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US President Joe Biden looks on after he delivered his farewell address to the nation from the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, DC, on Jan. 15, 2025.
Biden’s farewell speech sounds alarm
Biden emphasized the importance of democratic engagement and continued progress on issues like climate change, warning against powerful interests seeking to reverse environmental initiatives.
Rather than highlighting his own achievements, the speech called for a series of ethical reforms for government officials, including term limits and ethics reform for the Supreme Court, banning congressional stock trading, and a constitutional amendment clarifying that presidents are not immune from crimes committed while in office.
Biden ended his final speech in office by emphasizing the importance of American democratic institutions, noting that while imperfect, “they’ve maintained our democracy for nearly 250 years, longer than any other nation in history that’s ever tried such a bold experiment.”
President-elect Donald Trump speaks during a meeting with House Republicans at the Hyatt Regency hotel in Washington, DC, on Nov. 13, 2024.
Opinion: A Trumpian storm is brewing
For months on the campaign trail and in a crescendo last week at a press conference at Mar-a-Lago, Trump has made promises to American voters. On foreign policy, this list includes everything from ending the war in Ukraine within six months of taking office and imposing “all hell” if the Israeli hostages are not released before Inauguration Day (with a ceasefire deal coming into view) to his more recent discussions about taking control of the Panama Canal.
In anticipation of Trump’s return, the world has been packing their go-bags and considering how best to prepare. The Trump administration the world has been preparing for, however, may not be the one it gets. It is becoming increasingly clear how distinctly different Trump’s current worldview is than what came before him – including what he envisioned during his first term.
Differing tactics
Unlike the administration of Joe Biden, which leaned heavily on consensus building, non-binding partnerships like the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue and negotiations ad infinitum, Trump’s tactics have always been different. The businessman-president trades in grievances. He looks for the points of disparity and deploys (largely economic) tools like tariffs and sanctions to bring his “adversaries” closer to his preferred position – and to advance what he sees as America’s best interests. During his first term, for instance, Trump walked back a threat to impose tariffs on Mexico’s goods only after its government agreed to a deal stemming the flow of migrants along the southwestern border.
From his post-election personnel decisions, policy proposals, and posts on Truth Social, it seems clear Trump will continue to deploy these tactics in his second term. But what is also emerging is a Trump foreign policy agenda that’s radically different from Trump 1.0. Then “America First” focused on immigration, bringing jobs and manufacturing home, with a significant focus on reorienting global supply chains. With the exception of the January 2020 assassination of Qasem Soleimani, Trump largely avoided telegraphed security operations.
An aspirational agenda
Now, Trump has seemingly set his sights on a much more ambitious set of priorities. In 2025, Trump is speaking of the dawn of “the golden age of America.” Making America Great Again looks less like an isolationist story and more like a no-stone-uncovered one. As Trump scans the horizon looking for the angles, he has put his neighborhood, Europe, and the world on notice that almost nowhere will go unconsidered.
To the North, Trump’s December announcement that he would impose 25% tariffs on Canada set off a chain reaction that ultimately led to an already-fragile Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s resignation. Trump’s repeated barbs about Canada becoming the 51st US state and musings about removing the “artificial line” separating the two countries have continued to destabilize the political landscape. Canadian officials are reportedly drawing up their own list of American products to tariff should Trump make a move. To the South, Mexico has also been forced to respond to Trump's tariff and border vows. After he suggested renaming the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America, President Claudia Sheinbaum went tit-for-tat with Trump proposing to call the US, America Mexicana.
Across the Atlantic Ocean, headline-grabbing claims about acquiring Greenland initially generated chuckles in Europe. His threat to tariff Denmark at a very high level to open the door for negotiations over Greenland is Trump 1.0. His articulated vision of needing Greenland for national security purposes (and ultimately access to the Arctic’s resources) while refusing to rule out the use of military coercion are hallmarks of the emerging new Trump foreign policy.
In Trump 2.0, anywhere is up for grabs (a real estate deal), and economic tools of national security will be backed up by more traditional force posturing. The lesson of the moment appears to be that the best countries can hope for is to stay out of Trump’s crosshairs. America’s EU allies, for their part, have responded by taking Trump’s ideas increasingly seriously. German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and France’s Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot issued reminders of the inviolability of European borders, but European capitals are rattled.
In his news conference last week, Trump speculated that “since we won the election the whole perception of the whole world is different.” It is not just the case that the US and its voters may see themselves differently since Trump’s reelection, but the world has somehow been changed by it.
Still, according to Trump, “big problems remain that need to be settled.” The president-elect has spent the post-election period throwing up dozens of foreign policy trial balloons to clarify how he would like to see these problems settled. As the clock winds down to his inauguration, Trump’s more grandiose foreign policy vision may soon move many targets into the eye of the storm.
Lindsay Newman is a geopolitical risk expert and columnist for GZERO.
A Georgian reflects on the life of Jimmy Carter
We Georgians have always had mixed feelings about Jimmy Carter, who died today, Dec. 29, 2024, at age 100.
I was 12 when he was elected president, and I remember many people I knew, even some who liked him and voted for him, felt he’d been a mediocre Georgia governor who’d won the White House by accident. They dismissed him as simply the charming everyman America needed to purge the nation of the cynicism and disgust that flowed from the war in Vietnam and the Watergate scandal. Many Georgians felt he was in over his head.
As president, he had his accomplishments, none bigger than brokering peace between Israel and Egypt. But to many, he never seemed forceful enough for the job. In 1979 came the famous “malaise speech” in which he told Americans facing high inflation, high unemployment, and an energy crisis (I remember waiting in line 45 minutes with my mother to buy gasoline) that they should turn inward and reconsider their values.
The long hostage crisis in Iran made Carter seem small and lost. In 1980, Ronald Reagan easily defeated him, making Carter the first president to lose a bid for re-election since Depression-era Herbert Hoover in 1932.
But ask a Georgian today, or any day, what they think of Jimmy Carter now, and you’ll hear some variant of: “A disappointing president, but a truly good man.”
That’s because, after his stinging defeat, Carter spent decades helping to build homes for people who couldn’t afford them, building the Carter Center as a global philanthropic organization of note, and offering his services wherever they might be accepted. These were his greatest achievements.
Jimmy Carter wasn’t a political performer. He farmed peanuts. He served in war. He and his late wife Rosalynn supported one another through 77 years of marriage. For decades, he taught Sunday school every Sunday. He made peace.
Rest in Peace, Jimmy.Willis Sparks is a senior writer for GZERO Daily — and a native Georgian.
President-elect Donald Trump points his finger at the Palm Beach County Convention Center on Nov. 6, 2024.
Trump wants a White House AI czar
If appointed, this person would be the White House official tasked with coordinating the federal government’s use of the emerging technology and its policies toward it. And while the role will not go to Elon Musk, the billionaire tech CEO who has been named to run a government efficiency commission for Trump, he will have input as to who gets the job.
The Trump administration has promised a deregulatory attitude toward artificial intelligence, including undoing President Joe Biden’s 2023 executive order on AI.
That order not only tasked the federal departments and agencies with evaluating how to regulate the technology given their statutory authority but also how to use it to further their own goals. Under Biden, each agency was tasked with naming a chief AI officer. If Trump is to keep those positions, the White House AI czar would likely coordinate with these officials across the executive branch.Donald Trump is seen here at a Jets football game next to his campaign manager Susie Wiles, on Oct. 20, 2024. The president-elect has just named Wiles his White House chief of staff.
Who will Trump’s team be?
At last count — yep, they’re still counting ballots from last week’s US election — Republicans looked set for a clean sweep: taking not only the White House and Senate but possibly the House too. With 18 House races yet to be called, the GOP is leading in seven and needs to win just four for a majority.
Attention now turns to the president-elect’s naming of names for the first cabinet of “Trump 2.0.”
Here’s what we know:
Trump has made just one appointment so far: He has named Susie Wiles as the first-ever female White House chief of staff. The 67-year-old veteran Florida political operative ran Trump’s presidential campaign, helping to secure his stunning comeback.
We also know for sure that two people won’t be in Trump’s cabinet: Nikki Haley, who served Trump as UN ambassador but also ran against him in the 2024 primary, and Mike Pompeo, who was Trump’s secretary of state during his first administration.
No other appointees have been made official, so lots of Republicans are jostling for 15 Cabinet positions and various advisory roles.
Names being floated for secretary of state, the US top foreign policy role, include Richard Grenell, former ambassador to Germany and acting DNI director; former national security adviser Robert O’Brien, former Iran envoy Brian Hook, GOP Sen. Bill Hagerty of Tennessee, and Florida Sen. Marco Rubio.
The US Treasury secretary position, which is the top financial position in the US government, is likely to go to one of five men: Robert Lighthizer, the arch-protectionist who helmed the US tariff war with China as Trump 1.0’s US trade representative; billionaire hedge fund managers Scott Bessent and John Paulson; former SEC chair Jay Clayton; and Larry Kudlow, Trump’s former National Economic Council director.
For interior secretary, which oversees management of federal lands, including their use as energy sources, the top names include South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem, as well as North Dakota’s billionaire Gov. Doug Burgum — both were once considered veep candidates for Trump. Burgum, meanwhile, is also on the shortlist for energy secretary, along with Dan Brouillette, who held the post last time around.
We’ll be keeping an eye on official appointments for these and the other Cabinet positions, as well as for indications of what portfolios go to key supporters like Robert F. Kennedy Jr. — who may be named a White House health and wellness adviser or even become secretary of health and human services – and Elon Musk, who has himself suggested being named to helm a new department focused on government efficiency.Republican presidential nominee and former US President Donald Trump gestures during a campaign rally in Reading, Pennsylvania, on Oct. 9, 2024.
US election campaigns head into the homestretch
As election day nears, both parties are throwing everything they have into the final stretch of the campaign. For Kamala Harris and the Democrats, that includes a war chest of more than $1 billion that she’s brought in since she rose to the top of the ticket, an amount and pace observers say is likely record-breaking. The Trump campaign, by comparison, has raised roughly $850 million this whole year.
But amid concerns that the initial bump in momentum may be fading, the Harris campaign has undertaken a media blitz, including a series of interviews this week on “60 Minutes,” “The Howard Stern Show,” and the popular “Call Her Daddy” podcast. Whether it’s landed well is an open question. She has been criticized for not answering questions directly. The critiques come weeks after the Democratic contender was under fire for not doing any interviews at all.
The Trump campaign, meanwhile, had about $135 million left to spend at the end of August per FEC filings, but Trump is doing more on-the-ground legwork – notching 21 public campaign events in September alone, nearly twice the 13 that Harris and her running mate Tim Walz have done, combined.
The Trump campaign is also deploying a new get-out-the-vote model focused on people less likely to show up at the polls but who are leaning right — and it’s betting big on this approach, particularly in battleground states. Trump’s homestretch strategy has focused on attracting the votes of young men, as well as shoring up small but growing support from Black male voters. The MAGA campaign’s latest headache, however, was a new book by journalist Bob Woodward that claims Trump has kept in touch with Vladimir Putinsince leaving office, and that he sent the Russian president COVID-19 tests at the height of the pandemic when ordinary Americans were struggling to find tests.
Trump and the campaign deny the claims, but no campaign wants to be spending the dying days of the race fending off criticism of what a candidate says – or, in Harris’ case, doesn’t say.
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Vice President Kamala Harris attends the opening of a pop-up ice cream shop "Smize & Dream" owned by Tyra Banks, in Washington, US, on July 19, 2024.
November’s election is so close and yet so far
For the US election apparatus, it likely feels like an impossible challenge under urgent, abridged circumstances. For those watching from abroad, the duration of the US presidential election cycle – beginning immediately after the mid-term elections and spanning nearly two years – has always been a bit of a headscratcher. The United Kingdom completed snap elections earlier this month that lasted six weeks from start to finish. Even President Emmanuel Macron’s decision to surprise Europe with elections in France held the country in suspense for just under a month. The lengthening of the US election timeline across modern presidential history, alongside the ballooning of campaign financing, may feel foundational to democracy. But seen through a comparative lens, these dynamics are idiosyncratically American.
Amid this major test of the US political system, Vice President Kamala Harris has enjoyed a storybook start to her presidential campaign. Just over a week in, she could not have written it up better if she tried. With Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, and President Barack and Michelle Obama all endorsing her this past week, Harris saw the last of the dominoes fall in her favor. She can check the first benchmark, party unity, off her to-do list.
Harris’s campaign has seen a stunning inflow of donations that have reportedly broken historical records. Her early campaign messaging of fighting for America’s future, and the imagery of Harris as prosecutor versus the perpetrator, former President Donald Trump, is resonating. Latest head-to-head polling puts Harris and Trump at a virtual statistical tie, offering an ingredient for the Democratic campaign that Biden could not seem to bring: belief. Harris has Democrats believing she can expand the umbrella of potential constituencies and deliver a wider Democratic coalition in November. Harris even conquered social media with Charli XCX labeling her “brat,” which will perhaps prove to be the 2024 version of former Obama’s 2008 one-word mantra of “Hope.”
Leaders and watchers from abroad who have been wringing their hands for months over prospects of a Trump 2.0 find themselves taking a crash course on Harris. Without absolute clarity about what a Harris presidency would look like, the safe bet is that she will represent a policy continuity story for the Democrats. Foreign policy is particularly a “black box.” Unlike Biden, Harris is not known for her foreign policy experience. Having made fewer than two dozen trips abroad during her vice presidency, Harris was never assigned a foreign policy “patch” as VP and served more as a surrogate for high-level conferences and meetings like the Munich Security Conference.
Across the aisle, Trump is also waking up to the full reality of Harris’s candidacy. His plan to run down the clock to November by appealing to his base now faces alarm bells. Where his address at the Republican National Convention and selection of Sen. JD Vance as his running mate seemed like obvious tactics in the pre-Harris world, the risk is that Trump has narrowed his pathway to victory in November. He must now decide whether and how to get out of the trap he laid for himself, a position he most certainly will reject in favor of rallying cries around election integrity, fraud, and a rigged system.
Given all that is at play, it is hard to know which election narrative ultimately rings truest on Nov. 5. Will the anti-incumbency, anti-establishment sentiment circling the globe prove decisive? Does age – first Biden’s but potentially now Trump’s – matter? Is the existential threat to US democracy the single and most animating force for voters? Did Harris’s entrance come too late for a political system used to knock-down-drag-out campaign fights? And will there be blood? Whichever trend proves most salient, the summer of 2024 reset the race. The election countdown starts now.
Dr. Lindsay Newman is a geopolitical risk expert and columnist for GZERO.
President Joe Biden addresses the nation from the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, on July 24, 2024, about his decision to drop his Democratic presidential reelection bid.
Biden passes the torch to veep and voters
In his first address to the nation since ending his reelection bid last weekend, President Joe Biden framed his decision to bow out of the race as a sacrifice for the sake of American democracy.
“I revere this office but I love my country more,” he said in a historically minded address from the Oval Office on Wednesday night. “This task of perfecting our union is not about me … it’s about ‘we the people.’”
While calling for unity, he framed the November election as a pivotal choice for American voters between “hope or hate” and said that while he felt his experience and record justified another term, it was time to pass the torch to “a new generation of leaders.” Vice President Kamala Harris, he said, is “experienced, tough, and capable.”
To help shape her campaign, he pledged to focus his remaining months in office on key Democratic themes: protecting the right to abortion, reducing gun violence, accelerating the fight against climate change, brokering a cease-fire in Gaza, and reducing prescription drug prices.
He also reiterated his intention to reform the Supreme Court – with term limits for justices and an ethics code likely to be on the agenda.