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LONDON: As Trump brutally hammers out a settlement for Ukraine and Russia, he’s also been hammering Europe for vast, cold-war levels of military spending. And European leaders seem very keen to oblige.

Germany, the strongest economy of Europe and the nation facing big onslaught from the United States President Donald Trump in his second term, is finally getting back its mojo to carve out a strong independent position distancing from its longtime ally the U.S. Despite the spectacular victory of the far right pro-Trump AFD in the recent national elections, the political mood in Berlin is aligned against far right and Trump helping the chancellor designate Frederick Merz of the CDU/CSU to consolidate his position as the head of a strong nation caring for its sovereignty and national interests.

On January 20, 2025, US President Donald Trump issued an executive order suspending all USAID and State Department-funded projects, totalling $60 billion, for 90 days. This decision was framed as a reassessment of foreign aid effectiveness and its alignment with the administration’s strategic priorities. The abrupt termination of nearly 10,000 foreign aid grants and contracts has sent economic and humanitarian shockwaves through countries in the Middle East, North Africa (MENA), and South Asia, raising concerns over regional stability, economic sustainability, and geopolitical realignments.

Continued from Part I of the article published at https://tryxyz.com/article29787-TRUMP-S-TARIFF-HIKE-ON-STEEL-AND-ALUMINIUM-WILL-HAVE-LITTLE-IMPACT-ON-CHINESE-INDUSTRY.

Analysts are in consensus that steel exports by China will remain elevated in the current year too as the country’s property market faces weak recovery prospects and investment in infrastructure projects is experiencing moderate growth. The two sectors have more than half the share of China’s steel use. Fall in demand there was partly compensated by higher order for steel emerging from the manufacturing sector. But this could not be enough to arrest the fall in China steel use in 2024 by 4.4% to below 900m tonnes.

President Donald Trump is keeping the pot boiling with daily major announcements. Globally, the trade front changes are creating turmoil and uncertainty among nations and financial markets. ‘Are they on or off?’ - Nations are left guessing. Should they retaliate or wait? If they retaliate, Trump promises to increase the tariffs further and if they wait, it would look like Trump has cowed them down. Indian officials are keeping quiet but have lowered tariffs on goods of interest to the USA.

VIENNA: With European sovereignty under attack from Donald Trump and his national security plunderers, er, advisors—will Denmark eventually capitulate to the orange monster’s protection racket threat to take over Greenland? It is still refreshing to note that there are at least oases of the old continent’s Social Democracy which stand against the ever more powerful encroachment of American neo-liberal domination. One of those oases is Vienna, where the hard-fought gains of the Socialist movement of the 1920s still endure.

Long before Donald John Trump became President of the US for the first time in 2016, he invited the sobriquet maverick for the unconventional way he conducted his business and politics. The world is having a full taste of that in his second term as President Trump has proposed a tariff structure, which the US administration is in the process of implementing causing acute resentment among all US trade partners, including its traditional close allies. Imports of steel along with the base metal aluminium are coming for highly punishing tariff barrier with the US to charge 25% import duty irrespective of the origin of the two metals.

Pakistan Army's Operation Jaffar Express Clean-up came to a successful conclusion: All the Baloch ‘dehshatgars (terrorists)’ were eliminated in one fell-swoop with not a single body of the killed terrorists to show! Pak Army's Director-General Inter-Services Public Relations (DG ISPR) told the media. And if that is believable, how about the claim of not a single Pakistani soldier/officer, Special Forces personnel, lost his life cleaning up the "terrorists"?

Wednesday afternoon the Pak Army was planning a “full-scale operation” to free Pak Army personnel taken hostage by the Baloch Liberation Army (BLA) in a train. This, after claiming that security forces had "rescued over 100 civilian hostages" when the reality was the BLA had already "released civilians, including women and children."

WASHINGTON DC: On the evening of January 19, 2025, the American Hindu Coalition — a pro–Donald Trump group whose stated mission is to “build a stronger America through Hindu Enlightenment Principles” — joined forces with several right-wing Latino organizations to host a joint Hindu-Latino inaugural ball in downtown Washington, DC. Among those who gathered in the ballroom of the swanky Mayflower Hotel, rubbing shoulders with Argentina’s far-right president Javier Milei, was Rajiv Pandit, who serves on the Board of Directors of the Hindu American Foundation (HAF) — a Washington, DC–based advocacy group that proudly professes to be the “largest and oldest education and advocacy organization and the pre-eminent voice for Hindu Americans.”