Susan Kokinda: Europe just rolled out its largest package of sanctions against Russia since the Ukraine conflict began. There’s just one problem. Europe is still Moscow’s biggest gas customer, and over the weekend, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent called them out.
The Europeans have given the Russians more money, they have since the start of this war, than they have given the Ukrainians, because they cannot wean themselves off Russian energy. They had a failed energy policy, and Vladimir Putin, they continue to fund him. So for them to say that we cannot have a respite in diesel pricing is completely hypocritical.
But that didn’t stop the Europeans. Yesterday, the EU’s Kaja Kallas doubled down.
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Kaja Kallas: There is a clear understanding that now is not the time to ease pressure on Moscow, and that’s why today ministers adopted nearly 1,600 new sanctions listings targeting Russia’s military-industrial complex.
Susan Kokinda: This is the single largest expansion of our sanctions list since Russia’s war started. The Europeans do have the support of the usual cast of characters in the United States, the Democrats, the Bush Republicans, the establishment think tanks, but what none of them have is the whole card called reality, and that’s the card Scott Bessent holds. I’m Susan Kokinda, and today we’re going to see how the United States is playing that card, and why the most important thing that Scott Bessent did this week is the thing he didn’t do.
But before I get that, please hit those like, share, and subscribe buttons. So, President Trump’s diesel deal with Russia forced the European spokesmen to show their hands. The first one to challenge Trump was the one you’d expect, Mark Carney.
He got Zelenskyy on the phone, and the Canadian readout said, the leaders discussed the new agreement between the United States and Russia to supply millions of tons of diesel to the United States. The prime minister was clear, this agreement is in direct opposition to the efforts of Ukraine and Canada. What are those efforts? To keep the war and the economic pain for America going.
Then there is Boris Johnson, the man who ensured that this war didn’t end four years ago when he flew to Kyiv to tell Zelenskyy to reject the settlement that was on the table in 2022.
Johnson posted, “It is sickening that the United States is now lifting sanctions on Russian fuel. The White House is apparently determined to American drivers to bankroll Putin’s slaughter.”
Then came the EU sanctions and a long line of European ministers criticizing the diesel deal. But here’s what none of them will say: Who is actually bankrolling Russia? Well, it’s Europe.
Besides Scott Bessent calling out their hypocrisy, President Trump did, as well. He posted, “The European Union paid Russia $250 billion for energy and the fake news media doesn’t want to get near that story.”
Russia’s deputy prime minister for energy, Alexander Novak, joined in and he said, “For the period from 2022 to today, this figure amounts to $320.7 billion. European countries purchased $21.3 billion worth of Russian hydrocarbons in the first nine months of 2026 alone.”
These statements by Bessent, Trump, and the Russians expose more than just hypocrisy. They’ve exposed the complete failure of the Globalists’ three pillars of policy: free trade, Green energy, and fiscal austerity.
Green mandates shut down domestic production, free trade moves industry offshore, and austerity prevents any new credit for rebuilding. So Europe stands there with an empty energy hand while they threaten Russia and complain about the United States, both of whom are energy exporters.
And that highlights the real division in the world, not the Postwar geopolitical divide, which pits Russia against the United States, but the one where sovereign nations work with each other against the proxies of a failing imperial system.
If you want to follow that fight, subscribe to Promethean Action’s free newsletter. The link is in the description. And that imperial system stood up on stage this week.
While the EU was demonstrating its failures, the annual meeting of the IMF, which opened on Monday, continued to preach its doctrine. Now, throughout President Trump’s second term in office, he and his cabinet have been clear about how to deal with America’s debt. We can grow our way out of it.
The IMF doesn’t think so. And yesterday in Bangkok, IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva told the United States that directly.
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Kristalina Georgieva: The deficit has grown too high and the debt level is also too high. So measures to improve the budget balance and reduce the debt, the authorities very much rely on strong growth in the United States.
At the fund, we believe that the growth, of course, helps, but it cannot deliver fast enough the necessary adjustments. So some measures would be necessary.
Susan Kokinda: Now, the corporate media certainly got the point, because they blasted that out with headlines like this. Bloomberg said Besson’s growth plan can’t fix US debt problem. And CNBC chimed in, Scott Bessent’s growth plans aren’t enough to tame surging deficit and debt pile, IMF chief says.
Now, I want you to remember those headlines when we talk about what that same media didn’t cover a little bit later. Now, Georgieva is well-equipped to deliver the IMF’s prescription. She was trained at the London School of Economics and built her career as a World Bank environmental economist.
And the measures which she recommends have been part of the IMF’s playbook since Bretton Woods came down in 1971. While the city of London controls things like the petro and euro dollar markets and currency and commodity prices, the IMF enforces fiscal austerity on subject nations. This was first imposed on the developing sector, then on post-Soviet Russia, and finally on the advanced sector itself.
And here’s the irony. It was Russia under Putin that first walked away from these formulas, which is exactly why Russia has energy to sell to Europe today. And now, under Donald Trump, the United States has walked away too, which brings us to that empty chair in Bangkok at the meeting of the International Monetary Fund.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent is not at the IMF meeting, which is going on this week. I looked, and I couldn’t find the last time a treasury secretary blew off the annual IMF meeting. Now, the US did send a deputy secretary and an undersecretary with a one-line mission statement.
They’re supposed to ensure that the international financial institutions and the broader international economic system advance US economic and national security interests. Well, there is only one way to advance US economic and national security interests, and that is to ignore everything the IMF is doing, which is what Besant is doing. And the reason Treasury gave for Besant staying home? Domestic engagements.
Well, let’s look at some of those domestic engagements. How about rebuilding the US manufacturing base so that we can grow our way out of the debt? On October 11th, Peter Navarro, the president’s trade counselor, gave a thorough progress report at a White House press conference. And he dared the legacy press to cover it.
They didn’t, so we will. During the final two years of the Biden regime, America lost a staggering 230,000 manufacturing jobs. But now under the Trump tariffs and tax cuts, the trend is turning sharply.
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Peter Navarro: Since December of 2025, American manufacturers have added 72,000 jobs. Construction employment has increased by 109,000 jobs over the last 12 months. Here’s a preliminary look at the announced factory investments since President Trump took office on January 20th, 2025.
The totals reveal an extraordinary industrial transformation. We got more than $380 billion in announced investment, over 500 manufacturing projects across nine major sectors, more than 160,000 direct manufacturing jobs. And that’s before you count the hundreds of thousands of additional jobs these projects will generate.
And of these more than 500 projects, 63 projects are big. They’re worth at least a billion dollars each. But this is important.
The median project is smaller, roughly 90 million. This manufacturing renaissance is not simply a few giant semiconductor factories making the numbers look good. It includes hundreds of smaller factories and industrial expansions spread across the country.
Susan Kokinda: Navarro then went through investments, sector by sector, auto, steel, semiconductors, chips, pharmaceutical, shipbuilding, energy, strategic materials. Each one of those new manufacturing investments are shown on this map. Now the ones in green are new facilities breaking ground.
The ones in brown are the revitalization of plants shut down by globalization. And Navarro pointed out the importance of reviving these areas.
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Peter Navarro: For decades, we the people here of America have been told that the decline of domestic manufacturing was inevitable.
What we have lacked has been a national policy willing to use those advantages to defend American manufacturing. President Trump has changed that. And the direction is clear.
The concrete is being poured. The steel is going up. The machinery is being installed.
And across this great country, the American worker is getting another chance to build the world’s greatest industrial economy.
Susan Kokinda: Navarro concluded by addressing the same corporate media, which was happy to deliver the IMF’s message that growth doesn’t work. And he called them out directly.
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Peter Navarro: Are you listening, Washington Post? Are you listening, New York Times? Are you listening, USA Today? Are you listening, The Today Show, CNN, MS Now? Oh, and by the way, Fox News, which is not here today.
Susan Kokinda: Of course they were listening. But their assignment isn’t to report on reality. Their assignment is to keep pushing the failed playbook of the IMF and the EU and the global elite. But President Trump and Scott Bessent and Peter Navarro have thrown that playbook into the trash and they are busy bringing the factories home. And as Navarro said, with them comes America’s industrial future.
This is what the administration means when they say Scott Bessent is busy with domestic engagements and can’t go to the annual IMF meeting. Because the Trump administration doesn’t have time for either the institutions of the old liberal order or for the temper tantrums of their operatives who are clinging to the failed policies of a dying system.
This administration is busy running an American economic revolution.
This has been your Midweek Update. Thanks for watching.