February 14 2025

1. Apple, Google Restore TikTok to App Stores After Trump Administration Intervention
2. Manhattan US Attorney, Top Officials Resign Over Adams Case
3. Apartment Rents Set to Rise as Construction Boom Ends
4. Trump Unveils 'Reciprocal Tariff’ Trade Plan
5. Battle for Eurasia Update: US Warns Europe to Boost Defense Spending as Russian Military Spending Surpasses All Europe Combined; US Admiral Warns of China-Taiwan Conflict Risk
February 14, 270: St. Valentine beheaded

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1. Apple, Google Restore TikTok to App Stores After Trump Administration  Intervention

Apple and Google restored the TikTok app to their mobile app stores Thursday night, weeks after removing it to comply with a U.S. law requiring TikTok’s Chinese parent, ByteDance, to sell it or shut it down. The iPhone maker decided to restore the app after a letter from U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi, according to a person familiar with the matter.  The tech giants removed TikTok from their app stores in January because of the possibility they could face legal consequences for letting users download the Chinese-controlled app. President Trump is trying to arrange a deal to keep TikTok alive in the U.S. He signed an executive order on Inauguration Day delaying enforcement of the law passed last year requiring TikTok to shed its Chinese ownership or close in the U.S. TikTok’s reinstatement to the biggest app stores is critical to its continued growth in the U.S., where it has roughly 170 million users. Consumers who had already downloaded the app before it was removed from the app stores were still able to use it.

Article Source: WSJ

2. Manhattan US Attorney, Top Officials Resign Over Adams Case

Manhattan’s U.S. attorney on Thursday resigned rather than obey an order from a top Justice Department official to drop the corruption case against New York City’s mayor, Eric Adams. Then, when Justice Department officials transferred the case to the public integrity section in Washington, which oversees corruption prosecutions, the two men who led that unit also resigned, according to five people with knowledge of the matter. Several hours later, three other lawyers in the unit also resigned, according to people familiar with the developments. The serial resignations represent the most high-profile public opposition so far to President Trump’s tightening control over the Justice Department. They were a stunning repudiation of the administration’s attempt to force the dismissal of the charges against Mr. Adams. Days earlier, the acting No. 2 official at the Justice Department, Emil Bove III, had ordered Manhattan prosecutors to drop the case against Mr. Adams. The agency’s justification for dropping the case was explicitly political; Mr. Bove had argued that the investigation would prevent Mr. Adams from fully cooperating with Mr. Trump’s immigration crackdown. Mr. Bove made a point of saying that Washington officials had not evaluated the strength of the evidence or the legal theory behind the case. Mr. Bove accepted Ms. Sassoon’s resignation in his own eight-page letter on Thursday, in which he blasted her handling of the case and decision to disobey his order. He told her the prosecutors who had worked on the case against Mr. Adams were being placed on administrative leave because they, too, were unwilling to obey his order. He said they would be investigated by the attorney general and the Justice Department’s internal investigative arm. He also told Ms. Sassoon both bodies would evaluate her conduct. The Trump administration last month named Ms. Sassoon, a veteran prosecutor, to head the office on an interim basis while Mr. Trump’s choice for the job, Jay Clayton, awaited Senate confirmation. Ms. Sassoon joined the Southern District in 2016. A graduate of Harvard College and Yale Law School, she clerked for Justice Antonin Scalia on the Supreme Court and is a member of the Federalist Society, the conservative legal group.

Article Source: NYT

3. Apartment Rents Set to Rise as Construction Boom Ends

The era of falling apartment rents looks to be nearly over.  A spike in rents during the early years of the pandemic sparked a historic apartment construction boom in 2023 and 2024. That crush of new inventory, especially in hot Sunbelt markets like Austin and Phoenix, led to oversupply and caused rents to fall in much of the country. But more people now are renting longer, as mortgage rates stay high and the costs of homeownership remain unaffordable for many Americans. Landlords say that the new construction pipeline should be mostly drained by year-end, setting the stage for rents to rise nationwide later this year.

Article Source: WSJ

4. Trump Unveils 'Reciprocal Tariff' Trade Plan

Donald Trump has unveiled an overhaul of the US’s trading relationship with many of its partners and allies, launching what he dubs a “fair and reciprocal plan” for trade. The president on Thursday signed a memo ordering his top advisers to come up with a “comprehensive” approach to tackle the US trade deficit, chiefly by raising tariffs to retaliate against taxes, levies, regulations and subsidies that Washington considers unfair. The move is the latest trade salvo by Trump in his first month in office, and follows threats to unleash tariffs on the US’s North American trading partners, as well as new levies on metals imports. In June 2023, Trump pledged that if he won the election he would pass a law through Congress allowing him to match US import tariffs to those imposed on US goods by other countries. His campaign billed it as “an eye for an eye, a tariff for a tariff, same exact amount”. The approach taken has been broader. Officials said they would impose the levies on a “country by country” basis, retaliating against non-tariff barriers, too. They singled out the EU’s value added tax as an example of an unfair trade practice, along with the digital services taxes that have been explored or implemented by many European countries.

Article Source: FT

5. Battle for Eurasia Update: US Warns Europe to Boost Defense Spending as Russian Military Spending Surpasses All Europe Combined; US Admiral Warns of China-Taiwan Conflict Risk

Editors note: This ongoing conflict pits the West, led by the United States, against an axis of adversaries, including China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea. At stake is dominance over the vast and strategically critical landmass of Eurasia. The conflicts in Ukraine, the Middle East, and rising tensions with China in East Asia are all interconnected, forming part of a larger struggle: the Battle for Eurasia. To dive deeper into my framework for understanding the Battle for Eurasia, see my article.

A. US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth said Europe must invest in its defence now because American presence will not last “for ever”. Washington recognises the importance of US troops in Europe as a deterrent and as part of alliance unity, but the future depends on American needs and Europe’s ability to “step up”, he said. “Now is the time to invest because you can’t make an assumption that America’s presence will last for ever,” Hegseth said during a press conference in Warsaw after a meeting with its defence minister.

B. Emmanuel Macron has described Donald Trump’s return as an “electroshock” that should force Europe to secure its own future as well as Ukraine’s. In an interview at the Élysée Palace shortly after Trump agreed with Vladimir Putin of Russia to hold imminent peace talks, the French president championed the need for Europe to “muscle up” on defence and the economy.

C. Military spending in Russia, whose economy President Vladimir Putin has put on a war footing, now outstrips all of Europe’s defence budgets combined, according to a study. Total Russian defence spending soared last year by 42 per cent in real terms to Rbs13.1tn. That is equivalent to $462bn on the basis of purchasing power parity, which adjusts for what currencies can buy in their home countries. European defence budgets by comparison, including the UK and EU member states, rose almost 12 per cent last year to $457bn — slightly less than Moscow’s spending, the International Institute for Strategic Studies think-tank said on Wednesday.

D. China’s military exercises around Taiwan have become so extensive that they could soon be used as a “fig leaf” to conceal an attack on the island, according to the top US military commander in the Indo-Pacific. Speaking at the Honolulu Defense Forum, US Navy Admiral Samuel Paparo also warned about rising co-operation between China, Russia and North Korea, describing it as an “emerging axis of autocracy”. “China, Russia and North Korea have formed a triangle of troublemakers,” Paparo told the event sponsored by the Pacific Forum think-tank.

Article Source: FT

February 14, 270: St. Valentine beheaded

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Sources

2. https://www.wsj.com/tech/apple-and-google-restore-tiktok-to-mobile-app-stores-881ab6a7?mod=hp_lead_pos5

3. https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/13/nyregion/danielle-sassoon-quit-eric-adams.html

4. https://www.wsj.com/real-estate/rent-price-increase-landlord-friendly-market-8ec25de5?mod=hp_lead_pos8

5. https://www.ft.com/content/f0aa939f-b179-44e4-8420-68aca684ac63

6. A https://www.ft.com/content/3af08b74-9432-4183-8e95-a1dc7dd16bbb
B https://www.ft.com/content/1ee43b51-9d3a-47d2-adf6-3315c38e1c38
C https://www.ft.com/content/93d44b5a-a087-4059-9891-f18c77efca4b
D https://www.ft.com/content/3a31c037-f74c-4e33-9720-0fdc32f5133b