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President Donald Trump and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi shake hands as they attend a joint press conference at the White House in Washington, DC, on Feb. 13, 2025.
As promised, US President Donald Trump announced reciprocal tariffs on all American trading partners Thursday afternoon. Each country will be assessed individually, factoring in value-added taxes, foreign tariff rates, industry subsidies, regulations, and currency undervaluation to determine customized duty rates. Trump claimed, “It’s gonna make our country a fortune.”
The tariff review will be completed within weeks or months and could kick-start bilateral negotiations with other countries. Trump took the occasion to reiterate that Canada should become a 51st state, chastising it for not meeting NATO spending thresholds and repeating his false claim that the US “subsidizes” Canada to the tune of $200 billion a year.
Then there’s India. Trump’s proclamation came ahead of his meeting with “total killer” Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi at the White House. Modi reportedly arrived bearing a “gift”: tariff reductions on India’s imports of US electronics, medical equipment, and chemicals, as well as commitments to purchase American liquefied natural gas and defense equipment.
What else does Trump want from Delhi? Trump wants to reduce the US trade deficit with India, $45.6 billion in 2024. The average US tariff rate on Indian imports is currently 2.2%, while India’s is 12% on US goods. Trump also wants India to reduce the emigration of its citizens to the US – both H-1B visa-holders working in the tech industry and undocumented migrants. India is the third largest source of undocumented immigrants in the US.
On Thursday, Trump said he would match India’s tariffs. “We are being reciprocal with India … Whatever India charges, we charge them.”
Both men agreed on Thursday to begin talks on an early trade deal to resolve the tariff standoff. Modi said he would buy more US oil, gas, and military equipment while fighting illegal immigration, and Trump said the US would ultimately sell F-35 stealth fighters to India.
Linda McMahon testifies before the Senate Health, Education, and Labor Committee during a nomination hearing as Secretary of Education in Washington, DC, USA, on Feb. 13, 2025.
McMahon said that she would present a plan for downsizing the department that Republican senators would be able to get on board with. She said that while there were areas of the DOE that could be eliminated, states would still receive federal funding for schools. Project 2025 has laid out a plan for moving the core responsibilities of the DOE – like civil rights enforcement, student loans, and research – to other federal agencies in order to dismantle the department without fully eliminating it, a step that would require congressional approval.
Conservatives have sought to get rid of the DOE since it was created in 1979, arguing that educational decisions should be made by the states alone. The department doesn’t control curriculums or teachers, but it does provide outsized financial support for low-income areas and helps cover the higher costs of educating students with greater needs.
Meanwhile, the Senate officially confirmed Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as health secretary in a largely party-line vote on Thursday. All Democrats opposed his nomination, while all Republicans supported it, except for Kentucky Sen. Mitch McConnell. McConnell, who survived polio as a child, broke with his party due to Kennedy’s anti-vaccine stance.U.S. President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu hold a joint press conference in the East Room at the White House in Washington, U.S., February 4, 2025.
Recent US intelligence reports indicate Israel is considering strikes on Iranian nuclear sites in 2025. The assessment, produced during the waning days of the Biden administration, suggests Israel sees an opportunity to act in the face of Iran’s weakened military capabilities, loss of regional allies, and economic challenges.
If a strike is carried out, Eurasia Group expert Greg Brew says Iran’s nuclear program would likely be “damaged but not destroyed” and that any such move would need US involvement to “eliminate the risk that Iran dashes to a bomb immediately after.”
Any meaningful strike would require extensive US involvement – from providing munitions and possibly aircraft to offering defensive support against Iranian retaliation. A truly successful operation would have to target fortified facilities like Natanz and Fordow, which are both deeply entrenched underground, and only US military capabilities can effectively reach them.
That means it’s Trump’s call. Although the US president has reimposed his “maximum pressure” policy against Iran, Brew says, “Trump has made it clear that he’s more interested in talking, not bombing — at least initially.”
But, Brew adds, “It’s possible the timely leak of these intel reports is part of a US strategy, presenting Iran with two options: Make a deal, or Israel will bomb you.”
Third attack by migrant in three months heightens tensions ahead of German election
Police takes pictures of a car after some 28 people were hurt when a car driven by an Afghan asylum seeker plowed into a crowd in Munich, Germany, February 13, 2025.
A 24-year-old Afghan man plowed a white Mini Cooper into a crowd in Munich on Thursday, injuring at least 28 people in the third attack by a migrant in Germany in three months.
The incident comes just 10 days before nationwide elections in which the German far right is on track for its biggest victory since World War II, with polls showing the anti-immigrant Alternative für Deutschland party, or AfD, cruising to a strong second-place finish behind Friedrich Merz’s conservative coalition.
Bavarian Premier Markus Söder — from the sister party in Merz’s center-right alliance — described Thursday’s incident as a likely “terrorist attack.”
In January, a 28-year-old Afghan man wielding a knife attacked a group of preschool children in a park in the southern city of Aschaffenburg, killing two, including a 2-year-old boy. In December, a 50-year-old Saudi Arabian national rammed a BMW into a crowded holiday market in the eastern city of Magdeburg, killing six and injuring 300.
Thursday’s assault came the same day another Afghan migrant in his 20s with suspected jihadist motives went on trial for allegedly killing a police officer and wounding five others in a stabbing rampage at an anti-Islam rally in the western city of Mannheim last May.
Despite ruling out any alliance with the AfD, Merz’s coalition and the far-right party voted together to nearly pass legislation last month calling on Germany to turn back far more migrants at its border. The AfD, meanwhile, has pledged to fight for mass deportations under a policy Europe’s anti-immigrant parties are calling “remigration.”
“The safety of the people in Germany will be our top priority. We will consistently enforce law and order,” Merz wrote in a post on X in response to the attack. “Everyone must feel safe in our country again. Something must change in Germany.”
President Donald Trump meets with Jordan's King Abdullah in the Oval Office at the White House in Washington, on Feb. 11, 2025.
While meeting with Jordan’s King Abdullah II at the White House on Tuesday, Trump reiterated his intention to “take” Gaza, displace its two million residents to nearby countries, and turn it into the “Riviera of the Middle East.”
Middle Eastern states are set to meet in Saudi Arabia to come up with their own plan, which they will present to Trump, but Abdullah was cautious and noncommittal while in the Oval. Later, in a social media post, the king said that during his meeting with Trump he “reiterated Jordan’s steadfast position against the displacement of Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank” and called this “the unified Arab position.”
Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi, meanwhile, said this week that he will not visit Washington for talks on the Middle East while Trump’s Gaza displacement plan is on the agenda.
But Trump has threatened to cut off crucial US aid to Egypt and Jordan unless they comply. Cairo and Amman each receive about $1.5 billion annually in military and other aid from Washington.
Tulsi Gabbard hugs President Donald Trump in the Oval Office at the White House in Washington, D.C., on Feb. 12, 2025.
On Thursday, the Senate voted to confirmRobert F. Kennedy Jr. as Health and Human Services Secretary. The vote also went along party lines, 52-48, with McConnell also voting with Democrats against Kennedy.
RFK Jr., like Gabbard, has set off alarm bells. Ian Bremmer, founder and president of Eurasia Group, says Kennedy’s Make America Healthy Again movement is “set to shake up health policy” in the US. MAHA, says Bremmer, is “a worldview that blends concerns about corporate influence on healthcare with skepticism towards mainstream medicine.” It’s also made up, notes Bremmer, of wellness culture, vaccine hesitancy, alternative medicine, and deep state conspiracy – and it crosses ideological divides. It is, in a word, messy, and will almost certainly do what its proponents promise: upset the status quo on health policy in the US.Ontario Premier Doug Ford, chair of the Council of the Federation, speaks during a press conference with the premiers of Canada in Washington, D.C., on Feb. 12, 2025.
Trump hit Canada and others with 25% tariffs on steel and aluminum earlier this week, a policy that’s set to take effect on March 12 after temporarily pausing 25% duties on all other Canadian imports earlier this month. Trump says the metals tariffs will be cumulative, which means some goods, such as steel and aluminum, could be hit with a whopping 50% tax.
There have been plenty of events on the premiers’ docket, including a party with North Dakota Republican Sen. Kevin Cramer and a meeting with White House deputy chief of staff for legislative affairs Jim Blair.On Tuesday, Ontario Premier Doug Ford talked to business leaders in front of the US Chamber of Commerce in DC, warning that tariffs will hurt American industry and reminding listeners that no one wins a trade war.
Will the premiers find any love? Their ultimate catch, of course, would be Trump himself – the man who can turn off the tariff taps with the stroke of a pen. Graeme Thompson, a senior analyst with Eurasia Group’s global macro-geopolitics practice, says that could be possible, but it may come at a cost.
“I think a permanent reprieve or exemption will come as part of a finalized USMCA negotiation,” says Thompson. “Everything right now is merely the prelude to that. The big question to my mind is what Ottawa will have to concede to get that deal.”