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Major automaker Volkswagen has considered cancelling its plans for a US major factory over President Donald Trump's automotive tariffs, according to reports Monday. Oliver Blume, CEO of the Volkswagen Group, said in an interview with Handelsblatt that in the first nine months of 2025 levies issued by the Trump administration had cost the company $2.5 billion and that the company needed to make cuts, Semafor reported. After Trump returned to office, German investments in the US dropped 45% year-on-year in 2025, according to Reuters. The dollar's depreciation was considered a factor while German exports also declined. Other recent political and economic factors have also come into play. "After Trump warned at the World Economic Forum last week of possible further duties on Europe, growing global uncertainty over the stability of trade relationships pushed gold above $5,000 per ounce for the first time," according to Semafor.

Fifty killed in one incident as Italian authorities estimate 380 people may have drowned last weekUp to 380 people may have drowned attempting to cross the Mediterranean last week as Cyclone Harry battered southern Italy and Malta, the Italian coastguard has said, as a shipwreck with the loss of 50 lives was confirmed by Maltese authorities.Just one person, who was hospitalised in Malta, survived the shipwreck, which happened on Friday. Continue reading...

As I wrote this column, Donald Trump was speaking at the Davos Economic Summit. This event rightly has often been derided for pandering to elites and corporations while shallowly nodding to concerns about the environment, civil rights and economic inequality as the billionaires and world leaders fly in on their private jets.But this year it was at the center of the fear and chaos over Trump’s war on NATO and Europe, his demand for a Nobel Peace Prize, and his desire to seize Greenland.In his rambling speech, lying about his so-called accomplishments, Trump appeared to rule out using military force to take Greenland (after implying for days that he would seize it, as he put it, “the hard way” if he needed to do so). But, Trump said, he wants “immediate negotiations” to acquire Greenland because it is “undefended.” He’s made repeated false claims that it is being circled by Russian and Chinese ships.Was this another Trump TACO? Possibly. But don’t think he won’t threaten World War III again, nor demand the Nobel Peace Prize again in return for not waging war as he continues to grab for Greenland. We’ve come to know the tired performance in which Trump demands the world’s attention, the media complies, and international relations are damaged.Greenland, of course, is, always has been, and — barring any change in circumstances — always will be “defended” because it is part of NATO. That means the U.S. is defending it, along with the rest of the alliance. So everything that’s happened in the past few days around this issue is pure idiocy, and all about Trump’s ego and his desire to own land which I’m sure he’d like to rename “Trumpland.”But that’s what we have come to expect from the debilitating dictator who is waging war on his own country, sending thousands of violent goons to terrorize Minneapolis while continuing to dodge the Epstein files.The world, for its part, is moving on. The speech at Davos by Canada’s Prime Minister Mark Carney was a powerful synthesis of this. There is a new world order, he said, as the U.S. not only cannot be relied upon for stability; it can’t be trusted in any agreements and will at any time lash out with punishing tariffs or threats of domination.This new order will be a painful adjustment for the world and, in particular, those considered long-time allies of the U.S. But the people most hurt will be Americans, seeing Trump rip up trade agreements as the rest of the world makes new alliances. The very people who voted for Trump, hoping he was going to make life more affordable, will be more miserable than ever.As Ryan Cooper reported at the American Prospect, Trump, in repealing the government investments in green energy in the Inflation Reduction Act, has already doomed the American car industry with his war on electric vehicles:Now, thanks to that betrayal, plus Trump’s lunatic trade and foreign policy in general, the American auto industry is bleeding out.Consider Canada, which has historically been one of the biggest markets for American cars, being quite similar culturally, already heavily integrated into the U.S. auto industry (along with Mexico), and also one of the few places that will buy our big stupid trucks.America’s share of the Canadian auto market has been tumbling, down from about half in the previous decade to just 36 percent, because of Trump’s deranged trade war and threats of annexation, which has sparked a massive nationalist backlash and a mounting customer boycott of anything American.And that brings me back to Carney’s speech. He urged world leaders not to continue to yearn for a past order whose presentation was pretty fictional anyway:Let me be direct. We are in the midst of a rupture, not a transition.Over the past two decades, a series of crises in finance, health, energy and geopolitics have laid bare the risks of extreme global integration. But more recently, great powers have begun using economic integration as weapons, tariffs as leverage, financial infrastructure as coercion, supply chains as vulnerabilities to be exploited.You cannot live within the lie of mutual benefit through integration when integration becomes the source of your subordination.The multilateral institutions on which the middle powers have relied — the WTO, the UN, the COP, the very architecture of collective problem-solving — are under threat. As a result, many countries are drawing the same conclusions that they must develop greater strategic autonomy in energy, food, critical minerals, in finance and supply chains. And this impulse is understandable.A country that cannot feed itself, fuel itself or defend itself has few options. When the rules no longer protect you, you must protect yourself.Carney urged the “middle powers” of the world to unite — economically, militarily, and geopolitically — to become a force that can stand up to the great powers. It’s ambitious, but it’s the only thing that they can do, he said. As the European Union leaders described new trade deals with India, Brazil, China, and other countries, Carney also touted new trade agreements:We’ve agreed to a comprehensive strategic partnership with the EU, including joining SAFE, the European defence procurement arrangements. We have signed 12 other trade and security deals on four continents in six months.In the past few days, we’ve concluded new strategic partnerships with China and Qatar. We’re negotiating free trade pacts with India, ASEAN, Thailand, Philippines and Mercosur.The U.S. is pulling itself away while many of its spurned friends are making new alliances. As Carney noted, this is about survival and the inability to count on the U.S.:The question for middle powers like Canada is not whether to adapt to the new reality — we must.The question is whether we adapt by simply building higher walls or whether we can do something more ambitious.Now, Canada was amongst the first to hear the wake-up call, leading us to fundamentally shift our strategic posture. Canadians know that our old, comfortable assumptions that our geography and alliance memberships automatically conferred prosperity and security, that assumption is no longer valid. And our new approach rests on what Alexander Stubb, the president of Finland, has termed value-based realism.Or, to put it another way, we aim to be both principled and pragmatic. Principled in our commitment to fundamental values, sovereignty, territorial integrity, the prohibition of the use of force except when consistent with the UN Charter and respect for human rights.And then this line:Our view is the middle powers must act together because if we’re not at the table, we’re on the menu.In the first Trump administration there was an idea that Trump was an aberration. The hope was that he or someone like him would never return. The U.S. would go back to the order of the last century, and, even with all its flaws — including the U.S. and other great powers continually exempting themselves from the rules — it would all work out. But now there’s the realization that it’s done. And Carney sees it as a moment of opportunity and even liberation.We know the old order is not coming back. We shouldn’t mourn it. Nostalgia is not a strategy, but we believe that from the fracture we can build something bigger, better, stronger, more just. This is the task of the middle powers, the countries that have the most to lose from a world of fortresses and the most to gain from genuine co-operation.The powerful have their power. But we have something too: the capacity to stop pretending, to name realities, to build our strength at home and to act together.That is Canada’s path. We choose it openly and confidently, and it is a path wide open to any country willing to take it with us.With that, Carney laid it out for the business and political leaders of the world, receiving a standing ovation.Trump today ranted and lied at Davos, and he will continue to do so whenever he speaks. But he is making himself and the U.S. more and more irrelevant, as much of the world has no choice but to move on and find safety by joining together and making new friends.In forcing that, Trump is making America weaker by the day. Can we bring the country back? That will depend on the 2026 elections — and all of us working hard to stop the GOP from enabling him — as well as on the 2028 elections. And, though it perhaps can be done, whoever becomes president will have an enormous task in gaining the trust of the world once again.

Voting ends in month-long poll derided internationally as sham designed to cement army’s grip on powerVoting in Myanmar has ended with the military-backed party expected to win a landslide victory after a month-long election that has been widely derided as a sham designed to cement the army’s grip on power.The junta leader, Min Aung Hlaing, has rejected criticism of the vote, saying it has the support of the public and presenting it as a return to democracy and stability. Continue reading...

Any day now a swarm of armed state police dressed for war could descend on a metropolitan area in south-west Ohio.The small town of Springfield in Clark County is awaiting an invasion of unaccountable thugs who conceal their faces and identities, drive in unmarked vehicles with blackened windows, stomp on the Bill of Rights, and viciously brutalize human beings based on race and accent.The clock is ticking for 20 to 25 percent of the city’s population from Haiti. In two weeks, barring last-minute legal or congressional intervention, immigrants from the violently imploding Caribbean country will lose their legal protection from rampaging ICE warriors eager to fill deportation quotas.The militarized sweep of terror unleashed by unrestrained federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents that has traumatized Minneapolis and the nation writ large could be coming to Springfield soon.An estimated 12,000 to 15,000 Haitian residents in the metro area — many of whom have been living, working, and raising families in the area for close to a decade under a legal immigration lifeline — will be stripped of their Temporary Protected Status (TPS) on Feb. 3.That means on Feb. 4, a paramilitary ICE force of masked tough guys can grab and deport as many Creole-speaking Black people in Springfield as possible.Those who protest the savagery deployed against their neighbors could face the same harassment and dispersement tactics demonstrators in the Twin Cities did with flash grenades, tear gas, rubber bullets or, like Renee Good, worse.The Ohio city is bracing for barbaric.Haitian residents cut off from their legally protected status could meet the same fate as other immigrants besieged by cosplaying federal Rambos with weapons and short fuses.The Haitians who flocked to Springfield to escape a violent homeland trusted Ohio to have their backs. They worked their tails off and endured much to revive a dying Rust Belt region. But the lives they painstakingly built in Ohio as co-workers, business owners, community activists and church-going family people are nearing an expiration date.The huddled masses who yearned to be free in Springfield are terrified of being returned to Haiti which is even more turbulent and deadly than when they left.It is considered too dangerous by the U.S. for its own citizens.The State Department gave Haiti its highest Level Four: Do Not Travel advisory due to extreme risks of being caught in gunfire or ongoing gang violence, kidnappings, armed robbery, sexual assault, and severe shortages of basic necessities including fuel, water, and food.Yet while acknowledging (in a gross understatement) that “certain conditions in Haiti remain concerning,” the Trump regime insists the bloody hellscape is safe enough to ship 350,000 Haitian immigrants legally employed in the U.S, including Springfield, back home.The Department of Homeland Security even dangled a $1,000 incentive to Haitians who self-deport.One Springfield immigrant who is haunted by the bodies he saw regularly on the streets of Haiti, gunned down by roving gangs, flinched at an exit bonus to armed conflict.“You could be self-deporting to your death,” he said. The Haitians who turned to Ohio for security, employment, and hope rescued Springfield said local pastor Carl Ruby.The town had been in decline for 70 years before the 2017 arrival of Haitians, he explained.“We had shrunk all the way back to the population we had in 1910,” and the influx of immigrants, granted temporary refuge in Springfield, was “one of the best things that has happened in terms of economic growth and tax revenues” despite initial growing pains.“There were legitimate issues when such a large group arrived all at once, but we’ve made a lot of progress in dealing with those issues and it’s going to be both an economic and humanitarian disaster if TPS ends.” At the Haitian Support Center in Springfield, executive director Viles Dorsainvil said many of his compatriots who survived political upheaval, insecurity and abductions in Haiti believed they had come to Ohio to work hard, raise their families, go to school and contribute to their community.Now they shudder with fear and uncertainty as their final hours of safety and stability ebb away.“But we keep going because we are a resilient people,” sighed Dorsainvil.Yet if the Trump regime revokes the Haitians’ temporary protected status a couple of weeks from now ICE agents could quickly invade Springfield, like other targeted cities, and drag documented immigrants from their children their homes, their dreams.Anxious town leaders are appealing for calm. Meanwhile, Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine warned of a looming economic crisis in Springfield if area factories and business cannot find replacements for the thousands of terminated Haitian employees slated for indefensible deportation to what DeWine called “one of the most dangerous places in the world.”These immigrants were a godsend to American employers who struggled with hard-to-fill jobs.In a sane world, Republican leadership in Ohio would be fighting tooth and nail to protect the TPS holders from Haiti building a robust economic comeback in Clark County because it is clearly in the best interest of the state to do so.Ohio’s U.S. senators would be racing to obtain a TPS extension or redesignation for Haiti to give Springfield’s immigrant community work permit protections against removal to an extraordinarily unsafe country.But they acquiesce without a fight while the madness of a militarized sweep of terror comes to south-west Ohio.And it will. Any day now. Marilou Johanek is a veteran Ohio print and broadcast journalist who has covered state and national politics as a longtime newspaper editorial writer and columnist.

President Donald Trump on Thursday made a big announcement about an upcoming global event and who he picked to help lead it.He posted the following on his Truth Social platform: "Today, I am announcing the United States’ intention to bid for the World Expo 2035. The Great State of Florida has expressed strong interest in hosting the Expo in Miami, which I fully support. Miami Expo 2035 can be the next big milestone in our new Golden Age of America."Trump shared the news just a day after meeting with world leaders at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, and having major pushback to his demands to seize Greenland and invoke tariffs on European allies in retaliation to their objections — then announcing he had sought a new deal over the Arctic nation. He also revealed who in his circle will help lead the effort."I am appointing Miami native Secretary of State Marco Rubio to Chair the efforts of coordinating and advancing this exciting opportunity to convene the World. We will create thousands of jobs, and add Billions of Dollars in GROWTH, to our Economy. In my First Term as President, I fought hard to bring the 2026 FIFA World Cup and 2028 LA Summer Olympics to the U.S.A. I now have the Honor of hosting as the 47th President, plus America250, G20 Doral, and the G7. I look forward to winning and participating in the Miami Expo 2035!"

Donald Trump made some improvisations in his Davos speech as a way of setting himself apart from other world leaders, a therapist has suggested. Shelly Dar, a registered mental health therapist speaking to The Mirror US, claimed the president's intonation and erratic comments are all part of the act. The contrast he brought to the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, could be seen in the latter parts of his appearance. Dar said that, while Trump is initially tense for the presentation, it is a ploy to create dissonance with what the meeting is all about. She said, "What stands out from Trump is how rigidly controlled his presentation is. "For the first 95 minutes we only see him from the elbows up. Both hands are anchored to the podium, his posture is rigid, and when you can’t see two-thirds of the body that limits our information." Dar suggested Trump behind the podium manages to "conceal" the signals of anxiety which can be found in the lower body. But the contrast the president wished to show was more than obvious to the mental health therapist. "He visibly exhales, his pace loosens and his pitch varies," Dar explained. "He defaults to his usual behaviors — boastfulness, anecdotes, scaling things up. That tells us something important. His confidence isn’t dependent on structure."He appears more confident when improvising than when delivering prepared remarks. I think it's well known that he doesn't like reading off an autocue."Overall his communication strategy prioritizes dominance over dialogue. He provides certainty over nuance, and his narrative control is built on assertion rather than persuasion."This improvised commentary from Trump stands firmly against what Davos is all about. Dar added, "Davos is built on multilateralism, shared norms and collaborative language. So this contrast is deliberate."What stands out about Trump is the type of confidence that he shows. Behaviorally, he assumes authority that is already his. He doesn’t adapt to the room, but he expects the room to adapt to him. "This is a dominant personality style, it's not a collaborative one. He's there to set the tone of the room."

Donald Trump went to Davos on Wednesday morning and gave the speech that Vladimir Putin wanted him to, lying and pissing off Europe and shaking the North Atlantic alliance to its core.Our president has refused to help Ukraine in any meaningful way for a year now, giving Russia the room to destroy much of that country’s electric and heat infrastructure so badly that President Volodymyr Zelenskyy had to cancel his trip to Davos to deal with the crisis.Trump’s now invaded Venezuela and is threatening the same with Greenland, legitimizing Putin’s land-grabs in Georgia and Ukraine.Trump’s ICE goons are destroying the rule of law in America, running amok in Minneapolis, punishing — and killing — the residents of that city for having elected politicians who’d dare advocate democracy over autocracy.Russian media is proudly proclaiming that their own internal crackdowns on immigrants, dissidents, and people of color aren’t so bad because Trump’s doing the same thing in America. We’ve legitimized Putin’s racist police state.Trump’s destroyed much of America’s “soft power,” our friendly relations with resource-rich developing nations, by killing off John F. Kennedy’s USAID program, directly causing the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people with more to come.Many of the countries we’ve abandoned are now re-aligning themselves with Russia and China, to Putin’s delight.Trump’s duplicating Putin’s “enemy within” rhetoric to amplify the Russian-promoted “Great Replacement Theory” meme that claims wealthy Jews are paying to have Black and brown people “replace” white men in their jobs and lives.It’s become the operating system for ICE and is tearing America apart, pitting friends, neighbors, and relatives against each other while Russian media celebrates.The biggest thorn in Putin’s side has been NATO, all the way back to his days as a murderous KGB intelligence officer, and Trump is now shaking that organization all the way down to its foundations by threatening to seize Greenland and trash-talking alliance member states.Early on as Putin was rolling out his dictatorship, having destroyed Russia’s brief experiment with democracy, he put himself above the law by simply refusing to enforce rights the Russian constitution and laws gave to average citizens.Trump’s today doing the same thing, simply defying the Epstein Transparency Act and other laws while approving as his ICE goons routinely violate Americans’ civil rights.From Russia’s point of view, America’s biggest historic strength hasn’t been our formidable military (they have just as many nukes) but was our rock-solid multi-century relationships with allies.Today, Canada is — for the first time in over a century — preparing to fight back against an American invasion, while the European Union is trying to figure out how to disentangle itself from our economy in the event we start a war with them.Meanwhile a bigoted Australian billionaire family continues to pump daily pro-Russian-worldview (racist, nationalist, anti-democratic) poison into the minds of Americans.In the 1940s, Sir Keith Murdoch built his family’s media empire, in part, by running sensationalist articles about Black American GIs stationed in Australia during World War II “raping” and having affairs with white Australian women. Now Fox “News” is one of the most frequently quoted American sources for Putin’s captured domestic media, according to The New York Times.Everything Trump does, when it doesn’t involve soliciting bribes, hustling pardons, or making himself richer inures benefit directly to Putin. Which raises the question diplomats and leaders across Europe are increasingly asking out loud: why are elected Republicans tolerating this?Is it just because five corrupt Republicans on the Supreme Court legalized bribery and thus billionaire oligarchs who don’t believe in democracy now own them?For example, billionaire Peter Theil, who financed JD Vance’s rise to power as the senator from Ohio, has said:“I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible,” and “Since 1920, the vast increase in welfare beneficiaries and the extension of the franchise to women — two constituencies that are notoriously tough for libertarians — have rendered the notion of ‘capitalist democracy’ into an oxymoron.”Could it be that most Republican politicians simply agree with those types of sentiments, that democracy is mob rule and inconvenient, and that strongman autocracy is a more stable and predictable form of government? That they’d love to jettison European and Asian democracies in favor of corrupt police states like Russia and Hungary where they can get away with just about anything just so long as they keep the emperor happy?After all, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas was nakedly taking millions in “gifts” from rightwing billionaires with business before the Court and became the deciding vote in the Citizens United case; are Republicans going along with Trump’s corruption because they, themselves, are also taking bribes and using otherwise illegal insider information to make themselves rich?Or is it because six corrupt Republicans on the Supreme Court gave Trump immunity from crimes and he thinks of himself as America’s monarch, as if he were mad King Ludwig of yore?Are Republicans afraid — as Mitt Romney told his biographer, McKay Coppins — that Trump will use the force of law or activate his lone-wolf white supremacist terrorists to bring GOP politicians to heel or even have their families intimidated or their homes attacked like the Trump supporter who went after Paul Pelosi?Could it be that Republicans know that most Americans — at least those who haven’t bought fully into the Fox “News” and MAGA cults — have figured out that the GOP’s only loyalty is to billionaires and massive corporations?All they’ve done since the Reagan Revolution is cut taxes on the morbidly rich while gutting the agencies that catch criminal or unethical activity in government and the military; maybe the GOP now realizes we’ve got their number and that’s why they’re working so hard to purge voting rolls in Blue cities?Trump’s shocking behavior — and the even more shameful docility of elected Republicans and the lickspittles he’s surrounded himself with — raises questions that will probably only be answered by future historians.Nonetheless, we must push back. Democrats need to grow a spine, and the upcoming vote on the DHS budget is a great place to start. Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-CT) and Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA) have indicated they may support the legislation, while Reps. Ro Khanna (D-CA) and Ilhan Omar (D-MN), and Sen. Rubén Gallego (D-AZ) are signaling a fierce opposition. The battle will almost certainly play out in the Senate over a Democratic filibuster; you can call your two senators and Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) at 202-224-3121.Democrats also must signal now and repeatedly that Trump’s pro-Putin, anti-American rhetoric and actions are so unacceptable that impeachment is necessary, both for him and his brownnosers at DHS, ICE, and the FBI.And if there are any Republicans who have left an ounce of decency, now is the time for them to stand up and speak out. And not to back away as soon as Trump growls, the way Sens. Josh Hawley (R-MO) and Todd Young (R-IN) just did with the proposed Venezuela war powers legislation.Republican senator Barry Goldwater famously walked from the Capitol to the White House to inform Richard Nixon that his criminality had become so severe and obvious that Republicans in Congress could no longer support him and would, if necessary, vote to impeach and convict him.America needs today’s Republicans to find their spines, reclaim their integrity and patriotism, and politically stop Trump in his tracks. And maybe it’s starting to happen: Republican Rep. Don Bacon (R-NB) just told reporters he’s threatening impeachment:“I’ll be candid with you: There’s so many Republicans mad about this [Greenland issue]. If he went through with the threats, I think it would be the end of his presidency. And he needs to know: The off-ramp is realizing Republicans aren’t going to tolerate this and he’s going to have to back off. He hates being told no, but in this case, I think Republicans need to be firm.”It’s a start, but there’s a long way to go if Trump is to be held to account.When future historians ask what Putin wanted from Trump, the answer may be painfully simple: “Everything America once stood for.”Whether that happens is not yet settled and ultimately depends on what we Americans — across the political spectrum — do next.Thom Hartmann is a New York Times best-selling author and SiriusXM talk show host. His Substack can be found here.