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Republican presidential candidate and former U.S. President Donald Trump gestures as he speaks during a press conference at Trump Tower in New York City, U.S., May 31, 2024.
Hard Numbers: Trump takes to TikTok, Mexican mayor murdered, Shootout outside US Embassy in Beirut, A criminal epoch?, Spain’s menstrual law misses mark
5.2: From president to felon to social media influencer? Donald Trumpposted his first TikTok from a UFC fight last Saturday. He has already amassed over 5.2 million followers, beating Biden at his own game, who in 3 months has failed to even reach half a million followers. The app Trump once sought to ban as president has now become a part of his campaign for presidency as he hopes to woo the younger vote.
19: Within hours of Claudia Sheinbaum’s monumental presidential victory in Mexico, the mayor of Cotija, a town in western Mexico, was shot 19 times in an attack that killed her and her bodyguard. No arrests have been made since the assassination – another tragic example of Mexico’s rampant political violence.
1: A shootout involving one assailant occurred outside the US Embassy in Beirut, Lebanon, on Wednesday. The gunman, identified by the Lebanese military as a Syrian national, was shot and wounded by Lebanese soldiers before being taken into custody and transferred to a local hospital for treatment. The motive is unknown, but the incident occurred amid simmering tensions along the Israel-Lebanon border that have led the Jewish state to warn it could soon launch an offensive against the Iran-backed militant group Hezbollah.
67: Weidong Guan, CFO of the Epoch Times, has been charged with one count of conspiring to commit money laundering and two counts of bank fraud in an alleged $67 million, four-year-long scheme involving cryptocurrency and prepaid credit cards. If convicted, Guan faces up to 80 years in prison.
1,559: On June 1, Spain celebrated the first anniversary of Europe’s first paid menstrual leave law. Surprisingly, it has only been taken 1,559 times, according to the country’s Ministry of Inclusion, Social Security, and Migration. While hailed as a step forward for feminism, the law has limited applicability – as it can only be used by those with previously diagnosed conditions like endometriosis.Graphic Truth: Who wants to drop TikTok?
Is TikTok facing a ticking time bomb in the US and Canada? Last Wednesday, as part of a foreign-aid package that included funding for allies, President Joe Biden signed a law that requires TikTok’s Chinese owner, ByteDance, to sell the popular video-sharing app to an American buyer within a year or face a ban in the US. Analysts believe that Canada isn’t far behind.
Despite the momentum among legislators, public opinion on a ban is sharply divided, and the largest divides break down across age groups.
The main concern centers on national security. American and Canadian authorities are wary of the app's potential for data privacy breaches and spreading the influence of the Chinese Communist Party. However, TikTok's user base, which skews younger, tends to see things differently. In the US and Canada, adults between the ages of 18 and 34 are more likely to oppose a ban, arguing the app remains a significant platform for entertainment and expression, especially for Gen Z.
Protesters, mainly Houthi supporters, rally to show support to Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, in Sanaa, Yemen April 26, 2024.
Hard Numbers: Houthis widen strike zone, Americans sour on TikTok, Warsaw synagogue targeted, Russia shows off US tank
300: A Houthi drone launched from Yemen last Friday struck the MSC Orion, a cargo vessel transiting the Indian Ocean, over 300 nautical miles away from the Red Sea, where Houthis have constrained their attacks until now. Striking targets in the Indian Ocean presents a serious escalation, and experts told the Guardian that ships linked to Israel, the US, or the UK would likely need to be rerouted even further from normal shipping lanes to stay safe.
58: A 58% majority of Americans said they believe China is using the social video-sharing app TikTok to “influence American public opinion,” according to a new poll from Reuters and Ipsos. The same poll found that a slim 50% majority also supported banning the app, which the Biden administration may do if parent company ByteDance can’t find a buyer.
3: An unknown perpetrator hurled three firebombs into Warsaw’s main synagogue Tuesday night, drawing major condemnations from Polish political figures but causing little damage. Before the Holocaust, Poland had Europe’s largest Jewish population, over three million, which was so thoroughly expelled or exterminated by the Nazis that today the country has only a few thousand practicing Jews.
30: A Moscow exhibition is displaying over 30 pieces of Western military equipment captured on the battlefield in Ukraine, including an American M1 Abrams tank, a German Leopard 2, and a French AMX-10RC. The Russian government is using the exhibition to show that “the West destroys peace on the planet,” according to Russian foreign ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova.
Why the US-China relationship is more stable than you might think
Ian Bremmer's Quick Take: Hi everybody. Ian Bremmer here and a Quick Take to kick off your week. US Secretary of State Tony Blinken in the Middle East right now. But he just came from China, Beijing and Shanghai, and the US-China relationship is what I'm thinking about. Want to give you a state of play.
It continues to be better managed and more stable than we've seen in a long time. Now, not clear that would necessarily be the case, given the number of issues and places where we have friction between these two countries. Just over the course of the last couple weeks, you've got President Biden, putting new tariffs on Chinese steel, opening a new investigation into Chinese shipbuilding. You've got this anti TikTok policy that's coming down from US Congress. You've got $2 billion in additional military aid for Taiwan from the United States. You've also got lots of criticism from the Americans on ongoing Chinese support, dual use technologies for the Russians, allowing them to better fight the war in Ukraine.
Given all of that, is the relationship starting to become much more confrontational? And the answer is not really. It's true that the Chinese foreign minister said that the Americans need to choose between having a relationship of containment and a relationship of partnership, and it's certainly true that the Americans would rather have it both ways. They want to have partnership in areas where it suits the Americans, and containment in areas where it suits the Americans. The Americans getting away with more than that than other countries can because the US is the most powerful country in the world and ultimately the Chinese need Americans more than Americans need China. Still, there's a lot of interdependence, and there is an ability to push back. How much is China actually doing that? And the answer is there's been very little direct Chinese tit for tat, despite all of the policies I just mentioned. It is true that overnight, the Chinese Foreign Ministry said that there would be resolute and forceful measures if the supplemental support for Taiwan, which is a red line for the Chinese, is signed and Taiwanese assistance from the US moves ahead, and I suspect that means we're going to see some more sanctions from China against US defense contractors.
That is largely symbolic. It is a tit for tat. But on all the other policies I've mentioned that the Americans have just brought against China, we've seen Chinese focus on making their country and their economy more resilient against American efforts to contain, but not hitting the Americans back, not calibrated, moves of sanctions or reciprocal investigations. In fact, the Chinese have been pretty stable.
Also. We saw that Xi Jinping still met with Secretary of State Blinken directly, a meeting that would be very easy for the Chinese government to take down, and historically certainly wouldn't have been present if there had been a lot of tension in the relationship. They chose not to do that. And in fact, Blinken went to a record store, you know, he plays guitar and sings, and he's into music. And the coverage from the Chinese state media of that trip was very humanizing, was very friendly, frankly, better coverage of a US secretary of state than I've seen at any point since Xi Jinping has been in power. That's something it's very easy for the Chinese government to put their thumb on the scale if they want to show that they're unhappy with where the US relationship is. I think about Obama and the town hall, that he wanted to put together and the Chinese unwilling to give him the kind of coverage that the Americans at the time had wanted. You know, this is a lesser official from the US and is still getting, frankly, tremendous treatment from the Chinese government. I think that matters a lot.
Having said all of that, this is a relationship that is becoming more challenging to manage. And that's true because in the United States, whether you're Democrat or Republican, one of the very few things you can agree on in foreign policy is that there is a benefit in going after China. So the policy from the US is not just about Biden making decisions himself, but it's also about members of Congress. It's about governors. It's about the media. All of whom are taking their own shots. And they're not coordinated. Where from China, if Xi Jinping wants it, everyone basically rose in the same direction. Now, there are lots of American corporations and banks that are sending their CEOs, making trips with China right now. And there's much more people to people engagement between the two countries, something that Chinese officials are strongly focused on.
There's a lot more communication and cooperation on things like climate, as well as in response to America's fentanyl crisis, where the Chinese are shutting down the labs, the companies that have been exporting the precursor chemicals. Those things matter. They are engaged. There's also a lot of willingness of the United States, at the highest level, to provide more information to China, just on what the Americans are seeing happening around a confrontation in the Middle East that China would like to see a cease-fire for, so would the Americans at this point. And also, the Chinese don't have a lot of high level diplomats and a lot of ability to collect information that the Americans do. And when high level Americans are talking to their Chinese counterparts about the Middle East, the Chinese are very much in taking notes mode and appreciating that they're getting that information from the US.
So overall, I continue to see a lot of high level engagement that is very constructive. But coming against a relationship that has virtually no trust and where the baseline of conflict is going to pop up in a lot of different ways and a lot of different places around the world. Over time it's going to be harder to maintain that stable floor on US-China relations. But for now, I think we're likely to continue to see it, at least until elections in November.
That's it for me. I'll talk to you all real soon.
TikTok logo displayed on a phone screen is seen through the broken glass with American flag displayed on a screen in the background in this illustration photo taken in Krakow, Poland on April 24, 2024.
Why Canada will mimic America's TikTok dance
We appear to be at a curious “hinge moment” in history where great powers are engaged in intense rivalries but at the same time are finding ways to cooperate.
Congress and President Joe Biden have just told China to sell TikTok, the social video-sharing app, or it will be banned in the US. It has also just voted to send $8 billion in military aid to Taiwan, a move the Chinese have described as a “dangerous provocation.”
At the same time, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken is in China attempting to thaw relations. He follows on the heels of Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and recent calls between US and Chinese defense chiefs to discuss their differences.
Similar dual-track diplomacy is happening in other Western countries. Germany is “derisking” its relations with China, yet Chancellor Olaf Scholz visited Beijing earlier this month. Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese undertook a state visit to China in November, the first since 2016.
Canada’s government ordered a national security review of TikTok last September and has already banned the app on government devices. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said Canada is watching the debate in the US, and observers have little doubt that Canada will follow Washington’s lead, if the app is banned – just as it did when it blocked Huawei from its 5G network in 2022.
Sino-Canadian relations are likely to get cooler before they warm up. Interim findings of a Canadian public inquiry into foreign interference in the 2019 and 2021 elections by China will be released later this spring – details that are unlikely to lead to calls for rapprochement.
At the same time, Foreign Affairs Minister Mélanie Joly is sending her senior diplomat, David Morrison, to China as a prelude to an official visit.
The general sense is that we all have to coexist in the same neighborhood, albeit, in the words of US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan, “in small yards with high fences.”
A broken ethernet cable is seen in front of a US flag and TikTok logo.
The clock is ticking for … TikTok
President Joe Biden on Wednesday signed a law that could see TikTok banned nationwide unless its Chinese parent company, ByteDance, sells the popular app within a year. The law was motivated by national security concerns.
TikTok promptly vowed to challenge the “unconstitutional” law in court, saying it would “silence” millions of Americans – setting the stage for a battle over whether the law violates First Amendment rights.
Expect delays. Eurasia Group’s US Director Clayton Allen is skeptical that such legal challenges will be successful, but they will still likely delay “any action well into 2025, putting the onus – potentially – on a second Trump administration.”
Though Donald Trump moved to ban TiikTok while he was in office, the former president is now attacking Biden over the law and calling for “young people” to remember the move on Election Day.
Notably, Biden’s campaign says it plans to continue using TikTok to reach younger voters.
What will China do? China expects delays in the process but is likely to prohibit a sale if it comes to it, according to Eurasia Group, our parent company. Beijing is unlikely to respond with a tit-for-tat approach targeting American companies and will instead focus on building a fortress economy that’s insulated from US containment efforts.
US TikTok ban: China’s complaints are a double standard
Beijing blocks US technology companies like Facebook, Google, and X from operating in China. So why is the Chinese government so upset over the proposed TikTok ban in Congress? US Ambassador to China Nick Burns discussed China’s double standard when it comes to foreign tech firms on GZERO World with Ian Bremmer. The US has been pushing for TikTok’s Chinese parent company, ByteDance, to sell the app’s US operation, and millions of nationalist netizens on Chinese social media are decrying it as another example of the US limiting China’s global rise.
Burns says the idea that American firms could operate in China by following Chinese data and national security laws isn’t a convincing argument because a wide swath of US tech has been blocked for years, and China’s “Great Firewall” was set up to insulate Chinese people from the rest of the world. China’s rationale for US tech companies’ absence in China, he says, is fundamentally anti-democratic.
Catch GZERO World with Ian Bremmer every week on US public television (check local listings) and online.
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- Why the US-China relationship is more stable than you might think - GZERO Media ›
Graphic Truth: Which country ❤️s TikTok most?
TikTok has taken the world by storm over the past few years, growing its global audience to a whopping 900 million users and counting. You can find a wide array of video content on the app, ranging from people cooking, dancing, and pontificating to breaking news and political drama. It can be quite addictive.
Meanwhile, politicians in Washington continue to raise the alarm about the potential national security risks of the app, which is owned by the China-based company ByteDance. The US House of Representatives recently voted to ban TikTok if its Chinese owner doesn’t sell it, and we’re waiting to see whether the Senate votes on the measure. But many American users seem unfazed by the political discourse as the US boasts the most users – nearly 150 million – of any country in the world.
Should people be more concerned about the Chinese government spying on them through TikTok?