WEST PALM BEACH, FLORIDA — President-elect Donald Trump said Wednesday that he will nominate General Keith Kellogg to serve as assistant to the president and special envoy for Ukraine and Russia.

Kellogg, a retired Army lieutenant general who has long been Trump’s top adviser on defense issues, served as national security adviser to Trump’s former Vice President Mike Pence.

Trump made the announcement on his Truth Social account, and he said, “He was with me right from the beginning! Together, we will secure PEACE THROUGH STRENGTH, and Make America, and the World, SAFE AGAIN!”

Kellogg’s nomination comes as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine enters its third year in February.

Trump has criticized the billions of dollars that the Biden administration has poured into Ukraine. Washington has recently stepped up weapons shipments and has forgiven billions in loans provided to Kyiv. The incoming Republican president has said he could end the war in 24 hours, comments that appear to suggest he would press Ukraine to surrender territory that Russia now occupies.

For the America First Policy Institute, one of several groups formed after Trump left office to help lay the groundwork for the next Republican administration, Kellogg in April wrote that “bringing the Russia-Ukraine war to a close will require strong, America First leadership to deliver a peace deal and immediately end the hostilities between the two warring parties.”
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President-elect Donald Trump says he intends to nominate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to lead the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Kennedy disagrees with much of the scientific community on subjects including vaccines and HIV/AIDS. VOA’s Anita Powell has our story.
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LINCOLN CITY, Ore. — Drumming made the floor vibrate and singing filled the conference room of the Chinook Winds Casino Resort in Lincoln City, on the Oregon coast, as hundreds in tribal regalia danced in a circle.

For the last 47 years, the Confederated Tribes of Siletz Indians have held an annual powwow to celebrate regaining federal recognition. This month’s event, however, was especially significant: It came just two weeks after a federal court lifted restrictions on the tribe’s rights to hunt, fish and gather — restrictions tribal leaders had opposed for decades.

“We’re back to the way we were before,” Siletz Chairman Delores Pigsley said. “It feels really good.”

The Siletz is a confederation of over two dozen bands and tribes whose traditional homelands spanned western Oregon, as well as parts of northern California and southwestern Washington state. The federal government in the 1850s forced them onto a reservation on the Oregon coast, where they were confederated together as a single, federally recognized tribe despite their different backgrounds and languages.

In the 1950s and ‘60s, Congress revoked recognition of over 100 tribes, including the Siletz, under a policy known as “termination.” Affected tribes lost millions of acres of land as well as federal funding and services.

“The goal was to try and assimilate Native people, get them moved into cities,” said Matthew Campbell, deputy director of the Native American Rights Fund. “But also I think there was certainly a financial aspect to it. I think the United States was trying to see how it could limit its costs in terms of providing for tribal nations.”

Losing their lands and self-governance was painful, and the tribes fought for decades to regain federal recognition. In 1977, the Siletz became the second tribe to succeed, following the restoration of the Menominee Tribe in Wisconsin in 1973.

But to get a fraction of its land back — roughly 1,457 hectares of the 445,000-hectare reservation established for the tribe in 1855 — the Siletz tribe had to agree to a federal court order that restricted their hunting, fishing and gathering rights. It was only one of two tribes in the country, along with Oregon’s Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde, compelled to do so to regain tribal land.

The settlement limited where tribal members could fish, hunt and gather for ceremonial and subsistence purposes, and it imposed caps on how many salmon, elk and deer could be harvested in a year. It was devastating, tribal chair Pigsley recalled: The tribe was forced to buy salmon for ceremonies because it couldn’t provide for itself, and people were arrested for hunting and fishing violations.

“Giving up those rights was a terrible thing,” Pigsley, who has led the tribe for 36 years, told The Associated Press earlier this year. “It was unfair at the time, and we’ve lived with it all these years.”

Decades later, Oregon and the U.S. came to recognize that the agreement subjecting the tribe to state hunting and fishing rules was biased, and they agreed to join the tribe in recommending to the court that the restrictions be lifted.

“The Governor of Oregon and Oregon’s congressional representatives have since acknowledged that the 1980 Agreement and Consent Decree were a product of their times and represented a biased and distorted position on tribal sovereignty, tribal traditions, and the Siletz Tribe’s ability and authority to manage and sustain wildlife populations it traditionally used for tribal ceremonial and subsistence purposes,” attorneys for the U.S., state and tribe wrote in a joint court filing.

Late last month, the tribe finally succeeded in having the court order vacated by a federal judge. And a separate agreement with the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife has given the tribe a greater role in regulating tribal hunting and fishing.

As Pigsley reflected on those who passed away before seeing the tribe regain its rights, she expressed hope about the next generation carrying on essential traditions.

“There’s a lot of youth out there that are learning tribal ways and culture,” she said. “It’s important today because we are trying to raise healthy families, meaning we need to get back to our natural foods.”

Among those celebrating and praying at the powwow was Tiffany Stuart, donning a basket cap her ancestors were known for weaving, and her 3-year-old daughter Kwestaani Chuski, whose name means “six butterflies” in the regional Athabaskan language from southwestern Oregon and northwestern California.

Given the restoration of rights, Stuart said, it was “very powerful for my kids to dance.”

“You dance for the people that can’t dance anymore,” she said.
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U.S. President-elect Donald Trump announced a set of economic advisers he wants to appoint for his administration, including international trade attorney Jamieson Greer as his pick to be the U.S. trade representative.

Greer served in Trump’s first administration as the chief of staff to the trade representative, and Trump said Tuesday that Greer played a key role in both imposing tariffs on China and in the creation of a new trade deal with Canada and Mexico.

Trump said Kevin Hassett is his choice to lead the White House National Economic Council.

Hassett led the Council of Economic Advisers during Trump’s previous term. Trump said in the new role, Hassett would work to “renew and improve” a set of tax cuts implemented in 2017 and “will play an important role in helping American families recover from the inflation that was unleashed by the Biden Administration.”

Trump also announced Tuesday several health-related nominees, including his choice of health economist Dr. Jay Bhattacharya to lead the National Institutes of Health.

Bhattacharya was a sharp critic of lockdowns and vaccine mandates during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Trump said Bhattacharya will work with Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the nominee to lead the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), “to direct the Nation’s Medical Research, and to make important discoveries that will improve Health, and save lives.”

“Together, Jay and RFK Jr. will restore the NIH to a Gold Standard of Medical Research as they examine the underlying causes of, and solutions to, America’s biggest Health challenges, including our Crisis of Chronic Illness and Disease,” Trump said.

Another nomination announced Tuesday was Trump’s pick of former HHS official Jim O’Neill to serve as the agency’s deputy secretary.

Trump also said he was nominating private investor John Phelan to serve as secretary of the Navy.

Earlier Tuesday, Trump’s transition team announced the signing of a memorandum of understanding with the Biden administration about the process of starting to work with federal agencies.

A statement from Susie Wiles, Trump’s chief of staff, said, “This engagement allows our intended Cabinet nominees to begin critical preparations, including the deployment of landing teams to every department and agency, and complete the orderly transition of power.”

Wiles’ announcement said the transition will use only private funding, and the donors will be disclosed to the public.

The Trump-Vance transition team will not use government offices or technology, Wiles said. She added that the transition has an existing ethics plan and “security and information protections built in, which means we will not require additional government and bureaucratic oversight.”

The signing of the MOU means that teams from the transition will “quickly integrate directly into federal agencies and departments with access to documents and policy sharing,” Wiles’ announcement said.

Some information for this story was provided by The Associated Press, Agence France-Presse and Reuters.
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The prospect of punishing new U.S. tariffs will hang over the deliberations at China’s highest-level economic meeting when the Central Economic Work Conference of the Chinese Communist Party convenes for its annual session next month.

A key function of the meeting will be to set the nation’s growth target for 2025, a task made more challenging by the prospect of tariffs that could stunt the crucial export sector.

U.S. President-elect Donald Trump threatened repeatedly during his election campaign to swiftly impose a 60% tariff on Chinese-made goods. He wrote on his Truth Social account late Monday that he will impose “an additional 10% Tariff, above any additional Tariffs, on all of [China’s] many products coming into the United States of America.”

Most of the Chinese government advisers interviewed for a Reuters report this month recommended that Beijing maintain an economic growth target of 5.0% for next year, the same target as 2024.

Some said the country would have to launch stronger fiscal stimulus measures to offset the impact of new U.S. tariffs after Trump takes office in January.

Cai Shenkun, an independent commentator in the United States, told VOA Mandarin that Beijing’s “5% target” is clearly based on political necessity, rather than a market perspective.

After securing an extraordinary third term as president last year, Chinese leader Xi Jinping “will have to give the CCP an explanation and a vision,” Cai said. “He must make a good gesture. If he does not maintain the 5% target, his ruling position will be greatly threatened.”

Si Ling, a financial scholar in Australia, said in a phone interview with VOA Mandarin that if China wants to achieve its goal of doubling the size of its economy from 2020 to 2035, the annual economic growth rate must reach 4%.

“China has taken into account the uncertainty factors, like external shocks when Trump pledged to impose high tariffs. China must face the sudden decline in GDP growth,” said Si.

Reuters reported last month that China’s economy is likely to expand 4.8% in 2024, missing the government’s 5% growth target, and could slow to 4.5% in 2025. 

Si said the growth of China’s current GDP is dependent on exports and investments. If Trump fulfills his promise to impose high tariffs on Chinese goods, the impact on China’s economy will be profound, he said.

“China’s advantages in industrial products exports, brought by high state subsidies, will be completely wiped out due to high tariffs,” Si said. “Can the domestic market digest the industrial products intended for export? Many of these industrial enterprises have already begun to reduce their production scale. This means more people will lose their jobs.”

Local debt and real estate woes

Independent commentator Cai warned that overreliance on stimulus measures may exacerbate local government debt problems.

“Private capital does not dare to invest anymore. State-owned enterprises can no longer play the role of investment pioneers,” Cai said. “‘Maintaining the 5% target’ means printing a lot of cash, pouring it into the market, issuing a lot of treasury bonds and increasing the fiscal deficit. This is the only way. But it will have a great negative impact on the stability of the RMB currency value.”

A new wave of property market challenges will likely occur in the next 10 years, Cai said.

“In the past, people saw property as a means of asset appreciation or value preservation. Now the future housing market looks dark to everyone. If we continue to build houses, who will buy them? In the end, it may only lead to an avalanche-like bubble, which will burst completely.”

Kristalina Georgieva, managing director of the International Monetary Fund, said last month that unless China’s economy shifts from an export and investment-driven model to a consumer demand-driven model, its economic growth may slow to “well below 4%.”
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