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The U.K.'s New Prime Minister & Trump Slaps 50% Tariffs On Canada

The World Cup Final & China Smashes The U.S. In Global Popularity

Author

Marcus Gee-Lim
July 21, 2026

Hi readers, happy Tuesday! Today we’re covering the real toll of the U.S.-Iran war, the U.K.’s new prime minister, China’s rising popularity, Ukraine’s leadership crisis, an attack in New York, Trump’s 50% tariffs on Canada, and the World Cup final.

“Of all the unimportant things, football is the most important.” ― St. John Paul II

No Calm In Iran

“Marines board M/V Blue Star III” (U.S. Marine Corps photo)

The war in Iran has only escalated over the past few days. Last Friday, Iran launched ballistic strikes on U.S. military bases in Jordan, killing at least two American soldiers, injuring dozens of others, and damaging several helicopters. Those deaths bring the official count of U.S. personnel who’ve died in the conflict to 17. In a story covering the damage from Iran’s strikes, the New York Times accused the U.S. of hiding its casualty numbers, which have apparently almost reached 100 since hostilities resumed on July 7. Trump has promised to make Iran pay for those deaths “many times over,” though he already has – at least 1,700 Iranian civilians have been killed thanks to the U.S.

Now, the war has boiled over into other parts of the Middle East. On Monday, Yemen’s Iran-linked Houthi rebels announced that they would be imposing a naval blockade on Saudi Arabia, describing the action as “a maritime embargo against the criminal Saudi enemy, based on the equation of ‘an eye for an eye,’ effective immediately.” Yemen borders the Bab el-Mandeb Strait (the main entrance to the Red Sea), which the Saudis have been using to export oil while the Strait of Hormuz has been closed. A closure of the strait would reduce global oil traffic by 7%, adding to the 10% damage already inflicted by the Hormuz closure. A Saudi-aligned coalition military operating inside Yemen has vowed to stop that blockade from being carried out. Oil prices passed $90 a barrel for the first time in a month on the news.

It’s not all bad news, though – even as the Iran-aligned Houthi rebels announced their blockade plans, it seems like negotiations to end the war are still continuing. Yesterday, Iran’s Foreign Ministry announced that mediators had presented Iranian diplomats with “proposals,” and Pakistani negotiators told Reuters that they’d been asked to resume backchannel peace negotiations by Iranian Interior Minister Eskandar Momeni, who even flew to Islamabad to work out an end to the escalating war. 

Starmer Says Sayonara

Yesterday saw a changing of the guard in U.K. politics, kind of. Prime Minister Starmer kicked off the day by officially handing his resignation letter to King Charles III at Buckingham Palace. After Starmer made his exit, Andy Burnham made his own journey to the palace, where the 77-year-old monarch formally asked him to establish a new government.

Just before he handed in his resignation, Starmer delivered his last speech as Britain’s prime minister. “In 6 1/2 years, I took our party from a historic defeat in 2019, changed it so it was fit to face the country, and won a landslide general election victory in 2024,” he said, describing his time at the nation’s helm as “the privilege of my life” and stating that he felt he was leaving the country “stronger and fairer” than it was when he came to power. 

In his first speech as prime minister later that day, Burnham told the public that he and other Labour politicians are “acknowledging that many voters have grown frustrated with politics” as a whole. “I want to be honest with you,” he went on. “We have not been good enough, and we need to be better. We will be.” Burnham has promised to focus on cost of living issues, and is also planning to reverse the privatization of public transit and utilities while canceling the implementation of digital ID cards. 

Everybody Doesn’t Hate Xi

  • A recent Pew Research Center survey spanning 36 countries across 6 continents has revealed that China’s global favorability is on the rise. The recent results show that China’s favorability topped the U.S.’s in a vast majority of the countries surveyed, marking the first time that has happened in the think tank’s 20+ year history.

  • The survey involved interviews of 42,151 people, which were conducted between February 8 and May 13, as the U.S. and Israel launched their war against Iran. Just 6 of the countries surveyed (Poland, the Philippines, South Korea, India, Japan, and Israel) had a majority of respondents favor the U.S. Aside from India, all of those countries are heavily reliant on the U.S. military for their defense needs.

  • Meanwhile, U.S. favorability in its more self-reliant allies took a steep hit – in Canada, it dropped from 57% in 2023 to 33% this year, also following that pattern in France, Germany, and the U.K. Across the 17 middle-income countries covered by the survey, a median of 75% of respondents told Pew that they believe the U.S. meddles in other countries’ affairs, while 45% said that China does the same. You can read more about the poll here. 

No Syrskyi? Yes, Sir…

  • Ukraine’s leadership is, as the kids say, going through it. Last week, Mykhailo Fedorov, the country’s defense minister, was fired in the wake of a disagreement with Oleksandr Syrskyi, the commander-in-chief of Ukraine’s armed forces. Now, it appears that Syrskyi has found himself on the chopping block as popular protests are calling for his dismissal and Fedorov’s reinstatement.

  • The protests have seen thousands of people protesting outside of the presidential residence in Kyiv since last Thursday. “The public’s position has been heard,” said Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s chief of staff yesterday. He said that the situation was being handled “professionally and constructively,” while also calling on “everyone to keep calm.” In an attempt to save his position, Syrskyi published a newspaper column yesterday claiming that his clash with Fedorov was just a normal disagreement for a country at wartime, adding that he was “sorry” for the conflict and asking for Ukrainians to focus on their shared enemy. 

  • Despite that appeal, it looks like Syrskyi is on the way out – “His destiny is decided. The question is who will replace him. There are a few important requirements. The person should be known and popular so everyone applauds,” one source within the armed forces told the Guardian.

Additional World News

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A Really Bad Case Of The Mondays

  • Yesterday, a man lit a gasoline fire and set off an explosive device outside of a federal building in New York City. The building houses offices for thousands of employees working for various federal agencies, including ICE and the FBI, and the incident occurred at 8:30 a.m. local time, as employees were arriving for work.

  • Authorities have identified the perpetrator as Andrew Arrabaca, a 43-year-old Army veteran. He reportedly poured gasoline onto the ground outside of an employee entrance, lighting it on fire and setting off a “large firework in a canister” before pulling out an airsoft rifle and firing five to seven pellets. 

  • Arrabaca came to the building “armed with bad intentions,” said the assistant director of the FBI New York Field Office, noting that he was also sporting “two axes, a hammer, a machete and three knives,” on top of his incendiary toolkit and airsoft gun. Officials added that he had a sign reading “ICE off our streets” attached to the cart he was using to carry all those weapons, and “yelled derogatory terms to ICE” as he was being arrested by police. Three people were injured in the incident.

Tariff Thy Neighbor

  • As smoke from wildfires in Canada wafts over the U.S., the White House is sending something more unpleasant up north. Yesterday, Trump imposed 50% tariffs on a range of Canadian exports, including wine, hockey sticks, cement, dairy products, plywood, paper, and furniture. The administration claims that the import taxes are a response to Canada discriminating against the U.S. motor vehicle, dairy, and alcohol industries – Trump officials have alleged that some Canadian provinces have stopped purchasing U.S. alcohol entirely, and that Canada’s federal government has imposed regulations on importing U.S. cheeses and cars.

  • The president is using an arcane, Great Depression-era legal provision to levy the tariffs on Canada. That provision, Section 338 of the Tariff Act of 1930, allows the government to enact up to 50% tariffs on imports from countries that uniquely discriminate against U.S. trade – the White House claims that the Canadian policies mentioned above justify its use. Legal analysts expect the new tariffs to be challenged in court, but they also say that the tariffs could be used as leverage in upcoming negotiations about the U.S.M.C.A., a trade pact between the U.S., Mexico, and Canada.

Additional USA News

 

Spain Seizes The Sunday

  • ¡Vamos! On Sunday, Spain defeated Argentina 1-0 to win the World Cup after a grueling 120 minutes at New Jersey’s Metlife Stadium. While Saturday’s third-place England-France match saw an eye-watering 10 goals scored in 98 minutes, the final match of the World Cup saw zero goals scored until the 106th minute. That’s when a cross from Spanish right back Pedro Porro was barely kept in play by left winger Nico Williams, who headed the ball back into Argentina’s box – it landed perfectly for substitute striker Ferran Torres, who buried the ball in the back of Argentina’s net.

  • That’s not to say that the preceding 105 minutes were snooze-inducing. While Argentina weren’t able to piece together any offense at all, Spain fired 20 shots over the course of the match (12 of them on target). That bombardment led to a record-breaking performance from Argentina goalkeeper Emiliano Martínez, who saved 11 of those on-target balls while also playing with a broken finger. 

  • Argentina provided some more entertainment by playing as dirty as possible until a referee eventually handed out a red card to midfielder Enzo Fernández in the 93rd minute, leaving his team to play with 10 men against Spain’s 11 for the rest of the match. While Argentina was eventually able to play the game a tiny bit at the end of extra time, a few shots and crosses from Messi didn’t end up creating anything and the former World Cup holders left the final with nothing to show for their efforts.

Additional Reads

Peanut For Your Thoughts

Sad to see Messi go out on that note but happy for Spain!

Editor + Writer: Marcus Gee-Lim

Designer: Joe Stella