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BBC:

The Supreme Court has struck down some of Donald Trump's most sweeping global tariffs, upending one of the White House's top policy priorities and injecting new uncertainty into global trade. In a 6-3 decision, the justices in America's highest court said the law Trump used to impose some of his most significant tariffs did not authorise him to do so. The ruling opens the door to potentially hundreds of billions of dollars in tariff refunds, delivering a major victory to the small businesses and states that had challenged the measures. The Trump administration had contended that the duties were justified under a law empowering the president to respond to national emergencies. But lawyers for the challenging states and private firms said that the law used by the president to impose the levies made no mention of the word "tariffs". They argued that Congress did not intend to hand off its power to tax or give the president an "open-ended power to junk" other existing trade deals and tariff rules. In his opinion, Chief Justice John Roberts sided with that view. "When Congress has delegated its tariff powers, it has done so in explicit terms and subject to strict limits," he wrote. "Had Congress intended to convey the distinct and extraordinary power to impose tariffs, it would have done so expressly, as it consistently has in other tariff statutes." Follow our live coverage here The decision applies to tariffs that Trump unveiled last year on goods from nearly every country in the world, in announcements that first targeted Mexico, Canada and China before expanding dramatically on "Liberation Day" in April. The duties were justified using a 1977 law, the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA), which gives the president the power to "regulate" trade in response to an emergency. He said the duties were a response to drug trafficking and trade imbalances. The tariffs would encourage investment and manufacturing in the US, paving the way for economic revival, he said. But the measures sparked outcry at home and abroad from firms facing an abrupt rise in taxes on shipments entering the US, and fuelled worries that the levies would lead to higher prices. Ahead of the ruling, the White House had said it would use other tools to impose tariffs, raising uncertainty about the path ahead of trade. But businesses across the US still celebrated the decision on Friday, saying they hoped that refunds would come swiftly. "This comes as a relief for our employees here in Burlington, Vermont and at our manufacturing facility in Washington State," said Nik Holm, chief executive of Terry Precision Cycling, one of the small businesses involved in the case. "Though it will be many months before our supply chain is back up and running as normal, we look forward to the government's refund of these improperly-collected duties." The lawsuit was seen as a major legal test of Trump's wider push to expand the powers of the White House - and of the willingness of the justices, a majority of whom are conservative, to overturn a policy so central to the administration's agenda. The decision to strike down the tariffs was joined by the court's three liberal justices, as well as two justices nominated by Trump: Amy Coney Barrett and Neil Gorsuch. Justices Clarence Thomas, Brett Kavanaugh and Samuel Alito opposed the ruling.

Aus Der Spiegel: „Friedrich Merz hat sein Machtwort gesprochen. Für den CDU-Chef und Kanzler steht fest, dass die AfD der politische »Hauptgegner« ist, so hat er es zuletzt in Interviews bekräftigt. Eine Koalition mit den Rechtsextremen: »zu 100 Prozent« ausgeschlossen. Das ist der Anspruch.

Die Realität lässt sich im sächsischen Niesky nahe der polnischen Grenze besichtigen. Armin Menzel sitzt dort an einem verschneiten Januartag in seiner Autowerkstatt. Der 58-Jährige ist Christdemokrat, Fraktionschef der örtlichen CDU – und völlig anderer Meinung als Merz. »Ich lehne jede Brandmauer ab, grundsätzlich und ohne Ausnahme«, sagt er. Es ergebe keinen Sinn, die AfD auszuschließen, »auch nicht in Dresden oder Berlin«.“

The network age without courage

„And that has many implications. That means your connections are more of a source of power. If you go back a couple hundred years, the land you owned was a really big source of power.

I wonder if part of what is happening is, in an age of network power, courage becomes harder. Because if you think back to that person whose power came from being rooted in the community — they had some land, they were somebody in the town, maybe they were the deacon in the church on the weekend. They had multiple kinds of clout. They had some money they gave to the local civic thing. They maybe had a bunch of different things that might make them courageous about some other thing, so that if someone started to take over their political party who was a fascist, they would have support from their church community or from the sports league they were associated with — these other things.

A lot of those things have vanished. And your power really consists of your position and your number of connections and the density and quality and lucrativeness of those connections in the network.

And if you go to a place like TED or the Aspen Institute, you see this working. No one cares about the land you have or your family name or these other things that have mattered for most of human history. It is really about: Do you know this person? Do you know this person? I just wonder if courage is a value that has suffered in a network age, because to be courageous is to break ties. And the more valuable ties become — the more exponentially valuable more ties become — the more exponentially expensive it is to cut off that tie, to burn that bridge.“

by Anand Giridharadas

Defence Minister David McGuinty says Canada has now officially joined the European Union’s Security Action for Europe (SAFE) program, which offers loans to member states to invest in defence capabilities.

"The agreement strengthens our collective security, supports the development of key defence capabilities, and gives Canadian industry access to European defence markets while contributing to European and Ukrainian security," McGuinty said in a statement sent to CBC News.

„Bayerns Gemeinden von überflüssigen Vorschriften befreien - und damit das Leben der Menschen erleichtern: Wie das Ziel zu erreichen ist, wollen CSU und FW in Modellregionen erproben. Kommunen sind offen, fragen aber: Wie offen ist denn der Freistaat?“

…CSU und Freie Wähler - ehrlich? 🤔