With little more than three weeks to go before Germany's snap election, conservative frontrunner Friedrich Merz is taking his hard-line immigration drive to the next level today, pushing ahead with a parliamentary vote on a migration law that will need far-right support to pass. What impact Merz's lurch to the right will have on voting intentions remains to be seen: opinion polls are holding steady, with his CDU/CSU bloc around 10 percentage points ahead of the anti-immigrant AfD in second place. Trump is threatening to unleash his first wave of trade tariffs tomorrow, targeting Canada and Mexico, the two biggest buyers of US goods. He's pledged 25% tariffs on about $900 billion in imports from both nations, whose trade surpluses with the US have long chafed the president. He yesterday indicated he would also move forward with 10% import duties on China, but did not specify timing. LISTEN: On the latest Trumponomics podcast, host Stephanie Flanders and Bloomberg Opinion Senior Executive Editor Tim O'Brien speak with Oren Cass, economist and founder of the conservative think-thank American Compass, about how Trump's immigration crackdown will affect the nation's economy. Listen on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. Rwanda-backed M23 rebels are moving rapidly toward the city of Bukavu in the mineral-rich eastern Democratic Republic of Congo after seizing Goma earlier this week, the United Nations said. The International Crisis Group warned there's "a real risk" that Rwanda may try to topple the Burundian government next. The fighting has placed millions of people at high risk of death from the spread of disease. Gunshot and shrapnel victims pack a room at an International Committee of the Red Cross hospital in Goma yesterday. Photographer: Alexis Huguet/AFP/Getty Images Trump's move to scale back US investments in renewable energy is spurring companies to look to Brazil as an alternative for those projects, according to Finance Minister Fernando Haddad, with industries already reaching out to the nation's development bank for financing of solar- and wind-power projects. Mass protests in Serbia sparked by a deadly roof collapse at a railway station in November have put pressure on President Aleksandar Vučić's decade-long rule and triggered concerns for the EU, which the country seeks to join. A student protest in Belgrade, Serbia Monday. Photographer: Andrej Isakovic/Getty Images US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Trump's proposal to buy Greenland "is not a joke" because of the risk that China would station resources on the island that threaten American security and the importance of Arctic shipping lanes for energy exports. Members of Venezuela's most feared gang could be deported by the US to prison in El Salvador under a deal sought by Trump, with officials from Washington planning to discuss the proposal when Rubio visits Central America in the coming days, sources say. A tanker sanctioned by the US this month has discharged Russian oil in China after an unusually long journey in which it changed its destination from Shandong province, a hub for independent refiners. US officials are probing whether Chinese AI startup DeepSeek bought advanced Nvidia semiconductors through third parties in Singapore, circumventing US restrictions on sales of chips used for artificial-intelligence tasks, sources say. |
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