A day after President Trump ordered the suspension of American military assistance, Ukrainian diplomats and politicians scrambled on Tuesday to find a way to salvage their alliance with Washington while the war weary nation prepared for the possibility that it will have to fight on without U.S. support. With the White House and the Kremlin … Read more
President Trump’s rancorous threat to abandon Ukraine is stoking support for a long-debated proposal to use billions of dollars in frozen Russian assets to buy weapons for Ukraine and finance its reconstruction. The money — roughly $300 billion owned by Russia’s central bank — was frozen by the United States, the European Union, Britain and … Read more
European leaders have dealt with President Trump’s return to office by trying to keep him cooperating on Ukraine while pushing to ramp up their own defense spending so they are less reliant on an increasingly fickle America. But Friday’s meeting in the Oval Office, in which Mr. Trump berated President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine, underscored … Read more
An anticipated deal for Ukraine to hand over natural resources revenues to the United States abruptly fell apart during an explosive meeting in the Oval Office on Friday, in a dramatic rupture in relations between the two wartime allies. Mr. Trump and Vice President JD Vance castigated Mr. Zelensky for not being grateful enough for … Read more
Chancellor Olaf Scholz of Germany on Saturday accused Vice President JD Vance of unacceptably interfering in his country’s imminent elections on behalf of a party that has played down the atrocities committed by the Nazis 80 years ago. A day after Mr. Vance stunned the Munich Security Conference by telling German leaders to drop their … Read more
President Trump announced sweeping tariffs on foreign steel and aluminum on Monday, re-upping a policy from his first term that pleased domestic metal makers but hurt other American industries and ignited trade wars on multiple fronts. The president signed two official proclamations that would impose a 25 percent tariff on steel and aluminum from all … Read more
The State Department has given Congress formal notification that it plans to move forward with sales of more than $8 billion in weapons to Israel, bypassing an informal review process that was still ongoing in one House committee. The move took place just two days after President Trump met with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of … Read more
The U.S. trade deficit in goods hit a record $1.2 trillion last year, as American consumers snapped up imported products and a strong U.S. dollar weighed on export growth. Data released Wednesday morning by the Commerce Department showed that U.S. imports of goods and services grew 6.6 percent to a record $4.1 trillion, as Americans … Read more
Let’s skip the happy talk: Democrats are in a dark place. It’s not merely that Donald Trump has rolled back into Washington with an everything-everywhere-all-at-once approach to grabbing power. The new president is buoyed by eager-to-please Republican majorities in both chambers of Congress and a #Resistance movement that feels played out. The American people, meanwhile, … Read more
President Trump’s sweeping executive order to halt foreign aid threatens to freeze a U.S. program supporting security forces inside a notorious camp in the Syrian desert that holds tens of thousands of Islamic State members and their families, Syrian and U.S. officials said. The order has also wreaked havoc on another U.S. organization in Syria … Read more