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US President Donald Trump appears onstage during a visit at US Steel Corporation–Irvin Works in West Mifflin, Pennsylvania, USA, on May 30, 2025.
What We’re Watching: Trump doubles metal tariffs, Canada Liberals bid to secure the border, Wildfires spread
Trump doubles steel and aluminum duties
Days after a judge nixed Donald Trump’s “Liberation Day” tariffs, the US president signed an executive order doubling steel and aluminum duties to 50%. Trump hopes the tariffs will boost domestic steel and aluminum industries, but the higher duties are terrible news for Canada, which is the top exporter of both metals to the US. Canada’s US-bound exports of steel were already down before Trump doubled the tariffs. Now they’re set to drop further — and take jobs with them. Mark Carney must now decide if he’ll respond, and risk provoking Trump, or back down and betray the anti-Trump, “elbows up” rhetoric he ran on.
Liberals introduce border bill in new Parliament
On Tuesday, Public Safety Minister Gary Anandasangareeintroduced the Strong Borders Act, which aims to strengthen border security, combat the trafficking of fentanyl and guns, and tackle money laundering. Anandasangaree said the bill was “not exclusively about the United States,” but admitted it aimed to remedy certain “irritants for the US.” The law would give the government sweeping discretionary powers — to open mail, for instance — so it is expected to meet a measure of resistance in Parliament.
Canadian wildfires send toxic smoke south
Wildfires in Canada have burned 2.1 million hectares (5.2 million acres) of land so far this year, sending hazardous smoke into the Midwest and East Coast of the United States, and even as far as Europe. Experts say the wildfire season in Canada is off to an extraordinary, and dangerous, start, reminiscent of the 2023 season, which was the worst in the country’s history. The flames are putting at risk the health of millions on both sides of the border.A migrant carries his child after crossing the Darien Gap and arriving at the migrant reception center, in the village of Lajas Blancas, Darien Province, Panama, on September 26, 2024.
The migration issue will only get worse
On Tuesday, a coalition government in the Netherlands collapsed. The trigger? Geert Wilders, leader of the anti-immigration Party of Freedom (PVV) and a coalition partner, demanded new restrictions on the government’s grant of asylum to migrants. When these weren’t met, he pulled his party from the governing coalition.
Elsewhere in Europe, anti-immigration frustrations have fueled the rising political fortunes of nativist parties and politicians in France, Germany, Italy, Poland, Spain, the United Kingdom, and several other countries. In the United States, Donald Trump was again elected president in 2024 after centering his campaign not just on curbing illegal immigration across the southern border from Mexico, but also on deporting millions of undocumented immigrants.
This political trend isn’t limited to wealthy Western countries. The entry of a million Rohingya Muslims fleeing a bloody state crackdown in Myanmar has roiled the politics of Bangladesh. Refugees are moving across African borders in large numbers, fueling violence in many countries.
Globally, the number of people on the move is on the rise. In 2024, the UN reported 304 million international migrants, nearly double the number in 1990.
There are three main drivers of all these border crossings. The first is violence. Wars force civilians to flee, but less organized violence – like criminal gang activity in Central America – also pushes people to seek new lives abroad.
The second driver is climate change. Changing weather patterns disrupt farming, fishing, and herding, and can generate famine. Rising sea levels force people from over-crowded, low-lying areas.
But the principal cause is that a clear majority of the world’s migrants are simply looking for better economic opportunities for themselves and their families. This is especially true for those in developing countries. Counterintuitively, it isn’t poverty but their rising incomes that give them new opportunities to move toward richer countries.
Given these sources of migration, we should expect bigger waves ahead. The current lack of leadership in the international system, a problem that Eurasia Group’s Ian Bremmer calls the “G-zero world order,” will make armed conflict and an expansion of the world’s ungoverned spaces within countries, both more likely and more violent.
The Institute for the Study of Economics and Peace, a think tank, warns that more than one billion people live in 31 countries where “the country’s resilience is unlikely to sufficiently withstand the impact of ecological events” by 2050, contributing to “mass population displacement,” and that as many as 3.5 billion people could suffer from food insecurity by that date.
What’s more, as living standards and populations continue to grow in developing countries, more people will have the opportunity to move abroad.
As people increasingly go on the road, the politics in wealthy countries will also become uglier. Politicians on one side will insist that all new border restrictions are hateful and cruel, while those on the other will warn that surges of new arrivals will spread crime and disease.
Even when the debate is more nuanced, political leaders seem more interested in scoring points – and raising cash – at the other side’s expense than in finding common ground and enacting sensible immigration policies.
This deadlock over how to accommodate hundreds of millions of migrants in coming years will ensure this problem will become a much larger-scale international emergency than it is today. The situation in the Netherlands is the tip of the iceberg.
And, speaking as the husband of someone who migrated to America as a six-year-old girl, the scale of human tragedy becomes almost unthinkable.
Graph of illegal immigration to the US.
Graphic Truth: Illegal Immigration to the US hits record lows
The number of people attempting to cross the Southwest US border illegally has fallen to historic lows, with authorities reporting barely 8,000 “encounters” with undocumented migrants per month. That’s a staggering decline from the 200,000 such encounters per month in most of 2023, a year when illegal immigration hit record highs.
Since taking office, US President Donald Trump has cracked down hard on illegal immigration both at the border and inside the country, in some cases testing the constitutional limits of his authority. This has dissuaded migrants from entering the US illegally, making immigration policy the most popular policy of Trump’s second term.
But a closer look at the data shows that the numbers had been declining significantly throughout 2024, as the Biden Administration, in reaction to the popularity of Trump’s strong borders campaign messaging, moved to tighten access, expedite removals, and streamline asylum applications.
Here’s the monthly data since 2022. What jumps out at you?
People shout slogans in front of the portrait of Sirri Sureyya Onder, a prominent pro-Kurdish party lawmaker and key figure in Turkey’s tentative process to end the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party’s (PKK) insurgency who died on Saturday at age 62, during his funeral in Istanbul, Turkey, on May 4, 2025.
Hard Numbers: Kurds in Turkey formally disband, Burkina Faso’s military murders civilians, White Afrikaners land in US, UK tries to curtail immigration, Top Argentina Court discovers Nazi docs
41: The revolution will not be finalized, as the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), a militant rebel group in Turkey, formally disbanded after a 41-year insurgency against the Turkish government. The original goal was to create an independent Kurdish state, but the group’s weakened position in Iraq and Syria forced it to declare a ceasefire in March, before ultimately dissolving. Turkey hasn’t fully secured peace, yet: it must now establish how to disarm the rebel group.
130: In March, the Burkina Faso military and its allied groups killed at least 130 ethnic Fulani civilians, per a Human Rights Watch report, as the government’s response to the Islamist insurgency turns vicious. Leaders of the Fulani, who are a Muslim community, deny any links with the Islamist militants. The massacre triggered reprisal killings, with insurgent groups – who control around 40% of the country – murdering at least 100 civilians in villages they believe are helping the government.
59: A group of 59 white Afrikaners landed in the United States from Johannesburg on Monday, after the Trump administration granted them refugee status in response to what they see as “racial discrimination” from South Africa’s government – the Rainbow Nation denies these claims. The move further escalates the rising tensions between Pretoria and Washington.
100,000: In the latest sign of rising anti-immigrant sentiment in the United Kingdom, Prime Minister Keir Starmer announced measures to reduce annual net immigration by 100,000 by 2029. The plan includes banning recruitment of care workers from abroad, cutting access to visas for skilled workers, and increasing English language requirements for all work visas. Net immigration reached a record 906,000 in the 12 months to June 2023.
4: Albanian Prime Minister Edi Ramasecured a fourth term in office after his party dominated Sunday’s parliamentary elections. With 94% of ballots counted, Rama’s Socialist Party won 52%, while opposition leader Sali Berisha’s Democratic Party sits on just 34%. It marks a setback for the MAGA message: Berisha had relied on the help of major Trump allies, to no avail.
83: As if replicating the plot of an Indiana Jones film, Argentina’s Supreme Court discovered Nazi documents among its archives that included propaganda material aimed at spreading the fascist ideology across the country. The material is believed to be part of the 83 packages that the German embassy in Tokyo sent to Buenos Aires on the “Nan-a-Maru” steamship in 1941. Argentina was a safe haven for the Nazis after World War II, though some – Adolf Eichmann, most infamously – were tracked down and brought to justice.
People bathe in the sun under parasols on a beach near the city of Larnaca, Cyprus, on August 11, 2024.
HARD NUMBERS: UAE carries Cyprus’ water, China toughens trade stance, Trump admin ignores court order, Americans expect price hikes, Germany’s economy remains stagnant, South Korea’s ex-leader indicted
15,000: The United Arab Emirates is literally helping Cyprus navigate troubled waters by providing portable desalination plants to the Mediterranean island free of charge so it can supply enough water to the deluge of tourists set to visit this summer. The Emirati nation’s plants will reportedly produce 15,000 cubic meters of potable water per day. It’s unclear if the UAE is receiving anything in return – it seems happy to go with the flow.
$582 billion: China informed the United States that it must “completely cancel all unilateral tariff measures” if it hopes to begin talks over trade. Beijing had previously said that it was open to talks, without preconditions. However, on Friday, Reuters reported that Beijing would exempt some critical goods from its 125% and is asking its firms to identify imports they need to continue functioning --- though it stopped short of publicly making the first move in trade war de-escalation. Total trade between the two superpowers was $582 billion in 2024, but the sweeping new tariffs that each has slapped on the other is likely to force this number down.
2: In the latest clash between the Trump administration and the courts on immigration, the White House moved a Venezuelan man from Pennsylvania to Texas — possibly preparing to deport him — right after a judge ruled that the government couldn’t remove him from the commonwealth or the United States. The man, who wasn’t formally named, had been employed as a construction worker in Philadelphia for two months before his arrest in February on suspicion of being part of Venezuela’s Tren de Aragua gang.
77%: The price isn’t right: 77% of Americans expect President Donald Trump’s tariff plan to raise consumer prices, with 47% believing that consumer prices will “increase a lot,” according to an AP-NORC poll. Despite those numbers, 4 in 10 Americans still approve of Trump’s handling of the economy and trade negotiations.
0: In the wake of Trump’s tariffs, Germany announced on Thursday it was downgrading its predicted economic growth rate — the economy depends heavily on manufacturing exports — from 0.3% to 0.0%. If the prediction holds, 2025 will be the third straight year of stagnation for Europe’s largest economy.
217 million: Former South Korean President Moon Jae-in was indicted on Thursday on bribery charges, alleging that he received 217 million won ($151,705) from the founder of a low-cost airline. No, it wasn’t Turkish Airlines but Eastar Jet.
How Trump's assertive foreign policy impacts international relations
And the response by President Trump was immediately 25%, maybe 50% tariffs, and shut off visas and shut down diplomatic engagement. And there was immediate response by President Petro that was over the top, and as Trump's own responses are over the top, and going to completely hit the Americans back really hard. Now, America is Colombia's most important trade partner, and the size of these countries is a little bit different. And within a couple of hours, Petro very quietly accepted Trump's terms. The deported Colombians will be accepted back in Colombia, and the trade war with Colombia is in our rearview mirror. Not really a surprise.
So Trump is going out there, and he's saying all these extraordinary, extravagant things. Huge exaggerations about what he demands and what he wants. And if you're Colombia, the response was absolutely on par. I mean, the post that we saw from President Petro, who is also kind of a populist firebrand on the left, isn't enormously popular, frankly, and has had a lot of difficulty in passing economic policies. But he gave it a shot and it was entertaining to watch and read and a lot of Colombians responded well to it. It felt like good old nationalism. And of course, he had to back down. Why? Because you're not allowed to do the same thing that Trump is. It's not just about who's right, it's also about who's powerful. And Trump's more than happy to hit him with a stick. And so that turned out to be a loss pretty quickly for the Colombian government.
There are a lot of other countries that are working the same way. I see this happening with Mexico where the Mexican president has been incredibly careful. US is the most important relationship. Suddenly they are seizing enormous amounts of fentanyl. More in one seizure than they've done in four years under Biden and showing Trump, "Look at what we can accomplish because we know this is important to you." And working to get Chinese trade and investment that is problematic and coming through to the United States out of Mexico and willing to put more money and resources, people on Mexico's southern border to reduce the numbers of people that are coming through Mexico into the United States. They desperately don't want to fight with the Americans. They're going to make a lot of offers. Call it defense. Call it capitulation. But that's definitely what you're seeing.
I see this from Denmark, which is publicly trying to say nothing. There've been some leaks. But in general it's been very careful both from Denmark and all of the Nordic leaders I've spoken to, they've been very, very careful. Nothing public about the challenges that they're having. Of course, privately completely unacceptable that the United States would make demands of Greenland and wouldn't work through a very stalwart, though small, ally. The Danes who do everything the Americans ask in terms of coordinating on military exercises and providing multilateral support when the Americans want more participation in different wars or humanitarian support. You name it, the Danes are there. But that didn't matter to Trump. He said, "I want Greenland."
And they are privately trying really hard to get this out of the headlines to say nothing that would be provocative, not respond the way the Colombian President did, not get Trump to do anything even more angry. And instead, find a way to keep Greenland a part of Denmark, don't vote for independence and keep the alliance stable. Most places around the world, that's what they're doing. They're acting like Mark Zuckerberg and Meta and all of those tech titans that have given the money and have gone down to Mar-a-Lago and are saying, "No, we've always loved you Trump and we want to work with you and please don't hurt us."
But there are a few exceptions and I think it's worth mentioning who I think they are. Exception number one, this may surprise you: Canada. Canada is an exception not because they're unfriendly with the US, not because they don't depend on the US, but because they have an election coming up. Their government fell apart. And now everybody in Canada is angry at the United States with all of this threat of tariffs and we want more money for the Americans for security, and you guys should be a 51st state. Not only are the liberals angry, the conservatives are angry and they have to outdo each other to be tough on Trump in the United States or they think they're going to lose the election upcoming. So the fact is that Trump, I think, made a strategic mistake in going after Canada early because the Canadians are not in the position to respond well given the election.
The other two exceptions, the Europeans who want to be constructive with the US but have a stronger position if they can be collective through the EU and on some areas they can. On Russia-Ukraine, they can be collective, which has helped them bring Trump closer to the European position on Russia-Ukraine in the last three months than he was when he was initially elected. On trade, on tariffs, on China, Europe is more collective and has more regulatory force as long as they can act together. That is going to continue to happen, gives them more leverage, vis-a-vis the Americans.
And then finally the Chinese who don't act collectively, but they are stronger as an individual country. And they're going to be much tougher to engage with as we saw with the first phase one, phase two trade deal. It took a very long time to sort of come together and then they didn't actually uphold a lot of what they promised. A lot of decent conversations, but the Chinese were much more willing to lecture Marco Rubio in their first call with the US Secretary of State than anyone else he has spoken with around the world. Why is that? Because the Chinese want to show they're not going to be pushovers and that they are tougher and bigger and stronger and can hit back the way that many other countries cannot. What does that mean for US-China relationship? Probably going to get worse before it gets better. That would be my bet at this point. But we'll see how much of a deal Trump really wants.
That's it for me. I'll talk to you all real soon.
Migrants line up to leave the United States for Mexico after being deported across the Paso del Norte international border bridge after President Donald Trump promised mass deportation operation, as seen from Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, on Jan. 23, 2025.
How Mexico is preparing for Trump’s mass deportations
The initiative, called “Mexico Embraces You,” aims to build nine migrant reception centers along the US border, and employ all 34 federal agencies and 16 state governments to repatriate and resettle returnees. The program intends to enroll people in pensions, paid apprenticeships, and other social welfare initiatives, and to distribute cash cards worth about $100 each. It will also bus people back to their hometowns.
Critics say Mexico is ill-equipped to handle the influx and accuse it of benefiting from migrant remittances, which boost foreign exchange, domestic incomes, and economic growth, while lacking a system to support repatriation. Some wonder what migrants will do once they return since many fled because of violence or lack of opportunity.
Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum has expressed disagreement with Trump’s “unilateral” mass deportation decision, but with the US planning to implement 25% tariffs to force Mexico to crack down on the border, and the flood of migrants seemingly on their way back regardless, she has little choice but to prepare her country to receive them.
MAGA, the American Dream and immigration
Ian Bremmer's Quick Take: A Quick Take in this holiday season on the back of the biggest fight in the United States that we have seen among Trump supporters since his election win.
Started off when Vivek Ramaswamy, the billionaire, the co-director of this new Department of Government Efficiency, DOGE as they're calling it, writing that we have to bring in lots of high-talent immigrants, complaining that American culture isn't getting it right for the people that they need to hire in order to make the United States win and more competitive. We hear it all the time. You need to staple a green card to every STEM PhD that's being awarded to non-Americans in the US so they can stay. You need to keep those students here. You need to bring in far more talented legal immigrants in larger numbers to address the talent gap in the United States, and if Americans want to win, that's what you need to do.
The average American has heard this before, and they've heard it for a long time. To be clear, it is not like the US economy isn't winning right now. You look at the stock market, you look at corporate profits, you look at Elon Musk, the dude is worth nearly half a trillion dollars, and that's with a very strong dollar. Look at how the United States' economy has performed since the pandemic, while Europe, and Japan, and South Korea, and Canada, and others just are not, and they're not innovating, and they don't have the big companies. I've heard this about other issues. I've heard about tariffs. I've heard about even free trade. You hear it about investments and capital flows around the world and need to make things work more effectively for the big money in the United States. And working-class and middle-class Americans know that when elites in the US say that the US is going to win, that it doesn't mean 'em. The United States, for so many Americans, is a country of second-class healthcare, and second-class education, and second-class opportunities. And if the American dream doesn't work for the average American citizen, then you're telling them we should be bringing in really much more talented Indians? Good luck with that argument for them.
And those of you that know me, know that that's not my personal perspective. I grew up in the projects with a mother though that did absolutely everything for her kids. And I had opportunities. We had opportunities. I feel very lucky to have been born in America, not better than anyone else, not having any more intrinsic worth, just super, super fortunate. So the American Dream absolutely worked for me. Capitalism in the US and the ability to be an entrepreneur absolutely worked for me. But most of the kids that grew up in my neighborhood don't feel that way today, along with far too many working and middle-class Americans.
And if the United States felt like the land of opportunity instead of a two-tier system where you buy your way into privilege, and you buy your way into opportunity, and then you make sure you do that for your kids, and the best indicator of how well an American is going to do is how fortunate your parents are compared to other advanced industrial democracies, rich democracies around the world, well, that is not a country that's going to say, "Yeah, we need to do more to help the wealthiest win." Because the wealthiest have already figured out how to win for themselves, and there are lobbying dollars, and their access to the best that the world has to offer for them in the United States. If the average American felt that way and felt that applied to them, then Trump wouldn't be president today. You wouldn't have "America First" resonating for so many people that want to undermine globalism because globalism wasn't about the globe and it wasn't about all Americans. It was about just getting it done for that small, small group of people with access to capital.
This is the failure of globalism, and this is why the United States doesn't want to take the lead on global security, or global trade, or even global democracy anymore. You have to be a leader at home before you can effectively lead anybody, nevermind everybody else. This is what we're facing come January 20th. I think it's a useful fight to see play out publicly because there's a very big difference between those that have access to decision-making, power and authority in the United States and those that turned out and actually voted, the masses that voted against the establishment. And to the extent that they continue to be hard done by and every expectation for the last 40 years in the US is that that will be the case, whether it's a Democrat or Republican running the country, this situation is only going to get more toxic.
That's it for me. I wish everyone Happy holidays. Hope you had a merry Christmas. Looking forward to the new Year. I'll talk to you all real soon.