Posted on March 12, 2025 by Yves Smith
If one were to believe much of the Ukraine skeptic and/or Trump friendly commentary since Trump called Putin on February 12, Trump and Putin were going to in short order negotiate a peace deal with Ukraine and make Ukraine, the EU, and NATO swallow it. That was to be accompanied by normalization of commercial dealings between the US and Russia, which would seem to mean the lifting of some or even pretty much all of the US sanctions against Russia.
We’ll explain below how this plan for Trump as master-dealmaker going mano-a-mano with Putin and emerging victorious, or at least with a reasonably-face-saving agreement, has gone pear-shaped. And we have to say that we have been telling you so for quite a while.1
The short version of what happened in Saudi Arabia is Ukraine made the non-concession of agreeing to a one month ceasefire in turn for resuming weapons deliveries and intel support.2. Keep in mind that a ceasefire is to Ukraine’s benefit, since it can give its troops a rest, dragoon more, get a month of additional weapons supplies. That is why the Russians have been in “No ceasefire, no how, no way until we have a complete deal” mode back to the first talks, in Istanbul in March-April 2022.
So this fiction that a ceasefire is a real option for advancing a settlement has the effect of making sure the war continues with US backing, which is what Zelensky & Co. want. And the predictable rejection by Russia will sour the prospect of a meaningful warming of relations, another outcome Ukraine keenly desires.
In other words, The Ukrainians got the US to throw them into the briar patch…and think that that was the US idea!
We said the prospects of a settlement of the war, absent a regime change in Kiev, Ukraine capitulation, or Russia otherwise forcing Ukraine to accept its terms, were nada. There is no overlap between their positions. Russia has no reason to make anything more than trivial or cosmetic concessions because it will win and its momentum is accelerating. But the Ukraine side is dug in because its government is in the control of hard-core Banderites. A combination of an eschatological bent and the recognition that they’d be high on the list of Russian war criminals means many would rather ride on a white horse into a Wagnerian pyre rather than wind up in a gulag or worse.3
Many commentators relied on the notion that the US, as Ukraine’s big sponsor, could nevertheless bring the Ukraine government to heel by, as Trump threatened to do, cut off arms supplies and intel (there is debate over the degree to which that actually happened). However, as we pointed out, as weak as Ukraine appears to be, it still has agency. It still holds most of Ukraine.
And Ukraine made clear that its intent is to hold out and punish Russia as much as it can. The big drone attacks on Moscow and other parts of Russia, launched on the very eve of the US-Ukraine talks in Jeddah, was a very clear raised middle finger to Russia and the US peace scheme. The Moscow strikes were pure terrorism, on civilian apartment buildings. Aside from being an unmistakable statement of Ukraine hostility to a settlement, they will increase popular support in Russia for continuing to prosecute the war.
The even weaker and embarrassingly behind-the-plot Europeans also have agency. Even though they cannot influence Trump or Russia, they have been noisily and enthusiastically showing their support for Zelensky. Those scenes will extend his sell-by date in Ukraine, particularly since the controlled Ukrainian press may be able to do a pretty good job of keeping up the pretense that the Europeans can do more than send a pathetically small amount of weapons.
So let’s return to the plot: remember that the view that Zelensky and the Ukraine leadership were goners hardened after the unprecedented, on camera Oval Office row. That event had been planned to show Zelensky largely on the same page as Trump before they had lunch and signed the infamous minerals deal. Although the session started out on a friendly footing, Zelensky persisted in pressing Trump for security guarantees and insisted it would be unwise to agree on a ceasefire with Russia, since Putin was untrustworthy, with Zelensky serving up wildly misrepresented history to support his claims. Effectively telling Trump that Putin would outmaneuver him (true independent of Zelensky’s revisionism) looked to have really gotten Trump’s dander up.
He apparently persisted after the cameras stopped rolling, rather than backing down or apologizing for his part in the heated exchange, which got him and his team expelled from the White House. That is before getting to the elephant in the room, that for Lord only knows how long, every time the topic of a Ukraine agreement has come up, the Russians top to bottom have felt compelled to say “No cessation in hostilities until the roots of the conflict have been addressed.” Lavrov has also taken to adding that, as the Minsk Accords demonstrated, a ceasefire merely gives Ukraine the opportunity to rearm and resume the war.
So what does the Trump Administration think it is doing by retying the Ukraine millstone to its neck? This isn’t Trump’s war. The Oval Office row provided him with the perfect excuse to cut Zelensky loose, even put new elections as the condition for providing much help, and provide only bare bones support (not that the US could do more than that on the weapons front) so as to blunt criticism that the US was abandoning Ukraine, as opposed to getting them to sober up about their true condition.
One possibility is that the US really believes that Russia is faring badly economically and is taking high enough manpower losses so as to make the war hard to sustain, and so all the Putin/Lavrov talk about “no ceasefire” is posturing and they will accept the ceasefire to start talks.
A variant of this line of thinking is the profit rather than cost side: that Russia stands to benefit so much from economic relief and resumed trade with West that it will get over itself and start negotiating with Ukraine. Recall that Rubio has said there would be no sanctions relief before an agreement was reached to end the war.
Another option is that the neocons (and recall Rubio is a neocon) have successfully played on Trump’s fixation with ceasefires, knowing that Russia won’t play ball. So Trump will look foolish (of course assuming Trump does not find some way to fabricate what happened to present himself as driving events). And he’ll get angry at Putin and the Russians, which will either stop or greatly reduce the possibility of better relations.
Finally, Trump may, even more than before, be in “All tactics and no strategy is the noise before the defeat” mode. It is becoming more and more apparent that his top priority is dominating any interaction, no matter whether that advances any long term aim. Trump and his allies derived pleasure from beating up on Zelensky during and after the White House row. Even though Zelensky asked for it (at a minimum by not donning a suit), what did the US gain? Zelensky ran around Europe, getting support that bolstered him at home. The US, despite holding the cards, got bupkis in Jeddah aside from some optics.4
Mind you, this does not necessarily mean Russia will not deign to sit down with Ukraine. Putin (without parsing it quite so crisply) has repeatedly said he is willing to meet. But he and his officials have also consistently said a whole bunch of things need to be in place before actual negotiations start, like Ukraine withdrawing from the four oblasts and revoking the various decrees and Constitutional terms that bar negotiations. Oh, and clarifying who could actually sign a deal were one to be agreed.
So Russia may come up with a device to look minimally cooperative, like say an initial tea and cookies chat, with either then or shortly thereafter some process requirements before the ceasefire could be entertained. To put it another way, the only question seems to be how Russia decides to play appearances while not accepting this offer.
For more a more in-depth account, Simplicius has done a great job of one-stop shopping in US and Ukraine Hatch ‘Ceasefire’ Travesty which I urge you to read in full. Simplicius’ posts tend to be a mix of well-documented finds and more speculative ones, with him not often well flagging that some of his tidbits are iffier than others. So a quick discussion of his noteworthy items:
The scheme as an insult. Simplicius is contemptuous, as we are, and he invokes Scott Ritter:
I’ve lost faith in the good faith of the Trump negotiating team. A 30-day ceasefire would be a boon to Ukraine. A chance to stabilize the frontlines. To strip all tactical and operational advantages Russia has accrued through the blood and sacrifice of their soldiers. And once Ukraine recovers, then to sit at a table where a rejuvenated Ukraine rejects Russia’s conditions for peace.
Trump’s team has not negotiated in good faith. And the fact that this proposal is offered after Ukraine carries out a massive strike against Moscow? Russia will reject this ridiculous proposal.
Lockstep messaging, that “No peace” will now be Putin’s fault. Wellie, technically that is true regardless. The Russians could elect to stop fighting at any time. So the idea that coordinated whinging will move the Russians is yet more Western obsession with messaging over real world outcomes. But it’s getting a bit too obvious:
Doubts as to whether the US really did cut off arms and intel. One could imagine, given logistics, that it might be hard to stop arms supplies quickly (where do you put weapons already en route?). The theory is it’s easier to halt SIGINT, such as satellite images and real-time information. But Starlink stayed on, when that being one company, would presumably be easy to switch off and on (although Twitter’s terrible performance this week might suggest otherwise). Again courtesy Simplicius:
One could further argue that the US saying it has halted supplies was more important than that actually happening right away, given that the big objective were to impress US taxpayers that Trump was a tough guy and beating Ukraine into line, and to cow the Europeans and the Ukraine government.
I must have heard one of the YouTubers incorrectly because I though a Trump-Putin phone call was set for this Friday. Instead, the Kremlin has cleverly said a call could be organized quickly, putting the onus on the White House to ask for it. This also may be intended to make the point that Russia does not accept negotiation via press release, that someone needs to make a formal approach to Russia with whatever this proposal amounts to before anyone on the Russian side gets out of bed.
But in case you harbor any doubts, Lavrov has been relentlessly on message about a ceasefire being a non-starter:
Lavrov on Russia's attitude to a ceasefire without resolving the causes of the conflict:What is important to us is not a ceasefire that will allow Ukraine to be armed once again and again directed at our country, but a long-term sustainable peace based on the elimination of… pic.twitter.com/S7IW1dtLdL
— Sunt Förnuft (@mr__quake) March 11, 2025
So are Trump and State Department as dumb as they look? There’s no clever plot here, just hubris and unwillingness to listen. We’ll see soon enough what shakes out.
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1 To keep this post focused, we will spare you a recitation of how Russian officials, from Putin on down, have given extensive, and over time more detailed, accounts of what lying sacks of shit we Americans are. They have told Russian citizens and its allies that we are utterly untrustworthy….including that if the US ever got an honorable leadership group, that could all be unwound after a change in the White House. The implication is that Russia would need extremely strict and extensive guarantees of performance by the West, ones they’d be likely to balk at for (correctly) impugning US/NATO reliability.
2 If you read the Joint Statement, the only other Ukraine obligation is agreeing consummate the minerals deal and the naming of Ukraine members of a negotiating team. But Zelensky immediately offered that as soon as he was tossed out of the White House. So this was not a concession extracted during the negotiations, merely a confirmation of an existing commitment. Rubio reaffirmed that the minerals pact would not include a security guarantee.
And as for the negotiating team….Ukraine knows, even if the US does not, that Russia will not accept this proposal, so naming a team is just a PR gesture.
It also appears that some of the meeting was devoted to coming up with initial demands for Russia:
The delegations also discussed the importance of humanitarian relief efforts as part of the peace process, particularly during the above-mentioned ceasefire, including the exchange of prisoners of war, the release of civilian detainees, and the return of forcibly transferred Ukrainian children.
3 In fairness, some may hope they can make a late-in-game run to a safe haven like Canada and get enough plastic surgery to enable them to live a quiet life.
4 I don’t buy the notion that not allowing Zelensky a seat at the table was a monster put down. If it does not lead to concessions (and is seems not even to have led to Zelensky being markedly more worried about his job security), what’s the point? And as a negotiator, you NEVER want a principal (Zelensky) facing off with agents (US officials who are not final decision-makers). It can be exploited in what I call double-brokering: the agents on one side get the principal on the other to agree to something. Then the agents go back and their principal says no to something, which usually succeeds in getting the principal on the other side to give more ground.
https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2025/03 ... cheme.html
Business Press Suddenly and Widely Reporting Damage Done by Trump Economic Policies
Posted on March 13, 2025 by Yves Smith
Mr. Market falling out of bed due significantly to the Trump tariff whiplash has freed the business media to go with both barrels after Trump economic policies. Some headlines in the last two days:
Wall Street Fears Trump Will Wreck the Soft Landing Wall Street Journal
Is Trump Taking a ‘Liquidationist’ Approach to the Economy? Wall Street Journal
CEOs Don’t Plan to Openly Question Trump. Ask Again If the Market Crashes 20%. Wall Street Journal. Subhead: “Behind closed doors, business leaders air plenty of concerns about the administration and its policies.”
US CEOs Need to Find Their Missing Backbones Bloomberg
Trump’s $1.4 Trillion Tariff Threat Spurs Companies to Seek Cover Bloomberg
How Do You Sell America on a Recession? Bloomberg
U.S. markets tumble as Trump dismisses economic fears CNBC
Trump ‘an agent of chaos and confusion, economists warn CNBC — but a U.S. recession isn’t in the cards yet CNBC. Note the part after the dash does not appear in a search.
Musk’s cuts fail to stop US federal spending hitting new record Financial Times
Wall Street loses hope in a ‘Trump put’ for markets Financial Times
Trump’s tariffs are starting to bite American builders Business Insider
I’m a Canadian mom who frequently traveled to the States. Now I’m avoiding the US and boycotting American products. Business Insider
For the first time, a majority of Americans don’t like Trump’s economic policies Business Insider
And yes, not only is this selection not unrepresentative, but there is more where that came from.
Even libertarians are turning on Trump:
Nobody is pulling punches on Trump’s handling of the economy in the White House briefing room … not even Fox News. pic.twitter.com/jYN7ubMYxs
— The Recount (@therecount) March 11, 2025
The DOGE Tracker Shows DOGE Savings Only 8.2 Percent of the Claim Michael Shedlock
How Do We Lower the Trade Tensions Between the U.S. and Canada? Michael Shedlock
And even though the economy is softening (as we’ll see below, at a quickening pace due to consumers cutting back on spending), inflation pressures have yet to meaningfully abate:
Beneath the Skin of CPI Inflation: Pace Slows from Spike Last Month, but 6-Month CPI Accelerates Further, Worst Increase since September 2023 Wolf Richter
Price of Natural Gas Futures Up 140% Year-over-Year: One More Reason for Inflation to Not Back off Easily Wolf Richter
Inflation eased in February, but trade war threatens higher prices Washington Post
On the one hand, eggs are only eggs. On the other, they have come to symbolize the Biden and now Trump Administration’s inability to curb inflation:
The cost of eggs in the U.S. jumped 10.4% last month, the Consumer Price Index shows. Eggs are nearly 60% more expensive than a year ago. https://t.co/p9kcmzK384
— The Associated Press (@AP) March 12, 2025
Mind you, not all business/economic tsuris is Trump’s fault:
How things got so bad for airlines seemingly overnight Business Insider
We’ll briefly turn to two new stories on Trumponomics, which go beyond Mr. Market’s misery and tariff freakout. One is the lead item in the Wall Street Journal, Consumer Angst Is Striking All Income Levels. The story describes clearly how the rate of decline in confidence and spending accelerated in February as compared to January. And this is before Musk started threatening bulwarks of many Americans finances, Social Security and Medicare. Remember it isn’t just retirees who get whacked. Those within 10 to 15 years of retirement who expected Social Security to be a significant part of their retirement funding are likely to hunker down further on spending to try to bulk up their nest eggs. From a reader by e-mail:
I am slated to start getting my SS in September after waiting until the end of the window. The promised amount will be a substantial part of my retirement income. Ditto for my better half who will retire at the end of June. It better be there. I have paid into the system with every paycheck since I was 15 years old in the summer of 1971.
Those who made Bernie Sanders impossible, twice, made Donald Trump inevitable, twice.
The opener from from the Journal’s account:
American consumers have had a lot to fret about so far this year, between never-ending tariff headlines, stubborn inflation and most recently, fresh fears about a recession. These concerns seem to be hitting spending by both rich and poor, across necessities and luxuries, all at once.
Take low-income consumers: At an interview at the Economic Club of Chicago in late February, Walmart Chief Executive Doug McMillon said “budget-pressured” customers are showing stressed behaviors: They are buying smaller pack sizes at the end of the month because their “money runs out before the month is gone.” McDonald’s said in its most recent earnings call that the fast-food industry has had a “sluggish start” to the year, in part because of weak demand from low-income consumers. Across the U.S. fast-food industry, sales to low-income guests were down by a double-digit percentage in the fourth quarter compared with a year earlier, according to McDonald’s.
Things don’t look much better on the higher end. American consumers’ spending on the luxury market, which includes high-end department stores and online platforms, fell 9.3% in February from a year earlier, worse than the 5.9% decline in January, according to Citi’s analysis of its credit-card transactions data.
Costco whose membership-fee-paying customer base skews higher-income, said last week that demand has shifted toward lower-cost proteins such as ground beef and poultry. Its members are still spending but are being “very choiceful” about where they spend, Chief Financial Officer Gary Millerchip said. He said consumers could become even pickier if they see more inflation from tariffs.
The Journal helpfully provides charts that show that the big Biden deficits did not translate into fatter wages:
Later in the Journal’s discussion:
The economy has seen pockets of weakness in recent years, but nothing that suggests such widespread weakness…. Several years of inflation—particularly on necessities such as groceries, rents and utility bills—have hit poorer Americans hard. But a strong stock market, buoyed by artificial-intelligence hype, kept wealthier folks spending.
Recall how we have repeatedly featured analyses by Tom Ferguson and Servaas Storm that showed how depending groaf has become on the outlays of the richest cohort, to the degree that it was a big factor in stoking inflation. The Journal later took up this thesis.
But now:
This week alone, consumers have had plenty of new developments to digest. President Trump on Sunday declined to rule out a U.S. recession as a result of his economic policies, causing stocks to plummet. This was followed by yet another roller coaster of tariff threats, counter-tariffs and reversals. While Wednesday’s inflation data showed price increases slowing down slightly in February, that is cold comfort because it is too early to reflect the effects of Trump’s tariffs…
Many also have less cold hard cash on hand. Checking and savings deposit balances across all income levels have declined over the 12-month period through February and are getting closer to inflation-adjusted 2019 levels…
What this means is that consumers generally are less able to absorb shocks, just as uncertainty is soaring. It is hard to blame them for turning cautious, even if that means the economy suffers.
So shorter: Mr. Market and the Confidence Fairy were keeping the economy chugging along, even if it was not widely recognized as a two tier enterprise. Now Trump has managed to whack them both, hard. Remember, a surprising trend since the crisis is the degree to which even the moderately to very wealthy would borrow against assets. Falls in asset prices put a hard brake on that as an additional booster.
A new Axios story, Voters disapprove of Trump’s economic policies, polls show, explains why the public view of Trump’s schemes has soured:
The big picture: The ramifications of Trump’s policies are already rippling outwards and impacting businesses and communities.
The National Federation of Independent Business’s uncertainty index for small businesses rose to it’s second-highest reading ever last month since the 1980s, and many small businesses report raising prices, MarketWatchreported.
In fact, a slew of small business owners have spoken out about the detrimental impacts Trump’s tariffs will have on their ability to maintain their businesses.
Delta, Southwest and American airlines all warned this week that their first-quarter revenue or earnings forecasts will fall below expectations due to weaker consumer demand.
Our thought bubble, from Axios’ Ben Berkowitz: Investors are beginning to realize the first-term “Trump put” — the notion that he’d change policy if markets reacted negatively — isn’t in evidence this time around.
There’s a greater willingness by his team to let whatever happens happen, which is an adjustment to past Trump economic practice that’s coming as a shock to some people.
Recall that the mother of all shock doctrines, Pinochet’s 1975-1975 program, which unlike the Trump program, did produce some initial promising results, eventually led to damage so severe as to lead Pinochet to go hard into reverse.1 As we have seen repeatedly (particular tariff threats, the Ukraine negotiations, Trump ritually beating up on Bibi before shoring him up, Iran) Trump seems to relish making radical reversals simply because he can. But how much ego investment does he have in his tariff and Federal institution destruction program? He’s rhapsodsized so much about how wonderful it was in the great pre-electricity, barely-any-indoor plumbing Gilded Era that one can expect him to be far less responsive than he has on his other pet project. I’d like to see we’ll see soon enough, but we may not.
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1 From ECONNED:
Chile has been widely, and falsely, cited as a successful “free markets” experiment. Even though Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet’s aggressive implementation of reforms that were devised by followers of the Chicago School of Economics led to speculation and looting followed by a bust, it was touted in the United States as a triumph. Friedman claimed in 1982 that Pinochet “has supported a fully free-market economy as a matter of principle. Chile is an economic miracle.” The State Department deemed Chile to be “a casebook study in sound economic management.”
Those assertions do not stand up to the most cursory examination. Even the temporary gains scored by Chile relied on heavy-handed government intervention….
The “Chicago boys,” a group of thirty Chileans who had become followers of Friedman as students at the University of Chicago, assumed control of most economic policy roles. In 1975, the finance minister announced the new program: opening of trade, deregulation, privatization, and deep cuts in public spending.
The economy initially appeared to respond well to these changes as foreign money flowed in and inflation fell. But this seeming prosperity was largely a speculative bubble and an export boom. The newly liberalized economy went heavily into debt, with the funds going mainly to real estate, business acquisitions, and consumer spending rather than productive investment. Some state assets were sold at huge discounts to insiders. For instance, industrial combines, or grupos, acquired banks at a 40% discount to book value, and then used them to provide loans to the grupos to buy up manufacturers.
In 1979, when the government set a currency peg too high, it set the stage for what Nobel Prize winner George Akerlof and Stanford’s Paul Romer call “looting” (we discuss this syndrome in chapter 7). Entrepreneurs, rather than taking risk in the normal fashion, by gambling on success, instead engage in bankruptcy fraud. They borrow against their companies and find ways to siphon funds to themselves and affiliates, either by overpaying themselves, extracting too much in dividends, or moving funds to related parties.
The bubble worsened as banks gave low-interest-rate foreign currency loans, knowing full when the peso fell. But it permitted them to use the proceeds to seize more assets at preferential prices, thanks to artificially cheap borrowing and the eventual subsidy of default.
And the export boom, the other engine of growth, was, contrary to stateside propaganda, not the result of “free market” reforms either. The Pinochet regime did not reverse the Allende land reforms and return farms to their former owners. Instead, it practiced what amounted to industrial policy and gave the farms to middle-class entrepreneurs, who built fruit and wine businesses that became successful exporters. The other major export was copper, which remained in government hands.
And even in this growth period, the gains were concentrated among the wealthy. Unemployment rose to 16% and the distribution of income became more regressive. The Catholic Church’s soup kitchens became a vital stopgap.
The bust came in late 1981. Banks, on the verge of collapse thanks to dodgy loans, cut lending. GDP contracted sharply in 1982 and 1983. Manufacturing output fell by 28% and unemployment rose to 20%. The neoliberal regime suddenly resorted to Keynesian backpedaling to quell violent protests. The state seized a majority of the banks and implemented tougher banking laws. Pinochet restored the minimum wage, the rights of unions to bargain, and launched a program to create 500,000 jobs.
https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2025/03 ... icies.html
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Is there a Trump plan for Latin America?
Telma Luzzani
March 11, 2025 , 11:13 am .
The Argentine president has made his alignment with Trump a hallmark of his foreign policy (Photo: Archive)
The rapport between Javier Milei and Donald Trump raises questions about Argentina's role in the US geopolitical strategy for Latin America. While Washington seeks to consolidate a far-right axis in the region, the Argentine president is advancing a foreign policy aligned with Trump's interests, while weakening Latin American ties and promoting isolation. Analysts warn that the alliance is functional but temporary, and that Milei could be discarded when he ceases to be useful to the New Right's global project.
At his Senate confirmation hearing, Marco Rubio, Donald Trump's secretary of state, began his speech by asserting that the United States has a mission to create a new world order.
It is the old and never-abandoned supremacist idea that the Founding Fathers planted and that has been rearranged over time until today, when a president arrives at the White House convinced that "God saved him—in the failed attack in Pennsylvania—so that he could fulfill the mission of making America great again."
As in Trump's first term, protectionism is paired with isolationism in foreign policy, except with Latin America and the Caribbean, where—as throughout the history of US imperial expansion—the goal is to subjugate and control the region.
In this second period, the founding mystique of a new, clearly far-right order is also added. In such a scenario, an element emerges that draws attention not only because it is untimely but because, being so ostentatious, it seems somewhat false. This is the "harmony" between Trump and Argentine President Javier Milei. Has the US government assigned a role to the Argentine in the design of this new planetary structure?
Argentine foreign policy is, at best, erratic and almost always nonexistent. In his March 1st speech before Congress, Milei limited himself to attacking Cuba and Venezuela—like a obsequious student who does more than what is asked to please his superiors—and, several paragraphs later, he referred to Mercosur only to destroy it.
Jorge Taiana, former foreign minister and defense minister, and Carlos Raimundi, former ambassador to the OAS, both well-versed in the intricacies of Argentine foreign policy, members of the Mundo Sur group, and keen observers of the current global transformation, spoke with El Destape to analyze this "harmony."
There are two points that both emphasized: the first is Argentina's enormous importance on the geostrategic level, and the second is Trump's aim to impose a new order by strengthening the global dimension of the far-right.
"The role Washington assigns to Milei, from a strategic perspective, is zero," Taiana opined. "What's important is Argentina, and this has been evident for some time. The interest in the South Atlantic, in its natural resources, in its islands, in its mineral nodules, in the routes to Antarctica, in the interoceanic passage... the South Atlantic is going to have much more relevance in the 21st century."
"Milei rejects multipolarism: she refused to join the BRICS and seeks to destroy any regional integration project. She wants to be the unique one on the block. She argues with her neighbors. She believes Argentina's solution is financial and, at most, considers two or three areas of investment: agriculture, mining, lithium, oil, gas, and some knowledge technology. Not much more," he added.
For former ambassador Raimundi, Milei's obsession with attacking "politics and statehood" is highly functional for Trumpism. "The criticism of Mercosur, the attacks against Venezuela and Cuba, I don't know if they're part of a request from the US or Milei's own eccentricity," he speculated.
Whether ordered by Washington or not, the reality is that in just over a year the Argentine president has greatly contributed to regional disintegration, the weakening of Latin American ties, and the boycott of any kind of union that would empower the Great Homeland in a world in transition.
The line of action that Raimundi traces clearly demonstrates this: "Milei escalated. First, he went against Argentina. He said: 'I am a mole who has come to destroy the State.' He immediately attacked Latin American states: he insulted Presidents Lula, López Obrador, Boric, and Petro. Then he crossed the Atlantic and attacked the President of the Spanish government, Pedro Sánchez. Meanwhile, he used Davos—twice—and the UN General Assembly to attack the entire global statehood. He represents an anarcho-capitalist movement that, unlike classical anarchism, does not favor workers' organizations but rather large financial and digital corporations. Hence the strong alliance with Elon Musk."
And he continues: "Obviously, this alliance is temporary and utilitarian. When Milei's power falters, when he ceases to be useful to them, they will do to him the same thing they did to the Ukrainian Vladimir Zelensky. They will turn him, in the blink of an eye, from a hero to a rag, making him look ridiculous in front of the world."
Taiana then added a nuance: "Milei's key point isn't just following Trump. He wants to show that he's Trump's equal, that he's an ideological leader of the international far right, and that's why he says—at first we all laughed—that the two most important people in the world are Trump and him. For Milei, the national interest isn't important. Obviously, for Trump, it's very convenient to have a far-right leader governing one of the most important countries in Latin America and the second most important in South America. Having a sympathizer on the continent gives far-rightism a more global dimension."
Cuba, Venezuela and Latin America
On February 10, the State Department spokesperson reported on the meeting between Marco Rubio and Argentine Foreign Minister Gerardo Werthein in a document highlighting "Argentina's cooperation on shared priorities." The task of "confronting the criminal regimes of Cuba, Nicaragua, and Venezuela" is one of the main priorities, in addition to combating "the malign influence of extra-regional actors," an obvious—albeit ambiguous—allusion to China.
The obstinacy toward Cuba, Raimundi believes, is due to the fact that the island "is a symbol." "No libertarian can fail to condemn Cuba. The island is an icon of dignity. It is significant for what it represents more than for what it is."
Regarding Venezuela, the former ambassador observes an ambivalent US attitude. "It confronts Venezuela through Marco Rubio and Claver-Carone, just as it does with Cuba and Nicaragua, but at the same time, it sends a diplomat to Caracas to talk with President Nicolás Maduro about oil and migrants," in addition to the prisoner exchange. "There is an ideological policy to contain the most radicalized sectors in Miami and, at the same time, a pragmatic one to supply US refineries with cheaper and more suitable oil, coming from Venezuela, as has historically been the case."
In collusion with this pragmatic plane is the ideological one. "I believe that in our region, the objective is to strengthen the Trump-Bolsonaro-Milei axis, that is, the far-right axis within the framework of an ultra-right international coalition," Raimundi continued. "Through this axis, they will fight for Noboa to win the presidential runoff in Ecuador; they will try to destabilize Petro's government; they will try to recover Chile; they will try to win the Bolivian presidential elections by unifying the right-wing opposition with a far-right candidate; they will continue to consolidate Paraguay and maintain the right in Peru. If they manage to have that number of right-wing governments, they will succeed in emptying international organizations like CELAC and definitively ending UNASUR."
However, reality is not easy for Trumpism. Only by looking at the region will we see the serious difficulties the White House is facing in imposing its own candidate to succeed Luis Almagro as Secretary General of the OAS. The massive support from Latin American countries for Suriname's Foreign Minister, Albert Ramdin, is a setback for the plans of the new US administration and a ray of hope for advocates of regional unity and the strengthening of multilateralism.
This article was originally published in El Destape of Argentina on March 9, 2025.
https://misionverdad.com/globalistan/ha ... ica-latina
Google Translator
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'No one is expelling anyone from Gaza': Trump backpedals from ethnic cleansing plan
Trump's recent remarks arrive as Tel Aviv officials have expressed outrage over Washington's direct ceasefire discussions with Hamas
News Desk
MAR 12, 2025
(Photo Credit: Roberto Schmidt/AFP/Getty Images)
US President Donald Trump declared on 12 March that Palestinians will not be “expelled” from Gaza, seemingly taking back threats he made earlier this year to ethnically cleanse the strip to build the “Riviera of the Middle East.”
“We are not expelling anyone from the Gaza Strip,” Trump told reporters ahead of his meeting with Irish Prime Minister Micheal Martin.
Trump's remarks stand in stark contrast with his 4 February statement alongside Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, in which he said, “The US will take over the Gaza Strip … I see it as a long-term ownership position,” stressing that the US and Israel “will flatten it; 1.8 million need to leave.”
It also comes just one week after US National Security Council spokesman Brian Hughes declared that Trump “stands by his vision to rebuild Gaza free from Hamas,” rejecting an Egyptian proposal for post-war Gaza put forward by Arab states at a recent summit in Cairo.
“The current proposal does not address the reality that Gaza is currently uninhabitable and residents cannot humanely live in a territory covered in debris and unexploded ordnance,” Hughes said.
Over the past month, the US president repeatedly doubled down on his threats to “take” Gaza, claiming he was “committed to buying and owning” the enclave. However, late in February, he claimed not to wish to impose the ”Riviera” plan by force but “will recommend it.”
Trump's most recent statements come on the heels of direct US–Hamas negotiations over the ceasefire in Gaza led by US hostage envoy Adam Boehler.
“Look, they don’t have horns growing out of their heads; they’re actually guys like us; they’re pretty nice guys. We’re the United States, we’re not an agent of Israel. We have specific interests at play,” Boehler told CNN last week, drawing the ire of Tel Aviv.
Boehler further angered Israeli officials by speaking to Channel 12 News, telling the broadcaster there have been “positive developments in negotiations” with Hamas.
“[Boehler] attempted to negotiate the release of American hostages. We made it clear to him that he cannot speak on our behalf, and if he wishes to negotiate on behalf of the United States, then good luck to him,” Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich told Israel’s Army Radio.
https://thecradle.co/articles/no-one-is ... nsing-plan
Tomorrow he'll deny he ever said it, maybe forgotten or just covering his scatter-brain.
