Plus: Embassy of the day
IN TODAY’S EDITION
1️⃣ Trump’s latest tariffs |
2️⃣ Intrigue’s jobs board |
3️⃣ Embassy of the day |
Hi Intriguer. A smug thing to do at parties is to slip into conversation how you’ve been listening to jazz lately. But then you run the risk of some wise-guy asking which jazz. So fear not, dear Intriguer, I’ve got you.
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Belgium’s young Nala Sinephro has a hip new album called Endlessness, fusing jazz with a dash of electronica
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Australia’s acclaimed Jeremy Rose has one of my favourite tunes, Beautiful Decay, about a place we visit briefly below (Cuba), and
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I’ve been a big fan of America’s own Theo Croker since seeing him live in LA, after his years as artist-in-residence at Shanghai’s legendary Peace Hotel.
But then your new friends might ask why you’re talking about jazz artists all of a sudden. And honestly it’s a fair question, but that’s when you pivot and get them up to speed on Trump’s tariffs instead (see below).
PS – It’s not too late to join our candid online chat with Lithuania’s high-profile former foreign minister, Gabrielius Landsbergis. It’s right here, 10.30am ET, today (Wed).
Israel-Hamas ceasefire wobbles.
Responding to a Hamas warning of delays, Israeli leader Benjamin Netanyahu has ordered a troop build-up in and around Gaza, adding “the ceasefire will be terminated, and the IDF will return to intense fighting” unless Hamas returns the scheduled hostages by Saturday. Meanwhile, Donald Trump has used a meeting with King Abdullah of Jordan to double-down on his comments regarding a US takeover of Gaza.
CATL files for Hong Kong listing.
The world’s biggest producer of EV batteries has filed to list on Hong Kong’s stock market. The move could help CATL raise more than $5B, becoming Hong Kong’s biggest IPO since 2021. The Pentagon last year added CATL to its list of companies it says has links to China’s military.
UK and US decline to sign Paris AI Declaration.
In the end, around 60 countries signed the Paris AI declaration, including China, Australia, Japan, and India (though not the US or the UK). We explored the underlying tensions at this year’s AI summit yesterday.
China successfully tests new satellite rocket.
China’s space agency has successfully launched the Long March 8A rocket, carrying several low-Earth orbit satellites into orbit. While several details remain unknown, it seems part of China’s ambition to answer the US-based Starlink internet satellite network.
US teacher returns from Russian prison.
Marc Fogel, an American teacher imprisoned on drug charges since 2021, has now returned home. Trump has called his release a show of good faith by Moscow.
TOGETHER WITH INSTITUTE FOR GLOBAL NEGOTIATIONS
Explore the human side of crisis negotiation
Don’t miss Session 3 of the Institute for Global Negotiation’s (IGN) e-Conference 2025 – Negotiating with Strength: Mental Health and Resilience in High-Stakes Environments. International Intrigue’s own Helen Zhang and panelists will be going beyond theory to explore the human side of crisis negotiation.
This session will explore:
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The pressure to make decisions that will impact lives
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The mental toll of managing conflict day after day
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The overwhelming task of steering negotiations when emotions are running high
Come hear compelling stories and gain insights you won’t find in textbooks – real-world examples about what it takes to handle critical moments and make tough decisions while keeping your head, your health and your humanity intact.
TOP STORY
Trump’s latest tariffs, from four cities
Brave that deja vu, because Donald Trump has now signed another executive order imposing 25% levies on all aluminium and steel imports, effective 12 March.
So to make tariffs seem not-boring, let’s take a quick musical tour of four capitals…
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🇺🇸 Washington DC – ‘Everybody hurts’ by R.E.M
Notwithstanding the buzz or shock, these US tariffs aren’t new. The president imposed broadly similar levies back during Trump 1.0, before carving out exemptions for Australia, and later Canada and Mexico. Biden then expanded the exemptions list.
This time, however, Trump insists there’ll be no “exceptions or exemptions”. Why?
His stated rationale is national security. That’s partly for legal reasons — his Trump 1.0 tariffs used a national security authority (s232 of the Trade Expansion Act), and he’s relying on that same authority to amend them now. But if you have a spare nine hours and would like to read his full 2018 report, you’ll see it draws two national security links:
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i) America needs a strong steel and aluminium sector to meet future defence requirements (tanks, ships, and planes use a lot of metal), plus
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ii) there’s a broader risk of deindustrialisation undermining long-term US security via a loss of relevant skills, government revenue, and employment
Of course, when discussing this stuff in public, the president often leans more into the economic and political angle: what he describes as America’s rusting heartland, the loss of good blue-collar jobs, and the blame he ascribes to trade partners.
Anyway, Trump now argues the various exemptions have hollowed out his original tariffs, with China’s vast metal surpluses still hitting the US via third countries, whether because of direct transhipment or displacing local supplies which then get exported to the US. So for Donald Trump, this week’s announcement is about closing loop-holes.
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🇨🇦 Ottawa – ‘Ain't Gonna Look the Other Way’ by Celine Dion
Let’s start with Canada, because it’s America’s single-largest supplier, not to mention one of America’s closest allies. And Trump’s order cites an increase in imports from Canada (and Mexico) as evidence that something’s fishy.
But from Canada’s perspective, rather than undermining US national security, its own industry supports US security — Canadian metals end up in US fighter jets, for example.
The real lynchpin here is aluminium. Canada sells to the US more than triple the amount of aluminium the US can actually produce itself. And this isn’t skulduggery, either. It’s energy — Canada has plentiful, cheap hydropower, ideal for smelting aluminium.
To boot, a third of Canada’s smelters are even US-owned. That level of US-Canada integration is why the US aluminium industry briefed Trump last year, effectively describing the US-Canada industry as a single entity to be protected. It’s also why Trump’s first-term tariffs only slapped aluminium with a 10% levy.
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🇪🇺 Brussels – ‘Mad About You’ by Hooverphonic
The EU only sells half the steel to the US that Canada sells, but the broader EU context is where the story is at: European steel exports have collapsed in half over the past decade, partly due to the continent’s own high energy costs, but also due to the same low-cost products flooding markets from China. And the US is still the EU’s second-largest market.
So, fearing its own rapid deindustrialisation, the prospect of now getting kicked while it’s down, and any cheap foreign metals responding to US tariffs by flooding the EU instead, the bloc is vowing to impose “firm and proportionate countermeasures” — last time, that included targeted tariffs on US-made Harley-Davidsons and motorboats (it was a tough time to be going through a mid-life crisis).
But the Europeans are holding fire for now, at least until after Ursula von der Leyen’s meeting with JD Vance, scheduled for today (Wednesday).
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🇨🇳 Beijing – ‘Eggshell’ by Faye Wong
The world’s biggest steel exporter is seemingly now the chillest of the bunch. Pre-existing tariffs mean China exports relatively little steel or aluminium directly to the US, meaning these latest US tariffs will have little direct or immediate impact on China.
But things are still spicy — China produces more steel and aluminium each year than the rest of the world combined. And as its property sector crashes, its mills have exported more and more of that spare production abroad to stay open. That’s rattling countries everywhere, with many (including Canada, btw) slapping tariffs in response.
And still, the message behind Trump’s tariffs is he wants more countries to go harder.
INTRIGUE’S TAKE
Interestingly, markets have mostly shrugged off this latest round of Trump tariffs. That might be because a) they’re already priced in (Trump campaigned on this stuff), b) they’re assuming it’s just another ‘threaten then negotiate’ play, and/or c) they’re assuming at least the main players like Canada will get an exemption again.
Either way, last time around there was research suggesting the tariffs resulted in maybe 1,000 net new US steel-maker jobs, but at the cost of 75,000 US steel-user (manufacturing) jobs as metal inputs suddenly got more expensive. So we may well see similar impacts this time around, though Trump’s assessment seems to be it’s worth it.
But again, that’ll depend in part on how US trade partners play this — if they duly slap more tariffs on China’s low-cost output, that kind of win might offer Trump an exit ramp. But even then, you can already see and hear the exasperation among US allies. And it’s really with allies that the US stands the best chance of competing against China.
Also worth noting:
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The US imports around 25% of its steel, and 75% of its aluminium. It produced around half the world’s steel during the 1940s, and is now down to around 5%.
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Trump has again flagged the possibility of granting an exemption to Australia, a US ally where the US has a trade surplus, with relatively minor steel output.
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American firms submitted 100,000 exemption requests within the first year of the steel and aluminium tariffs imposed during Trump 1.0.
MEANWHILE, ELSEWHERE…
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🇹🇲 Turkmenistan: Ashgabat has signed an agreement that’ll see its natural gas flow to Turkey from March 1st via Iran’s pipelines. Turkmenistan is also flagging a longer-term pipeline to Turkey across the Caspian Sea and through Azerbaijan, as players rush to carve out a slice of Turkey’s growing market.
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🇩🇰 Denmark: The Danish intelligence services have released a memo warning that if Russia perceives NATO as weak and/or divided, Moscow could wage a “large-scale war” in Europe within five years. The report warns this is “particularly true if Russia assesses that the U.S. cannot or will not support the European NATO countries in a war with Russia”.
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🇳🇿 New Zealand: The Kiwis are rethinking their opposition to deep-sea mining, according to the country’s new-ish resources minister. He argues that the current NZ approach was rooted in an earlier government’s “luxury beliefs”, which ignored the need for economic growth.
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🇨🇦 Canada: Ottawa has now appointed a fentanyl czar to help curb drug flows into the US, as part of Canadian efforts to forestall Donald Trump’s threatened tariffs. The new appointee, Kevin Brosseau, most recently served as a national security and intelligence advisor to Trudeau.
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🇾🇪 Yemen: The UN is suspending all humanitarian operations in northern Yemen, a largely Houthi-controlled area, after locals detained eight more UN staffers in late January. Despite brokering a deal with the UN, the Houthis have continued to detain UN staff, totalling 24 since 2021.
EXTRA INTRIGUE
Intrigue’s jobs board
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Communications @ US House of Representatives Select Committee on China in DC
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Policy Adviser (Digital & Intellectual Property) @ AmCham EU in Brussels
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Foreign Policy Partnerships Manager @ Google in DC
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Head of Sustainability @ Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile in Geneva
EMBASSY OF THE DAY
Lee Ho-yul (L), South Korea’s first designated ambassador to Cuba. Credits: Republic of Korea foreign ministry.
South Korea just opened its first embassy in Havana, and that’s intriguing because the Cubans had long resisted the South’s approaches, partly out of solidarity with the South’s autocratic rivals in North Korea. It’s all featured some epic spy vs spy action along the way, including a fascinating North-South defection in Cuba last year.
Anyway, South Korea and Cuba established ties last year, likely reflecting a convergence between Cuba’s desperate need for economic partners, and Korea’s hunger for more international influence.
DAILY POLL
Do you think Trump's tariffs on steel and aluminium will accomplish their stated objective? |
Yesterday’s poll: What do you think the AI Summit's declaration should focus on?
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 🛑 Safety (74%)
🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ ☄️ Innovation (21%)
⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 📄 Deregulation (4%)
⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ ✍️ Other (write in!) (2%)
Your two cents:
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🛑 C.C: “We need codes of ethical conduct, professional associations across the digital spectrum – who establish/implement and enforce ethical standards. And a public that demands accountability from technoligarchs.”
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☄️ S.B: “Any attempt at regulation will be out of date almost immediately considering how fast this technology is developing.”
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✍️ S.L: “The environmental cost of AI is too high to warrant investing in it at all.”
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🛑 F.V: “We'll find out one day why we should have focused on safety. Once again people are blinded by the opportunity to make tons of money.”
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