Nobel Peace Prize winner María Corina Machado emerged from hiding in Venezuela to collect her award in Oslo. The Venezuelan opposition leader fled her home country by fishing boat to the Caribbean island of Curaçao, then flew by private plane to Norway via the U.S., according to the Wall Street Journal. In a video she posted Thursday around 2 a.m., Machado greeted a cheering crowd from the balcony of Oslo’s Grand Hotel, the venue that annually hosts the Nobel Peace Prize ceremony. Machado missed Wednesday’s event, where her daughter accepted the prize on her behalf. It was Machado’s first public appearance since January, after spending months in hiding in her home country. After arriving in Oslo, Machado met Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre. In a joint press conference Thursday morning, Støre praised the Nobel prize winner: “I would like to salute you … for your struggle. It has cost you, your family and your people a lot.” “I am very hopeful Venezuela will be free. We will turn the country into a beacon of hope and opportunity of democracy,” said Machado, who was seeing her family for the first time in 16 months. In 2023, she was disqualified from running for Venezuelan president against authoritarian leader Nicolás Maduro — prompting her to back candidate Edmundo González, who lost to Maduro in an election that observers described as flawed. González later fled the country for Spain. Machado recently praised Donald Trump for his stance against Venezuela’s authoritarian government, after the U.S. president said Maduro’s days in office were numbered. The Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to Machado for her “tireless work promoting democratic rights for the people of Venezuela and for her struggle to achieve a just and peaceful transition from dictatorship to democracy.”

President Donald Trump ratcheted up his threats against Colombia on Wednesday, telling reporters Colombian President Gustavo Petro is “next” in the White House’s regional campaign against drug trafficking. While initially, Trump told reporters “I haven’t really thought too much about” Petro, his comments quickly swerved into serious saber-rattling against the Colombian leader. “Colombia is producing a lot of drugs,” Trump said. “So he better wise up or he’ll be next. He’ll be next soon. I hope he’s listening, he’s going to be next.” Trump’s comments mark a sharp escalation of Trump’s threats against the Colombian leader. In a conversation with POLITICO earlier this week, the U.S. president floated expanding his anti-drug trafficking military operation — which have so far been focused on Venezuela — to Mexico and Colombia. Trump has overseen a slate of strikes against alleged drug boats in the Caribbean and Pacific Ocean since September and launched a massive buildup of military power off the coast of Venezuela in an attempt to pressure the country’s president, Nicolas Maduro, to leave office. Tensions between Trump and Petro escalated this fall amid the U.S.’s aggressive campaign against drug trafficking in the region. The Trump administration decertified Colombia as a drug control partner and revoked Petro’s visa in September, slashing aid to the country and bashing its leader as an “illegal drug dealer” the following month. Though Trump has made clear he wants Petro out of office, he could get his wish without having to follow through on his threats. The Colombian leader is term-limited — and the country is set to head to the polls for its presidential election in May. The Colombian embassy did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

BELÉM, Brazil — Grip the gear switch, twist, then silently glide into the potholed street. This fully electric, Caipirinha-colored car embodies the hope and confidence that large, developing economies like Brazil have zapped into the COP30 U.N. climate conference — and the anxieties and anger this optimism is generating in the West. I took a test drive of the BYD Dolphin Mini, the Chinese carmaker’s most popular model in Brazil. It comes with a stripped-down dash, chunky dials and a rotating screen display. Solid, whiz-bang modernity and, at just under 120,000 Brazilian Reals (around $22,500), cheap enough to appeal to a growing market of professionals — a target demographic of the company — even in one of Brazil’s poorest regions. Bringing all the governments of the world — bar the United States — to Brazil has shown that the doom and gloom over the cost of doing something to stop climate change is a peculiarly Western pathology. For many of the other nations gathered at the conference, whether they’re buying or selling, it’s the opportunity of the age. Countries like Brazil, India, Indonesia and Pakistan — so long dragged backwards by structural economic problems — are finding new energy and investment, job opportunities and cheap, clean consumer products thanks to the technologies that have grown out of efforts to stop global warming. China is the biggest beneficiary. Beijing is growing its sphere of influence in developing countries like Brazil and building a market for its new tech — as well as rattling the old powers in the West and feeding U.S. President Donald Trump’s allegation that climate efforts are a stalking horse for the Chinese century. Jobson Machedo was too busy to care about that, though. Machedo, BYD’s tattooed trade and marketing manager for northern Brazil, and I took a drive on Nov. 11, the day after the COP30 summit opened here in the Amazonian city of Belém. He was planning the festivities for the next day’s grand opening of their new showroom in the city. BYD’s current space in Belém had opened less than two years earlier, but it was already way too small. Just up the road was a giant new glass-fronted building, big enough to rival any of those of the American, Japanese and European carmakers in Belém’s moto district. “BYD in Brazil is trying to make a party,” Machedo said. The concrete was still wet, and workers were thumping down pavers across the vast acreage of the sales lot. But the guests were coming. It was time to sell some cars. Since opening a showroom in São Paolo in 2022, BYD, China’s biggest carmaker, has opened more than 200 across the country, selling electric and hybrid cars. In Pará, a huge state dominated by farms and rainforest, BYD plans to open four new spaces next year alone, said Machedo. In November, the company began producing cars at its first Brazilian factory — on the site of a former Ford plant. On an average day on Machedo’s lot, two or three cars get sold. On Saturdays, when he hires a DJ and puts out food — what he calls the “BYD experience” — sales often hit double digits. BYD — marketed under the slogan “Build Your Dreams” — has become one of the top selling brands in the country in just two years. BYD’s growth in Brazil is a sign of a rapidly shifting world. For the past 150 years or more, the world’s energy system was dominated by fossil fuels. Clean energy and electrification have given that system a competitor. “This is a turn of events that have a deep historical [and] political meaning” said French philosopher Pierre Charbonnier, author of the recent book Towards the Ecology of War, in which he explores this new paradigm. “It means that it is possible to build power, influence, standing, security on a … ground that is not fossil fuel anymore.” The United States is the world’s largest fossil fuel producer, which makes the growth of green energy a threat to the country’s economic power and other forms of global dominance. To make matters worse for the United States, China is by far the dominant force in the clean energy space. Trump officials have sought to mitigate this threat by dissuading other countries from pursuing clean energy. “Climate and geopolitics are the two sides of the same thing,” said Charbonnier. For a country like Brazil, this new world affords them the opportunity to play both sides. China is Brazil’s largest trading partner. But the U.S. is still its biggest investor. Brazilian officials have been trying to ease tensions with the White House over a jail term handed to Trump ally and President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s predecessor Jair Bolsonaro for a Jan. 6-style coup attempt in 2023. “We [are] quite clear that we don’t want to choose sides. We really want to make business with both of them and to have good relations with both of them,” said a Brazilian government official close to Lula, who was granted anonymity as they were not authorized to speak publicly. On the other side, the benefits of working with China are clear. Getting local factories is a key part of Brazil’s strategy for harnessing Beijing’s enormous global clean energy ambitions. Long before China arrived with its electric cars, Brazil — a country of 213 million people — insisted that access to its market for European and American companies required homegrown manufacturing, said Tim Sahay, co-director of the Net Zero Industrial Policy Lab at Johns Hopkins University. “This is Brazil’s playbook that other countries would do well to adopt for their own green development goals” he said. Building the clean energy manufacturing sector at home not only secures employment, but skills and technical expertise. Great Wall Motors, another large Chinese automaker, also opened a new plant in Brazil this year. The Chinese wind turbine maker Goldwind is expanding in the country, too. This is coming even as some Western manufacturers leave town after sustaining big losses, with some reports blaming high tax, labor and logistics costs. “They were closing those big factories,” said the Brazilian official, “causing huge unemployment. And now we have the Chinese willing to come and open these big electric car factories and they have all the support of President Lula because they’re moving the economy, generating jobs, usually in poor areas in Brazil.” Other countries are also seizing the opportunity. Since 2022, Chinese companies have announced plans to invest at least $227 billion in green manufacturing projects outside the country, according to a report co-authored by Sahay. It’s a staggering number that the researchers pointed out compared favorably in scale to the U.S. post-war reconstruction funding in Europe under the Marshall Plan. China’s project is equally, if not more, ambitious: to reconstruct the global energy system. And the benefits go far beyond jobs. Clean cheap energy from solar panels can help make energy affordable to more people and in remote places. It can also build new industrial centers, allowing countries that have been focused on resource extraction to shift toward higher-value, and in some cases less polluting, industries. Chinese firms have poured money into battery projects in Indonesia and Hungary and, in the Gulf, manufacturing for solar and green hydrogen. In Pakistan, the gas price crisis unleashed by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine set in motion an unplanned solar power boom, with Chinese panels blossoming on factory roofs and homes across the country. On the opening day of COP30, the Brazilian diplomat running the talks, André Aranha Corrêa do Lago, praised China for “lowering the price of all these essential elements in the transition. If the solar panel now costs 90 percent less than a few years ago, much more people in the developing world can afford them. You need less resources to get this done.” The U.S. is doing its best to counter these dynamics. A contrast between BYD’s fortunes in Mexico and Brazil shows how the U.S. can and will use its leverage. Mexico was, until recently, BYD’s largest overseas market thanks to liberal trade policies. In September, after pressure from the Trump administration, Mexico said it would raise a 50 percent tariff on Chinese cars. A planned BYD factory project there has also stalled. The auto industry is “really the battleground for a lot of these superpowers competing in Mexico,” said Rolando Fuentes, an energy professor at the EGADE Business School in Monterrey. Meanwhile, Europe is caught in the middle, and the political realities of clean industry could not be further from those in Brazil. The continent has in no way embraced the fossil fuel boosterism of the U.S. under Trump, but the conversation on climate has been wrapped into a broader tale of industrial decline, high energy prices and anxiety about Europe losing its place as a leading industrial producer. The EU is deeply concerned about its clean energy sector, which has lost market share and whole industries to China. Distressed automakers are concerned about the influx of Chinese electric cars, and the EU has raised tariffs on them. But this has a cost. Trade barriers against Chinese electric vehicles in favor of its own automakers makes cutting emissions more expensive. “From a climate perspective” one of the biggest threats to global progress is “the decision by some countries not to deploy cheap, readily available clean technologies,” said Li Shuo, the director of China Climate Hub at the Washington-based Asia Society Policy Institute. Here in Brazil, on the other hand, the story of climate change is at least partly one of hope. The drive in the BYD Dolphin had to be short. Machedo needed to return to party planning. I asked him about whether recent cultural and political tensions with the United States meant that Brazilians were biased toward Chinese cars. He was confused. Brazilians don’t care about things like that, he said. People still want “confident” American brands like Chevrolet and Ford, he said, because Brazilians “have that mongrel syndrome” — a phrase Brazilians use to describe their collective sense of inferiority compared to the rest of the world. “But today this is changing.” Back in the showroom, they were playing Frank Sinatra’s New York, New York — one of Trump’s favorite songs. There was little else that would have pleased the president’s ear. Zia Weise contributed reporting from Belém.

LONDON — Criminal networks are “weaponizing children” to commit torture and murder by recruiting them through multiplayer video games and smartphones — and parents often have no idea what’s happening, the boss of Europe’s law enforcement agency warns.  These groups now pose the greatest single criminal threat to the European Union because they destabilize society by targeting children and destroying families, said Catherine De Bolle, executive director of Europol.  “The weaponization of children for organized crime groups is what is going on at the moment on European soil,” she said in a joint interview with POLITICO and Welt. “They weaponize the children to torture or to kill. It’s not about petty theft anymore. It’s about big crimes.”  The “worst case” Europol has seen was of a young boy who was ordered “to kill his younger sister, which happened,” she said. “It’s cruel, we have never seen this before.”  She even suggested that children and young people are being used by hostile states and hybrid threat perpetrators as unwitting spies to eavesdrop on government buildings.  The Europol chief is in a unique position to describe the criminal landscape threatening European security, as head of the EU agency responsible for intelligence coordination and supporting national police. In a wide-ranging discussion, De Bolle also cautioned that the growth of artificial intelligence is having a dramatic impact, multiplying online crime, described how drug smugglers are now using submarines to ship cocaine from South America to Europe, and described an increasing threat to European society from Russia’s hybrid war.  De Bolle’s comments come amid an ongoing debate about how to police the internet and social media to prevent young and vulnerable people from coming to harm. The greatest threat facing the EU from organized crime right now comes from groups that have “industrialized” the recruitment of children, she said: “Because [they are] the future of the European Union. If you lose them, you lose everything.” FROM GAMING TO GROOMING Criminals often begin the process of grooming children by joining their multiplayer video games, which have a chat function, and gaining their trust by discussing seemingly harmless topics like pets and family life.  Then, they will switch to a closed chat where they will move on to discussing more sinister matters, and persuade the child to share personal details like their address. At that point, the criminals can bribe or blackmail the child into committing violence, including torture, self-harm, murder and even suicide.  Europol is aware of 105 instances in which minors were involved in violent crimes “performed as a service” — including 10 contract killings. Many attempted murders fail because children are inexperienced, the agency said. “We also have children who do not execute the order and then, for instance, [the criminals] kill the pet of the child, so that the child knows very well, ‘We know where you live, we know who you are, you will obey, and if you don’t, we will go even further to kill your mother or your father,’” De Bolle warned.  Criminals will also offer children money to commit a crime — as much as $20,000 for a killing, sometimes they pay and sometimes they don’t. While these networks often target children who are vulnerable because they have psychological problems or are bullied at school, healthy and happy children are also at risk, De Bolle said. “It’s also about others, youngsters who are not vulnerable but just want new shoes — shoes that are very expensive.”  Sometimes young people are even recruited for hybrid war by state actors, she said. “You also have it with hybrid threat actors that are looking for the crime as a service model — the young perpetrators to listen to the foreign state, to listen to the communication around buildings.” Once police catch a child, the criminals abandon them and move to groom a new child to turn into a remote-operated weapon.  “Parents blame themselves in a lot of cases. They do not understand how it is possible,” she said. “The problem is you don’t have access to everything your child does and you respect also the privacy of your children. But as a parent, you need to talk about the dangers of the internet.” DRUGS AND AI ARE ALSO A PROBLEM Among the new criminal methods crossing Europol’s desks, two stand out: The use of so-called narco-submarines to smuggle drugs like cocaine from South America into the EU and the growth in AI technology fueling an explosion in online fraud that enforcement agencies are virtually powerless to stop.  Instead of shipping cocaine into the ports of Hamburg, Rotterdam and Antwerp through containers, criminals have diversified their methods, De Bolle said. One key route is to sail semi-submersible vessels from South America to Europe’s North Atlantic coast, where speedboats meet them and offload the illegal cargo via Portugal, according to Europol’s information.  While Europe now is “overflooded with drugs,” criminal organizations may make more money, more easily through online fraud, she said. “Artificial intelligence is a multiplier for crime,” she said. “Everything is done a thousand times more and faster. The abuse of artificial intelligence lies in phishing emails — you do not recognize it very easily with phishing emails anymore because the language is correct.”  She said “romance fraud” is also “booming,” as “people look for love, also online.” “With deepfakes and with voice automation systems, it’s very difficult for a law enforcement authority to recognise that from a genuine picture. The technology is not there yet to [tell] the difference,” De Bolle added.  De Bolle said Europol needed to be able to access encrypted phone messages with a judge’s authorization to disrupt these criminal networks. “When a judge decides that we need to have access to data, the online providers should be forced to give us access to this encrypted communication,” she said. Otherwise, “we will be blind and then we cannot do our job.”

It’s the political battle of the year: Germany vs. Brazil! German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said he and his nation’s press were oh-so happy to return home from U.N. climate talks in Belém, Brazil, in remarks that triggered a political firestorm. “We live in one of the most beautiful countries in the world. Last week I asked some journalists who were with me in Brazil: Which of you would like to stay here? No one raised their hand,” Merz said upon returning from Brazil. “They were all happy that, above all, we returned from this place to Germany.” Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva didn’t take that slight lying down. “He should have gone dancing in Pará,” Lula said about the state where Belém is situated. “He should have tasted Pará’s cuisine. Because he would have realized that Berlin doesn’t offer him 10 percent of the quality that the state of Pará offers.” But which is the better country? POLITICO took (an entirely unscientific) look at five key areas to see whether it’s Berlin or Rio de Janeiro, Beckenbauer or Pelé, and currywurst or feijoada that ultimately comes out on top. FOOD AND DRINK Vegetarians are the biggest losers here. Germany’s meat-driven cuisine is known for Sauerbraten, a heavily marinated dish usually made with beef and served with Knödel (potato dumplings, since you asked). They’ve also got Currywurst (sliced sausage covered in ketchup and curry powder) and Schnitzel (a thin, breaded slice of fried meat), along with countless ways to prepare potatoes, and also breads. Don’t forget the breads. Would you rather go for a Schnitzel with beer or a feijoada with fresh orange juice? | Ferdinand Knapp/POLITICO Brazil’s cuisine is, somehow, even more meat-heavy. Brazilians love a good churrasco (barbecue) and their daily feijoada (a stew of black beans with pork and beef, served with white rice). The South American country also offers a dazzling array of fresh juices, made from tropical fruits most tourists have never heard of — and, of course, delicious Caipirinhas if you’re looking for something with a bit more punch. Germany can match that, however, with its world-renowned beer culture (more on that later). On the dessert front, German cakes are great, but Brazil’s açai bowls — a dish made of frozen and mashed fruit of the açai palm — have made it to European stores and hipster brunch cafés. It’s a narrow win for Brazil, but they do lose points for putting banana and chocolate on pizza. Brazil: 8 out of 10 Germany: 6 out of 10 SPORTS Brazil and Germany are two of international football’s heaviest hitters, and the Seleçao edges Die Mannschaft in the number of FIFA Men’s World Cups won, by 5 to 4. Brazil also beat Germany 2-0 in the 2002 World Cup final in Japan. But (and it’s a big but) in the 2014 World Cup semifinal, Germany crushed Brazil 7-1 at home in Belo Horizonte. The game was a major embarrassment for Brazil, and the national football team has arguably never recovered. After decades of iconic Brazilian players, from Pelé to Jairzinho to Sócrates to Zico to Romário to Ronaldo to Ronaldinho, the talent pipeline has run somewhat dry. Germany has produced some iconic players of its own — see Gerd Müller, Franz Beckenbauer, Lothar Matthäus and Manuel Neuer — but Brazil edges it here. Germany has also won two Women’s World Cups, to Brazil’s zero. While the countries don’t directly face off too often in other sports, two of the most legendary drivers in Formula One history — Ayrton Senna and Michael Schumacher — hail from Brazil and Germany, respectively. World famous Maracanã Stadium in March 2014, just months before the World Cup in Brazil. | Ferdinand Knapp/POLITICO Senna won three world championships before his untimely death in a crash in 1994, while Schumacher won seven titles before retiring in 2012. He suffered a serious brain injury in a skiing accident in 2013 and has been in private treatment ever since. On the tennis court, German stars Steffi Graf and Boris Becker won a combined 28 individual grand slam titles, which dwarfs the three won by Brazil’s best-ever player, Gustavo Kuerten. Brazil: 8.5 out of 10 Germany: 9 out of 10 CULTURE In the battle of the carnivals, Rio de Janeiro has the clear advantage over Cologne, not just in terms of the number of participants and visitors, but also in that you’re unlikely to have to wear your winter coat under your colorful costume in Rio. Brazil’s northeastern city of Salvador also boasts of having the world’s largest street carnival. However, carnival is important in both countries and is even dubbed “the fifth season” in Germany. Germany scores strongly because of Oktoberfest, which is of course mostly held in September (who said German efficiency was a myth?) and is the biggest celebration of beer, sausages (and flatulence) on the planet. It also gives us the annual sight of the chancellor raising aloft a massive festbier. In the battle of the carnivals, Rio de Janeiro has the clear advantage. | Ferdinand Knapp/POLITICO Not to be outdone, Brazil has its own Oktoberfest in Blumenau, a city in Santa Catarina state. Local authorities say it’s the second-biggest Oktoberfest in the world. Don’t forget Germany’s famous Christmas markets, although the impact has been dulled by the fact that you can now find them across Europe. Brazil: 9 out of 10 Germany: 7 out of 10 ECONOMY The shine has faded off what was once Europe’s superstar economy. Germany’s famed industry has been battered by the twin shocks of soaring energy prices in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and China’s turn toward high-tech manufacturing. The Asian country, Germany’s largest trading partner, is increasingly becoming a competitor and was the world’s largest exporter of cars in 2023. As a result, the German economy has barely grown since 2020, making it the worst-performing major economy in the EU. Brazil shines by comparison, having registered brisk growth of around 3 percent the last two years, and this year gross domestic product is expected to expand by around 2.2 percent. The South American country is an agricultural powerhouse and the world’s largest exporter of soybeans. It also holds the distinction of being one of the few developing countries to grow a domestic aerospace industry, with the world’s third-largest civilian airplane maker, Embraer. Brazil: 6 out of 10 Germany: 2 out of 10 NATURE Germany has diverse landscapes, from the pine woods of the flat north to the famous picture-postcard Black Forest in the hilly south. Brave tourists can take a swim in the (always refreshing!) North and Baltic Seas or hike and ski in the beautiful Alps. But none of this can match the biodiversity of Brazil’s massive Amazon rainforest (often called the “lungs of the world”) and the coast’s long, panoramic sandy beaches. And don’t forget Iguazu, the largest waterfall system in the world. The vibrating city of Rio de Janeiro alone combines natural contrasts you won’t find in Germany: The world-famous Copacabana and Ipanema beaches and the lush rainforest of Tijuca National Park are right next to each other, with Christ the Redeemer rising from the hills as Brazil’s iconic landmark. Brazil: 10 out of 10 Germany: 7 out of 10 Starnberg Lake in Bavaria, Germany | Ferdinand Knapp/POLITICO FINAL SCORE Brazil: 41.5 out of 50 Germany: 31 out of 50 It’s official (sort of), Brazil is better than Germany! Perhaps Merz should take Lula’s advice and go back so he can appreciate more of what Brazil has to offer.

BERLIN — Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva lashed out at Friedrich Merz after Germany’s chancellor made remarks disparaging the South American country. Merz said last week that he and the national press corps had been happy to return to Germany from the Amazon city of Belém, Brazil, where they had attended this year’s U.N. climate talks. “He should have gone dancing in Pará,” Lula said about the state where Belém is situated. “He should have tasted Pará’s cuisine. Because he would have realized that Berlin doesn’t offer him 10 percent of the quality that the state of Pará offers.” At a trade conference in Berlin last week, Merz attempted to spread optimism about the struggling German economy — but put his foot in his mouth. “We live in one of the most beautiful countries in the world. Last week I asked some journalists who were with me in Brazil: Which of you would like to stay here? No one raised their hand,” Merz said upon returning from Brazil. “They were all happy that, above all, we returned from this place to Germany.” His comments sparked a backlash among Brazilian state politicians — and, according to a Spiegel report, might even jeopardize the efforts of the German delegation on the ground. “Pará opened its doors and showed the strength of a welcoming people. It is curious to see that those who contributed to global warming find the heat of the Amazon strange,” Helder Barbalho, the Pará state governor, wrote on X. Although Merz has repeatedly stressed that he wants to maintain an ambitious climate agenda and existing climate targets, his government has also relaxed the timeline for a phaseout of coal plants and is planning to construct new gas-fired power plants.

LONDON — Keir Starmer loves to play the climate leader. But only when his political advisers (and the powerful Chancellor Rachel Reeves) tell him he’s allowed. The green-minded U.K. prime minister flies into the COP30 summit in Brazil Thursday, armed with undeniable climate credentials. His government is pressing ahead with a 2050 net zero target, even as right-wing political rivals at home run away from it. It is about to hand 20-year contracts, laden with financial guarantees, to companies developing offshore wind farms. Just by attending COP, Starmer has shown he’s willing to publicly back the faltering global climate cause, despite furious attacks on the green agenda by close ally Donald Trump. But his claim to global leadership comes with a catch. Action on climate change is also tied to the political agenda back home, where Starmer and Reeves insist they are focused on bringing down bills and driving economic growth. As the prime minister flies in and out of Brazil this week, those key themes dominate. In a speech on Tuesday, Reeves pledged to “bear down” on the national debt and focus on the cost of living — even it requires “hard choices” elsewhere. Climate is no exception. SHY GREEN It was Starmer’s “personal decision” to go to Brazil, U.K. Climate Minister Katie White told a pre-COP event in London on Tuesday. It was reported in the run-up to the summit that he would skip Brazil, amid concerns among his top political aides about the optics of a jaunt to South America to talk climate while voters — disillusioned with Starmer and Labour — struggle with the cost of living at home and brace for tax rises expected in the budget. In the end, Starmer opted to go. But the absence of a full traveling press delegation, the norm at previous COPs, means his visit will generate less media coverage. (Government officials insisted the decision not to take a full press pack was purely logistical.) Starmer, while not an expert, is instinctively supportive of climate action, said one government official. But not so much so, countered a Labour MP, that he has “his own ideas about things.” “He wants to do the right thing, but would be steered as to whether that’s talking about forests or clean power or whatever. I suspect [No 10 Chief of Staff] Morgan McSweeney didn’t want him to go,” said the MP, granted anonymity to give a frank assessment of their leader. JOBS AT HOME GOOD, TREES ABROAD BAD The COP30 leaders’ event is taking place in Belém, the Amazon port city near the edge of the world’s greatest rainforest. But in a symbol of how domestic messaging trumps all else, Starmer will use that global platform to talk about a somewhat less exotic port: Great Yarmouth in East Anglia. It’s one of three U.K. locations — along with Greater Manchester and Belfast — where new, private sector clean energy deals are being announced, securing a modest 600 jobs. The COP30 leaders’ event is taking place in Belém, the Amazon port city near the edge of the world’s greatest rainforest. | Mauro Pimentel/AFP via Getty Images If COP’s Brazilian hosts were hoping for a grander global climate vision, they are about to be disappointed. The U.K. won’t be stumping up any taxpayer money for a global fund to support poorer countries to protect their tropical rainforests — key carbon sinks that, left standing, can help slow the rate of climate change. The Tropical Forests Forever Facility (TFFF) is supposed to be the centerpiece of the summit for Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, but Lula has not been able to rely on even his close, left-wing ally Starmer — with whom he likes to chat about football — to weigh in with a financial contribution to match Brazil’s $1 billion. The U.K. played a role in establishing the concept of the TFFF. An energy department spokesperson said the government remained “incredibly supportive” of the scheme. But, with Reeves warning this week that her budget would deal with “the world as we find it, not the world as I would wish it to be,” her Treasury officials won a Whitehall battle over the U.K.’s financial backing for the scheme. Ministers say only that they will try to drum up private sector investment. ‘KEIR, SOMEWHERE IN THE MIDDLE’ The decision neatly captures the Starmer approach to climate action. If it suits the domestic economic and political agenda, great. If not then, then there is no guarantee of No. 10 and Treasury support. Taxpayer-funded international aid spending, a vital part of the U.K.’s global climate offer, has been slashed. At the same time, despite stretching emissions goals, one of the world’s busiest airports, Heathrow, will be expanded — because of its potential benefits for growth. Ministers are looking at watering down a pledge to ban new licences for oil and gas exploration in the North Sea, amid a sclerotic economy. The Treasury is considering easing the tax burden on fossil fuel companies. The bipolar approach risks bringing Starmer and Reeves into conflict with the U.K.’s energetic, committedly green Energy Secretary Ed Miliband, who will lead the country’s delegation to the COP30 conference and the formal United Nations negotiation. “On all of this, there is Ed on one side, Rachel on the other, and Keir somewhere in the middle,” said the government official. Starmer largely subcontracts his climate and energy policy to Miliband, said an industry figure who frequently interacts with government. Many MPs wish Starmer would act more like Miliband and embrace his green record more exuberantly. They point to the recent surge in support for the Green Party, which is making some in Labour nearly as nervous as the rise of Nigel Farage’s Reform UK to their right. OUTFLANKED In that context, it was a “no-brainer” for Starmer to go to COP and appear “visibly committed to climate action,” said Steve Akehurst from the political research firm Persuasion UK. “In so far as there is any real backlash to net zero in the U.K., it does not exist inside the Labour electoral coalition,” he said. The Greens are now “competing strongly for those votes.” A second Labour MP put it bluntly. “Starmer is so politically weak that to not attend would open up yet another front on his already collapsed centre-left flank,” they said. Before getting on the plane to Brazil, Starmer met sixth-form students at 10 Downing Street to talk about the summit and the environment. There was a flash of the green, idealistic Starmer that some say lurks beneath the political triangulation. He took the opportunity to remind the teenagers of the “obligation we undoubtedly have to safeguard the planet for generations to come.” “But also,” he added, it’s about safeguarding “hundreds of thousands of jobs in this country.” Additional reporting by Abby Wallace.

Ivo Daalder, former U.S. ambassador to NATO, is a senior fellow at Harvard University’s Belfer Center and host of the weekly podcast “World Review with Ivo Daalder.” He writes POLITICO’s From Across the Pond column. U.S. President Donald Trump loves the 19th century. His heroes are former presidents William McKinley who “made our country very rich through tariffs,” Teddy Roosevelt who “did many great things” like the Panama Canal, and James Monroe who established the policy rejecting “the interference of foreign nations in this hemisphere and in our own affairs.” These aren’t just some throw-away lines from Trump’s speeches. They signify a much deeper and broader break from established modern national security thinking. Trump is now the first U.S. president since Franklin D. Roosevelt to believe the principal threats to the U.S. aren’t in far-away regions or stem from far-away powers — rather, they’re right here at home. For him, the biggest threats to America today are the immigrants flooding across the country’s borders and the drugs killing tens of thousands from overdoses. And to that end, his real goal is to dominate the entire Western hemisphere — from the North Pole to the South Pole — using America’s superior military and economic power to defeat all “enemies,” both foreign and domestic. Of course, at the top of Trump’s list of threats to the U.S. is immigration. He campaigned incessantly on the idea that his predecessors had failed to seal the southern border, and promised to deport every immigrant without legal status — some 11 million in all — from the U.S. Those efforts started on the first day, with the Trump administration deploying troops to the southern border to interdict anyone seeking to cross illegally. It also instituted a dragnet to sweep people off the streets — whether in churches, near schools, on farmlands, inside factories, at court houses or in hospitals. Even U.S. citizens have been caught up in this massive deportation effort. No one is safe. The resulting shift is also expectedly dramatic: Refugee admissions have halted, with those promised passage stuck in third countries. In the coming year, the only allotment for refugees will be white South Africans, who Trump has depicted as genocide victims. Illegal crossings are down to a trickle, while large numbers of immigrants — legal as well as illegal — are returning home. And 2025 will likely be the first time in nearly a century where net migration into the U.S. will be negative. For Trump, immigrants aren’t the only threat to the homeland, though. Drugs are too. That’s why on Feb. 1, the U.S. leader imposed tariffs on Canada, Mexico and China because of fentanyl shipments — though Canada is hardly a significant source of the deadly narcotic. Still, all these tariffs remain in place. Then, in August, he called in the military, signing a directive that authorizes it to take on drug cartels, which he designated as foreign terrorist organizations. “Latin America’s got a lot of cartels and they’ve got a lot of drugs flowing,” he later explained. “So, you know, we want to protect our country. We have to protect our country.” And that was just the beginning. Over the past two months, the Pentagon has deployed a massive array of naval and air power, and some 10,000 troops for drug interdiction. Over the past five weeks, the U.S. military has also been directed to attack small vessels crossing the Caribbean and the Pacific that were suspected to be running drugs. To date, 16 vessels have been attacked, killing over 60 people. For Donal Trump, immigrants aren’t the only threat to the homeland, though. Drugs are too. | oe Raedle/Getty Images When asked for the legal justification of targeting vessels in international waters that posed no imminent threat to the U.S., Trump dismissed the need: “I think we’re just going to kill people that are bringing drugs into our country. Okay? We’re going to kill them. You know, they’re going to be, like, dead.” But now the U.S. leader has set his sights on bigger fish. Late last month, the Pentagon ordered a carrier battle group, Gerald R. Ford, into the Caribbean. Once that carrier and its accompanying ships arrive at their destination later this week, the U.S. will have deployed one-seventh of its Navy — the largest such deployment in the region since the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962. If the target is just drug-runners in open waters, clearly this is overkill — but they aren’t. The real reason for deploying such overwhelming firepower is for Trump to intimidate the leaders and regimes he doesn’t like, if not actually force them from office. Drugs are just the excuse to enable such action. The most obvious target is Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro, who blatantly stole an election to retain power last year. The White House has declared Maduro “an illegitimate leader heading an illegitimate regime,” and Trump has made clear that “there will be land action in Venezuela soon.” However, Maduro isn’t the only one Trump has his eye on. After Colombian President Gustavo Petro accused the U.S. of killing innocent fishermen, Trump cut off all aid to the country and accused Petro of being “an illegal drug leader,” which potentially sets the stage for the U.S. to go after another regime. All this firepower and rhetoric is meant to underscore one point: To Trump, the entire Western hemisphere is America’s. Leaders he doesn’t like, he will remove from power. Countries that take action he doesn’t approve of — whether jailing those convicted of trying to overthrow a government like in Brazil, or running ads against his tariffs as in Canada — will be punished economically. Greenland will be part of the U.S., as will the Panama Canal, and Canada will become the 51st state. Overall, Trump’s focus on dominating the Western hemisphere represents a profound shift from nearly a century’s-long focus on warding off overseas threats to protect Americans at home. And like it or not, for Trump, security in the second quarter of the 21st century lies in concepts and ideas first developed in the last quarter of the 19th century.

Argentinian President Javier Milei’s party scored a decisive win in Sunday’s legislative elections, sparking celebrations from U.S. President Donald Trump. With more than 99 percent of the ballots counted, according to local media, Milei’s austerity-pushing Freedom Advances party pulled in almost 41 percent of the vote, leaving leftist rivals trailing and giving the maverick president more sway in Argentina’s Congress. The vote was closely watched in Washington, where the White House has moved in recent weeks to prop up the Argentinian economy, which has been roiled by market uncertainty over Milei’s radical policies slashing government spending. “Congratulations to President Javier Milei on his Landslide Victory in Argentina. He is doing a wonderful job! Our confidence in him was justified by the People of Argentina,” Trump said on Truth Social in praise of the libertarian leader. In early October, Trump’s Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said the U.S. support — in the form of a $20 billion currency swap and a program to purchase Argentinian pesos, leading some to describe it as a bailout — was delivered because “Argentina’s reform agenda is of systemic importance, and a strong, stable Argentina which helps anchor a prosperous Western Hemisphere is in the strategic interest of the United States. Their success should be a bipartisan priority.” The mega-billions gamble, which Bessent argued over domestic objections was in line with Trump’s America First agenda, paid off Sunday. Trump followed up on his initial congratulations by reposting a message on Truth Social that indicated Milei’s success was, in part, due to his close relationship with the U.S. president. He then added: “BIG WIN in Argentina for Javier Milei, a wonderful Trump Endorsed Candidate! He’s making us all look good. Congratulations Javier!” “Argentines showed that they don’t want to return to the model of failure,” Milei told a crowd of supporters in Buenos Aires after his clear victory.

Nahal Toosi is POLITICO’s senior foreign affairs correspondent. She has reported on war, genocide and political chaos in a career that has taken her around the world. Her reported column, Compass, delves into the decision-making of the global national security and foreign policy establishment — and the fallout that comes from it. The first time President Donald Trump tried to push Nicolas Maduro out of power, he wasn’t coy about it. He accused the Venezuelan dictator of stealing an election, stripped U.S. recognition from Maduro’s government, imposed sanctions on Caracas and rallied other countries to pressure Maduro to quit. It didn’t work. In his second term, Trump is targeting Maduro differently, and his message is, uncharacteristically for Trump, less direct. Even though Trump continues to say Maduro is an illegitimate leader, he has said “we’re not talking about” regime change in Caracas. Instead, he’s emphasizing the long-standing accusations that the strongman is a drug lord and a dangerous criminal. The plan, people familiar with the situation tell me, is to force Maduro out as part of Trump’s ongoing fight against drug cartels. The effort has included labeling such groups as terrorist organizations, carrying out military strikes against alleged drug-carrying boats from Venezuela, raising the U.S. bounty on Maduro’s head to $50 million and cutting off diplomatic talks with Caracas. The campaign may not formally be about regime change, but if the pressure from the anti-cartel moves happens to topple Maduro, well, the president and his team will be delighted. While Trump admires many of the world’s autocrats, he has long appeared to genuinely dislike Maduro. The South American has socialist roots, not far-right tendencies the way Trump favorites such as Hungary’s Viktor Orban and Russia’s Vladimir Putin do. And — I’ve heard this from multiple U.S. officials over the years — Trump is truly aghast at how Maduro savaged the economy of a once-vibrant Venezuela. “Would everyone like Maduro to go? Yes,” a Trump administration official said of the U.S. president and his aides. “We’re going to put a tremendous amount of pressure on him. He’s weak. It’s quite possible that he’ll fall from this pressure alone without us having to do anything” more direct. But is Trump willing to eventually “do anything”? Send an invasion force to Venezuela or launch a missile with Maduro’s name on it, maybe? Trump’s team doesn’t seem to be ruling anything out. Trump has many plans available to him, including ones calling for airstrikes against drug targets on Venezuelan soil, but he has issued no order to directly take out Maduro, the official said. Still, one person familiar with the discussions suggested that if Maduro is considered a drug lord and a terrorist, he could become a fair target. “Don’t we go after indicted narco traffickers and terrorists all the time?” the person said. I granted both people anonymity to talk about sensitive internal deliberations. The White House didn’t respond to a request for comment. I’m not sure if there’s some special term for this approach. Regime change on the side? Whatever you call it, it may prove harder to pull off than the steps Trump has taken so far. The U.S. has tried an array of pressure campaigns against authoritarians in the past. Some have gone heavy on economic sanctions (Iran, Cuba). Some have armed rebels (Afghanistan). Some have used the U.S. military in ways that technically were not about ousting a regime (Libya) — or were (Iraq). These efforts can weaken autocrats and sometimes hasten their fall. But they also can take many years, and it’s often not clear whether U.S. pressure or another factor forced them out. The U.S. takedown of Manuel Noriega, the military ruler of Panama and troublesome longtime CIA asset, provides an interesting comparison to the face-off with Maduro. The U.S. imposed sanctions on Panama in the 1980s, indicted Noriega on drug trafficking charges and refused to diplomatically engage the puppet regime he oversaw. But Noriega didn’t lose power until the U.S. invaded Panama with more than 20,000 troops in late 1989 and detained him. The invasion was spurred in part by Noriega forces’ attacks on Americans in Panama as well as concerns about control over the Panama Canal, but then-President George H.W. Bush made sure to mention the drug charges in explaining his decisions. Venezuela is a bigger, more complicated country, making the Trump team’s approach even more unpredictable. Maduro has survived for a long time with the support of the country’s security forces, even if there is strong evidence that the country’s citizens keep voting against him. I believe Trump is willing to escalate his anti-cartel campaign, but I’m not convinced he’d ever send a full-on invasion force to topple Maduro. That’s partly because it could trigger alarm bells in the MAGA base, which has a strong isolationist streak. But a smaller force that goes after just Maduro, the drug kingpin? Maybe. The MAGA base is much more supportive of battling the cartels. Sticking to an anti-Maduro campaign without officially labeling it “regime change” has other benefits, former U.S. officials told me. Trump would look weak if he loudly proclaimed he was trying to oust Maduro but it doesn’t work (It wasn’t a great look last time). The U.S. also would be less responsible for the potentially costly fallout in Venezuela if it avoids an all-out invasion and sticks to what it insists is a law enforcement mission. “The Trump administration’s calculation could be that doing regime change on the cheap will help them avoid the penalties of the ‘Pottery Barn rule,’” said Peter Feaver, a former national security hand in the George W. Bush administration. That was former Secretary of State Colin Powell’s “famous aphorism that if you break Iraq, you have bought Iraq and are responsible for security stabilization in the aftermath.” Venezuela has a steady opposition that has various plans for what to do if the regime falls. The main opposition figure, María Corina Machado, was on Friday awarded the Nobel Peace Prize — an honor Trump himself covets. Machado dedicated her Nobel in part to Trump “for his decisive support of our cause.” The person familiar with the discussions told me that the Trump administration is not coordinating its actions with the Venezuelan opposition, though U.S. officials are in touch with them. David Smolansky, a representative of Machado, declined to say if the opposition is coordinating with the Trump team on its moves against the cartels. But Smolansky said Machado’s office is in constant communication with the administration and Congress, including providing information about drug activity emanating from Venezuela. Leopoldo López, an opposition activist who spent years as a political prisoner in Venezuela, said the U.S. administration is simply now in sync with what he and others have said for years: that Maduro should be approached as the head of a criminal enterprise, not a head of state. López compared Maduro with a more famous narco. “If you had Pablo Escobar as the president of Colombia, going after Pablo will be the same thing as making political change possible,” López said. The U.S. steps against Maduro — elements of which were previously reported by The New York Times — also dovetails with the individual goals of some Trump aides. Secretary of State and acting national security adviser Marco Rubio — a Floridian of Cuban descent — has long wanted to eliminate the Venezuelan regime in part because it could damage the regime in Cuba, a Caracas ally. Trump adviser Stephen Miller, a hard-core anti-immigration voice, hopes a new government in Caracas will make it easier to deport Venezuelans in the U.S., especially if post-regime chaos is limited. Trump aides also hope their crackdown on Maduro unnerves other leftist Latin American leaders, and reduces the flow of drugs. While the people I talked to weren’t willing to predict how and whether Trump would escalate his anti-drug-cartel-but-not-technically-regime-change operation, they did indicate that he wouldn’t de-escalate anytime soon. For one thing, the president is quite enjoying green-lighting airstrikes against boats alleged to be ferrying drugs. “He can blow boats out of the water every week for quite a long time,” the Trump administration official said.