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“Our relationship with Israel is close and one of the best we have in the region, but only with Israel in its 1967 lines unless there is a peace agreement,” said a senior European Union official who spoke on the condition of anonymity in keeping with diplomatic protocol. “We are clear, however, that what came under Israeli control in 1967 is not a part of Israel, so the settlements are illegal under international law and not helpful in the peace process.”

The European Union has gone considerably further than the United States, declaring that Israeli settlements over the Green Line are “illegal” under international law; the United States simply calls them “illegitimate” and “obstacles to peace.”

Some countries, like Britain, have gone further. Britain issued voluntary labeling guidelines in December 2009 “to enable consumers to make a more fully informed decision concerning the products they buy,” according to the UK Trade and Investment agency, because “we understand the concerns of people who do not wish to purchase goods exported from Israeli settlements in the Occupied Palestinian Territories.

More troubling to Israel, in December the agency warned companies and citizens to be “aware of the potential reputational implications” of investments in settlement areas. “We do not encourage or offer support to such activities,” it said.

The fall of the Berlin Wall and the disintegration and collapse of the Soviet Union were not only mammoth earthquakes politically, but also provided the imperialists, capitalists and their toady journalists, politicians and intelligentsia ammunition to launch a ferocious ideological crusade against socialism, communism and Marxism across the planet.

The Russian masses have suffered enormously. However, the propaganda of the western media against Putin of human rights violations and suppression of the right to expression is as hypocritical as it is biased. The incumbent ruling elite in Russia, or the ‘oligarchy’, is in constant fights over the plunder of the country’s resources.

he painful experience of despotism and the excruciating blows of free market economics in the aftermath of the breakup of the Soviet Union has been a retrogressive process, pushing the consciousness of the workers and the youth backwards.

All of the pathologies evident in the 1930s, which weighed so heavily on the minds of the EU’s architects, are resurgent—the high unemployment, the economic extremes, the perverse austerity policies, the popular backlash against ineffectual parliamentary politics, and the resulting ultra-nationalism.

For the right, the remedy was a return to a more laissez-faire model, even though there was little evidence that Europe’s social market had anything to do with the economic slowdown

For the first four postwar decades, democratically mobilized citizens in strong nation-states anchored the social part of Europe while the European Economic Community, predecessor of the EU, promoted the market part

WHEN JACQUES DELORS, a moderate French socialist, launched a full-blown European Union in the 1980s, the hope was to expand social Europe and market Europe in tandem. But in the actual Maastricht Treaty of 1992—Europe’s de facto constitution—free movement of goods, services, capital, and people are fundamental rights, and social protections are add-ons

IF EUROPE NEEDED ONE more assault to further undermine the model, it came via the refugee crisis. The crisis laid bare two awful fragilities. The first is the dysfunction of the EU as a confederation with multiple veto points and little capacity for leadership in a crisis

Politically, the collision of a lingering and needless economic crisis with a random refugee crisis has energized nationalism, both moderate and neo-fascist. In Norway, Sweden, Denmark, the Netherlands, France, Finland, Austria, and elsewhere, the second- or third-strongest party is far-right populist. Much of this support is working-class, at the expense of social democrats.

he refugee crisis also makes clear that much of Europe’s social compact assumes a common national identity, to which foreigners do not easily fit in.

Europe might be able to accept a million refugees economically, but it cannot do so politically. The refugee crisis is simply an overlay on a deeper crisis of solidarity and common purpose. Unless there is a renewal of popular energy and a burst of progressive leadership, the three-decade era of broadly shared prosperity—les trente glorieuses, as the French call it—will be remembered as a historical blip. The EU aspired to combine that impossible trinity of the French Revolution: liberty, equality, and fraternity. All three are now on the defensive.

the people who most rely on the safety-net programs secured by Democrats are, by and large, not voting against their own interests by electing Republicans. Rather, they are not voting, period. They have, as voting data, surveys and my own reporting suggest, become profoundly disconnected from the political process.

The people in these communities who are voting Republican in larger proportions are those who are a notch or two up the economic ladder — the sheriff’s deputy, the teacher, the highway worker, the motel clerk, the gas station owner and the coal miner. And their growing allegiance to the Republicans is, in part, a reaction against what they perceive, among those below them on the economic ladder, as a growing dependency on the safety net, the most visible manifestation of downward mobility in their declining towns.

After having her first child as a teenager, marrying young and divorcing, Ms. Dougherty had faced bleak prospects. But she had gotten safety-net support — most crucially, taxpayer-funded tuition breaks to attend community college, where she’d earned her nursing degree.

She landed a steady job at a nearby dialysis center and remarried. But this didn’t make her a lasting supporter of safety-net programs like those that helped her. Instead, Ms. Dougherty had become a staunch opponent of them. She was reacting, she said, against the sense of entitlement she saw on display at the dialysis center

“People waltz in when they want to,” she said, explaining that, in her opinion, there was too little asked of patients. There was nothing that said “‘You’re getting a great benefit here, why not put in a little bit yourself.’ ” At least when she got her tuition help, she said, she had to keep up her grades. “When you’re getting assistance, there should be hoops to jump through so that you’re paying a price for your behavior,” she said. “What’s wrong with that?”

these voters are consciously opting against a Democratic economic agenda that they see as bad for them and good for other people — specifically, those undeserving benefit-recipients who live nearby.

Where opposition to the social safety net has long been fed by the specter of undeserving inner-city African-Americans — think of Ronald Reagan’s notorious “welfare queen” — in places like Pike County it’s fueled, more and more, by people’s resentment over rising dependency they see among their own neighbors, even their own families.

This political disconnect among lower-income Americans has huge ramifications — polls find nonvoters are far more likely to favor spending on the poor and on government services than are voters, and the gap grows even larger among poor nonvoters

THAT pattern is right in line with surveys, which show a decades-long decline in support for redistributive policies and an increase in conservatism in the electorate even as inequality worsens. There has been a particularly sharp drop in support for redistribution among older Americans,

researchers such as Kathryn Edin, of Johns Hopkins University, found a tendency by many Americans in the second lowest quintile of the income ladder — the working or lower-middle class — to dissociate themselves from those at the bottom, where many once resided. “There’s this virulent social distancing — suddenly, you’re a worker and anyone who is not a worker is a bad person,” said Professor Edin. “They’re playing to the middle fifth and saying, ‘I’m not those people.’ ”

Meanwhile, many people who in fact most use and need social benefits are simply not voting at all. Voter participation is low among the poorest Americans, and in many parts of the country that have moved red, the rates have fallen off the charts. West Virginia ranked 50th for turnout in 2012; also in the bottom 10 were other states that have shifted sharply red in recent years, including Kentucky, Arkansas and Tennessee.

The political upshot is plain, Mr. Cauley added. “It’s not the people on the draw that’s voting against” the Democrats, he said. “It’s everyone else.”

low turnout by poor Kentuckians explained why the state’s Obamacare gains wouldn’t help Democrats. “I remember being in the room when Jennings was asked whether or not Republicans were afraid of the electoral consequences of displacing 400,000-500,000 people who have insurance,” State Auditor Adam Edelen, a Democrat who lost his re-election bid this year, told Joe Sonka, a Louisville journalist. “And he simply said, ‘People on Medicaid don’t vote.’

Republicans, of course, would argue that the shift in their direction among voters slightly higher up the ladder is the natural progression of things — people recognize that government programs are prolonging the economic doldrums and that Republicans have a better economic program.

it means redoubling efforts to mobilize the people who benefit from the programs. This is no easy task with the rural poor, who are much more geographically scattered than their urban counterparts. Not helping matters in this regard is the decline of local institutions like labor unions — while the United Mine Workers of America once drove turnout in coal country, today there is not a single unionized mine still operating in Kentucky.

it also means reckoning with the other half of the dynamic — finding ways to reduce the resentment that those slightly higher on the income ladder feel toward dependency in their midst. One way to do this is to make sure the programs are as tightly administered as possible. Instances of fraud and abuse are far rarer than welfare opponents would have one believe, but it only takes a few glaring instances to create a lasting impression

The best way to reduce resentment, though, would be to bring about true economic growth in the areas where the use of government benefits is on the rise,

who say he is underplaying the threat from radical Islamist groups such as ISIS.

technological advances and economic dislocation has left many Americans fearful of the future and anxious as social structures

urged them not to fall prey to the periodic temptation

Each time, there have been those who told us to fear the future; who claimed we could slam the brakes on change, promising to restore past glory if we just got some group or idea that was threatening America under control,

because we saw opportunity where others saw only peril -- we emerged stronger and better than before

a foreign policy crisis raging in the Middle East after Iran seized 10 U.S. sailors exemplified the struggles in which Obama has had to impose U.S. authority in an increasingly chaotic world that has challenged his core mission of ending costly American wars abroad

defended the legacy-building deal reached to halt Iran's nuclear weapons program.

lawmakers immediately seized on the incident to charge that Obama has emboldened Iran's aggressive behavior

old conservatives who deny climate change to "have at it" because they were defying the world.

It won't deliver the economy we want, or the security we want, but most of all, it contradicts everything that makes us the envy of the world

It doesn't work if we think the people who disagree with us are all motivated by malice, or that our political opponents are unpatriotic,

It's one of the few regrets of my presidency --  that the rancor and suspicion between the parties has gotten worse instead of better.

They do not threaten our national existence.

efended his domestic record, claiming credit for 14 million new jobs and a halving of the unemployment rate. He said those who claimed the economy was in decline are "peddling fiction."

Iran's provocations were the result of having a "weak president"

ainted an unflattering picture of Obama's America and said the nation would soon have a chance to turn the page in remarks which also seemed to be a repudiation of Trump

this president appears either unwilling or unable to deal with it."

No one who is willing to work hard, abide by our laws, and love our traditions should ever feel unwelcome in this country.

“Look at these things. Crazy,” Obama said to the infant. He then dispensed a bit of advice:

he venue — which opened in October, and was festooned with LED banner lights saying “Welcome to Obama”

”It’s still got that new arena smell,” the president joked, prompting applause from the enthusiastic crowd when he recalled that he won one electoral vote in Nebraska during his first White House bid.

it was not pretty. It was not pretty. But I love Nebraska anyway.”

Nebraska boasts a political culture of “civility,” Obama said, “and people treating each other with respect.”

Not Democrat first, not Republicans first, but Americans first. That’s our priority. And, and that’s harder to do during political season. I understand that.”

Alluding to the coming presidential primary contest “across the river” in Iowa, Obama said the ads were filled with “some doom and some gloom.”

That’s not what I see in communities and neighborhoods all across this country.”

where he will hold a town hall Thursday to highlight the newly elected Democratic governor’s plan to expand Medicaid coverage there under the Affordable Care Act.

Just after arriving at Joint Base Andrews, the president went into the lounge for a five-minute meeting with Jordan’s King Abdullah, who has been visiting Washington this week.

During his speech, Kerry said the debate over refugees on the campaign trail was “pretty nasty politics,” adding: “People make statements designed to scare people with no basis in the facts.”

On Wednesday, Attorney General Loretta E. Lynch planned to meet in Boston with current and former inmates to discuss

“That is who we are. That is what we do. That is how we wrote our history.”

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) announced Wednesday that the Senate would take up legislation next week to suspend the federal resettlement program for Syrians and Iraqis seeking asylum.

along with any asylum seeker who has visited either Syria or Iraq in the past five years

which has already passed the House. But the fact that the Senate will vote on the proposal

The main thrust of Obama’s State of the Union address on Tuesday night focused on fixing the nation’s broken politics.

institutions of this government and democracy” are functioning, something that has not happened amid all the partisan rancor of the last few years.

e also said that Obama will turn to more intimate settings such as the one scheduled in Omaha on Wednesday.

Pete Ricketts, to accept an invitation to be part of the welcoming party for Obama at the airport, saying he did not have time. After a public flap, Ricketts said he had found time to meet Obama at the airport.

“This democracy is hard work, and we want to make sure it is the American people who were driving that change,

The president believed that it was important that there be an alternative argumentation to rebut the prevailing wisdom in some of the public debate right now,”

Penny Pritzker will head to Denver on Friday to discuss the effect of climate change on the nation’s economic growth.

pisode of the television series “The West Wing” that celebrated the long-forgotten event. Roughly 50 administration officials

Away from the national level, the commitment of conservative donors to support a power shift in state government illustrates the determination of the right to eliminate regulatory and legal constraints on markets where their money has proven most productive.

Attempts to control the White House have become far more risky with the rise of a strong Democratic presidential coalition. In 2012, conservative groups put $700 million in a bid to win the presidency, two and a half times as much as liberal groups, but Obama still won decisively.

The willingness of conservatives to weather difficulty and to endure prolonged delay has been demonstrated repeatedly over the past decades.

the result for conservatives is thatyour volunteers and paid activists come out of a values-based institution, which is essentially not a political institution. People are there because of their values. If you come to politics from a club or church or veterans hall, it reinforces the stickiness of your work, your willingness to keep at it even if you are tired.

When the State Policy Network was founded in 1986, it had 12 affiliated state-based groups and a goal of creating an “interstate freedom network” to spread “the growth of freedom across America until a permanent freedom majority is built.” Today, there are one or more affiliated organizations in every state.

An examination of IRS reports from all of these conservative groups shows total spending in just one year, 2013, of $142.2 million, with the Texas Public Policy Foundation’s $8.9 million the largest expenditure.

The complex transactions between the foundations in the Koch Brothers network obscure the dollar amount of their investments in state and local organizations. But the Koch Companies’ June Quarterly Newsletter notes that the Koch brothers “hope to raise $889 million by the end of 2016, about two-thirds of which will help support research and education programs, scholarships and other efforts designed to change policies and promote a culture of freedom in the United States.”

the right can tap into an embeddedstructure of community-based cultural, religious, social organizations — churches, Elks, veterans halls, gun groups, local business organizations, etc. — that are gathering places with offices, meeting halls, phones and computers that can be used by activist troops for logistical and operational support.

In 1973, as the Watergate scandal was closing in on the Nixon administration, conservatives financed the creation of two institutions: the Heritage Foundation to counter the left on national policy, and the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) to foster state-based conservative lobbies, interest groups and foundations.

“progressives don’t have these community based, indigenous resources to educate, organize and mobilize troops anymore.” With the exception of unions, “we have fewer local places to gather and belong.”

In 2004, major liberal donors financed two new national groups created specifically for the 2004 presidential election — Americans Coming Together ($79,795,487) and the Joint Victory Committee ($71,811,666).

Despite the investment, the Democratic nominee, John Kerry, lost. At that point, the liberal donor community came to general agreement that the left needed a secure a permanent infrastructure at the national level to compete with such conservative institutions as the Chamber of Commerce, the American Enterprise Institute, Americans for Tax Reform and Heritage.

A year later, Democracy Alliance established its goal of building a “progressive infrastructure that could help counter the well-funded and sophisticated conservative apparatus in the areas of civic engagement, leadership, media, and ideas.”At a national level, the alliance has played a significant role in the development of such groups as the Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank; Catalist, which builds and maintains voter lists; and Media Matters, which seeks to document and discredit “conservative misinformation throughout the media.”

It has begun to appear that the twenty-first century progressive brain is not as interested in clubs, communities and cultural sharing as the conservative brain is.

How, Stein asked, “could we have lost that? How does a communitarian world view lose its communitarian sense of self?”

the nature of political liberalism has changed.

The liberalism of the 1930s and 1940s was shaped by the Great Depression, and the response was, in many respects, communitarian: the strengthening of unions, the provision of jobs and government benefits to the poor and unemployed and the creation of a safety net to provide a modicum of security.

The left has, in part, shifted focus, with more stress on the values of self-expression and self-fulfillment, on individual liberation from the constraints of traditional morality, especially sexual morality — what my colleague Ross Douthat calls “The Liberalism of Adult Autonomy” or “the morality of rights.” Economic liberalism – despite progress on the minimum wage - has lost salience.

Instead of communitarian principles, the contemporary progressive movement — despite its advocacy of local issues like community policing — has produced a counterpart to conservative advocacy of free markets: the advocacy of personal freedom.

Insofar as liberals continue to leave the state-level organization to conservatives, they are conceding the most productive policy arenas in the country.

As left interests are being cut out of this process, the groundbreaking work is being done on the right. The losses for the Democratic Party and its allies include broken unions, defunded Planned Parenthood, lost wetlands and forests, restrictive abortion regulations and the proliferation of open-carry gun laws.

conservatives have overseen the drawing of legislative and congressional districts that will keep Republicans in power over the next decade. In this way, through the most effective gerrymandering of legislative and congressional districts in the nation’s history, the right has institutionalized a dangerous power vacuum on the left.

"We then saw an al-Shabab fighter in the town. We also saw Kenyan soldiers who were fleeing from the camp."At the moment the camp is in the hands of al-Shabab. We can see military cars burning and dead soldiers all over the place. There are no civilian casualties but most people have fled the town."

Two-thirds of business owners said taxes threaten the viability of their businesses.

The number of regulations published in the Federal Register shot up from around 4,300 in 1993 to more than 90,000 by 2014.

The president even acknowledged the problem during his State of the Union, saying “there’s red tape that needs to be cut.”

The Job Creators Network launched a major new campaign this week called “Bring Small Businesses Back” that seeks to do just that.

Libya is an example of the long reach of Italian imperialism. Libya was for a brief period an incorporated province of Italy, on the model of French Algeria, and Libyan families still feel the devastating effects of the fascist dictatorship's persecution of those who resisted Italian occupation.

Over 100,000 Libyan men, women, and children were deported to concentration camps deep in the desert in the late 1920s and early 1930s, and much of the ruling class was exiled or exe

Until his death in 2011, despite deals with Italy and the European Union to control departures from his borders, Gadhafi intermittently used European fears of mass arrivals of migrants from Libya as a political weapon.

This climate has encouraged those who wish to rehabilitate the "heroes" of fascist imperialism. In 2012, the town of Affile built a publicly-funded memorial to General Rodolfo Graziani, known as "the butcher of Fezzan" for his brutal repression of Libyan resisters in the 1920s -- and for the massacre of Ethiopian civilians he ordered in response to a 1937 attempt on his life.

But her decision to embrace more than a million asylum seekers unsettled that cozy status quo. Outside Germany, the austerity she and her longtime finance minister Wolfgang Schäuble imposed on debtor countries like Italy, Spain, Portugal and, especially, Greece sowed misery and resentment that fester to this day.

Some, like the former Greek finance minister Yanis Varoufakis, compare Ms. Merkel’s austerity politics to the Treaty of Versailles, which imposed punitive economic measures on Germany after World War I, humiliated the country and fanned the flames of populism.“This is now what is feeding the political beasts,”

Her modest and moderate governance style, absent ideology and vanity, is the polar opposite of that of the strongmen now strutting the world stage. Her Germany — that “vulnerable hegemon,” as the intellectual Herfried Münkler calls it — became a beacon of liberalism.

Merkel knows a different form of social and societal equality,” Mr. Gysi said, adding of her former center-left rivals: “That made her so much more open to adopting ideas from the Social Democrats.”

“Angela Merkel personifies the best Germany we’ve ever known,” said Timothy Garton Ash, a professor of European Studies at Oxford University. “She managed Germany’s rise to once again become Europe’s leading power. But she failed to prepare Germans sufficiently for what that means.”

Ms. Merkel has never been one for rousing speeches. (“We had those kinds of speeches 70 years ago,” Ms. Roll said. “Her lack of talent and interest in this department was a good thing.”)

She never boasted that Germany got what it wanted after summit meetings (though it mostly did). But as exports and domestic demand boomed, Germany prospered and so did Ms. Merkel’s popularity ratings.

Gregor Gysi, a fellow Easterner and political opponent from the Left party, said that spending half her life under Communism gave her a visceral thirst for freedom — but also made her more socially conscious than other Western conservatives.

But like her friend and ally President Barack Obama — America’s first black president, who was succeeded by President Trump — Ms. Merkel will be judged by what comes next

now in the third so-called grand coalition with the Social Democrats, Ms. Merkel’s habit of taking inspiration from (and credit for) their ideas has left the party a shadow of itself.

It has also opened her own party to challenges on its right flank, leaving room for the emergence of the nationalist Alternative for Germany, which capitalized on her decision on asylum seekers.

The French president François Mitterrand and his British counterpart Margaret Thatcher had both worried about a resurgence of “bad Germans.” Ms. Merkel’s greatest achievement, Ms. Roll said, was that “she came to represent the good Germans.”

“It won Germany incredible respect — this image of a friendly humanitarian Germany, a Germany that protects,” Ms. Roth said. “She marked that image.”

“German populism is perhaps not her child,” said Henrik Enderlein, the dean of the Hertie School of Governance in Berlin. “But it is a child of the Merkel era.”

“An Adenauer or a Kohl would have done it,” Mr. Fischer said. But Merkel, who had grown up behind the Iron Curtain and without the Western pro-European mind-set, “wasn’t there yet,” he said. “Her European conscience was not fully formed yet.

Was hers a European Germany, one that saw Europe’s interests as its own? Or a Germany that ultimately wanted a German Europe?

The real missed opportunity, observers say, was to use the crisis to propel a more far-reaching build-out of European Union institutions, which remain unprepared for the next financial meltdown.

If there was ever a time to make a bold push to complete the institutions of the eurozone, this was it, said Joschka Fischer, a former German foreign minister.

Even before the migration crisis arrived, the debt crisis provided a pivotal test for a chancellor at the helm of a newly dominant Germany.And it led to criticism that Ms. Merkel, while leading humbly, was no less the hegemon — prioritizing German interests; manipulating European Union institutions to Germany’s abiding benefit; turning southern countries into captive export markets; tightening the hold of German banks

“But she always made clear: ‘I don’t build deadly walls,’ ” he recalled her saying. “She grew up behind one.”

In Germany, too, politics has become noisier and nastier. Open sexism has entered the chamber with Alternative for Germany, said Ms. Roth, the vice president of the parliament.“Merkel has been the target of countless attacks, gendered attacks, sexualized dirt,” Ms. Roth said.

Some have begun to referring to Merkelism, a modest but steadfast liberalism built on consensus rather than confrontation, as a recipe for democratic governance in the 21st century. Others fear that Merkelism will disappear with her.

“She is so unvain that she does not overly care about leaving behind a blueprint for the West 4.0,” said Mr. Kornelius, her biographer. “She primarily wants to preserve what she can.”

She has prevented crises rather than carried out visions, Mr. Kornelius said, and has been reactive rather than proactive. “But that is incredibly valuable at a time when we are dealing with questions of our liberal order in an unraveling world — and with leaders like Donald Trump.”

Today, Ms. Merkel’s Germany can feel like a liberal island in a growing sea of illiberal forces. She has not changed — the world around her has.“She is already an exception today,” Mr. Knaus said. “I hope she is not a relic of an era that is coming to an end.”

“She was a catastrophe,” said Mr. Varoufakis, the former Greek finance minister, “and she will be missed, because who comes next will certainly be worse.”

The leading intellectual of the North, Ralph Waldo Emerson, called the fugitive slave law a “sheet of lightning at midnight.” To him and many others, it revealed that Americans had been living all along in an unholy “union between two countries, one civilized & Christian & the other barbarous.”

Faced with a choice between denying the constitutional right of slave owners to recover their human property and thereby losing the Union, or tolerating slavery to the extent of returning fugitives and thereby saving the Union, Lincoln chose the latter. “I hate to see the poor creatures hunted down and returned to their stripes,” he said, “but I bite my lip and keep quiet.

In that sense, Lincoln was the embodiment of America’s long struggle to remake itself as a morally coherent nation. Under his leadership, the Civil War finally resolved the problem of fugitive slaves by destroying the institution from which they had fled

The fugitive slave law turned the nation upside down. Southerners who had once insisted on states’ rights now demanded federal intervention to enforce what they considered their property rights. Northerners who had once derided the South for its theory of “nullification”—John C. Calhoun’s idea that acts of Congress require consent from each individual state before they can take effect within its borders—now became nullifiers themselves. The fugitive slave law clarified just how incompatible North and South had become.

Most important, the fugitive slave law of 1850 made clear that slavery was not a southern phenomenon but a national phenomenon. Northerners who had once been able to pretend that slavery had nothing to do with them could no longer evade their complicity.

In fact, none of the issues of our time—economic inequality, affordability of health care, future of the environment, regulation of immigration—recalcitrant as they may be to bipartisan compromise, compares even remotely to the impasse of the mid-19th century

It implicated northerners in the business of slavery in a way they had never felt before. It made visible the suffering of human beings who had been hitherto invisible. It forced northerners to choose between coming to their aid in defiance of the law or surrendering them under penalty of the law.

The problem of the 1850s was a political problem specific to a particular time and place. But the moral problem of how to reconcile irreconcilable values is a timeless one that, sooner or later, confronts us all.

“We are in uncharted territory in terms of trade policy,” said Chad Bown, a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute of International Economics. “What President Trump has done is make everything uncertain in trade policy. You don’t know on almost a day-to-day basis what trade policy is going to be and businesses find it very difficult to operate in that kind of environment.”

Ross said in an interview with The Washington Post that Trump was acting within his authority. He said that under Section 232 of a key U.S. trade law Trump “has very broad powers. He can raise the tariffs. He can lower them. He can let countries in and let them out.”

Labour had allowed expectations for election gains to grow high, particularly in London, where some senior figures talked up prospects of a victory in Wandsworth. A dispute over the handling of anti-Semitism in the party may have also cost support for Labour and Mr. Corbyn, particularly in Barnet, where there is a significant Jewish population. Advertisement Continue reading the main story Nevertheless, the voting took place at a difficult time for a divided government facing many problems. In recent weeks, Mrs. May’s predicament has been complicated by the House of Lords, the unelected chamber of Parliament, which has inflicted 10 defeats on her Brexit legislation, adding amendments that she will try to overturn in the House of Commons, the main chamber.

Mrs. May’s problems over a withdrawal are coming to a head over her promise to leave Europe’s customs union, which guarantees tariff-free trade with Continental Europe.

This issue has come to symbolize a deep division: Pro-Europeans want to stick close to the bloc, Britain’s biggest trade partner, in order to protect the economy, while hard-line Brexit supporters want to break free and to negotiate other trade deals with non-European nations.

But the Europeans say they will discuss the Trump administration’s concerns only after the bloc receives a permanent, unconditional exemption from the tariffs. They regard the tariffs as illegal under global rules.“We will not negotiate under threat,” the commission said in the statement Tuesday.

“There is huge frustration with the way the administration is doing business,” said Mujtaba Rahman, managing director in London for Eurasia Group, a consultancy.

Economists say the biggest danger to the global economy is not so much the tariffs as the insecurity they sow among business managers trying to plan where to buy or sell products that contain steel or aluminum. Advertisement Continue reading the main story Big metals consumers like auto manufacturers and construction firms have been stockpiling supplies, girding for a disruptive trade war. “As a result, there is a visible surge in steel prices in the U.S., which negatively affects manufacturing and many other sectors,” said Max Finne, assistant professor of operations management at the University of Warwick in Britain.Mr. Trump’s provocative approach has fueled anxiety in Europe that the long-awaited economic recovery is losing momentum. The threat of a trade war adds to a list of risks that are making businesses less willing to invest and create jobs, including the imminent end of European Central Bank stimulus, Britain’s planned exit from the bloc and political deadlock in Italy.

The European Union regards the planned tariffs on steel and aluminum as a violation of international treaties and has already complained to the World Trade Organization, normally the arbiter of trade disputes. The complaint lays the groundwork for the bloc to impose retaliatory tariffs on a long list of American products — including bluejeans, bourbon and Harley-Davidson motorcycles — as early as mid-June.

The Obama administration pursued such an agreement for years, but it was largely moribund even before Mr. Trump took office, in part because of popular opposition in Germany.

Europe would be happy to cooperate with the United States to press China on issues such as protection of intellectual property. But in the current climate it seems unlikely that the European Union and United States are capable of joining forces.“The way Trump is going about it may not be the most effective, but he’s put it on the agenda. There is some sympathy for that,” Mr. Rahman said. “But it’s very difficult. The process seems completely broken.”

In Castile an influential party of magnates, led by Alfonso Carillo, archbishop of Toledo (who later reversed himself), and opposed to King Henry IV, supported the succession claims of the princess Isabella, the king’s half sister, against those of his daughter, Joan.

It needed a forged papal dispensation for the marriage, the blackmailing of Henry IV into (wrongly) denying the paternity of his daughter (Joan), and, finally, several years of bitter civil war before Ferdinand and Isabella defeated Joan’s Castilian supporters and her husband, Afonso V of Portugal.

Ferdinand and Isabella ruled jointly in both kingdoms and were known as the Catholic Monarchs

In Spain the Catholic Monarchs had no formal right of exequatur, but they and their Habsburg successors behaved very much as if they did.