The contrast couldn't be more telling. Whilst the EU committed to buy $750 billion worth of very expensive US LNG as a tribute payment to Trump over the next 3 years, China managed to completely remove any dependency on US fossil fuels. It's literally down to zero.

This is absolutely extraordinary and beyond parody: A reporter rightly asks Von Der Leyen "What are the US concessions? What is the US giving up in the deal" VDL's reply is that there was none because "the starting point was an imbalance, a surplus on our side, and a deficit on the US side [so] we wanted to rebalance the trade relation." This is who we have negotiating on the EU's behalf: someone so thoroughly captured she's repeating almost word for word Trump's insane rhetoric that trade deficits are somehow proof America is a victim that deserves compensation.

This is beyond parody: VDL says that US LNG gas is "more affordable and better" than Russian gas in order to justify the unequal treaty she just signed Europe for, in which - among other concessions - she commits to buy $750 billion of US LNG over the next 3 years. Anyone with an ounce of common sense can understand that gas that comes directly from your next-door neighbor via pipeline is by definition much cheaper than gas that has to be liquefied, shipped thousands of miles across the Atlantic in specialized tankers, and then regasified in Europe. What you have here is a perfect illustration of the transatlantic relationship: EU elites lying to their own population in order to justify vassalization to the US, all as a consequence of making Russophobia the basis of all EU policy. The latter incidentally being a direct consequence of the US's decision to keep expanding NATO in Europe. From a US standpoint it's perfectly logical, it's good old "divide and conquer" and reaping the benefits. From the EU's standpoint they need to lie to make it look like it's a rational decision when the obvious truth is that they got played.

Ha yes, the extraordinarily complex science of early-stage investing, where you need to a) look at startup pitches, b) decide if you give them money. How could the Chinese have possibly cracked that code without American help? 🤦 After IP theft, this "we taught the Chinese everything" is the new coping mechanism to reconcile China's rise and American exceptionalism - "we didn't lose, we were just super generous and gave it all away." Because we all know that American capitalists are famously all about selflessness and altruism...

To be expected, the U.S. is now issued open threats against this "Hague group" of countries seeking to put in place concreate measures against Israel. A U.S. State Department spokesperson said that they “strongly opposes efforts by so-called ‘multilateral blocs’ to weaponize international law as a tool to advance radical anti-Western agendas. [The Hague Group] seeks to undermine the sovereignty of democratic nations by isolating and attempting to delegitimize Israel, transparently laying the groundwork for targeting the United States, our military and our allies.” Adding that the U.S. government, “will aggressively defend our interests, our military and our allies, including Israel, from such coordinated legal and diplomatic warfare. We urge our friends to stand with us in this critical endeavor.” Wanting international law to actually apply is to "weaponize" it and having a "radical anti-Western agenda", apparently... Src:

Wow, 20 countries - including China (!) - are meeting in Bogota this coming week to declare “concrete measures against Israel’s violations of international law.” The states due to take part in the summit include Algeria, Bangladesh, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, China, Colombia, Cuba, Djibouti, Honduras, Indonesia, Ireland, Lebanon, Malaysia, Namibia, Nicaragua, Oman, Portugal, Spain, Qatar, Senegal, South Africa, Turkey, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Uruguay, and Palestine. Src:

What a complete joke, and a major sign of disrespect for Malaysia. Trump literally appointed an "alpha male" influencer, with zero experience in foreign policy and only a Bachelor of Media, as his ambassador to Malaysia. His political life has consisted in creating the Foundation for Liberty and American Greatness (FLAG) that promotes American exceptionalism in schools, which I am sure will really resonate among Malays 🙃

This might be the most remarkable geopolitical document I've seen come out of a major European institution so far this century. France’s Parliament has just produced an extraordinary 153-page report that calls for nothing less than a complete strategic realignment of Europe. The document systematically dismantles the EU's current geopolitical positioning - "vassalized" to the U.S., in the report's words - as a catastrophic failure that has led to the EU seeing "its influence diminish and its interests poorly protected." The report details 50 recommendations from the "creation of a common world currency" (recommendation #14) to dedollarize the global economy, to "replacing the EU's strategy in the Indo-Pacific region with a cooperative approach including China" (recommendation #11). In general the report's central recommendation is that Europe break free from Atlantic subordination and instead achieve strategic autonomy by partnering with China. This would mark a complete historical reversal - for the first time since the colonial era, the historical West choosing equal strategic partnership with a Global South nation as an alternative to Western alliance structures. The report (which you can find here: is in French so I wrote a detailed article breaking down its most explosive findings and recommendations, an explaining why this could be its last chance to avoid irrelevance in a multipolar world. The link to my article is in the next tweet.

I love how Trump ends his threatening letter to South Korea with an Orwellian "you will never be disappointed with the United States of America", when this very letter is the US unilaterally breaking the 2007 KORUS free trade agreement that they have with South Korea. Which means, incidentally, that contrary to what the letter states South Korea charges 0% tariffs on US goods already.

Remember this 👇? This was April 9th, the day of the announcement of the 90-day pause for "liberation day" tariffs, and Trump was saying that countries were "dying to make a deal" and would do anything for it, "kissing his ass" to make deals. Basically, the narrative was that countries were so desperate to avoid the tariffs that deals would be easy. We're now July 7th, the eve - literally - of the 90-day deadline. So where are we? 1) Not a single actual trade "deal" was achieved. The US has reached 3 "framework" agreements with respectively China, the UK and Vietnam but even with those the US wasn't exactly negotiating from a position of strength where the other side were "ass-kissing" them (save, maybe, for the UK). In fact the framework agreement with China - by far the most consequential country - was adopted precisely because China retaliated to Trump's tariffs and banned rare earth exports, inflicting real economic damage and forcing the U.S. to quickly negotiate a face-saving framework that restored Chinese exports while reducing American tariffs. 2) Scott Bessent just admitted ( that "many of these countries never even contacted us" 3) Most notably, again save for the UK, the US hasn't reached a single deal with any of its traditional allies and has instead only managed to thoroughly antagonize them. So much so that the Japanese Finance Minister has for instance threatened, for the first time ever and on national TV, to sell their holdings of US treasuries as a tool of economic warfare against the US ( So basically, far from revealing, as Trump obviously seemed to believe, the strength of American economic dominance, the Liberation Day tariffs have accomplished the exact opposite. Instead of countries begging for mercy, most just ignored him, allies turned hostile, China made him blink first by demonstrating that they could inflict real economic pain and America ends up looking weak, isolated and outmaneuvered by the very countries Trump claimed would be "kissing his ass." As always, Trump is the great revealer and in this instance he revealed that America simply doesn't matter much trade-wise for the rest of the world, at least not enough for them to lower themselves to kiss his ass.