World Briefing: January 21, 2025

President Trump has reentered the White House for the first time since becoming the 47th president. He quickly signed a number of executive actions before appearing at several Inaugural ball celebrations. In a speech heavy on vitriol, Trump took the route of a State of the Union address and announced several policy initiatives - including sending troops to secure the southern border and renaming the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America. He said “the golden age of America begins right now.” His speech was 2,885 words, compared to 1,433 in 2017, according to the American Presidency Project. With his threats to reoccupy the Panama Canal and expand America territory, FT columnist Edward Luce wrote the speech invoked regime change vibes rather than the usual peaceful transfer of power.

Shortly after being inaugurated on Monday, Donald Trump signed an executive order initiating a U.S. withdrawl from the World Health Organization. “World Health ripped us off,” Trump said in the Oval Office as he signed. Monday’s action starts a one-year countdown clock until the final exit, as WHO members are required to give one year’s notice and fulfill existing funding obligations before leaving the group, The Independent reported. Trump has always had it out for the WHO, stemming from the time it mishandled the Covid-19 pandemic and the way it went easy on China, where the virus is believed to have originated. The executive order cited the US’s “onerous “ share of membership fees. The U.S. has historically been the largest financial contributor to the WHO, giving $1.284 billion in the 2022 - 2023 period, in a mixture of assessed and voluntary contributions. The U.S. dues to the WHO for 2025 are roughly $130 million, while China will pay $87.6 million, The Independent reported. Trump previously threatened to pull out of WHO under his first presidency unless the UN body made significant reforms. The U.S. withdrawal would be devastating to the WHO and would like bring to an end the ambitious of its Ethiopian-born director general, Tedros Adhanon Ghebteyesus, to become UN secretary general. In response, WHO said it regretted the decision and claimed that over the last seven years it’s implemented “the largest set of reforms in its history.”

Donald Trump said on Monday he’ll slap 25% tariffs each on Canada and Mexico as of February 1. Referring to outgoing Prime Minister Justin Trudeau as the “governor” of Canada, he blamed the northern neighbor for porous borders and for allowing vast amounts of fentanyl in - claims which the Canadian government denies. Ottawa is expected to retaliate with painful tariffs (an overwhelming majority  of Canadians think their country should fight fire with fire if Trump carries through on his threat to impose a sweeping 25 per cent tariff on Canadian goods and services sold into the U.S. market). The move would inflict devastating harm on the Canadian economy. Already, Trump’s renewed warnings has sent the Mexican peso and Canadian sliding against the US dollar, and trimmed an earlier sell-off in the greenback, the FT reported. Update: The U.S. Dollar to Canadian Dollar exchange rate fell by a per cent on Monday and has since recovered 0.88% to go to 1.4434 on Tuesday. One Canadian Dollar currently equals 0.69 USD.

Trump also signed an executive order on Monday to once again withdraw the US from the Paris climate agreement, dealing a blow to global efforts to combat climate breakdown. The Paris pact aims to limit long-term global heating to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. Trump’s order says the Paris accord is among a number of international agreements that don’t reflect US values and “steer American taxpayer dollars to countries that do not require, or merit, financial assistance in the interests of the American people.” Laurence Tubiana, CEO of the European Climate Foundation and a key architect of the Paris accord, called the planned US withdrawal unfortunate but said action to slow climate change “is stronger than any single country’s politics and policies.” The global context for Trump’s action is “very different to 2017,’‘ Tubiana said Monday, adding that “there is unstoppable economic momentum behind the global transition, which the US has gained from and led but now risks forfeiting.” - France 24

Saying the United States foreign aid industry and bureaucracy are “not aligned with American interests and in many cases antithetical to American values,” the Trump administration has ordered an immediate, 90-day pause to the disbursement of foreign aid and a review of each foreign assistance program. The action has caught recipients of U.S. foreign assistance, both small and large, off guard.

On the war in Ukraine, Trump said he expects it will end soon and criticized NATO countries for not ponying up their fair share to aid Ukraine. He told reporters in the Oval Office that the U.S. is $200bn over what Europe has spent. He did not say when he plans to meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin. Trump has said he wants to meet with his Russian counterpart “very quickly” after his inauguration. Trump added that Putin is “destroying” Russia by refusing to make a deal to end the Ukraine war. “He should make a deal. I think he’s destroying Russia by not making a deal,” Trump told reporters. “I think Russia’s going to be in big trouble.” On the ground in Ukraine, people aren’t expecting an immediate end to the war. Neither do analysts who follow Ukraine. “When the Trump team starts engaging in these kinds of discussions, they will find that getting Putin to abandon his goal of subjugating all of Ukraine will be the hardest thing in this process,” Mikhail Alexseev, a political science professor at San Diego State University who focuses on Russia and Ukraine, told RFE/RL.

A fire has engulfed a hotel in the Turkish ski resort of Bolu, killing 66 people and injuring at least 51 more, officials have said. The fire broke out at the 12-storey Grand Kartal Hotel at 03:27 local time (00:27 GMT) during a busy holiday period when 234 people were staying there, he added. An initial toll of 10 dead was raised significantly in the hours after the fire by Turkey’s interior ministry. At least two people died after jumping from the hotel’s windows, Turkish reports said. Footage circulating in Turkey showed linen hanging from windows which was used by those trying to escape the burning building. Bolu governor Abdulaziz Aydin said initial reports suggested the fire had broken out in the restaurant section of the hotel’s fourth floor and spread to the floors above. The hotel was investigating whether guests had been trapped in their rooms as the fire spread. The governor told reporters the distance between the hotel, in Kartalkaya, and the centre of Bolu, paired with the freezing weather conditions, meant it took more than an hour for fire engines to arrive. Rescue efforts continued through the morning, and the interior minister said emergency services had deployed 267 people to respond to the fire - BBC

A prisoner swap between the United States and Afghanistan’s Taliban freed two Americans in exchange for a Taliban figure imprisoned for life in California on drug trafficking and terrorism charges, officials said Tuesday. The deal came as President Joe Biden, who oversaw the chaotic U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021, handed power over to returning President Donald Trump. The Taliban praised the swap as a step toward the “normalization” of ties between the U.S. and Afghanistan, but that likely remains a tall order as most countries in the world still don’t recognize the militants’ rule.The Taliban’s Foreign Ministry in Kabul confirmed the swap, saying two unidentified U.S. citizens had been exchanged for Khan Mohammed, who was sentenced to two terms of life imprisonment in 2008 - AP

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