Abe Newman

The Key to Managing Tariffs: Be Big and Have the President’s Ear

Remember tariffs are a tool of extraction. Companies have to tithe to seek relief. Who can afford that? Apple gets an exception from the tariffs and donates to the Trump ballroom. Many smaller businesses cant keep up.
www.nytimes.com/2026/02/02/b...

Previously I said I thought the Board of Peace was the best example for @abenewman.bsky.social and goddard’s neoroyalism theory. But as this thread makes clear, we’re witnessing wholesale rewriting of national security policy away from Nation’s interest to Trump/famil/cronies.

Tahnoun bin Zayed Al Nahyan (national security advisor) - Wikipedia

8/Policy is driven not by state bureaucracies but families/insiders. Sheik Tahnoun is simultaneously brother of UAE president, Chair of G42 (the AI firm), and national security advisor. On the US side, you have the Trump/Witkoff family. Court politics goes global.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tahnoun...

There's some overlap here btw the UAE, the chips, and the pardon of CZ.

Rupture? What Rupture? Thoughts on Trump's economic victory lap, Kevin Warsh's fairy tales, America's embrace of neo-royalism, how to invest for regime change, and why Chinese tech is winning

Rupture? What Rupture? My latest with thought on why Trump is entitled to his economic victory lap, Kevin Warsh’s fairy tales, America’s embrace of neo-royalism, how to invest through regime change, and why Chinese tech is winning

7/US national security is being rewired from a tool to protect the nation to one that serves as an extraction device for Trump and his insider clique.
www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

China’s Access to Powerful Nvidia Chips Comes at ‘Critical Moment’

6/See also the shift in US chip policy towards China. Trump reverses export controls but claims a benevolence from Nvidia.
www.nytimes.com/2025/12/09/b...

5/The framing around the revelations often focus on corruption. Sure, this is mega conflict of interest. But this not just skimming off the top. The rules of global politics are being rewritten along the lines of what @segoddard.bsky.social and I call neo-royalism.
www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

Inside U.S. Efforts to Untangle an A.I. Giant’s Ties to China (Published 2023)

4/And concerns over UAE and leakage are not new. G42, the UAE company that gets access to some 500 million Nvidia chips, has long been suspected of having ties to China.
www.nytimes.com/2023/11/27/u...

Trump’s UAE Chip Deal Is a National Security Risk The United Arab Emirates has spent years seeking access to advanced US chips to help cement its position as a technology hub and fuel its AI aspirations. The Biden administration, concerned that cutti...

3/This is not just a financial deal but also upends years of US foreign policy that had guarded our most advanced chip tech. Why? US worried that it will leak to China and help its AI ambitions.
www.bloomberg.com/opinion/arti...

Anatomy of Two Giant Deals: The U.A.E. Got Chips. The Trump Team Got Crypto Riches.

2/This builds on earlier NYT blockbuster. UAE related investments deposited 2 billion into World Liberty Financial months before chip deal.
www.nytimes.com/2025/09/15/u...

‘Spy Sheikh’ Bought Secret Stake in Trump Company $500 million investment for 49% of World Liberty came months before U.A.E. won access to tightly guarded American AI chips.

1/WSJ blockbuster. Key takeaway: Court interests not national interests are driving US foreign policy. In secret deal, UAE buys stake in Trump/Witkoff family crypto firm months before US does U-turn on advanced chip sales to UAE. This is what neo-royalism looks like.
www.wsj.com/politics/pol...

Very interesting thread.

Dropbox link in replies.

U.S. Allies Are Drawing Closer to China, but on Beijing’s Terms

11/ The other Thucydides Trap in action. US hubris pushes our allies into the arms of the rising power. In other words, Athens beat itself and the US risks doing the same.
www.nytimes.com/2026/01/31/w...

The Enshittification of American Power First Google and Facebook, then the world. Under Trump 2.0, US statecraft is starting to mimic the worst tendencies of Big Tech.

2/Here is the original article on the enshittification of US power.
www.wired.com/story/enshit...

Mississippi rice in trouble. The enshittification of American power. PCF HQ & the making of the Indian constitution. Great links, images, and reading from Chartbook Newsletter by Adam Tooze

1/ Platforms such you in and then they start to squeeze. This not just about Google or Meta, it is also about the US dollar and US coercion. @adamtooze.bsky.social flags @himself.bsky.social and my piece on the enshittification of US power.
open.substack.com/pub/adamtooz...

Cover: Francis Spufford, Light Perpetual

November 1944. A German rocket strikes London and five young children are atomised in an instant: Here are the futures they might have known, had they experienced the unimaginable changes of the twentieth century - futures that illuminate the miraculous in the everyday and the preciousness of life itself.

Cannot recommend this one highly enough: I already thought Francis was one of our greatest writers and this one is… emotional, put it that way. The framing device of lives never really lived helps to pick out moments of beauty and wonder from the mundanity of everyday life. It’s remarkable stuff.

Weaponized Interdependence: How Global Economic Networks Shape State Coercion Abstract. Liberals claim that globalization has led to fragmentation and decentralized networks of power relations. This does not explain how states increasingly “weaponize interdependence” by leverag...

For those interested in the original article on weaponized interdependence, you can find it here open access.
direct.mit.edu/isec/article...

Trump weaponized interdependence And made the world a more dangerous place

Trump has weaponized interdependence. One can only hope that the United States will eventually realize that it has put its own peace and prosperity in danger. Even if it tries to return to the fold one day, will other countries trust it? open.substack.com/pub/eduardoe...

#Neoroyalism www.theguardian.com/film/2026/ja...

2/For the more general argument on neo-royalism and the use of symbols for status dominance, see this piece w/ @segoddard.bsky.social
www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

Trump Threatens Iran With ‘Massive Armada’ and Presses a Set of Demands

1/Trump threatens Iran with a "Massive Armada". Neo-royalist language is used on purpose. It suggests the ships of kings. The Spanish Armada was the most feared fleet of its time...until it wasn't.
www.nytimes.com/2026/01/28/u...

Adam Tooze on this today: "[What Biden team did] is the weaponization of interdependence. That’s a very long way removed from how the Trump people are thinking about it, who are just using tariffs like these big, blunt instruments." www.nytimes.com/2026/01/30/o...

Trump threatens tariffs on any country selling oil to Cuba, backing Mexico into a corner President Donald Trump has signed an executive order that would impose a tariff on any goods from countries that sell or provide oil to Cuba, a move that puts pressure on Mexico.

10/The weeks not over yet. Mexico among others in the cross hairs because of Cube. Getting whiplash from all these threats....
apnews.com/article/oil-...

Welcome to the Age of Aristopopulism As you might suspect, it’s just a fancy word for oligarchy and kleptocracy.

Totally agree that order is not yet consolidated. Two fears a. elites are investing in it (see Microsoft/UAE deal). b. there is a larger ideological ecosystem in place supporting it. We caution against hoping/waiting it out because then it might be too late.
newrepublic.com/article/2033...

@abenewman.bsky.social to the Neo-Royalist courtesy telephone

Thanks so much Jason!

I highly recommend this Goddard and @abenewman.bsky.social article on "neo-royalism."
IMO the best scholarship on Trump II by far.
My thoughts in a brief 🧵 1/

'Very dangerous': Trump reportedly warns UK of doing business with China as Starmer seeks a reset Starmer is on a 4-day visit to China this week, the first trip by a British leader in eight years, signaling an attempt at resetting the bilateral ties.

9/Here is the latest threat -- the UK for its relationship with China.
www.cnbc.com/2026/01/30/t...