A Romanian F-16 fighter jet blew up a sea drone near the Neptun Deep gas platform in the Black Sea this morning, with the country’s president blaming the incident on Russia.

Romania’s Ministry of National Defense initially said the uncrewed vessel was carrying explosives, but later clarified it was a maritime drone.

President Nicușor Dan condemned Russia in a statement accusing Moscow of endangering “critical infrastructure” and people “working at the platform.”

“I strongly condemn the intensification of these types of irresponsible incidents on the part of the Russian Federation,” he wrote in a post on X.

European Commission President Von der Leyen also weighed in on the incident, lending European solidarity to Romania. “An escalating campaign of threats is underway, unsettling our citizens and seeking to divide our Union,” she wrote on X.

“With the European Drone Defence Initiative and the Eastern Flank Watch, we are scaling up production in Europe … So we can respond to emerging threats with speed, unity and resolve.”

According to a Facebook post by Romanian Defense Minister Radu Miruță, the drone was spotted by Romania’s Coast Guard a few hundred meters from the Neptun Deep platform, where several hundred people were working. After consulting the president, Romanian authorities scrambled two F-16 fighter jets and ordered the drone be destroyed.

Miruță said the drone had not come from its neighbor: “Through the direct communication channel recently created with the Ukrainian side, I received the official confirmation that it is not of Ukrainian origin.”

Neptun Deep is Romania’s largest natural gas development and is located in the Black Sea. Romania began developing the project in 2023, with the first gas to be extracted in 2027; it is expected to help Romania become the EU’s largest producer of natural gas.

NATO allies have previously raised concerns about protecting Neptun Deep from Russian drone attacks. Von der Leyen called the incident “hybrid warfare.”

The Russian embassy in Romania did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

German kebab shops want you for the country’s army: German citizens can now join the Bundeswehr’s medical service by scanning QR codes on street-food wrappers nationwide.

A defense ministry spokesperson told German outlet Berliner Kurier on Wednesday that the new recruitment campaign aims to reach “not only young people” deciding on a career but also “career changers and skilled workers” considering a new profession.

The kebab wrappers form part of what the ministry calls “ambient” advertising — recruitment materials placed in locations where potential applicants go about their daily lives. The kebab joints themselves don’t get paid, and operators voluntarily agree to distribute the material, according to the ministry.

“The restaurants receive the branded packaging free of charge,” it said.

Germany isn’t the first European country to rethink its military recruitment pitch in recent years: In a 2019 advertising campaign, the British Army targeted “snowflakes,” “selfie addicts” and “phone zombies.” France launched a nationwide multimedia recruitment drive in 2024, and the Netherlands has been offering young people the chance to spend a paid year in uniform since 2023.

The unconventional recruitment strategy comes as Berlin races to expand its armed forces. The Bundeswehr counted 186,705 active troops at the end of July — its highest level in 13 years — but aims to reach more than 260,000 by 2035 to meet NATO capability targets.

The sums are vast, but the explanations for the spending range from vague to inscrutable. Consider these items in the law that funded the Department of Defense this year:

For “Other Procurement, Air Force”: $32.6 billion. For “Research, Development, Test and Evaluation, Defense-Wide”: $35.2 billion. And for “supplies and associated support services” related to U.S. Code Title 10 Section 3601 subsection(c)(3)(B) clauses (i) through (iv): a mere $650 million.

Determining what, exactly, all this public money is paying for requires cross-referencing thousands of pages of financial tables, accounting records and congressional committee documents that will leave all but the most determined budgeting sleuth at a loss. Yet this is how the U.S. government explains its funding decisions for the most expensive military in the world. And the cost is growing.

“There’s no way that you can follow the money, because it keeps getting twisted like a Rubik’s Cube,” said John Ferrari, a retired Army major general and now a nonresident  senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. “None of it is set up to be transparent.”

ProPublica is setting out to untwist this Rubik’s Cube in a series of investigative articles, and we’re asking for your help. In the months to come, we will grapple with how President Donald Trump is spending taxpayer money at the Department of Defense (or the Department of War, as his administration calls it). With your assistance, we hope to emerge with vital, previously untold investigative stories. 

While accounting is rarely the stuff of action thrillers, the black box that is the Pentagon budget contains a world of grandiose plans and staggering consequences, from extraordinarily expensive jets, ships and missiles, to high-stakes projects gone terribly awry, to closed-door dealmaking with the world’s most powerful arms sellers. (Consider our first story in this series, about the epic dysfunction of an artillery factory bankrolled by $533 million from the U.S. Army.)

The scale is hard to fathom. Congress appropriated $1 trillion for defense this year, more than the combined appropriations for agencies overseeing health, veterans affairs, education, housing, agriculture and justice — twice as much, in fact. If the president prevails in his priorities for next year’s budget, defense spending will soar dramatically higher still, to $1.5 trillion. That would be more, adjusted for inflation, than the country spent annually on defense during the height of World War II. The Pentagon’s balance sheets are opaque even to the Pentagon itself: The agency as a whole has never received a passing grade on a comprehensive financial audit. (The Department of Defense did not respond to a request for comment.)

One thing is clear: Vast sums are funneled into developing costly weapons systems that often come in over budget, get delivered behind schedule or are rendered obsolete by the time they’re finished — if they’re finished at all.

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These poor outcomes follow grand promises. The Zumwalt class of naval destroyers was lauded for its “affordable and flexible design.” A ground-control system for GPS satellites called Next Generation Operational Control System was billed the “best-value GPS control system for the future.” And the F-35 jet was promised as “a truly remarkable, capable and affordable multirole fighter” that would be built “on schedule and on cost.”

Each of these programs went years past their original delivery deadlines and cost far more than originally budgeted. In 1998, the price tag for Zumwalts was estimated at $1.5 billion per ship, according to the Government Accountability Office. Now the expected price exceeds $10 billion per ship (in part because the Navy reduced the quantity it ordered). Expected costs for the GPS control system increased from $4.5 billion to over $7.5 billion. And developing, producing and maintaining the F-35 is anticipated to require $2 trillion, making it the DOD’s most expensive weapon system in history, according to the GAO. (A Lockheed Martin spokesperson called the jet “a critical capability for the United States and our allies” and said the company “is proud to serve as its prime contractor.”)

After the delays and cost increases, these projects have not exactly delivered reliable marvels. Only three of the originally expected 32 Zumwalts have been built. The GPS system was canceled — after 16 years and $6.27 billion in program costs, including payments to defense contractor RTX (formerly Raytheon Technologies). And F-35s are able to perform all of their missions only a quarter of the time. 

Experts in defense spending cite many systemic causes for such outcomes, including the Pentagon’s frequent preference for complex designs, its habit of starting production before the design has been finalized and, not least, its dependency on companies operating virtual monopolies over niche defense products. There are few lasting consequences for contractors who fail to deliver, the experts said. “Industry just says, ‘Shucks, write us another check,’” said one defense congressional staffer, who requested anonymity to speak about internal defense spending deliberations. “Congress just throws cash at the problem.”

Other types of notable figures abound, like the $7 million that the Pentagon reportedly spent on lobster tail in one month last year, the thousands of pages of regulations that would-be Pentagon contractors must navigate, the 4,000% by which a company was found to be marking up products sold to the DOD and the $111 million that RTX fraudulently extracted from the Pentagon by misleading the agency, according to the Department of Justice. (In 2024, RTX admitted to engaging in two schemes to defraud the Pentagon, including for Patriot missile systems, and paid over $950 million to resolve federal investigations. RTX did not respond to a request for comment.)

Those in positions to reform U.S. military spending can benefit from the high-spending status quo. Former four-star generals, Pentagon officials and congressional staffers alike find a welcome reception in the industry they once oversaw. Defense spending bills present excellent opportunities for members of Congress to direct jobs to their districts. And the largest defense firms enjoy annual profits in the billions of dollars.

This windfall ends up in the hands of a powerful few. From 2020 to 2024, just five companies — Lockheed Martin, Boeing, General Dynamics, RTX and Northrop Grumman — received DOD contracts worth a combined $771 billion. (General Dynamics and Boeing declined to comment. Northrop Grumman and Lockheed Martin did not respond to requests for comment on the value of their DOD contracts.)

None of this is a secret. It was four decades ago, during another military buildup under a Republican president, that reports of the Pentagon paying $400 for a hammer led a presidential commission to study wasteful defense spending. It’s because this dynamic has been allowed to persist (despite periodic reform efforts) that ProPublica believes the topic deserves renewed attention. 

The current administration, for its part, says that it is undertaking its own reforms, limiting stock buybacks by defense contractors, boosting new entrants to the defense industry and promising new financial accountability. Yet some fear Pentagon spending is becoming even more unrestrained in the second Trump era. Two of Trump’s marquee Pentagon programs, panned by some as boondoggles, are estimated to collectively cost more than $1 trillion. Companies connected to the president’s family and appointees have scooped up numerous DOD deals. The administration gutted the office that tests weapons systems for safety and efficacy. All in all, Lockheed Martin CEO Jim Taiclet told investors in April: “This is a golden opportunity right now based on who’s in government.”

Not everyone views U.S. military spending as excessive — some defense hawks have spent years clamoring for more of it. Measured as a percentage of gross domestic product, they note, U.S. defense spending has fallen from previous highs. A large chunk of the defense budget goes toward paying the salaries of service members. And even if they take longer and cost more than expected, American defense products are sought after the world over. “Weapons are expensive because our standards are high,” said longtime defense lobbyist Jim Dyer. “The outcomes are good.”

ProPublica is setting out to examine military spending and its outcomes. If you have worked in the world of defense budgeting, spending or contracting, we’d like to hear from you.

The post The $1 trillion black box appeared first on Salon.com.

Russia unleashed a barrage of missiles and drones across Ukraine early Thursday, killing at least 13 people and wounding dozens more.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said the hours-long attack struck Kyiv and the surrounding region as well as Odesa and Chernihiv, damaging apartment buildings, a children’s hospital and a school in the capital. Twelve people were killed in Kyiv and another in the surrounding region, he said, with around 40 injured.

“Unfortunately, while Moscow is investing in ballistic missiles and escalation, such strikes do not always receive the response they should from the world,” Zelenskyy wrote on X. “As long as Ukraine does not have enough anti-ballistic defense, Russia will not consider peace seriously.” U.S.-made Patriot interceptors “cannot yet be replaced,” he added.

Russia’s defense ministry said it used air-, land- and sea-launched weapons to strike military facilities and warehouses. Moscow also claimed its forces had shot down 726 Ukrainian drones.

Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko declared Aug. 21 a day of mourning “in memory of the victims of the enemy’s massive attack on the capital.” Flags will be lowered and entertainment events banned as emergency crews continue working across three districts of Kyiv.

The barrage also put neighboring NATO countries on alert.

Romania’s defense ministry announced that a drone “entered Romanian national airspace” at 3:21 a.m. before crashing minutes later near Grindu “in an uninhabited area.” No casualties or damage were reported.

Poland meanwhile scrambled military aircraft as Russian strikes continued in neighboring Ukraine. The Polish military said it had activated available forces and assets, while ground-based air-defense and radar systems were put “in a state of readiness.”

The Trump administration’s snub of South Korea has America’s allies in Asia rethinking how much they can depend on the U.S. for defense — and looking to each other to reduce their reliance on Washington.

President Donald Trump said this week he is cutting back joint military exercises with South Korea, and announced Wednesday that he will meet with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un later this year. That is pushing countries in the region to accelerate their defense spending and forge alternate partnerships, according to Asian diplomats and others familiar with discussions among regional governments.

“Expect a refocus on self-reliance,” said one Asian diplomat. The diplomat, and others, were granted anonymity due to the sensitivity of their comments.

“U.S. defense tech is still the best, and it’s not economical or logical for countries already locked in on it to pivot or diversify due to interoperability and maintenance issues,” the diplomat said. “But I reckon there’ll be more investment by those that can in self-defense to reduce reliance on the U.S. umbrella in the long term.”

That’s especially true because the move against South Korea was a pressure tactic related to a completely different conflict: the Iran war.

Trump’s move “resonates not just in Korea but across the entire Indo-Pacific because everyone’s wondering whether or not their relationship with the United States is as unstable as the Koreans’,” said Ian Brzezinski, who served as deputy assistant secretary of Defense for European and NATO Policy under President George W. Bush. Brzezinski is still in regular contact with Asian officials.

As recently as December, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth declared South Korea a “model ally” worthy of a “special favor.” The apparent reevaluation of that relationship is the latest sign that Trump can quickly flip on longtime partners in the region. In May, Trump delayed a $14 billion arms sale to Taiwan as a “bargaining chip” with Chinese leader Xi Jinping.

The U.S. has long worked to buttress alliances in Asia as a counterweight to Beijing’s growing military dominance. Over recent months, however, the Trump administration has appeared to see that as less essential, and Asian countries have already been investing in their own capacities.

The South Korea decision could speed that transition. South Korea is making it clear that it sees the Trump administration’s action and its approach as an insult.

South Korean Foreign Minister Cho Hyun told lawmakers in Seoul on Wednesday that the government was “not notified in advance” of Trump’s decision to cut the duration of the exercises by a week. President Lee Jae Myung — who presented Trump with a gold crown in October — is trying to get U.S. military ties back on track through joint discussions with administration officials, Cho added.

And the talks “are getting messy,” said a person familiar with those discussions. “The War Department and U.S. Forces Korea are just surprised and don’t have any specific plans right now.”

Lee is already seeking other partnerships. “He’s talking to African countries, to the Gulf and Japan” to expand those links, said Jung Pak, a former U.S. senior official who worked on North Korea and the region in the Biden administration. “This dispute is just going to reinforce that the Republic of Korea has to continue to do that.”

Trump’s push to renew high-profile conversations with the North Korean leader, whom he met three times in his first term, comes as the nuclear-armed authoritarian state accelerates its tempo of ballistic missile tests and threats against neighboring Japan.

The departure of the only Asia-based U.S. aircraft carrier to the Middle East this week also has allies questioning how committed the U.S. is to preventing such acts of aggression.

“Recent signals look more like U.S. disengagement, even though cooperation is clearly still ongoing,” said a second Asian diplomat. “The key issue is increasingly not U.S. intent, but U.S. capacity to sustain the level of presence it has promised.”

The Department of Defense declined to comment.

Asian countries do have some options to insulate their defense capabilities — including military hardware supplies — from the risk of becoming bargaining chips in future policy disputes with Washington.

That could include investments in air and missile defense systems, the hardening of military facilities to protect them from attack and greater cooperation with Australian and European forces, said a third Asian diplomat.

China and North Korea’s growing arsenal of conventional long-range ballistic and hypersonic missiles has increased the vulnerability of Asian nations’ military infrastructure previously considered safe from attack — making such investments high on many countries’ priority lists. Taiwan is building a network of hardened fighter aircraft shelters designed to withstand a Chinese missile barrage.

Longer term, South Korea and Japan could develop their own nuclear arsenals for fear that they may not be able to rely on the U.S. as a deterrent.

Indo-Pacific countries are already forging alternate defense partnerships. Japan and the Philippines sealed an agreement in June that creates a secure supply chain for joint military training exercises, while India and Vietnam launched a weapons co-production initiative in May.

“Tokyo keeps repeating that the U.S.-Japan alliance is a cornerstone of its defense policy, but that’s dwindled down to lip service at this point,” said Yuki Tatsumi, former special assistant for political affairs at the Japanese Embassy in Washington, who is in regular contact with both Japanese diplomats and government officials in Tokyo. “Japan increasingly sees itself as leading a coalition of U.S. allies with deep anxiety about U.S. long-term commitment in the region.”

Asian governments feel a growing sense of urgency to take such measures due to the strains that the ongoing war in Iran has placed on the U.S. military and the depletion of key munitions essential in any possible future conflict with China, the third diplomat said.

“U.S. commitments look more contingent, transactional and vulnerable to being overtaken by events elsewhere, and that raises doubts about whether the U.S. can sustain its stated Indo-Pacific priority in a multi-theater crisis,” the person added.

The rise of those new defense groupings could boost Beijing’s longtime efforts to pry Asian countries away from established U.S.-dominated alliances. Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi could make the case for a South Korean defense strategy less dependent on the U.S. during his two-day visit to Seoul, which began today.

“The Chinese leadership has long sought an opening to divide the U.S. from its two most important allies in the region: South Korea and Japan,” said Nicholas Burns, former U.S. ambassador to China in the Biden administration. “The timing of the president’s criticism of the South Korean leadership will give Wang Yi an opening to drive the wedge further between Washington and Seoul.”

The Chinese embassy declined to respond to a request for comment.

The Iran war is giving fresh life to Somali pirates who prey on commercial ships laden with fuel and goods – a threat that had lain dormant for years.

Earlier this week, a group of pirates seized a cargo ship off the coast of Somalia – at least the fifth such attack since April, according to Windward, a global maritime intelligence firm. Windward concluded that the pirates are likely resurgent in part because nations have shifted naval resources to the Middle East because of the war.

In addition to the hit this week, Somali pirates have seized at least three tankers carrying oil and fertilizer – two commodities that have seen the highest price spikes due to disruptions in the Strait of Hormuz. In July, pirates seized a ship carrying chemicals off the coast of Yemen. The seized tankers are now being held off the coast of Somalia and dozens of crew members are hostages.

Though Somali pirates so far have seized relatively few ships by sheer numbers, it represents another threat to shipping companies already severely strained by recent attacks on vessels around the Strait of Hormuz and Bab el-Mandeb Strait on the Red Sea, said Brett Erickson, managing principal of the consultancy Obsidian Risk Advisors.

“We’re now looking at multiple vectors that are increasing pricing for maritime companies, forcing companies to de-risk entirely, and posing a huge threat to the global economy,” he said. “The threat from Somali pirates doesn’t need to be significant on its own, but because it compounds with all the other factors, it makes a fairly large difference at this point every time they take action.”

A White House official said the U.S. is the largest contributor to Somalia’s security and suggested it is “false” to “blame localized piracy attacks on recent regional conflicts with Iran.”

“The United States maintains robust, highly capable maritime security forces in the region that are fully equipped to protect critical shipping lanes, including oil transport, while simultaneously addressing broader regional threats,” the official said.

Regardless of what is driving the uptick in attacks, the pirates are also now active again in an area that has served as a relief valve for global oil shipping routes as an alternative to the Strait of Hormuz.

According to Windward, “Somali piracy is back as an active operational threat to commercial shipping in the Western Indian Ocean and southern Gulf of Aden.”

Somali pirates attacked hundreds of ships between 2005 and 2011, causing an estimated $18 billion in damages annually. However, the threat was largely neutralized after sustained efforts by NATO and the Combined Maritime Forces, a 47-nation naval partnership that includes the United States. Now, American ships are protecting tankers crossing the Strait of Hormuz.

If the situation worsens, it could pose increasingly severe risk to the global economy, said Erickson. In the short term, fewer ships will be willing to take the risk of traveling in the region. It also means greater shipping costs, higher insurance prices and increased spending on private security. For now, the increased cost of a barrel of oil and tightness in the market means it’s a more attractive target for the Somali pirates.

“This is obviously a very, very lucrative business for them, and right now they have a far lower risk of American reaction to it because so many resources are tied up in the Middle East in general,” he said. “They’re profiteers, and this is an opportunity to profit.”

President Donald Trump’s Tuesday backpedal from threats to impose 50 percent tariffs on Canada sparked a round of cries of TACO — that “Trump always chickens out.”

But even the administration’s adversaries concede Trump’s latest maximalist menace accomplished something important: unsticking more than a year-and-a-half of stalled trade talks between the two nations and pushing them into serious negotiations.

After months of fitful talks, Canadian and U.S. officials have in the weeks since Trump made his threat made significant headway toward resolving disputes over aluminum, dairy, alcohol and other key trade issues, potentially with some significant concessions from the administration.

That wouldn’t have happened without the president’s July threat to slap new and massive tariffs on items like beer, furs and hockey equipment, Canadian officials, former Democratic administration officials, business representatives and others told POLITICO.

“This was seen as, ‘Well, this is kind of outrageous, so we better pay more attention to it,’” said Canadian Sen. Peter Boehm, chair of the Senate Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Trade. “There was always a sense that there have to be talks, but invoking [the tariffs] did provide the leverage to do that, at 50 percent.”

And Véronique Proulx, the president and CEO of the Quebec Chambers of Commerce Federation, said that the threat “put pressure on the Canadian government to come to the table.”

“Very little had been happening over the past year,” Proulx said.

The prospect of punishing new levies, which could have hobbled the Canadian economy, is the latest example of a uniquely Trumpian negotiating ploy that relies on an ultimatum to gain leverage. The president touted the tactic for decades including in his book “Art of the Deal” and he’s used it repeatedly in his second term — and not just on trade.

To push NATO countries to increase their defense spending, he threatened to withdraw from the alliance and upend eight decades of global world order. When Trump wanted Panama to lower fees on U.S. ships passing through its canal, he threatened to retake the waterway. That threat was withdrawn only after the country approved a deal that allowed U.S. firms – instead of Chinese companies — to control ports on opposite ends of the canal.

And when Trump wanted Canada to drop a digital services tax targeting U.S. tech companies in 2025, he threatened to terminate all trade discussions with Canada, a move that scuttled the tax push.

“This is one case where his maximalist demand worked,” said one person close to the White House. “I don’t think this was [a TACO] actually. I think this is going to end up being an example of a successful negotiation.”

The tactic hasn’t always been successful, though. France still has a digital services tax despite Trump’s threat to impose a 100 percent tariff on wine. And threats to bomb Iran to the “Stone Ages” have not forced Tehran to capitulate to his demands.

Still, the latest threat on Canada appears to have produced some movement between the two countries. While it remains to be seen if Trump officially signs off on a deal, the two sides are negotiating. Canadian and American officials met once again on Wednesday to hash out a formal deal before Friday at midnight, the new deadline to reach an agreement.

Among the proposals are lower U.S. tariffs on metals, which risk backlash from protectionist circles in Washington, according to three people close to the process. On the Canada side, concessions on programs to protect their dairy and lumber industries and a commitment to back off streaming taxes — as an expected rollback remains in flux — are under consideration, while negotiators remain in talks over other long-standing irritants including tariff on automobiles.

And three days is a lifetime in trade negotiations.

White House spokesperson Kush Desai said that Trump has “consistently proven skeptics wrong” and “leveraged the power and might of the U.S. economy – the world’s biggest and best consumer market – to secure nearly 20 trade deals with historic market-access concessions from Japan, Taiwan, Vietnam, and the EU.”

Trump’s trade threats are existential for Canada, which sends roughly 72 percent of its exports to the United States.

While the U.S. tariff threat was targeted toward specific industries and only hit about 5 percent of U.S. imports from Canada, Wilbur Ross, Trump’s first-term Commerce secretary, said he believes it will force Canadian concessions.

“The 50 percent would have been a real burden because 50 percent is more than the exporter can absorb. It’s more than the importer can absorb, so it would have been a real penalty for them,” Ross said.

Canadian negotiators made repeated trips to Washington ahead of the U.S.-Mexico-Canada trade agreements July renewal deadline. But they have largely been kept on the sidelines so far regarding the USMCA update, as U.S. officials insisted that they would not negotiate unless Canada dropped its retaliation on U.S. liquor and automobiles.

When Ottawa offered what it saw as concessions — like peeling back a digital services law that would have raked in billions from U.S. tech giants — the Trump administration dismissed them as irrelevant to the negotiations. U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer said Canada doesn’t “really get credit for doing something bad and then undoing it.”

“What [the Americans] are telling me — and they’ve been telling me for the last 18 months — is first of all, ‘Canada, get over it. You’re not special. I know you think you are. We are now including tariffs on everyone. There’s no exemptions for anybody,’” said one Canadian business official, also granted anonymity to discuss sensitive dynamics around the trade talks.

Productive talks between the U.S. and Canada could also pave the way to begin trilateral discussions with Mexico on the future of the trade agreement.

“They have struggled for a while to get the same attention as Mexico. A deal this week would in a way present the opportunity to move ahead bilaterally,” said Kate Kalutkiewicz, who served as a top trade adviser during Trump’s first administration.

Even as Trump has regularly reached for tariffs as a way to bully countries, the threat against Canada marked a new frontier. The president relied on Section 338 of the Tariff Act of 1930, a Great Depression-era law that had never been used to impose tariffs, to threaten about $20 billion worth of Canadian goods.

A Democrat working as a lobbyist for Canadian interests, granted anonymity to speak candidly about the political dynamics of the trade talks, added that there is “no question” the tariffs “got Canada to the table.”

“Canada was so reluctant to put a deal on the table because they felt that they would be put on the clock to make more concessions above and beyond what they already did.”

That’s why Trump’s threat was needed to push Ottawa to the table, said Kelly Ann Shaw, who served as deputy assistant for international economic affairs during Trump’s first term.

“The two sides appear to have accomplished more in three weeks than in a year of discussion,” she said.

The fact that the threat spurred Canada to the table may encourage the Trump administration to use it again, particularly because these tariffs never went into effect and therefore won’t face legal challenges.

“To me, the 338s, are in some ways, the new IEEPA tariffs,” said one trade lobbyist, granted anonymity to speak candidly about the negotiations, referring to a law Trump used to impose global tariffs, which were struck down by the Supreme Court in February.

Some U.S. businesses are already growing more comfortable with the reality that tariff threats are here to stay — particularly as they’ve watched other countries make concessions that would have been unlikely under previous administrations.

One business official, granted anonymity to speak candidly about private discussions with industry colleagues, said that the administration’s threats are bringing trading partners to the table and opening discussions on longstanding issues.

“Depending on the sector, you’re certainly seeing more understanding of how this is working and how this is being implemented, and you are seeing some of those historic logjam issues being broken,” the official said. “As industry gets more understanding of how this America First trade policy can create those opportunities, I think that there is more acceptance for being able to move forward in this way.”

Oliver Ward, Michael Blanchfield, Zi-Ann Lum and Mickey Djuric contributed to this report.

KYIV — Ukraine’s popular former Defense Minister Mykhailo Fedorov has emerged as a new rival to President Volodymyr Zelenskyy — but his call for an election is facing immediate blowback.

In a video address on Tuesday night, he zeroed in on topics he knew would strike a public chord in one of the most direct internal challenges to Zelenskyy since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. He complained that corruption was undermining the war effort and protested about centralized and opaque decision-making in the Zelenskyy administration — for which he worked until only last month.

However, Fedorov’s unexpected appeal for the nation to go to the ballot box sparked immediate retorts across the political spectrum. Critics insisted such an election would be banned by Ukraine’s martial law, would be impossible to organize in wartime, would play into Russia’s hands and would sow division when national unity remains vital.

Zelenskyy still commands broad support as a war leader, and his allies pointed out that, regardless of public frustration, there are limits to how much he can reveal about the inner workings of the state when national survival is at stake.

Fedorov’s emergence as a rival to Zelenskyy was accelerated by his shock dismissal as defense minister last month. The 35-year-old built up a strong following for spearheading Ukraine’s success in using new technologies — from cyberattacks to drones — to damage Russia.

His ejection from office sparked immediate protests, with thousands of people taking to the streets, calling for his reinstatement or for Zelenskyy to properly explain the decision to fire him.

In his address on Tuesday night, Fedorov delivered a thinly veiled criticism of Zelenskyy’s management style, referring to his peremptory approach to hiring and firing.

“People cannot endlessly live in a state where they do not understand why certain decisions are made. Why some reforms move forward while others are blocked. Why decisions needed on the frontlines today spend months circulating through government offices,” Fedorov said.

“It is dangerous when society develops the feeling that the main criterion for an appointment is not professionalism, results, or the ability to transform the country, but personal loyalty to the system,” added the former minister, who had himself been viewed as a Zelenskyy loyalist for seven years.

Election backlash

A top official in Zelenskyy’s office, who was granted anonymity to speak candidly about Fedorov’s move, had little time for the criticism that the president should explain his actions publicly.

“The president cannot just explain his hiring choices to the public during war, as those are matters of national security. And it’s his right to decide whom to appoint as his defense minister and whom to fire,” they said.

The official was also scathing about the possibility of holding an election in the face of devastating Russian attacks: “Let’s wait out another massive Russian ballistic attack and then go vote,” the person added, sarcastically.

Olga Aivazovska, head of Ukraine’s election watchdog OPORA, also stressed the practical obstacles to an election, insisting that there were “hundreds of scenarios and actions” that the Russians could use to undermine the electoral process.

Roman Lozynskyi, a parliamentarian from the opposition liberal Holos party and deputy head of the state management committee, feared the call for elections could prove disastrously divisive.

“There is zero positive for the country. Don’t be happy that you will have candidates in the post-war elections. You still have to live to see them,” he said. “People understand that elections during the war are in the enemy’s hands. That it will be a war of all against all.”

Even one of the leaders of the protest movement, war veteran Dmytro Koziatysnkyi, said he didn’t want to see elections during wartime. “I am also very afraid of the disunity of society during the electoral process and how this may affect the course of the war,” he said.

Far from bolstering Fedorov’s political future, the call for an election could even count against him.

Economist Timothy Ash, who frequently writes on Ukraine, suggested the ex-minister had made “an extraordinary political error of judgement which some would likely use against him if he ever pitches in to run as president in the future.”

Volodymyr Fesenko, a political analyst based in Kyiv, conceded Zelenskyy had become accustomed to “acting like in business,” defined by “single-man leadership” and “quick decisions,” but argued that the president was hardly acting out of step with any other major international leader.

“When his critics say he should appoint professionals instead of loyalists, they sound right but naive at the same time. Even in the West, unless we are talking about coalition governments, such an approach does not work. Any serious politician … and especially in a country like ours, will appoint trusted loyalists,” Fesenko added.

Fesenko also defended Zelenskyy’s record in appointing senior officials. He noted that Prime Minister Serhii Koretskyi, new commander-in-chief, Maj. Gen. Mykhailo Drapatyi, as well as new Defense Minister Yevhenii Khmara, all had positive reputations, even among Zelenskyy’s top critics in parliament.

Indeed, Khmara was confirmed in his new role to succeed Fedorov by a parliamentary vote on Wednesday, by 312 lawmakers out of 392.

‘People want change’

Fedorov is certainly popular. A poll from the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology said earlier this month that 63 percent of people saw him as trustworthy — a score that put him second only to former military supremo Valeryi Zaluzhnyi, who is now ambassador to the U.K.

But none of that put Zelenskyy, who scored a robust 56 percent, out of the picture.

In line with Fedorov’s attack on a lack of transparency in the centralized state, another survey found dwindling sympathy for Zelenskyy using his powers to intervene over other state authorities. The poll found that 79 percent of people in 2022 — the year of Russia’s full-scale invasion — thought the president could override the constitution’s division of powers, but that had slipped to 52 percent in May 2026.

“People are placing all responsibility for the course of the war on the president. Because of this, the president feels the need to make all these decisions independently, which is against Ukraine’s constitution and legislative procedures. As a result, one person, the president, has a huge number of completely different tasks, incentives, requirements,” said Yurii Hudymenko, head of the Public Anti-Corruption Council at Ukraine’s defense ministry.

Corruption is also a hot topic, as Fedorov identified. Last year, Zelenskyy signed a law to strip Ukraine’s national anti-corruption watchdogs of their procedural independence, only to then backtrack on that decision when it faced criticism from the EU and protests at home.

Later, his former business partner and allies were implicated in a $100 million corruption scheme in the state nuclear energy sector — a scandal that forced Zelenskyy to fire his faithful No. 2, Andriy Yermak. Yermak was charged with corruption and is standing trial.

Several of Zelenskyy’s top allies are also under investigation for corruption, including former Ukrainian Ambassador to the U.S. Olga Stefanishyna, while watchdogs complain they still face tremendous pressure and surveillance when investigating top officials.

On Wednesday, Zelenskyy fired Iryna Mudra as deputy head of his office, hours after anti-corruption watchdogs searched her workplace as part of a sweeping probe into an alleged criminal organization.

Yaroslav Zheleznyak, MP from opposition party Holos, and a prominent Zelenskyy critic, said the cumulative weight of these problems would ultimately count against the president.

He predicted Zelenskyy would suffer the fate of British wartime leader Winston Churchill and lose an election during the tail end of the war.

“No matter the competitors, Zaluzhnyi, [Head of the Presidential Office Kyrylo] Budanov, Fedorov or someone else, I think we will get the situation like in 2019, when anyone but the incumbent will win in the second round. In this case, this is very much a Churchill story, when a guy who won the war got voted out,” Zheleznyak said.

“People want change,” he added.

Oleksandr Saienko, expert at the Center for Political and Legal Reforms, said it was possible to avert a political crisis even without elections, but that would mean shifting some decision-making back to parliament and other state authorities.

“The subjectivity of the parliament must be restored both in terms of the legislative process and parliamentary control. The government must become the main center for the formation of state policy,” he said. “The pause on reform of the judicial system and law enforcement agencies, public administration, must be lifted and people should get a real sense of justice and protection.”

BARROW-IN-FURNESS, England — Submarines appear before the town does.

They can be seen from the road next to the factory, where the BAE Systems yard dominates the landscape and workers in high-visibility jackets are a constant presence. Police keep watch for anyone who might threaten Britain’s national security.

AUKUS — a security partnership announced in 2021 linking the U.S., U.K. and Australia seen by many as in a long-term effort to protect democracies against Chinese aggression in the Pacific — is a clear part of the town’s history, and its future.

A local memorial recalls the crews lost or captured sailing the first two submarines built in Barrow for the Royal Australian Navy during World War I, and over the next 15 years AUKUS depends on Barrow’s shipyards building the next generation of nuclear-powered submarines.

But observers, from the British parliament to former cabinet secretaries and prime ministers, say delays in Barrow are not only possible, but likely.

The SSN-AUKUS fleet will be based on a British design, incorporating technology from all three countries. The first examples will be built at BAE Systems’ Barrow yard, then later at Osborne Naval Shipyard in Adelaide, Australia, with Rolls-Royce supplying the nuclear propulsion plants.

And while Britain insists the first SSN-AUKUS class submarine will cut steel in 2027, delays would strain Britain’s national security and test the central promise of AUKUS.

A one-town dependency

Simon Case, the former U.K. Cabinet Secretary charged with regenerating the town, told POLITICO that AUKUS has become a live conversation in Barrow: “Barrow’s fortune has become synonymous with AUKUS.”

A House of Commons committee examining AUKUS went further, calling Barrow’s regeneration “too big to fail.”

That’s because Barrow must support Britain’s Dreadnought nuclear deterrent program and Astute fleet while also increasing output from one submarine a decade to one SSN-AUKUS every 18 months.

Achieving that leap in pace is more than a workforce challenge. It will take thousands of new houses, new higher education institutions, and an urban transformation.

The local college that feeds the shipyard apprentice pipeline was failed by Britain’s education standards body Ofsted in 2024.

If those facts are not daunting enough, Barrow’s regeneration challenge has a wider meaning: Get it right and this small town of 67,000 can claim to be at the center of a British power revival, in its post-Empire, post-EU era.

Get it wrong, and the central promise of AUKUS will go unmet.

The challenges will be constant over the next 15 years.

About 13,500 people work for BAE at the shipyard, roughly one-third of Barrow’s working-age population. While that’s a massive expansion from a workforce of 2,900 in 2003, the company still needs to reach 16,500 workers by the end of 2027.

Adding 3,000 jobs in a small town in 18 months is no easy feat. Adding them to achieve what Australia’s Defence Industry Minister Pat Conroy told POLITICO is “the most technically advanced thing in the world,” is even harder.

Conroy has visited Barrow twice and remains optimistic.

Trevor Taylor, director of the Defence, Industries & Society Programme at the RUSI defense think tank, also described the United Kingdom as the least risky part of the AUKUS bargain. Dreadnought and Astute class submarines appear to be emerging without drastic delays, he said.

The unresolved question is experience. “They’ve certainly got the workforce, and I think the infrastructure,” Taylor told POLITICO. “Whether they’ve got the workforce experience is another matter.”

That distinction matters in a nuclear program. Barrow can train welders and other tradespeople. The design engineers, nuclear physicists and systems architects required for SSN-AUKUS will mostly have to be brought in.

And Barrow will be competing against shortages faced in other parts of Britain’s nuclear workforce, from highly qualified specialists to vocational workers.

The town the workforce needs

The production schedule is colliding with the town’s social reality.

Case, the former head of Britain’s civil service who now leads Team Barrow, a partnership dedicated to transforming the town, said the yard’s fortunes declined after the Cold War peace dividend and the town declined with it.

The order book is now strong, with decades of work ahead. Housing, education, health and employment have yet to catch up.

“What is holding the town back is actually the previous 30 years of under investment in housing, education, health and employment,” Case said.

Despite Barrow being situated near England’s Lake District — a major countryside tourist hub and holiday destination — the town itself is not seen as an attractive place to live.

Barrow’s town center has the familiar marks of Britain’s former industrial heartlands. The Commons report records 18.3 percent of working-age people as not in employment, 71.3 percent of adults as overweight or obese and drug and alcohol misuse above national rates. Government statisticians report Barrow residents as having the lowest life satisfaction in the U.K.

BAE provides high-paying work, but deprivation remains interwoven with that prosperity.

John Woodcock, a former Labour MP for Barrow who now sits on the House of Lords crossbench, said the town must become a magnet for engineering, nuclear physics and other high-technology graduates.

Barrow’s relative remoteness makes that harder. The town is more than five hours’ drive from London.

Young graduates often want a major city, and visible deprivation can become a barrier to recruitment, Woodcock said, even when the jobs are among the most advanced in the world.

Housing is the immediate constraint.

BAE has said a stable workforce cannot be transient. A family moving to Barrow needs a home, a school, health services and a reason to stay, making regeneration critical to ongoing defense production.

With 89 percent of the BAE workforce living locally, up to 2,700 new households may be needed by the end of 2027. The district builds about 750 homes a year.

Marina Village, a planned 1,350-home development supported by £24.8 million from Homes England, has yet to deliver a home.

What sets Barrow apart from many industrial communities across England’s North, which have seen deprivation creep in after the closure of the mills and mines that provided jobs in the 20th century, is that Barrow’s industrial future still exists and is set to exist for decades to come.

Barrow’s technical education foundation is improving.

Around 11 percent of the population, about 6,000 people, have been in the apprentice system, the highest proportion in England. BAE received another 6,000 applications in 2025. The young adult population is growing, and a new University Technical College is due to open soon.

No additional funding, no nuclear submarines

The U.K. government has committed £200 million over 10 years through the Barrow Transformation Fund. Case, who leads the public-private partnership established to revive the town, puts the real requirement at £1 billion and says government health and transport departments are yet to make funding commitments. “Some of the most deprived wards in the entire country are here in Barrow, despite the fact we spend billions of pounds a year,” Case told the Commons defense committee.

His conclusion is blunt: “If Barrow does not get it, we do not get our nuclear submarines, which are the cornerstone of this nation’s security. It is that simple really.”

The Ministry of Defence rejects the £1 billion investment figure. It says the £200 million fund was designed to catalyze investment from other departments and the private sector, and points to a £6 billion dedicated submarine investment.

On July 29, Prime Minister Andy Burnham announced £8.4 billion for Dreadnought, including £5.9 billion for BAE and £2.5 billion for the wider supply chain and apprenticeships.

Burnham’s appointment of John Healey — the former defense secretary — as the chancellor, has cheered Australian officials. “That shows to me that they’re putting defense and national security at the heart of their economic agenda as well as their defense agenda,” said James Paterson, the shadow defense minister, who is at the heart of debates about AUKUS accountability.

The military clock

Barrow’s local problems translate into military risk through the gaps in Australia’s submarine capability.

Paterson has identified two potential gaps in Australia’s submarine capability that need planning.

The first comes between the Collins-class submarines and Virginia-class submarines in the early 2030s. The second comes between the Virginias and SSN-AUKUS in the early 2040s.

Australia’s interim options include rotating British Astute-class submarines through waters around Australia and acquiring second-hand U.S. Virginia-class submarines in the early 2030s.

The Commons report says the Royal Navy’s Astute fleet is the smallest the U.K. has had in decades: In the first half of 2024, none of the five Astute-class boats completed an operational deployment, according to the report.

Sidharth Kaushal, a senior research fellow specializing in sea power at Royal United Services Institute, told POLITICO a deployment to Australia would stretch it to the limits of its capacity.

“What I don’t want to see is fatalism,” Paterson said. “These are solvable problems. We’ve got time to get this right, as long as we are honest and realistic about it now.”

A shared industrial gamble

The U.K. is designing and building its own SSN-AUKUS boats before Australia builds its fleet.

That front-loads risk onto Britain and gives the U.K. a powerful incentive to get the program right for its own national security.

Burnham says British money should be spent on British workers, firms and skills in places written off for 40 years. Conroy supports this effort, seeing a stronger British yard as part of northern Britain’s economic rejuvenation, which will ultimately benefit Australia.

BAE says its £25 million Submarines Academy for Skills and Knowledge in Barrow and a Skills and a related Training Academy Campus in Adelaide will support thousands of future submarine builders. The Adelaide campus is scheduled to open in 2028 for up to 1,000 learners a year.

Woodcock argues that more of the early boats should be built in Barrow, creating a faster route to transfer capability and to build Australia’s sovereign capacity.

The future of AUKUS runs through a town where the shipyard has recovered faster than the place around it.

KYIV — Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy fired Iryna Mudra as deputy head of his office Wednesday, hours after anti-corruption watchdogs searched her workplace as part of a sweeping probe into an alleged criminal organization.

“Iryna Romanivna Mudra is hereby dismissed from the post of Deputy Head of the Office of the President of Ukraine,” Zelenskyy said in a decree published Wednesday. The one-line order gave no reason for her removal.

The firing adds to a turbulent stretch for Zelenskyy. Former Defense Minister Mykhailo Fedorov called Tuesday for wartime elections and denounced corruption and a systemic governance crisis, weeks after his ouster triggered prolonged street protests.

Earlier Wednesday, Ukraine’s National Anti-Corruption Bureau, or NABU, announced a new operation targeting an alleged criminal organization involving current and former lawmakers and senior officials in Zelenskyy’s office. The bureau said it was carrying out searches with the Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office, or SAP.

The investigation, dubbed Operation Forrest Gump, alleges the group laundered around 150 million Ukrainian hryvnia, equivalent to roughly $3 million, through state-owned Sense Bank to fund bail for former Energy Minister German Galushchenko, a key figure in last year’s $100 million Midas corruption scandal.

Writing on Facebook, Mudra said: “I will defend my name in a legal manner – calmly and consistently.”

NABU did not name Mudra directly in its video statement, referring only to a deputy head of the president’s administration, but searched her office.

Ukraine’s corruption watchdog released recordings in which a woman identified in the video only as a deputy head of the president’s office can be heard saying: “Fighting corruption is a wrong approach … Corruption has to be systemized and controlled.” NABU did not identify the woman by name.

This article has been updated with a comment from Iryna Mudra.

In dieser Episode sprechen Pauline von Pezold und Frederik Schindler dem Spitzenkandidaten der AfD für Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Leif-Erik Holm. Im Vorfeld der Landtagswahlen am 20. September geht es mit Holm um seine Ambitionen auf das Amt des Ministerpräsidenten und sein Vorhaben, notfalls durch eine Kooperation mit der CDU oder Tolerierungsmodelle an die Macht zu kommen. Obwohl er sich gleichzeitig die „Altparteien“ auf den „Müllhaufen der Geschichte“ wünscht.

Zudem konfrontieren die beiden Holm mit seiner energiepolitischen Kernforderung nach einer Rückkehr zu russischem Gas. Sie haken nach, wie sich diese Strategie mit den Importverboten der EU und dem Angriffskrieg Russlands gegen die Ukraine vereinbaren lässt und ob die AfD damit nicht sehenden Auges neue energie- und sicherheitspolitische Abhängigkeiten für Deutschland in Kauf nimmt.

Ein weiterer kritischer Fokus des Interviews liegt auf dem Personal des Landesverbandes.
Schindler und von Pezold befragen Holm zum neuen Generalsekretär seiner Partei sowie Vorstandsmitgliedern der Parteijugend Generation Deutschland, die teils eine Vergangenheit in der rechtsextremen NPD haben.

„Inside AfD“ ist der POLITICO-Podcast über die umstrittenste Partei des Landes. Trotz Radikalisierung und Beobachtung durch den Verfassungsschutz wächst die AfD weiter. Wie ist das möglich? Was treibt ihre Anhänger, Strategen und Gegner an? Wie funktioniert das Innenleben der Partei? Und was bedeutet ihr Aufstieg für das politische System Deutschlands?

Antworten liefern immer mittwochs Pauline von Pezold von POLITICO und Frederik Schindler von WELT — unaufgeregt, aber kritisch.

Fragen und Feedback gern an insideafd@politico.eu.

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South Korean Foreign Minister Cho Hyun said Wednesday that Seoul received no warning of Donald Trump’s plan to slash joint military exercises, a move the U.S. president announced publicly and linked to South Korea’s refusal to help with his war in Iran.

“Neither our government nor U.S. officials knew what President Trump wrote on his Truth Social,” Cho told the National Assembly’s foreign affairs committee. “We were not notified in advance.”

Trump ordered Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on Sunday to “substantially reduce” the annual exercises, calling them costly and “totally inappropriate and hostile” toward North Korea. He tied the move to Seoul’s refusal to assist his effort to strip Iran of its nuclear capabilities and highlighted his “very good relationship” with Pyongyang’s ruler Kim Jong Un.

Cho said Trump’s announcement caught Seoul by surprise, but added the eventual changes to the drills were being worked out jointly. Defense Minister Ahn Gyu-back was in “close consultations” with Washington, he said. “Since our defense minister was involved in the discussions, I do not think it amounts to a unilateral notification.”

He also warned that the smaller drills should not delay the transfer of wartime operational control, or OPCON, to Seoul — a longtime plan that would put a South Korean general in command of the combined U.S.-South Korean forces during a conflict.

The drills have anchored the U.S.-South Korean alliance for more than 70 years, born from the aftermath of the Korean War, which ended in 1953 with an armistice agreement but no peace treaty. North Korea, which routinely condemns the drills as rehearsals for an invasion, launched another round of ballistic missile tests last week after this year’s exercises were announced.

The rollback is already taking effect. South Korea said Wednesday that this year’s exercise will end on Aug. 21 rather than Aug. 27 after a U.S. request, cutting six days from the schedule.

President Donald Trump dropped a political bombshell on the Korean peninsula this week.

But security officials say the president’s threats to curtail a major military exercise with South Korea will do little to undermine the detente between Seoul and Pyongyang.

Trump’s declaration Sunday that he would instruct the Pentagon to cut back on annual drills sent Seoul’s leaders scrambling to repair the damage. But the president appears more focused on pushing for investment from the country than trying to upend defenses against North Korea’s nuclear threat. And that means security on the world’s most militarized border hasn’t significantly changed.

The U.S. has more than 28,000 troops stationed on the peninsula, along with thick layers of air defenses. It has worked hand in glove with the Korean military for decades, a powerful joint force that works closely at every level. The border between a nuclear-armed North Korea and the U.S. ally to its south is a case study in mutually assured destruction. And top commanders in Seoul and Washington remain in tight contact.

“I don’t think this is cataclysmic,” said Sydney Seiler, former national intelligence officer for North Korea at the National Intelligence Council.

Defense officials were tight-lipped about what Trump’s announcement would mean in terms of concrete changes to military exercises. The Pentagon would only say that it is “is actively working on executing the commander-in-chief’s directive.”

Trump’s order, and his praise of dictator North Korean leader Kim Jong Un’s “unthreatening and respectful” behavior, came days after the secretive nation launched its second ballistic missile test in a week. It flew over 430 miles before landing just outside Japan’s exclusive economic zone.

Some American lawmakers said the optics were horrible, particularly Trump’s seeming desire to appease a totalitarian regime.

“Kim Jong Un has won a propaganda victory and South Korea, one of our strongest allies, has been punished for no reason beyond Trump’s ego,” said Sen. Jack Reed of Rhode Island, the top Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee. “China and Russia are watching how easily this president abandons America’s allies, and they will remember it the next time they test us.”

The order affects a major exercise, Ulchi Freedom Shield, a staple of the alliance since it was first held in 1976. The drills this year were scheduled to begin Monday and encompass 14 different exercises over 11 days, ranging from cyber warfare to defending against drone attacks and GPS jamming. Officials are especially worried that North Korea received Russian technologies and know-how about electronic jamming after it sent tens of thousands of troops to help Russia’s war against Ukraine.

“The alliance will manage through, [although] this is clearly a rough patch,” said Victor Cha, a former National Security Council official during the George W. Bush administration and now Korea chair at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

Trump’s criticism of South Korea is particularly surprising because it’s a departure from comments by top Pentagon officials, who have repeatedly praised Seoul for increasing defense spending.

Pentagon policy chief Elbridge Colby called South Korea “a model ally” in a January speech in Seoul, and lauded its commitment to the alliance. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth also praised the relationship several times this year, including when his South Korean counterpart visited the Pentagon in May.

South Korean President Lee Jae Myung on Tuesday sought to soothe concerns over a rift. He said in a Cabinet meeting that “a strong alliance makes the foundation of security stronger, and strengthening our own capabilities increases our value and necessity as an ally.”

Many officials remain puzzled about why Trump would abruptly curtail an annual exercise that has taken place reliably for 50 years. There’s some precedent. He had railed against expensive exercises in South Korea during his first term and the Pentagon did scale back some large joint operations. But Ulchi Freedom Shield is a cornerstone of the military-to-military relationship.

The effort — a combination of a tabletop, virtual event and physical exercises — will continue in some form. But U.S. officials indicated that military leadership is trying to find ways to modify the event to meet the president’s demands. And the announcement underscores that American support remains at the whim of an unpredictable president.

Some of the president’s motivation is likely financial. South Korea pledged last year to invest $350 billion in the U.S., but Trump officials believe its government is slow-walking its commitment, POLITICO has reported.

“The thing about Trump is it’s all very transactional,” said Cha. “So if they announce a first tranche of investments, he’ll be fine, right?”

But Asian allies are closely watching whether the distancing from traditional backers will continue, particularly movement of some critical American military assets out of the Pacific region. The USS George Washington aircraft carrier left port in Tokyo this month and is heading west. It will presumably go to the Middle East and replace the beleaguered USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier, which is on the ninth month of an extended deployment.

The Pentagon relocated some elements of the THAAD missile defense system earlier this year from South Korea as part of a wider shift to the Middle East.

Lawmakers are also watching warily. Congress voted last year to restrict the Pentagon from reducing troop levels on the Korean peninsula below 28,500 unless the Pentagon certifies doing so is in the national interest and conducted after consultation with South Korea and other allies.

Lawmakers appear poised to extend those restrictions again in the 2027 National Defense Authorization Act.

“Reduced training hurts American preparedness too,” said Rep. Don Bacon (R-Neb.). “If we have moral clarity, then we’d treat [South Korea] as our ally and know North Korea is a dictatorship and slave labor state. … The president is wrong here.”

Conor O’Brien and Leo Shane contributed to this report.

Mykhailo Fedorov has called for elections in Ukraine despite Russia’s ongoing invasion, after his firing as defense minister sparked nationwide protests against President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

The president has been under increasing pressure at home following the controversial government reshuffle last month in which he pushed out Fedorov, a popular minister credited with inspiring battlefield innovations.

“People cannot endlessly live in a state where they do not understand why certain decisions are made,” Fedorov said in a video address Tuesday night, alluding to the reshuffle.

“We must not let [Russian President Vladimir] Putin decide when Ukrainians can choose their government,” he said.

Ukraine’s constitution does not allow for it to hold elections while it is under martial law, the state of play since Russia’s full-scale invasion began in February 2022.

Election challenges

Even if Ukraine can find a legal route to new elections, they would likely take place under the specter of war.

Russia is bombarding Kyiv almost daily with missiles and drones, grinding out gains on the battlefield in eastern and southern Ukraine and preparing for a winter onslaught to seize more territory.

Holding elections in these circumstances would be “complex,” Fedorov said. He spoke about the importance of securing voting rights for members of the military, Ukrainians abroad and people in frontline regions.

Russia looms over Ukraine not just militarily but electorally. Moscow has a long record of trying to influence democratic outcomes around the world and would likely view elections in Ukraine as a potential avenue to victory in the war of aggression Putin escalated in 2022.

Putin and Russia-friendly politicians have long sought to portray Zelenskyy’s rule as illegitimate. The Ukrainian president was elected by a landslide in 2019 but has not faced a public vote since Russian tanks rolled into Ukraine more than four years ago.

Although Zelenskyy has faced pressure from international leaders to hold elections — including U.S. President Donald Trump — he has steadfastly maintained that they cannot take place during wartime. In February, he offered elections in exchange for a ceasefire. Putin, however, kept the war going.

The Ukrainian leader has been a figurehead for his country since the full-scale invasion, but his initial popularity has begun to visibly wane in the past year, amid allegations of corruption and complaints about the transparency of his government.

“People do not demand that the state never make mistakes,” Fedorov said. “But they have a right to the truth.”

Even before the controversial reshuffle, Zelenskyy was beginning to seem more isolated, having lost members of his inner circle including his trusted chief of staff Andriy Yermak, who was arrested on corruption charges in May, which he has denied.

The president — who has received near-unconditional backing from establishment politicians in Europe — would be able to point toward the progress he has made toward EU membership if he is pushed into an election campaign. Membership of the bloc is seen as crucial to Ukraine’s postwar future.

But whether Zelenskyy would even contest an election is another matter.  

This article has been updated.

President Donald Trump is waiting for Iran to cave to his economic pressure. Tehran may be willing to wait even longer.

Even as Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent promises a level of economic isolation “never seen before,” former Trump administration officials, U.S. ambassadors and other Middle East experts are skeptical that tightening the economic vise will force Iran to relinquish its desire to toll ships passing through the State of Hormuz and make the other concessions Trump is demanding to bring an end to the war.

“It’s an attrition campaign, and I am sure Treasury tweaks this or that to fill gaps or expand coverage of sanctions,” said James Jeffrey, a former ambassador who served in the Middle East during three presidential administrations, including Trump’s first term. “But, it’s hard to believe [there will be] something decisive after 20 years of U.S. sanctions and Iranian experience of going around them.”

It’s an acknowledgement that underscores the asymmetry of the situation. The Trump administration is staring down a consequential midterm election amid an unpopular war that has sent oil prices back up to roughly $90 a barrel and helped push long-term borrowing costs to their highest level in nearly two decades as hope dims that a peace deal is near.

Iran’s leaders, meanwhile, see the conflict as existential, giving Tehran reason to absorb the extraordinary economic pain rather than accept terms it believes could imperil the regime — especially as U.S. inflation remains elevated and treasuries sell off.

The yield on 30-year U.S. government bonds, a figure Trump has in the past been attuned to, jumped on Tuesday to its highest level since just before the global financial crisis.

The increase in the yield to its highest level in nearly two decades isn’t solely because of the six-month war; global fuel shortages and broader instability have kept energy prices higher for longer, increasing the threat of persistent inflation. And that’s heaped even more risk on global bond markets that have repeatedly blanched at Trump-related shocks.

“We are in a situation where we’re spending more and more to finance more and more,” said Julia Coronado, founder of MacroPolicy Perspectives. And the war has created “a riskier world full of more frictions, full of more supply shocks.”

Iran’s outsized incentive to muscle through the pain is partly why some former administration officials doubt that the naval blockade, while unprecedented in its scale in the modern era or whatever new strategies Bessent may unveil, will change Iran’s calculus.

“I think the economic pressure would need to hit them in new ways we haven’t seen so far to change the mindset of the regime,” said one former Trump administration official, granted anonymity to candidly assess the impact of the U.S.’s economic pressure campaign.

The administration has yet to indicate what further action it plans to take, but options include going after major Chinese banks that facilitate Iran’s oil trade, expand secondary sanctions on countries doing business with Iran and confiscating Iranian assets under U.S. jurisdiction instead of just freezing them.

Iranian leaders publicly mocked U.S. efforts to sanction them into submission.

“Americans think squeezing Iran harder will win concessions that were never part of the agreement,” Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, the speaker of Iran’s parliament, posted on X Tuesday.

“Bessent and [Defense Secretary Pete] Hegseth are way out of their league,” he wrote. “Stop waiting for the clown crew to pull a rabbit out of their hat and clean up the mess you made.”

White House aides, however, continue to contend that the leverage is on its side.

“The crushing sanctions and one of the most successful blockades that have crippled Iran’s economy and has left Iran completely broke,” said one administration official, granted anonymity to share the U.S.’s thinking. “There are many levers the president can crank harder in the weeks and months ahead.”

In the half-year since the Iran war began, the president has deployed an array of pressure tactics to choke Iran economically, including physically preventing the country from selling its most important export — oil — as part of an ongoing naval blockade of Iranian ports. The administration has also sanctioned foreign buyers of Iranian oil, targeted the country’s shadow fleet of ships that ferries it and sought to cut the country off from the financial networks it uses to move money.

That economic pressure has sent Iran’s economy, which was already troubled before the war, into a deeper tailspin. Now, Iran is grappling with year-over-year inflation of 88 percent, long lines and rationing at gas pumps and food prices that have more than doubled.

But those who have worked on previous Iran negotiations say that’s far from enough to get the regime to cave, especially after six months of U.S. bombing that has killed, by Tehran’s own measure, more than 3,000 Iranians.

“It’s undeniable that there is economic pressure. The question is whether there is a breaking point, and I would say for a regime that is fighting for its life and has never hesitated to transfer economic pain to its population, there is no breaking point,” said Ali Vaez, the International Crisis Group’s Iran project director, who helped work to bridge differences between Iran and world powers during negotiations over the 2015 nuclear agreement.

Yet Trump continued to project patience on Tuesday, signaling that he was prepared to let the pressure campaign play out.

“There are no talks or conversations going on, or scheduled, with the Islamic Republic of Iran. The Naval Blockade remains in full force and effect. The Hormuz Strait is open and operating. All water mines have been removed or detonated. Thank you for your attention to this matter!” Trump wrote on Truth Social.

A senior White House official, granted anonymity to discuss the situation in Iran, insisted that Iran will cave long before the pain in the U.S. or world markets become intolerable.

“Ultimately we want a deal, but in the interim, the Iranian economy is tanking … people are lining up for gas, just for a half gallon of gas. And there’s a lot of civil unrest going on in Iran, that’s not being played on the news for whatever reason,” the official said late last week. “We’re fine if that’s the route they want to take.”

Still, there are signs inside the White House that the economic impacts are a growing concern. Vice President JD Vance last week said on Fox News that the administration’s first goal in the Iran war was to “keep oil and gas cheap for Americans all over the country.” The president, meanwhile, has repeatedly insisted voters will bear the pain of higher gas prices for an end to Iran’s nuclear ambitions.

The voters have a more dyspeptic view. A Reuters/Ipsos survey released this week showed Trump’s approval rating at 33 percent, the lowest level of his presidency. Roughly 80 percent of Americans — 87 percent of Democrats and 71 percent of Republicans — think U.S. involvement in Iran “will go on for an extended period of time,” the poll found.

But some former Trump administration officials, however, are holding out hope that patience will be rewarded and that the administration’s economic pressure campaign will work, in part because they see the other options on the table, including putting U.S. boots on the ground in Iran, as politically untenable.

Fred Fleitz, Trump’s former National Security Council chief of staff and vice chair of the American First Policy Institute’s American Security, predicted that the U.S. could be “dealing with a different Iran” in 30 to 60 days.

“I think patience is the best approach,” Fleitz said. “I don’t believe that a large-scale military attack right now is going to make a difference in changing the regime’s position, and I strongly oppose the idea of seizing Kharg Island or sending in American troops. The American people don’t want that. That would really bog us down in a quagmire.”

PARIS — The Paris prosecutor’s office has launched an investigation into disinformation efforts targeting two prominent candidates in France’s upcoming presidential election, according to Agence France-Presse.

Edouard Philippe and Gabriel Attal, two former prime ministers who are high-profile contenders for the 2027 race, were reportedly the subject earlier this summer of fake news reports posted on social media aimed at undermining their campaigns.

Fabricated videos posted on X that used branding from leading French news platforms claimed Philippe, who suffers from alopecia, was diagnosed with a neurodegenerative disease, while fake reports on X and TikTok alleged Attal had Parkinson’s disease and was using drugs.

Attal denounced the reports as fake and filed a complaint. Philippe has refrained from publicly commenting on the posts, though his top allies have framed them as likely Russian interference.

Two networks that Western authorities say have links with Russia, Storm-1516 and Matriochka, were involved in the disinformation operations targeting Philippe and Attal, respectively, according to a French official with knowledge of the technical investigation led by Viginum, the French agency responsible for combating digital interference.

Storm-1516, which the French government says is tied to Russian military intelligence, was also involved in a similar disinformation operation targeting center-left MEP and likely presidential contender Raphaël Glucksmann. The prosecutor’s office announced the launch of a separate probe into that case earlier this month.

Viginum alerted the candidates and recommended that they not publicize these operations in order to avoid giving them visibility, according to the same official.

Chinas Exporte treffen die deutsche Kernindustrie in nie da gewesener Härte und Geschwindigkeit. Weil massiv Arbeitsplätze wackeln, sucht Europa händeringend nach einer politischen Notbremse. Rixa Fürsen spricht mit Janka Oertel über die existenzielle Bedrohung für den Autobau und Maschinenbau. Oertel ist Politikwissenschaftlerin und China-Expertin, bei der Denkfabrik „European Council on Foreign Relations“ ist sie Direktorin des Asienprogramms und Senior Policy Fellow.

Wie hart Peking inzwischen zurückschlägt, zeigt die Reaktion auf jüngste EU-Sanktionen. Binnen 24 Stunden konterte China mit Exportrestriktionen gegen Rüstungskonzerne wie Rheinmetall. Trotzdem wächst in Europa der Widerstand, sodass beim EU-Rat im Oktober scharfe Handelsschutzmaßnahmen folgen könnten.

Während wir noch über E-Autos diskutieren, plant China längst die nächste industrielle Revolution. Im Bereich der sogenannten Biomanufaktur will Peking eine globale Dominanz aufbauen, um unabhängiger von fossilen Rohstoffen zu werden. Oertel warnt davor, dass Europa auch bei dieser Zukunftstechnologie seine aktuelle Führungsrolle verspielen könnte.

Das Berlin Playbook als Podcast gibt es jeden Morgen ab 5 Uhr. Gordon Repinski und das POLITICO-Team liefern Politik zum Hören – kompakt, international, hintergründig.

Für alle Hauptstadt-Profis: Der Berlin Playbook-Newsletter bietet jeden Morgen die wichtigsten Themen und Einordnungen. Jetzt kostenlos abonnieren.

Mehr von Rixa Fürsen gibt es auch hier:
Instagram: @rixafu | X: @rixa_fursen.

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LONDON — The personal mobile phone numbers of three U.K. Cabinet ministers — including Defense Secretary Wes Streeting — have been found published online alongside their names.

The discovery comes after POLITICO reported that Prime Minister Andy Burnham fell victim to a texting scam — engaging with messages from someone impersonating Susie Wiles, Donald Trump’s White House chief of staff, before becoming suspicious the contact was illegitimate and ending the conversation.

After checking through a list of Cabinet members, POLITICO found three published on the web, for Streeting, Justice Secretary Alex Norris and Northern Ireland Secretary Chris Bryant. POLITICO is not pointing to where the numbers can be found to avoid further risking security.

All three ministers declined to comment on the record. The reference to Streeting’s number online has since been deleted, and officials are working to remove the other two.

Ministers are given secure government devices to conduct business for their briefs, in particular for high-risk roles like defense, and are expected to use those for non-personal comms.

A government spokesperson said: “The government has robust procedures in place to ensure the security of sensitive information.”

But Prerana Joshi, research fellow at the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) think tank, said that having direct numbers for Cabinet ministers in the public domain is a risk, warning that numbers could be spoofed and used to call others at a time when the U.K. is “in a high threat situation” globally.

“In any civil space, if your number is exposed, a whole host of malign, nefarious or even opportunistic cyber criminals or cyber actors could get hold of it, and they have tactics,” Joshi said.

‘No significance’

Downing Street would not comment on the revelation that Burnham exchanged messages with the impersonator, citing “national security.”

One person briefed on the communications said a “few messages” were exchanged after the PM entered No. 10 but insisted they were “of no significance.”

It is unclear how the fraudster obtained Burnham’s number. POLITICO could not find it published online.

British officials initially feared Wiles’ phone had been hacked again. But a White House official said: “This incident had nothing to do with the Chief of Staff’s devices being hacked.”

It is not clear whether Burnham will change his phone number, as Boris Johnson did after the Popbitch newsletter revealed in 2021 that the then-prime minister’s details had been sitting online for years.

‘Full of traps’

The episode has sharpened questions over whether Burnham — who built his political brand on his informal style and being more approachable than other prime ministers — can carry on that way in No. 10.

A former national security adviser, granted anonymity to speak frankly, said the prime minister needs to “get into the habit” of having his security staff verify that messages reaching him are authentic.

National Security Adviser Jonathan Powell “could have phoned the White House in five minutes and checked whether Susie Wiles genuinely was texting the prime minister,” they said.

“Being a domestic politician and going on listening tours around the U.K. is one thing, but when you engage in the international world, it’s full of traps and full of risks,” the former adviser added.

“What starts off as a very informal chat can quickly get into some kind of business, and you could give away key details of an upcoming trip or the movements of Donald Trump,” they said.

Former Defense Secretary Ben Wallace — himself targeted by imposters posing as Ukraine’s prime minister in 2022 — said the incident “demonstrates our adversaries are always looking for weak points in our communications.”

While Downing Street has said nothing significant was discussed in the exchanges between Burnham and the imposter, Wallace said “there is always a risk of kompromat” being obtained by hostile actors.

As technology, such as AI voice cloning, improves, these sort of incidents are going to “happen more and more,” Wallace added.

Others have urged Burnham not to change tack.

Guto Harri, Johnson’s former director of communications, said: “It’s only a threat and it’s only an embarrassment if they give something away — and it doesn’t seem that he’s done anything like that.”

Harri said it was “good to have someone big enough not to have his calls screened from everyone” as prime minister.

“I don’t think it’s healthy that the civil service wants to control all access to the principal. If they had their way, nobody would be able to talk to a prime minister without going through them,” he said.

“We can’t say that politicians are not living in the same world as us … and then moan about them speaking to people like a normal human being.”

Harri conceded a new number might be a “good idea,” giving the prime minister a “clean slate.”

Dan Bloom contributed to this report.

RIGA — Latvian Prime Minister Andris Kulbergs wants Brussels to hand over €7 billion to help cover the military and economic costs of confronting Russia, as pressure grows over the price of the country’s hard line on Moscow.

The money should come from the EU’s next seven-year budget, under a new Competitiveness Fund, to offset higher defense spending and the collapse in trade with Russia since Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Kulbergs told POLITICO’s Brussels Playbook in an interview.

The cash, which Riga wants to come on top of other funds earmarked for the country, would amount to almost half of Latvia’s projected €15.1 billion defense bill over the seven-year budget period.

The demand comes at a sensitive moment. Latvia has been one of Europe’s staunchest supporters of Ukraine, sharply increasing defense spending since Moscow’s full-scale invasion, even as sanctions and the collapse of bilateral trade have cut deeply into economic links that once ran eastward. But ahead of an Oct. 3 national election, parties arguing that Riga should demand more in return for sanctions and military support are gaining ground.

The European Commission has proposed substantially increasing EU-level defense funding in the 2028-2034 budget, including a €125.2 billion security, defense industry and space pot in the European Competitiveness Fund. That money is designed to finance projects across the bloc rather than provide Latvia with a pre-agreed €7 billion allocation, and the entire budget remains subject to negotiations between EU governments and the European Parliament.

Kulbergs argues that Latvia deserves special consideration because it is borrowing to provide security for countries much farther from the front line. “We are getting our budget deficit to the maximum […] and from that debt we’re paying […] the defense of the whole [of] Europe,” the prime minister said at the government chancellery.

Much of Latvia’s military spending ultimately flows back to richer Western European economies, Kulbergs added, pointing to arms purchases from Germany, France, Spain, Sweden and the Netherlands. “We fuel their economies,” he added.

Election pressure

A sharper version of the same argument is emerging on the campaign trail.

Ainārs Šlesers, a veteran populist businessman whose party sits with the far-right Patriots for Europe group in Brussels, says Latvia should demand compensation when it backs EU sanctions on Russia. Šlesers condemns Moscow’s invasion and says support for Ukraine should continue, but argues that Latvia cannot absorb the costs indefinitely.

“We are losing money … we are talking about how to support Ukraine, but we are a victim,” he told POLITICO at his Riga campaign headquarters.

When EU sanctions come up for renewal, Šlesers said Latvia should “get in return support.” Asked whether that could mean withholding Riga’s backing for sanctions, he stopped short of threatening a veto but did not rule it out. “I don’t want to talk about [a] veto [now],” he said. “I guess that we […] will find a peaceful solution.”

Šlesers, who has business ties with Russian oligarchs, said the country needs to eventually restore economic ties with Moscow, and advocated for a quick end to the war. “There are things which we cannot replace because if it’s your neighboring country and you’re connected historically […] we need to find the right model.”

He argued that whether to hand over territory to Russia should be “a decision by Ukraine” but argued that other countries have lost territory to Russia after conflicts, including Latvia, “to reach [a] peace agreement.”

Kulbergs’ center-right party currently leads the polls, but coalition arithmetic could determine how far Latvia’s Russia policy shifts after October.

The far-right, pro-Russia Sovereign Power party, polling second, wants to restore ties with Moscow but is considered off-limits by mainstream parties. Šlesers, polling third, is a more plausible coalition partner — and Kulbergs has left the door open to governing with him.

The center-left Progressives, polling fourth and also hoping to enter government with Kulbergs, warn that bringing Šlesers into the coalition would gradually soften Riga’s line on Russia.

“I’m 100 percent sure Latvia’s foreign policy towards Russia is going to soften over time,” the party’s prime ministerial candidate Andris Šuvajevs told POLITICO outside parliament. He pointed to possible sanctions exemptions for Russian business interests and ministers “speaking in a more friendly tone towards Russia.”

Tough on Russia

Ahead of a new sanctions package due in the fall, Kulbergs called for a total EU visa ban on Russians. EU countries granted more than 630,000 visas to Russian citizens in 2025.

In the last sanctions package, France and Italy resisted a blanket ban on Russian combatants, arguing this issue should be covered by EU visa rules rather than as part of sanctions, while northern and eastern countries pushed for tougher restrictions. The eventual deal created the legal and political basis for barring Russian combatants and ex-combatants who took part in the war — leaving it up to EU countries to decide when the ban would take effect. 

“Are we nuts?” said Kulbergs on the delay. “We allow Russian military soldiers to be given visas, the ones killing [Ukrainians] on the field.”

He also urged EU countries to revisit sending Russia’s €210 billion in sovereign assets frozen in Europe to Ukraine, dismissing concerns Moscow could challenge the move after the war.

Kulbergs also rebuked European Council President António Costa’s decision to open a communications channel with the Kremlin, saying doing so should be “a decision of all the countries together.”

He called any Kremlin outreach “a useless exercise,” arguing there’s no sign President Vladimir Putin is ready to negotiate and that talks would merely give Russia “breathing time” to make its “next move.”

Despite Latvia severing ties with its eastern neighbor, and Kulbergs’ hawkish position on relations with Moscow, he said “we have to be open” to reestablishing ties once Russia pays reparations to Ukraine and those responsible for war crimes face justice, pointing to postwar Germany as the example to follow. “Do we isolate Germany because of that? No, it’s acceptance of guilt, acceptance of wrongdoing, punishment, and retribution,” he said.

After a ceasefire, Kulbergs concluded, “the insecurity of the border will only rise” as the real threat will be a wave of migration as hundreds of thousands of “screwed up” soldiers return from the battlefield seeking a better life and other citizens flee as Moscow’s war economy crumbles.

Dave Brat, Australia’s freshly confirmed U.S. ambassador, didn’t need to learn another language to qualify for his new gig. But he’s coming into the job fluent in a niche dialect that could give him a big advantage.

“He can speak Trump,” James Braid, President Donald Trump’s director of legislative affairs, said in a recent interview. “He can understand Trump, and he’s recognized as a longtime Trump ally. And I think that will really help him facilitate Aussie-United States relations.”

This dynamic could be key as Brat gets to work in Canberra, where political leaders have been rattled by the Trump administration’s aggressive trade agenda resulting in the implementation of a 12.5 percent tariff on Australian goods.

A longtime economist and academic, Brat is an avowed free trade advocate, which could quell some nerves on the ground. But Brat has also defended the Trump administration’s tariff regime as a kind of reset of the U.S. economic relationship with the world, telling a local news outlet in his home state of Virginia last year that “these tariffs are an attempt to bring some balance.”

At the same time, he has the ear of the White House, having earned Trump’s trust and respect long ago as a Republican member of the U.S. House of Representatives from 2014 to 2019. There, Brat was a member of the House Freedom Caucus — a contingent of conservative hard-liners known for taking uncompromising positions on federal spending — and in 2016 he embraced then-presidential candidate Trump as other more establishment Republicans turned their noses.

“The president hasn’t forgotten that,” said Braid, who was policy director of the Freedom Caucus during that period.

The Freedom Caucus was, as it is now, perpetually at war with party leadership on Capitol Hill, but the group harnessed Brat’s affable disposition and deft touch in high-stakes policy negotiations. He was obsessed with making sure that the group’s goals would be understood both by negotiators across the table and the public — something his former colleagues expect him to bring to the international stage.

Justin Ouimette, a former longtime executive director of the House Freedom Caucus, said in an interview that Brat’s approach has always been, “here’s the message and here’s where it is coming from” — a tactic that “tends to lower the temperature.”

“He was one of those guys that’s typically dispatched to disagree without being disagreeable,” Braid agreed. “Brat is really effective at stating a position, being firm while also collaborating to reach an outcome, and so that that experience will serve him well in his new diplomatic post.”

There’s hope among some in Washington that Brat’s views on trade, coupled with his ties to the Trump administration, could help soothe existing tensions and result in a positive working relationship between the U.S. and Australia. That optimism is shared by Virginia’s two Democratic U.S. senators, Tim Kaine and Mark Warner, who supported Brat’s nomination.

“He will be very focused on commerce, trade, and economic opportunity. You know, things that are good for the U.S. and good for the Australian economies,” said Kaine, who as governor once relied on Brat’s contributions to a bipartisan economic advisory panel to build the state’s budget.

“He’ll be very mindful of the commercial relationship, and I think that’s something that will be viewed positively by the Aussies,” Kaine added.

He noted that Virginia’s massive naval base would now have an advocate in Brat amid the continued implementation of AUKUS, a trilateral security pact among Australia, the U.K. and the U.S. in 2021 aimed at helping Australia acquire nuclear-powered submarines.

Warner was less effusive, saying he has “disagreed with Dave on a lot of issues,” but acknowledged he also was “a smart guy” he supported for the ambassadorship.

Brat also has long been vocal about the competitive threats to the U.S. posed by China, a concern shared by Australia in its diplomatic engagement with the Pacific region. Ouimette speculated that “his clear-mindedness and alignment with the administration on that particular issue weighed in his favor” as the White House was making its ambassador selection.

There are still some unknowns, however, including whether Brat will be living in Canberra full time and how he’ll handle staffing issues at the U.S. Embassy.

“I understand that Mission Australia’s current staffing and facilities are insufficient to meet the demands of our expanding Alliance activities,” Brat said in a written response to U.S. Sen. Brian Schatz, a Hawaii Democrat, as part of his confirmation proceedings. “Our investment in diplomatic infrastructure reflects our commitment to this vital partnership.”

Brat’s arrival heads a wave of new senior appointments at the embassy including Robert T. Koepcke as deputy chief of mission and Jonathan A. Habjan as counselor for political affairs.

A slew of new military postings at the embassy includes Col. Richard Bush as defense attaché; Col. Pete Roongsang as Army attaché; and Col. Kabir Rao as chief of MILGROUP, which manages security cooperation, foreign military sales and defense relations with the Australian Armed Forces.

Brat also hasn’t spoken publicly or at length about how or why he was recommended for this particular posting, though he said during his confirmation hearing that he “loved the Australian people I have met in my life and appreciate their decency, wit and sense of humor” — as well as being a “tennis fanatic” eager to engage in “sports diplomacy across the board.”

Australian Prime Anthony Albanese is also a keen tennis player, known to invite dignitaries and journalists to play on the court at his official Canberra residence, The Lodge.

“I’m very much looking forward to having a hit of tennis with David Brat,” Albanese told POLITICO, adding that he believes Brat’s appointment will “bolster” the existing alliance.

Brat did not respond to POLITICO’s requests for interviews.

But Braid made clear that sending Brat to Australia is not a vanity posting or just a favor for a longtime Trump loyalist, calling Brat “a serious lawmaker with serious chops.” He conceded that while Brat “comes from a political tradition that may be a little bit unfamiliar to the Australians,” he brings relationships and experiences to the table a career foreign service officer could not.

“This is a serious person,” Braid said.