TRUMP’S TAXES AND TARIFFS
US President Donald Trump is attempting to rattle through his long, long list of campaign promises in his first week back in the Oval Office and has now turned (some of) his attention to world affairs.
On Wednesday, writing on his Truth Social platform, Trump threatened to impose “high levels of taxes, tariffs, and sanctions” on Russia and its allies if it does not stop its invasion of Ukraine, The Guardian reports. (Reminder: Trump claimed he would be able to end the war in Ukraine within 24 hours of becoming president).
It’s a long post and I’m not planning on making a habit of including his endless posts in every Worm, but given we’re in the early stages of the second Trump administration and the subject matter, I thought it was worth sharing the full text:
“I’m not looking to hurt Russia. I love the Russian people, and always had a very good relationship with President Putin — and this despite the Radical Left’s Russia, Russia, Russia HOAX. We must never forget that Russia helped us win the Second World War, losing almost 60,000,000 lives in the process. All of that being said, I’m going to do Russia, whose Economy is failing, and President Putin, a very big FAVOR. Settle now, and STOP this ridiculous War! IT’S ONLY GOING TO GET WORSE. If we don’t make a ‘deal,’ and soon, I have no other choice but to put high levels of Taxes, Tariffs, and Sanctions on anything being sold by Russia to the United States, and various other participating countries. Let’s get this war, which never would have started if I were President, over with! We can do it the easy way, or the hard way — and the easy way is always better. It’s time to ‘MAKE A DEAL.’ NO MORE LIVES SHOULD BE LOST!!!,” Trump said.
Now whether he’s actually going to put any tariffs and sanctions on Putin and Russia very much remains to be seen. Trump’s threats of tariffs was the leading global concern ahead of his return to office, having previously pledged to hit China with a 60% tariff on its goods, Mexico and China with 25% import taxes, and most of the rest of the world with 10% tariffs.
The BBC reports the US president instead stated this week that he was considering imposing a 10% tariff on imports of Chinese-made goods from February. Those tariffs would be “based on the fact that they’re sending fentanyl to Mexico and Canada”, he claimed.
The British broadcaster says China’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning responded by promising to “safeguard its national interests”, adding: “We have always believed that trade wars and tariff wars have no winners.” Trump has also claimed the European Union “treat us very, very badly … So they’re going to be in for tariffs. It’s the only way you’re going to get back. It’s the only way you’re going to get fairness.”
On Wednesday, Germany’s Chancellor Olaf Scholz responded with: “Europe will not cower and hide, but instead be a constructive and assertive partner.” He added: “Europe must be strong and resilient in world that is, to put it mildly, in motion,” The Guardian said.
Scholz made the comments during a visit to Paris to meet French President Emmanuel Macron. During a joint news conference at the Elysee Palace, Scholz also said Trump “will be, and so much is already clear, a challenge”, German broadcaster Deutsche Welle reports.
At the World Economic Forum’s annual conference in Davos, Switzerland, on Wednesday JPMorgan Chase’s chief executive Jamie Dimon called tariffs a valuable “economic weapon”, The New York Times reports.
“If it’s a little inflationary, but it’s good for national security — so be it,” Dimon told CNBC. “Get over it,” he added. The NYT notes Dimon said several times in 2018, during Trump’s first term, that tariffs were a threat to the economy.
In other developments, the BBC says “the State Department has halted refugee processing and travel plans after Trump said he would suspend refugee admissions to the US from 27 January.” It also highlights that federal authorities’ ability to carry out swift deportations have been expanded. The Associated Press says the former decision has left thousands stranded, including “more than 1,600 Afghans seeking to flee Taliban rule”. The newswire also reports officials have claimed the Pentagon will “begin deploying as many as 1,500 active duty troops to help secure the southern border in the coming days”.
Fox News reports President Trump will sit down with host Sean Hannity for the first Oval Office interview of his second term. The interview will air at 9pm ET (1pm AEDT).
Meanwhile, the Trump administration’s big infrastructure announcement on Tuesday turned out to be a $500 billion AI project dubbed Stargate — involving OpenAI, Oracle and SoftBank — which plans to build data centres across America.
We’ve not gone 24 hours since it was announced and Elon Musk (yes I’m afraid we have to mention him again) has been openly questioning the funding for the project on his social media platform X. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has responded with a fairly blunt “wrong, as you surely know.” His full reply is here.
The other major international news story this morning is Prince Harry’s legal team announcing a settlement has been reached with Rupert Murdoch’s British newspaper group News Group Newspapers (NGN) over allegations of unlawful information gathering.
Reuters writes Prince Harry has declared it a “monumental” victory after the publisher “settled his lawsuit, admitting unlawful actions at its Sun tabloid for the first time and paying substantial damages”.
The Guardian reports a statement read to the court said: “NGN offers a full and unequivocal apology to the Duke of Sussex for the serious intrusion by the Sun between 1996 and 2011 into his private life, including incidents of unlawful activities carried out by private investigators working for the Sun.” It also apologised to the 40-year-old for “the impact on him of the extensive coverage and serious intrusion into his private life as well as the private life of Diana, Princess of Wales, his late mother, in particular during his younger years”, The New York Times said. NGN’s full statement is here.
The BBC said it understood the settlements to Prince Harry and his fellow claimant, former Labour deputy leader Lord Tom Watson, “have cost NGN more than £10 million in pay outs and legal fees”. The broadcaster said NGN “spent upwards of £1 billion in damages and costs to those who claim their phones were hacked and their privacy invaded by the News of the World and the Sun”.
AUSTRALIAN OPEN INTERVIEWS
In domestic news we’ll first focus on the tennis, with Alex de Minaur saying his straight sets loss to world No.1 Jannik Sinner in the quarter-finals felt like being “slapped across the face”, the ABC reports.
“After playing some great tennis on home soil and gaining so much, you feel like you just have been slapped across the face, to finish off like that,” he told reporters after his 6-3, 6-2, 6-1 defeat. “I’ll survive. I’ll keep improving. And if anything, I just need to sit with my team and figure out a way to hurt Jannik on the court… because at the moment we don’t have it. So, back to the drawing board, like I’ve done my whole career.”
Also making headlines overnight was 22-year-old American Ben Shelton, who after making it through to his first Australian Open semi-final, criticised the tournament’s on-court interviews as “disrespectful”, Guardian Australia says.
Following on from Novak Djokovic’s criticism of Channel Nine, Shelton said on Wednesday: “I’ve been a little bit shocked this week with how players have been treated by the broadcasters,” the ABC reports. He added: “I feel like there’s just been a lot of negativity. I think that’s something that needs to change.”
In political news, The Sydney Morning Herald is flagging its latest polling with research company Resolve Strategic, which it claims shows “Australians have swung more support behind Opposition Leader Peter Dutton amid new signs of frustration over the cost of living, as 46% of voters say they expect their real wages to fall this year.” The polling also showed 50% of respondees expected inflation to get worse in the near future.
Which is obviously somewhat at odds to other polling we flagged earlier in the week, which suggested Australians were feeling more optimistic about the economy and their finances in 2025.
What can we learn from this? Well, the usual — take every piece of polling you read with a huge dose of healthy scepticism.
Finally, Foreign Affairs Minister Penny Wong and the new US Secretary of State Marco Rubio have met in Washington and agreed to work together to secure a “prosperous Indo-Pacific region free from coercion” and to “continue security cooperation through AUKUS and bilateral defence initiatives”, The Australian reports.
The paper said Wong had also spoken at the Australian embassy and declared: “President Trump has made it clear that he is going to do things differently.”
Which is quite the understatement.
ON A LIGHTER NOTE…
You’ve heard of Snakes on a Plane — well today it’s the turn of a cat on a plane to make the headlines.
The Associated Press reports an eight-year-old cat named Mittens made three trips in 24 hours between New Zealand and Australia earlier this month after its cage was left in the plane’s cargo hold.
Mittens had been booked on a one-way trip from Christchurch to Melbourne as her family relocated to Australia. After landing in Australia, owner Margo Neas was informed her pet had been unloaded from the plane, but after waiting for three hours with no sign of Mittens she was told the plane had returned to New Zealand with the cat still on board.
The newswire reports Neas was told a wheelchair had obscured a baggage handler’s view of Mittens’ cage, resulting in it being missed. After being told of Mittens’ presence, the Air New Zealand pilot made sure the heating was on in the hold to keep Mittens comfortable as the cat flew back to Christchurch and then back to Melbourne again.
“She basically just ran into my arms and just snuggled up in here and just did the biggest cuddles of all time. It was just such a relief,” Neas said of her eventual reunion with Mittens.
Air New Zealand apologised and said it would reimburse all costs associated with Mittens’ travel, AP added.
Say What?
The so-called Bishop who spoke at the National Prayer Service on Tuesday morning was a Radical Left hard line Trump hater, She was nasty in tone, and not compelling or smart… She and her church owe the public an apology!
Donald Trump
The president of the United States of America posted on his social media platform about Bishop Mariann Edgar Budde after she pleaded with the 78-year-old to have mercy on immigrants and members of the LGBTQIA+ community during her sermon at the National Prayer Service at Washington National Cathedral on Tuesday, at which Trump was present.
CRIKEY RECAP
Since then, antisemites and Nazis have “flourished” on X; Musk has also reinstated the accounts of Holocaust deniers who have called for the killing of Jews. He has endorsed the far-right German political party Alternative for Germany (AfD) as the only party that can save the country, despite AfD’s history of using Nazi slogans, downplaying the Holocaust and glorifying German history; he’s also backed the UK Reform Party despite its repeated links with antisemitic candidates.
It’s unsurprising, then, that Musk celebrated the inauguration of Donald Trump with a Nazi salute. Well, it’s a Nazi salute according to historians, according to antisemites and Nazis themselves, and according to Israeli newspapers. But what would they know? According to US media, it wasn’t a Nazi salute at all. CNN called it an “odd-looking salute“. The Washington Post — controlled by Trump-truckling billionaire Jeff Bezos — called it a “straight arm gesture“. The Financial Review, taking its live feed from The New York Times, called it a “strange salute”. Nine called it an “odd gesture“. Even the ADL baulked at criticising Musk, claiming that it was a “delicate moment” and that it was only “an awkward gesture in a moment of enthusiasm”.
So, who are you going to believe — your own eyes, historians and even Nazis themselves? Or media outlets and lobby groups worried about their exposure to a vengeful Trump and his acolytes and enablers? There’s only one test that counts in determining whether it was any sort of Nazi salute: what would the coverage have been if a prominent progressive figure had performed it? The result would have been blaring headlines, an avalanche of ferocious denunciation and acres of op-eds arguing it confirmed that the left is fundamentally antisemitic. There wouldn’t have been an “odd gesture” in sight.
If Opposition Leader Peter Dutton and NSW Premier Chris Minns manage to make law of their proposed new plans to combat antisemitism, they will be following a global pattern of tougher hate speech penalties enacted since the Hamas attacks on Israel on October 7, 2023.
Terrorism offences would attract a minimum of six years in jail under the Coalition’s proposed laws, while those displaying terrorist organisation signs, Nazi symbols or performing a Nazi salute would face at least a year behind bars.
Minns has said hate speech laws are expected to be strengthened when the NSW Parliament reconvenes in February, despite a nine-month-long review headed by Law Reform Commission president Tom Bathurst concluding the reforms may not be the most effective means of combatting antisemitism.
“Our government is going to… strengthen laws, so that if someone’s preaching hatred in the community, it doesn’t manifest itself two or three months later in a firebombing, an attack or something worse,” Minns said. “No stone will be left unturned.”
While some Jewish groups have welcomed the tougher laws, other groups have raised questions about whether measures like mandatory sentences will reduce incidents.
It defies belief that Trump comprehends even the most basic thing about memecoins. I challenge you to imagine him using a computer. But I bet you that the economics of it makes intuitive sense to him. After all, the appeal of a memecoin is more-or-less the same as Trump as a political candidate. He is our first pump-and-dump president.
Like the memecoins pumped and dumped every single day, everybody knows that we can’t all be winners in the Trump presidency. Peeling back the bluster and hype, the only way that people can gain under Trump’s plans is if someone else loses. In fact, part of the appeal is the wicked delight of seeing a certain kind of person lose — whether it’s a rube who was stupid enough to buy in late or the child of an illegal immigrant whose citizenship might now be retracted under a new executive order.
Key to it all though is the belief — perhaps the delusion — that the Trump supporter will not be the person who loses. People vote for Trump and buy $TRUMP because they believe it will make their lives great again.
READ ALL ABOUT IT
Could ‘criminals for hire’ be behind some antisemitic attacks in Australia? Here’s what we know (Guardian Australia)
Judges, doctors warn of ‘unacceptable risk’ to public safety (The Sydney Morning Herald) ($)
‘F–k it: Release ’em all’: Why Trump embraced broad Jan. 6 pardons (Axios)
TikTokers offered $5,000 to join Facebook and Instagram (BBC)
Netflix refines its sports plan as Jake Paul helps wow investors (AFR)
Europe braces for a new Trump era, uncertain about what it means (The New York Times) ($)
THE COMMENTARIAT
I know what Trump means for our planet. I still choose hope – Aaron Regunberg (The New Republic): But anger alone is not enough to push back the forces of despair, which right now — for me, at least — are ever-present, waiting in the wings for a chance to sweep across the stage and take control. To keep those forces at bay, we also need to find our sources of hope.
That can be tough. With climate change, it often feels like each day, each headline, builds the case for despair: Climate change is accelerating faster than all our predictions. Destructive feedback loops — where small amounts of warming trigger physical changes like melting sea ice or political changes like the rise of rightwing authoritarianism that then cause the planet to warm even faster — are looming, and the catastrophic effects we’re starting to see are going to be increasing not linearly, but rather exponentially. Shit is going to get really bad — like, really bad — and I think sooner than even the more cynical of us are expecting.
Against that backdrop, no-one with a passing knowledge of climate science can lay a strong claim to the kind of pure, unalloyed hope that says everything’s gonna be okay. The truth is, it isn’t. Instead, we need to figure out how to come to terms with a grimmer, rougher kind of hope that admits that there are a lot of solid empirical reasons in this moment to choose despair, but also asks a critical, and practical, question — what does despairing get us?
Donald Trump’s new climate paradigm — The Australian Editorial (The Australian): The impact of Trump’s changes extends beyond government. Six of the biggest US banks have abruptly quit the UN’s Net Zero Banking Alliance. Major investment funds are reassessing their commitment to mandating climate investment and net-zero targets.
This leaves Australia committed to a regulation-heavy approach to climate action and anxious to be seen to be part of the Paris Agreement establishment. Some have argued that Australia can bypass the Trump administration and deal directly with individual states such as California. This might have worked under Trump Mark I but is likely to be much less productive now.
The reality is the UN process and Paris Agreement recognise national governments as state parties. Australia must have a long, hard look at what are its best interests. No doubt, the Trump regime will not last forever. But the net-zero transition is losing traction in Europe as well as the US. The world’s major emitters, including China and India, are not bound by the same rules as the US and will continue to prioritise industrial development over carbon dioxide emissions reductions. The Albanese government, meanwhile, is doubling down on subsidies that lessen our competitive edge and do little to reduce emissions in a global sense. Australia must take a global perspective to what is going on and avoid doing unnecessary self-harm.
