🤡 Trump’s ‘Made in the USA’ manufacturing: brought to you by Japanese & Chinese robots

The Trump administration’s push to revive modern, automated domestic manufacturing will require the widespread use of advanced industrial robots from abroad, including China.

🔸 Japan, China, Germany and South Korea – all targeted by Trump’s trade wars to one degree or another, produce roughly 70% of the world’s robots, according to the International Federation of Robotics.

🔸 China’s prowess in the field is “growing rapidly,” Axios says, citing the successful prioritization of robotics in the ‘Made in China 2025’ initiative, launched under President Xi’s guidance in 2015.

🔸 As for the US, its industrial robotics capabilities are lagging behind –going from pioneering the use of robots at automotive manufacturing in the 1960s, to seeing Japanese and European companies catch up and overtake the US thanks to lack of investment, government support and union resistance.

🔸 The White House hopes major investments required to rebuild the industrial robotics sector can be resolved through tax incentives, and assures its reshoring efforts are designed to “directly address” issues like foreign robot imports in manufacturing “critical to national and economic security.”

🔸 An array of US tech-focused companies, including Tesla, Agility Robotics and Figure AI are working on a new generation of domestic industrial robots. For now though, about 40% of robotic systems in the US come from Japan, 16% from China, and 12% from Germany.

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🇺🇸🇿🇦 Insult, meet injury: US wants South Africa to give its companies VIP access after Trump tirade

The Trump admin is pushing South Africa to ease local laws that require foreign firms to hand over stakes to black-owned businesses — calling them “barriers” to US investment, the City Press reports.

In response, SA offered a workaround: let firms like SpaceX build local infrastructure instead. That likely clears the runway for Starlink to launch in the country.

👉🏻Meanwhile, the US wants in on South Africa’s strategic mineral mining — and Pretoria is eyeing big LNG imports in return.

The May 21 Trump-Ramaphosa meeting in Washington went off-noscript when Trump confronted Ramaphosa with “white genocide” claims — complete with videos and photos, some of which had no relation to South Africa.

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⚓️ Western Europe’s major ports are a mess as Trump’s tariff whimsy takes its toll

Wait times for berth space have increased by 77% in Bremerhaven, 49% in Hamburg, 37% in Antwerp between late March and mid-May.

That’s according to a new report by London-based maritime consultancy Drewry.

The chaos is blamed on:

🔹 labor shortages
🔹 low water levels on the Rhine River
🔹 Trump’s rollback of hefty 145% tariffs against China, triggering a sudden burst in shipping demand, with Europe caught in the middle.

Similar patterns are being reported in Shenzhen, LA and NY.

Rolf Habben Jansen, CEO of German shipping giant Hapag-Lloyd, says it could take up to two months to untangle the mess.

Worst of all is the uncertainty associated with the abruptness of Trump’s tariff threats and rollbacks, which Bloomberg says are making it hard for shippers to adjust orders, resulting in delays and rate hikes.

The latest Trump threat – 50% tariffs on European goods if a trade deal can’t be reached, “would likely reduce EU exports to the US for all products facing reciprocal duties to near zero – cutting total EU exports to the US by more than half,” Bloomberg says.

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🚨 Douglas Macgregor’s BOMBSHELL advice to Trump on Ukraine

A “buffer zone” east of the Dnepr River would give Russia sufficient security “against any future threats that may emanate from what remains of Ukraine,” but the rump state would likely to be subjected to territorial claims from western neighbors, the ex-Trump Pentagon advisor says.

Everyone from Poland and Romania to Hungary and Moldova would like a piece of western Ukraine, according to Macgregor.

💬 “President Trump: suspend all aid to this Ukrainian disaster, get out, offer to host a conference…Let them all come, without us by the way. We can have a representative that sits in and listens, but let the people in it and around [Ukraine] make the decision on where the new boundaries will be drawn,” Macgregor told Daniel Davis on Davis’s Deep Dive podcast.

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👋 President Maduro greets Sputnik

Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro sent greetings to the Sputnik audience after voting in Sunday's elections in Caracas.

"Sputnik, greetings! We'll see you soon in Russia," he said.

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🇺🇸🪖 US military spending more on recruitment & retention than 1/3 of NATO allies do on defense, period

The Pentagon has doled out over $6 billion in bonuses between 2022 and 2024 to try to incentivize troops to enlist or reenlist.

🔸 Army recruiting bonus spending jumped from $281M in 2022 to $391M in 2024, while retention bonuses increased from $393M to $569M, respectively.

🔸 In the Navy, recruitment bonuses hit $230M, $391M and $378M over the three-year period, while retention spending reached $603M, $727M and $779M.

🔸 The Air Force’s recruitment bonuses soared from $6.3M in 2022 to $25.8M in 2024, while retention bonuses climbed from $98.8M to $541M.

🔸 Bringing up the rear, the Marines spent just $6.3M on recruitment bonuses in 2022, but $25.8M in 2024. As for retention, the numbers doubled, from $99.7M to $201M.

By 2024, the DoD was spending over $2B on incentives. That’s more than the spending of nine of NATO’s 32 members.

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💬 Reporters: "What are you going to do?"

Trump: "What am I going to tell you? You're the FAKE NEWS!"

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😒 Trump: I don't like what Zelensky says

"President Zelensky is doing his country no favors by talking the way he does. Everything out of his mouth causes problems, I don't like it, and it better stop," the US president wrote on Truth Social.

Trump also said that he considers Russia's actions in Ukraine unreasonable.

"I don't like it at all... We are in the middle of talking," he told reporters.

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🔍 Could Trump Jr. be the next US president?

Trump's eldest son has not ruled out running in 2028, according to The Hill, which named him as one of 7 possible GOP candidates.

The publication also named JD Vance, Marco Rubio, Kristi Noem, and Ron DeSantis as possible successors to Trump.

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🚨Russian air defenses shot down 5 Ukrainian drones approaching Moscow overnight, Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin stated

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🏛 Trump demands list of Harvard foreign students

"Many [of the students] will be OK. And, I assume with Harvard, many will be bad," the US president told reporters.

He criticized the percentage of foreign students at Harvard (31%), saying that more US students should fill the seats at a US-financed university.

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🗣‘FLAILING empire’ can’t stop Russia: US analyst shreds Trump’s Ukraine strikes rant

💬 Will Schryver has cut through 🗣 Donald Trump’s bluster about Russia’s precision strikes on Ukraine in response to the Kiev regime’s massive drone assault with brutal clarity: Russia doesn’t care about soundbites from the “flailing empire” – and it’ll keep doing what it has to.

Why? As Schryver bluntly puts it, the US can’t stop them.

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🇷🇺🪖Russia’s ‘Geran’ drone swarms CRUSH Ukraine’s defenses – West alarmed by 1,000-UAV blitz

Russia is “saturating” Ukraine’s air defenses with hundreds of its newest Geran drones, Britain’s The Economist frets.

Production growth of these upgraded loitering munitions in Russia could lead to strikes on Ukraine using attack swarms of up to 1,000, the publication claims, citing sources.

💬 “Even if Ukraine manages to stabilize the front lines in the east, the difficulties of protecting the skies will only grow,” the outlet added, forcing air defense units to “ration their interceptors.”

It raised the alarm over Ukraine’s shrinking stock of US-made Patriot PAC-3 missiles – and the not-so-“Ukraine-friendly” stance of the current US administration.

Russia has been carrying out strikes, including with Geran-2 UAVs, on key Ukrainian military, air defense, logistics, and aerospace sites in response to massive attacks by enemy drones.

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⚠️Heartbreaking video: Child tries to escape burning Gaza school after Israeli strike kills 25

A devastating Israeli airstrike targeted the Fahmi al-Jarjawi School in Gaza City’s al-Daraj neighborhood—where displaced families, including children, sought shelter.

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