Connect with us

Top Stories

From Laos to Brazil, Trump’s tariffs leave a lot of losers. But even the winners will pay a price

Published

on


WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump’s tariff onslaught this week left a lot of losers – from small, poor countries like Laos and Algeria to wealthy U.S. trading partners like Canada and Switzerland. They’re now facing especially hefty taxes – tariffs – on the products they export to the United States starting Aug. 7.

The closest thing to winners may be the countries that caved to Trump’s demands — and avoided even more pain. But it’s unclear whether anyone will be able to claim victory in the long run — even the United States, the intended beneficiary of Trump’s protectionist policies.

“In many respects, everybody’s a loser here,’’ said Barry Appleton, co-director of the Center for International Law at the New York Law School.

Barely six months after he returned to the White House, Trump has demolished the old global economic order. Gone is one built on agreed-upon rules. In its place is a system in which Trump himself sets the rules, using America’s enormous economic power to punish countries that won’t agree to one-sided trade deals and extracting huge concessions from the ones that do.

“The biggest winner is Trump,” said Alan Wolff, a former U.S. trade official and deputy director-general at the World Trade Organization. “He bet that he could get other countries to the table on the basis of threats, and he succeeded – dramatically.’’

Everything goes back to what Trump calls “Liberation Day’’ – April 2 – when the president announced “reciprocal’’ taxes of up to 50% on imports from countries with which the United States ran trade deficits and 10% “baseline’’ taxes on almost everyone else.

He invoked a 1977 law to declare the trade deficit a national emergency that justified his sweeping import taxes. That allowed him to bypass Congress, which traditionally has had authority over taxes, including tariffs — all of which is now being challenged in court.

Winners will still pay higher tariffs than before Trump took office

Trump retreated temporarily after his Liberation Day announcement triggered a rout in financial markets and suspended the reciprocal tariffs for 90 days to give countries a chance to negotiate.

Eventually, some of them did, caving to Trump’s demands to pay what four months ago would have seemed unthinkably high tariffs for the privilege of continuing to sell into the vast American market.

The United Kingdom agreed to 10% tariffs on its exports to the United States — up from 1.3% before Trump amped up his trade war with the world. The U.S. demanded concessions even though it had run a trade surplus, not a deficit, with the UK for 19 straight years.

The European Union and Japan accepted U.S. tariffs of 15%. Those are much higher than the low single-digit rates they paid last year — but lower than the tariffs he was threatening (30% on the EU and 25% on Japan).

Also cutting deals with Trump and agreeing to hefty tariffs were Pakistan, South Korea, Vietnam, Indonesia and the Philippines.

Even countries that saw their tariffs lowered from April without reaching a deal are still paying much higher tariffs than before Trump took office. Angola’s tariff, for instance, dropped to 15% from 32% in April, but in 2022 it was less than 1.5%. And while Trump administration cut Taiwan’s tariff to 20% from 32% in April, the pain will still be felt.

“20% from the beginning has not been our goal, we hope that in further negotiations we will get a more beneficial and more reasonable tax rate,” Taiwan’s president Lai Ching-te told reporters in Taipei Friday.

Trump also agreed to reduce the tariff on the tiny southern African kingdom of Lesotho to 15% from the 50% he’d announced in April, but the damage may already have been done there.

Bashing Brazil, clobbering Canada, shellacking the Swiss

Countries that didn’t knuckle under — and those that found other ways to incur Trump’s wrath — got hit harder.

Even some poorer countries were not spared. Laos’ annual economic output comes to $2,100 per person and Algeria’s $5,600 — versus America’s $75,000. Nonetheless, Laos got rocked with a 40% tariff and Algeria with a 30% levy.

Trump slammed Brazil with a 50% import tax largely because he didn’t like the way it was treating former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, who is facing trial for trying to lose his electoral defeat in 2022. Never mind that the U.S. has exported more to Brazil than it’s imported every year since 2007.

Trump’s decision to plaster a 35% tariff on longstanding U.S. ally Canada was partly designed to threaten Ottawa for saying it would recognize a Palestinian state. Trump is a staunch supporter of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Switzerland was clobbered with a 39% import tax — even higher than the 31% Trump originally announced on April 2.

“The Swiss probably wish that they had camped in Washington’’ to make a deal, said Wolff, now senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics. “They’re clearly not at all happy.’’

Fortunes may change if Trump’s tariffs are upended in court. Five American businesses and 12 states are suing the president, arguing that his Liberation Day tariffs exceeded his authority under the 1977 law.

In May, the U.S. Court of International Trade, a specialized court in New York, agreed and blocked the tariffs, although the government was allowed to continue collecting them while its appeal wend its way through the legal system, and may likely end up at the U.S. Supreme Court. In a hearing Thursday, the judges on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit sounded skeptical about Trump’s justifications for the tariffs.

“If (the tariffs) get struck down, then maybe Brazil’s a winner and not a loser,’’ Appleton said.

Paying more for knapsacks and video games

Trump portrays his tariffs as a tax on foreign countries. But they are actually paid by import companies in the U.S. who try to pass along the cost to their customers via higher prices. True, tariffs can hurt other countries by forcing their exporters to cut prices and sacrifice profits — or risk losing market share in the United States.

But economists at Goldman Sachs estimate that overseas exporters have absorbed just one-fifth of the rising costs from tariffs, while Americans and U.S. businesses have picked up the most of the tab.

Walmart, Procter & Gamble, Ford, Best Buy, Adidas, Nike, Mattel and Stanley Black & Decker, have all hiked prices due to U.S. tariffs

“This is a consumption tax, so it disproportionately affects those who have lower incomes,’’ Appleton said. “Sneakers, knapsacks … your appliances are going to go up. Your TV and electronics are going to go up. Your video game devices, consoles are going to up because none of those are made in America.’’

Trump’s trade war has pushed the average U.S. tariff from 2.5% at the start of 2025 to 18.3% now, the highest since 1934, according to the Budget Lab at Yale University. And that will impose a $2,400 cost on the average household, the lab estimates.

“The U.S. consumer’s a big loser,″ Wolff said.

____

AP Economics Writer Christopher Rugaber contributed to this story.





Source link

Top Stories

Iran-backed Houthis raid UN offices in Yemen’s capital and detain staffers

Published

on


CAIRO (AP) — Iran-backed Houthis on Sunday raided offices of the United Nations’ food, health and children’s agencies in Yemen’s capital, detaining 11 U.N. employees, officials said. The rebels tightened security across Sanaa following the Israeli killing of their prime minister and several Cabinet members.

Abeer Etefa, a spokesperson for the World Food Program, told The Associated Press that security forces raided the agencies’ offices in the Houthi-controlled capital on Sunday morning.

Also raided were offices of the World Health Organization and UNICEF, according to a U.N. official and a Houthi official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to brief the media. The U.N. official said armed forces raided the offices and questioned employees in the parking lot.

Ammar Ammar, a spokesperson for UNICEF, said a number of the agency’s staffers were detained, and UNICEF was seeking additional information from the Houthis.

Both Etefa and Ammar said their agencies were conducting “a comprehensive head count” of their employees in Sanaa and other Houthi-held areas.

U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres in a statement late Sunday said at least 11 personnel had been detained. He condemned that and the “forced entry into the premises of the World Food Program, the seizure of U.N. property and attempts to enter other U.N. premises in Sanaa.” He called for the immediate and unconditional release of the personnel.

The raids were the latest in a long-running Houthi crackdown against the U.N. and other international organizations working in rebel-held areas in Yemen.

They have detained dozens of U.N. staffers, as well as people associated with aid groups, civil society and the now-closed U.S. Embassy in Sanaa. The U.N. suspended its operations in the Houthi stronghold of Saada in northern Yemen after the rebels detained eight U.N. staffers in January.

At least 5 ministers confirmed killed in the Israeli strike

Sunday’s raids came on the heels of the killing of the Houthi prime minister and several of his Cabinet members in an Israeli strike Thursday. It was a blow to the Iran-backed rebels who have launched attacks on Israel and ships in the Red Sea in relation to the Israel-Hamas war in the Gaza Strip.

Among the dead were Prime Minister Ahmed al-Rahawi, Foreign Minister Gamal Amer, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Local Development Mohammed al-Medani, Electricity Minister Ali Seif Hassan, Tourism Minister Ali al-Yafei and Information Minister Hashim Sharafuldin, according to two Houthi officials and the victims’ families.

Also killed was a powerful deputy interior minister, Abdel-Majed al-Murtada, the Houthi officials said.

They were targeted during a “routine workshop held by the government to evaluate its activities and performance over the past year,” a Houthi statement said Saturday, two days after the strike. The Houthis said a funeral for all those killed is scheduled for Monday in Sabeen Square in central Sanaa.

Defense Minister Mohamed Nasser al-Attefi survived the attack while Abdel-Karim al-Houthi, the interior minister and one of the most powerful figures in the rebel group, didn’t attend the Thursday meeting, the Houthi officials said.

U.N. envoy for Yemen Hans Grundberg expressed “great concern” over Israel’s recent strikes in the Houthi-controlled areas following Houthi attacks against Israel.

“Yemen cannot afford to become a battleground for a broader geopolitical conflict,” he said in a statement. He called for de-escalation.

Thursday’s strike came after the Houthis attacked Israel on Aug. 21 with a ballistic missile that its military described as the first cluster bomb the rebels had launched at Israel since 2023. The missile, which the Houthis said was aimed at Ben Gurion Airport, prompted air raid sirens across central Israel and Jerusalem, forcing millions into shelters.

The Houthis are likely to escalate their attacks on Israel and ships in the Red Sea, after they vowed in July to target merchant ships belonging to any company that does business with Israeli ports, regardless of nationality.

“Our military approach of targeting the Israeli enemy, whether with missiles, drones or a naval blockade, is continuous, steady, and escalating,” al-Houthi, the group’s secretive leader, said in a televised speech Sunday.





Source link

Continue Reading

Top Stories

Florida State QB Tommy Castellanos mocks Alabama with merch after opener upset

Published

on


Less than 24 hours after handing Alabama its first loss in a season opener since 2001, Florida State quarterback Tommy Castellanos is capitalizing on the weekend’s biggest upset.

Castellanos’ website is selling eight shirts and sweatshirts taunting the No. 8 Crimson Tide over its 31-17 loss to the Seminoles. Alabama entered the game as a heavy favorite, even on the road.

Some of the merchandise features the line “Nick Can’t Save Them,” a reference to his eyebrow-raising comments about the Tide in June, when he said, “They don’t have Nick Saban to save them. I just don’t see them stopping me.”

At ACC media days in July, he doubled down on his prediction, telling reporters: “We stand on what I said. I said what I said, and we stand on that.”

 

 

On Saturday, he backed up those words, leading FSU to a stunning victory.

Other items Castellanos is selling show a cartoon of him standing on a brick with Saturday’s score painted on it, while others say “Stand On What I Said.”

Castellanos, a senior who transferred to FSU after two seasons at Boston College, completed 9 of 14 pass attempts for 152 yards against Alabama. He also ran for 78 yards and a touchdown.

Alabama suffered multiple upsets last season under new head coach Kalen DeBoer, and some fans feel the team has underperformed since Saban’s retirement, posting a 9-5 record since the switch.

The Seminoles will face East Texas A&M next Saturday, while Alabama is set to take on Louisiana-Monroe the same day.

(Photo by Butch Dill / Getty Images)





Source link

Continue Reading

Top Stories

Kristi Noem confirms plan to expand ICE operations in major cities

Published

on


Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem confirmed Sunday that the Trump administration plans to expand Immigration and Customs Enforcement operations in major cities, including Chicago.

Asked about plans to expand ICE operations in Chicago specifically, Noem told CBS News’ “Face the Nation,” “We’ve already had ongoing operations with ICE in Chicago and throughout Illinois and other states, making sure that we’re upholding our laws, but we do intend to add more resources to those operations.”

Asked about what an expansion of ICE operations would look like in Chicago and whether it would involve a mobilization of National Guard troops to assist with immigration raids and arrests, Noem demurred, saying, “That always is a prerogative of President [Donald] Trump and his decision. I won’t speak to the specifics of the operations that are planned in other cities.”

Her remarks come one day after Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson signed an executive order directing his city’s legal department to explore ways to counter a potential surge in federal law enforcement and National Guard troops to Illinois.

During a press conference Saturday, Johnson warned that Chicago officials had “received credible reports that we have days, not weeks, before our cities see some type of militarized activity by the federal government.”

Earlier this month, the Trump administration directed federal law enforcement officers, including those employed by ICE, to assist police in Washington, D.C., with crime-fighting operations. That surge of resources included thousands of National Guard troops who were deployed to the nation’s capital with the stated goal of lowering crime rates.

Following the movement of troops and law enforcement officers to Washington, Trump threatened to send federal officers and troops to other major American cities, including Baltimore.

Later in the Sunday interview, Noem was asked whether Boston would be one of the cities where the federal government would surge immigration enforcement agents.

“There’s a lot of cities that are dealing with crime and violence right now, and so we haven’t taken anything off the table,” she said, adding later: “I’d encourage every single big city — San Francisco, Boston, Chicago, whatever they are — if they want to help make their city safer, more prosperous, allow people the opportunity to walk in freedom like the people of Washington, D.C., are now … they should call us.”

Other Democratic officials, including a group of over a dozen governors, have condemned plans to deploy troops to their states.

In a statement last week, they said, “Whether it’s Illinois, Maryland and New York or another state tomorrow, the President’s threats and efforts to deploy a state’s National Guard without the request and consent of that state’s governor is an alarming abuse of power, ineffective, and undermines the mission of our service members.”

And in an interview that aired Sunday on “Face the Nation,” Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker, a Democrat, said, “We don’t want troops on the streets of American cities. That’s un-American. Frankly, the president of the United States ought to know better.”

Pritzker also accused the Trump administration of targeting states run by Democrats rather than those run by Republicans, telling CBS, “Notice he never talks about where the most violent crime is occurring, which is in red states. … Their violent crime rates are much worse in other places, and we’re very proud of the work that we’ve done.”

Asked whether there are plans in place to deploy troops and federal law enforcement officials to states and cities run by Republicans, Noem said, “Absolutely.”

“Every single city is evaluated for what we need to do there to make it safer. So we’ve got operations that, again, I won’t talk about details on, but we absolutely are not looking through the viewpoint at anything we’re doing with a political lens,” she added.



Source link

Continue Reading

Trending