Both Russia and China are interested in establishing relations with the United States, US President Donald Trump said on Fox News’ The Ingraham Angle on Tuesday.
Asked by the host if it was possible to believe that Putin really wants this, while he is influenced by “his close friend, President Xi of China,” Trump replied that “we have our own discussions with President Xi of China, and he also wants to make a deal and we want to make a deal with him. And we will do that.”
Trump blamed the Barack Obama administration for the rapprochement between Russia and China.
“Obama really forced them together through energy and bad energy policy. And when he did so many different things, he forced (them) into a marriage that should never have happened. Because it’s unnatural. And for one reason: Russia has a huge territory, a lot of land, and China doesn’t have enough land. Russia has a much smaller population than China. And it’s natural, it’s always been a natural hostile situation,” Trump said.
“Maybe they’re friendly now, but we’re going to be friendly with both of them. I think we will be friendly with both. China desperately needs us in terms of trade, but we have to equalize the deficit,” he added.
“I think President Xi would like to reach an agreement, and I think Russia would like to reach an agreement with the United States,” Trump summarized.
By standard measures such as job and GDP growth and the stock market, the US economy was in excellent shape
Donald Trump keeps saying he inherited a terrible economy from Joe Biden and many Americans believe him, even though that’s not true. During his White House marketing event for Tesla on Tuesday, Trump said the US and its economy “went to hell” under Biden. Last week, in his national address to Congress, Trump said: “We inherited from the last administration an economic catastrophe and an inflation nightmare.”
But the truth is that by standard economic measures, the US economy was in excellent shape when Biden turned over the White House keys to Trump, even though most Americans, upset about inflation, told pollsters the economy was in poor shape.
When Biden left office, the unemployment rate was a low 4.1%, and during Biden’s four years in office, the average jobless rate was lower than for any president since the 1960s. Trump has repeatedly railed against the high inflation under Biden, but the fact is that by the time Biden left office, the inflation rate had fallen to just 2.9% – down more than two-thirds from its peak and near the Federal Reserve’s inflation goal.
Stocks tank and egg prices soar under Trump
Not only that, the nation’s GDP growth has been impressive, rising at a solid 3.1% rate at the end of Biden’s term. Ever since the pandemic ended, economic growth in the US has been considerably stronger than in the UK, France, Germany and other G7 nations. Shortly before election day, the Economist magazine ran a story saying the US economy was “the envy of the world” and had “left other rich countries in the dust”.
Trump often says job growth under Biden was terrible, but the fact is that the US added 16.6m jobs during Biden’s presidency, more than during any four-year term of any previous US president. Under Trump, job growth was far worse – during his first four-year term, the nation lost 2.7m jobs overall, making Trump’s presidency the first since Herbert Hoover’s during which the nation suffered a net loss in jobs. The pandemic was largely responsible for this, but even during Trump’s first three years in office, before the pandemic hit, job growth was only half as fast as it was under Biden.
Recently, Trump has repeatedly boasted how his tariffs will bring back manufacturing. Trump fails to note, however, that Biden had considerable success in bringing bring back manufacturing and factory jobs. Under most recent presidents, the US lost manufacturing jobs, but under Biden, the nation gained an impressive 750,000 factory jobs, the most under any president since the 1970s. A big reason for this was that as a result of Biden’s green jobs legislation and the Chips Act to boost semiconductor production, manufacturing investment boomed, more than doubling during Biden’s four years in office.
Biden took considerable pride about how the economy performed under him, even though he failed to persuade most Americans that the it was doing well. In December, Biden wrote: “Incomes are up by nearly $4,000 adjusted for inflation [since he took office], and unions have won wage increases from 25% to 60% in industries like autos, ports, aerospace, and trucking. We’ve seen 20 million applications to start small businesses. Our economy has grown 3% per year on average the last four years – faster than any other advanced economy. Domestic energy production is at a record high.”
Many economists vigorously disagree with Trump’s claim that he inherited a poor economy. Paul Krugman wrote that in January, when Biden left office, the US had what was “very close to a Goldilocks economy, in which everything is more or less just right”. Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Analytics, had even more glowing words. “President Trump is inheriting an economy that is about as good as it ever gets,” he said. “The US economy is the envy of the rest of the world, as it is the only significant economy that is growing more quickly post-pandemic than pre-pandemic.”
Trump pays attention to one measure of the economy above all others: how the stock market is doing. During Biden’s four years, Wall Street did very well. The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose by 39% and the S&P 500 soared by 55.7%, including a 28% jump during 2024. In contrast, the stock market is down overall since Trump took office as investors have grown alarmed about the president’s tariff war against the US’s trading partners.
To be sure, there were some serious economic problems under Biden. Housing affordability was a major problem, and inflation rose to uncomfortable levels. The spike in prices was caused largely by two factors: the pandemic, which gave rise to worldwide supply chain problems, and Putin’s war in Ukraine, which pushed up food and fuel prices. But Trump, in denouncing Biden on inflation, ignores all that.
As Trump’s trade war spooks the markets and makes nervous CEOs rethink their investment plans, many economists are saying it’s more and more likely the US will stumble into recession this year.
Trump has a long history of refusing to accept blame for mistakes and problems, and by repeatedly claiming he inherited a horrible economy, he seems to be laying the groundwork to blame Biden if the country slides into a painful recession.
Source: https://www.theguardian.com/business/2025/mar/16/trump-biden-economy
President of the United States Donald Trump has promised that on Monday, March 17, there will be news about the ceasefire talks with Ukraine and Russia. He said this in an interview with journalist Sheryl Attkisson, answering a question about his communication with Putin.
“We are dealing with him, and I think it’s a reasonable thing to do. The situation is very complicated, you know, it’s a bloody, terrible war. I think everything is going well. You know, we have a ceasefire agreement with the Ukrainians. And we are trying to get it with Russia. And I think that so far it’s gone well. We’ll know a little bit more on Monday. And I hope it goes well,” Trump said.
The US president said that Ukraine could “negotiate” to prevent war.
Earlier, US President Donald Trump said that elections should be held in Ukraine, as incumbent President Volodymyr Zelenskyy allegedly has a low rating, and that Russia allegedly wants the war to end.
“Now we have a situation in Ukraine where there have been no elections for a long time. Martial law has been introduced there. And the Ukrainian leader now, no matter how sad I am to say it, has 4% support,” Trump said at a press conference in Mar-a-Lago following the US-Russia talks in Riyadh on February 18.
According to him, it is not Russia that is demanding elections in Ukraine, but an “objective situation” because there have been no elections for a long time.
It is not yet clear where Trump got these sociological data from.
The US president also says that Russia is desperate to “stop” the war.
Zelenskyy has rebuffed US’s initial attempt to take control of minerals as downpayment for its aid in war with Russia
Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, has rebuffed an initial attempt by the US to corner his country’s critical minerals as a downpayment for continued military and economic aid for its war with Russia.
Three sources told the Reuters news agency that the US had proposed taking ownership of 50% of Ukraine’s critical minerals. Zelenskyy did not dismiss the offer out of hand, but said it did not yet contain the security provisions Kyiv needed.
Critical minerals are the metals and other raw materials needed for the production of hi-tech products, particularly those associated with the green energy transition, but also consumer electronics, artificial intelligence infrastructure and weapons.
The rush to tackle climate breakdown and move away from fossil fuels has triggered a rush for energy transition minerals such as cobalt, copper, lithium and nickel, which are useful for electrification of transport and the construction of wind turbines. The same minerals and others are also used for the manufacture of mobile phones, AI datacentres and arms such as F-35 fighter aircraft, placing them in high demand.
As the world’s economy and technology transforms, the value of critical minerals has soared and geopolitical competition for access to them is rising. In 2023, the International Energy Agency (IEA) estimated that the market for energy transition minerals had reached £320bn in 2022, double its value five years earlier. And if countries fully implement their clean energy and climate pledges, demand is expected to more than double by 2030 and triple by 2040, the agency says.
The term critical minerals is not a scientific term so much as a political term, and different countries have different lists of critical minerals depending on their domestic and geopolitical objectives.
In 2022, the US Geological Survey (USGS) published a list of 50 minerals, from aluminium to zirconium, that it regarded as “play[ing] a significant role in our national security, economy, renewable energy development and infrastructure”. Notable inclusions were arsenic, for semiconductors; beryllium, used as an alloying agent in aerospace and defence industries; cobalt, lithium and graphite, crucial for manufacturing batteries; indium, which makes screens respond to a finger touch; and tellurium, which is used for solar power generation.
The US’s Energy Act stipulates that the list must be updated every three years, which means this year it will be up for review, and it will be interesting to see which minerals appear or disappear given the new political environment in the country.
Rare earth elements (REEs) are a subset of 17 critical minerals that are variously indispensable for mobile phones, electric vehicles, missile guidance systems and other electronics, industrial and energy applications.
Despite their name, most of the rare earth elements are not particularly rare, but their extraction and refining is fiendishly difficult – and environmentally highly destructive – meaning production is concentrated in very few places, mainly China.
REEs include europium, used in nuclear power station control rods; dysprosium, gandolinium and praseodymium, used in the magnets in your mobile phone; and gadolinium, holmium and ytterbium, used in lasers among other things.
A 2022 article by the chair of Ukraine’s Association of Geologists, Hanna Liventseva, claimed her country contained about 5% of the world’s mineral resources, despite covering only 0.4% of the globe’s surface, thanks to a complex geology that takes in all three of the main components of the earth’s crust.
According to Ukraine’s own data, cited by Reuters, the country has deposits of 22 of the 34 minerals identified as critical by the EU, including rare earths such as lanthanum, cerium, neodymium, erbium and yttrium.
Before the outbreak of war with Russia, Ukraine was a key supplier of titanium, producing about 7% of global output in 2019, according to European Commission research. It also claimed 500,000 tons of lithium reserves, and one-fifth of the world’s graphite, a crucial component of nuclear power stations.
However, with Russia controlling about one-fifth of Ukraine’s territory, much of these reserves have been lost. According to estimates by Ukrainian thinktanks cited by Reuters, up to 40% of Ukraine’s metal resources are under occupation. Russian troops also occupy at least two of Ukraine’s lithium deposits, one in Donetsk and another in Zaporizhzhia.
There is one big reason Trump is so keen to get his hands on Ukraine’s critical minerals: China. More than ever, the Asian superpower is the world’s factory and that means, wherever in the world critical minerals are torn from the ground, it remains a crucial staging point on the supply chain.
Most of the world’s processing capacity for critical minerals is in China. According to the IEA, China’s share of refining is about 35% for nickel, 50-70% for lithium and cobalt, and nearly 90% for REEs. Its dominance in the latter, especially, is overwhelming. According to USGS data, in 2024 China accounted for almost half the world’s REE reserves.
With Trump effectively instigating a trade war with China with his imposition of steep tariffs on Chinese goods, US access to critical minerals is potentially under threat. As mentioned earlier, the world is being gripped by an unseemly scramble for mineral wealth. They are the building blocks of the economy of the future, and if the US doesn’t get its hands on them, someone else will.
Saudi Arabia has supported the idea of holding a meeting between US President Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin on its territory and reaffirmed its ongoing efforts to achieve a lasting peace between Russia and Ukraine, the press service of the Saudi Foreign Ministry reported.
“The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia highly appreciates the telephone conversation held between US President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin on February 12, as well as the announcement of the possibility of holding a summit between their esteemed two presidents in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia,” the statement said.
The ministry added that the Kingdom welcomes the summit in Saudi Arabia and reaffirms its ongoing efforts to achieve a lasting peace between Russia and Ukraine.
It is noted that on March 3, 2022, Crown Prince and Prime Minister of the KSA Mohammed bin Salman bin Abdulaziz, during telephone conversations with Putin and Zelensky, “expressed the Kingdom’s readiness to provide its mediation services to achieve a political settlement of the crisis.”
“Over the past three years, the Kingdom has continued these efforts, in particular by organizing numerous meetings on this issue,” the Foreign Ministry added.
