As U.S. President Donald Trump left Beijing on Friday after two days of talks with Chinese President Xi Jinping, the world’s two biggest powers appeared to have come to a temporary truce. How long it will last remains to be seen, given that the summit concluded without any apparent breakthroughs in the long list of differences, from trade to Taiwan, that have strained relations. Instead, both sides appear focused on injecting some stability into a relationship that has, of late, seen many ups-and-downs. Mr. Xi offered a new label for ties, calling for “a constructive relationship of strategic stability” for the remaining years of Mr. Trump’s term and beyond. If both agree on the need for some stability, their priorities appear to differ. Mr. Xi told Mr. Trump that Taiwan was the most important issue in the relationship, which could descend into conflict if not properly managed. The U.S. stance on Taiwan remains unchanged, which includes substantial arms sales. How this détente will handle the Trump administration’s next sale remains to be seen. For Mr. Trump, getting China to buy more American goods and relax controls on rare earths are key metrics of the health of ties. He said that Beijing had agreed to buy 200 Boeing aircraft, step up purchases of soyabean, and relax restrictions on U.S. beef exports – the “three Bs” he has emphasised. The U.S. has also allowed 10 Chinese firms to resume purchases of advanced Nvidia chips. Both sides have discussed setting up a Board of Trade to manage trade issues, including reducing tariffs on some Chinese goods, and a Board of Investment to green light Chinese investment in non-sensitive sectors.

These deals, if confirmed, may at most lead to a pause in a bruising trade war. However, the Beijing summit has also served as a reminder of the broader changing structural dynamics in relations between the world’s two biggest powers. If the U.S. remains the pre-eminent military power today, it is the limits of its ability to command global influence that have come into question increasingly, all the more so after the Iran war. China, for its part, has made clear it is no longer interested in biding its time or hiding its global ambitions. As Mr. Xi put it to Mr. Trump, can China and the U.S. avoid the Thucydides Trap, of an inevitable conflict between the established power and the rising power, and create a new model of relations? This question holds significance for India and the rest of the world, which have to navigate this rivalry. Standing up to U.S. pressure, while managing difficult relations with an increasingly confident China, will be two key tests of India’s diplomacy in the years to come. Reinforcing India’s strategic autonomy and independence, rather than diluting it, will offer the best path forward.

A gunman breached security and fired shots at the annual dinner gala of the White House Correspondents’ Association in Washington DC, which included U.S. President Donald Trump and other senior administration officials, all of whom escaped unharmed. The suspected shooter, said to be Cole Tomas Allen (31) of Torrance, California, was arrested. This is the third incident of violence apparently targeting Mr. Trump, after a previous occasion on which a would-be assassin’s bullet grazed the President’s ear at a campaign rally, and another in which a gunman was apprehended near a golf course frequented by Mr. Trump. The suspect in this case is said to have “clearly stated” that he wanted to target administration officials, according to the White House, and in a note by the suspect shared by law enforcement officials, he said that he could no longer allow a “traitor to coat my hands with his crimes”. The incident comes in the wake of several high-profile attacks on political figures in recent years. These include the September 2025 killing of Charlie Kirk in Utah, the murder of Minnesota Democratic State Representative Melissa Hortman and her husband a few months earlier, and the 2022 attack on Paul Pelosi, the husband of former Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. It also comes after more than a year of Mr. Trump’s second term in office, a period marked by increasing polarisation over key policies, including immigration, and his association with disgraced financier and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

While bitter partisanship has long marked U.S. politics, it is the ubiquitous proliferation of guns that has truly supplied a deadly edge to disagreements in the public discourse. Ironically, the Trump administration has been at the forefront of efforts to protect the U.S. Constitution’s Second Amendment, the right to bear arms, to the point where it is often in alignment with the position of the National Rifle Association (NRA) in terms of reversing reasonable restrictions on gun ownership. For example, Mr. Trump supported a ban on assault weapons in 2000, yet he reversed his position by the time he launched his 2016 presidential campaign, one that was backed by millions of dollars spent by the NRA. The U.S. has been periodically wracked by mass shootings, including three this year, and more than 500 over the past 60 years, according to databases tracking such incidents. Notwithstanding the deep pockets and lobbying power of the NRA and its ilk on Capitol Hill, it behoves the U.S. to take a step back from the brink of this unrelenting gun violence epidemic and bring common-sense gun reforms to the table, then to be enacted into law by Congress. Until such time as society and popular culture move towards a more moderate position on gun laws, it is reasonable to believe that violence of the kind routinely witnessed across the country will continue unabated.

When Aristotle grounded politics in ethics, he was diagnosing a structural condition of legitimacy far beyond a mere moral statement. The polis, in his conception, exists not merely to secure bare life but also to enable a flourishing civil society where human potential can be realised. Divorce political authority from this ethical telos, and it collapses into an organised system of domination.

It is precisely this ethical stripping away that defines our present political condition. When Pope Leo XIV invokes the Gospels to call for restraint, peace, or an end to war, his appeals are often received not as profound ethical reflection but as naive political interference. The discomfort that the Pope’s moral interventions seemed to provoke in U.S. President Donald Trump found a strange and telling afterlife in the viral meme portraying Mr. Trump as Christ — a gesture that feels less like a real satire and more like a quick defensive move to hide his vulnerability.

In his 2026 State of the Union address, U.S. President Donald Trumpchose to double down on the politics of his conservative support base by touting his second administration’s achievements with regard to divisive, if not polarising issues relating to immigration, the cost of living, and foreign policy concerns including tariffs and the prospect of war in the context of Iran. The speech itself comes at a fraught moment for the Trump White House, days after the U.S. Supreme Court struck down its use of the International Emergency Economic Powers Act to slam a broad swathe of trading partners, including India, with punitive tariffs. An apparently undaunted Mr. Trump repeated his earlier remarks on social media hinting at disdain for the ruling, when he described it during the speech as “unfortunate” and argued, against evidence to the contrary regarding the burgeoning public debt, that the tariff revenues received by his government were “saving” the U.S. Similarly, he neatly avoided alluding to the two Americans killed in ICE raids in Minneapolis or the agency’s other heavy-handed actions targeting “criminal aliens” and “drug lords”. With regard to Iran, even though Washington has rapidly built up its force posture across West Asia following Teheran’s crackdown on protesters, Mr. Trump appeared to be holding out hope for a modus vivendi when he said, “My preference is to solve this problem through diplomacy. But… I will never allow the world’s number one sponsor of terror, which they are by far, to have a nuclear weapon.”

If Mr. Trump’s remarks in Congress sounded self-congratulatory, that might have been because they echoed a well-rehearsed campaign speech ahead of the critical mid-term elections. While it is true that inflation has gradually come down during Mr. Trump’s second term, his description of the price trend as “plummeting” might have appeared to some to be an exaggeration, especially given that it was under his predecessor Joe Biden that prices came off their nearly 9% peak in mid-2022 to 2.9% by the time Mr. Trump entered the White House, leading to the current rate of nearly 2.4%. More concerningly for the White House and Republican lawmakers, opinion polls suggest that most Americans are disenchanted with the tariff policy and its cost-escalating pressure on the economy, with the design and implementation of the current immigration policy, and with the perceived involvement of Mr. Trump in the Epstein scandal. While an upbeat address to a joint session of Congress might galvanise the faithful, it will take more than words to alter the bitter ground realities faced by the common people and they tend to express their frustrations in this context at the ballot box.

The Trump administration has expanded the U.S. travel ban, adding five more countries to the list and imposing new restrictions on others to tighten immigration and entry standards. The White House said the measures are aimed at strengthening national security following the arrest of an Afghan national accused of shooting two National Guard troops.

The Trump administration has expanded the U.S. travel ban, adding five more countries to the list and imposing new restrictions on others to tighten immigration and entry standards. The White House said the measures are aimed at strengthening national security following the arrest of an Afghan national accused of shooting two National Guard troops.

U.S. President Donald Trump has again claimed that he played a key role in defusing tensions between India and Pakistan by threatening to impose massive tariffs on both countries, saying the move “stopped the fighting” between the two nuclear-armed neighbours.

In an interview with Fox News on Wednesday (October 8, 2025), Mr. Trump said his “ability” to use trade and tariffs as diplomatic leverage helped bring “peace to the world” in multiple conflict zones.

Tariffs, he said, “give you a tremendous road to peace and the saving of millions of lives, just millions and millions of lives”.

The President said he made seven peace deals where countries, in many cases, were fighting for hundreds of years and “millions of people were being killed”.

“Not in all cases, but probably in at least five of the seven (peace deals) we’ve done, it was through trade. We’re not going to deal with people that fight,” he said.

Mr. Trump said he told the countries that “we are not going to let you deal in the United States. We’ll put tariffs on you”.

To buttress his point, he gave the example of the recent military conflict between India and Pakistan, which he again claimed to have stopped.

Mr. Trump said he had told both India and Pakistan that the U.S. would halt trade and impose “massive tariffs” unless they “put it together” and stop the fighting.

“You look at India and Pakistan, I said, well, we’re not going to do business with either of you if you don’t put it together. These are two nuclear nations. Seven planes were shot down, as you know, and they were really at it,” Mr. Trump said. He, however, did not specify which country’s jets he was referring to.

“I said, we’re not going to do any business with you. We’re not going to have anything to do with you. We are going to put massive tariffs on both of you… And within 24 hours, I had a peace deal… they stopped the fighting,” the President claimed.

Mr. Trump also described his peace efforts in the Middle East as an “incredible thing”, saying the Israel and Hamas’ agreement to his peace plan to pause fighting is “so great for Israel, so great for Muslims, for the Arab countries, (and) for the United States”.

“This is more than Gaza. This is peace in the Middle East, and it’s an incredible thing,” he said.

India launched Operation Sindoor on May 7, targeting terror infrastructure in Pakistan and Pakistan-occupied Kashmir in retaliation for the April 22 Pahalgam attack that killed 26 civilians.

India and Pakistan reached an understanding on May 10 to end the conflict after four days of intense cross-border drone and missile strikes.

India has consistently maintained that the understanding on cessation of hostilities with Pakistan was reached following direct talks between the Directors General of Military Operations (DGMOs) of the two militaries.

Mr. Trump has repeated several times that he ended seven wars in the second term of his administration so far, including India and Pakistan, Cambodia and Thailand, Kosovo and Serbia, the Congo and Rwanda, Israel and Iran, Egypt and Ethiopia and Armenia and Azerbaijan.

Since May 10, when Mr. Trump announced on social media that India and Pakistan had agreed to a “full and immediate” ceasefire after a “long night” of talks mediated by Washington, he has repeated his claim dozens of times that he “helped settle” the conflict between India and Pakistan.