Authored by David DesRoisiers via The Spectator,

At 2 a.m. on Saturday, President Trump gave a New Year’s kinetic expression to his recently published National Security Strategy and what it means in the American hemisphere. If we take President Trump at his blustering word – which those in the administration’s Maduro-adjacent crosshairs should – this is just the first, big, shock-and-awe move by the United States in a resetting of the rules-based order that has governed our hemisphere.

This time on America First terms.

In Europe, those who take Trump seriously and see the long-term upside in his policies, call him “Daddy.” Last weekend Trump showed the “Papi” side of this national security strategy in our hemisphere. The Venezuelan people woke up praising the Papi of Venezuelan freedom. There is a new sheriff overseeing the hemisphere – and there are going to be regional and global consequences.

China is going to have to tighten its belt and stop building roads and propping up adversaries in our hemisphere. Cuba, too, should be very worried. What happened in Venezuela was not a product of a Bay of Pigs military mindset. Like Venezuela, Cuba is surrounded by the US Navy. Cuba’s infrastructure was shot before the hurricanes hit. The country looks like North Korea at night – and its people spend their days in a Hunger Games-pursuit. Without Venezuelan oil and other needed subsidies, Cuba will find itself completely dark in a matter of weeks. And their best fighters are stuck in Venezuela. Going home is not an option; escaping to Colombia and joining the Narcos is the likelier move. Soon enough, the Cuban regime with collapse under its own weight, followed by a Cuban Diaspora returning home, welcomed as liberators.

The narco-industrial complex needs to show that they are listening to Papi Gringo and adapting to new market conditions. Discontinuing the fentanyl trade and hanging its leadership from bridges would be a constructive first act of  “We hear you, Papi.”  Taking this step would help the cartels protect their core business, which has not always been poisoning Americans.

To date, President Trump has been a model of kinetic restraint and has studiously avoided the excesses of regime change and nation-building overreach.

Trump blew the minds of the neocons and their America First critics in Iran. He showed the world, in Operation Midnight Hammer, a middle path. Trump is doing so again in Venezuela with Operation Absolute Resolve. Under Trump’s leadership and direction, his administration scrupulously planned and executed a multi-agency kinetic response with minimal casualties to the regime’s key players – none to populace – resulting in a tomorrow that favors peace, and an orderly transition to better. When have we seen that before?

Tucker Carlson – with whom I disagree, but whom I refuse to quit, cancel, or stop listening to – is a not-so-stable genius when it comes to foreign policy and conduct of war. In contrast, Carlson has much to offer on how “We the People” think about our nation’s obligations to each other, citizen to citizen, which includes our elected representative. Domestic policy is the constructive lane for Tucker’s flavor of America First Quakerism.

But foreign policy is not Tucker Carlson’s strong point. Nor, frankly, is it a strong point of his foil and former colleague Mark Levin, who Carlson often depicts as a totem of neoconservatism. However, it is a strength of President Trump, and it is being faithfully executed by his Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, and Secretary of War, Pete Hegseth.

It is worth noting that his two war captains both have neocon resumes and let’s-give-war-a-chance tendencies, a cause of concern for the America First crowd. It does appear, however, that they have evolved to embrace a third way – Trump’s way – between the excesses of neoconservatism and the deficits of America First Quakerism.

Tucker and Levin are both prisoners of mindsets that necessarily lead to failure. In contrast, Trump’s approach to peace and war defies the worst features of each, and in doing so delivers on the partial in both within a win-win outcome. Iran’s nuclear ambitions got crushed without American boots on the ground, regime change and suffering of non-combatant, and combatants and leadership.

Just because Trump’s actions in Iran, and now in Venezuela, make Senator Lindsay Graham giddy, doesn’t mean that Trump’s foreign policy instincts have been captured. As in Iran, what is happening in Venezuela is not regime change; it is regime influence through leverage. This difference between the former and latter is a distinction with a huge, game-changing difference. 

Here’s a tactical expression of the American strategy: Trump does not punish the innocents – men, women, or children – or all the guilty for that matter. That is America First, restraint born of prudence. Trump hits targets – Iran’s nuclear enrichment and weaponization capacity – and cocksure leadership who don’t know the comparative size of their stick: Maduro. And when Trump does act, he does so with a precision and measure born of patient, disciplined planning and rehearsal, and with open communication to those on the ground, counseling calm, and, if not, a reality of more coming. Trump offered Maduro an off-ramp that did not require a jail cell. He could be living the al-Assad life somewhere that fits his despotic liking. He did not take it, however, and woke up in a very different position. Trump offered his second-in-command, Delcy Rodríguez – his ruthless Lady Macbeth – a second chance and new lease of life, a receivership relationship for her and her dirty-hand cronies.

This is not regime change. This is regime influence. On the same day of the extraction, the Venezuelan leadership that was spared was offered a peace-and-reconciliation olive branch. He has extended that opportunity to those already charged as co-conspirators to become collaborators in building a better Venezuela on terms that the US dictates. Foment chaos and expect to be replaced by your number two, who will distinguish themselves as a patriot by killing their boss, assume the title and play nice with Papi.

Just imagine if what we pulled off in Venezuela with Maduro, we did in Iraq with Saddam Hussein. Get him in his palace while he is sleeping and leave his people and leadership alone. And while this is happening, reach out to his second-in-command and make an offer that he or she can’t refuse with wash, rinse and repeat consequences of noncompliance.

This is a genuine Art of War insight. Give the existing leadership an opportunity to survive and evolve into better, or at least enough time to steal enough money and get out of the country. Doing so will take away the incentive to circle around the leader and fight like their fates are locked at the hip with his. Decouple their fates and you compete on a completely different terrain.

How much human suffering could have been avoided if this was our default, first response to bad behavior in Afghanistan and Iraq?

Trump’s National Security Strategy is an evolution of the art of war and statecraft. The “Trump Corollary” to the Monroe Doctrine is an improvement to rally around.

Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of ZeroHedge.

The global pharmaceutical industry’s revenue is increasingly concentrated in a handful of high-value drug classes, with oncology, diabetes/obesity treatments and immunology leading the charge.

As Statista’s Tristan Gaudiat details below, according to estimates from Statista Market Insights, cancer drugs alone generated over $217 billion last year, making oncology the largest therapeutic segment, driving nearly one-fifth (18 percent) of all pharmaceutical sales.

You will find more infographics at Statista

Antidiabetic medicines rank second, with estimated sales of over $85 billion in 2025, contributing 7 percent to global market revenues.

Some of the top-grossing drugs include Merck’s Keytruda, an immunotherapy for multiple cancers with almost $30 billion in revenue in 2024, as well as Eli Lilly’s Mounjaro and Novo Nordisk’s Ozempic/Wegovy, used for diabetes treatment and weight loss, and bringing in more than $10 billion annually for their parent companies.

Human rights groups say that hundreds of people have been killed during mass demonstrations that have roiled Iran in recent weeks, with thousands more detained.

At least 192 protesters have been killed since the mass demonstrations started, said the Norway-based Iran Human Rights group on Sunday. It said that “unverified reports” have shown that several hundred people, or even more than 2,000, might have been killed so far.

“Due to the total internet blackout and severe restrictions on access to information, independent verification remains a serious challenge under the current circumstances,” the organization stated.

A U.S.-based group, the Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA) said Sunday that at least 538 people have been killed in the government suppression of nationwide protests, adding that 490 deaths were protesters and 48 were members of the regime’s security forces.

Around 10,600 people have been detained, the group reported, adding that the death toll and arrest numbers will likely rise.

The Epoch Times’ Jack Phillips reports that it has not been able to independently verify the group’s reports. The Iranian regime has not released any official figures about the death toll or how many people have been detained.

Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian said Sunday that outside groups have been fomenting discord in the country and have been facilitating riots as well as general unrest. He also signaled that the country’s regime would be willing to speak to some of the protesters.

“We have made our decision to resolve their problems with every possible approach … that is why we are holding talks with them on a daily basis,” Pezeshkian said, according to state-run Tasnim News.

Speaking to the youth in Iran, Pezeshkian said that they should “not … be deceived by these rioters and terrorists” and said that those individuals “are trained,” according to his comments carried by state-run media outlet PressTV.

There have been reports from inside the country that some buildings, including Mosques or courthouses, have been set on fire amid the unrest. The Epoch Times has not been able to independently those reports, either.

The demonstrations began on Dec. 28, 2025, over the collapse of the Iranian rial currency, which trades at over 1.4 million to $1, as the country’s economy is squeezed by international sanctions levied in part over its nuclear program. The protests intensified and grew into calls directly challenging Iran’s theocratic regime.

President Donald Trump has offered support for the protesters, saying on social media that “Iran is looking at FREEDOM, perhaps like never before. The USA stands ready to help!!!”

“Iran’s in big trouble. It looks to me that the people are taking over certain cities that nobody thought were really possible just a few weeks ago,” Trump told reporters on Friday. “We’re watching the situation very carefully. I’ve made this statement very strongly, that if they start killing people like they have in the past, we will get involved … that doesn’t mean boots on the ground, but it means hitting them very, very hard where it hurts.”

In this frame grab from footage circulating on social media shows protesters dancing and cheering around a bonfire as they take to the streets despite an intensifying crackdown as the Islamic Republic remains cut off from the rest of the world, in Tehran, Iran, Friday, Jan. 9, 2026. UGC via AP

Trump’s comments were made about a week after the U.S. military launched an operation in Venezuela, an ally of Iran, that captured leader Nicolás Maduro on drug-trafficking charges.

About six years ago, Trump ordered a U.S. military strike that killed top Iranian commander Qassem Soleimani, who the Trump administration described as a major backer of attacks on American forces in the Middle East. And over the summer, the U.S. and Israeli militaries launched strikes on facilities associated with Iran’s nuclear program, prompting Iran to launch missile barrages at a U.S. air base in Qatar that led to no casualties.

Some Iranian officials have responded by saying that the country could strike Israel or the United States. A parliamentary speech by Mohammad Baagher Qalibaf, the speaker of the Iranian body who has run for the presidency in the past, issued direct threats to both countries.

“In the event of an attack on Iran, both the occupied territory and all American military centers, bases and ships in the region will be our legitimate targets,” Qalibaf said over the weekend. “We do not consider ourselves limited to reacting after the action and will act based on any objective signs of a threat.”

Via Remix News,

In yet another major blow to the German automobile labor market, Mercedes has announced it will be relocating production of its A-Class from Rastatt, Germany, to Kecskemét, Hungary. While Hungary’s foreign minister is taking a victory lap, Germany’s largest opposition party is sharply crticizing he government as signs grow that Germany’s automobile market is faltering.

Trade Minister Péter Szijjártó has officially confirmed Mercedes move, writes Budapester.

Szijjártó credited the success to “an economic policy based on sound common sense and a stable government that continually attracts new investment projects from global companies in America, Asia, and even Germany.”

However, the news is not being welcomed in Germany, with the Alternative for Germany (AfD) pointing out the dire economic situation the country is facing.

“Mercedes-Benz has stood for German engineering excellence and Germany’s economic upswing for decades. Yet, like many other automakers, the company is cutting jobs in Germany and expanding in other countries. As a result, the entire production of the A-Class is being relocated to Hungary. 20,000 employees are expected to lose their jobs as a result,” wrote AfD politician Christian Abel on X.

“This is a direct consequence of Friedrich Merz’s green climate and energy policies. To make Germany an attractive industrial location again, a genuine economic policy turnaround is needed through the termination of the energy transition, the combustion engine ban, the abolition of fleet emission limits, and the elimination of state-mandated reporting requirements. If this is not possible within the EU, Germany must seriously consider a Dexit,” he wrote.

His last comment has proven controversial in the AfD itself, with the mainline position that a Dexit will not be considered. In 2024, it was reported that AfD co-leader Weidel said she ruled out completely the idea that a Dexit, or exit of Germany from the EU, was possible.

Nevertheless, in 2023, the country lost a staggering 120,000 manufacturing jobs, highlighting serious problems.

However, Hungary, already a major manufacturing hub for German automobile producers, is now set to expand. Production of the A-Class is slated to begin at the Kecskemét plant as early as Q2, with production planned to continue until 2028.

“Hungary is demonstrating economic brilliance at a time when all of Europe is suffering from the consequences of the war in Ukraine and the misguided policies of the EU headquarters in Brussels,” Szijjártó wrote on social media.

Mercedes’ decision proves that investors embrace Hungary’s political stability, low taxes, and highly skilled workforce, with the Kecskemét plant its largest production site in Europe; only in China does the group have a larger capacity, notes Budapester.

Mercedes, named “Most Attractive Employer” in 2024, now directly employs more than 5,000 people in Hungary.

In October 2024, the plant celebrated the milestone of 2 million vehicles produced; in the future, the site will be able to manufacture both combustion engine cars and plug-in hybrids and all-electric vehicles.

Mercedes is also setting up its first R&D center in Hungary. With the relocation of A-Class production, the German automaker is now entrusting three models to the Hungarians, as the electric GLB and the new C-Class were already being built in Kecskemét.

Last December, Szijjártó also posted about new jobs in Szeged brought by Germany’s Rheinmetall as well. “Rheinmetall’s new hall has been completed, which means more than 300 new, highly skilled jobs in the city! Such investments contribute to Hungary becoming one of the most important European centers for future technologies, which is why we supported the German company’s 29 billion forint investment with 13 billion forints.”

The plant will produce high-tech components for both civil and defense applications, focusing on electromobility (e-mobility), hydrogen vehicles, and renewable energy power plants, alongside some military electronics. It’s Rheinmetall’s first major site outside Germany that combines civil and defense activities under one roof, creating jobs and positioning Hungary as a hub for future technologies.

Read more here…