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By Leo Banks, Mike Williams, and Ryan Mulholland


On January 16, 2026, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney announced a landmark trade deal with China that will open its market to Chinese electric vehicles (EVs) in exchange for lower tariffs on Canadian-produced canola oil. It’s a major change that could lead to the Canadian market welcoming Chinese-made passenger vehicles at a significantly higher scale and throws into stark relief the consequences of the Trump administration’s reckless trade policy and its large-scale disinvestment in EVs.


The Trump administration’s wrecking-ball approach to traditional forms of international cooperation its willingness to attack long-time partners and allies with ever more outrageous tariff threats and its destruction of the U.S. EV supply chain has forced Canada to change its strategy for modernizing and growing its domestic auto industry. Canada has historically been the largest importer of U.S. passenger vehicles. Now, as a direct result of the Trump administration’s actions, Canada’s pivot toward Mexico, China, and elsewhere stands to further isolate the U.S. market as the rest of the world moves decidedly toward a cleaner future. Indeed, if U.S. automakers were already behind Chinese and other international EV producers in terms of technology, production, and price, then the Trump administration’s antics on the world stage will only widen the gap and jeopardize a lucrative export market, to the detriment of American workers and consumers alike. -- READ MORE

By Damian Murphy and Michael Clark

For decades, the United States’ policy on China was grounded in the pragmatic desire to integrate a rising superpower into the global order, politically liberalizing China in the process. As China grew richer from trading with the world, the theory was that its people would demand the freedoms, legal norms, and democratic accountability that defined the West.

That theory obviously proved wrong, and a new, darker reality has taken its place: Instead of trying to change the course of Chinese behavior, the United States under President Donald Trump’s leadership has increasingly adopted Beijing’s toolkit. Rather than competing with Beijing, the Trump administration increasingly mimics it. The great irony is that Trump’s “America first” platform—a mix of transactional nationalism, personal loyalty, and state control—is producing an “America with Chinese characteristics.”

Advancing political objectives with coercion The most visible parallel to Beijing’s model is Trump’s use of state power to achieve political ends. While Beijing punishes trading partners who support Taiwan or question Beijing’s governance and human rights record, the Trump administration uses threats and tariffs to bully friend and foe alike into accepting its demands. Trump vowed to impose sweeping tariffs—a threat he has since walked back—on eight European countries for their refusal to facilitate the United States’ acquisition of Greenland. -- READ MORE

By Courtney Federico


President Donald Trump has justified his unchecked aggression in pursuit of “owning” Greenland as necessary both to defend against Russia and China and to gain unfettered access to Greenland’s supply of minerals and natural resources. The Trump administration’s designs on Greenland amount to little more than attempts at resource seizure in what’s becoming a pattern for the administration, mere weeks after the U.S. military was deployed to oust Venezuela’s leader and seize control of the country’s oil. In Trump’s push to gain control of Greenland—an autonomous territory of Denmark located in the Arctic, where the U.S. military is already granted a great deal of access through the Danish-American defense pact—he has failed to identify the source of his urgency: climate change.

The Arctic region is warming nearly four times faster than the rest of the world due to climate change. The resulting decline in sea ice has made navigating the Arctic Ocean easier, enabling an uptick in activity in the region, with a 37 percent increase in ships recorded in the Arctic over the past 10 years. While Trump denies the existence of climate change, calling it “perhaps the greatest hoax in history” in his recent speech in Davos, Switzerland, his fixation on Greenland reinforces that climate change threatens American security. Climate change in the Arctic is a security threat to the United States Global temperatures are on the rise: -- READ MORE

By Dan Herman, Allie Preston, Greta Bedekovics +5 more

The recent killings of Renée Good and Alex Pretti during the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement operations in Minneapolis are the latest in a pattern of dangerous, reckless law enforcement tactics that are terrorizing communities, costing lives, trampling on Americans’ constitutional rights, violating the law, and undermining actual immigration enforcement.

Since the start of the second term, the Trump administration has launched a series of immigration enforcement operations involving U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP), and other federal law enforcement agencies. These operations—involving masked, unidentified agents using aggressive tactics against both U.S. citizens and immigrants—have caused chaos across the United States. Many of these operations have been targeted against President Donald Trump’s political opponents, deploying large roving task forces to cities and states run by Democratic officials.

As an immediate next step, the Trump administration must pull ICE and U.S. Border Patrol agents out of Minneapolis and fire Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem in order to prevent further tragedies in Minnesota. But the problems with this administration’s Department of Homeland Security (DHS) are far more widespread and demand meaningful reforms and accountability from Congress.

To immediately reform the Department of Homeland Security, the Center for American Progress recommends the following commonsense measures: -- READ MORE

By Sara Estep and Kennedy Andara

Today’s jobs report came in above expectations, but underlying this positive month were large negative revisions to the 2025 jobs numbers and a continuation of the lackluster growth seen in sectors that employ blue-collar workers. Unemployment fell to 4.3 percent in January 2026, and some relief was offered to workers as the economy gained 130,000 jobs this past month. But under the hood were downward revisions to last year’s data showing that the economy only added 181,000 jobs overall in 2025, or an average of 15,000 jobs per month—with an overwhelming 93 percent of jobs added before “Liberation Day” in April. These revisions were particularly negative for workers in blue-collar jobs that tend to be stable and pay well, who are experiencing a labor market that does not usually exist outside of recessions.

Blue-collar job growth went negative

In 2025, job growth slowed for workers across nearly every industry. But industries that employ blue-collar workers actually lost jobs overall. (see Figure 1) In blue-collar industries—such as manufacturing, construction, logging and mining, transportation and warehousing, and utilities—a cumulative total of nearly 166,000 jobs were lost from February 2025 to January 2026. Although the construction and utilities industries added 44,000 and 9,200 jobs, respectively, during this period, these gains were not enough to make up for job losses in other blue-collar industries. Moreover, these gains pale in comparison to those seen during the same time frame the year prior, when the construction industry added 141,000 new jobs and the utilities industry added 10,600 new jobs. .-- READ MORE

By Molly Weston Williamson

Nearly 75 million people receive benefits from the Social Security Administration (SSA), with more older adults, people with disabilities, and other claimants becoming eligible each day. But despite the large and growing number of Americans who count on this already understaffed agency, the Trump administration has reduced SSA staff numbers by thousands, significantly hindering the SSA’s ability to serve claimants and provide the benefits upon which Americans rely.

From President Donald Trump’s inauguration in January 2025 to November of the same year, the SSA’s staff shrunk by 6,645 people, a decrease of more than 11 percent from the end of federal fiscal year 2024. These departures have notably reduced staffing capacity at field offices and other important outposts throughout the country, making it harder for Americans to get the services and support they need. In 33 states, the SSA had at least 10 percent less staff in fiscal year 2025 than in fiscal year 2024.* Some states were even harder hit. For example, Wyoming lost 19 percent of its Social Security staff in fiscal year 2025 compared with the prior fiscal year, while Missouri and Wisconsin’s state SSA staffs each shrunk by around 14 percent. Some individual field offices have had even greater reductions, losing one-quarter or more of their staff. Lack of staffing has led some rural field offices to close entirely.

The result is a customer service crisis that harms claimants and their families. ​-- READ MORE