European lawmakers suspend U.S. trade deal
cnbc.com
cnbc.com
China's claimed the South China Sea as its sovereign waters and has been using force against fishermen from the nations that actually have control over the water. They're continuing to threaten Taiwan in a purely ideological push. Chinese secret police have set up stations abroad to kidnap dissidents. Border skirmishes with India are not uncommon. The agreement for a democratic Hong Kong was torn up and now they're under the thumb of the CCP, same as the mainland.
Russia invaded Georgia in 2008, Crimea in 2014, and of course Eastern Ukraine in 2022. They haven't had a "real" election in decades. Dissidents die suspiciously with regularity.
Both nations have supported the efforts of North Korea to further its nuclear arsenal in blatant violation of UN resolutions.
With the exception of the invasion of Ukraine, there have been zero negative consequences for any of this behavior.
Both nations have hosted at least one major international sporting event in the last 20 years. China is signing trade deals with Canada and the EU nations because, for some reason, those parties see a totalitarian single-party state as a viable alternative to the US that will never produce a "mad king", when in fact, it's almost tailor-made to do so. Construction on Nordstream 2 started after the invasion of Georgia, specifically because Europeans wanted Russian natural gas. Russian oligarchs continue to hold major interests in European nations and are free to move about the continent. Sanctions against the Russian economy over the invasion of Ukraine are dodged by dealing with intermediate parties so that many nations, including those in Europe, can do business as usual.
If you're a narcissistic psychopath - like the majority of world politicians and Donald Trump are - and you see this sort of thing happening, you're going to ask, "Why can't America play by those rules too?"
Such a person (or the people willing to trust them) would be seen as naïve, though, because any sane person would tell you that's exactly what's been happening since you were born.
This is in response to new US tariffs and threats, not the other way around. Our previous diplomacy was cold with China.
But it doesn't endeavor to ask exactly why the US is behaving this way.
The answer is simple: a mad king. You have a man who thinks the government should be run as his own personal enterprise and is being given license to do so by one of the country's two main political parties. The other half of the country is making it rather clear that they don't approve of this behavior, along with other things happening in the country. There are pictures from the last few days of people protesting while armed in Minnesota.
Tyranny is a problem, obviously, and it's one that has existed as long as power structures have existed in human societies. I can see why Canadians are angry at Trump and the US as a whole. I don't blame you, but if you want to solve the problem of the mad king, you don't sign trade deals that enrich a single-party totalitarian state. You can almost guarantee that come the next international dust-up over something - Oh, just spitballing, maybe freedom of navigation in the South China Sea - the PRC will use that new trade deal as leverage on Canada. It will happen. They will get a return on their investment. That's how authoritarians work.
A deal with literally anyone else would have been better.
They dont. Republican party supports all of that, fully. Project 2025 came from heretage fund. Supreme court is result of them strategically getting people who support this on it.
Conservatives all like what trump does. Evangelical Christians still support him too.
The US just had its longest government shutdown, where the government was non-functional. Yet no politicians appear to have suffered any consequences, and there are rumors of another.
The "checks and balances" of the government seem to be non-functional, as one branch of government claims to have veto power over all other branches.
The populace appears to have no power over their elected representatives, or possibly supports the current turn of events.
That's directly due to the mad king. Trump's the head of the party, and he's used to running an organization where no one questions him, because that's what he did at the Trump Organization for decades. If you vote against him - and some GOP senators did recently - you "receive pressure" to change your mind. What does "receive pressure" mean? I'm not in DC and not in politics, so I can't say for sure, but my guess is it can include things like backing primary/caucus candidates that will be a reliable vote for Trump's agenda come the next election cycle, public disparagement on Truth Social, and tacit threats to derail the representatives' personal agendas for their constituents.
Could it be even more direct, like threats of violence or blackmail? Maybe. It wouldn't surprise me with Trump.
This has existed throughout history in a number of systems of government, but it seems especially bad now in the US because you have someone who came from a system where he never had to encounter any sort of resistance who is now running the executive. Prior to Trump, all modern presidents had at least some experience in government, and it was understood that there was bargaining involved in the system.
I've maintained since the 2015 primaries that you simply cannot have someone from the private world be in such a high office, and this is exactly why.
https://data.worldhappiness.report/chart
I like to spend a lot of time at the World Happiness Report because it gives me a better sense of economic well-being. You can't just look at GDP, you need a sense of which countries are burning human capital to fuel GDP and generate billionaires. That's a very common short-term tactic, so the WHR gives you a better sense of long-term political stability. Unhappy populations tend to vote for strongmen.
It's basically impossible to get to Finland-levels without bringing everyone along. Not just internally like getting rid of 996, but also including neighbors like Taiwan/Ukraine cause corruption tends to leak back in. Imagine if Bush had spent the Iraq war trillions on high speed rail/free college/ housing. Instead we got ICE.
Changed the deal.
A deal is between 2 parties in agreement.
When both parties agree to terms that are written out, the one party (Europe) is given a document with modified terms, the provider (US) broke convention. The receiver of the modified document stopped the negotiation. Suspended is sufficient to describe the situation. This isnt complicated, sheesh.
Putting on my Dart Vader hat: "I'm altering the deal, pray I don't alter it any further"
However, the headline implies that Europe broke the deal. That implication is incorrect, making the headline wrong in the non-pedantic reading.
The US broke the deal, and this story is simply about Europe acknowledging that fact.
[0] - https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-01-22/eu-plans-...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agreement_on_Reciprocal%2C_Fai...
So I don't really follow the news
1) A rapidly growing economic crisis due to aggressive and inchorent foreign policy decisions
2) The new force of Gestapo murdering and harming citizens in cities all across the nation
A real privilege.
If history is any guide, ICE may be better compared to the SA. Their job is to make it safe for the future Gestapo to operate unmasked... at which point the unprofessional street thugs in ICE will find that they've become a liability to the regime.
As I understand it, the right to record police has never actually been tried definitively at the SCOTUS level. The Republicans certainly have the tools on the SCOTUS bench to prohibit it now, so look for a case to be brought at some point.
1: https://reason.com/2026/01/08/you-have-the-right-to-record-i...
2: https://www.kqed.org/news/12070260/what-you-need-to-know-abo...
But, they were actual police, highly effective. (Torured, murdered, commited genocide ... buy were actual trained cop good at being cops and good at genocide).
"Nearly all Epstein files still unreleased a month after Congress deadline" - https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/jan/19/jeffrey-epst...
I wish I could ignore all of this because I am tired man.
You can only threaten your friends so many times before they cut you out, and Trump is going on a year straight of threatening us (Canada, but also Greenland) with annexation, and the EU with sanctions and tariffs.
It doesn’t matter if the US government are serious or are posturing, the message is clear: prepare for existential warfare (economic or militarily) or be faced with it.
I think Prime Minister Mark Carney’s speech yesterday captures the shared sentiment outside of the US very well. It’s worth listening to and lays bare the cracks in international diplomacy the last 80 years.
I personally find the argument that it’s about masking something clever weak. There are two things going on: repeatedly admitting US manufacturing can’t keep up with China and desperately trying to bring it home, and “Donroe Doctrine” colonialism where the US wants to lean on the weak to extract money out of them.
Maybe next year Trump is going to say “look how strong I made NATOs military, no more freeloaders here, this was all a ruse”, but I doubt it.
And my personal raw take, as a Canadian: we’ve shown we will take a punch to the nose for the US, it’s going to be impossible to look at our relationship the same for a generation. I’ve worked for US companies (as do most of our best and brightest), we have tight security integrations, this all feels incredibly unnecessary.
American here with Canadian family members.
Agree 100%, this whole thing was incredibly dumb from the beginning. Trump's dementia and ego will ruin (has ruined?) the US's standing in what was the former West. What a sad day to be alive.