Thought I would end the week with a quick round-up of updates. Some of these have generated a fair bit of headlines themselves, while others are a bit more under the radar.
The latest on Russia / Ukraine
Quite a bit has happened in the days since I published the update on the Russia-Ukraine war.
On Tuesday (April 22), the US proposed a peace deal that would freeze the battle lines and recognize Russia’s annexation of Crimea. The plan would also prevent Ukraine from ever joining NATO. Zelenskyy stated Ukraine would never recognize Crimea as Russian territory, and warned that the form these discussions were taking was shifting the negotiations in Putin’s favor. Indeed, Putin’s spokesperson, Dmitry Peskov, said Trump’s view on Crimea “completely matches the Russian position.”
On Wednesday (April 23), a high-level meeting of foreign ministers supposed to take place in London was scrapped at the last minute after Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced on Tuesday he would not be attending. Rubio’s decision caught the British government completely by surprise.
Trump’s chief envoy Steve Witkoff was also supposed to attend but he too dropped. Instead, he is in Moscow for his fourth round of meetings with Putin. The decision to scupper the high-level allied talks in London and go ahead with bilateral US-Russia talks effectively sidelined Europe, again.
Trump and Vance also expressed frustration with the slow-moving nature of negotiations. Trump said he was finding negotiating with Zelenskyy to be more difficult than with Putin, and that the Ukrainian leader was harming peace negotiations despite having “no cards to play.” Meanwhile, Vance reiterated Trump and Rubio’s earlier warnings that the US could walk away from the process if the parties cannot come to an agreement.
On Wednesday night / Thursday morning, Russia unleashed a hellacious strike on Kyiv, killing at least 12 people and injuring 90. This attack, the deadliest on the Ukrainian capital since last summer, was widely condemned, including by Trump.
World leaders, including Trump and Zelenskyy, are now heading to the Vatican for Pope Francis’s funeral this weekend. Expect there to be some meetings on the sidelines between the two, and maybe Europe.
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If all of this is leading you to think the US is playing hardball with Zelenskyy and softball with Putin, you are not alone. The deal on the table parrots Moscow’s talking points and decidedly favors Russia, forcing Ukraine to acquiesce to a loss of territory (which would require a change in Ukraine’s constitution) and forego any future hope of NATO membership.
Trump’s concession on Crimea goes against a decade of US policy, including his own during his first term. In 2018, his Secretary of State Mike Pompeo issued the “Crimea Declaration”, rejecting Moscow’s claim over Crimea and pledging continued support “until Ukraine’s territorial integrity is restored.”
But throughout Trump’s second term, Zelenskyy has been much more amenable than Putin. And yet the Ukrainian president is the one who has drawn most of Trump’s slings and arrows (at least, before this most recent attack on Kyiv).
Even if Ukraine were 100% on board with this deal and signed today — which, to be clear, it isn’t — what is to prevent Putin from applying the same lesson from 2014, one of bidding his time, rearming the Russian war machine for a couple of years in relative quiet, all the while preparing for a future strike to take more Ukrainian territory?
On Thursday, when asked about the situation and specifically what sort of concessions Moscow was offering, Trump said “stopping the war”, implying that Russia simply not occupying all of Ukraine was a “pretty big concession.” This would clearly set a dangerous precedent, of the belligerent getting rewarded for their actions without blowback. Could this be the pretext necessary for Trump to go after Greenland and Panama? What about Xi and Taiwan? How the situation in Ukraine proceeds has implications far beyond the region.
A temporary win for Voice of America
The thing about doing government via executive order is, most of the actions target Congressionally mandated funding schemes. However, attacking Congressional funding via fiat, without approval from Congress, is technically illegal. So when impacted staff bring suit against the government in court, the staff should have a strong legal argument.
This week, that is exactly what happened with Voice of America.
A federal judge ordered the Trump administration to rehire all Voice of America, Radio Free Asia and Middle East Broadcasting Network staff for now, and he said all congressional funding must resume to the outlets, which had been effectively shuttered by the administration.
And the reasoning is exactly what you would expect. (PTO emphasis added)
Judge Lamberth wrote in his ruling that in attempting to throttle the outlets in part by cutting funding and removing staff, the Trump administration had likely violated the Constitution, along with laws that govern how federal funds are spent….“The president does not have unilateral authority to refuse to spend the funds,” Judge Lamberth wrote. “The defendants’ unwillingness to expend funds in accordance with the congressional appropriations laws is a direct affront to the power of the legislative branch.”
He added: “Congress possesses the ‘power of the purse.’”
While this is a victory for Voice of America, the actual implications are less substantial. Funding runs out in September, leaving it up to Congress as to whether or not to provide more money for the following year.
The Democratic Republic of the Congo & M23 reach a temporary ceasefire
Per Al Jazeera:
The government of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and Rwanda-backed M23 rebels have agreed to pause fighting as they work towards a broader peace deal, according to their joint statement….“Both parties reaffirm their commitment to an immediate cessation of hostilities, a categorical rejection of any hate speech, intimidation, and call on local communities to uphold these commitments,” said the joint statement.
The “cessation of hostilities” would apply “throughout the duration of the talks and until their conclusion”…
This agreement comes a little over a month after the DRC agreed to a ceasefire with Rwandan military forces who had also re-engaged in clashes within the border regions. Despite denials from Rwandan president Paul Kagame, the Rwandan government has long been accused of backing the M23 rebels.
Since January, when M23 embarked on its latest offensive in eastern DRC, some 7,000 people have been killed. So for a region that has been beset by violence, this most recent move is an encouraging sign.
However, turning a temporary ceasefire into a long-term, sustainable peace is no guarantee. The DRC and M23 have reached at least six truces since 2021. All of them have later collapsed.
Trade negotiations take time
Will Trump and co. be able to negotiate 90+ bilateral trade deals during the 90-day pause in ‘reciprocal’ tariffs? The evidence from past trade negotiations suggests this will be neigh impossible.
Per Apollo:
It normally takes 18 months on average for the US to negotiate a trade deal…Why does it take so long? Because trade negotiations involve going through what is imported into each country line by line and then negotiating the tariff for each product category (t-shirts, pencils, cars, pharmaceuticals, lawnmowers, services, etc.). The negotiations also involve discussions about non-tariff barriers, tax differences, rules of origin discussions, IP rights, labor standards, environmental standards, anti-dumping, dispute resolution, digital trade and e-commerce, government procurement, and sometimes security and defense considerations.
The bottom line is that trade negotiations take time because they are complex.
Granted, the above assumes trade negotiations are detailed, thorough and done properly.
Gold’s roller-coaster of a month
Gold has been on quite the journey recently. The price of the precious metal fell in the days immediately following ‘Liberation Day’, but surged for two weeks as investors bet on the safety of gold in the very unsafe world of global markets.
But after peaking over $3,500/ounce earlier this week, the price of gold instantly slumped over 5% as Trump has walked back a bit of the rhetoric over,
1) Firing the fed chair Jerome Powell - “I have no intention of firing him” - and
2) The tariff war with China - the current rate with China of “145% is very high and it won’t be that hight…It won’t be anywhere near that high. It’ll come down substantially. But it won’t be zero.”
Despite this recent fall, gold is still up 9.5% in the past month, a significant delta from the S&P 500’s fall of 5%.