The Brussels Playbook Week Ender podcast is still away on holiday — but don’t worry, we will be back next week.   

In the meantime, here’s an episode from earlier this year about Europe’s attempts to protect its industry from Chinese products flooding the continent.

In this conversation, which was first released in May, host Sarah Wheaton is joined by Sander Tordoir from the Centre for European Reform, Grzegorz Stec from the Mercator Institute for China Studies and POLITICO’s Jordyn Dahl to discuss the European Commission’s attempts to forge a common stance on China.

The Brussels Playbook Podcast will be back to its regular schedule on Aug. 24. 

Questions? Comments? Send us a message to our WhatsApp here or at +32 491 05 06 29. 

Labour MPs want a cap on political donations to stave off Nigel Farage’s big-money backers. Andy Burnham is set to disappoint them.

Downing Street will not include a universal domestic cap on political donations in Britain when the elections bill returns on Sept. 2, two officials briefed on government thinking said. But both the officials, who were granted anonymity to discuss policy considerations, did not rule out returning to the issue again in the future.

“We’re prioritizing cracking down on foreign interference and crypto billionaires as part of this piece of legislation,” one of the officials said, referencing existing proposals in the elections bill from Burnham’s predecessor Keir Starmer to cap overseas donors and ban cryptocurrency donations.

That’s despite mounting pressure to act from the British PM’s own MPs as they fret about Farage, whose rise has been aided by a flurry of cash from individual donors — and hints from Burnham himself that he is minded to move ahead. 

There is currently no limit on the amount individual donors based in the U.K. can give to a political party. Donations above £11,180 must be reported to the Electoral Commission watchdog. 

Burnham told transparency campaigners before becoming prime minister that he supported a cap to “guard against the perception of any one party being unduly influenced or swayed by one person or organisation.” 

While indicating a wider review of political funding would be required before setting a firm figure, Burnham said his “gut feeling would suggest somewhere in the region of £500k” for the upper limit. 

Following Burnham’s arrival in No. 10 Downing Street in July, officials in Whitehall had been waiting for a signal that they should start work to include a donation cap in the Representation of the People Bill — the official title of the elections bill.

But the two officials quoted above said using that bill as the vehicle for a cap could delay plans also included in the legislation to give 16-year-olds the right to vote at the next general election. 

A third British official acknowledged the Sept. 2 date, when the elections bill returns, is a “crunch point,” and suggested ministers could “kick the can” and commit to considering action when the bill gets to the House of Lords.

A Labour MP pushing for a donations cap said the arguments being put forward for not going ahead with a donations cap are “bullshit,” adding: “They are scared of the unions.”

Complicated landscape

A POLITICO analysis of how a £500,000 donation cap would have hit the main political parties’ finances over the last three years demonstrates the trade-offs Burnham would face in pushing ahead.

The analysis draws on publicly-available Electoral Commission returns for Westminster’s main political parties between Jan. 1 2023 and Dec. 31, 2025.

It shows a £500,000 ceiling would have curbed 55 percent of Reform UK’s reported private donations over the past three years — amounting to some £12 million — suggesting Nigel Farage’s party would have taken the greatest hit of any of the parties in proportional terms over the period.

But the data also shows there is potential peril for Labour in slamming a lid on funding — particularly if cash from trade unions, which represent some of the party’s major backers, is included.

A £500,000 cap over the same period — with no union exclusion — would have wiped out 47.4 percent of all private donations to Labour, or around £34 million in funding. 

An exemption from the cap for unions would leave Labour’s war chest significantly stronger. Labour would have kept hold of £12 million of that money over the same period, which included the donation-rich run-up to the 2024 general election.

The GMB trade union has already urged Labour MPs not to back a cap due to concerns it will damage the labor movement’s historic relationship with the party. 

Parliamentary pressure

Opting for a cap with or without a union exemption carries significant political risk for Burnham. Capping unions alongside individual donors and corporates would dent Labour’s finances and strain relations with the movement seen as foundational to the party’s identity. 

But exempting them from any cap would bolster Farage’s narrative that changes to election rules are part of an intentional establishment campaign to halt his party’s progress.  

Burnham’s predecessor, Starmer, already proposed an annual £100,000 cap on donations from British citizens living overseas.

The measure could create a major hurdle for crypto-entrepreneur Christopher Harborne, who has donated over £12 million to Reform UK despite being based in Thailand.

But MPs are already putting pressure on Burnham’s new government to go further.

Several amendments pushing for domestic caps set at various amounts — up to £1 million — were proposed when the bill was introduced earlier this year. A proposal from Labour MP Stella Creasy, which would mirror the £100,000 cap on overseas donors, gained the most support.

At the time, the amendments were aimed at demonstrating political appetite for a long-running campaign to limit the sway of mega-donors, but MPs and campaigners had hoped Burnham’s previous comments had indicated he was gearing up to act.

One adviser working the parliamentary push for a donations cap said MPs could back down if the government suggests its own cap — regardless of the size of it.

“Our preferred outcome is the government come forward with their own individual donation cap,” the adviser said. “Whatever the level is we will support it.” 

Supporters of a cap also pointed to Creasy’s amendment, drafted with assistance from Transparency International UK, as a potential middle-ground for the knotty union problem. Rather than a blanket policy, Creasy proposes that affiliation fees — an annual political levy usually paid by unions on a per-member basis — would be exempt from the cap, while other donations would be included.

POLITICO’s analysis shows that approach would lessen the blow on Labour’s finances — while not providing unions a complete carve-out.

In 2024, GMB gave Labour £2 million in total — of which £1.1 million was affiliation fees.

Under Creasy’s carve-out for unions, the £1.1 million in affiliation fees would go directly to Labour.

Only the remaining £900,000 would be subject to the cap, wherever it is set — meaning a far gentler loss to Labour.

“The loophole must be closed to prevent mega-rich donors who have the potential to harm democracy — as the government has accepted is possible — that means they can continue to donate just because they claim a U.K. postcode,” Creasy said.

POLITICO’s analysis suggests that the Creasy amendment’s proposed cap — £100,000 — would have eaten into the donation income of leading parties had it been applied over the last three years.

In 2023, a £100,000 cap would have deprived the then-governing Conservative Party of more than £26 million — around 54 percent of all its declared donations.

Labour would have lost between £11 million and £16 million, depending on how the rules were applied to unions — a loss of between 50 percent and 70 percent of its declared donations.

In 2024, both Labour and Conservatives would have lost higher sums of cash as election campaign fundraising hit its peak, although the losses remain similar in percentage terms.

Other parties would have faced similar hits, with the Liberal Democrats losing around 20 percent of their £9 million declared donation income, while around 40 percent of Reform UK’s £3 million of declared funds would have been ineligible.

Analysis of last year’s data suggests a £100,000 cap would have been devastating for Farage’s outfit given its reliance on mega-donors.

Of the £18.8 million declared in donations for 2025, more than £15 million would be lost under Creasy’s plan — around 80 percent of Reform’s total declared donations.

With campaign spending hitting record highs at the 2024 election, even a lenient cap would have had a substantial impact on the country’s major political parties. But successive polls have found public support for the measures.

In January, YouGov’s biannual tracker showed that 67 percent of Brits backed a donations cap of £50,000 or less, with support for the current, unlimited system dropping from 21 percent in 2020 to just 13 percent at the start of this year.

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.

The staff of the tiny agency on the front lines of President Donald Trump’s trade wars has shrunk to its smallest size in two decades as its responsibilities balloon. Its work is suffering.

Since Trump returned to the White House, the agency has rolled out new tariffs across the globe, launched trade negotiations with dozens of countries and reopened the signature pact governing North American trade. And after the Supreme Court struck down many of his initial tariffs, it has begun four probes into countries’ unfair trade practices to provide legal justification for new duties — with more threatened. 

The trade agency is attempting to do all of this with a staff that has dwindled by about a fifth, which along with a hiring slowdown and an intensely compressed schedule is leading to often slapdash work, according to eleven former trade officials from the Trump and Biden administrations who spoke to POLITICO.

Some of the errors are embarrassing, including letters sent to foreign dignitaries announcing new tariffs that went out addressed to the wrong titles and genders, according to one former official.

Others could undermine the president’s drive to impose new duties on dozens of trading partners. A recent investigation into whether other countries’ inaction on forced labor is giving their exports an unfair advantage was rushed out in a matter of months when previous investigations have taken more than a year. An announcement of a second investigation lacked basic details like what policies are harming U.S. businesses. Tariff challengers have already seized on similar weaknesses in court.

“When you’re rushing like that, right, it’s kind of like crap in, crap out,” said one former Trump USTR official, who, like others interviewed by POLITICO, was granted anonymity to discuss the agency’s inner workings. USTR officials are getting “crushed” under the administration’s workload, the person said.

The brain drain at the agency, including the departures of senior officials responsible for leading trade talks with key allies, is continuing even as U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer has pushed to expand the budget and stepped up hiring efforts.

A USTR spokesperson said that under Greer’s leadership, the agency has “delivered an unprecedented volume of work on behalf of the American people that is thorough and outcomes-based.”

Greer inherited an agency that was already shorthanded, and the Trump administration wasted no time in rolling out its new tariff-focused trade agenda. In the opening months of the administration, the president unveiled new tariffs on Mexico, Canada and China, before rolling out sweeping new duties on almost every U.S. trading partner on April 2, 2025 — what the president dubbed “Liberation Day.”

But the Liberation Day rollout was filled with errors. In addition to slapping tariffs on an uninhabited island filled only with penguins, which was roundly mocked in the media, the administration sent letters informing countries of their new tariff rates that contained the wrong genders and titles for foreign officials, said the first former official. The calculation for assessing the tariff rates, which USTR eventually published on its website, showed a simple back-of-the-envelope formula based on countries’ trade surpluses with the U.S., an embarrassment for an agency that prides itself on its data-driven, reasoned trade analysis and deep technical knowledge.

The episode “made USTR look like a joke,” the former official said.

The Supreme Court in February struck down Trump’s Liberation Day tariff regime, leaving USTR to come up with alternative legal justifications for imposing sweeping duties. More serious than the embarrassing mistakes, former officials said, is that the agency has been rushing out the reports and announcements that are used to create those justifications, potentially handing tariff challengers legal ammunition.

A March announcement of a probe into countries’ manufacturing overcapacity did not initially identify any specific policies from trading partners that qualify as an unfair trade practice, said Ed Gresser, a former assistant USTR for trade policy and economics, who left the agency during the Biden administration. The omission could leave the probe more vulnerable to a legal challenge, he said.

Countries also pushed back against inaccurate information in that announcement. An initial version referred to Singapore — one of the investigation’s targets — as having a bilateral trade surplus with the U.S. of $27 billion in 2024. But that language was quietly removed from a later version after the Singaporean government pointed out publicly that it was, in fact, the U.S. that had a trade surplus of $27 billion with Singapore. USTR also quietly corrected the numbers it cited for both Indonesia and Cambodia’s trade surpluses with the U.S.

Tariff challengers are already filing court documents citing omissions in the USTR investigation into efforts to curb imports made with forced labor. The July report into countries’ forced labor practices, initiated under Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974 and produced in just four months, lacked the depth featured in comparable reports from previous administrations, three former officials noted.

“It strikes me a lot more vulnerable to legal challenge than previous 301 reports have been,” said Gresser, who is now the vice president and director for trade at the Progressive Policy Institute.

Democratic attorneys general filed a suit earlier this month seeking to overturn the proposed duties tied to forced labor. “The USTR made no effort to link the scope of the tariffs to the scope of harm,” they wrote in their filing.

Burlap and Barrel, a vendor of imported spices that is also suing, noted that the USTR failed to provide a “reasoned, record-based explanation” for its tariff findings.

“You can tell they’re stretched,” said Peter Harrell, a former Biden administration economic official who is now a trade law professor at Georgetown Law. Officials are “not able to put in or do the level of detail that they’ve been able to do in the past.”

USTR’s staff of less than 300 people has always punched above its weight, almost all of the former officials noted. The Commerce and Treasury Departments, by comparison, count workforces of around 40,000 and 80,000 employees, respectively.

From 2023 to 2026, however, the number of USTR employees fell almost 20 percent, from 269 workers to 220, leaving it with the smallest workforce since 2005, according to data from the White House Office of Personnel Management.

The agency’s lowest staffing in more than 20 years continues a decline that began in the latter half of the Biden administration when the agency faced a staff exodus driven by frustration with the former president’s dormant trade agenda.

USTR’s in-house expertise has only continued to dwindle in the second Trump administration.

The agency’s most senior official responsible for North American trade, Daniel Watson, retired just days before the White House formally launched a review of the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement on July 1. Meanwhile, Bryant Trick, the top trade official for Europe and the Middle East is also set to retire in the coming months at a time when U.S. talks with Europe over its digital trade practices, pharmaceutical pricing and implementation of a bilateral trade pact are in full swing.

Officials that left the agency during Trump’s second term did not agree on a single driving factor behind the recent departures. The first former USTR official cited their dismay over Trump’s ties to the late disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein as a reason for their own departure. Others noted there was a cohort of staff nearing retirement age.

“I don’t sense that one can point to a morale problem or something like that,” a second former official said.

Greer, who served as chief of staff to Trump’s first-term trade representative, Bob Lighthizer, is widely respected at the agency, former officials said, and built up goodwill among staff for his handling of the administration-wide effort to cut the size of the government last year. USTR was spared from those cuts, which several former officials attributed to Greer’s assertiveness on personnel matters.

There is money available for USTR to staff up. The agency received $88 million in fiscal 2026, which should accommodate 274 employees, according toUSTR’s budget documents.Greer is also asking for $95 million in fiscal 2027 to beef up trade enforcement activities. The agency says the funding increase would allow for 301 full-time employees.

But it hasn’t been easy to hire.

Since Trump returned to office, the private sector has scrambled to bring on trade experts to help companies navigate the more complex tariff landscape, offering higher salaries than candidates and sitting officials can earn in government.

“It is no surprise that the private sector is eager to hire the well-regarded experts at USTR during this period of historic change in U.S. trade policy,” the USTR spokesperson added in a statement.

Three of the former officials said it is common for jobs to sit vacant for more than a year. One said they have seen the recruitment process drag on for two years, as the Executive Office of the President, which handles USTR’s hiring, prioritizes recruitment in other executive offices.

Shifts in human resources policies under Trump have also hurt recruitment efforts, two of the former USTR officials said, citing, in particular, new limits on remote work.

A flexible working environment “is one of the ways that you compete with better salaries and more certainty in other sectors,” one of the people said.

USTR is supposed to be a “nimble” agency, the person stressed — particularly so under Trump, where trade negotiations, investigations and new tariffs are rolled out on shortened timelines and responding to fast-moving developments in bilateral trade relationships.

“They’re being asked to do a lot,” the person said, but the hiring “system is just not set up to be nimble or to get results on any quick timeline.”

Paroma Soni contributed to this report.

LONDON — Prime Minister Andy Burnham’s government said the U.K. is willing to discuss American concerns over its digital services tax amid renewed pressure from the White House.

President Donald Trump in June threatened to impose 100 percent tariffs on European countries with DSTs which target U.S. tech firms, and in an interview with The Times newspaper published on Monday, Trump’s top trade official Jamieson Greer said the threat was “not a bluff” and the president’s demands that foreign governments abandon such taxes were “quite serious.”

“We remain open to discussing U.S. concerns and working with partners internationally,” a U.K. government spokesperson said when asked about Greer’s comments.

“This tax is about making sure that businesses pay their fair share of U.K. tax based on the value they derive from U.K. activities,” the spokesperson said, adding that the U.K. is committed to removing it “once a global solution is in place.”

The DST raised over £1 billion last year, predominantly from American tech firms, and has repeatedly drawn Trump’s ire.

The U.K. government has so far resisted calls to abandon the tax, including during trade negotiations last year. A U.K.-U.S. Economic Prosperity Deal signed by Trump and Burnham’s predecessor, Keir Starmer, did not mention the DST but said both sides would continue discussions to increase digital trade and address non-tariff barriers.

Greer added in his interview with The Times that the U.S. administration would not “set artificial timelines” and that relations with his British counterparts, including Trade Secretary Jonathan Reynolds and the prime minister’s business adviser Varun Chandra, are positive.

A full three decades ago, as Bill Clinton turned 50 in the midst of his successful 1996 reelection campaign, he was sounding even then in an autumnal mood.

“I have more yesterdays than tomorrows” he used to say often that year, a wistfulness that caused those of us who covered him to puzzle. What’s with this misty nostalgia? It was literally true, unless he expected to live 100, that he probably had more yesterdays than tomorrows. But fifty is typically the point when people realize they are no longer exactly young. It is hardly an age that merits a self-conception as old. Clinton’s perspective, however, doubtless left him with an appreciation of the fragility of life. He never met his biological father — a traveling salesman who married five times and died at age 28 in a car accident, three months before the future president was born.

Yet Clinton himself has proved reasonably durable, especially for a man who had serious heart surgery at age 58. The 42nd president turns 80 today — at last at an age that amply justifies a more searching look back on life.

Rest assured that no one in 1996 was contemplating the possibility that the president 30 years later would be a man who is actually two months older than Clinton — much less that this man would be President Donald Trump, who at that time had already been famous as a real estate magnate and professional self-promoter for 15 years or so.

Above all, I think few people then were imagining that the country in 2026 would itself be feeling so old — or, at a minimum, so surly and so bereft of a unifying vision of the future. The very essence of the most powerful and divisive political movement since former President Ronald Reagan’s is expressly backward-looking — Make America Great Again.

Many of the habits that today infuse American politics — the ones that make it so remorseless and infused with indignation and disdain — were present in nascent form in Clinton’s presidency. At the time, those developments seemed exotic — there was scant notion that they represented a shabby new norm.

In the early days, this brand of contempt-driven politics often revolved around arguments about Bill Clinton’s public and private character. This was a theme of his 1992 election against George H.W. Bush, his 1996 election against Bob Dole, and it even shadowed the 2004 dedication of his presidential library in Little Rock, Ark.

I am hardly a Clinton intimate. I haven’t been in his company in a decade. At one time, however, I probably knew as much about his presidency — its animating ideas, its decisive moments, its distinctive personalities — as anyone who had not actually served in it. This came from six years covering his White House for the Washington Post, and another two working on a book that aimed to synthesize his years in office and take a preliminary cut at assessing their historical weight. In both journalistic and historical terms, much of this time was devoted to thinking about competing appraisals of Clinton’s character.

It is an argument without end in part because the positive and negative elements of Clinton’s character, the light and the shadows, seemingly flow from the same source: an intense need to win, to matter, to seduce, to prove himself in the world. Imagine if people around Bill Clinton in 1974, the year he ran unsuccessfully for Congress — Hillary Rodham, then a girlfriend but not yet a spouse, showed up in Arkansas to help — had been given a crystal ball to peer into the future. These people would not be surprised to learn that a future president was in their midst; His talent, ambition, and idealism were that obvious. Nor would they be surprised to learn how his campaigns and presidency would at various turns be nearly derailed. As early biographer David Maraniss documented, even then Clinton had a reputation for sexual vagrancy, and the patterns of heedlessness, deception, and hypocrisy such a lifestyle inevitably requires.

He’s been out of political office for more than a quarter-century — as long as he was ever in it, beginning with his first victory as Arkansas attorney general in 1976. By my lights, the years since he yielded the Oval Office to George W. Bush (who turned 80 last month) in January 2001 have abundantly ratified the proposition that the country could do worse — at key junctures plainly has done worse–than Clinton’s character or his record, the strengths and infirmities alike.

As he turns 80, and the country contemplates a post-Trump future two years from now, it seems to me there are at least four ways in which Clinton has prevailed in the great character argument woven throughout his life.

Responsibility

This is a place where my views have not changed much from what I thought at the time and what I think now. A paradox of Clinton’s presidency is that, however reckless he was in his personal life — culminating in the Monica S. Lewinsky scandal and Republicans’ unsuccessful attempt to evict him from office through impeachment — he was supremely responsible in his use of power and his willingness to take sober risks for what he thought was right. Yes, he would over-agonize on hard choices — on issues from trade to welfare to war in the Balkans. But at the end of the day — sometimes it could be a very long day — on big subjects there was rarely much variance between what Clinton genuinely thought was the right decision and what he did.

A good many of his policies are out of favor now within his own party. But the political and policy landscape he was navigating was much different than today. Clinton was a thoroughly political creature, but he was not an unduly cynical one — he was willing frequently to risk his political self-interest on behalf of what he conceived of as the public interest.

Persuasion

One reason Bill Clinton and his brand of centrist politics can seem antiquated is that the past generation has been defined by a whole different emphasis: the politics of mobilization. Under this later school of politics, elections are won principally by sharpening divisions and elevating the moral stakes. The aim is not to win over skeptics through the power of reasoned argument. It is to convince your own side that the other side is so repugnant in its character and aims that they should rally behind you and turn out in the biggest possible numbers.

Clinton would in most of his campaigns give a nod to trying to explain what the other side believed, and why he believed his approach is better. “I think one of the ways you win elections is by talking straight with people and giving them permission to vote against you,” Clinton said a few years ago on a podcast. What he meant was that effective arguments don’t hector audiences or assert moral superiority, or the other side’s moral iniquity. They invite or even inspire people to think about an issue differently.

In short, the politics of mobilization harnesses the power of contempt; the politics of persuasion employs the language of respect. Mobilization politics tends to deal in ideological and cultural abstractions like free markets versus socialism, or “traditional values” versus sexual freedom — the kind of debates that are especially potent at pushing people to decide “which side are you on?” Persuasion politics is more likely to center on the concrete human dimensions of policy choices — here’s what an expansion of childcare tax credits might mean for you.

You could argue which brand of politics is more effective, and for the most part advocates of mobilization politics in recent years on left and right have been prevailing. But it’s hard to see how the politics of persuasion is not a more inspiring expression of American character, and also more likely to resolve serious long-term debates.

The fight for power

When Clinton opened his presidential library in Little Rock in 2004, the late Peter Jennings of ABC News in an interview baited Clinton about a recent survey of historians that rated his presidency reasonably well overall, but second to last (ahead only of Richard Nixon) in “moral authority.” Clinton said curtly that the historians were wrong, adding, “I don’t really care what they think.” Jennings replied: “Excuse me, Mr. President. I can feel it across the room. You care very deeply.”

Clinton then snapped: “You don’t want to go here, Peter. You don’t want to go here. Not after what you people did. And the way you — your network — what you did with [Whitewater prosecutor] Kenneth Starr. The way your people repeated every little sleazy thing he leaked. No one has any idea of what that’s like.”

The new library had an alcove about Clinton’s 1998 impeachment and subsequent acquittal called, “The Fight for Power.” The scandal, the exhibit argued, was simply the Republicans’ effort to overturn an election they lost.

At the time, I believed this was mostly Clinton’s tortured rationalization for his own mistakes. Events since then, however, have swung the historical argument irrefutably in his favor. In the 1990s we spent months and even years covering such inane issues as whether the newly elected Clinton acted properly to fire long-term employees of the office that booked White House charter flights and hotels for the media. Now, Trump asserts the right to eliminate cabinet departments and agencies without congressional approval — and the stories often get lost in the rush of other news. There is not a credible argument that says Bill and Hillary Clinton’s Whitewater land investments in the 1970s were a worthy subject for ethics inquiries and criminal probes but the Trump family’s crypto investments and overseas deals while the company founder is in the Oval Office are no big deal.

Clinton was right that the attacks on his character were often simply not on the level—but a proxy for other agendas.

Perseverance

In 2000, as Bill Clinton’s presidency was winding down and Hillary Clinton was waging a successful campaign for New York Senate, there was a political skull session at the White House involving a trusted roster of aides and strategists. As one of them described it to me later, Bill Clinton brought up the elephant in the room. Female voters in particular, he noted, wanted to understand why Hillary had stayed with Bill during the sex scandal. The mood was briefly awkward until Hillary Clinton said good-naturedly that she wanted to know the answer too.

“Because you’re a sticker!” the president replied, jabbing the air for emphasis.

Actually, it seems to me, both Clintons are. Across many decades, they have stayed married, and stayed in the fight over the issues they care about—amid plenty of victories and setbacks alike. That is a kind of character, too.

These days, Bill Clinton’s public appearances are fewer. At times he looks frail. His skeptics include many people in his own party. Yet, on his 80th birthday, the main question seems to be less about his character than the country’s: Is there a pathway to a destination in which more people believed with him that politics can illuminate the best and most generous and inspiring parts of national identity? Clinton may be getting old, but that idea should be made young again.

President Donald Trump paused a 50 percent tariff on Canadian goods hours before it was scheduled to kick in, saying the two countries had reached a preliminary deal.

In a post on social media late Tuesday, Trump announced that he would delay the duties, set to go into effect at midnight on Wednesday, for three days “based on the fact that Canada and the U.S.A., subject to the finalization of documents, have a DEAL!”

The president teased that the agreement could include resurrecting the Keystone XL Pipeline, a long-stalled pipeline extension intended to pump crude oil from Alberta, Canada to the Midwest of the United States.

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.”

A deal between the U.S. and Canada to stave off new tariffs on Canadian goods is now on President Donald Trump’s desk, according to three people familiar with the discussions who were granted anonymity because of the sensitivity of the talks.

Now it’s up to Trump whether the 50 percent duty goes into effect, as scheduled, at midnight.

U.S. and Canadian officials have been in wall-to-wall talks for several days, with the administration pressing Canada to drop retaliatory measures it took against Trump’s tariffs last year — including provincial bans on U.S. liquor and tariffs on U.S. automobiles — and Ottawa looking to lower U.S. duties on autos, among other goods. The potential deal taking shape also includes Canadian concessions on its tariff-rate quota on dairy — an issue that has frequently come up in Trump’s missives against Canadian trade policy, according to two of the three people.

Negotiators hope a small deal on these issues can unlock broader talks between the two countries on a North American trade agreement that is up for review this year. But automobiles remained a major sticking point in negotiations Monday as U.S. and Canadian officials huddled in the afternoon, according to three other people familiar with the status of the talks, granted anonymity to discuss them. While the duties set to go into effect Wednesday only hit a small percentage of trade between the two countries, they could poison the broader negotiation on nearly $1 trillion worth of goods and services trade between the two countries.

“You can think of it as effectively trying to come up with an early harvest, an interim deal, a smaller package of what ultimately will land as part of the USMCA talks,” said Kelly Ann Shaw, who served as deputy assistant for international economic affairs during Trump’s first term.

The political stakes are high on both sides of the border. After repurposing a hockey fighting slogan to describe his approach to the U.S. during last year’s campaign, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney is now confronted with U.S. officials who are adamant that Canada will have to drop longstanding trade protections, like loosening its supply management program that protects the dairy and lumber industries.

“There’s going to be a political cost for Carney on any type of concession with some portion of the public,” said an industry figure, granted anonymity to speak candidly about the trade discussions. “I cannot understate how upset the average Canadian is with the United States, and really specifically with Trump.”

If the tariffs go into effect, the Trump administration risks creating more economic pain ahead of midterm elections — particularly in Maine and Michigan, two states that could help determine the control of the Senate.

“At the end of the day, [U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson] Greer cannot bring something to the president that doesn’t address some of the president’s personal core concerns,” Shaw said. “And I think Carney recognizes he’s got to bring something back where he can say, ‘Look, not only are we just at the table, but we actually got something for it.’”

The White House did not respond to a request for comment. Gabriel Brunet, the spokesman for Canada-U.S. Trade Minister Dominic LeBlanc, said the Canadians were “in a holding pattern at this time.”

Trump sparked the frenzied negotiations last month after he used a Great Depression-era tariff law to impose tariffs on a wide swath of Canadian goods, like hockey equipment and Canadian bacon, if Canada did not remove its tariffs on U.S. automobiles, eliminate provincial bans on U.S. alcohol and make changes to its dairy supply management laws. But his proclamation included a one-month lag before the duties to kick in, to allow more more talks. The tariffs officially take effect at midnight Aug. 19.

At the time, trade experts saw the tariffs as a way for Trump to force Canada to the negotiating table after struggling for months to make progress — to U.S. officials’ growing frustration.

“I think these three issues must be resolved before Canada can get into the room on USMCA with the United States,” said a former USTR official, shortly after Trump unveiled the new tariffs on Canada last month. “And the U.S. side is wanting a situation where Canada is in the room and so they’re trying to help prompt fixes to these three.”

Of the three issues, auto tariffs have emerged as a key sticking point. Canada is looking for reductions in the 25 percent auto tariffs Trump imposed last year on countries around the world and wants the duty to apply only to vehicle content produced outside North America, according to one of the people.

Automobiles could also be key to unlocking progress on U.S. demands. The United States has made clear that getting American wine and spirits back on Canadian shelves is a red line in the negotiations. But that issue is up to the individual provinces maintaining the bans, which will mean winning over premiers like Doug Ford of Ontario — a car-making hub.

Whether Ford caves will “come down to where we land on autos,” one of the people said, calling the automobile piece of the talks a “domino” in the discussions.

Ford exerted his control over his province’s liquor stores in March 2025, removing U.S. alcohol from shelves in the country’s most populous province. Other premieres soon followed, delivering a nearly $150 million blow to the U.S. distilled spirits industry, alone. While Alberta and Saskatchewan lifted their bans after just a few months, the two provinces account for less than 20 percent of the Canadian population.

Even if the premieres do end their boycott, there’s no guarantee that Canadians — who are also upset by Trump’s jabs that Canada should become the 51st U.S. state — will be quick to resume purchases.

“I would be surprised, even if the liquor goes back on the shelves, if Canadians buy it,” said the industry figure.

While Trump officials have repeatedly faulted Canada for being one of two countries that retaliated against the president’s tariffs — along with China — Trump is also attempting to get the country to drop longstanding protectionist measures for its dairy industry, a source of tension between the two neighbors for decades.

On the Canadian side, negotiators LeBlanc and Janice Charette have been pushing for reductions to U.S. national security tariffs imposed on automobiles and steel and aluminum. But the Trump administration has held firm on the 50 percent steel tariffs, according to three people familiar with the status of the metals discussions.

“That’s probably going to be something that is much more of a longer term” discussion, one of the people said, “if at all.”

Greer stressed to reporters last week that he has been satisfied with the steel tariffs and their impact on the domestic steel industry.

“This is working,” he argued, pointing to rising domestic steel production. Through mid-August, U.S. steelmaking was up more than 5 percent year-to-date on the same period last year, according to the American Iron and Steel Institute, and capacity utilization was up two percentage points.

“We’re seeing huge success in the American steel industry, which is exactly what President Trump wanted,” Greer said during a trip to Iowa Thursday.

Mike Blanchfield contributed to this report from Ottawa.

BERLIN —Senior conservative and social-democrat lawmakers in Germany’s governing coalition are urging the EU to sanction Israel’s Minister of National Security Itamar Ben-Gvir after he called for nightly targeted killings in Gaza.

“I think targeted killings should be carried out in Gaza, remove 30, 40 [people] every night,” said Ben-Gvir, leader of the far-right Jewish Power party, in a podcast episode released last Saturday. “Not just those who pose an immediate threat. No, there are people there who are not worthy of life. They shouldn’t live. They’re not even people.”

The comments drew an unusually sharp response from German Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s conservatives.

“Ben-Gvir’s inhumane remarks can only be condemned,” Jürgen Hardt, foreign policy spokesperson for the Christian Democratic Union/Christian Social Union parliamentary group, told POLITICO. “The EU should sanction him as a sign of the universal validity of human dignity and human rights.”

Hardt went further, saying he was convinced an Israeli government without Ben-Gvir or fellow far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich would bring Europe and Israel closer together.

Germany’s Social Democrats struck a similar tone. Adis Ahmetović, the party’s foreign policy spokesperson, said the two ministers had shocked international opinion well before their latest statements, and urged the German government to support sanctions against both.

The criticism extended across the political spectrum.

The Left’s Dietmar Bartsch called Ben-Gvir’s remarks “deeply inhumane,” and urged Berlin and Brussels to consider sanctions, including an entry ban. Markus Frohnmaier, the far-right Alternative for Germany party’s foreign policy spokesperson, said calling for the indiscriminate killing of people who posed no immediate threat crossed “a clear line.” Green Member of Parliament Marlene Schönberger branded Ben-Gvir a “far-right extremist” and said his comments were “deeply inhumane,” adding that they had “nothing whatsoever” to do with Israel’s right to defend itself and its citizens.

The statements mark a significant shift in Berlin. Germany has repeatedly pushed back against EU measures targeting Israel, including proposed sanctions on Ben-Gvir in June and, as recently as last month, restrictions on trade with illegal Israeli settlements in the West Bank.

EU sanctions require unanimity, giving Berlin considerable sway over whether the bloc can move.

Merz’s government has not yet followed the lawmakers’ lead. The Foreign Ministry declined to take a position Monday, while some in government fear sanctioning Ben-Gvir just weeks before Israel’s Oct. 27 election could play into his hands.

German Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul will meet his EU counterparts in Ireland on Sept. 1 and 2, where Ben-Gvir’s remarks and the war in Gaza are likely to loom over discussions.

Maximilian Heimerzheim contributed to reporting.

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LONDON — Britain’s Liberal Democrats are holding fire against Andy Burnham — for now.

The centrist party has studiously avoided criticizing the new Labour prime minister during his first weeks in power, instead pushing the same “constructive opposition” approach followed during predecessor Keir Starmer’s early stint in Downing Street.

“I like what he’s doing,” says 2024-intake Lib Dem MP Martin Wrigley. “I like the way he’s going, focusing on things that matter.” The question is: how long can it last?

A person familiar with Lib Dem Leader Ed Davey’s thinking, granted anonymity because their job does not authorize them to speak publicly, says the party hopes Burnham removes the “performative hostility” from Westminster.

“That style of politics really suits the populist parties, both on the left and the right, and it isn’t the sort of politics that we as Liberal Democrats want to do,” they argued.

But while not rocking the boat has landed well with Lib Dem MPs, there is still a call for a distinctive identity for the party in a highly competitive political environment, with Labour enjoying a “Burnham bounce” in the opinion polls on the left, and Tory Leader Kemi Badenoch’s personal brand on the up.

Duty of care

Davey — whose party enjoyed its best-ever result at the 2024 election but remains only just in double digits in national polls — has already made one big play in the Burnham era: being helpful on reforming social care.

The creaking social care system in England is a policy challenge governments of all stripes have failed to meet — leaving families with drained finances and cash-strapped local authorities plugging the gaps.

The Lib Dem leader, who cares for his disabled son, attended a virtual cross-party meeting after Burnham, whose own father is in a care home with Alzheimer’s, called for an open conversation on a fix.

This proactive approach has so far landed well with Davey’s troops. “I don’t think we’re going to sink the process if we don’t get everything we want,” says Lib Dem Shadow Commons Leader Bobby Dean. “If we can get cross-party consensus on one element, then we should get on with that element straight away.” 

Indeed, Mike Storey, the Lib Dems’ co-deputy leader in the House of Lords, says the party will “cooperate fully on social care … and we’ll do it with no strings attached.” 

The person familiar with Davey’s thinking laid out the approach, saying “People are put off” by opposition parties that “decide to just immediately say ‘oh, they’re terrible. They’re breaking everything again’” when a new government arrives.

Tom Lubbock, co-founder of polling agency J.L. Partners, agrees a conciliatory approach makes sense for now as “you just look a bit mad if you just go in studs-up within the first couple of months.”

But there’s some angst about making sure the Lib Dems clearly separate themselves from Labour.

Party of the countryside 

It’s not the first time the Lib Dems have tried to play nice with a Labour prime minister.

But Davey’s party soon found ways to differentiate themselves from the increasingly unpopular Keir Starmer.

After Starmer’s government changed inheritance tax rules for farmers, the Lib Dems spied an opening — dubbing it the “family farm tax” and ramping up campaigning.

The party has an “extraordinary niche and an extraordinary opportunity” to pose as the “Countryside Alliance arm of the Labour Party,” argues Lubbock — in other words, a progressive rival to Labour that rural voters can still get behind.

Burnham’s focus on reviving urban areas may lend itself to this approach, with Lib Dem figures poised to exploit any perception “Avanti Andy” is shuttling between London and Manchester, another major city.

Adam Dance, who represents the rural constituency of Yeovil, warns Burnham “can’t be a prime minister just for Manchester and the biggest cities” and says “he needs to understand rural areas.” 

Northern MP Tom Gordon also challenges the prime minister’s claim to represent northern England, arguing this “does feel slightly performative.” He reckons voters “don’t hate him [Burnham] yet” as “he’s not had long enough to make any really unpopular decisions.”

Left vs. right blocs 

Much of the Lib Dems’ success under Davey has come from wooing disillusioned Conservatives, targeting Tory-held seats in the home counties — dubbed the “blue wall.”

But winning remaining Tory areas next time round could be harder if the Lib Dems appear too closely aligned with a Labour government. 

Lubbock argues the Lib Dems will do “much worse” if supporters of Nigel Farage’s Reform UK “get on the Conservative bandwagon” to help defeat Labour nationally. That would be a mirror of the way some Labour supporters tactically backed the Lib Dems in 2024 to oust the Tories.

Though the Tories are still stuck below 20 percent in most polls, there are signs of recovery. YouGov data last month put Badenoch’s net favorability score at the highest of any Conservative leader for more than five years. Her position is undeniably more stable than it was 12 months ago.

While Lib Dems are optimistic Badenoch’s moves to the right on net zero and human rights will push more One Nation, centrist Conservatives in their direction, their Tory rivals sound bullish.

Tory MP Gregory Stafford, who saw off a challenge by the Lib Dems to win Farnham and Bordon two years ago, doesn’t think there are more Tories left for the Lib Dems to poach.

“All I’m seeing is those people coming back, not the other way round,” says Stafford about voters who bid the Tories farewell in 2024. Despite his narrow win, he thinks some of the 6,000 Reform UK voters in his seat will return — thanks to Badenoch.

“They see demonstrably in Kemi a leader that both they like as a person, but also speaks their language and speaks to the policies that they’re concerned about,” he argues.

As such, the Lib Dems may settle for a stronger attack against the right.

“People just don’t feel listened to,” says the party’s Scotland spokesperson Susan Murray. “When they don’t feel listened to, they are open to populism.” She argues that both the Lib Dems and Labour are “not succeeding in getting that message [of hope and opportunities] across.” Dean adds, “There’s a massive demand out there for a liberal party to make a bold offer to the country and at the moment that space feels vacated.” 

It’s a perceived weakness Stafford, the Conservative MP, plans to leap on at the next election. “The real danger for the Liberal Democrats is that they are seen as a patsy party that might champion local issues locally, but actually have nothing to say distinctive on the national stage,” he argues.

Roz Savage, who entered the Commons for the Lib Dems in 2024, recognizes the outfit has a “PR challenge that people think of us as the nice party.” Instead, a “bigger story” is required about a future Lib Dem government, she says.

“When we talk to Lib Dem voters in focus groups, they don’t really have a clear vision for what the Lib Dem party should stand for,” says Merlin Strategy’s Head of Research, Julian Gallie. People often back them as a vote against other parties, the political analyst says.

MPs also want the Lib Dems to reach beyond their traditional strongholds and target historically Labour areas — including Newcastle and Hull. Both have Lib Dem-run city councils, but are the kind of areas in which Burnham will fancy he can improve Labour’s standing. Meral Hussein-Ece, the Lib Dems’ Lords equality spokesperson, says the party must also do more to understand “the diversity of this country, which I don’t think we’ve done very well so far.” 

Lib Dem conference in Brighton next month will give the party a chance to lay a marker for the expected general election in 2029. But MPs want more than set-piece events to present a distinctive vision. 

“We do have to do better at utilizing the likes of social media and capturing the attention all the time, not just when we get the spotlight shined on us,” argues Gordon, the Harrogate and Knaresborough MP.

The Lib Dems, he says, have to drive “conversation on our own terms, rather than always having to just respond.” 

The first thing I noticed when I gave up American technology was the silence.

My phone usually starts up before I get out of bed, buzzing every few minutes throughout the day with calls, messages, headlines, calendar reminders and social media alerts. It’s a constant pulse that averages nearly 200 iPhone notifications on weekends and twice as many Monday-to-Friday.

But on this warm mid-summer Sunday, my life was on an unlikely version of mute. After years of reporting on Europe’s push to wean itself off U.S. tech giants and cultivate homegrown alternatives, I had decided to test my own daily habit by cutting myself off from using any American technology for 72 hours.

No iPhone. No Mac. No Slack or Teams. No Google Search or Maps. No ChatGPT. No WhatsApp or Signal. No Facebook or Instagram feeds. No credit card payments.

I wondered if I would turn into a digital monk.

For three days, I set out to live and work in Brussels as if U.S. tech had suddenly become unavailable to me overnight. It was a purposefully fictional scenario rooted in a very real European anxiety: what happens if Washington weaponizes our continent’s Silicon Valley dependence and reaches for the tech “kill switch?”

Limited versions of that scenario have already surfaced. When U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration cut off French-born International Criminal Court judge Nicolas Guillou from U.S.-linked financial and technology services, he called it a form of “civil death.”

Meanwhile, U.S. export controls in June forced Anthropic to block foreign nationals from accessing two of its most advanced AI models, offering a glimpse of what government bans on access to cutting-edge technology can look like.

Such episodes feed into mounting fears that the Trump administration could use Europe’s overreliance on U.S. tech as leverage in trade fights or disputes over EU regulations. A Proton survey released earlier this month found that 74 percent of European business leaders worry such a cutoff could disrupt their operations.

In my own little experiment, the stakes were much lower. Yet I was about to find out that replacing American tools with those built here in Europe was going to make almost everything harder — and lonelier.

Trying to live without U.S. tech, I would find out, essentially amounts to trying to live without tech at all. That was partly because, like virtually all of my fellow Europeans, I had locked myself into those consumer choices.

Dumbphones and FOMO

The early symptoms of going cold turkey looked suspiciously like withdrawal.

On that first morning, with my iPhone shut off, I reached for a Nokia brick from Finland. The so-called dumbphone is the type of device now enjoying a second life among people detoxing from screen time and is also a favorite of drug dealers seeking to avoid getting busted by any tracking and data collection.

Several hours in, I realized there were no notifications on the Nokia. Nobody calls or texts anymore. Then came the shameful part: a sense of helplessness, followed by FOMO-fueled restlessness. The world had surely kept spinning at full speed, and I was missing it. For the next few days, I would still catch myself checking the phone compulsively like an addict.

“The phone aged you instantly,” my best friend joked later that day as we traded our now-standard FaceTime video calls for a regular one. It was unclear whether he meant the muffled audio or me struggling with a new-but-actually-old device, or both.

I did notice that I was pacing up and down my flat because my usually overstimulated brain apparently couldn’t handle focusing on a voice-only call.

One instant benefit from my dumbphone: no doomscrolling in bed.

It all took me back to my first cellphone at 13, when texting meant tapping the same tiny key several times for a single letter, every SMS cost money and abbreviations and emojis were not just stylistic choices but ways to squeeze more into a message.

I knew my social media life would be at risk in my experiment. European alternatives such as Mastodon have gained traction since Elon Musk turned Twitter into X. But who joins a social network when none of their friends are there?

That was fine. I was actually eager to disappear for a while, well aware of the anxiety social media induces in me and the insecurities created by constantly watching other people’s supposedly perfect lives.

Online shopping was out — but so too was paying by card in stores and restaurants. The payment networks I rely on are American: Visa and Mastercard dominate card payments across Europe, meaning that even a purchase made with a European bank card often still runs over U.S.-controlled rails.

It meant I had to buy everything using cash, which I hadn’t done regularly in ages. Fortunately, unlike in some other European countries, Belgian legislation requires merchants to accept banknotes. The hard part was finding some of those stores without the help of Google Maps, which I’d come to rely on almost as much as my credit cards.

The invisible grip

Swearing off Netflix, Amazon Prime, Disney+ and YouTube was also part of the deal — already eliminating a sizable chunk of my leisure time. But it turned out I could barely watch anything at all, or even properly test European streaming platforms, because my television and tablet both ran on Google software.

Thankfully, an offline Nintendo Switch from Japan, good old books and the legendary Snake game kept me company.

These invisible dependencies run deep. Beyond the products we use every day, U.S. systems often serve as gateways to European companies trying to take on Big Tech.

Take Sweden’s Spotify or the Estonia-based rival to Uber, Bolt. Both still heavily rely on U.S.-controlled app stores, operating systems, payment networks and other digital infrastructure.

And then there is the cloud: the data centers and servers that host websites, process data and route traffic. The vast majority of that market is dominated by Amazon, Microsoft and Google, whose infrastructure supports large parts of Europe’s digital economy.

Many corners of Europe would go dark if those services were shut down, with its economy, public administration and communications infrastructure struggling to function normally.

Working outside the stack

On Monday morning, I walked into the office with the slightly misplaced confidence that I had prepared for everything. My efficiency at work, admittedly during a very quiet summer week, took less of a hit than I expected.

I was still working from the office. I used an open-source, Linux-powered computer. I communicated by email through a Switzerland-based Proton address, browsed the web using the Norwegian browser Vivaldi and French search engine Qwant, wrote everything in LibreOffice and even tried Mistral’s generative AI assistant. And there was always a good old notebook.

I felt productive. But the workflow around me was not. The tools themselves worked perfectly well once I accepted that breaking years of habits would take time. The disruption ultimately came from stunted collaboration: meetings, messages, shared documents and the constant stream of small exchanges that keep a newsroom moving.

“It was like you disappeared,” one colleague would tell me later.

European alternatives do exist in that space. The problem is, just like for social media, they only work properly when everyone else uses them too or when competing systems are interoperable — something the EU has long tried to legislate and enforce, often against resistance from large technology platforms.

For this little while, despite technically being able to continue working, I became an outsider within my own team. I had to skip our routine video meetings on Slack and Teams, while missing messages sent over WhatsApp and Signal.

In a trade, a city and an era built around instant messaging, sending a good old SMS felt almost prehistoric — a reminder of the longstanding complaints from the European telecom industry about losing messaging and calling revenues to U.S. tech firms.

Ultimately, this underscored one of the major pinch points in Europe’s push for greater tech independence: digital sovereignty is not an individual project. It only works if people, companies and institutions move together.

On their own, individual efforts are more likely to leave people feeling digitally isolated rather than digitally sovereign.

Relax and relapse

And yet, there was something blissful about these three days.

The initial anxiety slowly gave way to a kind of peace. Of course, that feeling may only reflect that the experiment was temporary and my digital life had not been erased.

The experience nevertheless highlighted how much I had taken these tools for granted. I have placed all my eggs in the same digital basket: my communication channels, the tools I use to authenticate myself and access the digital world, my polished digital self and years of accumulated knowledge, all stored inside one sprawling digital safe.

The concern is no longer simply whether that safe could be broken into from the outside. It is also whether somebody could lock it — or empty it — from within.

Now, as you might wonder how I’ll act on what I’ve learned, I am strangely reminded of Covid.

Many of us emerged from that temporary era of lockdowns and involuntary limits full of healthy new habits and grand ideas about how our lifestyles should change, only to return remarkably quickly to our old routines.

Sadly, the same thing happened here. My iPhone came straight back into my pocket. Messages began flowing through again. My bank card returned to its usual place. Within hours, I had fallen comfortably back into the U.S. technology stack.

As I switched my smartphone back on, my screen lit up with incoming texts inquiring whether my little experiment was over. After 72 hours of old-school SMS exchanges, two different friends were both clearly eager to return to reality, sending me the same final text: “Back to WhatsApp?”

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.

The U.S. on Friday threatened action against the EU unless Brussels reins in its environmental and human rights rules, which Washington says unfairly burden American companies.

Acknowledging Brussels had made “some positive reforms,” Washington said the EU had “failed to fully address U.S. concerns,” and that it “will take any actions necessary to address unreasonable burdens on U.S. commerce.”

U.S. Ambassador to the EU Andrew Puzder piled on the pressure Friday, writing on X that “now it’s time for the EU to deliver.” He pointed to commitments made under last year’s Turnberry trade deal to ensure U.S. businesses do not face “undue restrictions” on transatlantic trade due to Brussels’ green regulations.

The dispute centers on two pillars of the EU’s corporate sustainability rulebook: the Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive, which requires large companies to address human rights and environmental harms linked to their operations and supply chains, and the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive, which requires companies to disclose sustainability-related information.

Brussels has scaled back both laws in its drive to cut red tape, but has stopped short of Washington’s demand to shield U.S. companies from their reach.

Last week, Puzder similarly attacked the EU’s Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism as a tariff on U.S. exporters. On Thursday, the White House also accused the EU and more than 40 countries of enabling Chinese goods to skirt U.S. tariffs by rerouting them through their markets.

A European Commission spokesperson told POLITICO that Brussels had made “considerable efforts” to explain its rules and highlight “its willingness to cooperate with the US to increase trade where possible,” but drew a line at changing its regulatory regime in response to U.S. pressure.

“We have been very clear and consistent on the fact that neither our rules framework nor our regulatory autonomy are up for negotiation,” said the spokesperson.

This story has been updated.

Koen Verhelst contributed reporting.

Ukraine’s normally copious grain exports are stuck in the country — caught between Russian attacks in the Black Sea, drought on the Danube and distrust among Kyiv’s closest allies. 

It’s bad news for global food prices.

“If it keeps going like this, you’ll have once again a global price increase of at least 25, 30 percent, with all the consequences we had in 2022 for world food inflation,” Ukraine’s Agriculture Minister Taras Vysotskyi said.

With missile strikes keeping cargo ships away from its ports, Kyiv is scrambling, yet again, for a way out via Europe. But its fallback routes run overland through EU countries, including Poland, Hungary and Slovakia, where previous waves of Ukrainian grain left governments facing a fierce domestic backlash.

The last surge of Ukrainian agricultural exports through Eastern Europe unleashed mass protests from farmers, particularly in Poland, who complained that cheap Ukrainian produce that was meant to merely pass through the region was instead ending up on their domestic markets. Poland imposed a ban on Ukrainian grain in 2023, alongside similar measures in Hungary and Slovakia, defying EU trade rules and souring relations with Ukraine.

Kyiv’s fresh pleas — and insistence that the grain would only transit through its EU neighbors — have prompted Warsaw to reassure its own farmers that none of it will end up in Poland. 

“We are doing everything to keep the embargo,” Polish Agriculture Minister Stefan Krajewski told Radio ZET on Monday, referring to Poland’s ban on Ukrainian grain imports.

Blocked bounty

One of the world’s largest grain producers, Ukraine typically sends more than 90 percent of its agricultural exports by sea. The disruption of that trade after Russia’s 2022 invasion helped drive global food prices to record highs. This summer, Russia and Ukraine have intensified attacks on each other’s ports and shipping across the Black Sea. 

Ukraine exported just 463,000 metric tons of grain in the first nine days of August — about one-third of the usual pace, said Vysotskyi. By November, when the new harvest comes in, the country risks running out of storage for grain it cannot export.

Kyiv asked the European Commission for €220 million last week to help its farmers weather the disruption.

The non-repayable grant would subsidize bank loans, allowing small- and medium-sized farms to hold on to their grain until shipping resumes rather than sell at a loss. A Commission spokesperson confirmed receiving the request but did not say whether Brussels would provide the money.

But money can only buy time. The bigger problem is getting ships back into Ukraine’s ports.

No grain vessel has entered the ports around Odesa since late July, even though they remain open. That month, a Russian missile struck a corn carrier leaving port, killing 10 people aboard. The vessel sank a week later.

Since the attack, crews have refused to sail, and shipping companies have suspended service.

“Ship owners and crews are just afraid. They are not ready to send the ships at all,” said Vysotskyi. “It’s not that it’s impossible to make it. They are just not ready to.”

Back to the border

With the Black Sea route stalled, Ukraine is negotiating with Romania, Poland, Hungary, Slovakia and Moldova to move more grain overland.

But those routes cannot simply replace maritime exports.

Moving grain by rail and road costs $50 to $70 more per ton, said Vysotskyi. When grain prices soared after Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022, exporters could absorb that premium. At today’s prices, they cannot.

“It’s nonprofitable,” said Vysotskyi.

Ukraine’s main alternative route, through Romania, is also running into constraints. Low water levels on the Danube are limiting the amount of cargo that can reach the Black Sea port of Constanța.

And moving more grain overland revives another problem for Kyiv: the political backlash in its EU neighbors.

Polish farmers blockaded crossings with Ukraine in 2023 and 2024, turning agricultural trade into one of the most politically explosive issues between Kyiv and one of its strongest wartime supporters.

But Ukraine, said Vysotskyi, is not asking for greater access to the EU market.

EU quotas now cap Ukrainian wheat sales to the bloc at 1.3 million tons a year, which, according to Vysotskyi, makes a repeat of the earlier influx “legally impossible.” Kyiv would seek a larger quota only if the EU itself proposed one, he added.

“There should be consensus inside the EU, with EU farmers,” he said.

Warsaw has been adamant that its grain embargo will stay. But while Ukrainian grain can’t be sold in Poland, the government has been working with Kyiv to help pass it through.

Talks with Kyiv “concern exclusively the smooth transport of Ukrainian grain to third countries, not its export or admission to the Polish market,” said Polish Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Maciej Wewiór, adding that Ukrainian grain remains critical for many countries in Asia and Africa.

Trust deficit

For Polish farmers, assurances that the grain will pass through the country uninterrupted are not enough, with farm groups arguing that some shipments supposedly bound for other countries never actually leave Poland.

Gustaw Jędrejek, head of the Lublin Chamber of Agriculture and one of the leaders of the border blockades, alleged that shipments are recorded electronically as delivered abroad while the grain itself is sold inside Poland.

“Documents travel to Lithuania, the Czech Republic or Slovakia — and the grain stays in Poland,” he said. The Polish government has consistently denied such allegations.

Asked whether he trusted assurances that additional Ukrainian grain would simply pass through the country, Jędrejek was unequivocal.

“I absolutely don’t believe it.”

A news organization and free speech nonprofit sued President Donald Trump over his social media platform’s program that offers paid early access to his posts after the scheme went live at the beginning of August.

The lawsuit, filed Wednesday in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York by the left-leaning nonprofit newsroom The Intercept and the Freedom of the Press Foundation, alleges the practice “is extraordinary, corrupt, and unconstitutional.”

The plaintiffs also say the controversial $100,000-a-month program violates their First Amendment rights to access presidential statements “on equal terms with other members of the press and public.”

In announcing plans to introduce the program, Truth Social — whose parent company Trump founded in 2021 after being kicked off social media platforms and owns a plurality stake in — described the initiative as valuable for “organizations that place a premium on immediate, verified access to information.” But critics allege it amounts to insider trading on advanced access to the president’s market-moving words.

The service gives traders and other entities high-speed access to the president’s Truth Social account in addition to the nine other most-popular accounts on the platform, including Vice President JD Vance, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt and Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

A spokesperson for Truth Social, which isn’t named as a defendant in the complaint but is referenced throughout it, said in a statement that “information from President Trump is disseminated by countless platforms and news outlets, many of which offer subscription APIs.”

“One of those channels is Truth Social, which was founded as an uncancellable haven for free speech after the President was unjustly deplatformed,” the statement continued. “Now, left-wing activists are trying to wrongfully weaponize the courts to censor him again and harm our shareholders.”

The White House did not respond to requests for comment.

The Intercept’s chief legal officer, David Bralow, in a statement said “nothing could be more antithetical to the free, independent press than the president charging for early access to his public announcement.”

Natalie Harp, an executive assistant to Trump who media reports suggest is responsible for authoring many of the president’s social media posts, is named as a defendant in the suit alongside deputy chief of staff Dan Scavino, the Executive Office of the President and the White House Office.

The subjects of the president’s Truth Social posts can range from squabbles with federal judges to hiring and firings within his administration and threats against foreign adversaries. They also provide a glimpse at the issues of the day that occupy Trump’s attention.

Such announcements have had the ability to sway markets, like when oil prices plunged after Trump posted that he was calling off an attack on Iran in April. He has also occasionally touted specific companies on the platform, causing their stock prices to rise.

The plaintiffs also express concerns that the program would give outlets willing to pay for the service an unfair advantage over other newsrooms and hinder efforts to catalog the president’s posts by scraping Truth Social.

The company said in an August earnings report that despite a $238 million loss in the second quarter of 2026, 10 customers had already registered for the service.

The program has caught the eyes of Democratic lawmakers on the Hill. Sens. Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.) and Mark Warner (D-Va.) introduced a bill Tuesday seeking to ban social media companies from selling early access to government employees’ accounts and specifically invoked the Truth Social program.

Polish Foreign Minister Radosław Sikorski on Wednesday threatened to reconsider Warsaw’s $50 million-a-year spending on Elon Musk’s Starlink network, joining a growing government backlash over new roaming restrictions set to hit Polish customers later this month.

“Hey, @elonmusk, big man, stop discriminating Polish users of Starlink or we might re-think paying you $50 million p.a. for your services,” wrote Sikorski on X.

The foreign minister’s anger follows Starlink’s decision to exclude Poland from a shared European roaming zone that covers more than 30 countries, including Germany, Czechia, Slovakia and Lithuania. Customers within the zone can take their terminals across borders without triggering international-use restrictions. But Polish users will now face extra requirements when traveling.

“Note: Poland is not included in the Europe region above. Accounts registered in Poland are treated as Poland-only for home-country use,” reads Starlink’s current guidance.

Polish Digital Affairs Minister Krzysztof Gawkowski also went after Musk, accusing Starlink’s parent company SpaceX of treating Poles as second-class customers and demanding it spell out the regulatory basis for the change.

“Poland is not a second-tier market. Polish customers are not second-tier customers,” Gawkowski wrote on X. If SpaceX blames “local regulatory requirements,” Warsaw expects it to point to the specific rules rather than offer “general explanations,” he added.

The new rules have applied to new customers signing up for Starlink since July 14, 2026 and will extend to existing Polish users on Aug. 17.

This isn’t the first time Sikorski and Musk have fought over Starlink. Last year, Musk told the Polish minister to “be quiet, small man,” after Sikorski warned that Warsaw could seek alternative providers for the satellite service it’s financing for Ukraine.

SpaceX did not immediately respond to POLITICO’s request for comment.

Fancy a morning coffee, orange juice or blueberry pancakes for your Sunday brunch? Prepare to fork out more for those items if Brussels’ plan to get foreign growers to align with the bloc’s pesticide rules holds.

An analysis by the European Commission’s in-house researchers confirms what non-EU farmers have been saying for months: A plan to prohibit any trace of some of the “most hazardous” pesticides banned in the EU for health and environmental reasons would lead to fewer and more expensive products.

Under a worst-case, hypothetical scenario — in which the non-EU producers don’t adjust to the rules — you’d have to pay 332 percent more for coffee and 82 percent more for citrus fruit, the Joint Research Centre said in an analysis published on Tuesday. The EU’s agricultural imports would decline by 41 percent and livestock farmers would also be hit with higher feed costs.

Even under more plausible scenarios envisioned by the researchers, in which external growers get on board to varying degrees, consumer prices would rise and EU agricultural imports decline. Though that would in turn boost domestic production, with exact numbers depending on producers’ willingness to adapt.

The findings lay out an unpalatable political choice for Brussels: Keep angry farmers’ tractors off the streets, or hit consumers’ wallets as they fulfill basic needs at the grocery store.

The proposed residue ban, which is part of the food and feed safety simplification package, is popular with European farmers seeking a level playing field with foreign growers — after all, it was partly designed to appease their ire over the EU’s trade deal with the Mercosur bloc of Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay, and Uruguay. In order to avoid leaving any residue on fruits and vegetables, producers would essentially have to stop using the substance in question.

However, critics say it clashes with global trade rules, as it essentially imposes EU rules on foreign producers, which is known as a mirror clause.

A wide range of international producer groups argue that the proposed ban goes beyond existing health protections in order to push a one-size-fits-all approach, ignoring the reality that growers around the world face different pests, climates and farming conditions.

“The choice is between berries that are available all year round — healthy, safe and at a fair price — or limited production at a high price,” said Amine Bennani, president of the Moroccan Association of Red Fruit Producers.

What Brussels calls an “alignment of standards,” he said in an emailed statement, amounts in practice to “a trade barrier.” Bennani also complained that the association has never been consulted, even though the legislation will affect 250,000 Moroccans working in the sector.

The concerns are not unique to Moroccan berry growers. South African fruit farmer association Hortgro and the South African Table Grape Industry argued that country’s grape exports are critical to livelihoods of thousands of people working in the sector.

Similar points were also raised by other producers, including the Canadian grains and pulse sector, Honduran melon agro-export sector,  Brazilian livestock and agriculture union and California’s almond sector.

The Commission said its aim is to prevent the most hazardous substances — banned for use in the bloc — from re-entering the EU through imports altogether by lowering their residue limits to a technical zero.

Both the Commission and the global producers agree on one point: Residue limits are already set to ensure safe levels of consumption for human health. Critics argue, though, that the EU executive wants to go well beyond existing safeguards for human health as it looks to block traces of substances banned for broader health and environmental threats.

Europe’s “very high standards” for safety “need to be adequately controlled,” said Elisabeth Werner, director-general of DG AGRI, at the POLITICO Sustainable Futures Summit just ahead of the proposal’s debut last year.

Adding further uncertainty for growers, the Commission has yet to specify which banned pesticides would be covered by the measure. The JRC study identified 18 active substances that could be subject to the residue ban, affecting 235 commodities and 86 countries.

The EU will make those decisions case-by-case, using impact assessments, said Commission spokesperson Eva Hrnčířová.

In an emailed statement, Hrnčířová did not directly address concerns about higher prices or reduced availability. Yet she stressed that any action “would take into account the importance of preserving the EU’s food security and possible international implications.”

The EU has reason to be concerned about international implications. Several countries, including Australia, Canada, Paraguay and the U.S., have challenged the measure at the World Trade Organization level, while the International Fresh Produce Association argues that existing global food safety standards already protect consumers while facilitating trade.

Some EU countries support mirror clauses as a way to be more fair to European farmers, who fear free trade deals like Mercosur allow competition from abroad that isn’t subject to the same restrictions. Paris has been especially vocal, already imposing national-level bans earlier this year on products with residual levels of some pesticides whose use is forbidden in the EU — restricting some potatoes and avocados from entering the country. So much for avocado toast.

MIRROR, ALBERTA — Nestled within a sleepy community campground and roadside cafe, hundreds of Canadians are gathered to imagine a new country of their own.

It’s July 1, and they’re hosting a family-friendly event that looks like a typical Canada Day celebration. Live music, a farmers’ market, hamburgers on the grill. Except there isn’t a Maple Leaf in sight.

Instead, people have wrapped themselves in Alberta’s flag, wave “we’re done” banners and wear “Trump 2024” and MAGA — Make Alberta Great Again — ball caps. This is an “Albertans’ Day” gathering at the Whistle Stop Cafe, which gained notoriety for bucking pandemic-era rules and which former Alberta premier Jason Kenney calls “ground zero” for the province’s fast-growing separatist movement.

Instead, people have wrapped themselves in Alberta’s flag, wave “we’re done” banners and wear “Trump 2024” and MAGA — Make Alberta Great Again — ball caps. This is an “Albertans’ Day” gathering at the Whistle Stop Cafe, which gained notoriety for bucking pandemic-era rules and which former Alberta premier Jason Kenney calls “ground zero” for the province’s fast-growing separatist movement.

And until Alberta separates, Moore places her faith not in Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney — whom she views as part of a Davos “cabal” — but in U.S. President Donald Trump.

“I kept thinking this: Trump is the only one that can save us.”

Moore’s affinity for conspiracy theories is shared by many, though certainly not all, of the separatists. Resentment toward the federal government in Ottawa is longstanding in Alberta. But a surprising new ingredient has turbocharged the separatist push: Trump and the increasingly toxic U.S.-Canada relationship. The separatists are furious about Carney’s friction with Trump and the fraying ties to their southern neighbor. Some even hope the Trump administration might help their cause.

Many separatists believe Trump’s presidency makes Alberta’s independence possible, with the United States a ready customer for its oil and gas should they split from Canada. One group, the Alberta Prosperity Project, is trying to seek a C$500-billion U.S. government loan to fund the province’s “seamless departure” from Canada.

“This isn’t your grandfather’s independence movement,” says Jeffrey Rath, a co-founder of the Alberta Prosperity Project and a longtime separatist activist who has sought to court the Trump administration.

Many separatists see a cultural kinship with the United States. They proudly share fake newspaper clippings that highlight the province’s history of early American settlers allegedly helping to shape a self-reliant, frontier culture that remains in Alberta today. They argue the Eastern provinces are more associated with European traditions than American ones.

While some object to Trump’s idea of making Canada the 51st American state, others embrace the idea.

“I like freedom and less taxes,” says Casey Phillips from Edmonton, Alberta.

Carney and his government are now working hard to convince skeptical Albertans their best prospects lie with a united Canada. He and Alberta Premier Danielle Smith, who called the Oct. 19 vote, are touting a new pipeline agreement to send western oil abroad. The effort may work with some swing voters, but the hard-core separatists aren’t likely to buy it.

“It will never happen because Canada’s a communist country and there will be 24 years of paperwork,” Phillips says of the pipeline project. “It’s all lies.”

The separatists have good reason to think the Trump administration could be an ally. In January, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent called Alberta a “natural partner for the U.S.” while referencing the province’s “great resources.”

“People are talking,” Bessent told conservative podcaster Jack Posobiec, nodding to the separatist movement. “People want sovereignty. They want what the U.S. has got.”

Rath says he has requested introductions to the U.S. Treasury Department and major financial institutions like JP Morgan Chase and Goldman Sachs to build a day one feasibility plan for Albertan independence, though it’s unclear if he has had any such conversations.

The Alberta Prosperity Project, however, has taken three trips to Washington, D.C., and Rath insists the group has met with “very senior level” officials, who he says have taken their information directly to the White House.

A State Department spokesperson said the department “regularly meets with a wide range of representatives. We do not anticipate any future meetings, and all department engagements are at our sole discretion.”

“As Ambassador to Canada Pete Hoekstra has said, the vote is a decision for the people of Alberta,” the spokesperson added.

Bessent made his comments amid heightened U.S.-Canada tensions; days earlier Carney had argued at Davos that middle powers needed to form new coalitions after the Trump-fueled “rupture” in the global order.

That episode inflamed the pro-America separatists, as did Carney’s subsequent use of the phrase “new world order” during a January trip to China to sign new energy and trade agreements. That phrase is catnip to those who fear the creation of a global government, and more conspiracy theories quickly seeped into Alberta’s separatist movement through Facebook groups and YouTube videos claiming Carney is steering the country toward communism and against the U.S.

But it’s also true that Alberta’s grievances with Ottawa began long before Carney jostled with Trump. They have been passed down for generations, rooted in a belief that the federal government has ignored, exploited or misunderstood the province since its founding.

Today, that resentment has become deeply personal. Separatists point to what they see as federal overreach and clean energy policies that have made life more expensive and undermined their economy.

Federalists, meanwhile, are alarmed that neighbors, friends, family, and sometimes even spouses, are “willing to betray their country,” in Kenney’s words.

Former Conservative MP Damien Kurek cautions against dismissing separatists as traitors. Instead, he argues, politicians should ask why so many Albertans feel abandoned by the federation.

For Kurek, one of the defining moments of Albertan anger came in 2021, when U.S. President Joe Biden cancelled the Keystone XL pipeline on his first day in office by revoking its cross-border permit.

The ripple effects spread throughout Kurek’s riding. He says mechanics had fewer oilfield trucks to repair and restaurants served fewer meals, while roadside motels sat empty and young families put off buying homes.

But what many Albertans remember most isn’t Biden’s decision. It’s the belief that Ottawa, under then-Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, failed to fight it.

“I was very frustrated with the Liberals, including many Liberals that told me that I just needed to accept it, that are still on the Liberal Cabinet benches today,” says Kurek, whose riding included Hardisty, Canada’s largest oil pipeline hub.

That moment reinforced a deeper belief among many of his constituents, he says: If our national leader won’t stand up for us when we need him most, the very “promise of Canada” was in question.

Many in rural Alberta feel like their communities live or die by decisions made thousands of miles away in Ottawa. But this was just another chapter in a much longer story.

Kenney, the former Alberta premier, traces Western alienation back to the province’s creation in 1905. He says Ottawa initially treated Alberta more like a colony than an equal partner, including delaying provincial control over its natural resources.

The modern separatist movement then took shape in the 1980s after former Liberal Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau introduced the National Energy Program, which raised taxes on oil companies and oil exports and shifted more of the industry’s profits from Alberta to Ottawa. The unpopular program was dismantled five years later, but Albertans didn’t forget.

When Trudeau’s son, Justin, became prime minister in 2015, his government introduced environmental policies that Alberta’s oil industry argued made it more difficult and expensive to build pipelines, expand production and attract investment.

Albertans’ sense of alienation also extends beyond energy policy. Many feel their votes carry less weight than those cast in vote-rich Ontario and Quebec, since that’s where federal elections are often decided. After repeatedly electing Conservative MPs only to see Liberal governments take power in Ottawa, some have concluded federal elections have little effect on Alberta’s fortunes.

That frustration is compounded by Canada’s equalization program, enshrined in the Constitution, which redistributes federal tax revenue to help less wealthy provinces fund public services. Because Alberta’s oil-rich economy is one of the country’s wealthiest, it has never qualified for those payments. At the same time, Ottawa collects more in federal taxes from Albertans than it spends in the province, which reinforces a decades-old belief that Alberta bankrolls the rest of the country while getting too little in return.

“It’s very scary to see what they’re trying to take from us, what they’re trying to control,” says Trina, a Red Deer resident who volunteers with a separatist group and who did not give her last name. “It leaves us with a lot of uncertainty. Nothing feels secure.”

Carney is aware of the challenge ahead. Even as he has warned Alberta against stumbling into its own Brexit disaster, he has sought to address the province’s most tangible concerns.

Last November, Carney signed an agreement with Alberta to work toward a new oil pipeline and soon after, delivered a sobering wake-up call to his Liberal caucus behind closed doors.

To the surprise of MPs in the room, Carney opened his remarks by addressing the specter of Alberta separatism, framing the pipeline deal not just as an economic win, but as a strategic necessity to keep the country together.

“He was emotional,” a Liberal MP, who was granted anonymity to discuss internal party matters, told POLITICO at the time. “You could hear a pin drop.”

It was a clear sign from the prime minister that the separatist movement was shaping his thinking — and federal policy.

“This was a no-BS kind of thing,” the Liberal lawmaker said. “This was coming from someone who grew up in that province, who understands that province, and who was very worried about the feelings of alienation.”

The speech also marked Carney’s first step in persuading Liberal supporters — many of whom had embraced Justin Trudeau’s aggressive climate agenda — that pipelines, increased oil production and energy exports were essential to Canada’s economic and geopolitical future.

Carney has made a similar pitch to the broader public.

“In Canada, we are strongest when we are united — when we look out for each other and ensure that no child, no family, no one is left behind,” Carney said in a speech to Canadians and his Cabinet in January. “This spirit of solidarity and generosity helps define us as a nation.”

Nine months later, Carney has backed up that message with action. Since taking office, he has rolled back several Trudeau-era environmental policies despite pushback from some Liberal MPs, including former environment minister Steven Guilbeault, who is leaving politics after accusing his party of “backsliding” on climate action. Last month, the West Coast oil pipeline got closer to fruition, after Carney’s government announced its partnership with Alberta would amount to a C$35 billion project in a bid to boost the province’s energy sector.

The policy shift is part of Ottawa’s effort to encourage federalists to send a strong message on Oct. 19, that they want to remain in Canada. In July, Carney made three trips to Alberta, two of which included photo-ops with Smith, Alberta’s premier. Both have been framing their pipeline pact as proof that Canada still works, for all its people, even as many separatists argue it comes a decade too late.

Federalists say the biggest risk in the vote isn’t necessarily that Alberta endorses moving toward separation; polls show about 30 percent of Albertans want independence. It’s that federalists don’t show up to vote since they assume victory. If turnout is low, a highly motivated separatist base could post an unexpectedly strong result, giving the movement new legitimacy and driving away private investment in the province.

“We can all think that the worst isn’t going to happen. We could put signs on our lawn and write poetry about Canadian unity. But honestly, unless people show up at the polls on Oct. 19, we could lose this referendum question,” says Eleanor Olszewski, a federal Liberal cabinet minister from Alberta.

Back outside the Whistle Stop Cafe, the conversations at Albertans’ Day drift from claims Carney wasn’t democratically elected, to beliefs the pandemic was orchestrated by global elites, to how a federal ban on assault-style firearms is meant to stop Canadians from rising up against the federal government.

One vendor sells knives, stun batons, tactical shovels, night-vision glasses and body shields, encouraging Albertans to protect themselves. Pickup trucks and SUVs are modified to look like sheriff’s vehicles with “Republic of Alberta” decals. Some separatists show off homemade T-shirts that read “skid mark Carney” or “pure-blood warriors” showcasing a white baby in the paws of a lion.

The antipathy toward Carney and enthusiasm for Trump even has some separatists ready to defend Trump’s wave of tariffs against Canadian goods.

Keith Walker, who is from a small farming community in southern Alberta, believes the only thing preventing Canada from becoming a communist country under Carney is Trump’s trade war.

Canada, in his view, is part of a group of governments that Trump is trying to dismantle alongside Venezuela, Cuba and Iran. “That’s why that’s happening,” Walker says of Trump’s tariffs; he and a friend are both wearing Trump 2024 hats.

The separatists’ longstanding grievances with Ottawa aren’t occurring in a vacuum. Populist forces have reshaped the globe over the last decade, amid Brexit and Trump and the pandemic, and they are now converging in Alberta.

Separatism has become a right-wing uni-cause.

“It is a perfect umbrella,” Kenney says, “for every obsession, paranoia and anxiety on the right.”

The Senate voted 86 to 11 to pass the sweeping Russia sanctions bill championed by the late Sen. Lindsey Graham on Friday, advancing legislation that would give the White House more leverage against Moscow as it seeks to end the war in Ukraine — and a brand new tariff tool.

Now that the bill has cleared the upper chamber, it’s up to lawmakers in the House to determine its fate when they return in September. President Donald Trump has already signaled he would sign the bill if it lands on his desk.

The bill, which Graham and cosponsors including Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) have worked to advance for more than a year, would issue mandatory sanctions not only on Russia’s leadership and energy sector, but also on abetters of Russia’s defense industry and so-called shadow fleet in an effort to curb the flow of cash to Moscow’s war chest.

Ukraine’s supporters on the Hill and officials in Kyiv have been urging its passage, arguing that it would deal a timely blow to Russia’s war efforts as Kyiv seeks to capitalize on a series of recent favorable turns in the war to end it altogether.

In comments on the Senate floor ahead of the vote, ranking member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and vocal backer of the bill Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.) stressed the “urgency” of the moment.

“The momentum is on Ukraine’s side,” Shaheen said. “Now is the time to put more pressure on Putin.” She added that the situation on the ground could turn back in Moscow’s favor within months — especially with assistance from foreign foes like China.

It has already been a long road for the sanctions measure, which Graham and Blumenthal first introduced in April 2025. The lawmakers negotiated for months with the White House, which wanted more control over what entities it could sanction, and by how much. In July, Graham announced — from Kyiv — that the White House had agreed to a revised version of the bill.

The new iteration of the bill includes broad authority for the president to waive any sanctions that are applied, as long as the White House provides a written certification that the waiver is “in the national interests of the United States” and a report outlining the basis for the certification.

Following a last-minute demand from Trump, lawmakers also added language to the bill to extend certain sanctions on Iran.

Graham’s sudden death just days after winning Trump’s green light spurred his fellow senators to support the legislation, which cleared a procedural hurdle at the end of the month by a wide margin.

But a provision in the bill that would grant the White House authority to issue 100 percent tariffs on top buyers of Russian oil, and countries facilitating sanctions evasion, nearly derailed the measure’s passage in the upper chamber before lawmakers left town for August recess.

An amendment pushed by Sens. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) and Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) that would have stripped the tariff language from the bill entirely failed in a 64 to 32 floor vote Friday.

Still, nearly one-third of the upper chamber voted in favor of striking the tariff language, highlighting Democrats’ worries about handing more tariff powers to a White House already eager to use that tool against Washington’s global allies and enemies. That Democratic discontent is likely a foreshadowing of a similar sticking point for lawmakers on the House side when they return from recess in September.

As Senate leadership tried to reach an agreement to fast-track consideration of the bill before the chamber adjourned for the summer, lawmakers opposed to the tariff provisions threatened to derail that effort over squabbles about what amendments should get a floor vote.

One of those amendments was an effort from Sens. Raphael Warnock (D-Ga.) and Bill Cassidy (R-La.), to add language curbing the tariff powers afforded to Trump in the bill. Warnock — who voted to advance the bill in July — had threatened to thwart Senate leadership’s effort to fast-track consideration of the legislation this week if his amendment didn’t get a floor vote.

But Warnock pulled the amendment at the eleventh hour Thursday evening after securing the Trump administration’s commitment to enact a clear off-ramp for countries hit with tariffs, according to a person familiar with the senator’s plans granted anonymity to speak about internal conversations.

That move may not go far enough to quell the concerns of Democrats in the House — some of whom have already expressed frustration over the provision.

House Foreign Affairs ranking member Gregory Meeks (D-N.Y.) and Rep. Don Beyer (D-Va.) issued a joint statement following the Senate vote slamming the current bill text as “unacceptable” and citing the broad waiver authority and tariff powers granted to the White House.

But the lawmakers vowed to “continue to seek a path forward that remedies this bill’s flaws.”