BLACKWATER USA | DAILY BRIEF - Blackwater Worldwide

Posted by BW Actual on Jul 24th 2025

Trade

Pres. Trump announced a big new trade deal with Japan that settled on a 15% "reciprocal" tariff rate - instead of the 25% level Trump had threatened - in exchange for $550 billion in Japanese investment in the U.S. Stock markets celebrated the news.
We're likely to see more major trade deals announced this week and next: Trump gave dozens of other countries a deadline of Aug. 1 - next Friday - to agree to better terms than the ones he threatened to impose in the absence of a deal.
In other trade news, the UK's PM Starmer and India's PM Modi also signed a significant trade agreement this week. Their deal - which is the largest trade agreement the UK has signed since Brexit - removes or reduces tariffs on around 99% of Indian exports to the UK and 92% of the UK's exports to India (including Scotch whiskey, which will see its levies drop from 150% to 40% over the next 10 years).

Ukraine

As expected, Ukraine and Russia failed to make meaningful progress towards a peace deal during their latest round of talks in Istanbul yesterday. The talks lasted just 40 minutes, and neither side budged on its demands.
Ukraine proposed another summit - this time a direct meeting between Presidents Zelensky and Putin - before the end of August (which is the deadline Pres. Trump set for Russia to agree to a peace deal or face new secondary sanctions), but it seems unlikely that Putin will agree to even meet Zelensky.
The NYT summarized their impasse nicely: "Ukraine is demanding a full cease-fire before discussing a durable peace deal. Russia wants the opposite, insisting on agreeing to the terms of a peace deal before laying down arms."
Separately, Ukraine's parliament passed a new law handicapping the country's anti-corruption bodies and giving the presidency more control over them.
The EU commissioner responsible for overseeing the accession of new member states chastised the move as "a serious step back" from the governance standards the EU expects of aspiring members.
Ukrainians were also irritated by the power grab: thousands of them took to the streets in Kyiv in the first major anti-government protest since the war began in 2022.

Southeast Asia

Thai and Cambodian soldiers exchanged fire across their shared jungle border today, leaving at least 11 Thai civilians dead.
Both sides blamed the other for starting the latest flare-up, but the roots of their long-simmering territorial dispute lie in bad colonial-era mapmaking.
Thailand has now closed its border with Cambodia and reportedly sent fighter jets to strafe the other side, which is likely to return the favors.

Central African Republic (CAR)

The International Criminal Court (ICC) convicted the former head of CAR's football federation, Patrice Edouard Ngaissona, and an accomplice nicknamed "Rambo" of crimes against humanity for leading anti-Balaka attacks against CAR's Muslim population in 2013 and 2014.
The ICC is also trying a leader from the other side of the violence (Seleka).