Mallen Baker: Faultlines

In this news round-up of the week, Trump sides with Putin in blaming European leaders for his frustrations about the lack of progress in ending the Ukraine war. The US blows a boat with eleven people out of the water because it has decided they are narco-terrorists. The world's smallest and newest petrostate just had a crucial election. And a good old-fashioned British tabloid feeding frenzy has b...

The leader of Reform UK and best bud of Donald Trump, Nigel Farage, testified to Congress yesterday and told Americans that the UK has a free speech crisis and has become akin to North Korea. That is patently absurd, and some of the supporting evidence given for it is likewise. But some of it is not, and some of the most telling instances are not even being highlighted. So what's really going on?...

China has been hosting an economic summit that brought together Russia, Indian and numerous other countries from the global south. And then it topped that off with one of its spectacular military parades that put Xi Jinping, Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong Un in the spotlight, and rather showed up Trump's birthday parade as being a pale imitation. But the serious business underlying all this is the gr...

Back in May, we saw the numbers of visitors to the United States plummeting in the wake of President Trump's attacks on most countries in the world with his tariffs and much else besides. Particularly with visitors from Canada, but also Europe and elsewhere. It was speculated that, if it continued, it would wipe billions of revenue off the US tourism industry and leave a lot of, particularly small...

Lots of people have been speculating this weekend that maybe Trump has been out of sight because his health isn't good. That all seems overblown, but it did focus people's minds briefly on what would come next had it been the case. And the fact is that there are reasons to think it would be substantially different, and in many ways potentially much more difficult even than the erratic Trump 2.0 ex...

If anything has defined Donald Trump's second term as president, it is his use of tariffs to bully the world into giving the US highly unequal trade deals. He has used tariffs as an economic bludgeon, but also a political punishment weapon - targeting India and Brazil for political, not economic, reasons. Well, now it is all up in the air as the appeals court has confirmed that all of it was Trump...

In this news round-up of the week, countries are forming common-interest groups across the world to find ways to reduce their exposure to Trump's America and to work on the old rules-based trade order. Also, the world postal services stop sending parcels to the US. Russia pummels Ukraine's capital - Europeans hope Trump will take note, and you can guess how that goes. The head of the CDC is fired...

You're not supposed to be able to use the Presidency of the United States in order to enrich yourself. Indeed, previous presidents provoked controversy even from commanding lucrative deals AFTER they'd been in the office. But all those rules are out of the window with President Trump. Between deals for Trump licensing, gifts, crypto initiatives, and more - Trump has been doing very well indeed ove...

We knew that Trump's Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard had directed spies to go into Greenland as part of a covert influence operation. Now, Denmark has identified three individuals doing exactly what she had directed - gathering names of potential supporters to try to seed a secessionist movement, to create conflict and division between Greenlanders and Denmark. This shows that, not...

We know all about some of the very public moves - gerrymandering in Texas, for instance. But across multiple measures - many of which are hidden in plain sight - Trump's MAGA Republican Party is step by step dismantling America's processes for ensuring free and fair elections. The details don't capture the public attention, but unless they're halted, it could be the start of an extended dark perio...

The US used to lead the world in its innovation, including in energy and industry, and also in its medical advances. And that was because it invested in scientific knowledge, and turned that knowledge into useful services that were easily sold to the whole world. Now, the Trump administration is fixated on articles of faith, not actual scientific advance. It hates renewable energy, which the rest...

It was just a couple of days ago that President Trump was telling us in no uncertain terms that Ukraine needed to be able to hit deep inside Russia to have a chance of defending itself - and that it had been a major failure of Biden to have not let them do this for so long. And yet, it was revealed today that Trump's Pentagon has been blocking Ukraine from doing just that - and it doesn't seem inc...

For just a few days, there was an illusion of real momentum arising from the Trump Putin Summit in Alaska, and the Zelensky Europeans meeting with Trump in the Oval Office. But very quickly, reality is reasserting itself. All the concessions that Trump and his envoy Steve Witkoff believed they had gotten from Putin in Anchorage are dropping one after the other. No, Putin doesn't want to meet Zelen...

Trump's administration has started getting directly involved with businesses in the United States, especially those considered strategic. Up to, and including, taking part-ownership of Intel. But it's the plan to get AI chips being sold to China, with a slice of the revenue going to the government, that has really stirred things up. Not least because China is now turning away from those chips comp...

Trump loves strong man leaders, and it used to be that he loved Narendra Modi as a result. They were great friends, the world was told, and so Modi thought. The world looks different now as President Trump's America is tariffing India more severely than almost any other country - and doing so allegedly because it buys Russian oil. But is that really the reason? And regardless of why - what will be...

There are two live issues being played out following the Alaska summit and the ensemble meeting at the White House. First, Trump's determination that there should be a trilateral meeting with Zelensky, Putin and himself. And Second, that there should be some commitment around a security guarantee that would aim to prevent war from simply restarting soon in the future. All the players are seeking t...

Following Trump's failure to hold the simple lines agreed with European leaders in advance of his summit with President Putin, the heads of the largest European countries, along with others with good relationships with Trump, are going with President Zelensky for meetings at the White House. Their fear is that Trump will seek to bully Ukraine into accepting Putin's terms for a peace deal. Their de...

The big summit meeting in Alaska finally took place. After being talked about, written about and speculated about for the preceding week, it turned out to be ... exactly what we thought. For Trump, there was no escaping the fact this was a monstrous fail, as his amateur-hour combo went up against well-prepared, highly experienced opponents. Initially, even Trump didn't much want to speak to the pr...

China continues to make the most of its near-monopoly on rare earth minerals and magnets - now it is telling businesses they are not allowed to build up a reserve or stockpile. If China suspects them of doing so, they will have their supplies slashed. This is an indicator that Xi Jinping has been emboldened by President Trump's attempts to extort the entire world, and is seeking short-term advanta...

In this highly uncertain world, with wars raging and tensions rising - many countries have committed to boosting their defence spending - and that includes buying new fighter jets. Many countries in NATO and elsewhere, had committed to buying American F-35 jets. President Trump loves the F-35, and encourages everyone to buy them. But suddenly people are dropping those commitments like hot stones,...

A week ago, we were noting that President Trump fired the head of the statistics bureau that gave the world the bad news about US jobs growth. And we speculated over whether he was really going to push a compliant partisan into that post, given that just about everybody said that if he did, it would completely undermine America's credibility when it came to information about its economy. Well, tha...

The more that President Trump does his trademark freewheeling in the run-up to his summit with Vladimir Putin in Alaska on Friday, the more it becomes apparent that this is an illegitimate process. Trump's America has no valid cause to be inserting itself into a conflict from which it is walking away, and on behalf of a side that has not granted it power to represent it at the negotiating table. T...

A growing number of rather vocal people, some with large platforms to amplify their message, are utterly convinced that Britain is in deep decline, on the verge of a massive uprising and even civil war, thanks to widespread perceptions of crisis. Nigel Farage, leader of Reform UK is one of the most prominent, with his 'lawless Britain' campaign. And yet when you look at some of the statistics wher...

The Trump Putin summit has been confirmed to take place in the state of Alaska next Friday. But as more has come to light, it seems possible that the whole event, and the optimism that Trump expressed for what might come out of it - might just have hinged on a mistake made by Trump's hapless special envoy Steve Witkoff when he met Vladimir Putin a few days ago. Even before that possibility came ou...

The comforting line is that it's all just temporary. Sacking the scientists. Removing the research studies. Publishing anti-scientific conspiracy nonsense as if it were fact. But there are some very good reasons to think we simply cannot be so complacent - that forces are coming together to make this a moment in history where we could - with all our technology and hubris - be about to take a step...