January 21 2025

1. Trump Returns to White House, Vows 'Golden Age' in Inaugural Address
2. Trump Plans 25% Tariffs on Mexico, Canada by February; Holds Off on China Tariffs, Orders Global Trade Review
3. Trump Reverses Biden's AI Executive Order on First Day
4. OpenAI's o3 Model Signals Shift in Software Economics
5. Great Power Competition Marks 'New Age of Conquest'
6. Ohio State Claims National Title with 34-23 Win Over Notre Dame
January 21, 1976: First flight of Concorde

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1. Trump Returns to White House, Vows 'Golden Age' in Inaugural Address

Donald John Trump completed an extraordinary return to power on Monday as he was sworn in as the 47th president of the United States and opened an immediate blitz of actions to begin drastically changing the course of the country and usher in a new “golden age of America.” In a triumph of the man and his movement, Mr. Trump took the oath of office during a ceremony in the Capitol four years after he was evicted by voters, reinvigorated for another term aimed at remaking America in his vision. He wasted no time outlining an ambitious program of often divisive policies to “reclaim our Republic” and purge its enemies and his own. “My recent election is a mandate to completely and totally reverse a horrible betrayal and all of these many betrayals that have taken place, and to give the people back their faith, their wealth, their democracy and indeed, their freedom,” Mr. Trump said during a 29-minute Inaugural Address as former President Joseph R. Biden Jr. and former Vice President Kamala Harris looked on. “From this moment on, America’s decline is over.” Feeling vindicated by voters after impeachments, indictments and conviction on 34 felony counts, Mr. Trump claimed a personal mandate as well as a political one. “Many people thought it was impossible for me to stage such a historic political comeback,” he said. “But as you see today, here I am. The American people have spoken.” Indeed, he saw divine intervention in his restoration to the White House, citing his close call during an assassination attempt this summer when a bullet nicked his ear. “I felt then, and believe even more so now, that my life was saved for a reason,” he said. “I was saved by God to make America great again.”

Article Source: NYT

2. Trump Plans 25% Tariffs on Mexico, Canada by February; Holds Off on China Tariffs, Orders Global Trade Review

A. President Donald Trump signaled plans to impose previously threatened tariffs of as much as 25% on Mexico and Canada by Feb. 1, reiterating his contention that America’s closest neighbors and largest trading partners are letting undocumented migrants and drugs flood into the US. “We’re thinking in terms of 25% on Mexico and Canada, because they’re allowing vast numbers of people” across the border, Trump said in response to questions from reporters in the Oval Office on Monday night. “I think we’ll do it Feb. 1.”  

B. President Donald Trump held off unveiling China-specific tariffs on his first day in office, instead ordering his administration to address unfair trade practices globally and investigate whether Beijing had complied with a deal signed during his first term. The moves — detailed in a fact sheet that is not yet public — are aimed at “reversing the destructive impact of globalist, America last trade policy,” according to a copy seen by Bloomberg News. The fact sheet also called for key federal agencies to address currency manipulation by other countries. The decision not to immediately target Beijing on Monday reflects a shift by the incoming president into a negotiating mode and an eagerness to cut another deal with Chinese President Xi Jinping, according to a person familiar with the decision who asked not to be identified discussing private deliberations.

Article Source: Bloomberg

3. Trump Reverses Biden's AI Executive Order on First Day

President Donald Trump rescinded the Biden administration’s sweeping executive order regulating artificial intelligence, marking a significant shift in federal oversight for the rapidly advancing technology. The move, announced on Monday, immediately halts the implementation of key safety and transparency requirements for AI developers. Biden’s mandate, which was signed in 2023, had required leading artificial intelligence companies to share safety test results and other critical information for powerful AI systems with the federal government. It also prompted the creation of the US AI Safety Institute, housed under the Commerce Department, to create voluntary guidelines and best practices for the technology’s use. Trump didn’t immediately say exactly what would replace the order, but the administration is likely to take a more hands-off approach. Before returning to the White House, Trump had criticized Biden’s AI regulations as heavy-handed and hindering tech innovation. Trump also appointed David Sacks, a venture capitalist and longtime critic of tech regulation, as his crypto-AI czar.

Article Source: Bloomberg

4. OpenAI's o3 Model Signals Shift in Software Economics

When openai announced a new generative artificial-intelligence (ai) model, called o3, a few days before Christmas, it aroused both excitement and scepticism. Excitement from those who expected its reasoning capabilities to be a big step towards superhuman intelligence (some reckoned it would be a bigger deal than Openai’s launch of Chatgpt in 2022). Scepticism because Openai did not release it to the public and had every incentive to overplay the firm’s pioneering role in ai to curry favour with Donald Trump, the incoming president. Yet since then one point of consensus has emerged. The model, as well as its predecessor, o1 (o2 was skipped because that is the name of a European mobile network), produces better results the more “thinking” it does in response to a prompt. More thinking means more computing power—and a higher cost per query. As a result a big change is afoot in the economics of the digital economy, which was built on providing cheap services to large numbers of people at low marginal cost, thanks to free distribution on the internet. Every time models become more expensive to query, the zero-marginal cost era is left further behind.

Article Source: Economist

5. Great Power Competition Marks 'New Age of Conquest'

In 1945, the victorious Allied powers gathered in San Francisco to draft a charter for the United Nations, the foundation of a new global order that would make another world war impossible. The charter proclaimed that all countries had equal rights and would no longer resort to “the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state.” President Harry Truman told the assembled delegates that “the responsibility of the great states is to serve, and not to dominate, the peoples of the world.” Today, these lofty principles look quaint, if not outright irrelevant, as the world returns to what was presumed to be the natural law of statecraft since the dawn of history: The strong do as they please and the weak suffer as they must. Russia, one of five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council, is three years into a war of conquest in Ukraine, annexing parts of the country and seeking to eliminate the independence of the remainder. Russian leaders openly talk about their designs on other neighboring states, including members of the European Union and NATO. China, another permanent member of the Security Council, supports the Russian war machine and is preparing for a war to take over Taiwan, while bullying the Philippines and other countries with its claims on the South China Sea. And in the U.S., President-elect Donald Trump has begun to indulge in imperialist rhetoric of his own, repeatedly threatening to absorb Canada, Greenland and the Panama Canal zone. Smaller countries are following the great powers’ lead. Turkey and Israel are expanding their military presence in Syria following the collapse of the Assad regime. Azerbaijan is threatening to wipe out Armenia, which it claims was established on historic Azeri lands. “We’re entering a new age of conquest”

Article Source: WSJ

6. Ohio State Claims National Title with 34-23 Win Over Notre Dame

Maybe Ohio State football fans will like coach Ryan Day now. Fifty-one days after suffering the worst loss of his career, Day guided the No. 8-seeded Buckeyes to their first national championship in 10 years with a 34-23 victory over seventh-seeded Notre Dame in the College Football Playoff National Championship game presented by AT&T on Monday night.

Article Source: ESPN

January 21, 1976: First flight of Concorde

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Sources

1. https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/20/us/politics/trump-inauguration.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare

2. A https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-01-21/trump-plans-to-enact-25-tariffs-on-mexico-canada-by-feb-1
B https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-01-20/trump-seen-sparing-china-targeted-tariffs-on-day-one-of-new-term

3. https://news.bloomberglaw.com/artificial-intelligence/trump-scraps-bidens-sweeping-ai-order-in-regulatory-reset

4. https://www.economist.com/business/2025/01/20/openais-latest-model-will-change-the-economics-of-software

5. https://www.wsj.com/world/in-a-new-age-of-empire-great-powers-aim-to-carve-up-the-planet-fef072f7?st=k72Yt5&reflink=article_copyURL_share

6. https://www.espn.com/college-football/story/_/id/43499656/ohio-state-puts-away-notre-dame-claim-cfp-championship