The Trump administration is telling foreign officials and others that it will not reschedule a summit between the U.S. president and Chinese leader Xi Jinping until the Iran war ends. A Washington-based diplomat privy to U.S.-China summit planning confirmed that the administration has made clear “the next dates for the Trump-Xi summit will only be proposed after the active part of the Iran conflict is over.” A Washington-based individual close to the administration also briefed on White House summit planning confirmed the administration shared that timeline. POLITICO granted both the people anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly about sensitive diplomatic discussions. The U.S. State Department directed queries to the White House. The White House denied the summit timeline was tied to the Iran war. “This is fake news. The United States and China are having productive discussions about rescheduling President Trump’s visit — announcements are forthcoming,” White House spokesperson Anna Kelly said. The Chinese embassy said it had “no information to provide” about the possible delay in summit scheduling. The long-anticipated meeting between Trump and Xi had originally been planned for the end of March, but Trump said Monday the meeting would be pushed back “a month or so” because “we’ve got a war going on.” On Thursday, he said it would happen in “about a month and a half.” Speaking to reporters on Wednesday, White House spokesperson Karoline Leavitt suggested the meeting might not take place until after May. “The president has some things here at home in May that he has to attend to, and I’m sure President Xi is a very busy man, as well, so we’ll get the dates on the books as soon as we can,” Leavitt said. Tying the summit preparations to the end of the Iran conflict could mean additional delays to a meeting intended to maintain stability in a fragile U.S.-China trade truce. As the war on Iran enters its fourth week, the Trump administration appears to be preparing for a longer conflict. The U.S. has made detailed plans for the deployment of ground troops onto Iranian soil, CBS News reported Friday. The administration is also moving to dispatch thousands of troops to the region. Trump told reporters Thursday he’s “not putting troops anywhere” but then added: “If I were, I certainly wouldn’t tell you.” “There are operational constraints to managing a war from a foreign country — particularly a hostile one like China,” said the person close to the administration. “It would be terribly awkward for Trump and Xi to transact in this climate.” On Friday, Trump signaled a potential wind-down in the Iran conflict in a Truth Social post, suggesting the U.S. could scale back its role while pushing allies to take on more responsibility in securing the Strait of Hormuz, the major commercial waterway that connects the Persian Gulf to the Arabian Sea. “We are getting very close to meeting our objectives as we consider winding down our great military efforts in the Middle East,” Trump wrote. Trump and Xi made progress toward heading off an intensified trade war in an October meeting in South Korea. During that meeting, Xi committed to Chinese purchases of U.S. agricultural products like soybeans and the elimination of many of Beijing’s restrictions on critical minerals exports. In return, Trump agreed to extend a pause on triple-digit tariffs on Chinese goods. Wendy Cutler, a former negotiator in the U.S. Trade Representative’s office, argued this work can continue even if Trump and Xi don’t meet again in person. “The stabilization part of this won’t necessarily be jeopardized without a meeting,” she said. “Now, if something happens in the war, either foreseen or unforeseen, there’s just lots of flash points that can threaten this truce, which are unforeseeable at this period.” Rush Doshi, former senior director for China and Taiwan in the Biden administration, said a meeting between the two leaders is important to strengthening and maintaining the bilateral relationship. “Without leader-to-leader communication to manage a relationship of this complexity until the war is over — and there’s no sense of when the war is going to be over — there’s a real risk the relationship is going to be less stable than people might have expected,” said Doshi, now at the Council on Foreign Relations.

BRUSSELS — Chinese goods continue to flood into the European Union as the bloc’s manufacturing base struggles to cope. The EU’s trade deficit in goods with China widened to €359.3 billion in 2025, up nearly a fifth from €304.5 billion in 2024, according to data published by Eurostat on Friday. The figure is the total value of all goods imported from China, minus the goods exported to the country. The widening deficit was the driven both by a 6.3 percent increase in imports from China, and a 6.5 percent decline in EU exports to China. The widening deficit exposes Europe’s inability to compete in industries ranging from basic chemicals to cars. In 2025, China’s global trade surplus in goods hit a record of nearly $1.2 trillion — with Donald Trump’s U.S. tariffs redirecting its export glut to more open economies like Europe. China has been on an inexorable economic ascent since joining the World Trade Organization in 2001. Neither the 2008 financial crisis, nor the recent deflation of a vast real estate bubble, has been enough to knock it off course. While Chinese businesses used to occupy the bottom of the value chain — assembling electronics, producing basic chemicals, or manufacturing low-end consumer goods — they’ve steadily moved to the technology frontier. Chinese champions operate in everything from electric vehicles to artificial intelligence and robotics. EU leaders are alert to the threat. Speaking at an EU industry summit in Antwerp on Wednesday, French President Emmanuel Macron called on the European Commission to act more swiftly to erect trade protections when China uses subsidies to give an unfair leg-up to its industry. “We have a big issue today. We are too slow,” said the French leader talking about the Commission’s lengthy probe into Chinese electric vehicles that resulted in the imposition of duties in late 2024. It was useless, Macron said, if the European Commission takes two years to find out that a Chinese company was relying on state aid to undercut its European competitors. “I mean, thank you, happy I was right, but it’s over. So we have to accelerate much more swiftly the process for these inquiries, clearly,” Macron added. France’s High Commission for Strategy and Planning estimates that a quarter of the country’s exports are “directly threatened” by Chinese competition. For Germany, that number rises to a third. The advisory body has recommended that the EU retaliate with a weaker euro — which would give exporters a boost — and across-the-board tariffs. Chinese Vice Premier He Lifeng seemed to offer an olive branch at the World Economic Forum in Switzerland last month. In a speech made in the wake of U.S. President Donald Trump’s threat to annex Greenland, He promised that China would uphold the international trade order and “open its door still wider to the world.” He also said that the government would move to fix economic imbalances that had sapped domestic demand and added to the export glut. But policymakers, both in EU capitals and the Berlaymont, are skeptical that China is serious about any shift toward household consumption. French Finance Minister Roland Lescure said this week that Chinese officials have been “saying the right things” with talk of “rebalancing of the Chinese economy with more consumption.” But, he told reporters: “We feel that so far, there’s been a lot of talk, but not many results yet.” It’s an attitude shared by top Commission trade official Joanna Szychowska who, at a conference last month, said the EU should not “all of a sudden become friends with China today because we have a shift in U.S. policy.” “China is very much focused on transactions. Now we have to ask ourselves the question of what transactions we can make — so what is our leverage, what is our strength?” added Szychowska, who is director for Asia, services and digital trade. Additional reporting by Zia Weise and Geoffrey Smith.

Mikhail Khodorkovsky is the founder of the New Eurasian Strategies Centre and co-founder of the Russian Antiwar Committee. The Russia-China partnership has no limits — if you believe the two countries’ leaders, that is. Reality, however, isn’t quite so cozy. An uncomfortable marriage of convenience, theirs is a relationship limited by opposing goals: President Vladimir Putin’s Russia wants to tear down what remains of the post-Cold War international order and refashion it in the Kremlin’s own image. Whereas China’s contrasting gradualist approach to creating a Sino-centric global system requires preserving stability, predictability and the semblance of a rules-based order. Putin’s in a hurry because he has a limited window of opportunity to play to his strengths by exploiting the divisions among what he calls the “Collective West.” However, his weaknesses are clearly visible: U.S. intervention in Venezuela, the Kremlin’s reluctance to defend Iran and the Assad regime’s fall in Syria in late 2024  are all part of a pattern — that of an overstretched, weakened Russia that’s becoming less reliable and less trusted among its allies in the global south. And while U.S. President Donald Trump sometimes frames Russia and China as a collective threat to the U.S. — when it comes to the rationale behind his Greenland policy, for example — Washington’s actually much more interested in shaping global dynamics with Beijing than with Moscow. The 2025 meeting between Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping in Seoul made clear that the Trump administration now sees value in separating the “Russia question” from the “China question,” and in building a pragmatic relationship of economic cooperation and Machtpolitik with Beijing. And though many experts dismiss this possibility out of hand, the Kremlin is worried by it — for good reason. For Russia, the implications of a U.S.-China rapprochement — even if based on convenience rather than conviction — are profound. Such a shift would relegate Putin’s Russia to the status of a secondary player on the international stage and sharply weaken its leverage — not least in Ukraine. The Russian leader’s dependence on Chinese supplies for machinery, equipment and the transit of goods essential to sustain his war has reached unprecedented levels. Without China, Putin’s war machine would have likely ground to a halt in 12 months or even less. Pool photo by Evgenia Novozhenina/AFP via Getty Images That’s why Moscow’s reaction to the Trump-Xi meeting was predictably bellicose, with Kremlin-friendly television channels trumpeting the fact that Russia’s new nuclear-capable missiles could plunge the world into ecological disaster or wipe out millions of people in a heartbeat — a sure sign Putin was rattled. True, the China-Russia relationship has strengthened significantly since 2022, and China has done little to rein in Putin’s aggression so far. Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi also reportedly told EU High Representative Kaja Kallas that his country didn’t want to see Russia defeated in Ukraine, as the U.S. would then concentrate its attention on Beijing. But the maintenance of the Moscow-Beijing partnership rests on the assumption that both countries have more to gain in challenging and resisting the U.S. together. And that’s now in question. It was Washington’s miscalculation to initially believe it could peel Moscow away from Beijing by offering concessions and engage China from a position of strength. But that strategy has changed, with Trump characterizing his most recent meeting with Xi as a “12 out of 10,” and enthusiastically accepting an invitation to visit China in April. The U.S. leader’s pragmatic approach is certainly closer to Xi’s style, which opens the door for Beijing to achieve its goals regarding trade and hegemony in its own immediate neighborhood. Moreover, neither is inclined to provoke military conflict with the other. Trump, for his part, has vowed to curtail America’s “endless wars” — even if he bombed Iran and threatened several neighboring countries. And while Xi has his eye on Taiwan, he has every reason to avoid war with the U.S. because of the risks to the Chinese economy. This is in stark contrast to Putin, who is locked into the logic of war in order to preserve power. His absolutist approach to diplomacy couldn’t be more different to Trump. Every time the U.S. pushed for a ceasefire in Ukraine to enable negotiations, the Kremlin reiterated its maximalist goals and stepped up its air attacks instead. At least Trump appears to have realized he can’t force Putin to the negotiating table with existing sanctions or limited military pressure. However many “constructive” phone calls they have, there’s no deal to be struck. At the same time, talk of Trump walking away from Ukraine has mostly died down in Washington. The U.S. leader remains committed to achieving a peace settlement, and appears to understand that Beijing’s leverage over Moscow now offers the best prospect of achieving this. The question is whether the “no limits” partnership with Putin still offers greater benefits for Beijing, or if China’s current interests lie in a pragmatic détente with Washington and Europe. With Europe eyeing the U.S. administration warily, China now has an opportunity to cement a long-term accommodation with the old continent. And that gives Europe potential leverage to persuade China to distance itself from an unpredictable “ally” and curtail the Kremlin’s neo-imperial aggression. After all, Beijing has no interest in Putin’s continued destabilization of Europe.

Lucas Guttenberg is the director of the Europe program at Bertelsmann Stiftung. Nils Redeker is acting co-director of the Jacques Delors Centre. Sander Tordoir is chief economist at the Centre for European Reform. Europe’s economy needs more growth — and fast. Without it, the continent risks eroding its economic foundations, destabilizing its political systems and being left without the strength to resist foreign coercion. And yet, despite inviting former Italian prime ministers Mario Draghi and Enrico Letta to discuss their blueprints to revive the bloc’s dynamism, member countries have cherry-picked from the pair’s recommendations and remain firmly focused on the wrong diagnosis. Europe, the current consensus goes, has smothered itself in unnecessary regulation, and growth will return once red tape is cut. The policy response that naturally follows is deregulation rebranded as “simplification,” with a rollback of the Green Deal at its core. This is then combined with promises that new trade agreements will lift growth, and ritual invocations of the need to deepen the internal market. But this agenda is bound to disappoint. Of course, cutting unnecessary red tape is always sensible. However, this truism does little to solve Europe’s current malaise. According to the latest Economic Outlook from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, the regulatory burden on European business has risen only modestly over the past 15 years. There has been no explosion of red tape that could plausibly account for the widening growth gap with the U.S. And even the European Commission estimates that the cost savings from its regulatory simplifications — the so-called omnibuses — will amount to just €12 billion per year, or around 0.07 percent of EU GDP. That isn’t a growth strategy, it’s a rounding error. New free trade agreements (FTAs) won’t provide a quick fix either. The EU already has FTAs with 76 countries — far more than either the U.S. or China. Moreover, a recent Bertelsmann Stiftung study showed that even concluding pending deals and simultaneously deepening all existing ones would lift EU’s GDP by only 0.6 percent over five years. From Mercosur to India, there’s a strong geopolitical imperative to pursue agreements, and in the long run they can, indeed, help secure access to both supply and future growth markets. But as a short-term growth strategy, the numbers simply don’t add up. The same illusion shapes the debate on deepening the single market. Listening to national politicians, one might think it’s an orchard of low-hanging fruit just waiting to be turned into jars of growth marmalade, which past generations simply missed. But the remaining gaps — in services, capital markets, company law and energy — are all politically sensitive, technically complex and protected by powerful vested interests. The push for a Europe-wide corporate structure — a “28th regime” — is a telling admission: Rather than pursue genuine cross-border regulatory harmonization, policymakers are trying to sidestep national rules and hope no one notices. But while this might help some young firms scale up, a market integration agenda at this level of ambition won’t move the macroeconomic needle. From Mercosur to India, there’s a strong geopolitical imperative to pursue agreements, and in the long run they can, indeed, help secure access to both supply and future growth markets. | Sajjad Hussain/AFP via Getty Images A credible growth strategy must start with a more honest evaluation: Europe’s economic weakness doesn’t originate in Brussels, it reflects a fundamental shift in the global economy. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine delivered a massive energy price shock to our fossil-fuel-dependent continent. At the same time, China’s state-driven overcapacity is striking at the core of Europe’s industrial base, with Chinese firms now outcompeting European companies in sectors that were once crown jewels. Meanwhile, the U.S. — long Europe’s most important economic partner — is retreating behind protectionism while wielding coercive threats. With no large market willing to absorb Europe’s output, cutting EU reporting requirements won’t fix the underlying problem. The continent’s old growth model, built on external demand, no longer works in this new world. And the question EU leaders should be asking is whether they have a plan that matches the scale of this shift. Here is what that could look like: First, as Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney argued at Davos, economic strength starts at home — and “home” means national capitals. Poland, Spain and the Netherlands are growing solidly, while Germany is stagnating, and France and Italy are continuing to underperform. What is seen as a European failure is actually a national one, as many of the most binding growth constraints — rigid labor markets, demographic pressure on welfare systems and fossilized bureaucracies — firmly remain in national hands. And that is where they must be fixed. It’s time to stop hiding behind Brussels. Next, Europe needs a trade policy that meets the moment. Product-by-product trade defense can’t keep pace with the scale and speed of China’s export surge, which is threatening to kill some of Europe’s most profitable and innovative sectors. The EU must move beyond microscopic remedies toward broader horizontal instruments that protect its industrial base without triggering blunt retaliation. First, as Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney argued at Davos, economic strength starts at home — and “home” means national capitals. | Harun Ozalp/Anadolu via Getty Images This is difficult, and it will come with costs that capitals will have to be ready to bear. But without it, Europe’s core industries will remain under acute threat of disappearing. Moreover, trade defense must be paired with a rigorous industrial policy. The Green Deal remains the most plausible growth strategy for a hydrocarbon-poor continent with a highly educated workforce. But it needs clarity, prioritization and sufficient funding in the next EU budget at the expense of traditional spending. “Made in Europe” preferences can make sense — but only if they’re applied with discipline. Europe must be ruthless in defining the industries it can compete in and be prepared to abandon the rest. That was the Draghi report’s core argument. And it boggles the mind that the continent is still debating European preferences in areas like solar panels, which were lost a decade ago. Finally, deepening the single market in earnest isn’t a technocratic tweak but a federalizing choice. It means going for full harmonization in areas that are crucial for growth. It means taking power away from national regimes that serve domestic interests. Any serious reform will create losers, and they will scream. That isn’t a bug — it’s how you know the reform matters. In areas like capital markets supervision or the regulation of services, leaders now have to show they’re willing to act regardless. And unanimity is no alibi: The rules allow for qualified majorities. EU leaders must learn to build them — and to live with losing votes. EU leaders face a clear choice tomorrow: They can pursue a growth agenda that won’t deliver, reinforcing the false narrative that the EU shackles national economies and giving the Euroskeptic extreme right a free electoral boost. Or they can confront reality and make the hard choices a bold agenda calls for. The answer should be obvious.

Dalibor Rohac is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington DC. As we approach the 10th anniversary of the Brexit referendum, the time has come to rebuild ties between the U.K. and the EU. In the words of European Parliament President Roberta Metsola, “in a world that has changed so profoundly,” the two parties must “exorcize the ghosts of the past.” They must work together on trade, defense, research and the many other matters disrupted by the U.K.’s withdrawal. But while letting bygones be bygones is certainly the right approach for the EU, the U.K. needs to have an explicit reckoning with the abysmal failure the Brexit project has been — both for the sake of improving its European policies but, more importantly, for the sake of getting its domestic politics on firm footing. Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney recently received a lot of acclaim for citing Czech playwright and former President Václav Havel’s “The Power of the Powerless” in his speech at the World Economic Forum, inviting the world’s nations and businesses to stop living in the lie of the rules-based international order. And that lesson applies here too: For the U.K. to finally move on, it must choose not to live in lies — especially the ones that fueled Brexit. And yet, both of the U.K.’s main political parties, Labour and the Conservatives, are treating Brexit as a sacred cow rather than grappling with the enormity of its failure. The Conservative leadership that oversaw the U.K.’s shambolic withdrawal from start to finish, and purged any internal dissenters in the process, are now owning its dismal results. The current Labour government, meanwhile, is taking baby steps to reintegrate the U.K. into the eminently valuable parts of Europe’s architecture, like the Erasmus program. Mark Carney recently received a lot of acclaim for citing Czech playwright and former President Václav Havel’s “The Power of the Powerless” in his speech at the World Economic Forum, inviting the world’s nations and businesses to stop living in the lie of the rules-based international order. | Fabrice Coffrini/AFP via Getty Images However, both groups are too afraid to explain why Brexit was a colossal mistake. And it leaves them vulnerable to the populist Reform UK party’s claim that the real error was opting for a departure that wasn’t sharp enough. It’s true that on all the fronts that motivated the vote in 2016, Brexit has failed to deliver: Britain’s departure was followed by a dramatic rise in immigration, reaching over 900,000 net in 2023. There’s no indication that extricating the U.K. from the EU’s regulations has injected the country with any economic dynamism. Since 2020, the British economy has grown more slowly than both the eurozone and the EU as a whole. And with a debt-to-GDP ratio over 100 percent, its fiscal outlook is just as depressing, if not more so, than its highly indebted European neighbors. Part of this is because during their time in power after the referendum, the Conservatives wasted precious political bandwidth on tertiary Brexit-related fights, like the Irish “backstop” protocol or the status of EU law in the British legal system. That was time that could have been used to undertake deep structural reforms, which would make the U.K. a more competitive economy. And of course, EU membership never prevented the U.K. from changing its zoning laws, cutting taxes, improving secondary education or pursuing any number of other supply-side reforms in the first place. To be fair, though, not everything was a lie. There were also some elementary miscalculations. The Brexit project of pursuing deep economic ties with rapidly growing economies in Asia and America did make some sense — in a predictable rules-based global trade system, that is. But that’s not the world we find ourselves in today. One would be hard pressed to find a worse time to embark upon a free-trade global Britain, turning its back on Europe to seize exciting opportunities overseas. The U.S. has gone from having paralyzed the World Trade Organization under both presidents Donald Trump and Joe Biden to extracting extravagant concessions and “remuneration” — as the former puts it — from partners under duress. And instead of a coveted free-trade deal that would solidify the “special relationship,” the U.K. was pressed to accept 10-percent base tariffs just to access the U.S. market. All the while, rather than leveraging fast economic growth in Asia, the U.K. has been confronted with an increasingly predatory China, and a global rush to secure and onshore supply chains. Of course, the U.K. continues to play a constructive role in European security — especially when it comes to aiding Ukraine — but its absence from the bloc also makes it harder for British companies to take part in the defense build-up currently underway. For example, the U.K. stayed out of the first iteration of the EU’s loan scheme, Security Action for Europe, and it may need to pay to participate in the second. Metsola is right — Europeans have every reason to seek a closer relationship with the U.K. But the real obstacle to closer ties lies on the other side of the English Channel. It’s a chorus of deafeningly loud voices shouting that the real Brexit, like Communism, was never tried, on the one hand, and the pusillanimity of those who understand Brexit was a failure but won’t openly say so for fear of political reaction on the other. And as the U.K.’s political establishment — including its current government — continues to follow Reform UK’s factually inaccurate bad-faith framing, they’ll simply empower its far-right leader Nigel Farage and his followers. Paradoxically, while support for Reform UK is now surging, the modest popular majority that delivered the Brexit result almost 10 years ago is now gone — in the case of older voters, quite literally so. Instead of treating Brexit as axiomatic, Britain’s political elites must refuse to continue living in the lie fabricated by its advocates. The point here isn’t necessarily to get mainstream political leaders to advocate for the U.K.’s return to the EU — that’s a story for another day. It’s simply to acknowledge the reality of how much this political gamble made the U.K. a lesser country. And until that moment comes, one must fear Britain’s relationship with Brussels will continue to be precarious, and its national politics dangerously unhinged.

The Chinese government has agreed to resume exports of key chips for the European auto sector, according to Dutch Prime Minister Dick Schoof. “We were informed by China that they will enable the resumption of supplies from Chinese factories from Nexperia,” Schoof told Bloomberg Friday on the sidelines of the COP30 climate summit in Brazil. The crisis was sparked in October when the Netherlands seized control of the Dutch-based chipmaker, a subsidiary of Chinese chip giant Wingtech, prompting Beijing to impose retaliatory export restrictions. Schoof told the newswire that the resolution was the result of cooperation between the Netherlands, Germany and the European Commission, as well as recent Dutch-Chinese diplomatic talks, alongside a trade detente between the U.S. and China. German auto firm Aumovio disclosed on an earnings call on Friday that it had been informed that it had received the necessary permissions to begin importing Nexperia’s chips.

Anchal Vohra is a Brussels-based international affairs commentator. Last month, the South Korean Ambassador to the EU took a gentle bow and launched a Korean movie weekend at an independent theater in Brussels. The opening film was inspired by the true story of the abduction of 23 Korean missionaries by the Taliban in 2007 — a reminder of the risks South Korea has taken to prove its worth to its most important strategic partner, the United States. Currently, however, Seoul’s ties with Washington are under stress. And as South Korea concentrates its energies on greeting its relations with the U.S. on surer footing, the country has little time for its allies in Europe. Since returning to office, U.S. President Donald Trump has adopted a mercantilist approach to trade, leaving Seoul increasingly trapped between the U.S. and China. He has demanded that Seoul pay $550 billion in investments “upfront” if it wants tariff relief, and that it substantially increase its defense expenditure if it wants to keep the U.S. forces (USFK) deployed as a bulwark against North Korea. America’s European allies are battling identical dilemmas, being forced to up their defense spending, accept tariffs and promise more than $600 billion in investment from EU in the U.S. Yet, it seems they’re unable to keep their key Asian ally interested in the bloc or NATO in the process. “The current government is very occupied” with sorting out economic issues at home, and is busy with “the Trump situation,” said Wooyeal Paik, a professor of political science and international studies at Yonsei University. “NATO-AP4,” he said, in reference to NATO’s four partners in the Indo-Pacific, “is not on the table.” This is surprising given that over the last three years, Seoul’s ties with NATO had advanced exponentially. Former President Yoon Suk Yeol wanted Seoul to be a global player, and had deemed further cooperation necessary to confront common security threats: “South Korea should no longer be confined to the Korean Peninsula but rise to the challenge of being what I have described as a ‘global pivotal state,’ one that advances freedom, peace, and prosperity through liberal democratic values and substantial cooperation,” he wrote. Under his leadership, South Korea shared intelligence with NATO on Moscow’s deployment of North Korean soldiers against Ukraine, enhanced cooperation on seemingly benign but increasingly charged files like hybrid warfare, and indirectly supplied much-needed ammunition to Ukraine when Europe fell short. There was even talk of an Asian NATO. This pro-NATO policy was in part intended to limit Moscow’s revanchism and to discourage China from invading Taiwan. But more importantly, from Seoul’s perspective, it was meant to curtail Moscow’s growing ties with Pyongyang. Seoul has long been worried about Russia supplying military technology to Pyongyang and employing North Korean soldiers and laborers who send money back home, thus aiding the cash-strapped regime. U.S. President Donald Trump has adopted a mercantilist approach to trade, leaving Seoul increasingly trapped between the U.S. and China. | Pool photo by Allison Robbert/EPA However, in a dramatic turn of events earlier this year, Yoon tried to impose martial law and was impeached soon after. Subsequent elections then paved the way for Lee Jae-myung — a leader with a rather different worldview, seemingly more open to rapprochement with Moscow and downgrading ties with NATO. So far, Lee has said he’ll pursue a “pragmatic” foreign policy centered on national interests, a part of which is maintaining ties with China — the country’s biggest trading partner. And to the surprise of NATO’s European members, Lee didn’t attend their high-stakes summit at The Hague this year. It appears the South Korean leader has prioritized the national economy rather Europe’s security concerns, and he appears reluctant to see security in the Euro-Atlantic and Indo-Pacific theaters as linked. Plus, there were already murmurs of dissatisfaction in Seoul with a foreign policy that sanctioned Moscow during Yoon’s tenure, with Lee himself reportedly warning against taking a side in the Russia-Ukraine war. He also described Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy as a “novice politician,” asking: “Why should we get involved in someone else’s war?” Lee sees Russia as a neighbor it must, somehow, reconcile with, not as an enemy. Along these lines, Russian Ambassador to South Korea Georgy Zinoviev had already predicted better ties between Moscow and Seoul once Yoon was impeached, and he was right: South Korea invited Russian President Vladimir Putin, as well as Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping, for this week’s Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit. But this doesn’t necessarily mean Lee intends to stop defense cooperation with Europe. South Korea will continue to sell weapons that free up European supplies for Ukraine. And Seoul’s supplies of ammunition to the U.S., which freed up American ammunition to be sent to Ukraine, were also critical to Ukraine’s war effort.  “South Korea wants to preserve the option of reopening relations with Russia in the future when conditions allow. This is why assistance was deliberately channeled indirectly, mainly through European partners and industrial contracts, rather than by direct lethal deliveries to Ukraine,” observed Arnaud Leveau, president of the civil society research institute Asia Centre. “Going forward, indirect support will remain the most realistic scenario. Contracts with Poland and the Czech Republic will continue, and these [will] allow Europe to free up stock for Ukraine,” he added. There is a sense, however, that the policies of South Korea’s new president are still taking shape. That even if domestic compulsions, and the fact that Trump has often expressed warmth toward his Russian counterpart, might have influenced Lee’s calculus, all is not lost. “For NATO and the EU, the way to keep Seoul engaged is through practical, low-visibility cooperation,” explained Leveau, listing cybersecurity, resilience, and industrial partnerships and discreet intelligence dialogues on maritime Southeast Asia as possible areas for collaboration. “These concrete areas matter more than big political slogans,” he said. And they may be the key to keeping one of Europe’s most crucial partners in Asia on-side.

U.S. President Donald Trump suggested he could potentially make concessions to China to alleviate trade tensions between the two economic powers. “Sure they’ll have to make concessions” if China does not want to be hit by extra tariffs on its exports to the U.S., Trump told reporters as he embarked on a tour of Asian countries. “I guess we will, too,” in order to reach a deal, Trump added. “We’re at 157 percent tariff for them. I don’t think that’s sustainable for them,” Trump said. “They want to get that down, and we want certain things from them,” he added. Trump is set to meet with Chinese leader Xi Jinping at the sidelines of the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation Summit in South Korea next week. Trump has also threatened to impose an extra 100 percent tariff on Chinese goods from November if China does not roll back its tightened restrictions on its rare earths exports. Asked what are the odds that he would press ahead with that extra 100 percent tariff, Trump replied: “I don’t know. I have no odds. I don’t think they would want that. It would not be good for them.” Trump will also address China’s purchases of Russian oil in the context of Moscow’s ongoing illegal war in Ukraine. “I’d love China to help us out with Russia,” he said. “We put very big sanctions on Russia. I think those sanctions are going to be very biting, very strong; but I’d like to see China help us out.”

Liam Byrne is chair of the Business & Trade Committee and a member of the U.K. Parliament. U.S. President Donald Trump’s state visit to the U.K. is no mere pageant. It is a test of whether Britain and America can enlarge the future, or if they will remain trapped in a tariff battle that serves neither party well. It was former Prime Minister Winston Churchill who warned in 1940:“If we open a quarrel between the past and the present, we shall find that we have lost the future.” This week, we must convince Trump that for all his unhappiness with America’s trade deals of yesterday, the future is the greater prize — and by working together, our countries can build a deeper partnership that helps keep the West safer, stronger and richer at a pivotal moment in world history. Prime Minister Keir Starmer did extremely well to ensure Britain was the first to strike the new “General Terms of an Economic Prosperity Deal” with the U.S. But we have to be honest: We’re now trading with our largest trading partner on terms that are worse than those we enjoyed before Trump took office. Industry called it “the best deal we could have hoped for under the circumstances.” But that phrase tells its own story. It means the best under duress, relief without permanence, and access on terms that, in some cases, are less favorable than those granted to our European neighbors. Even worse, uncertainty still gnaws at the future of our critical industries. Steel, aluminum and pharmaceuticals — all industries facing endless reviews — can’t plan investment against the specter of renewed tariffs. Boardrooms are hesitating; investors are holding back; jobs are hanging in the balance; and without clarity, capital may well migrate to safer harbors. This is why this deal can’t stop where it stands. It must be driven forward toward strategic alignment and commercial certainty during this state visit. The stakes are too high to deliver anything less — as was all too clear when Chinese President Xi Jinping gathered 20 world leaders to witness an extraordinary display of military and technology leadership in Tiananmen Square recently. We know that behind the tanks, troops, drones and hypersonic weaponry lies an invisible, formidable dark arsenal of AI capabilities — the armaments of tomorrow. With stagecraft, steel and silicon, China is making its claim to leadership clear. And unless Britain and America act, the commanding heights of the global economy will tilt East. This is the backdrop against which Trump’s visit must deliver. It is the moment to pivot from paper promises to strategic purpose and a binding bargain.   This new partnership has to be about more than tariffs. It must be about technology. As former Google CEO Eric Schmidt once said: “Technology is the power in superpower.” Britain and America have the building blocks for a formidable technology alliance: The U.S. boasts the world’s largest tech firms, deepest venture markets and broadest innovation ecosystem. Meanwhile, Britain is home to Europe’s most dynamic AI cluster, a world-leading life sciences base, universities of global caliber and the City of London’s unrivaled capital markets. Prime Minister Keir Starmer did extremely well to ensure Britain was the first to strike the new “General Terms of an Economic Prosperity Deal” with the U.S. | Andrew Harnik/Getty Images Alone, each is strong. Together, they could set the standards of the century. Therefore, the task in London this week is two-fold: First, enlarge the future. That means binding our nations around joint missions in AI, clean energy, biotech and digital trade. It means creating shared standards for data, procurement, labor and regulation. It means linking our research, finance and industrial capacity, so that when the world writes its rules, it is our rules — and our values — that prevail. Second, we must harness the promise of tomorrow to tackle the perils of protectionism today. Britain should press Trump to grant it the same terms as the EU in order to end the tariff uncertainty that still confronts our key industries, and provide the predictability investors require. Tariff relief alone isn’t enough; what matters is tariff parity — and the confidence it can unlock. So, let us be clear. This visit isn’t about gilded dinners or ceremonial splendor — though that is what will capture the media’s attention. Rather, it is about whether Britain and America can summon the imagination to expand the future and the discipline to settle the past. If we succeed, we’ll not only close the tariff gap but anchor Western leadership in the technologies that matter most. The lesson from history couldn’t be clearer: If we don’t shape the future, others will. And if technology is, indeed, “the power in superpower,” then only a U.S.-U.K. bargain, forged during this state visit, can safeguard Western leadership through tomorrow.

U.S. President Donald Trump said he is ready to impose “major sanctions” on Moscow if NATO members stop purchasing Russian oil.  In a letter to alliance members, which he published on his social network Truth Social, Trump wrote: “I am ready to do major Sanctions on Russia when all NATO Nations have agreed, and started, to do the same thing, and when all NATO Nations stop buying oil from Russia.”  He added that oil purchases by NATO states have been “shocking,” arguing that it “greatly weakens your negotiating position, and bargaining power, over Russia.” Trump said he believes ending Russian oil purchases, combined with the imposition of tariffs on China of 50 percent to 100 percent — by NATO members and the U.S. — would help bring an end to what he called a “ridiculous war.” Trump, promised in his election campaign that he would end the war within a day, concluded his statement Saturday by saying that if NATO followed his plan, the war would “end quickly.” Just this week, several European leaders were confident that they had convinced Trump that Russian President Vladimir Putin is not interested in ending the war and has to be forced to the negotiating table, officials and diplomats told POLITICO. In a flurry of diplomatic visits, the leaders discussed new financial restrictions and plans to cut off the flow of Russian oil and gas.