Extract from ABC News
Analysis
As the US president faces domestic consequences for his violent immigration crackdown, his geopolitical bluffs across the world also come at a price. (Reuters: Anna Rose Layden)
Associated Press Photographer John Locher snapped a photo in Minneapolis on January 11 which seemed to capture the aggressive overkill by Donald Trump's ICE agents, an overkill from which the majority of Americans have recoiled this week.
A woman wearing what appear to be hospital scrubs is standing in the doorway of her home with her phone in her hand, her palms facing upwards in a gesture which reflects the disbelief on her face at what she sees before her.
No fewer than nine US federal immigration officers stand in her front yard, confronting her with their weapons brandished.
A New York Times journalist, Thomas Gibbons-Neff, who deployed twice to Afghanistan with the US Marines, subsequently gave a detailed rundown of the "helmets, camouflage and tactical gear which all look straight from the battlefield".
"Their gear is the physical manifestation of decades of war, fine-tuned and perfected for close-quarters killing over myriad operations in faraway lands but now wielded in broad daylight in American cities," Gibbons-Neff wrote.
With a backlash across the political spectrum to two US citizen now violently killed in the ICE crackdown in Minneapolis, the US president finally changed course in his endorsement of their tactics this week.
The "White House Border Tsar" (yes, that is his actual title) Tom Homan has been sent in to "de-escalate" the situation in Minneapolis.
"We are not surrendering our mission at all. We're just doing it smarter," Homan said at a press conference.
The Minneapolis ICE story has therefore entered that news limbo where an immediate crisis may have passed, even if where it heads next is completely unclear.
News limbo is a heavily occupied space these days.
Trump revels in being unpredictable and argues it is an effective weapon in his foreign policy armoury.
And uncertainty certainly now surrounds all the major conflicts into which he has inserted the United States and his military machismo.
Trump revels in being unpredictable and argues it is an effective weapon in his foreign policy armoury. (Reuters: Kevin Lamarque)
Trump warns Iran
Bumping the Minneapolis story down the news list this week has been renewed pressure on Iran — though it is notable that the European Union has also been increasing its pressure on the regime.
The US president warned Iran that "time is running out" to negotiate a deal on its nuclear program — (the American idea of an Iranian nuclear program is no Iranian nuclear program) as a "massive armada" was "moving quickly, with great power, enthusiasm, and purpose" towards Iran. That armada is a US naval fleet led by the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln.
Iran's foreign minister Abbas Araghchi responded by warning that the country's armed forces were ready "with their fingers on the trigger" to "immediately and powerfully respond" to any aggression by land or sea.
Analysts will observe that Trump prefers short, sharp and clearly defined engagements like the US strike on Iranian nuclear facilities or the extraction of Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro.
They also note his style of brinkmanship — such as that seen over Greenland — which suggests he often backs away from conflict while claiming a gain.
What worries many now is that the sabre rattling over Iran — which has ebbed and flowed for months — gets to a point where it only continues to work if Trump actually acts in some way.
Remember that a couple of weeks ago he pledged to the Iranian people that "help was on its way" to back the thousands of people protesting against their repressive regime.
The help never came and the fate of all those protesters wasn't mentioned again by the US president in his most recent warnings to Iran.
The US demands now seem to have escalated to include a permanent end to all enrichment of uranium and disposal of all of Iran's current stockpiles.
Iran's oreign minister Abbas Araghchi responded to Donald Trump by warning the country's armed forces were ready "with their fingers on the trigger" to "immediately and powerfully respond" to any aggression by land or sea. (Reuters: Denis Balibouse)
An anxious world awaits
While Iran has clearly been weakened in recent times, it is still seen as able to strike back if Trump does launch some hostile action.
So an anxious world awaits more rounds of meetings and talks of possible solutions.
As it does over Ukraine. As it does over Gaza. As it does over Greenland. As it does over NATO. As it does over tariffs.
There is a certain surrealism to the fact the world's media must still report the comments of officials expressing optimism about various negotiations in any of these tensions spots around the world when for all intents and purposes it appears the differences between the parties are utterly unresolved.
Ukraine? Yes, there have been three-way talks going on between Russia, the US and Ukraine. Trump is claiming credit for getting Vladimir Putin to agree to a one week ceasefire because of the brutal cold in Ukraine.
But the reality is that the major stumbling block to a settlement in Ukraine is that neither side is prepared to give any ground on the issue of the Donbas.
The media reports that there has been a ceasefire in place in Gaza, despite the fact that Palestinians continue to get killed almost daily by Israeli forces and that there is now broad reporting of Israel pushing its "yellow line" of occupied land further and further into the strip.
What happens to negotiations over Greenland, and even over the US relationship more broadly with its NATO allies, has gone off the boil, awaiting some new focus in coming weeks. But they are not issues that are going away and they are not being resolved.
Such uncertainty does not come without its costs.
The price of uncertainty
Beyond the much-observed costs to the US's reputation as a reliable ally suffered in the week of Trump's Davos speech, there's also the cost to the its international reputation on human rights flowing from the ICE deployments under his watch.
UK prime minister Sir Keir Starmer has been in China this week — the first British leader to visit in eight years — to warm up the relationship.
The British media want to know how he is balancing getting warmer trade ties with Chinese human rights abuses.
Unfortunately, it is not just the US that loses any moral superiority on issues like human rights as a result of events in America, but its allies.
The complex fallout from US policy seemingly being perpetually in a state of flux is most apparent in the economic sphere, where tariffs policy only seems to get more complicated by the day as the president threatens, then "unthreatens", tariff action in support of a wide range of foreign policy aims.
The impact of tariffs on US manufacturing — which is supposed to be reinvigorated by the policy — remains mixed.
Some manufacturers are doing better. A lot aren't because they rely on inputs which cannot be replicated in the US.
And it seems every day now there is another story about countries doing significant deals with countries other than the US, which you have to think might not have happened in different circumstances.
The EU and India signed a massive free trade deal this week, a deal which has been on the table since 2007, which will significantly benefit the European car and wine sectors — both hard hit by US actions.
Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney announced during a visit to Beijing a couple of weeks ago that a small number of Chinese electric vehicles would be allowed into Canada at a low tariff rate.
Canada turns to Asia
The Canadian auto industry is also under threat from US tariffs. Canada announced an agreement with South Korea to investigate bringing Korean auto manufacturing onshore.
Canadian prime minister Mark Carney also announced during a visit to Beijing a couple of weeks ago that a small number of Chinese electric vehicles would be allowed into Canada at a low tariff rate, despite the US president threatening a 100 per cent tariff on all Canadian exports to the US if Canada "makes a deal with China".
The thing that may best help make the US economy "great again" is the one that is almost accidental, or incidental, to all the administration's work.
The US dollar has continued to fall because of all the geo-strategic and economic uncertainty. It has fallen 2.6 per cent since the beginning of this year and 9.5 per cent in 2025.
Maybe it is all part of the cunning plan.
Trump said this week he thought it was "great" that the dollar had fallen when asked whether he was concerned about its decline. And many in the financial markets believe this is indeed an objective of the administration.
But Trump is now playing a very large number of bluffs, in a very large number of theatres, simultaneously.
And the risks of being called on any one of them, only increases the risks of what happens to all his other hands.
Laura Tingle is the ABC's Global Affairs Editor.
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