Not even a month after his inauguration, US President Donald Trump has stepped up his foreign policy efforts, from the American continent to Europe and the Middle East. The CIA announces sweeping layoffs, while Mexico and Canada temporarily cancel tariffs.
Layoffs and kickbacks
The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) offered buyouts to all of its employees on Tuesday, citing a goal to align the agency with US President Donald Trump’s priorities. A CIA spokesman said the move was intended to bring the agency in line with the policies of new CIA Director John Ratcliffe.
Director Ratcliffe is moving swiftly to ensure the CIA workforce is responsive to the Administration’s national security priorities. These moves are part of a holistic strategy to infuse the Agency with renewed energy.
The agency did not disclose its budget or number of employees. The reported buyout offers correspond to a sweeping overhaul of the US government launched by the Trump administration, which has fired and suspended hundreds of government employees as part of its first steps to cut bureaucracy.
Ratcliffe, a former member of the House of Representatives who served as director of National Intelligence during Trump’s first term, was confirmed by the US Senate to be CIA director days after Trump took office for a second term.
On Tuesday, Trump also said he believes he will wind down the US Agency for International Development (USAID). The agency faced challenges amid a freeze on most foreign aid funds to check whether they matched the interests of the US.
He’s [Elon Musk who accused USAID of being a “criminal” organisation] done a great job. Look at all the fraud that he’s found in this USAID. (…) Nobody could approve that. They [‘radical left lunatics’] can only approve that if they were getting kickbacks.
Potential trade war
Trade seemed to have moved to the back burner amid the government’s immigration initiatives. However, that all changed last weekend when Trump announced comprehensive 25% tariffs on US allies Canada and Mexico, as well as 10% duties on Chinese imports.
Trump said he viewed the tariffs not only as a tool to achieve political goals, but also as a permanent source of US revenue and a means of funding government programmes and reducing the budget deficit.
After talks with Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, Trump put the tariffs on pause. Although the new duties on China went into effect and prompted retaliatory measures from Beijing, markets found the US moves to be less disruptive and smaller in scale than they could have been.
In contrast, if the US were to impose a series of escalating tariffs with Canada and Mexico on more than $1.57 trillion of goods, the global economic impact could be catastrophic, analysts said.
Mexico, meanwhile, pledged to step up anti-drug measures and commit 10,000 troops to patrol the US-Mexico border. However, those numbers reflected the number of troops the country had deployed in 2019 and 2021.
War in Ukraine
The US president said at a joint press conference with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that the US was negotiating a war between Ukraine and Russia.
We’re having very good talks, very constructive talks on Ukraine. And we’re talking to the Russians, we’re talking to Ukrainian leadership.
Trump voiced hope that deals would be reached as soon as possible. Meanwhile, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky stressed that his country needed security guarantees before returning to the negotiating table. Russia, for its part, underlined that it would negotiate only with the legally elected government of Ukraine.
In early February, Trump said that his administration had already held “very serious” talks with Russia on the war in Ukraine and that both he and Russian President Vladimir Putin could soon take “significant” action to put an end to the conflict.
We will be speaking, and I think will perhaps do something that’ll be significant. We want to end that war. That war would have not started if I was president.
Keith Kellogg, Trump’s special envoy for Ukraine and Russia, also said in an interview that presidential and parliamentary elections in Ukraine, suspended during the war with Russia, “need to be done.”
Most democratic nations have elections in their time of war. I think it is important they do so.I think it is good for democracy. That’s the beauty of a solid democracy, you have more than one person potentially running.
