration’s plans to wind down its operations to have more time to consider the merits. Many Administration actions raise novel legal questions. This bucket also includes whether employees with Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency can obtain access to Treasury payment systems.
Mr. Trump is stretching laws to see what he can get away with, but so have other recent Presidents. Barack Obama touted his pen-and-a-phone strategy of ruling by decree. “So sue me,” he taunted House Republicans. The Supreme Court blocked his Clean Power Plan and DAPA, which protected millions of undocumented immigrants from deportation.
Joe Biden exceeded his power by canceling student loans, mandating vaccines and banning evictions, among other overreaches. After the Supreme Court blocked his first loan write-off, he declared “that didn’t stop me” and used other illegal means. (…)
The third category of Trump actions are clear violations of current law with a goal of inviting legal challenges to get to the Supreme Court. This includes his order barring birthright citizenship, and another dismissing a member of the National Labor Relations Board. Mr. Trump believes he’ll win on both issues because he thinks previous Supreme Court rulings were wrongly decided.
Mr. Trump may be wrong, but there is no constitutional crisis as the cases make their way through the courts. Liberals are flogging a recent tweet by JD Vance that “judges aren’t allowed to control the executive’s legitimate power.” But even liberal judges agree with this in principle as they interpret the proper separation of constitutional powers.
The real crisis would come if Mr. Trump defies a Supreme Court ruling. If that happens, and it could, the left may wish it hadn’t squandered its credibility by crying wolf so often about crises that didn’t exist. Readers can relax in the meantime.
New Financial Times, February 11
Elon Musk’s assault on the US federal bureaucracy
Supposed efficiency drive is providing cover for a power grab by the executive branch
Full article :
In a 4am social media post last week, Elon Musk called his project to hack back the US federal bureaucracy the “revolution of the people”. What the world’s richest man is attempting looks, in reality, less like a popular uprising than a power grab by the executive branch, backed by President Donald Trump. Dismantling federal agencies, freezing funding and pushing staff to resign goes far beyond a mere restructuring. It aims to shift the constitutional separation and balance of powers.
Parts of the US bureaucracy are no doubt bloated and inefficient, and need modernisation. Most American voters support this idea. Reforming creaking bureaucracies often requires radical efforts. Yet it also needs detailed planning, transparency and oversight. All these are missing from what the Trump administration is now doing.
The Department of Government Efficiency that Musk heads is not a government agency established by Congress but an opaque body created by executive order. Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer has argued it has no authority to make spending decisions or shut down programmes — let alone entire agencies.
In their quest to find savings and root out “woke” policies, Musk’s team of 20-something coders have nonetheless managed to infiltrate agencies including the US Treasury and the state and health departments; the $40bn USAID agency has in effect closed down. Tens of thousands of civil servants have been fired or suspended. Doge operatives have accessed troves of data, from intelligence records to employees’ bank details and health records, raising risks for privacy and national security. Handing such power to a corporate boss with an interest in shaping policies and regulation creates clear conflicts.
Musk has claimed he can save $2tn from the federal budget — more than half of all discretionary spending. Yet that is unrealisable without cutting back programmes that millions of Americans rely on. Rather than a purringly efficient bureaucracy, the result is more likely to be a federal government with huge holes hacked out of it at Doge’s whim. Beyond America, the gutting of foreign aid is already wrecking US soft power and endangering millions of vulnerable people.
As well as vandalising the machinery of government, however, this supposed efficiency drive appears to be being used as cover to bolster the power of the executive branch to drive through its priorities and neuter opposition. The Musk team’s tactics in government departments resemble his takeover of Twitter, where he fired 80 per cent of the workforce, sweeping away potential critics and opponents — and many who really understood how the organisation worked.
The Doge team’s efforts to take control of payment systems dovetail, too, with the administration’s attempt to freeze hundreds of billions of dollars of federal grants and loans, later rescinded after it was temporarily halted by a judge. Both look like a bid to challenge a 1974 law that makes it illegal for the president to refuse to spend money that Congress has appropriated — tilting the balance of power from the legislative to the executive branch.
With Congress largely supine, it is falling to the courts to defend the constitutional order. But the administration’s flurry of orders and actions make it hard for pro-democracy activists and judges to keep up. Vice-president JD Vance has suggested the president could disregard court rulings that attempted to stop him from firing civil servants. Like populist regimes elsewhere, the administration might also seek to blame judges for obstructing its agenda, which could erode public trust in the judiciary. Yet sacrificing the rule of law to government efficiency is a good way to end up with neither.
https://www.ft.com/content/f7665ee1-dcda-4c35-9209-735094054482
The Wall Street Journal, February 10
Fact vs. Trump Fiction in Panama
The president claims Chinese soldiers are working in the canal. That’s nonsense.
Extraits:
Secretary of State Marco Rubio went on Fox last week to cite a “Hong Kong shipping vessel” in the Panama Canal as evidence that China is exercising “effective control” of the waterway. He was wrong on two fronts. First, the Panamanian-flagged ship belonged to a South Korean company. Second, the 47-year-old U.S.-Panama treaty governing “the permanent neutrality and operation” of the canal means ships from any country are allowed to use it.
Mr. Rubio knows this. He loudly denounced Cuba’s effort to sneak arms through the canal to North Korea in 2013. But ever since President Trump announced on Dec. 21 that he wants to tear up the treaty and reclaim the canal for Americans, fiction has ruled the U.S. narrative.
It may be that by bullying one of the few U.S. allies in the region, Mr. Trump intends only to negotiate the toll rates that the canal authority charges all its customers and reduce China’s presence in Panama. Let’s hope so.
Panama hasn’t violated the treaty and says it won’t relinquish the canal. Retaking it would require economic or military force and a U.S. occupation. Marching on a weaker, law-abiding democracy would be Putinesque. It would also be a broken promise from a president who ran on a pledge to curtail foreign adventures. If U.S. moral authority in the world matters at all to Republicans, they might want to pump the brakes on this one. (…)
Chinese soldiers aren’t “lovingly, but illegally, operating the Panama Canal,” as Mr. Trump claimed on Christmas Day. “The United States” didn’t lose “38,000 lives in building” the canal—another Trump whopper. The number of total deaths, according to historian David McCullough, was 5,609. About 350 were “white Americans,” he wrote in “The Path Between the Seas.” Most of those who perished were migrant workers from the West Indies. (…)
China does present cyber threats to the canal, the ambassadors said. But such attacks “can be launched from anywhere in the world.” That’s why, “in the spirit of upholding the Neutrality Treaty,” the canal authority recently signed a cybersecurity agreement with U.S. Southern Command.
The antidote to China’s “creeping commercial expansion” in Panama, the ambassadors wrote, is greater “U.S. commercial interest and activity.” Instead, the Trump administration is making stuff up, swinging a big stick, and humiliating a friend. This is strengthening the anti-American left in the country. That’s not diplomacy. It’s insanity.
The Wall Street Journal, February 8, pay wall
Government Keeps Going Too Far
The common thread that ties men on women’s sports teams and Musk’s indiscriminate cutting.
Full article: https://kinzler.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/8-fevrier-2.pdf
The Wall Street Journal, February 6, pay wall
The U.S. Has Rights Over the Panama Canal
Marco Rubio is right. The Neutrality Treaty authorizes America to enforce a prohibition against ‘foreign operation.’
Extraits:
In his inauguration speech, President Trump accused Panama of violating the terms under which the U.S. handed over the Panama Canal. “We’re taking it back,” he declared. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, during a visit to Panama this week, told President José Raúl Mulino that “absent immediate changes,” the U.S. will “take measures necessary to protect its rights” in the canal. The U.S. has a serious legal basis on which to contest—including by military intervention—what it regards as impermissible foreign influence in the canal.
President Jimmy Carter signed two treaties with Panama in 1977: One provided for the gradual transfer of the strategic waterway from the U.S. to Panama by 1999, and the other established a permanent “regime of neutrality” over the canal.
The regime of neutrality mandates equal access for all nations to peaceful transit, “just, equitable and reasonable” tolls and fees, exclusive Panamanian operation of the canal, and no foreign military or defense presence in the country. American shippers have objected to the canal’s toll system, but because it applies to all countries equally, it’s hard to see it as a treaty violation.
But Messrs. Trump and Rubio are correct that there may be other violations of the neutrality regime. As Assistant Secretary of State Douglas J. Bennet Jr. testified during Senate ratification hearings in 1977, the treaty prohibits not only “the garrisoning of foreign troops” but also “foreign operation of the canal.”
A Hong Kong-based company currently operates ports on both sides of the canal. In 1997, when the company first won contracts to manage the ports, Hong Kong was still a British territory. A few months later the U.K. handed Hong Kong over to China, and two years after that the U.S. handed the canal over to Panama. In the ensuing decades, China has cemented its control over Hong Kong far beyond what was contemplated in its agreement with the U.K., eventually imposing a rigid “national security” law in 2020.
In a communist regime, distinctions between private and government-owned firms are matters of degree, not kind. China has an official strategy known as “military-civilian fusion,” aimed at integrating the country’s military and civilian sectors to advance the Chinese army. The country’s Belt and Road Initiative is a sprawling policy to strengthen its strategic influence overseas. Panama is an official signatory of the initiative, allowing China increased investment and influence. (…)
There may also be violations of the treaty’s prohibition on foreign troops or military infrastructure in the canal. This prohibition applies to naked violations like a People’s Liberation Army garrison, and to “informal forces,” as Dean Rusk, who served as secretary of state under John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson, explained in ratification hearings. Belligerent powers often seek to evade international legal limitations by disguising their actions in civilian clothes. Mr. Trump must determine if China’s civilian presence around the canal includes covert Chinese intelligence agents or security forces. (…)
The U.S. need not wait until canal operations are disrupted, or China unfurls the five-star red flag, to intervene. A 1977 joint statement from Carter and Panama’s Brig. Gen. Omar Torrijos made clear that Washington can “defend the Canal against any threat to the regime of neutrality.” Treaties don’t interpret themselves, and under this treaty each county decides for itself whether a violation has occurred. The Senate made clear that each party may take “unilateral action.”
The treaty also authorizes the use of military force. (…)
When Panama received the canal, it agreed to the condition that the U.S. would have considerable discretion to intervene over perceived threats to the neutrality of the waterway. Panama also knew that Carter wouldn’t always be the president. The U.S. has the right to use military force, but Mr. Trump shouldn’t resort to this option lightly.
Under diplomatic pressure from Messrs. Trump and Rubio, Mr. Mulino promised on Sunday not to renew Panama’s Belt and Road agreement with China and “study the possibility of terminating it early.” While this falls far short of addressing the Trump administration’s concerns, it may be an early sign that Panama will also be open to ending its contracts with the Chinese companies operating around the canal.
Mr. Kontorovich is a professor at George Mason University Scalia School of Law and a senior research fellow at the Heritage Foundation.
The Economist, February 3, pay wall
Lexington : Donald Trump’s Defining Decade
Will America’s president overcome the 1970s, or just refight its battles?
Extraits: https://kinzler.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/3-fevrier-3.pdf
Link : https://www.economist.com/united-states/2025/01/30/donald-trumps-defining-decade
New York Times, February 2, pay wall
The Six Principles of Stupidity
Article intégral : https://kinzler.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/2-fevrier-1.pdf
Link : https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/30/opinion/trump-executive-orders.html
The Wall Street Journal, January 30, pay wall
A Critical Look at Trump’s Economic Plans
The effects of tariffs and tax cuts will be mild, but an immigration crackdown is cause for real concern.
Extraits:
The second presidency of Donald Trump is off to a wild start. Amid the freeing of violent criminals, attacks on DEI and affirmative action, and the violation of the Constitution, you might have lost sight of his economic policies. But I’m an economist, so I’ll stick with those.
Specifically, what are his prospects for getting what he wants on tariffs, income taxes and immigration? And if he succeeds, what are the likely effects on growth and inflation? The dangers are far less dramatic than in the noneconomic arena, but they are nonetheless real.
Mr. Trump has already come out swinging on tariffs. He will get his way because Congress decades ago ceded much of its constitutional authority over tariffs to the president under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act of 1977. A big mistake, I believe, but it’s the law. All a president must do is declare a national economic emergency and he can raise tariffs as much as he wants.
And hey, doesn’t economic growth near 3%, unemployment at 4% and inflation under 3% sound like an economic emergency to you? (…)
For his income-tax cuts, Mr. Trump needs Congress. But he will likely get most of what he wants—which is an extension of the provisions of the 2017 tax cut law that are scheduled to expire at the end of this year, and perhaps a few added bells and whistles. These provisions mostly apply to individuals, not corporations, and tax cutting is in the Republican DNA. Ronald Reagan did it, George W. Bush did it, and Mr. Trump did it in his first term. Each of them, by the way, promised a supply-side miracle that never materialized. Look for a repeat in Trump II.
That said, income-tax cuts should spur slightly faster growth, perhaps roughly offsetting the drag from higher tariffs. We’ll have to await the magnitudes of each to judge. (…)
Moving beyond taxes, a sharp attack on immigration is near the top of Mr. Trump’s wish list and has already begun. But after the initial round of raids, the political, legal and logistical hazards look harder to navigate.
Reducing illegal immigration has bipartisan support and began happening late in the Biden administration. While largely a human-rights issue, immigration is also an economic one. That’s because legal and illegal immigrants have boosted our economic growth by expanding the U.S. labor force, especially in agriculture, construction and hospitality. If the immigrant workforce shrinks notably, economic growth will slow and inflation will rise.
But the details matter greatly. Just about everyone supports deporting criminals. But you don’t get close to 11.5 million people by stopping there. I hope we won’t see the U.S. government separating children from their families again. I also hope we don’t set up detention camps, which could easily scoop up legal immigrants or even Spanish-speaking citizens. (…)
His designated immigration czar, Tom Homan, will be armed with a passel of executive orders—some of which may be draconian, if not unlawful. (…)
Estimates of likely deportations can be no more than wild guesses at this point. It will surely take time. So this part of Trumponomics looks like a steady drip-drip that’s antigrowth and pro-inflation for as long as it lasts.
My best guess is that the effects of the president’s proposed economic policies would be slightly negative on growth, modestly inflationary and truly worrisome on immigration. All bad, but nothing comparable to overriding the Constitution or trying to colonize Canada, Panama and Greenland.
Mr. Blinder is a professor of economics and public affairs at Princeton. He served as vice chairman of the Federal Reserve, 1994-96.
Trump’s Ukraine Moment
A U.S. president saying that he wants the war over is a big change.
Article intégral : https://kinzler.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/29-janvier-2.pdf
The Wall Street Journal, January 27, pay wall
Trump’s Imperial Presidency?
We may be heading to the outer limits of America’s system of checks and balances.
Extraits:
Has a signature ever put so much in motion? By week’s end, President Trump will have signed executive orders on immigration, energy, gender ideology and outward into every nook of American life, not to mention the rest of the world he intends to “tariff and tax.” Mr. Trump looks like he gets a tingle with every stroke of his black Sharpie pen.
Donald Trump made his intentions clear in countless public rallies, and on that basis, the American people chose him to be their president. Notwithstanding the “shock and awe” of Mr. Trump’s executive orders, every president holds this authority under the Constitution and powers delegated by Congress. Presidents sign such orders by the hundreds to accomplish goals too difficult or time-consuming to push through Congress.
With Mr. Trump, however, we may be heading to the outer limits of what America’s traditional system of checks and balances can absorb. Among Mr. Trump’s first acts was to instruct his Justice Department not to enforce a ban on TikTok imposed by an act of Congress and affirmed unanimously by the Supreme Court. In his inaugural speech, Mr. Trump never mentioned Congress, exhibiting a disdain for the legislative branch also shared by his White House predecessors.
A remarkable deference to Mr. Trump’s use of his powers is happening, or being allowed to happen, because so many Americans think the political system is broken (…).
In a blink, Mr. Trump went from zero to 60 on exercising presidential authority, declaring two national emergencies—on the border and energy policy. If energy is a crisis under the National Emergencies Act, anything is.
Mr. Trump is reveling in his return to the U.S. presidency and the unparalleled powers of its modern incarnation. Those who agree with most of his goals think: So what? The ends, under the nation’s current dire circumstances, justify exceptional means. (…)
Still, it’s worth considering how we arrived at a point of being willing to cede significant power to one presidential personality. (…)
The term “imperial presidency” was coined in the 1970s by the liberal historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr. In practice, Democrats have invoked the threat of an imperial presidency as a cudgel against Republican presidents. It started with Richard Nixon and the political crisis over the Watergate break-in and Nixon’s impoundments of congressional spending. I’d argue you can draw a line from what happened to Nixon to the public’s elevation of Donald Trump, who is certain to be accused of conducting an imperial presidency. He will love it. (…)
The breadth of the Trump presidential orders is impressive but also a sign of a system that isn’t working as originally designed. Congress is supposed to represent the country’s varied interests, down to 435 separate congressional districts. And they are different. Mr. Trump is displacing that federalism of interests with the simpler idea of a uniform national interest, defined and executed by the president.
While an argument can be made that more consolidation of national power has become important in a world of aggressive, centralizing powers like China and Russia, America’s system of dispersed authority, whether among the three federal branches or the states, is a sustaining strength.
Its hallmark is accountability, achieved through a system of checks and balances. The Biden and Trump pardons this week were a lurch into unaccountability. The message they sent is that you can get away with anything. Where’s the Republican outrage?
We are about to enter another age of strong, if not imperial, presidential authority. And perhaps some of it is necessary, with no end in sight to Congress’s underperformance. But Mr. Trump’s instinct, evident this first week, is to be unbound by much of anything. Conservatives, not least his own people, will need to hold the 47th president to account.
The Wall Street Journal, January 27, pay wall
The White House ‘Wonder Horse’
Trump returns to office with a burst of energy and a flurry of actions, some sensible, some dangerous.
Full article :
What is the honorable way to oppose while hoping for the best, to oppose while being as quick to recognize progress as to see failure, to oppose while appreciating any outcomes that are healthy for and helpful to the United States of America? And without forgetting why you oppose? We’ll find out. This is our goal. History is long and our moment within it short. Play it straight and say what you see.
As for the past week, where to start?
It was another Trumpian triumph. Talk about energy in the executive. President Trump is flooding all zones, throwing whole pots of spaghetti against the wall. The spirit is Teddy Roosevelt, high dynamism and canny show business, though the new president has taken to referring to TR’s more orderly predecessor, William McKinley.
Mr. Trump successfully turned the page. He established this feeling: The past is sodden, the future electric.
As he sat at the Resolute Desk in the Oval Office Monday night, holding an impromptu news conference—this was after he gave an inaugural address, a long, ad libbed postinaugural speech to the overflow crowd, a Capitol One Arena speech accompanied by the public signing of executive orders, and before the sword dancing at the first of three inaugural balls—as he sat at the Resolute desk simultaneously taking questions and signing more executive orders—this one makes clear the United States owns Saturn—I realized three things:
I once wrote of him as Chief Crazy Horse but as he signed, I thought of . . . an old nickname for Tom Brokaw. Years ago his producers marveled at his stamina—he could sit in that anchor chair and go live all day and all night, he was indefatigable, never lost focus, he didn’t even have to use the bathroom. They called him “Duncan the Wonder Horse.” That was Mr. Trump this week.
He is going to utterly dominate our brainspace. He is a neurological imperialist, he storms in and stays. In his public self, Joe Biden asked nothing and gave nothing. Mr. Trump demands and dominates: Attention must be paid. It was said years ago that Fox News viewers were so loyal that they never changed the channel and the Fox logo burned itself into the screens. Donald Trump won’t be happy until he’s burned himself into the nation’s corneas.
He is at the top of his powers, top of his game. He used to be testy and aggrieved with reporters because he yearned for their admiration. Now he treats them with patience and calm because he doesn’t care about them. He’s got his own thing going. If they don’t like him it’s their problem, with their puny little numbers and shrinking networks.
Finally, my optimistic thought. I found myself wondering if the first Trump administration was Mr. Trump’s public nervous breakdown and his second administration will be his recovery. Is that possible? His first was chaos and fury, ending in 1/6. What we’re seeing now is a person who presents as even, collected and commanding, who isn’t wholly uninformed and has a plan. We all tell ourselves stories, and that, this week, is mine.
His inaugural address was exactly like a speech by Donald Trump. He fleetingly asserted a golden future and quickly reverted to insulting the presidents who’d shown up to maintain form, most pointedly his immediate predecessor, who listened impassively. A friend said of Mr. Biden, sweetly, “At least he won’t remember.” I include the insult because it is deserved after he pardoned his family for any crimes they might have committed. This was a scandalous act that embarrasses America in the eyes of the world—you with your moral pretensions and your skeevy elites on the take. It was the act of someone who doesn’t care anymore.
His friends were encouraged by the celebrations of Jimmy Carter when he died—“In time, history will be kind to Joe.” It will not. He took a torch to that possibility in his last official act.
Of Mr. Trump’s executive orders, some were sound, such as the crackdown on illegal immigration. But let me tell you what happens when you pardon virtually everyone who did Jan. 6: You get more Jan. 6ths. When people who commit crimes see that their punishment will be minimal they are encouraged. It was a wicked act. Conservatives are tough on crime because of the pain and disorder it causes. In that case it pained an entire nation. Jan. 6 too shamed us in the eyes of the world. This pardon was not a patriotic act.
What the president’s appointees have to balance in their minds is two opposing thoughts. One: They just won an overwhelming victory—the presidency, Congress, the popular vote—with almost all the institutions of the country arrayed against them. The other: Mr. Trump won 77 million votes and Ms. Harris 75 million. The margin of victory was 49.7% to 48.2%. We are a split country. The victors had a stunning victory but half the country opposed them. The point isn’t to advise gradualism or moderation, which in Mr. Trump’s case is absurd and already overtaken by events. It is to say: Know your position. For all the triumphalism of the moment Trump staffers shouldn’t feel impervious or unhurtable. Their position can change overnight.
An example: the tech billionaires in the front rows at the inauguration. It was a Trumpian power-flex: Look who’s on my side. But they aren’t kissing the ring, they’re tough and willful men who do what they must to get what they want. What they won was a live White House event in which the president excitedly prompted them, like a yokel, on how artificial intelligence will cure cancer. That’s not all it can do, read a little Geoffrey Hinton. AI doesn’t need a cheerleader; it needs caution and gravity. But it seems to have just won the formal imprimatur of the new administration. To be taken in like this by subtle high-class hustlers wasn’t promising and fresh but embarrassing.
Democrats so far are nonexistent as the opposition. In the long term their passivity is a strategy: Let Mr. Trump control immigration and kill woke; that will remove the issues people most hate about the Democratic Party. Once he solves them, the issues are gone. In the short term this isn’t a strategy but another indication of lostness: They don’t know what they believe in and have no leader. The idea that Barack Obama will swoop in to save them is ridiculous. That selfish man isn’t interested in a fight that would expose him to fire.
It will be interesting to see how the world arranges itself. Eight years ago when Mr. Trump rose, Europe thought it was witnessing an aberrational freak show, something visited on them like a spaceship. It would disappear in four years. The only ones who saw the implications of his rise were themselves slightly nutty, like Nigel Farage. Now they’re watching the Republicans in Washington and seeing: In four years Mr. Trump will be gone but Trumpism will stay, it is entrenched. Even rising Democrats will take cues from it. This is a new dispensation. It will be interesting to see how they adjust.
For four years it’s going to be non-stop, 24/7 rock-’em-sock-’em. God bless our beloved country. History ahead, everybody hold on tight.
The Wall Street Journal, January 25, pay wall
American Society Was Built for Populism, Not Elitism
Technocrats and elites insist that centralized control is best. Nature and history prove them wrong.
Full article here: https://kinzler.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/25-janvier-1.pdf
Neue Zürcher Zeitung, 25. Januar, nur für Abonnenten
Politisierte Predigten: Zwei Geistliche polarisieren zur Inauguration von Trump
Die politische Spaltung in den USA erreicht die Kirche.
Extraits:
Zu den politischen Ritualen gehört in den USA auch der Glaube. Der Präsident bringt eine Bibel zur Vereidigung mit. Es wird gebetet, gesegnet, gepriesen. Und manchmal, da schleichen sich auch politische Statements in die Predigten.
Pfarrer Lorenzo Sewell hat bei der offiziellen Amtseinführung am Montag in der Rotunde des Capitols den Segen für Trump gesprochen. Er bedankte sich bei Gott, dass er der Nation «in diesen schwierigen Zeiten» einen Trump berufen habe. Trump werde allen Amerikanern Freiheit bringen, rief Sewell in das Gewölbe.
Bischöfin Mariann Budde leitete am Dienstag den traditionellen ersten Gottesdienst des Präsidenten in der Washington Cathedral, an dem auch Trumps Familie teilnahm. Am Ende der Predigt bat Budde den neuen Präsidenten, sich der Menschen im Land zu erbarmen, die wegen der von ihm angekündigten Gesetze Angst hätten, ihre Freiheiten zu verlieren. Budde ging es um jene, deren Existenz der Präsident explizit verneint, die er loswerden will. Insbesondere Queere und Migranten.
Sewell wird von Trump und seinen Anhängern geliebt, Budde hingegen gehasst. Die Auftritte der beiden Geistlichen zur Inauguration von Donald Trump verdeutlichen, wie die politische Polarisierung im Land auch die Kirchen erreicht.
Bevor Pfarrer Lorenzo Sewell am vergangenen Montag Trump den Segen sprach, war er in den USA noch eher unbekannt. Doch nach seinen ersten Sätzen wurde klar, weshalb Trump den Mann für die Segnung auserkoren hatte.
«Himmlischer Vater, wir sind so dankbar, dass du unserem 45. und nun unserem 47. Präsidenten ein Millimeterwunder geschenkt hast. Wir sind dankbar, dass du derjenige bist, der ihn für eine solche Zeit wie diese berufen hat. Dass Amerika wieder zu träumen beginnt», rief Sewell energiegeladen ins Mikrofon.
Das «Millimeterwunder» ist eine Anspielung auf das Attentat in Pennsylvania im Juli 2024, das Trump nur mit viel Glück überlebt hat. Die Aussage, die auf die Segnung folgte: Trump werde die Amerikaner frei machen, und zwar alle Amerikaner. «Dank sei dir, Gott, dem Allmächtigen, wir sind endlich frei.» Der Auftritt von Sewell dauerte drei Minuten. Er hielt seine Augen geschlossen, die Arme Richtung Himmel gestreckt, sprach lebendig und laut. Zum Ende klatschte er laut in die Hände.
Sewell ist Afroamerikaner und stammt aus einer sozial benachteiligten Gegend in Detroit. Er wuchs in einem gewaltbereiten Umfeld auf, sein Vater sass wegen Mordes im Gefängnis, sein Bruder wurde getötet. Sewell war drogenabhängig, begann zu dealen und wurde Anführer einer Bande. 1999 will er Jesus begegnet sein, ein Ereignis, das ihn radikal veränderte, wie er sagt. Heute ist Trump so etwas wie sein Heilsbringer. (…)
Nach dem Auftritt am Parteitag stieg Sewells Gefolgschaft auf der Plattform Instagram auf mehr als 100 000. Sewell teilt seither regelmässig Videos mit politischen Aussagen, betet darin mit einem Maga-Hut auf dem Kopf oder schimpft über die «falsch gezählten Stimmen» aus seiner Kirchgemeinde bei der Wahl 2020.
In einem Video auf Instagram erklärt er den Sturm aufs Capitol vom 6. Januar 2021 zu einem der wichtigsten Tage in der Geschichte des «schwarzen Amerika». Die Menschen, die dabei gestorben seien, hätten sich geopfert, damit Afroamerikaner nun für faire Wahlen kämpfen könnten. Sewell vergleicht die Opfer mit den Afroamerikanern, die im Kampf um Gleichberechtigung ihr Leben verloren. (…)
Auch Bischöfin Mariann Edgar Budde wurde am Gottesdienst in Washington politisch. Ihre Predigt war das Kontrastprogramm zu Sewells Lobeshymne auf Trump.
Mariann Budde ist seit 2011 die Bischöfin der Episkopalkirche von Washington und die erste Frau in diesem Amt. Es hat Tradition, dass der Gottesdienst zur Amtseinführung in ihrer Kirche stattfindet. Der Präsident kann anders als bei seiner Segnung nicht bestimmen, wer die Predigt hält. Und so setzte Budde einen ganz anderen Ton als Sewell: Am Ende ihrer Predigt überraschte sie mit eindringlichen Worten an den Präsidenten.
Budde forderte Trump auf, denjenigen zu helfen, die aus Kriegsgebieten fliehen. Erbarmen mit Kindern zu haben, die «Angst haben, dass ihnen ihre Eltern weggenommen werden». Und an die «schwulen, lesbischen und transsexuellen Kinder in demokratischen, republikanischen und unabhängigen Familien zu denken, von denen nun einige um ihr Leben fürchten». Budde sprach ruhig, machte viele Pausen und schaute Trump immer wieder direkt an.
Und wie reagierten Trump und seine Familie? Donald starrte gelangweilt ins Leere, seine Frau Melania blickte genervt zur Kanzel, die Tochter Tiffany schaute zu ihren Verwandten und verdrehte die Augen.
Nach dem Gottesdienst sagte Trump zu Journalisten: «Nicht sehr aufregend, oder?» Und: «Sie könnte es viel besser machen.» Nach Mitternacht schrieb er auf seiner Social-Media-Plattform Truth Social, Budde sei eine «linksradikale Hardliner-Trump-Hasserin». (…)
Budde überraschte mit ihren Worten alle. Vor dem Auftritt hatte Budde zur «Washington Post» lediglich gesagt, sie habe ihre Predigt mehrfach umgeschrieben. Denn sie habe eine grosse Verantwortung. (…)
Nun hat Budde eine zweite Gelegenheit erhalten, direkt vor Donald Trump zu predigen – und hat die politische Stimmung unverhohlen in die Kirche geholt.
The Economist Leader, January 24, pay wall
Project 1897 : America has an imperial presidency
And in Donald Trump, an imperialist president for the first time in over a century
Full text :https://kinzler.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/24-janvier-2.pdf
Link: https://www.economist.com/leaders/2025/01/23/america-has-an-imperial-presidency
The Wall Street Journal, January 23, pay wall
American Exceptionalism Is Back
Trump has assembled a potentially powerful coalition of tech moguls and populists.
Extraits:
As the world braces for the second coming of Donald Trump, many fear and some hope that his return to power means the end of American exceptionalism. I think Mr. Trump’s return means exactly the opposite. His remarkable political recovery demonstrates the enduring strength of American cultural forces that have, for more than two centuries, made America uniquely hospitable to the disruption and chaos that dynamic capitalism inevitably brings.
Mr. Trump’s MAGA coalition has at least temporarily brought together two groups who are at daggers drawn in much of the world: angry populists seeking to defend the identities and, as they see it, the traditional values of their societies, and entrepreneurial tech lords pushing for deregulation and the rapid deployment of cutting-edge technologies that will likely displace many blue-collar workers.
It will take some fancy footwork by Mr. Trump to keep these rival wings of his coalition together, but the job isn’t impossible. American populists are typically more pro-capitalist than populists in Europe and elsewhere, and America’s tech lords have less reason to object to the populist elements of the MAGA agenda than do the leaders of more traditional industries and firms. There is a large set of issues on which Mr. Trump’s base and his tech allies agree, and even their differences offer more room for compromise than many observers expect. (…)
The MAGA-populist/tech-lord coalition is a volatile one, and keeping it together will be taxing. It is too early to tell how successful the second Trump administration will be. But as your peripatetic Global View columnist attends this week’s World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, he will be cautioning participants against underestimating the potential of America to renew itself in unlikely and even unseemly ways. In aligning U.S. policy with the needs of the most dynamic, future-facing elements in the economy, the MAGA movement and its newfound technology allies may be more consequential than many critics understand.
The Economist, January 23, pay wall
Lexington : America really could enter a golden age
Donald Trump would need to build on its strengths, and subdue his own weaknesses
Extraits:
Maybe you are in the habit of applying a hefty discount to claims by Donald Trump; no one could blame you. But he really does have the chance to lead America into the golden age he proclaimed in his second inaugural address. Historic circumstances, political dynamics and his own audacity could also enable him to achieve the legacy he wants as “a peacemaker and a unifier”. His party has fallen into lockstep; his adversaries at home are confounded and enervated, and America’s opponents abroad are preoccupied with their own troubles. Mr Trump has battled for ten years against anyone he perceived to have crossed him. His most formidable adversary still standing is probably himself.
As he assumes office again, Mr Trump has embarked on a marketing offensive, a familiar routine, albeit this time with a twist: rather than having to persuade people something is grander than it is—that the Trump Tower in Manhattan has 68 floors rather than 58—he has to assign himself credit for things that are truthfully better than Americans may yet realise. America’s economy is the envy of the world. America is already exporting record amounts of gas and oil, and its biggest obstacle to pumping more is global demand. But Mr Trump’s declaration in his inaugural address of a “national energy emergency” may help him vault to the head of the kind of parade celebrating American glory that poor President Joe Biden lacked the wherewithal to summon. (…)
Yet Mr Trump’s initial executive orders are meant to do more than gild the lily. In some cases they call for drastic action, particularly on immigration. As with Mr Trump’s promises of tariffs and his exhumation of “manifest destiny”, no one knows how far he may go with his deportation initiative. But there is also a bigger, more hopeful possibility: Could his showy crackdown be part of a grand plan for the golden age?
In Mr Trump’s first term some of his aides saw the potential of linking enhanced border security to broader reform of America’s immigration system. For all his harsh oratory about immigrants, Mr Trump has sometimes sounded sympathetic, particularly about people brought as children. Last October, he told the editorial board of the Wall Street Journal he had a practical reason for his tough talk about illegal immigration: “The nicer I become, the more people that come over illegally.” (The Biden administration learned that lesson to its sorrow.) But, Mr Trump said, “We have a lot of good people in this country, and we have to do something about it.” In general, said Mr Trump, who is married to an immigrant, and not for the first time, “I want a lot of people to come in, but I want them to come in legally.”
Mr Trump tries to win over any room he walks into, and that may explain his comments to the Journal editors. But he may also recognise that he has amassed more credibility with immigration hardliners than any president in memory, and thus has an opening to achieve what his recent predecessors could not. Comprehensive immigration reform has eluded presidents since 1986, when Ronald Reagansigned into law heightened border security along with amnesty for almost 3m people in America illegally. (…)
Such deals at home would realise Mr Trump’s vision of being a unifier. His opportunities to prove himself a peacemaker, extending America’s golden aura beyond its shores, await not in Panama but in Eastern Europe and the Middle East, where war may have wearied America’s allies but has surely weakened its adversaries, Russia and Iran. The test for Mr Trump is whether he can insist on fair deals for Ukraine, and for the Palestinians.
From Abraham Lincoln to Franklin Roosevelt to Reagan, presidents who accomplished great things appear more as unifiers in the eyes of history than they did in those of their contemporaries. They were all dividers, too. They were also subjected to vicious criticism and even violent attack.
But Mr Trump has yet even to hint at the grandeur of spirit that those presidents brought to the job. The petty partisanship of his inaugural address, along with his pardons of even violent January 6th convicts, bode poorly for the chances he will ever overcome the weaknesses likely to cast a shadow over what could be a golden age: self-pity, a flickering attention span, a vulnerability to flattery and a reverence for strongmen. “Trump’s sense of aggrievement reinforced his penchant for seeking affirmation from his most loyal supporters rather than broadening his base of support,” General H.R. McMaster concludes in “At War With Ourselves”, his memoir about his time as Mr Trump’s national security adviser during the first term. “Trump’s indiscipline made him the antagonist in his own story.” And in America’s. ■
https://www.economist.com/united-states/2025/01/21/america-really-could-enter-a-golden-age
The Economist, January 23, pay wall
Schumpeter : Donald Trump’s America will not become a tech oligarchy
Reasons not to panic about the tech-industrial complex
Read full article here : https://kinzler.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/23-janvier-2.pdf
Link: https://www.economist.com/business/2025/01/21/donald-trumps-america-will-not-become-a-tech-oligarchy
The Wall Street Journal, January 23, pay wall
President Trump, Crypto Billionaire
His new family tokens, which have soared in value, are courting legal and political trouble.
Extraits:
Donald Trump doesn’t always separate his personal interests from his public obligations, and a howling example is his sudden new status as a crypto billionaire. The President is inviting trouble with what looks like remarkably poor judgment.
Crypto markets have boomed since Mr. Trump’s election in part on expectations of friendlier regulation. And so be it. Animal spirits have been rising all around. But Mr. Trump and his family have tried to cash in on the mania by minting Trump-branded coins.
On Friday, as a private citizen soon to be President, Mr. Trump announced sales of his $TRUMP crypto token. “It’s time to celebrate everything we stand for: WINNING!” he posted on X.com. Melania Trump debuted her own coin on Sunday. Step right up, Americans, you can’t lose betting on $TRUMP. But what happens when some inevitably do?
Unlike Trump-stamped tumblers ($42) and pickleball paddles ($180), crypto tokens are vehicles for speculation. Like other cryptocurrencies, their price is volatile. After surging roughly 10-fold after its launch, $TRUMP’s price has since fallen by half. (…)
All of this creates flashing-red political risks and ethical conflicts. Start with who may be buying the tokens. A business or foreign official with interests before the federal government might seek to curry favor with Mr. Trump by announcing plans to buy millions of his token to pump up the price. Or, worse, whispering to Mr. Trump that he’s made the purchases, since crypto holdings aren’t disclosed. If Mr. Trump’s regulators then act in a way that aids crypto or the person seeking the favor, he’ll be accused of aiding the buyer in service of presidential self-dealing.
The President might claim immunity by saying the regulation is part of his official duties, but that won’t remove the political taint. That also won’t stop civil lawsuits if (and probably when) there’s a crypto crash. (…)
Mr. Trump has created a regulatory nightmare for Paul Atkins, his highly qualified nominee to run the SEC. Mr. Atkins was crypto-friendly long before his nomination, but now any regulatory move he takes that the industry supports will be attacked as helping Mr. Trump’s business. The Trump tokens might hurt the crypto industry by making it all look like a get-rich-quick scheme. (…)
No careful President would get anywhere near this kind of political risk, and we can’t recall any President who has. Where are Mr. Trump’s lawyers? In his first term, Mr. Trump was often deterred from some of his worst impulses by legal advisers who saw their job as serving the Presidency as much as this President. The crypto caper is a worrisome sign that Mr. Trump’s current advisers don’t understand the difference any better than he does, or that they are too cowed to speak up.
Neue Zürcher Zeitung, 23. Januar, nur für Abonnenten
7 Milliarden Dollar in Luft aufgelöst: Donald Trump ist der Präsident, der seine Bürger abzockt
Mit der Lancierung eines offiziellen Meme-Coins nährt Donald Trump die schlimmsten Vorurteile über Kryptowährungen, statt der Branche zu helfen.
Extraits:
Die Krypto-Branche hat im Wahlkampf Partei ergriffen und ihr finanzielles Gewicht für Donald Trump in die Waagschale geworfen. An Mitteln fehlt es ihr bekanntlich nicht.
Trump nahm die Spenden gerne entgegen und versprach im Gegenzug, die USA «zur Krypto-Hauptstadt» der Welt zu machen, eine staatliche Bitcoin-Reserve zu schaffen. Und die von der Regierung Biden geschaffenen Hürden für Krypto-Firmen wieder aus dem Weg zu räumen.
Doch kurz vor seiner Amtseinsetzung erweist Trump der Sache seiner Geldgeber einen Bärendienst. Er fügt der Krypto-Branche, die ohnehin nicht über die beste Reputation verfügt, einen zusätzlichen Imageschaden zu.
7 Milliarden Dollar lösen sich in Luft auf
Donald Trump lancierte einen offiziellen Meme-Coin. Der stieg zwar schon innert Stunden massiv an und erreichte einen Marktwert von 15 Milliarden Dollar. Nach der Kursexplosion kam es dann aber, wie es kommen musste: Der $Trump brach wieder deutlich ein. Seit dem Preishoch vom Sonntag haben sich 7 Milliarden Dollar in Luft aufgelöst.
Einige Trump-Anhänger dürften mit dem digitalen Konterfei ihres Idols viel Geld verloren haben. Sie sind von ihrem Präsidenten abgezockt worden. Und von der First Lady auch, denn Melania Trump gab ebenfalls einen offiziellen Meme-Coin aus. Es sagt einiges über den Zustand eines Landes aus, wenn dessen Präsident den Bürgern Schlangenöl verkauft.
Denn Meme-Coins sind Token, die explizit ein Witz sind. Sie haben keinen inneren Wert. Meme-Coins dienen lediglich der Spekulation, weil sich womöglich ein Dummkopf finden lässt, der sie dem heutigen Besitzer zu einem höheren Kurs abkauft. Diese Logik hat einen Namen: die Greater-Fool-Theorie.
Flut von Müll
Die Blockchain-Technologie ermöglicht jedem, der sich ein paar Youtube-Tutorials ansieht, solche Meme-Coins zu kreieren. Gleichzeitig lenkt diese Flut von Müll von der technologischen Innovation ab, die seriöse Blockchain-Projekte darstellen.
Sie streben zum Beispiel an, unser Finanzsystem auf ein solideres Fundament zu stellen – so dass der Untergang grosser Banken keinen Flurschaden mehr anrichten kann. Oder sie arbeiten an Lösungen, wie wir im Internet Dienste in Anspruch nehmen können, ohne dass grosse Tech-Konzerne unsere Daten sammeln und auswerten.
Die meisten dieser Projekte verfügen auch über einen eigenen Token, der den Nutzern der Blockchain erlaubt, für die angebotenen Dienstleistungen zu bezahlen. Oder der mit einem Mitbestimmungsrecht verbunden ist. Jeder kann diese Tokens kaufen und so zum Wagniskapitalgeber werden.
Auf den ersten Blick ist ein Token ein Token. Doch in ein Projekt investiert eine Gruppe von Software-Entwicklern womöglich Tausende von Arbeitsstunden. In ein anderes fliesst gar keine Arbeit, wie bei $Trump und $Melania. Diese Art von «Unterstützung» braucht die Branche nicht. Sie hat genügend Spekulanten und Betrüger in ihren eigenen Reihen. (…)
Heute bewegen sich viele amerikanische Krypto-Projekte in einer rechtlichen Grauzone und müssen jederzeit damit rechnen, verklagt zu werden.
Ist diese lähmende Rechtsunsicherheit einmal aus der Welt geschafft, werden amerikanische Unternehmer tun, was sie immer tun: mit ihrem unnachahmlichen Risikoappetit die Weltmärkte aufrollen. Über $Trump und $Melanie spricht dann mit Sicherheit niemand mehr.
https://www.nzz.ch/meinung/der-praesident-der-seine-buerger-abzockt-ld.1867278
The Economist, January 23, pay wall
A bad day for doomers : A $500bn investment plan says a lot about Trump’s AI priorities
It’s build, baby, build
Extraits:
When President Donald Trump announced a half-trillion-dollar of private-sector investment in American artificial-intelligence (AI) infrastructure on January 21st, his second day in office, he basked in the accolades of the three men backing the “Stargate” project: OpenAI’s Sam Altman, Masayoshi Son, a Japanese tech mogul, and Larry Ellison of Oracle, an IT firm. He called it the largest AI investment in history. Then came the kicker. “This is money that normally would have gone to China.”
Considering that AI will be the defining technology of his time in office, Mr Trump can sound awestruck by it. “AI seems to be very hot,” he said. But as the announcement of the four-year project (which starts with the construction of massive data centres in Texas) foreshadowed, AI is likely to be a priority within his administration. That is for strategic as well as economic reasons. The government’s “north star”, as one tech insider in Washington puts it, will be how to beat China in the AI war.
Silicon Valley has China hawks already nestled in the White House. (…)
The big question is, will Mr Trump continue the Biden administration’s approach of prioritising constraints on China, with export curbs and the like, to maintain America’s lead in AI? Or will he put more emphasis on freeing America’s tech firms to out-innovate China?
There are justifications for trying to keep China at heel. In Silicon Valley, supporters of a crackdown say Chinese firms steal American intellectual property, helping their large language models (LLMs) to advance fast. They argue that Chinese tech firms have evaded export controls on American semiconductors, either by buying cutting-edge American graphics processing units (GPUs), the chips used to train and run AI models, on the black market, or by renting out capacity on other countries’ cloud servers. This doesn’t only help China’s tech industry. They note that China is far ahead of America in incorporating AI into military tech, so hobbling it is justified on national-security grounds. (…)
In the tech industry, the hope is that as well as cracking down on Chinese malfeasance, the Trump administration will push to promote American competitiveness by loosening the reins. As John Villasenor, an expert on tech policy at the University of California, Los Angeles puts it, “The best way to stay ahead of China is not to over-regulate at home.”
On his first day in office Mr Trump took a step in this direction by scrapping Mr Biden’s executive order of 2023 that required builders of advanced LLMs to share information with the American government. Tech insiders in Washington say they expect the new administration to take a “sector-specific” approach instead. In other words, rather than overarching AI regulation, federal agencies would oversee the use of AI within their own domains.
Some may worry that, with less regulation, tech firms will overstep the limits of AI safety. But for now, AI “accelerationists” have overtaken the “doomers”. In a sign that deregulation is high on Mr Trump’s agenda, he promised the three joint-venture partners in Stargate to make it “as easy as it can be” for them to build their project.
One further force promoting AI innovation could be defence spending. America puts only a tiny fraction of its $850bn defence budget into AI. Silicon Valley executives hope that the Trump administration will allow more participation by startups building AI weapons and systems in the competition for defence contracts.
In short, there is synchronisation. Mr Trump wants lots of investment in America, a roaring stockmarket and the ability to claim he is vanquishing China. America’s AI giants want to build bigger models to compete with each other and keep ahead of China, and to have more customers to justify their investments. Stargate looks like the shape of things to come. ■
Le Figaro, 22 janvier, article payant
Yasvcha Mounk : «Donald Trump veut désormais incarner la promesse d’un futur désirable pour tous les Américains»
GRAND ENTRETIEN – Le discours d’investiture du 47e président des États-Unis illustre le passage d’un populisme protestataire à un «populisme aspirationnel» outre-Atlantique, analyse l’essayiste américain et professeur à l’université Johns Hopkins*. Après avoir élargi sa base électorale, Trump cherche à proposer un avenir désirable à l’ensemble du peuple américain.
*Yascha Mounk est professeur à l’université Johns Hopkins et fondateur du magazine en ligne Persuasion. Dernier livre paru : « Le Piège de l’identité» (Éditions de l’Observatoire, 2023).
LE FIGARO. – Dans son discours d’investiture, Donald Trump a déclaré sur un ton placide : « Le déclin de l’Amérique est terminé. L’âge d’or a commencé. »Avant de parler du 20 janvier 2025 comme le « jour de la libération ». Ce discours rencontre-t-il un écho chez une majorité d’Américains ?
(…) Contrairement à ce qu’ont voulu croire les politologues ces dix dernières années, la victoire de Trump n’est pas juste le fait de vieux hommes blancs motivés par la peur du futur et désireux de renvoyer le pays dans le passé. Ce qui est intéressant sociologiquement, c’est qu’elle a été aussi portée par des jeunes, des femmes, des latinos, qui, eux, sont plutôt optimistes. Ils s’identifient volontiers avec cette vision plus glorieuse du futur américain, tant sur le plan économique qu’international ou même, comme le suggère l’évocation de Mars, interplanétaire ! (…
Dans son discours, la promesse du futur a-t-elle pris le pas sur le fantasme du passé ?
L’optimisme et la promesse d’une Amérique « great again » ont toujours été une des raisons de la popularité de Trump, mais il l’a particulièrement souligné lundi. Cela illustre la naissance d’une nouvelle forme de populisme que l’on pourrait appeler « populisme aspirationnel ». Un populisme qui ne s’adresse pas qu’à la majorité ethnique mais qui promet un futur désirable à l’ensemble du peuple américain dans ses différentes composantes. Dans son discours, Trump s’est adressé aux nombreux Américains latinos, noirs et asiatiques qui l’ont soutenu. Il a même promis de réaliser le « rêve » de Martin Luther King. Et il a évoqué une conception de la méritocratie dans laquelle il y aurait de la place pour les Américains de toutes origines, mais sans que les minorités aient besoin de discrimination positive pour réussir. Tout cela s’adresse à un électorat qui n’a pas peur du futur, qui ne veut pas retourner dans un passé où leurs ancêtres n’étaient peut-être pas aux États-Unis, ou bien vivaient marginalisés et discriminés. Ils veulent une vie meilleure que celle de leurs parents. (…
Trump a fait ce qui aurait dû être la tâche des politologues et des philosophes, à savoir dissocier deux aspects d’un concept que l’on pensait indissociables. Il a conservé l’aspect « anti-institutionnel » du populisme qui estime qu’un président élu ne doit pas tolérer que son pouvoir soit limité par des institutions entravant la volonté du peuple. Mais il a tourné le dos à la dimension ethnique du populisme tel qu’analysé par la majorité des politologues depuis des décennies. Pour eux, le populisme était l’émanation d’une majorité ethnique – blanche – qui voyait dans le vote pour Trump la dernière opportunité pour se défendre contre le changement démographique. Cela s’est révélé complètement faux. Trump a séparé le côté populiste du côté majoritaire au sens ethnique, gardant le premier et rejetant le deuxième. Il a gagné beaucoup de voix des groupes minoritaires et a dit de manière très claire qu’il se voyait comme le champion de tous les Américains. (…)
Que dire du discours de Trump sur l’autre aspect du populisme, à savoir la défiance à l’égard des institutions ? A-t-il évolué ?
Trump continue clairement de mépriser les limites qui pourraient entraver son pouvoir. C’est ce que montre son choix d’utiliser l’armée face aux migrants au Mexique, une décision qui va probablement provoquer une crise constitutionnelle sérieuse. Car il est tout à fait inconstitutionnel d’envoyer l’armée pour le maintien de l’ordre à la frontière, et des recours seront probablement déposés devant la Cour suprême. Cela prendra du temps mais il est probable que les juges disent à Trump que c’est une violation claire de la Constitution. À ce moment-là nous verrons à quel point Trump voudra tester les limites de son pouvoir.
Trump a peu parlé du reste du monde lors de son discours, il n’a pas mentionné l’Europe et a simplement dit qu’il voulait être « un artisan de la paix et un rassembleur ». Est-ce aussi l’illustration de sa politique « America first » ?
Certainement. Trump a sans doute peu parlé de politique étrangère car il y a aussi d’importantes contradictions internes à son mouvement sur ces questions. On le voit dans son équipe : Marco Rubio, qu’il a nommé secrétaire d’État, est un « faucon », plutôt favorable aux alliances de l’Amérique avec ses partenaires traditionnels. Face à lui, il y a des voix dans le mouvement « Maga » qui ont des sympathies pour la Russie de Vladimir Poutine et qui sont très sceptiques à l’égard de l’Otan. Ces questions vont faire l’objet d’âpres débats au sein du trumpisme pendant les quatre prochaines années.
Et ce n’est pas le seul paradoxe : Trump a dit qu’il voulait qu’on se souvienne de lui « pour les guerres qui ne commenceront pas » mais en même temps il a déclaré qu’il souhaitait reprendre le canal du Panama. Le Panama n’a pas d’armée, certes, et il serait sans doute possible de reprendre le canal sans une guerre, mais il y a une vraie tension entre l’idée d’être mesuré et d’éviter les guerres d’un côté, et sa rhétorique expansionniste et presque néocoloniale de l’autre. Quand il dit « le legs dont je serai le plus fier sera celui d’un artisan de la paix et d’un rassembleur », c’est un beau sentiment : espérons qu’il le réalise.
Neue Zürcher Zeitung, 22. Januar, nur für Abonnenten
Trump will Amerika und die Welt radikal umkrempeln – und er blufft nicht
Trump kehrt mit der Energie einer Urgewalt nach Washington zurück. Er will seine radikale Agenda in Rekordzeit umsetzen. Und diesmal weiss er, wie.
Extraits:
Es war ein langer Inaugurationstag, und Trump erschien bei diversen Auftritten in vielen Inkarnationen: Er präsentierte sich als Heilsbringer, der dem Volk ein «goldenes Zeitalter» versprach, und als Märtyrer, der ein Attentat knapp überlebt hatte. Er zeigte sich als ein schlechter Sieger, da er für Kamala Harris und ihre 75 Millionen Wähler keine versöhnlichen Worte fand und stattdessen die Demokraten als «Verräter der Nation» verunglimpfte. Dann wieder flüsterte er Joe Biden in der Rotunde ein klar erkennbares «Thank you» zu. Er markierte den Imperialisten, als er Panama damit drohte, den Panamakanal «zurückzuholen.» Er gab sich als Pazifist, der Weltfrieden stiften will: Schon länger träumt er laut von einem Friedensnobelpreis, den ihm eine «Pax Trumpiana» eintragen könnte. Und bei all dem Hin und Her wirkte der 78-jährige Präsident nicht etwa zerstreut, sondern überaus fokussiert. Wie soll man da schlau werden?
Trumps Charakter ist schwer fassbar, und sein Hang zum Pompösen ist längst bekannt. Das sollte allerdings nicht darüber hinwegtäuschen, dass es ihm sehr ernst ist mit seinen politischen Plänen und dass er einen eisernen Willen hat, Washington umzukrempeln. Davon zeugt die Kaskade von Regierungsverordnungen, die er am Tag seiner Amtseinführung abfeuerte. Dabei schreckt er nicht vor radikalen Massnahmen zurück.
Die extremste ist wohl die Begnadigung sämtlicher Capitol-Stürmer vom 6. Januar 2021. (…)
Als eine der ersten Amtshandlungen rief Präsident Trump den nationalen Notstand an der Grenze zu Mexiko aus, wie er es schon in seiner ersten Amtszeit getan hatte. Das ermöglicht ihm, ohne Zustimmung des Kongresses gegen die illegale Migration vorzugehen und das Asylrecht auszusetzen.
Auch in der Energiepolitik griff er zu diesem Mittel und erklärte den «nationalen Energienotstand.» Beides begründet er mit der nationalen Sicherheit. Damit erhält er vorübergehend den nötigen politischen Handlungsspielraum, aber die Begründung ist in beiden Fällen fragwürdig. Die Migrationszahlen sind derzeit tiefer als am Ende von Trumps erster Amtszeit, und unter Biden erreichte die Erdöl- und Gasförderung eine Rekordhöhe.
Radikal ist Trumps Vorhaben, Truppen an die Grenze zu schicken. Das verstösst gegen das Posse-Comitatus-Gesetz aus dem Jahr 1887, das den Militäreinsatz gegen Zivilisten auf dem Boden der USA strikt untersagt. Ebenso radikal ist seine «Drill, baby, drill»-Verordnung, und zwar wegen eines Nebensatzes: Trump erwägt unter anderem Enteignungen von Privatland («eminent domain»), um seinen Abbauplan umzusetzen.
Andere Erlasse entsprachen den Erwartungen: der Gender-Erlass, die Auflösung des Beamtenstatus von Schlüsselpositionen in der Verwaltung, der Austritt aus der WHO und dem Pariser Klimaabkommen, die Gründung von Musks Deregulierungs- und Sparagentur Doge, die einen kleinen Umfang hat, gemessen an ihrem grossen Auftrag.
Einige Versprechungen werden auf später verschoben: Es werden derzeit keine generellen Strafzölle kommen, aber Kanada und Mexiko müssen ab Anfang Februar mit Zöllen von 25 Prozent auf ihren Exporten rechnen. Was Trump damit erreichen will, ist nicht ganz klar. Das im Wahlkampf so wichtige Thema Inflation hingegen erhielt wenig Beachtung – in einem ultrakurzen Erlass verlangt Trump eine Ursachenanalyse in allen Departementen.
Aussenpolitisch bestätigt Trump die America-first-Doktrin, welcher er schon während seiner ersten Amtszeit nachlebte. Trump sieht die USA als die überlegene Nation auf Erden, die alle beneiden und die im eigenen Interesse schaltet und waltet. (…)
Neu ist die imperialistische Note von Trump. Noch nie hatte ein Präsident in einer Antrittsrede einem anderen Land mit einer Invasion gedroht – genau das geschah gestern gegenüber Panama. (…)
Der Startschuss der zweiten Amtszeit und jener vor acht Jahren könnten unterschiedlicher nicht sein. 2017 schien Präsident Trump unvorbereitet für das hohe Amt. (…)
Am 20. Januar 2017 unterschrieb der neugewählte Präsident nur eine einzige «executive order» am Inaugurationstag. Diese Woche hat er offenbar 200 Erlasse vorbereitet, die sorgfältig ausgearbeitet und rechtlich fundiert sind. (…)
«Ich habe so einiges gelernt auf meinem Weg», sagte Donald Trump während seiner Inaugurationsrede und meinte damit seine erste Amtszeit. Dieses Wissen will er nun einsetzen. Wie weit er damit kommt, bleibt abzuwarten. Vieles wird vor Gericht landen, und der Kongress mit der dünnen Mehrheit der Republikaner steht als Korrektiv da. Klar ist, dass Trumps Leute genau studiert haben, wie sie die Macht der Exekutive diesmal maximal nützen können.
https://www.nzz.ch/meinung/kommentar-inaugration-von-praesident-donald-trump-ld.1867147
The Economist, January 22, pay wall
Trading losses : Tariffs will spark retaliation, not a manufacturing renaissance
Donald Trump’s pursuit of tariffs will make the world poorer—and America, too
Read full article: https://kinzler.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/22-janvier-2.pdf
The Economist, January 21, pay wall
From the gilded age to the golden age : The new American imperialism
Donald Trump is the first president in more than 100 years to call for new American territory—including Mars
Read full article here : https://kinzler.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/21-janvier-3.pdf
Link : https://www.economist.com/united-states/2025/01/21/the-new-american-imperialism
The Wall Street Journal, Editorial, 21 janvier, article payant
Trump’s Inaugural of Optimism: He begins his second term with a far better message than in 2017
Full article here: https://kinzler.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/21-janvier-1.pdf
Link: https://www.wsj.com/opinion/donald-trump-inaugural-address-2025-72edaf3e?mod=hp_opin_pos_0
The Economist, 20 janvier, article payant
Trump 2 : The beginning of the end of the Trump era
The new president is more confident, and radical, than ever—and also more accepted
Extraits:
THE MOST jarring difference between Donald Trump’s first and second inaugurations will be the setting. Eight years ago he spoke in front of the Capitol building on a relatively mild January day, but frigid temperatures have pushed the ceremony inside for the first time in 40 years. A closer look at plans for this scaled-back event also offers hints at some of the profound contrasts between 2017 and 2025. (…)
Mr Trump was something of an international oddity in 2016. Some, like the prime minister of Japan, swiftly adapted to the new reality and visited Mr Trump in New York. This time Mr Trump has a broader international fan base. Javier Milei, the president of Argentina, plans to attend, along with Italy’s prime minister, Giorgia Meloni. The Chinese Communist Party will send the country’s vice-president, and India’s foreign minister will be there as well. Mr Trump had been conducting shadow foreign policy for weeks—with his advisers playing a role in the Gaza ceasefire—so it comes as no surprise to see such a broad guest list from abroad.
The American public’s reaction also has been starkly different. Rather than the palpable sense of dread apparent in January 2017, the streets are filled with tourists and there are parties taking place throughout the city. Organisers of an anti-Trump protest in Washington had hoped some 50,000 people might show up; around 5,000 did. (…)
Mr Trump is at the peak of his power, before he has had to do anything unpopular, or disappoint any of the factions competing for his attention. Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk—all open Trump critics during the first term—have struck friendlier notes and are set to attend the inauguration. Even Bill Gates recently said he was “impressed” with the new president. (…)
And while the Republican Party is very much outwardly MAGA—and agrees on cutting taxes, restricting immigration and bolstering energy production—many pre-Trump orthodoxies prevail. As he works with Congress, Mr Trump may find himself giving way to policies that don’t seem particularly revolutionary. “The striking thing about Republicans in Congress now is that they’re pretty recognisable” when compared to their Obama-era predecessors, argues Yuval Levin, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, a think-tank, and alumnus of George W. Bush’s administration. “They haven’t changed as much as you would think, given how different Trump is from where Republicans have been before.” (…)
Mr Trump will move rapidly; the question is whether his policy changes stick. The beginning of the end of the Trump era will kick off with large-scale deportations on Tuesday, once the inauguration festivities have come to a close. Once the initial shock and awe have worn off, it will be on Mr Trump to fight tougher battles of persuasion to create a real legacy.■
https://www.economist.com/united-states/2025/01/19/the-beginning-of-the-end-of-the-trump-era
Le Figaro, 20 janvier, article payant
L’éditorial de Philippe Gélie : « Trump et la fin de l’Occident »
Les Européens auraient tort de penser qu’ils jouent encore dans la même équipe que les États-Unis.
Extraits:
Ce n’est pas le moindre talent de Donald Trump que de forcer ses interlocuteurs à spéculer sur ce qu’il va faire. On connaît les piliers de son programme, puisqu’il n’en a jamais changé – lutter contre l’immigration, imposer des droits de douane, encourager les forages, dégraisser l’État fédéral, traquer le wokisme –, mais nul ne sait dans quel ordre il va procéder, à quel rythme et sous quel angle d’attaque. Ces incertitudes inquiètent et déstabilisent, c’est le but. (…)
Donald Trump, c’est d’abord une méthode, très simple : celle de « la pression maximale ». Quel que soit le sujet, face à des adversaires ou de supposés alliés, il utilisera tous les moyens disponibles pour obtenir le meilleur « deal ». (…)
Face aux ressorts du trumpisme, vecteurs de son populisme, le monde est prié de s’adapter. Pour les Européens, cela s’annonce particulièrement difficile, parce qu’ils croient encore jouer dans la même équipe. Or, s’il paraît un peu grandiloquent de dire qu’avec Trump c’est la fin de l’Occident, c’est en tout cas la fin annoncée du confortable « club occidental », où l’on défendrait des intérêts communs. Avec Trump plus qu’aucun autre, le seul destin de l’Europe est dans le non-alignement.
The Wall Street Journal, 18 janvier, article payant
Trump Is a Realist on Greenland
In fact, stability depends on the U.S. being ready to act in the places the president-elect keeps talking about.
Extraits :
(…) But it’s easier to make sense of Mr. Trump’s rhetorical gambits, including threatening to control Panama and Greenland by force, than you might think. (…)
Also in the cards: an early Beijing provocation in the South China Sea, aimed just below Mr. Trump’s threshold of irritability, to further erode U.S. deterrence in the region. In enlarging the geopolitical playing field to include areas where the U.S. is more advantageously placed, Mr. Trump not only distracts, he reminds us the playing field is bigger and more favorable than we might have remembered.
• Stating the obvious. He’s saying what more decorous and perhaps wiser presidents don’t feel the need to emphasize. The U.S. stands ready to exert control over the Panama Canal in any conflict with China. It stands ready, in one fashion or another, to assert control over Greenland to protect vital communications between the U.S. and Europe. The U.S. already has large forces based in Europe. They need to be supported. Also Greenland contains rare minerals that aren’t really rare: China’s power comes from controlling the processing, which it uses to favor sourcing that it also controls. The underpopulated Danish territory is one of the West’s best opportunities to flip this table. (…)
The Danes have been responsible stewards. Denmark is a loyal NATO ally. Anathema ought to be handing over its giant, indefensible island hinterland to 56,000 local voters. Notice how the “resource curse” has turned the Mideast into a byword of stability and progress. The gap between present status and expectations is even vaster and more dislocating—on paper, every Greenlander is a multimillionaire given the wealth under their feet.
These are circumstances to undo almost any newly independent nation. In how many years might an outside military have to intervene if demagogues and kleptocrats come to power? (…)
Mr. Trump has dominated the downtime between election and inauguration with his stink-bomb musings on age-old geopolitical questions. He successfully crowded other world leaders and their words off the stage, consolidating his astonishing gift for driving the global discussion. This alone is a useful demonstration. Russia and China would be instant sinkholes without U.S. stability and predictability upholding open markets and secure transit. We forget this but they don’t. Mr. Trump is throwing them curveballs. If he has a good game plan to go with it, it could pay off for America.
The Economist, by invitation, 17 janvier, article payant
The second Trump presidency : Trumpism is becoming more pragmatic, argues Reihan Salam
But not all of the incoming president’s backers buy it
Reihan Salam is president of the Manhattan Institute.
Extraits :
DONALD TRUMP is enjoying a honeymoon. As he wryly observed in December, “[In] the first term, everybody was fighting me. In this term, everybody wants to be my friend.” The president-elect was referring to the ever-growing list of technology CEOs who had made the pilgrimage to Mar-a-Lago, his Florida home. But he could just as easily have had in mind the #Resistance media luminaries now seeking to mend fences, the swing-state Democratic senators backing immigration-enforcement measures they once deemed anathema, or the anxious foreign emissaries hoping that he can be talked out of walloping their economies with tariffs.
Why do so many of the great and good now want to be Mr Trump’s friend? One explanation is that his victory in 2024 was broader and more convincing than the one in 2016. This time, he won the popular vote by drawing in more working Americans of all racial groups, Hispanics in particular. Moreover, urban areas that were once Democratic strongholds gave him significant support.
This broadened coalition, though, represents a change not just to Trump voters, but to Trumpism. (…)
Thanks to surging inflation and illegal immigration, and with Mr Trump growing more moderate on key social issues, many socially liberal voters found themselves “mugged by reality”, as the conservative intellectual Irving Kristol once put it. Business leaders, investors, Silicon Valley moguls and academics who once considered Mr Trump beyond the pale began to reconsider his virtues. The result is a new Trumpian synthesis—call it Neo-Trumpism.
This is a stark departure from Mr Trump’s first bid for the Republican nomination. (…)
The progressive overreach of the Biden years created an opening for Mr Trump, but an opening that was markedly different from what came before. He could shift his focus from appealing to the traditional Republican base—with whom his alliance was always uneasy—to affirming the centre’s anger over Mr Biden’s overreach. (…)
The spike in inflation that followed the budget-busting American Rescue Plan revealed the limits of fiscal expansion and reminded American voters of the downsides of unlimited welfarism. Swing voters weren’t suddenly clamouring for entitlement reform, but they were more worried about the rising cost of groceries than the need for more transfers.
Finally, Hamas’s October 7th attack on Israel served as a vivid reminder of the threat of terrorist barbarism abroad and, closer to home, the extent of anti-Israel, anti-Western sentiment among American leftists and in many immigrant communities.
Paleo-Trumpism has thus had to make room for Neo-Trumpism: a more pragmatic, less ideological tendency that emphasises law and order, pro-growth economic policies, an assertive foreign policy, a more selective approach to immigration and vigorous opposition to the entrenchment of intersectional leftism in schools, workplaces and cultural institutions.
On the campaign trail, these tendencies can coexist. When it comes to governing, however, there will be hard choices ahead, as evidenced by the ferocious row over H-1B visas that recently pitted Elon Musk and his Silicon Valley allies, who embrace skilled immigration, against MAGA social-media influencers, who vehemently disagree.
There will, then, be pressure to abandon Neo-Trumpism, but Mr Trump would be unwise to yield to it. Not only is it what put him back in the White House. By expanding his coalition, and increasing its respectability, Neo-Trumpism gives its namesake an opportunity to forge a lasting ideological legacy. ■
The Economist, 16 janvier, article payant
What do Greenlanders think of being bought?
Donald Trump’s desire for Greenland, and a shabby visit by his son, reignite the independence debate
Extraits :
(…) Panama is part of a bigger piece of real estate that Mr Trump has his eye on. He wants to influence territory and infrastructure close to the United States. He views Mexico as a source of unwanted migration, drugs and Chinese goods, Canada as a liberal dystopia and Greenland as a weak link. Some of his remarks are bluster. The Gulf of Mexico, he says, should be renamed the Gulf of America. Marjorie Taylor Greene, a congresswoman, has drawn up legislation for that purpose; Mexico’s leader Claudia Sheinbaum has retorted that a portion of the continent should be renamed Mexican America. He says Canada should become the 51st member of the United States, but among just a few other problems with that, absorbing relatively liberal Canada into the United States would dilute the Republicans’ political clout.
Yet his remarks about the Panama Canal, Greenland and Mexico touch on real sensitivities and have tangible consequences. On January 7th Mr Trump said the canal was “vital to our country” and claimed that it is being “operated by China”. On January 9th Dusty Johnson, a Republican congressman, proposed a bill to authorise the purchase of the canal from the Panamanian government, citing “China’s interest in and presence around the canal”. José Raúl Mulino, Panama’s president, has responded to Mr Trump’s by saying that “every square metre of the canal” belongs to Panama and will continue to do so.
MAGA claims that China operates or owns the canal are false. Nonetheless the Panamanian government has become cosy with China in recent years. “China doesn’t have control of the canal, but it has taken advantage of weak institutions and endemic corruption to increase its influence in national politics and business,” says Alonso Illueca of Santa María La Antigua Catholic University in Panama city. In June 2017 Panama’s government ended diplomatic relations with Taiwan and established them with Beijing. (…)
Mr Trump also says “the United States of America feels that the ownership and control of Greenland is an absolute necessity” for “purposes of national security”. He has refused to rule out using force. Mute Egede, Greenland’s prime minister, says its 57,000 residents do not want to be either Americans or part of Denmark, as they are at present. Mr Trump’s allies point to China’s “Polar Silk Road”, a spree of infrastructure-building in the Arctic, as a threat, but that is old news. The cash-strapped Greenland government did welcome Chinese investment a decade ago, but pressure from the Danish and American governments often blocked Chinese projects. Chinese mines have faced financial obstacles and local opposition. China’s activity is now mostly confined to fisheries. A poll in 2024 showed that 25% of Greenlanders welcome more co-operation with China, down from 47% in 2021. (…)
But it is undeniable that Greenland is important to America’s national security. The shortest route for Russian nuclear missiles to reach America’s east coast goes right over the island: Pituffik Space Base in the territory’s north-west hosts part of America’s missile early-warning system. The so-called Greenland-Iceland-United Kingdom gap plays a central role in the high-stakes submarine contest between nato and Russia. “Frankly, this is our backyard…Actually, it’s our front door,” says Tom Dans, a former Trump appointee at the US Arctic Research Commission.
A majority of Greenlanders want independence from Denmark. Under a 2009 home-rule law they have a roadmap to achieving it, though they remain divided on timing and economic viability. An independent Greenland could be vulnerable to coercion and be an unreliable ally. Greenlanders can have a Panglossian view of geopolitics. The government has advocated non-militarisation. In 2024 2% of Greenlanders considered growing military tension their biggest challenge. (…)
What next? As usual with Mr Trump’s wildest pronouncements, deals are much more likely than extreme outcomes. Greenland becoming part of the United States would do little to improve security. Yet a military and economic reset is looming. (…) In Nuuk on January 13th Mr Egede said he had been “shocked” by Mr Trump’s comments, yet at the same time signalled closer co-operation on defence, and welcomed American investment in mining. “The US doesn’t need to own Greenland in order to support its presence there,” says Kristine Berzina of the German Marshall Fund, a think-tank.
Likewise an American invasion of Panama is not on the cards. Mr Mulino has rejected any negotiation over the canal, which brings in $5bn in annual revenue. Yet it seems likely that Panama will try to deepen commercial and diplomatic links with the United States, and to reduce its China connection. America’s most important immediate neighbour sets an example here. On January 13th Ms Sheinbaum announced a new “Plan Mexico” aimed at reducing its dependence on inputs from China, and reaffirmed the centrality of the usmca trade deal linking the United States, Mexico and Canada. Will it be enough to placate Mr Trump? She also revealed that she had not been invited to the president-elect’s inauguration. Mr Trump is not about to invade his neighbours. But he is unlikely to prioritise building reliable partnerships either. The new doctrine is one of deference. ■
L’Express, 15 janvier, article payant
Donald Trump, le retour du dynamiteur : jusqu’où ira-t-il ?
Etats-Unis. Avec Elon Musk à ses côtés et le contrôle sur tous les pouvoirs, le 47e président dispose d’une puissance inédite. Les Européens peuvent à bon droit s’inquiéter
Extraits :
Sans attendre la passation de pouvoir du 20 janvier, Donald Trump a déjà (re)démarré son show. Moins de deux semaines avant son investiture, celui-ci a commencé par un feu d’artifice de provocations à l’égard de ses alliés, frappés de sidération. Lors d’une conférence de presse improvisée depuis sa résidence de Mar-a-Lago, en Floride, le président élu a asséné qu’il n’excluait rien. Ni d’attaquer le Panama pour reprendre le contrôle du canal interocéanique cédé à ce pays fin 1999. Ni de s’emparer du Groenland – partie intégrante du Danemark depuis deux siècles. Ni de faire pression sur le Canada pour en faire le 51e Etat américain.
Au même moment, le fils du président élu, “Don Jr” débarquait à Nuuk, la capitale du Groenland, en service commandé : envoyé spécial de son père, il était venu faire le buzz en multipliant les selfies avec une poignée d’autochtones coiffés de casquettes MAGA (Make America Great Again) distribués par ses soins.
On croyait le 47e président américain isolationniste, désireux de replier l’Amérique sur elle-même; on le découvre impérialiste. “Il a une vision du monde très XIXe siècle, estime Jacob Heilbrunn qui dirige la revue de géopolitique The National Interest. Dans la lignée de la doctrine du président Monroe [1817-1825], il veut découper le monde en “sphères d’influence” et estime que les Etats-Unis n’ont pas d’alliés, seulement des concurrents ou des adversaires. Il croit obtenir davantage par l’agression que par la coopération : en cela, il ressemble à Vladimir Poutine…” Nous voici prévenus : avec le retour de Trump, les relations internationales se définiront avant tout par la loi du plus fort. (…)
Mais pourquoi Donald Trump se plaît-il tant à déstabiliser ses alliés européens et américains? “Une partie de la réponse relève de la psychologie : sans filtre, il adore effrayer les gens et indigner les journalistes et les commentateurs, réplique Eliot A. Cohen, ex-conseiller du ministère des Affaires étrangères sous George W. Bush.
Mais il faut reconnaître, aussi, que ses propos correspondent à des préoccupations réelles. Le Groenland, où vivent 57 000 habitants, est un territoire à haute valeur stratégique dans l’Arctique, qu’il s’agit de défendre des convoitises chinoises.” Au Panama, c’est également la Chine qui est visée. Les dirigeants américains s’inquiètent de la prise de contrôle par Pékin de plusieurs ports et zones franches aux entrées du canal dont la valeur stratégique, en cas de guerre, serait inestimable.
De là à ordonner une opération militaire? (…)
L’imprévisibilité trumpienne met en tout cas les acteurs européens dans un état de stress qu’ils n’avaient pas connu depuis… le précédent mandat du républicain. Il est vrai que le 20 janvier, le monde pénètre en terra incognita. (…)
Déjà, le plus proche conseiller de Donald Trump multiplie les ingérences dans la vie politique européenne. Au Royaume-Uni, Elon Musk a déterré un scandale de pédocriminalité avec l’objectif de faire tomber le Premier ministre travailliste Keir Starmer, demandant carrément des élections anticipées. En Allemagne, à quelques semaines des élections législatives de février, il appelle à voter pour Alternative für Deutschland (AfD), “dernière lueur d’espoir” dans un pays dirigé par un Olaf Scholz traité d'”imbécile incompétent”. Musk a aussi offert une tribune inespérée à Alice Weidel – cheffe de ce parti antimigrants, prorusse et eurosceptique – et candidate au poste de chancelier, dans une interview en streaming le 9 janvier sur X.
Le statut ambigu d’Elon Musk dans la galaxie Trump représente à lui seul un défi. Non élu et non-membre du cabinet présidentiel – mais à la tête d’une instance non gouvernementale chargée de faire des recommandations pour tailler dans les dépenses de la bureaucratie – l’entrepreneur ne représente pas l’Etat américain. Stricto sensu, ses propos ne relèvent donc pas de l’ingérence. Et il se présente comme un simple individu exerçant sa liberté d’expression. “Le danger qu’il fait peser sur la vie démocratique européenne est pourtant bien réel”, évalue l’expert David Colon, auteur de La guerre de l’information. Les Etats à la conquête de nos esprits (Tallandier). Il a fait modifier l’algorithme qui gère son propre profil sur X afin que la portée de ses tweets soit amplifiée mille fois et qu’ils atteignent tout le monde, bien au-delà de ses followers. Résultat, X est devenue la chambre d’écho mondiale du moindre propos de Musk dont la rafale de posts quotidiens affectent nos débats publics.”
Or Musk comme Trump ont en horreur l’ordre mondial hérité de la Seconde Guerre mondiale. Ils abhorrent les institutions onusiennes et méprisent les démocraties européennes. Face à l’offensive lancée par ce tandem infernal, l’Europe a du souci à se faire. (…)
Une question demeure : jusqu’où le prochain locataire de la Maison-Blanche, appuyé par le gourou Musk, abusera-t-il de sa position dominante? “Ayant réussi le plus extraordinaire come-back de l’histoire américaine, il se sent plus fort que jamais, pointe Jacob Heilbrunn, du National Interest. La tentative d’assassinat dont il a miraculeusement réchappé a encore renforcé l’idée messianique qu’il se fait de lui-même. Il se prend désormais pour un génie infaillible, comme Poutine.” Pas vraiment rassurant.
The Wall Street Journal, 15 janvier, article payant
Trump’s Canada and Greenland Threats Imperil China Fight, Says Departing Envoy
Ambassador Nicholas Burns expresses concern about future relations with Beijing
Extraits :
BEIJING—U.S. Ambassador Nicholas Burns, in a parting interview in which he expressed concern about the future of relations with Beijing, said President-elect Donald Trump’s designs on Canada and Greenland will weaken Washington’s ability to confront adversaries such as China.
In the days leading up to his inauguration next week, Trump has declared it “an absolute necessity” that the U.S. take control of Greenland, a Danish territory, and suggested that Canada be made a 51st U.S. state, citing national-security concerns. Greenland’s prime minister and officials in Canada have pushed back.
Threats to the sovereignty of allies undermine the longstanding U.S. position that nations should respect the territorial integrity of those around them, Burns said in an interview at the U.S. Embassy in Beijing.
“We’re facing, in Putin, in the Chinese Communist leadership, in Iran, in Venezuela, countries that want to unravel that international order that we have supported,” he said. “The last thing we should do is insult and be disrespectful to the people of Canada or the people of Denmark.” (…)
“One of the greatest achievements in the history of the United States was the order that we helped to put into place following the Second World War…that the borders of the countries are sacrosanct, that the United States recognizes the inviolability of borders of other countries,” Burns said. “Our message to Putin and to the Chinese will be very strong and credible, when we practice that respect for the sovereignty, especially of our allies.” (…)
The Guardian, 15 janvier, libre accès
Timothy Garton Ash: In the new Trumpian era, liberal democracies must hold their noses – and engage with difficult partners
New polling says much of the world will welcome Trump. Europe will need to be more transactional abroad – but less so at home
Read full article here: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/jan/15/donald-trump-liberal-democracies-trumpian-europe-politics
The Wall Street Journal, 14 janvier, article payant
Trump’s Talk of Buying Greenland Energizes Island’s Independence Movement
Many in Danish territory don’t want to sell to the U.S., but they are open to the idea of a closer relationship
Extraits :
Jørgen Boassen, a 50-year-old bricklayer and Trump admirer, was at the airport in Greenland’s capital Nuuk this week wearing a MAGA hat to cheer the arrival of Trump Force One.
But Boassen, who helped organize the visit from Donald Trump Jr., says he has no interest in President-elect Donald Trump’s entreaties to buy the icebound island. “We can’t be sold,” he says. Instead, he wants to further Greenland’s push for independence, and to that end, Trump’s interventions are proving unexpectedly useful.
Greenland is a self-ruling part of the Kingdom of Denmark. The Danish government says it is willing to grant Greenland full independence if there is local support, and recent Greenlandic elections and polls indicate there is.
Like many independence movements, the Greenlandic campaign is butting up against uncertainty over what happens next when freedom is secured. The Danish government has said that if Greenland became independent, it would stop around $600 million in annual handouts—about half the island’s budget—raising doubts over how the new nation would fund itself.
Trump’s recent threat of a trade war with Denmark is changing the negotiating dynamic, says Ulrik Pram Gad, a senior researcher at the Danish Institute for International Studies. The Danish government now might be more open to agreeing a divorce deal that includes some continued payments to ease Greenland’s path to independence, he says. “My prognosis is that the Danish government will accept it in the next few years,” he says. An independent Greenland would then be free to forge its own security or economic ties with the U.S., Denmark or anyone else.
“What Trump has said is that we are valued in the U.S., he wants to help us,” says Pele Broberg, the leader of one of Greenland’s pro-independence parties, Naleraq. “We can become independent with the help of other states.” However, Broberg says he has no desire to become part of the U.S.
Trump on Thursday night seemed to double down on his offer. “The people of Greenland would love to become a state of the United States of America,” he said. “Now, Denmark maybe doesn’t like it. But then we can’t be too happy with Denmark and maybe things have to happen with respect to Denmark having to do with tariffs.”
In April, Greenland goes to the polls in a vote that could fire the starter gun on independence for the territory of 57,000 people. The last time elections were held, pro-independence parties got 80% of the vote.
Just days before Donald Trump Jr.’s arrival, the prime minister of Greenland made a New Year’s address to the nation saying that a draft constitution for the country has been prepared and that the independence process should be triggered. “It is now time to take the next step for our country,” Múte Egede said. “Like other countries in the world, we must work to remove the obstacles to cooperation—which we can describe as the shackles of the colonial era—and move on.” (…)
A poll conducted in 2019 showed 68% of Greenlanders want their country to become independent from Denmark sometime in the two decades to come.
Boassen, who welcomed Donald Trump Jr., and enjoyed a buffet lunch with him at a local hotel, says he would like to establish greater security ties with the U.S. to avoid being invaded by Russia. Some Greenlandic politicians, meanwhile, have urged that Greenland should tie itself closely to Denmark and the European Union.
Some of Trump’s advisers have privately acknowledged a sale of Greenland is unlikely, but an expansion of U.S. military and financial presence on the island is a possibility. A poll in 2021 showed that 69% of Greenlanders favored more cooperation with the U.S., compared with 39% who favored tighter cooperation with China.
Pram Gad, at the Danish Institute for International Studies, says the idea that the U.S. needs to buy Greenland to achieve its geopolitical aims is “crazy.” (…)
Denmark has sold bits of its empire to the U.S. before. In 1916, it sold the Danish West Indies, a group of islands in the Caribbean, to the U.S. for $25 million in gold. Last month, the Danes responded to Trump’s overtures by upping military spending on Greenland, announcing the purchase of two new inspection ships, two additional dog-sled teams and an upgrade for one of Greenland’s three main civilian airports to handle F-35 jet fighters.
The king of Denmark also updated the royal coat of arms to include an enlarged image of a polar bear, a symbol of Greenland, in an attempt to underscore the monarchy’s attachment to the place.
The Economist, 11 janvier, article payant
An American purchase of Greenland could be the deal of the century
The economics of buying new territory
Article complet en PDF: https://kinzler.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/9-janvier.pdf
The Wall Street Journal, 11 janvier, article payant
Denmark May Regret Not Selling Greenland to Trump
How long will the Danes even own it?
Extraits :
Danish politicians may be struggling to understand the art of the deal. Yes, real estate is about location, location and location. But for any kind of negotiation, timing is important too. Voters in Denmark may soon be asking why political leaders didn’t cut a deal with President Donald Trump when they had the chance during his first term. That’s when Mr. Trump broached the idea of the United States purchasing Greenland, a Danish territory and former colony. Mr. Trump recently raised the issue again as he prepares for his second term.
Now the Danes could end up getting bupkis for the chilly islands—no check from Uncle Sam and no control over Greenland. Reuters reports from Copenhagen:
Greenland’s Prime Minister Mute Egede emphasised his desire to pursue independence from Denmark, its former colonial ruler, during his New Year speech, marking a significant change in the rhetoric surrounding the Arctic island’s future.
Egede’s speech, which comes on the heels of comments by U.S. President-elect Donald Trump expressing his wish for “ownership and control” of Greenland, also expressed a desire to strengthen Greenland’s cooperation with other countries.
“It is about time that we ourselves take a step and shape our future, also with regard to who we will cooperate closely with, and who our trading partners will be,” he said…
“It is now time for our country to take the next step. Like other countries in the world, we must work to remove the obstacles to cooperation – which we can describe as the shackles of colonialism – and move forward,” he said.
This doesn’t mean that Mr. Egede welcomes a U.S. acquisition. Kathryn Armstrong reported for the BBC after the most recent Trump declaration of interest last month:
Greenland has once again said it is not for sale after US President-elect Donald Trump said he wanted to take control of the territory.
“Greenland belongs to the people of Greenland,” its prime minister said on Monday, a day after Trump repeated comments about the Arctic island that he first made several years ago.
But if Greenland is rapidly moving toward a split with Denmark, it will likely be seeking a partner to offer security, as well as new commercial opportunities. (…)
Denmark may be in for a bad case of non-seller’s remorse. Sure, “fly me to Ilulissat” is not something you hear every day. But with travel options expanding the sky’s the limit. And recent history suggests Greenland may be in for a Trump bump. (…)
If travel expands, Americans may soon be cherishing memories of exotic getaways and saying, “We’ll always have Qaqortoq.”
New York Times, 26 décembre, article payant
The President’s Arsenal
In the United States, only the president can decide whether to use nuclear weapons. It’s an extraordinary instance in which Mr. Trump’s decision-making power will be absolute.
Extraits:
In the United States, only the president can decide whether to use nuclear weapons. It’s an extraordinary instance in which Mr. Trump’s decision-making power will be absolute. He will not need to consult Congress, the courts or senior advisers on when or how to use them. He will have a free hand to craft our nation’s nuclear posture, policy and diplomacy.
On the campaign trail, Mr. Trump commented on the peril posed by the rest of the world’s growing nuclear arsenals. His return to the White House offers new opportunities for him to steer America clear of those threats. His administration will need to act urgently and with creativity, all while also demonstrating the understanding that nuclear weapons are too dangerous to be brandished as a cudgel.
The leaders of China, Russia and the United States are in the midst of a new great-power competition, a global struggle for military, economic and geopolitical dominance. But not all aspects of this contest are zero-sum, especially in nuclear weapons matters. There are ample opportunities for all sides to improve their own national security conditions by staving off a costly arms race and dangerous confrontation.
Most Americans have never seen — or perhaps even contemplated — what it takes to be ready for nuclear conflict. Times Opinion gained rare, up-close access this summer to film what this looks like in the United States. Observing the missile launch procedures provided a glimpse at the inner workings of a warfighting machine that should never be set in motion.
The global nuclear balance is more tenuous in 2024 than it has been in decades.
“Tomorrow, we could have a war that will be so devastating that you could never recover from it,” Mr. Trump said in June. “Nobody can. The whole world won’t be able to recover from it.” (…)
President Vladimir Putin of Russia continues to raise the specter of escalating his war on Ukraine to nuclear use. India and Pakistan have an estimated 170 nuclear weapons each but are expanding their arsenals. U.S. intelligence believes China plans to double by 2030 the size of its stockpile of an estimated 500 warheads, as it continues the most ambitious expansion and diversification of its weaponry in its history. North Korea has developed missiles designed to strike America. The war in Gaza threatens to expand into a wider regional conflict; Israel already has nuclear weapons and Iran is moving closer to building a bomb, risking a proliferation cascade throughout the Middle East.
The nuclear risk isn’t found only among America’s adversaries. Allies without nuclear aims are now seriously discussing whether they also need nuclear capability. The recently impeached South Korean president, Yoon Suk-yeol, has raised the possibility of building a bomb, and polls have shown that 70 percent of Koreans think the country should. If South Korea proceeds, experts assume Japan will as well. Germany is debating whether it should develop its own nuclear program, and Poland has sought a more active role in NATO’s nuclear sharing. Ukraine’s leader, President Volodymyr Zelensky, has made his nation’s need for a nuclear weapon clear if the country isn’t granted NATO membership. (…)
In the past, Mr. Trump has said that he first appreciated the true danger of nuclear weapons after talking to an unlikely source: his uncle, an M.I.T. professor. In 1986, when he was still principally a New York real estate developer, Mr. Trump reached out to the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War, which had just received a Nobel Peace Prize for its disarmament work. He hoped to arrange negotiations with the Soviets to lower the nuclear threat.
Now it will be the job of President Trump to pull the world back from the brink. It’s time to discuss what he and the United States should prioritize. (…)
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/12/17/opinio
New York Times, Guest Essay, 21 décembre, article payant
The Budget Fight and Trump’s Nihilistic Style
Extraits:
In about a month, the inauguration will complete a loop: Donald Trump will become president again, eight years after the initial event.
The Trump era of American life will last about 12 years, including the Biden interregnum, stretching from the summer of 2015 into the winter of 2029. The country has, to understate it, already wildly changed.
None of us are the same people we were eight years ago. Politics definitely isn’t the same as it was — even people’s reactions to Mr. Trump winning the presidency again are different. This time it has played out more like a mix of resignation, alienation and openness than the shock and refusal of late 2016. “EVERYBODY WANTS TO BE MY FRIEND!!!” Mr. Trump posted on Truth Social on Thursday morning. He is like a magnet who pulls, repels and reshapes what surrounds him. (…)
A major part of the past two years has been Mr. Trump’s promise that radical, dramatic change is coming, undergirded by the broader movement of national conservatives and the more hard-core MAGA universe, from mass deportations to a rethinking of American power abroad. We’re already in an era of deep change, which happens in big and small ways all the time: We’ve now spent half a decade talking about the industrial base, industrial policy, renegotiated trade deals — nationalistic economic policies and an interest in domestic tech manufacturing that were almost impossible to imagine before the Trump era. But the sudden, enormous presence of Mr. Musk in political life, the rapid re-emergence of big spending cuts as a G.O.P. concern this year and the surprise congressional spending standoff are a good reminder of the discordant way big change could be coming in 2025.
At the beginning of the year, Mr. Musk and Mr. Trump were considered potential but not yet certain allies. Now they seem to be deeply intertwined in decision-making about all kinds of things. Mr. Trump and Robert Kennedy Jr. barely knew each other a few months ago and there they are now, together, with a real segment of the G.O.P. base deeply attached to Mr. Kennedy’s outlook. (…)
But the creation of the Department of Government Efficiency, from its nongovernmental nature to the sheer power of the resources Mr. Musk may possess and his own demonstrated ability to shape events, is one of those things that you couldn’t dream up a year ago. Through Mr. Musk, spending cuts have roared back as a Republican concern over the past couple of months in a way that was not at all a sure thing given the arc of Mr. Trump’s first term, his resistance to cutting entitlements and the broader goals of some of the national conservatives. DOGE seems like an unpredictable outside force that could be nothing or everything next year, as evidenced in a certain way by the events on Capitol Hill this week.
Unpredictability and ideological inconsistency were always part of the first Trump presidency, and a major and chaotic theme of the past decade overall, as we limp toward the end of another year of wild news events. One of the inescapable conclusions of the 2024 election and everything that has transpired is that, generally, it’d be foolish and ignorant to say that systems couldn’t be run better or rethought, or that the public does not want significant changes to American institutions. But one of the most disorienting, uneasy aspects of this transition is knowing that drastic change is coming — and that the people, mechanisms and big-picture decisions can change from one day to the next.
Even the unexpected can be more unexpected than we think.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/20/opinion/trump-shutdown-allegiances.html
Le Point, 18 décembre, article payant
Trump, le faiseur de deals à l’épreuve du nouvel ordre mondial
LA CHRONIQUE DE BRICE COUTURIER. De l’Ukraine à la Syrie, comment le président élu va tenter de s’imposer dans un monde beaucoup plus instable qu’en 2020.
Extraits:
De quel côté la politique étrangère de Donald Trump va-t-elle pencher ? Le futur président de la première puissance mondiale est un politicien imprévisible : il est réputé pour n’être inspiré par aucune doctrine en particulier et se fier à ses intuitions. Son slogan de campagne « La paix par la force » paraît inspiré par le désir de ses communicants de renouer avec la rhétorique reaganienne. (…)
Tout ce dont on est sûr concernant Trump, c’est que, en tant qu’homme d’affaires spécialisé dans l’immobilier, il se vante de savoir « passer des deals ». Ce qui le rapprocherait du « transactionnalisme », préconisé notamment par le sénateur James E. Risch à l’époque récente où ce républicain présidait la commission des Affaires étrangères du Sénat.
Cette doctrine consiste en une série de tentatives destinées à « modifier la base de l’engagement américain et définir une série de contreparties à l’engagement des États-Unis », bref, à faire payer les alliés pour une protection américaine revue à la baisse sans basculer dans l’isolationnisme pur et simple.
Lors de son premier mandat, il a ainsi tenté de négocier un certain nombre de « contrats » au bénéfice des États-Unis. Avec des résultats mitigés : si le dictateur nord-coréen l’a roulé dans la farine, Trump peut cependant se vanter d’avoir obtenu la signature des accords d’Abraham, normalisant les relations entre Israël et quatre États arabes : Bahreïn, les Émirats arabes unis, le Maroc et le Soudan.
À cette époque déjà, comme au cours de la campagne électorale de cette année, il avait promis aux Américains de mettre fin aux guerres lointaines et interminables, comme les aventures afghanes et irakiennes, imputées à l’idéalisme imprudent des néoconservateurs et à leur « wilsonisme botté ». C’est ce que continue de désirer la majorité d’entre eux. (…)
Cela fait un certain temps qu’on a compris que les États-Unis ne voulaient ou ne pouvaient plus jouer le rôle du shérif d’un ordre international libéral dont ils ont été les concepteurs, mais qu’ils estiment à présent contraire à leurs intérêts… (…)
Selon l’essayiste Ross Douthat, il faut s’attendre à ce que Pete Hegseth, le secrétaire à la Défense, s’oppose au vice-président J. D. Vance. Le premier a traité Vladimir Poutine de « criminel de guerre » quand l’autre a déclaré à plusieurs reprises que le sort de l’Ukraine l’indifférait et a recommandé que cesse tout soutien militaire américain à ce pays agressé. Selon Eric Ciaramella, de la Fondation Carnegie pour la paix internationale, ce sont actuellement les isolationnistes qui ont le vent en poupe au sein du cabinet.
Le monde que trouvera le nouveau président américain en prenant ses fonctions le 20 janvier est bien différent de celui au sein duquel il a joué sa partie entre 2017 et 2020. Il est devenu, de l’avis général, plus instable et plus dangereux. La Chine, la Russie et l’Iran se sont coordonnés pour saper l’influence occidentale. Ils rencontrent des auditeurs attentifs dans un « Sud global » dont il est erroné d’imaginer qu’il soit unifié et homogène. Deux guerres majeures ont éclaté, l’une en Ukraine, l’autre au Moyen-Orient. Et Trump ne saurait s’en désintéresser. (…)
Les Américains et leurs alliés de l’époque ont échoué à imposer la démocratie en Irak parce que ce type de régime doit procéder d’une maturation interne et ne saurait faire l’objet d’exportation. Mais, dans le cas de la Syrie, les États-Unis devraient s’impliquer et faire pression en ce sens auprès des nouveaux dirigeants du pays. Comme l’écrit Friedman, les coûts seraient faibles mais les chances de succès, élevées.
The Economist, 18 décembre, article payant
Labour under false pretences : Workers love Donald Trump. Unions should fear him
The president-elect is no friend to organised labour
Extraits:
It has been a banner year for America’s unions. In November 33,000 machinists returned to their stations at Boeing having won a 38% wage increase over four years. Their victory followed a seven-week strike that brought the plane-maker to its knees. A month before, 47,000 dockworkers walked out for three days at some of the country’s busiest ports. Teamsters union members at Amazon warehouses in New York are threatening a strike.
According to the Bureau of Labour Statistics, 29 stoppages involving more than 1,000 workers each began between January and November (last year’s total was 33, the most since 2000). The National Labour Relations Board (NLRB), the federal agency tasked with resolving labour disputes, says petitions to hold a vote to unionise are up by more than a quarter compared with last year. (…)
What will Mr Trump’s second term mean for this momentum? American conservatism is certainly edging closer to the country’s workers. Mr Trump has promised “historic co-operation between business and labour”. Yet his inauguration is also likely to bring unprecedented cosiness between the White House and billionaires such as Elon Musk. The populists and plutocrats that make up Mr Trump’s uneasy coalition have vastly different ideas about the future of the labour movement. American workers, unions and industry cannot help being caught in the middle. (…)
Other company kept by Mr Trump, however, is cause for picket-line panic. Mr Musk, who has been chosen to run a new Department of Government Efficiency, is a threat to organised labour. He has resisted unionisation at Tesla, his electric-vehicle company, which has helped it best the big Detroit carmakers. Along with Amazon, Mr Musk’s firms have challenged the authority of the NLRB in court.
There are more reasons to expect a decline in union power. The conditions of high inflation and near-full employment that gave leverage to striking workers during Mr Biden’s term have softened. (…)
To secure Mr Trump’s favour, unions may have to adapt. Many have taken to championing views on topics irrelevant to the livelihoods of those they represent. Earlier this year, for example, a coalition of unions demanded cessation of military aid to Israel. They will need to rein in their campaigning.
After all, wooing workers and courting unions are not the same thing. J.D. Vance, the incoming vice-president, and Marco Rubio, the presumptive secretary of state, for now both senators, have introduced a bill that includes provisions for direct worker representation on corporate boards to bypass “big labour”. America’s unions should brace for competition. ■
https://www.economist.com/business/2024/12/17/workers-love-donald-trump-unions-should-fear-him
Wall Street Journal, 14 décembre, article payant
Biden Gets Lost in Trump’s Shadow
The president-elect acts as if he’s already in charge. There’s never been a transition like this before.
Extraits:
Like Donald Trump or dislike him, hate him or love him, doesn’t matter: You have to see that what we are witnessing right now is truly remarkable, with no precedent.
He is essentially functioning as the sitting president. In the past, a man was elected and sat in his house, met with potential cabinet members, and courteously, carefully kept out of the news except to make a statement announcing a new nominee. The incumbent was president until Inauguration Day. That’s the way it was even in 2016; Barack Obama was still seen as president after Mr. Trump was elected. All that has changed.
Mr. Trump is the locus of all eyes. He goes to Europe for the opening of Notre-Dame. “The protocols they put in place for his arrival were those of a sitting president, not an incoming one,” a Trump loyalist and former staffer said by phone. He holds formal meetings with Volodymyr Zelensky and Emmanuel Macron. There he is chatting on a couch with Prince William. (…)
Mr. Trump tells Vladimir Putin that now that he’s abandoned Syria, he should make a deal to end the war in Ukraine. “I know Vladimir well. This is his time to act. China can help. The world is waiting!” (…)
Donald Trump hasn’t overshadowed Joe Biden; he has eclipsed him. A former senior official in Mr. Trump’s first term told NBC News a few days ago that Mr. Trump “is already basically running things, and he’s not even president yet.” (…)
To some degree the status shift is expected. Mr. Trump is the future, Mr. Biden the past; Mr. Trump wide-awake, Mr. Biden sleepy. The 46th president is a worn tire, the tread soft and indistinct. With the pardon of his son he lost stature. Also, Mr. Trump makes other leaders nervous, as he enjoys pointing out. They can neither predict him nor imitate him, so they can’t take their eyes off him. And Mr. Biden’s been rocked by something he knew in the abstract that’s become all too particular: after 50 years at the center of public life he’s been dropped, cast aside, because it was about power all along, and not about him. (…)
Wall Street Journal, 13 décembre, article payant
The Wrong Lessons From the Iraq War
The U.S. has made foolish mistakes, but withdrawing from the world would be the worst of them all.
Extraits:
JD Vance is tired of Washington lawmakers who believe they can “remake the entire world in America’s image.” So he said in an October podcast with Joe Rogan, adding that the Iraq war was America’s “biggest world-historical catastrophe.” This came after insights into issues as diverse as climate and energy, immigration and assimilation, and the clash between the right to autonomy and the right to life. It is to Donald Trump’s credit that he chose a running mate capable of handling such topics so adeptly.
Messrs. Trump and Vance are right that it’s past time for American allies to pay their bills. That’s true of Britain and Australia too, the nations least inclined to shirk their obligations. Americans are also right to feel underappreciated, given that the long Pax Americana has mostly been better for the world than for America itself. Still, thanks to America’s blood and treasure, the world has been freer, fairer, safer and richer for more people than at any time in history.
As a weary titan, America’s reluctance to be the main guardian of the universal decencies of mankind is understandable. But the incoming administration should understand that this would be the worst time for the indispensable nation to step aside. An axis of dictatorships—a militarist one in Moscow, an Islamist one in Tehran and a communist one in Beijing—are united by a hatred of the West and a desire to undo history. Without America’s active engagement, the dictators will create a much bleaker and more dangerous world.
Consider the threats and who is prepared to resist them. Vladimir Putin wants to re-create a greater Russia—an impoverished police state across the Eurasian landmass. Xi Jinping wants a restored Middle Kingdom as the world’s dominant power. Ali Khamenei wants a global caliphate, regardless of the violence and bloodshed needed to create it. Standing in their way are Ukraine, Taiwan and Israel. Yet none of these nations can battle alone. (…)
Mr. Vance served honorably in Iraq, but he misreads that war, and his views have implications for today’s conflicts. It wasn’t wrong to remove the monstrous Saddam regime, which breached several United Nations resolutions. The catastrophe was disbanding the Iraqi army, leaving hundreds of thousands of unemployed men with guns, and sacking the Baathist public service, so that civilian infrastructure largely collapsed.
The folly was failing to restore the monarchy—the only form of government that works in the Arab world—or failing to hand the government to the least bad of Saddam’s generals. The Iraq war was never “all about oil,” as many critics suggested. It was a commendable, if poorly executed, attempt to bring a measure of humanity to a benighted people. I doubt the women of Afghanistan, once more imprisoned behind their veils, regarded the Western efforts as futile effrontery. The fruits of such efforts have been affirmed elsewhere. The people of Germany, Japan and South Korea are the transformed beneficiaries of the first global hegemon ever to use its power to help rather than oppress the weak.
It is a tragedy that so many Americans have perished in recent wars. But the best way to honor their memory is to be smarter about future conflicts, not to surrender the ideals for which they died. Allies can pick up the slack. Australia and others should swiftly move to spend 3% of gross domestic on their armed forces. Britain and Europe should take a stronger lead on Ukraine. The West’s military-industrial base must be rebuilt.
Effectively managing this transition is the great challenge Messrs. Trump and Vance must meet. Much hangs on their success.
Mr. Abbott served as prime minister of Australia, 2013-15.
Wall Street Journal, 6 décembre, article payant
Trump Plans to Appoint Musk Confidant David Sacks as AI, Crypto Czar
Tech investor was one of the most outspoken supporters of Trump in Silicon Valley
Extraits:
President-elect Donald Trump named a Silicon Valley investor close to Elon Musk as the White House’s artificial intelligence and cryptocurrency policy chief, signaling the growing influence of tech leaders and loyalists in the new administration.
David Sacks, a longtime venture capitalist who worked with Musk at PayPal more than two decades ago, will serve as the “White House A.I. & Crypto Czar,” Trump said on his social-media platform Truth Social.
“In this important role, David will guide policy for the Administration in Artificial Intelligence and Cryptocurrency, two areas critical to the future of American competitiveness,” he posted.
Musk, who has spent close to a quarter-billion dollars to help elect Trump, and Vice President-elect JD Vance chimed in with congratulatory messages on X. (…)
Some crypto executives cheered Sacks’ appointment. Emilie Choi, president and chief operating officer of crypto exchange Coinbase Global, wrote on X: “Time to build in the US!” (…)
The appointment further illustrates the growing influence of Musk and his associates in the incoming Trump administration. The Tesla chief has been appointed to co-lead the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, the mandate of which is to streamline government bureaucracy. (…)
Some of Musk’s rivals fear that he and his associates could target them with their newfound power. Artificial intelligence company OpenAI’s CEO Sam Altman ranks high on the billionaire’s list of enemies. That didn’t stop Altman from congratulating Sacks. “congrats to czar @DavidSacks!” Altman posted on X after Thursday’s announcement.
Musk responded to Altman’s post with an emoji that is laughing so hard it is crying.
Wall Street Journal, 4 décembre, article payant
The Economic-Policy Contradictions of Donald Trump
The president-elect says he’ll lower prices, but his other promises would raise them.
Extraits:
Many voters supported Donald Trump not as a disrupter of norms and institutions, but for policy reasons. They hired him to accomplish specific tasks, such as reducing prices, cutting taxes and halting illegal immigration. The incoming administration’s success will depend on Mr. Trump’s ability to accomplish these tasks. It won’t be easy—in part because some of his policies contradict each other and could undercut these goals.
Take Social Security as an example. Mr. Trump posted on Truth Social this July: “SENIORS SHOULD NOT PAY TAX ON SOCIAL SECURITY!” This statement, which he repeated on the campaign trail, was popular because it seemed intuitive. Workers are taxed on their earnings throughout their working lives to pay for future Social Security benefits. Why should they be taxed again when they receive these benefits?
But it isn’t that simple. (…)
Another bold promise—to cut electricity and other energy costs in half within 18 months of taking office—is at the core of Mr. Trump’s strategy for lowering prices across the board. This pledge helped move millions of working-class voters into his column. But many fossil-fuel industry leaders don’t favor his strategy of significantly boosting domestic production, and many energy experts doubt it will work. (…)
If Mr. Trump gave priority to reducing consumers’ costs for big-ticket items, he would eliminate restrictions on the import of electric vehicles. China sells many such vehicles at substantially less than the average price of Tesla’s U.S.-produced vehicles. But lowering import barriers would sound a death knell for the domestic auto industry.
This example illustrates a larger truth: Reducing prices often contradicts the goal of stabilizing and increasing domestic production. Protecting American industry can come at a substantial cost to the consumer. While Mr. Trump has said that “tariff” is the most beautiful word in the dictionary, many Americans consider “inflation” to be among the ugliest, and they voted for him believing he would rein it in. It’ll be interesting to see how the new administration responds when the tension between two of its core promises—protecting American industries and lowering prices—becomes too great to ignore. (…)
Many other tensions exist within Mr. Trump’s agenda. During his campaign, he promised the largest deportation of illegal immigrants in U.S. history. Doing so, he argued, would result in lower housing prices due to fewer immigrants competing with Americans for scarce housing.
But the result would likely be the opposite: a labor shortage resulting in fewer homes built and thus higher home prices. (…)
Mr. Trump is a mold-breaking leader, but voters will judge him on a traditional measure—his ability to deliver on the promises that propelled him to a second term. Tensions among these promises will complicate his task.
The Economist, 3 décembre, article payant
Wessex and the White House : Joe Biden abused a medieval power to pardon his son
The president’s reversal is understandable, humane and wrong
Extraits:
WHEN SETTING up the checks and balances in the American constitution, the document’s authors knew they wanted the judiciary to be independent of the legislative and the executive branches. But who, then, would check the judges? One answer was that the president would be able to pardon criminals. This awesome power—to override a decision taken by the courts—should be used rarely, because it is at odds with democracy and judicial independence. If it seems a bit medieval to let one man dispense (and dispense with) justice in this way, that is because it is. In British law the “prerogative of mercy” can be traced back to the reign of King Ine of Wessex in the seventh century.
In pardoning his son Hunter, Joe Biden has abused it. The Supreme Court once described the president’s pardon power as “an act of grace”. This pardon probably qualifies as that. Which loving father, having lost one child in a car crash and another to cancer, could resist sparing his addiction-prone son prison time if it were within his power to do so? As a private matter the pardon is understandable, humane even. Yet Mr Biden is also the president, so that is not the standard. The court has also said that presidential pardons can be used to further “the public welfare”. This one harms it.
It is an act of hypocrisy. Asked in June about a pardon for Hunter, the president replied: “I said I’d abide by the jury decision, and I will do that. And I will not pardon him.” This was not a slip. Mr Biden has said the same thing several times. The pardon exposes him as the sort of politician who says one thing and does another. (…)
Unfortunately, hypocrisy may be the least damaging thing about the pardon. Mr Biden’s refusal to interfere in the Department of Justice’s (DoJ) investigation into his son was cited by some Democrats as evidence their party was different. Unlike MAGA Republicans, whose respect for the rule of law and norms like DoJ independence was selective, their party acted on principle. That argument has been exposed as meaningless, and at a particularly bad time for the high-minded principles Mr Biden once claimed as his own.
When Donald Trump pardons those convicted in relation to the attack on the Capitol on January 6th 2021, as seems probable, what principle will Democrats appeal to? (…)
The pardon thereby confirms the cynicism many Americans feel about their politicians and institutions. In his speech to the Democratic National Convention, Barack Obama warned Americans that Republicans will “tell you that government is corrupt; that sacrifice and generosity are for suckers; and that since the game is rigged, it’s OK to take what you want and look after your own.” What is this pardon, if not the president looking after his own? Mr Biden applies one set of rules to himself and his family members, and another to the people he serves. At least Mr Trump makes no secret of what he is.
One of the many disappointments of Mr Biden is that he talked as if Mr Trump was a threat to the republic, yet never acted as if he believed it. He stayed in the race when his own party’s voters were worried he was too old to run; he presided over a party machinery that interfered in favour of Republican election-deniers in the 2022 mid-terms, because it thought they would lose; he stepped down without giving his party time to find its strongest candidate. And he warned about Mr Trump abusing the machinery of justice, then pardoned his son for convictions on tax and gun charges. It is an ignominious coda. Unfortunately, it is also a prelude.■
https://www.economist.com/leaders/2024/12/02/joe-biden-abused-a-medieval-power-to-pardon-his-son
New York Times, Guest Essay, 3 décembre, article payant
Biden’s Pardon for His Son Dishonors the Office
By Jeffrey Toobin. His book “The Pardon: The Politics of Presidential Mercy” will be published in February.
Extraits:
Pardons are the consummate discretionary acts; presidents are never required to issue even a single one, nor are they limited in the number they issue or to whom. In this way, they reveal their roots in the royal prerogative of mercy. There is only one reason presidents, or kings, issue pardons: because they want to.
On Sunday night as he boarded a plane to Cape Verde, en route to Angola, President Biden revealed himself as an anguished, and furious, father when he pardoned his son Hunter. Mr. Biden said, as recently as June, that he wouldn’t pardon Hunter or commute his sentence, and his press secretary reiterated that he had no plans to pardon Hunter after last month’s election. In June, a jury had found the younger Mr. Biden guilty of three felony counts relating to lies about his drug use on a federal form to apply to own a firearm. Then, in September, he pleaded guilty to nine federal tax charges in California. (…)
Mr. Biden sought to define his presidency in counterpoint to the corruption and indecency of the first Trump years. With the pardon of his son, Mr. Biden added his name to the roll call of presidents who dishonored their office by misusing the pardon power. By changing his plan to issue this pardon, Mr. Biden himself seemed to recognize how wrong it was, and is.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/02/opinion/joe-hunter-biden-pardon-dishonor.html
Neue Zürcher Zeitung, 3 décembre, article payant
Begnadigung des Präsidentensohns: Joe Biden entlarvt seine politische Heuchelei
Mit der Begnadigung seines Sohnes Hunter verabschiedet sich Präsident Biden als Heuchler aus dem Weissen Haus. Donald Trump wird dies als Freipass für seinen eigenen Umgang mit der Justiz verstehen.
Extraits:
Bis zu einem gewissen Grad kann man die Argumentation des amerikanischen Präsident Joe Biden sogar nachvollziehen. Natürlich wurde sein Sohn Hunter von den Republikanern im Kongress und in den ihnen nahestehenden Medien jahrelang gejagt, weil er der Sohn des Präsidenten ist. Die beiden Strafverfahren, die schliesslich mit riesiger Medienaufmerksamkeit gegen ihn zustande kamen, wären gegen irgendeine beliebige Person bei ähnlichen Vergehen wahrscheinlich weniger scharf verlaufen. (…)
Doch das ist keine Entschuldigung. Hunter Biden musste nicht nur den Nachteil einer besonders genauen öffentlichen Überprüfung seiner Person erdulden, weil er der Sohn des Präsidenten und früheren Vizepräsidenten ist. Er kam auch in den Genuss riesiger Vorteile, die er schamlos ausgenutzt hatte. Dank seiner familiären Situation ergatterte er für sich Verwaltungsratsmandate und Aufträge bei ausländischen Unternehmen, die dafür auf eine Sonderbehandlung durch den mächtigen Vater hofften. Eine solche Gegenleistung konnte dem Präsidenten zwar nie nachgewiesen werden. Hunter bezog dennoch Millioneneinkommen, die er in erster Linie als Sohn des Vizepräsidenten und nicht als erfahrener Berater oder Manager erhielt. Es sind zwei Seiten derselben Medaille.
Präsident Biden sucht in seiner Mitteilung vom Sonntagabend Verständnis bei den Bürgern zu wecken: Welcher Vater würde sich nicht ähnlich mitfühlend für seinen Sohn einsetzen, wenn er könnte? Doch das trifft die Sache in keiner Weise. Biden ist nicht irgendein Vater. Er ist der Präsident der Vereinigten Staaten von Amerika. Als solcher unterliegt er ganz anderen moralischen Anforderungen – und daraus folgenden Bürden – als jeder normale Bürger.
Das trifft besonders auf einen Präsidenten zu, der 2020 als angeblicher Gegenpol zu Donald Trump angetreten war: als der moralisch überlegene Mann, der die USA nach vier Jahren unter dem verkommenen Narzissten Trump wieder auf den rechten Weg zurückführen werde. Nun steht derselbe Präsident Biden nackt da, entblösst von seiner eigenen moralischen Heuchelei. (…)
Biden schädigt mit der Schwäche für seinen Sohn nicht nur sein eigenes, sorgfältig poliertes Image als Saubermann. Er liefert ausgerechnet seinem Nachfolger die Vorlage, um sich selbst eigennützig der Justiz zu bedienen. Trump hat im Wahlkampf unverhohlen angekündigt, dass er die Justiz zur Verfolgung seiner politischen Gegner benutzen werde. (…) Sollte es wirklich zu Missbräuchen kommen, werden er und seine Parteigenossen zur Relativierung stets mit dem Finger auf Joe Biden zeigen.
https://www.nzz.ch/meinung/hunter-biden-begnadigt-heuchelei-im-weissen-haus-hat-folgen-ld.1860291
New York Times, 2 décembre, article payant
In Pardoning His Son, Biden Echoes Some of Trump’s Complaints
President Biden complained about selective prosecution and political pressure in a system he has spent his public life defending.
Extraits:
President Biden and President-elect Donald J. Trump now agree on one thing: The Biden Justice Department has been politicized.
In pardoning his son Hunter Biden on Sunday night, the incumbent president sounded a lot like his successor by complaining about selective prosecution and political pressure, questioning the fairness of a system that Mr. Biden had until now long defended.
“No reasonable person who looks at the facts of Hunter’s cases can reach any other conclusion than Hunter was singled out only because he is my son — and that is wrong,” Mr. Biden said in a statement announcing the pardon. “Here’s the truth,” he added. “I believe in the justice system, but as I have wrestled with this, I also believe raw politics has infected this process and it led to a miscarriage of justice.”
Mr. Biden’s decision to use the extraordinary power of executive clemency to wipe out his son’s convictions on gun and tax charges came despite repeated statements by him and his aides that he would not do so. (…)
The pardon and Mr. Biden’s stated rationale for granting it will inevitably muddy the political waters as Mr. Trump prepares to take office with plans to use the Justice Department and F.B.I. to pursue “retribution” against his political adversaries. Mr. Trump has long argued that the justice system has been “weaponized” against him and that he is the victim of selective prosecution, much the way Mr. Biden has now said his son was. (…)
But Mr. Biden’s pardon will make it harder for Democrats to defend the integrity of the Justice Department and stand against Mr. Trump’s unapologetic plans to use it for political purposes even as he seeks to install Kash Patel, an adviser who has vowed to “come after” the president-elect’s enemies, as the next director of the F.B.I. It will also be harder for Democrats to criticize Mr. Trump for his prolific use of the pardon power to absolve friends and allies, some of whom could have been witnesses against him in previous investigations.
“While as a father I certainly understand President @JoeBiden’s natural desire to help his son by pardoning him, I am disappointed that he put his family ahead of the country,” Gov. Jared Polis of Colorado, a Democrat, wrote on social media. “This is a bad precedent that could be abused by later presidents and will sadly tarnish his reputation.” (…)
Mr. Biden’s pardon will also give ammunition to Republicans who have contended that Hunter Biden was guilty of wrongdoing beyond the charges for which he was actually prosecuted. A House Republican investigation made clear that the president’s son traded on his father’s name in business, but never proved that the elder Mr. Biden took action as vice president or president to benefit Hunter. (…)
“This just furthers the cynicism that people have about politics,” he said on MSNBC, “and that cynicism strengthens Trump because Trump can just say: ‘I’m not a unique threat. Everybody does this. If I do something for my kid, my son-in-law, look, Joe Biden does the same thing.’ I get it, but this was a selfish move by Biden which politically only strengthens Trump.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/01/us/politics/biden-hunter-pardon-politics.html
Le Point, 2 décembre, article payant
États-Unis : pourquoi les démocrates ne laisseront pas tomber le wokisme de sitôt
LA CHRONIQUE DE YASCHA MOUNK. Pour la gauche américaine, changer de cap exigera des transformations structurelles qu’elle n’est pas prête à entreprendre.
Extraits:
Tant de raisons expliquent la défaite des démocrates. Ils ont pâti de l’impopularité d’un président sortant, ont été sanctionnés pour l’inflation élevée de ces dernières années et ont placé une candidate terne qui n’est jamais parvenue à exposer un programme clair.
Mais la raison la plus fondamentale pour laquelle tant de groupes d’électeurs supposés maintenir à flot la bonne fortune du camp des bleus ont viré au rouge – et aussi la raison la plus susceptible de mettre en péril les chances des démocrates lors des prochaines échéances électorales, lorsqu’ils ne seront plus embarrassés du fardeau d’un candidat sortant –, c’est qu’ils renvoient l’image d’un groupe évoluant à mille lieues des courants culturels majoritaires.
Les démocrates parlent désormais avec les inflexions et le vocabulaire élitiste de la méritocratie de la côte Est, celle qui est passée par la case université. Cela a un effet repoussoir radical sur un groupe multiracial composé de tous les Américains qui n’ont pas leur place dans cette haute société – plus tous ceux qui s’agacent de l’autosurveillance et de l’autocensure constantes requises si l’on veut ne pas en être exclu.
S’ils veulent faire cesser les dégâts causés par une image de marque de plus en plus toxique, les démocrates doivent changer leur façon de parler et le contenu de leur discours. Cela implique de se débarrasser de certains des éléments de la réflexion identitaire les plus impopulaires, connus sous le qualificatif de « woke », adoptés par la gauche ces dix dernières années – la mise en avant de la DEI (diversité, équité et inclusion), du vocabulaire des Bipoc (noirs, indigènes et personnes de couleur) et des Latinx.
Mais cela ne s’arrête pas là. Il faut que les démocrates convainquent les Américains qu’ils sont prêts à dire la vérité, quand bien même cette vérité choquerait-elle les groupes militants qui constituent une forte proportion de leur base, mais aussi qu’ils compatissent avec les citoyens ordinaires qui en ont ras le bol de la criminalité et du chaos plutôt qu’avec les petits délinquants qui troublent l’ordre public, et enfin qu’ils aient trouvé le moyen de défendre l’inclusion sans que ce soit au détriment du bon sens. (…)
La gauche américaine sera-t-elle capable de se transformer si profondément ? Il est tentant de croire que la gauche est enfin en train de se détourner du wokisme. En septembre dernier par exemple, The Economist a signalé un modeste déclin de la fréquence d’apparition de termes comme « intersectionnalité » et « microagression » dans les médias généralistes ou les articles universitaires. Le magazine en a dûment conclu que nous avions dépassé le cap du « pic woke ». (…)
De nombreux démocrates à qui j’ai parlé ces derniers jours ont bon espoir que ce changement d’ambiance à gauche se concrétise. À en croire Maureen Dowd, éditorialiste du New York Times, « certains démocrates se réveillent enfin et se rendent compte que woke is broke : le wokisme, c’est la ruine ». (…) Mais je doute fort que la tendance se confirme. (…)
Loin d’abonder dans le sens du diagnostic proposé par Gilberto Hinojosa et Seth Moulton, de nombreuses factions du parti sont totalement dans le déni quant à l’étendue des dégâts qu’est susceptible de provoquer, sur leurs perspectives électorales, ce que James Carville a très justement surnommé la « politique de salle des profs ». (…)
Au même moment, d’autres sections du parti ont estimé que les démocrates avaient perdu parce qu’ils n’étaient pas assez radicaux sur les questions culturelles ou parce qu’ils n’ont pas changé de cap au sujet du conflit au Moyen-Orient. Presque tous les démocrates haut placés pensent que le parti doit changer ; il se trouve juste que la plupart d’entre eux estiment qu’il doit s’aligner sur ce qu’ils disent depuis le début. (…)
La difficulté qu’éprouvent les démocrates à se rassembler autour d’un réel changement de cap s’explique en partie par le fait qu’un grand nombre de leurs prises de position impopulaires découlent de leur vision fondamentale du monde. Cela fait plusieurs dizaines d’années que les démocrates conceptualisent le pays avec une méthode profondément empreinte de catégories identitaires.
Plutôt que de s’adresser à des électeurs qui se trouvent être latino-américains, ils pensent devoir mobiliser « la communauté latino ». Plutôt que de reconnaître la fluidité de l’identité américaine, ils croient que le pays est essentiellement divisé entre Blancs et « personnes de couleur ». (…)
Ce qui nous conduit au principal obstacle qui s’oppose à un véritable changement de cap : le groupe des employés, des donateurs et des militants, qui sont les vrais décisionnaires au sein du Parti démocrate. Les démocrates dépendent dans des proportions excessives de jeunes employés frais émoulus d’universités prestigieuses.
Nombre d’entre eux ont fait leur éducation en socialisation au cœur de la stimulante culture activiste des campus, où une remarque supposément offensante peut vous valoir d’être longuement ostracisé. Et comme ils sont en tout début de carrière, signaler leur pureté idéologique leur importe souvent davantage que remporter la prochaine élection. (…)
La bataille des démocrates autour du wokisme va durer encore au moins quatre ans. Leur catastrophique échec de cette année laisse entendre que si elle finit par s’arrêter, ce sera probablement pour une de ces deux raisons : soit un représentant de la petite faction anti-woke du parti réussira à remporter les primaires de 2028 avec une vision nouvelle et plus inclusive pour l’avenir du pays, soit, cet automne-là, un successeur de Donald Trump trié sur le volet infligera une défaite encore plus cuisante au Parti démocrate.
* Yascha Mounk est professeur de politique internationale à l’université Johns-Hopkins, fondateur du site Persuasion et auteur sur Substack. Il est l’auteur du best-seller Le Peuple contre la démocratie (L’Observatoire, 2018 ; Le Livre de poche, 2019, traduit par Jean-Marie Souzeau). Dans son dernier livre publié en français, Le Piège de l’identité (L’Observatoire, 2023, traduit par Benjamin Peylet), il s’attelle à déconstruire le wokisme pour mieux camper la démocratie libérale sur ses appuis.