[T]he EU organization itself... -- once again –- is at the center of a new corruption scandal....

While Huawei has been effectively banned in the US – and has closed all its official and direct lobbying operations in Washington in early 2024 – the company has been free to do its influence peddling in the EU, where it is not banned. China's influence in Europe in a multitude of areas is already highly present...

The Belgian raid came roughly two years after the so-called Qatargate: In December 2022, Belgian authorities uncovered the bribery of Members of European Parliament by Qatar...

Politico reported on the leaked files, dubbed "the Qatargate files" in December 2023: "The actions recorded in the documents include some with a significant impact on the workings of the European Union — such as scheming to kill off six parliamentary resolutions condemning Qatar's human rights record..."

Qatargate is far from over. Trials are only scheduled to begin in late 2025. The EU, therefore, currently has not just one, but two huge corruption scandals on its hands.

The president of the unelected European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, in her second term in the position, having first maneuvered her way into this post after serving as a scandal-ridden minister of defense in Germany for many years, is herself under scrutiny in what has become known as "Pfizer-gate"...

Qatar has not only bought and invested in large swathes of European real estate, it is also a huge contributing factor to the Islamization of Europe. Qatar funneled -- at an extremely conservative estimate -- at least €71 million (approximately $78 million) to build 140 mosques and Islamic centers in Europe just as of 2014, according to the latest authoritative report on the issue, the 2019 book Qatar Papers by French journalists Christian Chesnot and Georges Malbrunot.

Chinese President Xi Jinping has introduced a new letter, C for consumer.

Twenty years ago, the Chinese were producers, supplying the world with inexpensive products that most citizens of the People's Republic couldn't afford. Today, however, China has the second-largest consumer market after the United States and is set to surpass it in consumer purchasing power parity.

Bastiat was not familiar with the modern state structures that have transformed Hobbes's "Leviathan" into a regulating machine in the service of special interests, fashionable ideologies and the cult of the imaginary victim.

The current war of tariffs pits Trump as a protectionist inspired by David Ricardo, not to say Marx, against Xi, who has discovered Smith via Bastiat. The duel shows that ideas, too, have a free market and could spread in different directions with different time-spans.