Politics

It will probably not come as a surprise that days after the biggest shake up among White House communications personnel, the Washington Post obtained transcripts of President Trump's classified calls with Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto and Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull from the early days of his presidency back in January. While details of the calls had been made public previously, this is the first time entire transcripts have leaked out.

Yesterday, the WSJ reported that the Trump administration is planning to begin a probe of what the U.S. sees as violations of intellectual property by China. Against a backdrop of Trump’s frustrations with domestic policy, sliding approval ratings and disagreement with China over North Korea, the chances of protectionist action are rising, as is the probability of a "hot", retaliatory trade war. This morning ow learn when Trump is set to fire the first shot.

Several hours after President Trump officially signed the new Russian sanctions into law - despite his reservations and his statement that while he favors "tough measures to punish and deter aggressive and destabilizing behavior by Iran, North Korea, and Russia, this legislation is significantly flawed" - Russia responded when moments ago Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev said on his FaceBook page that any hopes of improving Russian relations with the new US administration are dead, that the Trump administration demonstrated complete impotence by transferring executive power to

Authored by Raul Ilargi Meijer via The Automatic Earth blog,

The western world is mired in a mile-deep political crisis and nary a soul seems to notice, or rather: everyone just sees their own little preferred echochamber tidbits of it. Which is not a good thing, because that crisis is bound to trigger other bigger crises that are much more damaging. And I’m sorry to say it, but Donald Trump is not your main problem. Not even close.

While the world's eyes are focused on Syria, Russia, Ukraine, and North Korea; there is another - much more tense - fight between two nuclear powers that is getting far too little attention. The world's two most populous nations, China and India, have been engaged in a border dispute for decades but in recent months it has flared once again with a Chinese Ministry of Defense official now warning explicitly that Indian troops must leave the contested Doklam area if they do not want war.