Lone Candle
Champion of Truth
This “peace deal” is a demand for Hamas’s surrender. Hamas surrendering may bring peace, but I generally wouldn’t call a demand for surrender a ‘peace deal’.
https://www.politico.com/news/2025/09/29/trump-touts-peace-plan-for-israel-hamas-has-not-agreed-00584857?cid=Connatix&nid=00000150-1596-d4ac-a1d4-179e288b0000&nname=illinois-playbook&nrid=00000164-8481-d4a7-a5fc-9ecfc4730000
““Deals with the Trump administration simply do not create the kind of lasting certainty everyone is desperate for, because certainty, predictability and strict fidelity to treaties are not White House objectives,” said Dmitry Grozoubinski, a former trade diplomat and author of the book “Why Politicians Lie About Trade.””
https://www.politico.eu/article/eu-faces-first-reality-check-fragile-trade-truce-donald-trump/
“Putin doesn’t want a deal — Putin doesn’t want a deal that Ukraine can accept. Putin wants a deal where Ukraine would essentially, now or in the future, cease to be an independent, sovereign country with ties to the West. So, I am skeptical in the extreme that a lasting peace could be negotiated.
Also, Putin’s made it clear that, at a minimum, he wants all sorts of territorial transfers. Well, it’s one thing for Zelenskyy to recognize that Russia occupies Crimea and much of the Donbas. It’s something very different for Zelenskyy to sign away Ukraine’s title and rights to these areas.
The biggest difference then, between a ceasefire and a peace is that in a ceasefire you don’t sign away your rights to anything. You simply agree to stop the war. In a permanent peace, you’ve got to sign away rights, potentially to territory, to populations, you name it.
…
If you go back to the summer of 2021 and Putin’s so-called essay or op-ed, he obviously sees Ukraine as central to Russia’s future. It’s part of the Russian Empire identity and central to his own legacy, which makes it extraordinarily difficult for him to agree, in a permanent way, that Ukraine will be separate and different from Russia. So yes, it makes it very hard for Putin to agree to a final status or a permanent agreement that doesn’t give him a great deal. It ought not to rule out a ceasefire, because then he could say, this is simply a tactical pause.”
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2025/08/21/trump-ukraine-russia-negotiations-interview-00517411
Countries recognizing a Palestinian state while Hamas is in power helps cement their power because Hamas can claim that their strategy worked. Their strategy of terrorist attacks and using their people as human shields worked to get the Palestinian state recognized by more countries.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KYQkD_vkxRE
The Trump administration made a potentially good deal between Armenia and Azerbaijan. Azerbaijan wants a corridor to its territory that is separated by Armenia. Armenia would consider such a corridor an infringement of its sovereignty. Both sides agreed to let the U.S. and private companies manage the corridor while it remains Armenian territory.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UzA3CFdEiMM
“The Trump administration claims its tariffs are drawing countries to the table for tough negotiations. Yet in 2016, TPP partners were already there, ready to sign an agreement that closely reflected U.S. trade standards and practices, having overcome significant domestic hurdles. The TPP’s multilateral negotiating framework actually provided an efficient mechanism for participating countries to modernize their existing bilateral free trade agreements, and it augmented less comprehensive pacts like NAFTA and the Korea-U.S. agreement (KORUS).
The White House claims its new trade deal with Japan pushed “breakthrough openings” in agriculture and food, but the real groundwork was laid a decade earlier, when Shinzo Abe took on Japan’s powerful farm lobby in 2015, clearing the path for the TPP and softening resistance to liberalized agricultural trade. The TPP would have covered virtually all goods, including politically sensitive products like Japanese rice.
The 2025 deal also hardly qualifies as a “free trade deal,” with imports from Japan into the U.S. still subject to a 15 percent reciprocal tariff rate. Those tariffs are a tax on American businesses and consumers.
The TPP, by contrast, was slated to roll back 18,000 individual tariffs, making it “the largest tax cut on American exports in a generation.”
…
Building trade policy on headline‑driven, ad hoc bargains is an unstable strategy—made more precarious when the very tariffs they hinge on rest on contested executive authority. These arrangements may create the illusion of momentum, but without enforceable commitments or structural durability, they offer little of the stability that comprehensive trade agreements provide. The TPP demonstrated how a well‑designed pact could lock in reforms, deepen alliances, and shape the rules of global commerce for decades. Washington’s drift toward improvisation risks ceding that ground to others who are willing to play the long game—and win it.”
https://reason.com/2025/08/07/the-art-of-the-empty-trade-deal/
“Canadian travel to the United States by car has declined for seven consecutive months.
Canadians have said they are boycotting travel to the United States in response to Trump’s policies.”
https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/data-many-canadians-still-avoiding-003056944.html
Trump’s careless policies toward countries in the Indo-Pacific will make it harder for future administrations to cooperate with these countries.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l3rPY695Roc
U.S. tariffing and ending aid to Pacific countries in such a way that makes the U.S. look like an erratic and bad partner, and makes China look relatively better.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B77a8o3RSUw
“European leaders knew it would be much easier for Trump — who sees global politics, from trade to NATO, largely as zero-sum financial transactions — to agree to supply arms for Ukraine if the Europeans bought them, allowing the U.S. to swing a profit.
But they were also aware of Trump’s reluctance to abandon the isolationist wing of his MAGA movement by taking a more active role in defending Ukraine and directly confronting Putin. By providing American weapons themselves, the Europeans are providing Trump with cover to act.”
…
“France, whose President Emmanuel Macron has long pushed for Europeans to build up their own defense industrial base by buying locally, was a notable omission from the list.
Paris will not join the initiative to buy U.S. weapons for that reason, according to two French officials with knowledge of the issue. The French government is also struggling to boost its own defense spending as it tries to make budget cuts and rein in its staggering deficit.
But given Europe’s limited manufacturing capacity, Merz’s government believes buying American is one of the only ways to swiftly supply Ukraine with the weapons it needs.”
https://www.politico.eu/article/europe-donald-trump-weapons-aid-war-in-ukraine-nato/