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When it comes to tariffs for Canada and Mexico, America is ending the week pretty much as it started. Over the course of just a few days, Donald Trump—following up on a November promise—announced 25 percent tariffs on the country’s North American neighbors, caused a panic in the stock market, eked out minor concessions from foreign leaders, and called the whole thing off (for 30 days, at least). But the residue of this week’s blink-and-you-missed-it trade war will stick.

The consensus among economists is that the now-paused tariffs on Canada and Mexico would have caused significant, perhaps even immediate, cost hikes and inflation for Americans. Tariffs on Mexico could have raised produce prices within days, because about a third of America’s fresh fruits and vegetables are imported from Mexico, Ernie Tedeschi, the director of economics at Yale’s Budget Lab, told me in an email. But “uncertainty about tariffs poses a strong risk of fueling inflation, even if tariffs don’t end up going into effect,” he argued. Tedeschi noted that “one of the cornerstone findings of economics over the past 50 years is the importance of expectations” when it comes to inflation. Consumers, nervous about inflation, may change their behavior—shifting their spending, trying to find higher-paying jobs, or asking for more raises—which can ultimately push up prices in what Tedeschi calls a “self-fulfilling prophecy.”

The drama of recent days may also make foreign companies balk at the idea of entering the American market. During Trump’s first term, domestic industrial production decreased after tariffs were imposed. Although Felix Tintelnot, an economics professor at Duke, was not as confident as Tedeschi is about the possibility of unimposed tariffs driving inflation, he suggested that the threats could have ripple effects on American business: “Uncertainty by itself is discouraging to investments that incur big onetime costs,” he told me. In sectors such as the auto industry, whose continental supply chains rely on border crossing, companies might avoid new domestic projects until all threats of a trade war are gone (which, given the persistence of Trump’s threats, may be never). That lack of investment could affect quality and availability, translating to higher costs down the line for American buyers. Some carmakers and manufacturers are already rethinking their operations, just in case.

And the 10 percent tariffs on China (although far smaller than the 60 percent Trump threatened during his campaign) are not nothing, either. These will hit an estimated $450 billion of imports—for context, last year, the United States imported about $4 trillion in foreign goods—and China has already hit back with new tariffs of its own. Yale’s Budget Lab found that the current China tariffs will raise overall average prices by 0.1 to 0.2 percent. Tariffs, Tedeschi added, are regressive, meaning they hurt lower-earning households more than high-income ones.

Even the most attentive companies and shoppers might have trouble anticipating how Trump will handle future tariffs. Last month, he threatened and then dropped a tariff on Colombia; this week, he hinted at a similar threat against the European Union. There is a case to be made that Trump was never serious about tariffs at all—they were merely a way for him to appear tough on trade and flex his power on the international stage. And although many of the concessions that Mexico and Canada offered were either symbolic or had been in the works before the tariff threats, Trump managed to appear like the winner to some of his supporters.

Still, the longest-lasting damage of the week in trade wars may be the solidification of America’s reputation as a fickle ally. As my colleague David Frum wrote on Wednesday, the whole episode leaves the world with the lesson that “countries such as Canada, Mexico, and Denmark that commit to the United States risk their security and dignity in the age of Trump.”

Related:

The tariffs were never real. How Trump lost his trade war

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A federal judge said he would issue a temporary restraining order that would pause parts of the Trump administration’s plan to slash the USAID workforce and withdraw employees from their overseas posts. Donald Trump met with Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba at the White House, where they discussed reducing the U.S.’s trade deficit with Japan. A plane carrying 10 people went missing in western Alaska while en route from Unalakleet to Nome.

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Illustration by Akshita Chandra / The Atlantic. Sources: Getty; Wikimedia Commons.

The Rise of the Selfish Plutocrats

By Brian Klaas

The role of the ultra-wealthy has morphed from one of shared social responsibility and patronage to the freewheeling celebration of selfish opulence. Rather than investing in their society—say, by giving alms to the poor, or funding Caravaggios and cathedrals—many of today’s plutocrats use their wealth to escape to private islands, private Beyoncé concerts, and, above all, extremely private superyachts. One top Miami-based “yacht consultant” has dubbed itself Medici Yachts. The namesake recalls public patronage and social responsibility, but the consultant’s motto is more fitting for an era of indulgent billionaires: “Let us manage your boat. For you is only to smile and make memories.”

Read the full article.

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How the Spanish have built one of the strongest economies in the European Union.

There he was, running from his home in northern Gaza, one of his granddaughters in his arms, as bombs dropped. There he was again, now in the driver’s seat, shielding his face as a car in front of him exploded.

Marwan Bardawil, 61, a Palestinian engineer who has devoted his life to the management of water, recounted these and other episodes over months of conversations via phone and sometimes WhatsApp. It was with a sense of relief and almost disbelief that I finally laid eyes on him in person this past fall: lean and wiry in a gray suit, standing on the doorstep of a terraced Cairo apartment, backlit by the waning afternoon sun.

As an administrator—until recently, the head of the Gaza Program Coordination Unit of the Palestinian Water Authority—Bardawil has for 30 years had one main focus: the water system of the Gaza Strip. In cities around the world, an intricate lattice of pipes connects homes, businesses, and public facilities to sophisticated systems that deliver clean water and take away dirty water. Turn on a tap, and water flows. Flush a toilet, and water disappears. All of this is at once an engineering feat and a mundane luxury. But it was always precarious for the 2.2 million people crowded into Gaza’s 140 square miles. Now, after 15 months of war between Hamas and Israel, the water system in Gaza has gone from hardscrabble and tenuous to virtually nonexistent. The announcement last month of a cease-fire dangles the prospect of hope, though cease-fires are fragile. President Donald Trump’s proposal this week for a U.S. takeover of Gaza, the relocation of everyone living there, and the building of a “Riviera of the Middle East,” adds a bizarre and dangerous new variable.

[Read: Nobody wants Gaz-a-Lago]

Engineers in Gaza have no time for bluster and fantasy about the place they know as home. They must deal every day with the damage already done, knowing that it cannot easily be undone. For Gaza’s civilians, the half-life of war is long.

In Cairo, Bardawil gestured with a cigarette. “I don’t think that people … they are not interested in my personal difficulties and problems,” he said. “This will not make a value for anyone.” I had heard this sentiment from him before. No one wants another sad story from Gaza, he would say. He didn’t want to talk about politics. He wanted to stick to the “professional side”—that is, how Gazans get their water.

Bardawil is Gazan by birth and before the war had been living in a town named Rimal. It lies seven miles northwest of Kibbutz Be’eri, the Israeli community across the border where some 100 civilians were killed by Hamas on October 7, 2023; all told, the Hamas attacks that day took the lives of almost 1,200. On October 12, amid Israeli air strikes, Bardawil and his adult children and two young grandchildren fled their home. He said they’d made the decision to flee in an instant. “When you left, you left under the threat of losing your life, so you just jump out with what you wear.” The short journey from northern Gaza to a house in Khan Younis, in southern Gaza, took days: It was safer to proceed on foot—cars are targets—and intense fighting often forced the family to shelter in place overnight along the way. Despite cellphone service that was frequently jammed, Bardawil remained in contact with his own staff and that of an independent partner, the Coastal Municipalities Water Utility. All of them were contending with the worst engineering crisis of their lives.

Bardawil’s managerial career began soon after the signing, in 1993, of the Oslo Accords between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization. The agreement created the Palestinian Authority; under it, the Palestinian Water Authority was established to oversee water resources.

Bardawil had a degree in mechanical engineering and hydraulics, and had been teaching and working in Libya. The Oslo Accords drew him back to Gaza. He was an idealist who believed in the peace process, but he was also a technocrat who understood how to make pragmatic improvements. Bardawil and the water authority’s dozen other engineers in Gaza worked out of a hotel room at first. They made long-term and short-term plans, hopeful that “what we are doing on paper,” as he put it, would someday become real. In time, the water authority matured into a functional agency.

Illustration by Mel Haasch. Sources: Marwan Bardawil; AFP / Getty

And it made progress, despite severe obstacles. Gaza was poor and crowded, and its politics were unstable. Violence was part of the environment, and it came both from inside and outside. The PWA never enjoyed real autonomy. The Oslo Accords formalized the significant control over water that Israel had exercised since occupying the West Bank and Gaza after the Six-Day War, in 1967. The water authority had to operate according to Israeli regulations. Permits for new facilities needed Israeli approval. The relationship with Israel was never one of equals—Bardawil referred once to an omnipresent “umbrella of superiority”—but engineer to engineer, it more or less worked. Importantly, the Palestinians were able to leverage international help—from the European Union, Canada, the United Nations, Oxfam—in building new facilities.

The system they patched together had three components. The first depended on water purchased from Israel, which gets some of its own supply from the Coastal Aquifer Basin running beneath Gaza and extending far beyond. The water arrived through three separate connection points and accounted for about 10 percent of Gaza’s total supply. The second part of the system consisted of three large desalination plants positioned along the Mediterranean. Together, these solar-diesel hybrids—built with help from the EU and UNICEF—provided perhaps 7 percent of Gaza’s water. The rest of the water supply—more than 80 percent—came from groundwater accessed by hundreds of wells, some of them with pumping stations. Because of pollution, depletion, and seepage of water from the sea, the groundwater was of poor quality—brackish and salty, with a high level of chemicals. But it was accessible.

From these sources, the population of Gaza in normal times was able to utilize about 80 liters of water—roughly 21 gallons—per person a day, a third of the amount typically available to Israelis and about a quarter of the water available to the average American. Eighty liters is barely above what the World Health Organization considers to be a safe level. The people of Gaza made do.

Through it all—elections, intifadas, attacks—Gaza’s engineers kept the system running. For the most part, they did not involve themselves in politics. In 2006, Hamas wrested control of Gaza from Fatah, the secular party of the Palestinian Authority. (Fatah remains in power in the West Bank.) The engineers and civil servants stuck close to their expertise and tried to focus on maintaining a basic level of service, inadequate though it was.

Everything changed when Hamas breached Gaza’s fortified border with Israel on October 7. In addition to the large number killed, some 250 people were taken hostage. Israel responded with a military campaign—a sustained aerial bombardment and then a ground invasion. Gaza was placed under siege. On October 9, then–Defense Minister Yoav Gallant declared: “No electricity, no food, no water, no fuel.”

[Read: The war that would not end]

Israel’s onslaught has taken the lives of tens of thousands of civilians—the exact number is hard to know and politically charged. The Hamas-controlled Health Ministry in Gaza has put the total number of civilian and militant deaths through January at about 47,000. It is a count that the United Nations has relied on and that the Israeli government has criticized as exaggerated. There has also been at least one independent attempt to capture the number of people killed. A peer-reviewed study published in The Lancet estimated the total number through last summer at a minimum of 55,000. Lethal force aside, Israel’s capabilities are significant. It can cut off or reduce the availability of outside water and electricity for Gaza. It can restrict fuel supplies and disrupt communications. Access to clean water has been among the gravest challenges. At the worst moments during the war, the average person in Gaza was getting a little less than a gallon of water a day.

The PWA engineers watched as the water system they’d created was torn apart. I began speaking with Bardawil, alongside my colleague Hanna Rosin, and those conversations became the basis for a podcast episode of Radio Atlantic. He described to me the wrenching experience of having to ration water for his own granddaughters. When we met in Cairo, he tried to sum up his feelings: “To see plans jump from paper to become realistic projects, and then to witness the destruction of these facilities, and how the people are impacted, is …” But he never finished the thought, shifting back to his “professional side.”

Also on October 9, the Israeli water company Mekorot shut off the supply flowing to Gaza through the three major junctions. Bardawil remembered the numbers falling: “One of the pipes goes down from 700 cubic meters per hour to zero. Other line—800 cubic meters per hour—goes to zero. The third one—1,400 cubic meters per hour—goes to zero.” It would take more than a week, and international pressure, before water from any of these connection points was restored, but never again would it flow at the original capacity.

Meanwhile, the vascular network of smaller pipes that bring water to homes and businesses, schools and hospitals—a network built over three decades—collapsed under Israeli bombardment. A grim pattern was established: Pipes would be destroyed, repaired, and then destroyed again. Communication between Gaza engineers and their Israeli counterparts went from perfunctory to disjointed. At times, the Israelis would unexpectedly open the taps, only for the water to reach the damaged tributary pipes and then gush wastefully into the sand or the streets.

Gaza’s three large desalination plants started to fail; the Israelis had halted deliveries of diesel fuel and solar components, fearing that Hamas would redirect both to military use. Gaza’s six sewage-treatment plants, which operate on diesel as well, also began to fail.

[Read: Gaza’s suffering is unprecedented]

In theory, the more than 80 percent of the water supply that comes from groundwater, by means of local wells, was less subject to disruption. But as the Israeli invasion continued and entire regions were leveled, roughly half of Gaza’s population was pushed from north to south; many people crowded into tent cities. The forced migration put groundwater sources in the north beyond reach while doubling the burden on resources in the south.

Those resources are vulnerable. In July, Israeli forces destroyed or damaged wells and other water-related sites across southern Gaza. An Israeli soldier posted a video on social media of the Israel Defense Forces fixing explosives to pipes at one of the wells, as well as footage of the well exploding. A caption read “in honor of Shabbat.”

The groundwater was by now heavily contaminated—a catastrophic consequence of the sewage plants’ failure, poor sanitation in the tent cities, and the onset of heavy rains. By summer, some 70 percent of what had been Gaza’s sewage system either didn’t work or no longer existed. So much sewage flowed uncollected that none of the systems could not keep up with the level of groundwater contamination.

As of August, Gaza had nearly 600,000 documented cases of acute diarrhea, a condition attributable to contaminated water. It had 40,000 cases of hepatitis A. And that month, a 10-month-old baby—paralyzed—tested positive for polio, the first confirmed case in Gaza in a quarter century.

Leaving Gaza had not been Bardawil’s intention, but his superior at the Palestinian Water Authority encouraged him to get out. He himself also realized it was time to go: Using Gaza as a base of operations was becoming too difficult and too dangerous. In April, Bardawil had been driving home from a water facility that needed repairs when the car in front of him blew up. Bardawil was wounded when shrapnel from the blast smashed his windshield. Weeks later, he left with his family, using an Egyptian company that specializes in facilitating the passage of Gazans into Egypt. (The price is $5,000 per adult and $2,500 per child.) They joined the more than 100,000 other Gazans who have fled to Egypt. Bardawil’s job now is to coordinate with donor countries and international organizations. From Cairo, Bardawil looked back with resignation on the legacy of the past three decades: “All that we planned, all that we implemented, all that has been invested in—it’s totally gone.” It was as if his life, he said, had been “for nothing.”

But that wasn’t true. During nearly a year and a half of war, Bardawil and the other engineers had worked to salvage what they could. Part of the task involved reconfiguring pipelines and water mains—the conduits from Israel, from the desalination plants, from smaller facilities—so that water would follow the population as it moved south. Another part involved fixing the damage to pipes and wells caused by bombs and artillery. All of this was never-ending, often futile. Every day, every hour, was consumed by desperate acts of coordination and repair. Cellphones were unreliable. Attacks proved lethal. In June, an Israeli air strike on a building in Gaza City killed five municipal workers as they operated local wells. In October, four water engineers were killed when their car was bombed while they were on their way to make repairs near Khan Younis. According to Oxfam, their vehicle was marked and their movements had been coordinated with the Israeli government.

Life in Gaza has been sustained by intermittent convoys of water tankers and trucks with cargoes of plastic bottles. Images of children standing in line with yellow water jugs half their size have become a staple in news reports and on social media. Plenty of water is available outside Gaza. Moving it into Gaza has required continual, vexing diplomacy by the water authority. The process for other commodities has been even more complicated. Bardawil recalled the PWA spending 10 days trying to persuade Israel to release enough diesel to power the generators that pump the wells in Gaza City.

[Read: Israel never defined its goals]

My visit with Bardawil this past fall coincided with Cairo Water Week, a yearly conference where economists, engineers, and diplomats gather to discuss policy and innovations in water management. In 2022, Bardawil had attended the conference and talked about a pilot program he’d been proud of—how the PWA had helped connect a small wastewater-treatment plant and an agricultural project run by women. A year into the war, the plant and the project were gone. What is essential now, he explained during this year’s conference, is getting big, solar-powered water-treatment units into Gaza. He was hoping for 25 of them—each the size of a shipping container. This number, he believed, would be enough to ensure some measure of stability—collectively providing as many as 1 million Gazans with as much as two and a half gallons of water a day. That’s not a permanent solution, or even close, but units such as these are common in many parts of the world. They are relatively inexpensive, and they work.

Under the terms of the cease-fire announced in January, Hamas would begin releasing hostages, and Israel would expand the size of relief convoys permitted to enter Gaza. Since the cease-fire took hold, the amount of water available to each person in Gaza has been about seven to 10 liters a day—about two and a half gallons at most. Israel had already started providing electricity to one of the desalination plants. But most of Gaza’s water infrastructure has been damaged or destroyed. The Palestinian Water Authority has put together a six-month plan with the overarching goals for Gaza that one would expect: restore the water connection from Israel; get the desalination plants working; do something about sewage. The full list of what needs to be done is impossibly long. And many of the very people planning the reconstruction of the water system are themselves struggling to reconstruct their own lives.

Bardawil told me that he looked forward to a time when war would end, and killing would end, and people in Gaza could rebuild their lives and their hope in one another. “I’m not sure that I will witness that day,” he admitted. But seeing the arrival of 25 desalination containers would be a start.

Move over, Greenland. Donald Trump has his eyes on a new prize: Gaza. At a news conference with visiting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu yesterday, the president declared that “the U.S. will take over the Gaza Strip,” “level it out,” and “create an economic development that will supply unlimited numbers of jobs and housing for the people of the area.” These people would not all be Gazans, whom Trump suggested should be resettled elsewhere, at least temporarily. The president also expressed openness to deploying U.S. troops in order to turn Gaza into the “Riviera of the Middle East.”

Trump’s Gaz-a-Lago plan has just one minor defect: It is a nonstarter with pretty much all of the parties required to make it work. Fresh off failed forays into Iraq and Afghanistan, many Americans will balk at inserting themselves into one of the Middle East’s most intractable conflicts. “I think most South Carolinians would probably not be excited about sending Americans to take over Gaza,” Republican Senator Lindsey Graham, one of the most hawkish lawmakers in Congress, told reporters. Trump named Jordan and Egypt as two Arab countries that could take in displaced Gazans during the territory’s reconstruction, but both regimes would rather swallow broken glass than grant citizenship or even a foothold to large numbers of Palestinians, whose cause they celebrate but whose people they routinely denigrate.

Trump’s scheme also conflicts with an essential component of the Israeli ethos. The country prides itself on “defending itself by itself,” as home to a formerly persecuted people no longer reliant on foreign powers for its security. This pose is something of a polite fiction—Israel very much relies on American weapons and diplomatic support—but it’s true to the extent that the country has always fought its own wars with its own fighters. Trump’s proposal would upend that doctrine and risk turning Israel into a liability for the United States, rather than a strategic asset. As for the Palestinians, many Gazans would readily seek a new life elsewhere if offered the opportunity to escape their horrific circumstances, but many others would not. If done at the point of a gun, such a transfer would constitute ethnic cleansing—a far-right Israeli dream into which Trump just breathed new life, whatever his intentions.

[Read: Trump’s wild plan for Gaza]

But as flawed as Trump’s proposed solution is, it does identify a real problem. The U.S., Arab states, the European Union, the United Nations, and countless human-rights organizations all claim to care about Gaza. In the decades since Israel withdrew its troops and settlements from the territory, however, the international community has participated in a perverse cycle: It shovels money and aid into Gaza; watches that money get appropriated by Hamas to bankroll its messianic war against Israel’s existence; relegates the military response to Hamas to ever more hawkish Israeli governments, elected by voters pushed to the right by rocket attacks; rebuilds Gaza with more soon-to-be-compromised aid after yet another ruinous conflict between Israel and Hamas; then proclaims itself shocked and appalled when the cycle repeats.

The latest war has been catastrophic for the Palestinian people, and that is the culmination of years of bankrupt international policy. “The Gaza thing has not worked; it’s never worked,” Trump told reporters yesterday. “It’s a pure demolition site. If we could find the right piece of land or numerous pieces of land and build them some really nice places … I think that would be a lot better than going back to Gaza, which has had just decades and decades of death.” As is often the case, Trump accurately diagnosed a fundamental failure of the reigning policy elites, but offered a half-baked solution to the problem.

With significant revisions, this proposal could contain a semblance of something workable. Temporarily housing Gazans in dignified conditions elsewhere while the devastated territory is rebuilt under the watchful eyes of America and its allies would provide the Gazan people with much-deserved relief while depriving Hamas of its source of power and income. The civilians would no longer be shields for Hamas to place between itself and Israel, and Hamas would no longer be able to skim funds from the population’s aid. Ultimately, the Gazan people could then return to a home no longer hostage to either Hamas or Israeli blockade. Should Trump’s Arab allies talk him into something like this, it would certainly be better than rerunning the old playbook and expecting a different result.

Trump’s proposal could be a negotiating tactic—a grandiose plan intended to be bargained down to something practical. It could be a flight of fancy that won’t survive contact with the regional players, or a vision he intends to push through with American might. No one honestly knows. More immediate questions also remain unanswered: Does Trump intend to ensure that the current Israel-Hamas cease-fire holds through its second phase, which is scheduled to begin in March, or will the war reignite? If the president is unable to strike a new accord with Iran, Hamas’s weakened patron, will he back Israeli strikes on its nuclear sites? Trump also dropped another surprise toward the end of his press conference, when he said that his administration would announce its policy on potential Israeli annexation of the West Bank—territory that Palestinians claim for their future state—in the next four weeks.

Whether Trump will follow through on any of the ideas he tossed like grenades into the discourse yesterday is anyone’s guess. What’s certain is this: The old rules of the Middle East no longer apply, and no one knows what the new ones are.

For months, thousands of protesters have marched through Tbilisi, Georgia, confronting masked police who have beaten and arrested hundreds. The demonstrations took off in November, when the ruling party halted talks to join the European Union. Georgians fear that their government is sidling up to Moscow and transforming the country into an authoritarian state.

The crisis threatens to overturn a decades-long effort by the United States and EU to preserve Georgian democracy, which has served as a bulwark against the Kremlin’s growing influence in the Black Sea region. Now the protesters stand between Vladimir Putin and a political victory that could accelerate his imperialist campaign throughout Eastern Europe.

Since gaining independence from the Soviet Union in 1991, Georgia has received more than $10 billion in development aid from the West, much of it bolstering the country’s democratic institutions. But Georgia’s path to democracy has never been straight. Abuses of power and electoral disputes have repeatedly undermined progress. Contested elections in October gave the Georgian Dream party commanding control of Parliament. By suspending talks to join the EU, the party quashed a goal that an overwhelming majority of Georgians supported. Protesters worry that the country’s current autocratic turn may become irreversible.

[Read: A wider war has already started in Europe]

Georgian Dream emerged in 2012 during a period of political turmoil. Bidzina Ivanishvili, an oligarch who had amassed his fortune in Russia, invested his considerable resources in establishing a political party to run against Georgia’s then-president, Mikheil Saakashvili, who faced allegations of corruption and political violence. He served as prime minister for a year and appointed his business associates to leadership positions. His party has remained in power ever since, steadily accruing control over the country’s judiciary, electoral commission, state broadcaster, and other TV stations. Today, Ivanishvili’s estimated wealth amounts to more than one-quarter of Georgia’s GDP. Georgian Dream’s ascent resembles those of other so-called hybrid regimes, which use the tools of democracy to subvert civic institutions and curtail freedoms while evading accountability.

Until recently, Georgian Dream backed EU accession. Along with opposition parties, it enshrined the goal in the constitution, and a year ago, the EU formalized Georgia as a candidate for membership. But in 2021, the party refused to adopt EU-mediated reforms that would have ensured judicial independence and other basic norms of democratic power-sharing. After Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Georgian Dream took a more explicitly anti-Western turn, adopting nationalist language that echoed Putin’s and playing up the threat of an unspecified “Global War Party” that aimed to drag Georgia into “a second front” against Russia. In May, it passed a law that designated Western-funded NGOs as “foreign agents” and imposed intrusive reporting requirements that many Georgians sense could wipe out the civic sector.

Five months later, Georgian Dream won 54 percent of the vote in parliamentary elections that observers have widely criticized. Exit polls suggested that the party had less support than the official results indicated, by a margin of 10 or more points. Demonstrations erupted in Tbilisi and haven’t stopped since.

Photograph by Ksenia Ivanova

Georgian protesters voice worries that their country might become a Russian vassal, like Belarus. Russian funds have poured into the country, particularly since the full-scale war in Ukraine and subsequent sanctions on Russia. The opposition leader Giorgi Gakharia, a former Georgian Dream prime minister, has accused the government of fostering a “grey zone” to help Russia, Iran, and China facilitate illicit trade and sidestep regulators. “With the Ukraine war, Russia needs ways to avoid sanctions,” he told me, “and the South Caucasus is ideal for this.” (Shortly after we met, two senior Georgian Dream officials, including an MP, physically attacked Gakharia, inflicting a concussion and a broken nose.)

The Kremlin already holds nearly 20 percent of Georgian territory, which it secured through a war in 2008, and is pushing to develop a new port in Russian-controlled Abkhazia. During the election campaign, Georgian Dream raised the idea of reintegrating these regions, which would be virtually impossible without close alignment with Russia. Some Georgians fear that a potential peace settlement in Ukraine might grant Russia greater influence in their country in exchange for Western security guarantees for Ukraine.

[Read: Trump is facing a catastrophic defeat in Ukraine]

A Kremlin-aligned Georgia would undermine the Eastern Partnership, an EU initiative that aims to spread democracy in the Black Sea region and strengthen its political, economic, and military relations with Europe. Of the six states involved in the initiative, Moscow has dominated Belarus, allied with Azerbaijan, invaded Ukraine, and interfered in a recent election in Moldova. If Georgia succumbs to the Kremlin, that leaves only Armenia, whose potential bid to join the EU will be severely complicated by the Russian influence that surrounds it.

The EU has condemned Georgia’s October election and withdrawn visa-free travel for party elites. It has also suspended aid, including 30 million euros it earlier committed for military reform. And the U.S. has imposed sanctions on key figures within the Georgian government, including Ivanishvili. But Georgia’s would-be autocrats appear to be undaunted. So far, police have avoided charges for beating demonstrators, while cultural figures and protesters face long prison sentences for minor infractions.

Many in the Georgian opposition, and some abroad, now look to outgoing President Salome Zourabichvili for leadership. To keep the opposition united and sustain the support of Western allies will require considerable diplomatic skill. Zourabichvili spent inauguration week in Washington to make her case to the new administration.

The nights in Tbilisi were already very cold when I visited in December. Now they are freezing. Still the streets are dense with protesters, and they are determined to stay.

“Georgian Dream has taken over everything, but all Georgians are gathering here,” one young demonstrator told me. “We will be here until the end.”

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So you’re a world leader and you’ve been threatened by the American president. What now? First, take some consolation: You’re not alone. The first two weeks of the second Trump administration have seen the White House trying to wring policy concessions from allies and adversaries both near and far.

Now to come up with a response. Simply ignoring Donald Trump is not an option. The United States wields so much power that even if you think the president is irrational or bluffing, you have to reply. Any leader must calibrate a response that will speak not only to Trump but also to their own domestic audience. This may be Diplomacy 101, but Trump will nonetheless expect your answer to be fully focused on him. “Trump doesn’t seem to have any concept that maybe other people have publics to which they’re accountable,” John Bolton, who served as national security adviser in his first term, recently told me.

As heads of state scramble for the best response, we’ve seen several different approaches. Each has clear upsides—but also some pitfalls.

Fight Fire With Fire

Example: Colombia. On January 26, President Gustavo Petro posted on X announcing that he’d turned back two American military planes full of deportees. “We will receive our citizens in civilian airplanes, without them being treated as delinquents,” he wrote. “Colombia must be respected.” Trump promptly threatened huge tariffs; Petro fired back, threatening tariffs of his own and saying, “You will never dominate us.” In the end, Petro agreed to accept military flights but also got assurances from the U.S. that Colombians would not be handcuffed or photographed, and would be escorted by Department of Homeland Security staff, not troops.

Why it might work: Trump doesn’t actually like conflict, so he might blink. (While the presidents sniped at each other, their respective aides were hammering out an agreement.) He also sometimes respects a bold, brassy response—just ask his good pal Kim Jong Un of North Korea.

Why it might not: If Trump had gone through with 25 or 50 percent tariffs, Colombia’s economy would have been devastated. It’s a high-risk play.

***

Make a Deal

Examples: Mexico, Panama, Denmark. These countries aren’t powerful enough to fight Trump outright, so they’re looking for a way to compromise. This weekend, the White House announced large tariffs on Mexican and Canadian goods, but this morning, Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo announced that she had struck a deal with Trump to avoid tariffs. “Mexico will reinforce the northern border with 10,000 members of the National Guard immediately, to stop drug trafficking from Mexico to the United States, in particular fentanyl,” she posted on X. “The United States commits to work to stop the trafficking of high-powered weapons to Mexico.” That’s a concrete commitment from Mexico and a rather vague one from the U.S., but it allows Mexico to escape tariffs and save some face. Elsewhere, Panama is promising to not renew an infrastructure agreement with China after Trump threatened to seize the Panama Canal. And Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen is offering the U.S. a chance to expand its presence on Greenland, even as she says the island is absolutely not for sale. “If this is about securing our part of the world, we can find a way forward,” she said.

Why it might work: Trump is fundamentally transactional, and in each of these cases he’s getting a win without having to do anything besides issue a threat.

Why it might not: Trump is getting a win without having to do anything besides issue a threat. He might be satisfied for now, but he also might conclude that you can be easily bullied—so he might come back for more later. Giving in to Trump could offend your domestic audience and win only a temporary reprieve.

***

Try Targeted Threats

Example: Canada. Facing similar tariffs to Mexico, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau initially announced his own tariffs. Trudeau’s list included a few particular goods produced in red states that support Trump, including Kentucky bourbon and Florida orange juice. At a press conference Saturday, Trudeau spoke directly to Americans. “Tariffs against Canada will put your jobs at risk, potentially shutting down American auto assembly plants and other manufacturing facilities,” he said. “They will raise costs for you, including food at the grocery store and gas at the pump.” Late this afternoon, Trudeau announced that he and Trump had struck a deal in which Canada made hazy commitments to border security in exchange for Trump pausing tariffs.

Why it might work: This strategy is effective for countries like Canada, large enough trading partners that they can inflict real pain on the U.S. economy—which gives their threats some heft. Trudeau's tariffs were also cleverly tailored for maximum political impact in the U.S.

Why it might not: Trump backed down now, but Canada still stands to lose more than the U.S., and Trump knows that Trudeau is a lame duck.

***

Speak Softly and Carry a Big Stick

Example: China, the European Union. Trump has already imposed new tariffs on China and has threatened Europe as well. China’s government promised “necessary countermeasures to defend its legitimate rights and interests,” and French President Emmanuel Macron said today, “If our commercial interests are attacked, Europe, as a true power, will have to make itself respected and therefore react.” (Confidential to the Élysée: “True powers” don’t usually need to announce themselves as such.)

Why it might work: Trump doesn’t like conflict, has many reasons to work with American allies in Europe, and already lost a trade war with China in his first term. These vague threats are a sign of some strength, following Theodore Roosevelt’s maxim about foreign policy.

Why it might not: You think Trump’s going to be scared off by vague threats? This could just whet his appetite. Trump’s exchange with Petro suggests that threats work only if he thinks you really mean it.

Related:

What Trump’s finger-pointing reveals The price America will pay for Trump’s tariffs

Here are three new stories from The Atlantic:

Purging the government could backfire spectacularly. The Democrats show why they lost. The race-blind college-admissions era is off to a weird start.

Today’s News

Secretary of State Marco Rubio was appointed to be the acting administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development, which Trump wants to shut down, according to Elon Musk. Trump signed an executive order that sets up plans for a U.S. sovereign-wealth fund. The fund could be used to pay for infrastructure projects and other investments, including buying TikTok, according to Trump. The Treasury Department reportedly gave Musk and members of the Department of Government Efficiency access to the federal payment system, which contains sensitive information for millions of Americans.

Dispatches

The Wonder Reader: “To stay in or to go out, that is the question,” Stephanie Bai writes. The cost-benefit analysis of weekend plans never ends.

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Evening Read

Illustration by The Atlantic. Source: Getty.

The Illegal Drug at Every Corner Store

By Amogh Dimri

To judge by the shelves of America’s vice merchants, the nation is in the grips of a whipped-cream frenzy. Walk into any vape store or sex shop, and you’ll find canisters of nitrous oxide showcased in window displays—ostensibly to catch the eye of bakers and baristas, who use the gas to aerate creams and foams. At the bodega near my apartment, boxes of up to 100 mini-canisters are piled up to eye level, next to Baby Yoda bongs.

In fact, culinary professionals generally don’t shop for equipment at stores with names like Puff N Stuff or Condom Sense. The true clientele inhales the gas to get high.

Read the full article.

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Stephanie Bai contributed to this newsletter.

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From inside the room, Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s confirmation hearings felt at times more like an awards show than a job interview. While the health-secretary nominee testified, his fans in the audience hooted and hollered in support. Even a five-minute bathroom break was punctuated by a standing ovation from spectators and cheers of “We love you, Bobby!” There were some detractors as well—one protester was ushered out after screaming “He lies!” and interrupting the proceedings—but they were dramatically outnumbered by people wearing Make America Healthy Again T-shirts and Confirm RFK Jr. hats.

The MAHA faithful have plenty of reason to be excited. If confirmed, RFK Jr. would oversee an agency that manages nearly $2 trillion, with the authority to remake public health in his image. “He just represents the exact opposite of all these establishment agencies,” Brandon Matlack, a 34-year-old who worked on Kennedy’s presidential campaign, told me on Wednesday. We chatted as he waited in a line of more than 150 people that snaked down a flight of stairs—all of whom were hoping to get a seat for the hearing. Many of them were relegated to an overflow room.

Of course, Matlack and other RFK Jr. fans could be in for a letdown. Whether Kennedy will actually be confirmed as health secretary is still up in the air. There was less raucous cheering during the hearing on Thursday, as Kennedy faced tough questions from Republican Senator Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, whose vote could be decisive in determining whether Kennedy gets confirmed. But the realization of RFK Jr.’s vision for health care in America may not hinge on his confirmation. The MAHA movement has turned the issue of chronic disease into such a potent political talking point that people like Matlack are willing to trek from Pennsylvania to Washington, D.C., just to support Kennedy. Politicians across the country are hearing from self-proclaimed “MAHA moms” (and likely some dads too) urging them to enact reforms. They’re starting to listen.

Kennedy is best known as an anti-vaccine activist who spreads conspiracy theories. His more outlandish ideas are shared by some MAHA supporters, but the movement itself is primarily oriented around improving America’s diet and the health problems it causes us. Some of the ways MAHA wants to go about that, such as pressuring food companies to not use seed oils, are not exactly scientific; others do have some research behind them. Consider artificial food dyes, a major MAHA rallying cry. Multiple food dyes have been shown in animal studies to be carcinogenic. And although a candy-corn aficionado likely isn’t going to die from the product’s red dye, the additive is effectively banned in the European Union. (Kennedy claims that food dyes are driving down America’s life expectancy. There’s no evidence directly linking food dyes to declining human life expectancy, though one study did show that they cut short the life of fruit flies.)

Until recently, concerns over food additives, such as artificial dyes, were the domain of Democrats. In 2023, California became the first state in the nation to ban certain food additives: red dye 3, potassium bromate, brominated vegetable oil, and propylparaben. But now food-additive bans are being proposed in Donald Trump country, including West Virginia, Arkansas, and Kentucky. Some of the efforts, such as the Make Arkansas Healthy Again Act, are an explicit attempt to enact Kennedy’s agenda.

In other states, something a bit more Schoolhouse Rock is happening: The purported dangers of food ingredients are riling up Americans, who are then going to their lawmakers seeking change. Eric Brooks, a Republican state legislator in West Virginia, told me that he decided to copy California’s food-additive bill after being prodded by a constituent. “I said, Well, I don’t normally look out West, especially out to California, for policy ideas, to be honest with you,” he told me. “But once I had done the research and I saw the validity of the issue, I said, Okay.” Although his bill, which was first introduced in January 2024, did not move forward in the previous legislative session because, in his words, “there were bigger fish to fry,” Brooks hopes the national interest coming from the MAHA movement will motivate West Virginia legislators to take another look at the proposal.

Other red-state efforts to follow California’s lead have similarly not yet been passed into law, but the fact that the bills have been introduced at all signifies how motivated Republicans are on the topic. The MAHA moms may be enough to propel Kennedy to the job of health secretary. One Republican, Senator Jim Banks of Indiana, told Kennedy on Thursday that he plans to vote to confirm him because doing anything else “would be thumbing my nose at that movement.” Republicans are not only introducing bills to ban food additives; they’re also taking up Kennedy’s other MAHA priorities. Arkansas Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders recently asked the federal government for permission to forbid food-stamp recipients in her state from using their benefits to buy junk food—a policy Kennedy has repeatedly called for.

Over the past two days, senators seemed shocked at just how loyal a following Kennedy has amassed. One pejoratively called him a prophet. MAHA believers I spoke with made clear that they want RFK Jr.—and only RFK Jr.—to lead this movement. Vani Hari, a MAHA influencer who goes by “Food Babe” on Instagram, told me that, if Kennedy fails to be confirmed, there “will be an uprising like you have never seen.”

But at this point, it seems that the movement could live on even without Kennedy. On Wednesday, the Heritage Foundation hosted a press gaggle with MAHA surrogates. Heritage, an intellectual home of the modern conservative movement, is now praising the banning of food dyes. This is the same pro-business think tank that a decade ago warned that should the FDA ban partially hydrogenated oils, trans fats that were contributing to heart attacks, the agency “would be taking away choices,” “disrespecting” Americans’ autonomy, and mounting “an attack on dietary decisions.”

Republicans have generally been a bulwark for the food industry against policies that could hurt its bottom line. Democrats and Republicans in Washington today seem more aligned on food issues than ever before. “When you have members on both sides of the aisle whose constituencies are now extremely interested in understanding fully what’s in their food products, it does shift the game a bit,” Brandon Lipps, a food lobbyist and a former USDA official under Trump, told me. After all, even Bernie Sanders, despite chastising Kennedy multiple times during this week’s confirmation hearings, professed his support for aspects of the MAHA movement. “I agree with you,” Sanders told Kennedy on Thursday, that America needs “a revolution in the nature of food.” During the same hearing, Cassidy said that he is struggling with Kennedy’s candidacy because, despite their deep disagreements on vaccine policy, on “ultra-processed foods, obesity, we are simpatico. We are completely aligned.”

Although MAHA has shown itself to be a unifying message, the real test will come down to the brass tacks of any political movement: passing actual legislation. How willing lawmakers—especially those with pro-business proclivities—will be to buck the status quo remains to be seen. Politicians have proved eager to speak out against ultra-processed foods; in that sense, MAHA is winning. But policy victories may still be a ways off.

US President Donald Trump has said that trade tariffs on the European Union ‘will definitely happen’.

The trip is part of what the PM calls a "reset" between the UK and the European Union.

The UK left the European Union on 31 January 2020.