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U.S. President Donald Trump holds a letter from Britain's King Charles as he meets with British Prime Minister Keir Starmer in the Oval Office at the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S., February 27, 2025.
As US President Donald Trump travels to the United Kingdom this week, there is an unnerving sense in which the ghost of Christmas past will be greeting the potential ghost of Christmas yet to come. The former imperial power meets with the current global leader at a moment when both countries face an expanding set of domestic and global tests.
Each will be hoping this visit provides an opportunity to convey bonhomie and unity against a landscape that is anything but friendly and settled. All eyes will be on this heavily choreographed visit.
It’s coronation day
In February, just a month into his second term, Trump hosted UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer at the White House. In separate remarks following those sessions, Trump and Starmer extolled the “special relationship” between the US and UK, declaring that it remained “very special” and “true.” The leaders discussed the ongoing conflict in Ukraine and efforts to bring peace by standing “side by side.” The most telling moment, the know-your-audience moment, came when Starmer handed Trump a letter from His Majesty King Charles. Opening it, Trump found it bestowed an invitation to Windsor Castle for a historic second state visit. The invite landed as it was intended, with Trump visibly tickled and honored.
That was February, when the return of Trump was still fresh and the UK, Europe, and the world had so many questions about the future of US engagement. Already at that moment, some of the answers were coming into view. Trump had imposed 10% tariffs on Canada and Mexico – two of the US closest trading partners - and an additional 10% tariff on imports from China. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was a casualty of Trumpenomics, stepping down after it became clear there were no knots he could tie himself in that would appeal to Trump. Also, by February, the Trump administration had taken steps to dismantle the US Agency for International Development and six decades of US foreign aid policy. The retrenchment in American international funding and soft power raised alarms for food and security programs, health missions, climate and sustainability initiatives.
On security, just days after Starmer handed the King’s letter to Trump, the US president and Vice President JD Vance met with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in the Oval Office. The televised conversation devolved from cordial to contentious over the course of 45 minutes. An anticipated deal for Ukrainian natural resources went unsigned, and Zelensky was told he held “no cards.” Within a week, the US sided with Russia on a series of United Nations resolutions marking the third anniversary of the invasion. Europe was put on notice that the US commitment to Ukraine would be elusive.
We’re going to the palace
Seven months on, with Trump arriving in the UK this week, those early February trendlines have only accelerated. On trade, US partners, allies, and nearly everyone else have been “liberated” and hit with individualized “reciprocal” tariffs. On foreign aid, the administration has stayed its course. Just last week the US Supreme Court granted the Department of Justice’s application allowing the administration to continue withholding billions of appropriated foreign aid funding. Inn Ukraine, the conflict appears no closer to a resolution. After innumerable conversations, a Trump-Putin summit in Alaska, and much European handwringing, Russian drones incurred Polish air space last week.
The Trump administration’s ambitions to redefine the US global footprint is a familiar proposition in the UK, which has struggled to find its footing in the aftermath of Brexit. According to policy documents like the Integrated Review Refresh 2023, successive British governments have sought to position the UK for a more active posture on the world stage amidst increasing geopolitical volatility. Thus far, these ambitions have borne few tangible results.
Even as their global trajectories diverge, Trump’s arrival in the UK comes at a moment of domestic precariousness for both countries. From migration pressure to untenable budgets, divisive partisanship, fluctuating political attitudes and concerns over crime, these Transatlantic partners face a long and overlapping list of maladies.
The visuals are meant to be televised.
Against this backdrop, ambitions will be low for Trump’s visit. Neither side is likely to wade into sensitive domestic dynamics like the recent removal of the UK ambassador to the US, or American political violence. Announcements of a nuclear energy accord and promises of UK technology investments by US AI and chip private sector leaders will be the main takeaways, but are really window dressing. What is called for is a show of allegiance, an optical win at a time when other global leaders have themselves been busy.
Collegial images of China’s President Xi Jinping, Vladimir Putin, and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi at the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) earlier this month grabbed widespread attention. A slew of analysis argued that this was the new world order, evidence that the powerful “rest” were joining forces against “the West.”
While it is not, in fact, the case that India, China, Russia (+ North Korea and Iran) are now locked into an exclusive alliance that will by magnetism bring others into their realm, countries are hedging their bets. With all the grandeur of a royal visit, Trump will be seeking out the spotlight and looking, once again, to rewrite the script.
Over the past decade, renewable energy has exploded. Technology is improving. Costs are plummeting. This is now the fastest energy transition in human history. But just as the world goes all in on renewables, the US is doubling down on fossil fuels. Does it risk being left behind in the race to power the future? Environmentalist and author Bill McKibben joins Ian Bremmer on GZERO World to discuss the sudden and overwhelming surge of clean energy installation and generation over the past two years, China’s push to dominate the renewable market, and whether the Trump administration’s policies will put the US at a disadvantage.
The White House has cancelled funding solar and wind projects and is pushing other countries to buy more oil and gas, but McKibben says the scale and pace of the global energy transformation is just too powerful to ignore. McKibben’s new book, "Here Comes the Sun," argues that renewables aren’t just a climate fix—they’re a political and economic opportunity to reshape our future. He has no doubt that 30 years from now, we’ll run the planet on sun and wind simply because of economics, but also warns the world will face serious problems if it takes that long to get there
“Fossil fuels become harder to get over time. Renewable energy is the opposite,” McKibben says, “We now live on a planet where the cheapest way to make energy is to point a sheet of glass at the sun.”
GZERO World with Ian Bremmer, the award-winning weekly global affairs series, airs nationwide on US public television stations (check local listings).
New digital episodes of GZERO World are released every Monday on YouTube.Don't miss an episode: subscribe to GZERO's YouTube channel and turn on notifications (🔔). GZERO World with Ian Bremmer airs on US public television weekly - check local listings.
Brazil’s ex-President Jair Bolsonaro sentenced to 27 years for coup plot
Former president Jair Messias Bolsonaro is inaugurating Route 22 in eight cities in Rio Grande do Norte, starting with the cities of Extremoz, Natal, Parnamirim, and Mossoro, in Natal, Brazil, on August 16, 2024.
Brazil’s Supreme Court has convicted former President Jair Bolsonaro of plotting a coup to stay in power after losing the 2022 election — a historic first in a country that’s lived through 15 coups.
Four of the court’s five justices voted to find Bolsonaro and seven allies, including his running mate and top military officials, guilty of conspiring to overturn the result and hatching a plan to kill their opponent, current president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. Bolsonaro, who had already been banned from seeking public office again, has been sentenced to a 27-year prison sentence. He is expected to appeal.
How we got here. Bolsonaro, a former army captain far-right firebrand who was elected president in 2018, spent the 2022 re-election campaign spreading claims of election fraud that were disproven by official investigations. After losing to his leftwing nemesis Lula, his supporters stormed Brazil’s Congress, Supreme Court, and presidential palace on Jan. 8, 2023, demanding the military step in and overturn the results.
In recent weeks, the US has put pressure on Brazil over the trial. Bolsonaro is a close ally – and stylistic emulator – of US president Donald Trump, who has publicly pressured Lula to force the court to drop the charges, threatening high tariffs, sanctions on court justices, and other punitive measures on Latin America’s largest economy.
Those attacks have seemingly backfired – boosting the popularity of the aging and unpopular Lula, who has styled himself as a defender of Brazilian honor and sovereignty. The court justices, meanwhile, appear not to have been swayed by American pressure.
But Bolsonaro’s movement isn’t going away. Eurasia Group Brazil expert Silvio Cascione warns this is not the “turning of the page” many of Bolsonaro’s opponents may hope for. The ruling “crystallizes Brazil’s deep polarization rather than resolving it,” he said. Public opinion is split almost evenly: 43% say the trial was unfair, 51% back the conviction.
“The real concern isn't massive street protests,” Cascione says, “but rather the continued erosion of institutional trust that's been poisoning Brazilian politics for years. Courts, media, and political parties all suffer from a credibility deficit.”
Bolsonaro is still the kingmaker of the Brazilian right. Polls still show he’d be the strongest challenger to Lula in next year’s presidential election, so his endorsement could still shape the race. São Paulo Governor Tarcísio de Freitas has already emerged as a top heir to Bolsonaro’s movement, courting the former president’s base and floating an amnesty bill in Congress.
The conviction is set to roil relations with Washington. US Secretary of State Marco Rubio called the ruling a “witch hunt” and signaled possible retaliation, including sanctions on the justices who voted to convict.
If so, Brazil is unlikely to hit back directly, as an actual trade war with the world’s largest economy – and a major source of investment – could get ugly fast.
But tensions with Washington could still have a political upside for Lula. “In what promises to be a highly competitive race,” says Cascione, “playing the victim of American bullying could actually help Lula
A drone view shows the scene where U.S. right-wing activist, commentator, Charlie Kirk, an ally of U.S. President Donald Trump, was fatally shot during an event at Utah Valley University, in Orem, Utah, U.S. September 11, 2025.
The assassination of 31-year old conservative activist Charlie Kirk at a college event in Utah yesterday threatened to plunge a deeply divided America further into a cycle of rising political violence.
Who was Charlie Kirk? The founder of Turning Point USA, a conservative youth organization active on more than 3,500 college campuses. Kirk built his formidable brand by challenging students, in particular liberals, to open debates on hot-button culture war issues.
An ultra-conservative Evangelical Christian, he advocated for values of faith, family, and patriotism. He held divisive views on race, women in the workplace, gun control, and gay marriage.
A titan in the MAGA movement. Kirk’s outreach to young voters is considered a major reason why Donald Trump won 56% of young male voters in the 2024 election.
The manhunt: The shooter remains on the loose, and nothing is known about their background or motivations. A weapon and other evidence were reportedly recovered near the scene of the killing on Thursday morning.
The context: Violence against prominent political figures is becoming more commonplace in America, and it affects both sides of the political divide. Earlier this year, the Democratic governor of Pennsylvania, Josh Shapiro, survived an arson attack. Two months later, two Democratic state lawmakers in Minnesota were assassinated. Last year, of course, there were two separate attempts on Donald Trump’s life. A recent Marist poll found that 73% of Americans see political violence as a major problem.
The White House response: a crackdown on “the left”? In a four minute special address from the White House, President Trump eulogized Kirk and condemned radicalism and violence. He blamed “the left” – pledging to “find each and every one of those who contributed to this atrocity, and to other political violence, including those who fund it.” This framing has raised concerns in some quarters about a possible wider crackdown on ideological opponents of the White House.
Most politicians on both sides condemned the killing but tensions simmered beneath the surface. Congress erupted into a shouting match over GOP leader Mike Johnson’s call for a moment of silence for Kirk on the same day as a school shooting that went largely unmentioned. Many prominent MAGA influencers and supporters of Trump responded with outrage, blaming Democrats or liberals for the killing, and claiming Kirk as a martyr.
Some Democrats responded to Kirk’s murder with calls for more gun control. But Eurasia Group US expert Noah Daponte-Smith says those are unlikely to make headway. Kirk himself was a staunch opponent of tighter gun laws, once declaring, in typically controversial style, “it’s worth the cost of, unfortunately, some gun deaths every single year so that we can have the Second Amendment to protect our other God-given rights.”
Are things about to get worse? Daponte-Smith says that while an escalatory cycle can certainly still be avoided, “there is a higher potential for more political violence.”
So far, Trump's approach to energy policy is to maximize US fossil fuel production that keeps the price of gasoline low, and it's been a winning formula. But in the latest episode of The Debrief, Eurasia Group energy analyst Gregory Brew says the Big Oil honeymoon may be coming to an end.
First, his sweeping tariffs announced earlier this year, shocked oil markets and sent the price of oil tumbling at the same time. Tariffs on things like imported steel means rising costs for US oil companies. It's now more expensive to drill a well in the United States than it was a year ago. Second, Trump is anxious to preserve his relationship with Saudi Arabia, a major oil producer, and also the head of OPEC. As a result, Trump has turned a blind eye to OPEC policy of increasing oil production this year, which has pushed prices down even further. Low prices. Rising costs means less profits for US oil companies. So why does that matter? Well, less profits means fewer jobs, a slowdown in activity and economic pain in places like North Dakota and Texas Centers of the US oil industry that also happen to be deep red states where Trump generally maintains high levels of support. That means some trouble for Trump moving into next year's midterm elections by November of 2026. Drill baby drill might seem like a hollow mantra, and that might hurt Trump's brand where it matters most.
Trump's silhouette as a wrecking ball banging into the Federal Reserve.
President Trump has made no secret of his longstanding desire for lower interest rates to juice the economy and reduce the cost of servicing the $30 trillion federal debt. But his attacks on the Federal Reserve will prove self-defeating, driving up borrowing costs for American consumers, businesses, and the federal government.
For months, the president has threatened and insulted Fed chair Jerome Powell for refusing to cut rates, even toying with the idea of firing him over supposed (and nakedly pretextual) cost overruns on the renovation of the Fed’s headquarters. Yet despite the bluster, he has stopped short of the one move advisers warned him could turn financial markets against him: actually sacking him. Why risk it when Powell’s term as chair expires in May, at which point Trump (who appointed him in 2018) will get to select a replacement more willing to do his bidding?
The president even got an unexpected chance to fill a Federal Reserve Board seat last month when Fed governor Adriana Kugler resigned under suspiciously hasty circumstances before the end of her term, allowing Trump to nominate his economic advisor Stephen Miran to succeed her. You’d think that’d be good enough to keep him placated for a while. Not so.
On Aug. 25, Trump posted a letter to Truth Social announcing he was firing Federal Reserve Board governor Lisa Cook over mortgage fraud allegations from before she joined the Fed. This unprecedented escalation – the first attempt to fire a Fed governor in presidential history – followed a politically motivated investigation started by the Federal Housing Finance Agency’s Bill Pulte, a Trump loyalist and donor who has weaponized his government position to make similar accusations against other MAGA political enemies (California Sen. Adam Schiff and New York Attorney General Letitia James).
Cook, a Biden appointee whose term is set to run until 2038, has refused to resign and is contesting the dismissal. The Supreme Court recently ruled that presidents have wide latitude to fire the heads of independent agencies, but it made a point to carve out an exception for the Fed, whose governors can only be removed “for cause.” What that means exactly, no one knows … because no president has ever tried to fire a Fed governor. Until now.
Although the Department of Justice has launched a criminal investigation into the allegations, Cook hasn’t yet been charged with a crime. It’s unclear whether an allegation of malfeasance that predates Cook’s employment at the Fed and is unrelated to her job meets the judicial bar for “cause” set by the Federal Reserve Act. The matter will be decided by the courts, which granted Cook a preliminary injunction last night, allowing her to stay in the job while the case gets litigated.
Of course, this isn't really about mortgage fraud – it's about seizing control of the Fed. Trump’s not coy about the endgame. On Aug. 26, the president bragged that “We’ll have a majority very shortly, so that’ll be great.” Trump already has two appointees on the Federal Reserve Board, Chris Waller (a favorite to succeed Powell as chair) and Michelle Bowman, and he will likely get a third soon once Miran gets confirmed. If the president ultimately succeeds in pushing out Cook, he’ll have appointed four of the board’s seven members, possibly before Powell even steps down.
That wouldn’t be enough to directly control the 12-person Federal Open Market Committee that sets rates. But a four-person Federal Reserve Board majority would have veto power over the appointment of the regional Fed presidents who sit on the FOMC – and those presidents just so happen to be up for reapproval for five-year terms at the end of February in what's normally a rubber-stamp vote, raising the stakes of both the outcome and the timing of the Cook ruling. Not that the administration needs to actually fire every independent-minded dissenter to chill dissent: sometimes, the demonstration effect of seeing some of your colleagues’ lives ruined is enough to sway behavior.
Yet even if Trump succeeds in stacking the FOMC with loyalists (a big if), the president will still struggle to get what he wants most out of this whole enterprise: substantially lower borrowing costs.
The crux of the issue is that the Fed only has direct control over short-term interest rates, but most borrowers care about long-term rates, which are determined by market expectations of future economic growth, inflation, and fiscal policy. The more the president leans on the Fed, the greater the compensation demanded to hold long-term bonds, as investors lose confidence in the Fed’s ability to keep inflation under control no matter the political costs to the president.
Accordingly, the benefits to Trump of pushing for lower interest rates than merited by economic conditions would likely be offset by large and sustained increases in long-term yields. In the worst-case scenario, Trump forces the Fed to set rates inappropriately low, causing inflation to rise and damaging the Fed’s credibility. By the time the president starts feeling the political pain of runaway prices and orders the Fed to reverse course, the genie is already out of the bottle: inflation expectations are unanchored, long-term rates have spiked, and the Fed is forced to print ever more money to pay for the mounting costs of servicing a growing debt pile. This may sound like the story of an emerging market, but it’s becoming suddenly plausible for the United States.
The last time a US president messed with the Fed’s independence was when Richard Nixon strong-armed Fed chair Arthur Burns into keeping rates low ahead of the 1972 presidential election, causing inflation to spike. It took a decade and punishingly high interest rates to get runaway inflation under control and rebuild the Fed’s credibility, long since understood to be a key pillar of America’s world-beating economy and the dollar’s reserve currency status. Most Wall Street leaders understand the risks of going down the same path again, even if they are too timid to speak out publicly against it (with few exceptions).
So why the muted market reaction? Maybe investors doubt Trump can pull this off. After all, we've been down this road with President Trump before – he's been threatening the Fed since 2017 to little effect. Or maybe investors assume he'll back down in the face of any significant bond market fallout – the so-called TACO trade. But what if that market calm emboldens him to push harder? By the time investors wake up, the damage may be done. As Hemingway wrote about bankruptcy, crises happen gradually, then suddenly.
The real irony? Trump is ramping up his Fed attacks just as he's about to start getting the rate cuts he wants – though not for reasons he'll like. Two weak jobs reports show his tariffs, immigration crackdown, and policy volatility are beginning to weigh on the labor market. The Fed will almost certainly cut rates next week, even if not as aggressively as Trump demands given signs of rising inflation.
If Trump truly wants to lower borrowing costs for Americans, he should stop attacking the Fed and start cutting the deficit. Otherwise, the president will head into the midterms with a slowing economy, soaring prices, and higher long-term rates. Turns out not even the world’s most powerful man can bully bond markets into submission.