The Dictatorship
As Trump talks tariffs, his Argentine ally welcomes a shipload of Chinese EVs
ZÁRATE, Argentina (AP) — The vast field of over 5,800 electric and hybrid vehicles gleamed on the cargo deck of the BYD Changzhou, an Chinese container vessel unloading Wednesday at a river port in eastern Argentina.
In other places, such a scene would not be noteworthy. Chinese automaker BYD has sped up its exports and undercut rivals the world over, alarming Washington, upsetting Western and Japanese auto giants and unnerving local industries across Southeast Asia, Africa and Latin America.
But the sight of so many new Chinese EVs gliding onto a muddy river bank in Buenos Aires province was unprecedented for Argentina, its crisis-stricken economy dominated for years by a left-wing populist movement that protected local industry with stiff tariffs and import restrictions.
“For decades people in Argentina had this vision that everything here must be manufactured here,” said Claudio Damiano, a professor in the Institute of Transportation at Argentina’s National University of San Martin. “The boat has a symbolic value as the first step for BYD. Everyone’s wondering how far it will go.”
The shipment also came in stark contrast to the news in Brussels, where on Wednesday European Union lawmakers voted to delay ratification of a landmark free trade deal with the Mercosur group of South American countries, including Argentina, which promises to tear down trade barriers for European industrial imports and supercharge consumption of German EVs.
“For the Europeans, there’s just no possibility of competing with the Chinese,” Damiano said.
The ship shocks a long-closed economy
Argentina became one of the region’s most closed economies under Kirchnerism — the movement formed by ex-President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner and her late husband, former President Néstor Kirchner, which championed the rights of the downtrodden, defaulted on sovereign debt and disdained global trade as a destructive force.
A chronically depreciating peso and sky-high taxes constrained consumer choice, compelling well-heeled Argentines to smuggle iPhones and Zara hauls into the country when returning from vacations abroad.
Fed up with cycles of economic crisis, Argentines vaulted radical libertarian President Javier Milei to power in 2023. He railed against Kirchnerism, vowed to destroy the state and praised U.S. President Donald Trump as an ideological soulmate.
Argentina transforms with an influx of imports
For the last two yearsMilei has has done the exact opposite of his most powerful ally in Washington.
While Trump has waged trade warsMilei has flung open Argentina’s doors to imports, slashed trade barriersunwound customs red tape and shored up the local currency to make foreign goods more affordable.
Last year Argentina logged a record 30% increase in imports compared to the year before — much of it in the form of $3 milk frothers and $10 dresses piling up on Argentines’ doorsteps from Asian online retailers such as Temu and Shein.
Now Chinese automakers — once choked by 35% levies on imports — are seizing on a new measure to allow 50,000 electric and hybrid cars into the country this year tariff-free. The first shipment arrived Monday at Zárate Port after a 23-day voyage from Singapore.
Telling business and political leaders Wednesday at the World Economic Forum in Davos that that his drastic deregulation measures “allow us to have a more dynamically efficient economy,” Milei declared: “This is MAGA, ‘Make Argentina Great Again.
Trump and Milei bond despite differences
Milei and Trump share a contempt for perceived “wokeness,” a resentment of multilateral institutions like the United Nationsa denial of climate change and a zeal for massive budget cuts.
The ideological bond has paid dividends for Milei: Argentina is a rare place in the region where Trump has wielded the might of the U.S. to help an ally rather than enforce demands with military threats, as he has in Colombia and Mexico. Last year he offered Milei a $20 billion credit swap to boost his friend’s chances in a crucial midterm election.
Yet at Davos, the leaders’ differences were on display. Milei delivered his anti-interventionist, libertarian interpretation of MAGA shortly after Trump laid out his own vision for making America great: demanding control of Greenland and threatening allies with tariffs and other consequences if they don’t fall in line.
For all of Trump’s support, China has perhaps benefited most from Milei’s free-market drive.
Chinese imports to Argentina surged over 57% last year compared to the year before. Chinese investment poured into Argentina’s energy and mining sectors.
“Argentina has rejoined the world,” government spokesperson Javier Lanari said of Monday’s Chinese car shipment. “Very soon, the Cuban-made vehicles left to us by Kirchnerism will be part of a sad and dark past.”
China ‘won the race’ in Argentina
BYD and similar Chinese cars have already taken the streets of Latin America by storm, drawing controversy and backlash from Mexico City to Rio de Janeiro.
Now the brands are best positioned to reap the rewards of Milei’s zero-tariff quota for EVs, which applies only to cars under $16,000, experts say.
“Chinese manufacturers have the technology and the ability to meet the price limits set by the government,” said Andrés Civetta, an economist specializing in the auto sector at the Argentine consulting firm Abeceb. “China has won the race.”
Western car manufacturers in Argentina have raised alarms about unfair competition, and opposition lawmakers have criticized officials on the Chinese EV tariff exemption, with the comptroller general posting on social media, “Trump is right: China must be stopped.”
But Argentina is still far behind its neighbors in developing its EV industry, said Pablo Naya, the creator of Sero Electric, Argentina’s only domestic electric car manufacturer.
The country’s aging power grid is nowhere near ready for a wave of electric cars to strain it en masse, he said. And if something goes wrong with a Chinese EV on the road, there are currently no dealers’ service centers able to undertake internal repairs.
“Honestly, we’re not worried,” Naya said.
But if or when Argentine infrastructure and consumer aspirations catch up to Chinese supply, it will be a different story.
“Then that would get complicated for us,” he said from the Sero Electric factory in the Buenos Aires suburb of Castelar. “We’d have a problem.”
ByDavid Rohde
Secretary of State Marco Rubio says there is “no reason” to doubt a new report by five European nations that Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny was killed in a Russian government prison with poison found in Latin American dart frogs.
A fatal toxin not found naturally in Russia — epibatidine — was “conclusively” discovered in samples of Navalny’s body by a joint investigation conducted by Germany, France, Britain, the Netherlands and Sweden, according to a joint statement by the nations on Saturday.
The toxin is only known to exist in poison dart frogs in Central and South America. One species, the phantasmal poison frog, contains a chemical that is 200 times more potent than morphine.
“It’s a troubling report,” Rubio told reporters at a news conference during a visit to Slovakia on Sunday. “We don’t have any reason to question it.”
It was not clear why the United States did not participate in the investigation of Navalny’s death. But the finding comes amid rising support in the Senate for a bill that would impose sweeping new sanctions against the government of Vladimir Putin, which has been opposed by the Trump administration.
Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, D-N.H., the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, noted on the closing day of the Munich Security Conference, where Rubio received a standing ovationthat 84 out of 100 senators have signed on to co-sponsor the bill authored by Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C.
“I don’t understand the reluctance to go after Vladimir Putin and what Russia is doing in Ukraine,” Shaheen told a group of reporters. “The failure by the United States to act has extended this war.”
Russian officials have repeatedly denied playing any role in the death of Navalny two years ago in a government-run penal colony in the Arctic. They called the new European report “a Western propaganda hoax,” according to Russia’s state news agency.
The report comes as U.S. envoy Steve Witkoff and Jared Kusher, President Donald Trump’s son-in-law, are expected to meet with both Russian and Iranian officials on Tuesday in Geneva. The goal of the Russia talks is to reach a peace settlement in Ukraine by a June deadline the administration has set. (Witkoff and Kushner are also set to join a second round of nuclear talks with Iranian officials in Geneva on the same day.)
Critics of Trump, who promised to end the war days after returning to office, say Russia has not been seriously negotiating and is simply playing for time so it can gain ground on the battlefield. Democrats have also expressed concerns over reports that Witkoff has been negotiating business deals during peace talks with Kirill Dmitriev, a former Wall Street banker who runs Russia’s sovereign wealth fund.
Last week, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said that Dmitriev pitched $12 trillion in bilateral economic agreements with the U.S. It is unclear how such large deals could be achieved. The $12 trillion figure is about four times the size of Russia’s 2025 gross domestic product.
A European diplomat whose country has negotiated with Russia in the past told MS NOW that Moscow has repeatedly made such investment offers. But the business entities end up being largely Russian controlled. “They lure you in,” said the diplomat, who was granted anonymity to speak candidly.
Shaheen expressed skepticism as well.
“I’m concerned about all things Russian in this administration,” Shaheen said. “I’m not a conspiracy theorist. But I’m beginning to become one with respect to Putin and President Trump.”
David Rohde
David Rohde is the senior national security reporter for MS NOW. Previously he was the senior executive editor for national security and law for NBC News.
A glove with DNA found near 84-year-old missing Nancy Guthrie’s home appears to match those worn by a masked person caught on surveillance footage, the FBI said Sunday.
“The FBI received preliminary results yesterday on 2/14 and are awaiting further testing,” the bureau said in a statement. “This process typically takes 24 hours from when the FBI receives DNA.”
The FBI said investigators collected “approximately 16 gloves in various areas near” Guthrie’s house in Tucson, Arizonawhere she was last seen on Jan. 31. Most of those gloves were “searchers’s gloves that they discarded in various areas when they searched the vicinity” but the glove with the “DNA profile recovered is different and appears to match the gloves of the subject in the surveillance video,” the FBI said.
“What we have is a lead here. The glove retrieved would need to have the victim’s DNA or some other forensic material to tie it to the home,” a law-enforcement source familiar with the investigation cautioned. “It must be connected to the home and victim. That would make the glove actual evidence, at this point it’s a lead. A good lead.”
The FBI said said the glove was found in a field approximately two miles from Guthrie’s house. The glove resembles the one on the hand of a person who was captured on porch camera video footage at the home of NBC “Today Show” host Savannah Guthrie’s mother the night she went missing.
The agency said it is awaiting quality control and official confirmation before putting the individual’s profile into the bureau’s national database, which could take up to 24 hours.
The FBI has described the man captured in photographs and on video as approximately 5’9”-5’10” with an average build. In addition to gloves, he was also seen wearing a ski mask and a black, 25-liter “Ozark Trail Hiker Pack” backpack. The agency on Thursday increased its reward for any information leading to an arrest and conviction of anyone involved in Guthrie’s disappearance to $100,000.
Guthrie was reported missing by her family on Feb. 1. Sheriff’s deputies also found blood on the front porch that was later confirmed to belong to the network host’s mother. Guthrie’s children, including Savannah, have posted several videos pleading for their mother’s release, agreeing to pay any ransom demanded and asking for help from the public.
Alex Tabet, Marc Santia and Ken Dilanian contributed to this report.
Erum Salam is a breaking news reporter and producer for MS NOW. She previously was a breaking news reporter for The Guardian.
Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., co-author of the Epstein Files Transparency Acton Sunday slammed what he called Donald Trump’s “Epstein administration” for not fulfilling its legal obligation to release all government documents related to the late convicted sex offender.
Massie cited a Justice Department letter sent to Congress on Saturday defending its redactions made to the newly released final batch of Epstein documents. Appearing on ABC’s “This Week” show, the GOP congressman noted the DOJ letter, signed by Attorney General Pam Bondi and Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, cited “deliberative-process privilege” as a reason for withholding certain records.
“The privileges that applied to the withheld records were deliberative-process privilege, work-product privilege, and attorney-client privilege.,” the Feb. 14 DOJ letter said. The letter listed the names of more than 300 people, many of whom had no direct dealings with Epstein and have long been dead, including Marilyn Monroe, Elvis Presley and Ronald Reagan.
Other names include President Donald Trump, former Presidents Barack Obama and Bill Clinton, Treasury Secretary Howard Lutnick — who was grilled before Congress last week over his association with Epstein — Jeff Bezos and Peter Thiel. None of the people listed have been accused of criminal wrongdoing with regard to Epstein’s actions.
Rep. Ro Khanna, the California Democrat who co-authored the Epstein bill, also criticized the DOJ letter regarding its redactions.
“The DOJ is once again purposefully muddying the waters on who was a predator and who was mentioned in an email,” Khanna said on X. “To have Janis Joplin, who died when Epstein was 17, in the same list as Larry Nassar, who went to prison for the sexual abuse of hundreds of young women and child pornography, with no clarification of how either was mentioned in the files is absurd.” (The Justice Department announced in December that a letter released in a tranche of Epstein files purportedly from Epstein to Nassar, the convicted Olympic gymnastics coach, was a fake.)
Massie objected to the DOJ’s claim of privilege in withholding certain Epstein documents because, he said, the Justice Department “must release internal memos and notes and emails” related to investigative and prosecutorial decisions regarding the Epstein matter.
“It’s important they follow that because then we could find out why they didn’t prosecute Leslie Wexner,” he told ABC’s Martha Raddatz. A legal representative for Wexner said in a statement that the assistant U.S. Attorney in charge of the Epstein investigation “stated at the time that Mr. Wexner was neither a co-conspirator nor target in any respect” and that “Mr. Wexner cooperated fully by providing background information on Epstein and was never contacted again.”
Massie accused the Justice Department of taking down documents before members of Congress were able to review them in their unredacted forms. “We want to be able to look at all these files,” he said. Lawmakers have also been subject to apparent surveillance while reviewing Epstein documents in a private room at the Justice Department.
Rep. Robert Garcia, D-Calif., ranking member of the House Oversight Committee, echoed calls for answers about who was involved in the trafficking of girls and women besides convicted Epstein co-conspirator Ghislaine Maxwell.
“We have questions for President Trump, and I think the broader issue here is why wasn’t this investigated when these accusations and these stories actually were heard by the FBI years ago?” Garcia said in a Sunday interview with CBS’s “Face the Nation” show. “Where was the investigation? Where was the DOJ? And this, by the way, is an issue not just in Republican administrations, but also ones led by Democrats. We have to get answers.”
The Justice Department, in its letter to the Republican chairmen and ranking Democrats of House and Senate Judiciary Committees, said no records were withheld or redacted “on the basis of embarrassment, reputational harm, or political sensitivity, including to any government official, public figure, or foreign dignitary.”
Several of those listed have faced backlashincluding ex-prince Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, who was stripped of his royal titlesevicted from Windsor Castle and faces a potential investigation in the U.K.
The DOJ said the lengthy list of high-profile names included in its letter includes “all government officials and politically exposed persons.” But the letter does not differentiate between people mentioned in news stories who likely had little or no connection to Epstein and those who were shown to have communicated with Epstein, Maxwell and other associates.
Massie, who is facing a primary opponent endorsed by Trump, said the president is “still with the Epstein class. This is the Epstein administration and they’re attacking me for trying to get these files released.”
Erum Salam is a breaking news reporter and producer for MS NOW. She previously was a breaking news reporter for The Guardian.
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