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https://ericzuesse.substack.com/p/trumps-now-apparent-plan-for-ukraine

https://theduran.com/trumps-now-apparent-plan-for-ukraine-and-for-the-world/

Trump’s Now-Apparent Plan for Ukraine — and for the World

27 January 2025, by Eric Zuesse. (All of my recent articles can be seen here.)

Whereas I have previously stated that I expect Russia to ultimately take all of Ukraine — that there will be an unconditional surrender of Ukraine’s government to Russia — the great geostrategic analyst Alexander Mercouris, in his January 26th video, comes right to the point here (which is at 54:41 into the video), about the process by which it will happen:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1dXh4Y_OLyc&t=3281s 

saying that Putin is planning to meet privately with Trump, and that Trump and Putin will agree upon “Istanbul+,” and that when Zelensky rejects it, Trump will blame Zelensky and let Russia do whatever it wants — to conquer all of Ukraine if Putin decides to do that.

“Istanbul” refers to the deal that both Ukraine and Russia had initialed in Istanbul during April 2022 (in which Ukraine would commit to neutrality and never join NATO, and in which Russia would keep only the parts of Ukraine that it then controlled — but this was not defined in the text). Joe Biden’s agent the British P.M. Boris Johnson rushed to Istanbul on April 9th to tell Zelensky that if he would sign it “The West” would no longer arm Ukraine nor provide Ukraine any security “guarantees” (though Johnson couldn’t offer those “guarantees” anyway); at which point, there was an urgent flurry of diplomatic activity by many countries to try to save the deal, but Zelensky finally accepted Johnson’s advice late in April, because by that time Russia already increased the areas it controlled (and so it would now be what Mercouris is calling “Istanbul+”), and Zelensky decided that with NATO’s continued support he could simply defeat Russia in the battlefields of Ukraine and win the war outright, not sign the compromise deal. 

Here is the reason why I still think that this (Russia’s taking all of Ukraine) will be the outcome: Nothing has changed about my argument on 22 February 2023 that the answer can only be “Yes” to the question “Will Russia take all of Ukraine?” Nothing.

This outcome isn’t, at all, what Putin had hoped for or expected to result from his invasion of Ukraine on 24 February 2022; he had not expected that Russia would need to “go all the way” and take control of all of Ukraine in order to prevent the U.S. Government from ever placing a nuclear missile near Russia’s border such as in Sumy Ukraine a mere 5 minutes of missile-flying-time away from blitz beheading Russia’s central command in The Kremlin.

The U.S. and UK Governments have been leading Europe into an economic abyss by this rabid anti-Russia policy of imposing anti-Russia sanctions against importing or exporting to Russia, because Russia had been by far the cheapest source of energy to European countries, pipelined in — which is vastly cheaper than by means of containerizing it and shipping, trucking, and training, it in, from the U.S. across The Atlantic, such as is now the case because of all of those anti-Russia sanctions (and the blowing-up of the Nord Stream pipelines), which the U.S. Government is now enforcing more than ever before. It’s strangling Europe’s economies.

On January 25th, the progressive economist Michael Hudson wrote:

Trump told the Davos Economic Forum January 23: “My message to every business in the world is very simple: Come make your product in America and we will give you among the lowest taxes of any nation on earth.” Otherwise, if they continue to try and produce at home or in other countries, their products will be charged tariff rates at Trump’s threatened 20%.

To Germany this means (my paraphrase): “Sorry your energy prices have quadrupled. Come to America and get them at almost as low a price as you were paying Russia before your elected leaders let us cut Nord Stream off.”

The great question is how many other countries will be as quiescent as Germany as Trump changes the rules of the game: America’s Rules-Based Order. At what point will a critical mass be achieved that changes the world order as a whole?

Can there be a Hollywood ending to the coming chaos? The answer is no, and that the key is to be found in the balance-of-payments effect of Trump’s threatened tariffs and trade sanctions. Neither Trump nor his economic advisors understand what damage their policy is threatening to cause by radically unbalancing the balance of payments and exchange rates throughout the world, making a financial rupture inevitable.

The balance-of-payments and exchange-rate constraint on Trump’s tariff aggression

The first two countries that Trump threatened were America’s NAFTA partners: Mexico and Canada. Trump has threatened to raise U.S. tariffs on imports from both countries by 20% if they do not obey his policy demands.

He has threatened Mexico in two ways. First of all is his immigration program of exporting illegal immigrants and permitting short-term work permits for seasonal Mexican labor to work in agriculture and household services.

He has suggested deporting the Latin American immigration wave to Mexico, on the ground that most have come to America via the Mexican border along the Rio Grande. This threatens to impose an enormous social-welfare overhead on Mexico, which has no wall on its own southern border.

There also is a strong balance-of-payments cost to Mexico, and indeed to other countries whose citizens have sought work in the United States. A major source of dollars for these countries has been money remitted by workers who send what they can afford back to their families. This is an important source of dollars for families in Latin America. Deporting immigrants will remove a substantial source of revenue that has been supporting the exchange rates of their currencies vis-à-vis the dollar.

Imposing a 20% tariff or other trade barriers on Mexico and other countries would be a fatal blow to their exchange rates by reducing the export trade that U.S. policy promoted starting under President Carter to promote an outsourcing of U.S. employment by using Mexican labor to keep down U.S. wage rates.

The creation of NAFTA under Bill Clinton led to a long line of maquiladora assembly plants just south of the U.S.-Mexico border, employing low-wage Mexican labor on assembly lines set up by U.S. companies to save labor costs. Tariffs would abruptly deprive Mexico of the dollars received to pay pesos to this labor force, and also would raise costs for their U.S. parent companies.

The result of these two Trump policies would be a plunge in Mexico’s source of dollars. This will force Mexico to make a choice: If it passively accepts these terms, the peso’s currency exchange rate will depreciate. This will make imports (priced in dollars on a worldwide level) more expensive in peso terms, leading to a substantial jump in domestic inflation.

Alternatively, Mexico can put its economy first and say that the trade and payments disruption caused by Trump’s tariff action prevents it from paying its dollar debts to bondholders.

In 1982, Mexico’s default on its tesobono bonds denominated in dollars triggered the Latin America debt bomb of defaults. Trump’s acts looks like he’s forcing a replay. In that case, Mexico’s countervailing response would be to suspend payment on its U.S. dollar bonds.

This could have far-reaching effects, because many other Latin American and Global South countries are experiencing a similar squeeze in their balance of international trade and payments. The dollar’s exchange rate already has been soaring against their currencies as a result of the Federal Reserve raising interest rates, attracting investment funds from Europe and other countries. A rising dollar means rising import prices for oil and raw materials denominated in dollars.

Canada faces a similar balance-of-payments squeeze. Its counterpart to Mexico’s maquiladora plants are its auto-parts plants in Windsor, across the river from Detroit. In the 1970s the two countries agreed on the Auto Pact, allocating what assembly plants would work on in their joint production of U.S. autos and trucks.

Well, “agreed on” may not be the appropriate verb. I was in Ottawa at the time, and Canadian government officials were very resentful at being assigned the short end of the auto deal. But it is still going today, 50 years later, and remains a major contributor to Canada’s trade balance and hence the exchange rate of its dollar, which already has been falling against that of the United States.

Of course, Canada is no Mexico. The thought of it suspending payment on its dollar bonds is unthinkable, in a country run largely by its banks and financial interests. But the political consequences will be felt throughout Canadian politics. There will be an anti-American feeling (always bubbling under the surface in Canada) that should end Trump’s fantasy of making Canada the 51st state.

Hudson’s “Trump’s fantasy of making Canada the 51st state” seems likelier to me to be Trump’s aiming to scare the Canadian public at the same time as to entice Canadian investors to move their capital if not themselves to the U.S., and I don’t think it’s a “fantasy,” at all. More like a plan.

Those anti-Russia sanctions have served their purpose of destroying Europe’s economies; and, now, Trump has the perfect follow-up: to destroy the Western Hemisphere’s economies too. This is “America First” that will widen America’s economic advantage to investors (which are the only people he even thinks about), by forcing them to invest in America instead of in their own countries.

The Obama-Biden policies were a perfect set-up for this, and Trump seems to be determined to take full advantage of it.

If this seems too psychopathic for him to be, then think of the ongoing genocide in Gaza — his ‘solution’ for it is to save what he says is the surviving 1.5 million surviving residents in Gaza (which had 2.3 million when the genocide started on 16 October 2023, so that he’s alleging 800,000 of them have been killed so far) by forcing them to go to either Egypt or Jordan — turn the genocide of Gazans into an ethnic cleansing by forced displacement. But that is part of his megadonor Miriam Adelson’s plan for Gaza because it would end the Palestinians’ “right of return” and so end Palestine altogether — which both Egypt and Jordan refused, on 16 October 2023, ever even to consider doing. It is simply indisputable that (like all American Presidents so far this century), Trump is a psychopath. Something is deeply wrong with the approximately thousand individuals who are actually controlling the U.S. Government, and our Presidents are a mere symptom of that disease these controllers (America’s Deep State) share.

PS: If you like this article, please email it to all your friends or otherwise let others know about it. None of the U.S.-and-allied ‘news’-media will likely publish it (nor link to it, since doing that might also hurt them with Google or etc.). I am not asking for money, but I am asking my readers to spread my articles far and wide, because I specialize in documenting what the Deep State is constantly hiding — what the ‘news’-media ignore if they can, and deny if they must. This is, in fact, today’s samizdat.

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Investigative historian Eric Zuesse’s latest book, AMERICA’S EMPIRE OF EVIL: Hitler’s Posthumous Victory, and Why the Social Sciences Need to Change, is about how America took over the world after World War II in order to enslave it to U.S.-and-allied billionaires. Their cartels extract the world’s wealth by control of not only their ‘news’ media but the social ‘sciences’ — duping the public.