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US President Donald Trump holds an American football during a presentation to the Navy Midshipman American football team in the East Room of the White House, April 15, 2025
THE statement attributed to Mao: “Everything under heaven is in utter chaos; the situation is excellent” appears nowhere in his writings. And like many apocryphal aphorisms it only illuminates a small part of reality. Nevertheless it has been pressed into service to describe the turmoil arising from the split in the ruling class in the United States.
It is maybe too early to weigh up the relative political weight of the contending factions and the picture is clouded not just by Trump’s erratic policy unmaking but by his political need to align at least some of his actual policies with the expectations of his political base in a US working class and the declassed underbelly of what is increasingly seen as a failed state.
Working Americans are highly resistant to any more foreign wars, want a revival of manufacturing jobs and are suspicious of both state and government. Trump deploys an ambiguous political rhetoric but this is proving insufficient to resolve the various problems he is encountering.
The cancelled China trip of the German Foreign Minister marks a break with Helmut Schmidt’s China policy and drives Germany further into Washington’s confrontation course, warns SEVIM DAGDELEN
US tariffs have had Von der Leyen bowing in submission, while comments from the former European Central Bank leader call for more European political integration and less individual state sovereignty. All this adds up to more pain and austerity ahead, argues NICK WRIGHT
Starmer sabotaged Labour with his second referendum campaign, mobilising a liberal backlash that sincerely felt progressive ideals were at stake — but the EU was then and is now an entity Britain should have nothing to do with, explains NICK WRIGHT
