NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte disagrees that Ukraine is losing the war, although "the front is moving in the wrong direction".

Source: Rutte in an interview with German tabloid Bild, as reported by European Pravda

Details: Rutte was asked whether the West is losing the war against Russia in Ukraine.

"The front is moving in the wrong direction. But at what cost? The Russians are paying for it with 1,000 to 1,500 people dying or being seriously wounded every day. Nevertheless, the Russians are not achieving their goals.

Our task is to ensure that they never achieve their goals. Therefore, no, Ukraine is not losing. And we have to help them get into a position of strength," the secretary general stressed.

He also stressed that the West should not show weakness: "Otherwise, Russia might try something. As it has done in Ukraine".

Rutte warned against being naive about a lasting peace with Russia.

"Let's not be naive about Putin. You only have to look at what happened in Bucha [Rutte was referring to atrocities committed by Russian troops in the settlement of Bucha in Kyiv Oblast]. So, if a peace agreement is concluded, it must be sustainable. We have to make sure that he can never, ever conquer even one square kilometre of Ukraine again," he said.

Background:

• President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has stated that excluding Ukraine from the US-Russia talks on the war in Ukraine would be "very dangerous" and asked for further discussions between Kyiv and Washington to develop a ceasefire plan.

• He also believes that meeting US President Donald Trump should come first before determining how to engage with the Russians.

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Former Obama White House ethics lawyer Norm Eisen on Monday warned that Donald Trump’s power grabs could ultimately backfire on the president.

Appearing on MSNBC’s “The Weeknight,” Eisen (who also served as U.S. ambassador to the Czech Republic) said the lesson he’s taken from people who’ve experienced “democratic backsliding” in their own countries, only for them to recover, is that “the besetting sin, the greatest danger of self-destruction that dictators have, is overreach.”

Politics: Here Are The Major Takeaways — And 1 Thing You Didn't See — From Trump's '60 Minutes' Interview

“In a sense, the phrase is, ‘The worse, the better,’” Eisen explained. “So, the American people will not let him get away with that. The courts alone won’t save us, but the people are the ultimate guardrail and the ultimate safeguard.”

Eisen said he sees signs of voters pushing back against Trump.

“They don’t like it,” he said. “So, I’m hopeful that we will be strong enough to stand up to his shenanigans.”

But he grimly cautioned: “It will get worse.”

Politics: Ex-White House Ethics Lawyer Accuses Donald Trump Of ‘Nakedly Illegal Action’

Anchor Symone Sanders-Townsend had earlier talked about how Trump’s administration truly believes “that when the president does something, it is legal, regardless” of what it is.

Trump’s team wants “us to be in a place where, when not just the Insurrection Act but I think even martial law is invoked, nobody bats an eye,” she added.

Trump, though, is “in a race against time,” she argued, noting that “what happens in tomorrow’s elections could accelerate, frankly, his authoritarian tendencies.”

Watch here:

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Read the original on HuffPost

By David Lawder

WASHINGTON, November 3 (Reuters) -U.S. factory equipment maker OTC Industrial Technologies has long used low-cost countries to supply components - first China and later India - but President Donald Trump's blitz of tariffs on numerous trade partners has upended the supply chain math for CEO Bill Canady.

"We moved things out of China and went to some of those other countries, and now the tariffs on those are as bad or worse," Canady told Reuters. "We just have to hang on and navigate our way through this so we don't all go broke in the short run."

It is a dilemma that is sinking in with companies, foreign trade ministries, trade lawyers and economists as the U.S. Supreme Court considers the legality of Trump's global tariffs, with arguments set for Wednesday. Under one legal authority or another, Trump's tariffs are expected to stay in place long term.

LOWER COURTS RULE AGAINST TRUMP

The court, whose 6-3 conservative majority has backed Trump in a series of major decisions this year, is hearing his administration's appeal after lower courts ruled that the Republican president overstepped his authority in imposing sweeping tariffs under a federal law meant for emergencies.

A ruling striking down Trump's use of the 1977 International Emergency Economic Powers Act, or IEEPA, to quickly impose broad global tariffs also would eliminate a favorite cudgel to punish countries that draw his ire on non-trade political matters. These have ranged from Brazil's prosecution of former president Jair Bolsonaro to India's purchases of Russian oil that help fund Russia's war in Ukraine.

"For decades, our country has been looted, pillaged, raped and plundered by nations near and far, both friend and foe alike," Trump said in announcing sweeping reciprocal tariffs in April under this law.

"Reciprocal - that means they do to us and we do it to them," Trump added.

Trump is the first president to invoke this statute - which often has been used to apply punitive economic sanctions to adversaries - to impose tariffs. The law provides a president broad authority to regulate a variety of economic transactions when a national emergency is declared. In this case, Trump deemed a $1.2 trillion U.S. goods trade deficit in 2024 a national emergency - even though the United States has run trade deficits every year since 1975 - and also cited overdoses of the often-abused painkiller fentanyl.

U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said he expects the Supreme Court to uphold the IEEPA-based tariffs. But if it strikes down the tariffs, Bessent said in an interview, the administration will simply switch to other tariff authorities, including Section 122 of the Trade Act of 1974, which allows broad 15% tariffs for 150 days to calm trade imbalances.

Bessent said Trump also can invoke Section 338 of the Tariff Act of 1930, a statute that allows tariffs up to 50% on countries that discriminate against U.S. commerce.

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"You should assume that they're here to stay," Bessent said of Trump's tariffs.

For countries that have negotiated tariff-lowering trade deals with Trump, "you should honor your agreement," Bessent added. "Those of you who got a good deal should stick with it."

Trump already is using other authorities for certain tariffs. He is busy piling up tariffs under Section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act of 1962 involving national security concerns to protect strategic sectors including autos, copper, semiconductors, pharmaceuticals, robotics and aircraft, as well as tariffs under Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974 involving unfair trade practices investigations.

"This administration is committed to tariffs as a cornerstone of economic policy, and companies and industries should plan accordingly," said Tim Brightbill, co-chair of law firm Wiley Rein's trade law practice in Washington.

NEGOTIATING POWER

Trump administration officials have touted his tariffs as pushing major trading partners such as Japan and the European Union to negotiate major concessions that will help to reduce the U.S. trade deficit, arguing those concessions will survive any Supreme Court ruling.

U.S. trade partners are not waiting for a Supreme Court ruling in deciding how to proceed. The U.S. Trade Representative's office has announced finalized framework trade deals with Vietnam, Malaysia, Thailand and Cambodia, locking in tariff rates of 19% to 20%. South Korea agreed to terms on a $350 billion investment plan, unlocking a 15% tariff for its cars and other goods.

Negotiations with China have proven more difficult due to its willingness to retaliate against the United States and cut off its supplies of rare earth minerals and magnets essential for U.S. high-tech manufacturing from autos to semiconductors.

Instead of major concessions, Trump's administration has had to settle for extensions of a delicate truce under which American and Chinese tariffs were reduced to keep the rare earths flowing.

In South Korea last Thursday, Trump agreed in talks with Chinese President Xi Jinping to halve the U.S. tariff rate on Chinese goods related to fentanyl to 10% and to delay tighter technology export controls for a year in exchange for China's year-long pause on its tough licensing requirements for global rare-earth exports.

Xi agreed to resume purchases of American soybeans that China had halted for months, while Trump paused new U.S. port fees for China-linked ships for a year.

REVENUE, INVESTMENT CONCERNS

Some investors have said financial markets, which have grown accustomed to the Trump tariff status quo, could be thrown into turmoil if the Supreme Court strikes down the IEEPA tariffs.

A major reason for concern, particularly in the Treasury debt market, is the risk of having to refund more than $100 billion in IEEPA tariff collections and forgoing hundreds of billions of dollars of revenue annually.

The IEEPA tariffs collected so far this year make up the biggest portion of a $118 billion increase in net customs receipts in the 2025 fiscal year that ended on September 30. That helped offset rising healthcare, Social Security, interest and military outlays, helping shrink the U.S. deficit slightly to $1.715 trillion.

"It's a significant political economy risk that we get addicted to tariff revenue," said Ernie Tedeschi, a senior fellow at the Yale University Budget Lab, adding that makes it harder for any future presidential administration to lower the duties.

Getting the money back also would be difficult, as a tariff reversal "is unprecedented at this scale" for U.S. Customs and Border Protection, said Angela Lewis, global head of customs at freight forwarder and customs broker Flexport.

The onus could be on individual importers to apply for "post-summary corrections" with the agency, a messy process that could take years and not be worthwhile for some smaller firms, Lewis said. For those getting refunds, U.S. taxpayers also would be on the hook for 6% annual interest costs compounded daily.

INFLATION TIMING

The biggest dilemma is managing costs. Importers for the most part have eaten the tariffs, according to academic studies and comments from executives, reducing profit margins but limiting higher consumer prices and protecting market share.

While this has dampened the inflationary impact so far, cost pass-throughs are broadening through clothing and other goods prices, according to Oxford Economics, which estimated that tariffs added 0.4 percentage point to September's Consumer Price Index annual rate of 3.0%, keeping inflation well above the Federal Reserve target.

Corporate earnings have taken the biggest hit, with global companies flagging more than $35 billion in tariff-related costs so far heading into third-quarter earnings season.

Ohio-based OTC designs and builds factory production lines and automation systems. Soon, CEO Canady said, companies like his will have to "place their bets" on where to shift production for a more sustainable cost base. That may mean back to U.S. shores for high-end products, and to Mexico for lower-value parts.

"I think the new normal is going to be 15%," Canady said of Trump's tariffs, regardless of the legal authority he invokes. "They're going call it whatever they need to call it so that it is not challengeable."

(Reporting by David Lawder; Additional reporting by David Gaffen and Joseph Ax; Editing by Dan Burns and Will Dunham)

Conservative attorney George Conway on Monday taunted President Donald Trump over his expression of sympathy for the British monarchy amid the ongoing fallout over Andrew, the royal formerly known as a prince who has been stripped of his titles over his ties to late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

Trump, himself once friendly with Epstein, told reporters aboard Air Force One that he felt “very badly” for the British royal family. “It’s a terrible thing that’s happened to the family,” the president said, calling it a “tragic situation.”

Conway, a longtime Trump critic despite his ex-wife Kellyanne Conway’s Trumpworld connections, seized on the remarks with a mocking post on X, the Elon Musk-owned platform formerly named Twitter.

“Who says the man has no empathy?” Conway snarkily asked, before listing a series of controversial figures and groups who’ve also received the president’s sympathy.

They included Russian President Vladimir Putin, the convicted Jan. 6 insurrectionists and “the Nazis who marched in Charlottesville.”

Conway’s jab quickly went viral, with commenters noting who Trump chooses to empathize with.

See Conway’s full post here:

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Read the original on HuffPost

Fox News host Guy Benson called for President Donald Trump to receive more scrutiny for admitting to pardoning a man he didn’t even know on Monday.

Last month, Binance co-founder Changpeng Zhao — commonly referred to as “CZ” — received a pardon from the Trump administration. Zhao pleaded guilty in 2023 to “failing to sufficiently combat money laundering on his crypto exchange.” He was sentenced to four months in prison.

When pressed about the pardon on the most recent episode of 60 Minutes, Trump claimed he actually had no clue who Zhao was.

“Okay, are you ready?” Trump said. “I don’t know who he is. I know he got a four-month sentence or something like that. And I heard it was a Biden witch hunt.”

In response to the clip, Benson specifically pointed to former President Joe Biden’s autopen scandal to argue that Trump should face more heat for his comments.

“If we care about Biden’s autopen scandal on pardons and commutations (we should),” Benson said in a tweet, “shouldn’t this answer from POTUS on this set of facts draw scrutiny and concern? Oversight shouldn’t be selectively partisan and reflexively tribal, by either side.”

As noted by CBS’s Norah O’Donnell, Zhao’s company “helped facilitate a $2 billion purchase” of a Trump crypto venture.

The post Fox News Host Calls Out Double Standard of Biden Autopen Backlash After Trump Admits to Not Knowing Billionaire He Pardoned first appeared on Mediaite.