Why it matters: The move, first reported by the Wall Street Journal, follows numerous statements from the U.S. military and Trump administration that the U.S. is maintaining military pressure in the region until denuclearization is achieved. The change is reportedly an effort to ease tensions between the U.S. and North Korea after Kim Jong-un threatened to cancel the summit with Trump planned for next month, and effectively canceled talks with South Korea scheduled for this past Wednesday.
Rebuilding ties with Russia is now a "core policy objective" of Germany's government, Bloomberg reports, citing a senior German official.
The backdrop: Per Bloomberg, tensions with President Trump mean Merkel "is being pushed closer toward a more predictable partner in Moscow." Germany is furious with Trump over his decision to exit the Iran deal and his threats to slap sanctions on the EU. In a poll last December, Germans were more likely to describe Russia as a reliable partner than the U.S. Still, Putin and Merkel have had a decidedly cool relationship since the 2014 Ukraine crisis.
When President Trump demanded that China cut its $375 billion trade deficit with the U.S. by $200 billion, Chinese officials and the U.S. press shrieked. It seemed impossible. However, there's a simple way for China to give Trump this “win”: buying $200 billion worth of American oil, as well as liquefied natural gas (LNG) from Alaska, Texas and Louisiana.
The details: Alaska is estimated to have nearly $1 trillion worth of LNG that it's eager to sell and heartland states have several trillion dollars’ worth of oil and gas reserves available for export. While there would be some delays in delivery — new production and transportation infrastructure would first have to be built — the trade deficit is measured by date of sale, so the impact would be seen right away.
Researchers and reporters have been slowly uncovering the massive scale of political re-education camps housing members of the Muslim minority in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region in Western China. Beijing is concerned about separatism, terrorism and Islamic extremism.
Why it matters: The apparent scale of human rights violations is staggering, and yet so far foreign governments have said little. But given China's crackdown on Muslims, will the China become nearly as hated across the Muslim world as America? Might drawing the anger of the Muslim world hurt the prospects for the Belt And Road Initiative, and its long game for influence in the Muslim world?
China is disputing reports that Vice Premier and Xi Jinping special emissary Liu He offered to meet the Trump administration's request to cut the trade deficit in his talks Thursday in D.C.
Why it matters: "Even if there is a deal to cut the trade deficit by $200 billion, experts say the U.S. can not produce and sell enough goods to China to hit that target," as Bob Davis and Lingling Wei reported in the Wall Street Journal:
Ex-spy Sergei Skripal, who was poisoned with a nerve agent in Salisbury, England in March, was discharged from the hospital on Friday.
The backdrop: The U.K. has blamed Russia for the attempted murders of Skripal and his daughter, Yulia Skripal, and the incident has led several governments around the world to expel Russian diplomats from their countries. Meanwhile, Sky News reported Thursday that Skripal is still being questioned by police about the attack and his level of contact with British intelligence.
China’s powerful and well-funded Department of Propaganda has been tasked with building the same kind of personality cult around Xi Jinping that existed around Mao Zedong — efforts that infiltrate Chinese classrooms and extend beyond the country's borders.
The impact: The department aims to control all the information that Chinese people see and hear — which is why newspaper readers across China this week were instructed to “carve Xi Jinping's speech into our bones and dissolve his spirit into our blood.”
North Korea canceled talks with South Korea this week in response to joint U.S.–South Korea military drills and has also put next month's U.S.–North Korea summit in doubt.
The big picture: North Korea seems to be insisting on two conditions for the U.S. summit it believed to have been previously established: U.S.–South Korea exercises will exclude threatening military power, and the U.S. will enter denuclearization negotiations in good faith.
The House Appropriations Committee on Thursday unanimously agreed to include a measure in an appropriations bill that would continue sanctions against Chinese phonemaker ZTE, reports Politico.
Why it matters: The move comes as a staunch rebuke to President Trump, who signaled his intention earlier this week to attempt to reverse the effective shutdown of the company in an attempt to save Chinese jobs. The Commerce Department banned American companies from selling parts to ZTE for seven years because the Chinese company violated U.S. sanctions by selling equipment made with American parts to Iran and North Korea.
The Palestinian government is undertaking a war crimes complaint against Israel at the International Criminal Court after more than 100 Palestinians were killed by Israeli troops near the Gaza border this week, the AP reports.
The backdrop: This comes as the bloodshed on the Gaza border continues to rattle the international community and is weakening diplomatic relations between various Middle Eastern countries, Israel and the U.S.
Europe has announced it is going to revive a blocking regulation from the 90s that could, with a few supplemental measures, protect EU-based firms from U.S. sanctions against Iran now that the Trump administration has announced a withdrawal from the Iran deal, Reuters reports.
Between the lines: This could buy the Iran deal some time by bolstering the heft of its financial draw for Iran, before the deal crumbles without the U.S. Although European countries party to the Iran deal have said they will try to salvage the deal without the U.S., skeptics believe that most of the incentive Iran had to stay in the deal came from the U.S.' participation.
China, the world’s biggest soybean importer, has bought a record amount of soybeans from Russia while canceling multiple soy shipments from the U.S. in retaliation to the Trump administration's tariffs on Chinese goods, reports Bloomberg.
Why it matters: American farmers are heavily dependent on soybean production as a source of revenue. In 2016, soybeans accounted for 12% of exports from the U.S. to China. But that stream is now dissipating with China using subsidies incentivizing their own farmers to cut reliance on U.S. soybeans.
But, but, but: Russia supplies less than 1% of China's soybeans.
President Trump's decision to exit the Iran deal has set off a flurry of diplomacy among the deal’s remaining signatories as they try and salvage the agreement.
What's at stake? Iranian Foreign Minister Javid Zarif arrived in Brussels Tuesday, after earlier trips to Beijing and Moscow, to talk to his counterparts about the tough road ahead. If he returns home with nothing to show, domestic hardliners — who never cared for the deal in the first place — could seize the opportunity to challenge more moderate figures, only furthering the distance between Tehran and the West.
Don't forget: Trump's lawyers had initially said, over and over again, that the investigation would be wrapped up by the end of 2017. We're now a year in, and Mueller's probe could well go on for another few months. Meanwhile, Trump hasn't changed his story — he insists there was no collusion and no obstruction, and maintains the whole investigation is a witch hunt against him.
President’s Trump’s M.O. is to project confidence in every setting: Even in small groups, he's loath to reveal even a tincture of self doubt. On North Korea, though, there have been private moments when his breezy talking of "winning" has evaporated and confidants found him almost awestruck by the enormity of what he’s confronting.
Why it matters: This isn’t just a big real estate deal or even a blustery trade standoff. The stakes are infinitely beyond anything he’s dealt with, and Trump knows it. The closest the president has come to being privately rattled has been when the rhetoric with North Korea got hot last year, and the world braced for the worst.
The U.S. joined six other countries on Wednesday in imposing additional sanctions against the senior leadership of Iranian-backed Hezbollah, Hassan Nasrallah and Naim Qassem.
The big picture: Per Reuters, this "was the third round of sanctions announced...since the United States pulled out of the Iran nuclear deal." Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said that by targeting Hezbollah's leadership, "our nations collectively rejected the false distinction between a so-called ‘Political Wing’ and Hizballah’s global terrorist plotting."
