Trump vows to take back ‘stolen’ wealth as tariffs on steel and aluminum imports go into effect

Trump vows to take back ‘stolen’ wealth as tariffs on steel and aluminum imports go into effect
US Trade Representative nominee Jamieson Greer called the European Union's economic policies "out of step with reality" after the bloc promised to strike back on Washington's sweeping steel and aluminum tariffs. (AFP)
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Updated 13 March 2025
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Trump vows to take back ‘stolen’ wealth as tariffs on steel and aluminum imports go into effect

Trump vows to take back ‘stolen’ wealth as tariffs on steel and aluminum imports go into effect
  • Trump’s use of tariffs to extract concessions from other nations points toward a possibly destructive trade war
  • It also has destabilized the stock market and stoked anxiety about an economic downturn

WASHINGTON: President Donald Trump openly challenged US allies on Wednesday by increasing tariffs on all steel and aluminum imports to 25 percent as he vowed to take back wealth “stolen” by other countries, drawing quick retaliation from Europe and Canada.
The Republican president’s use of tariffs to extract concessions from other nations points toward a possibly destructive trade war and a stark change in America’s approach to global leadership. It also has destabilized the stock market and stoked anxiety about an economic downturn.
“The United States of America is going to take back a lot of what was stolen from it by other countries and, frankly, by incompetent US leadership,” Trump told reporters on Wednesday. “We’re going to take back our wealth, and we’re going to take back a lot of the companies that left.”
Trump removed all exemptions from his 2018 tariffs on the metals, in addition to increasing the tariffs on aluminum from 10 percent. His moves, based off a February directive, are part of a broader effort to disrupt and transform global commerce.
He has separate tariffs on Canada, Mexico and China, with plans to also tax imports from the European Union, Brazil and South Korea by charging “reciprocal” rates starting on April 2.
The EU announced its own countermeasures on Wednesday. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said that as the United States was “applying tariffs worth 28 billion dollars, we are responding with countermeasures worth 26 billion euros,” or about $28 billion. Those measures, which cover not just steel and aluminum products but also textiles, home appliances and agricultural goods, are due to take effect on April 1.
US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer responded by saying that the EU was punishing America instead of fixing what he viewed as excess capacity in steel and aluminum production.
“The EU’s punitive action completely disregards the national security imperatives of the United States – and indeed international security – and is yet another indicator that the EU’s trade and economic policies are out of step with reality,” he said in a statement.

 

Meeting on Wednesday with Ireland’s Taoiseach Micheál Martin, Trump said “of course” he wants to respond to EU’s retaliations and “of course” Ireland is taking advantage of the United States.
“The EU was set up in order to take advantage of the United States,” Trump said.
Last year, the United States ran a $87 billion trade imbalance with Ireland. That’s partially because of the tax structure created by Trump’s 2017 overhaul, which incentivized US pharmaceutical companies to record their sales abroad, Brad Setser, a senior fellow at the Council of Foreign Relations, said on X.
Canada sees itself as locked in a trade war because of White House claims about fentanyl smuggling and that its natural resources and factories subtract from the US economy instead of supporting it.
“This is going to be a day to day fight. This is now the second round of unjustified tariffs leveled against Canada,” said Mélanie Joly, Canada’s foreign affairs minister. “The latest excuse is national security despite the fact that Canada’s steel and aluminum adds to America’s security. All the while there is a threat of further and broader tariffs on April 2 still looming. The excuse for those tariffs shifts every day.”
Canada is the largest foreign supplier of steel and aluminum to the United States and plans to impose retaliatory tariffs of Canadian $29.8 billion ($20.7 billion) starting Thursday in response to the US taxes on the metals.
Canada’s new tariffs would be on steel and aluminum products, as well as US goods including computers, sports equipment and water heaters worth $14.2 billion Canadian ($9.9 billion). That’s in addition to the 25 percent counter tariffs on $30 billion Canadian ($20.8 billion) of imports from the US that were put in place on March 4 in response to other Trump import taxes that he’s partially delayed by a month.
Trump told CEOs in the Business Roundtable a day earlier that the tariffs were causing companies to invest in US factories. The 7.5 percent drop in the S&P 500 stock index over the past month on fears of deteriorating growth appears unlikely to dissuade him, as Trump argued that higher tariff rates would be more effective at bringing back factories.
“The higher it goes, the more likely it is they’re going to build,” Trump told the group. “The biggest win is if they move into our country and produce jobs. That’s a bigger win than the tariffs themselves, but the tariffs are going to be throwing off a lot of money to this country.”
Trump on Tuesday had threatened to put tariffs of 50 percent on steel and aluminum from Canada, but he chose to stay with the 25 percent rate after the province of Ontario suspended plans to put a surcharge on electricity sold to Michigan, Minnesota and New York.
Democratic lawmakers dismissed Trump’s claims that his tariffs are about national security and drug smuggling, saying they’re actually about generating revenues to help cover the cost of his planned income tax cuts for the wealthy.
“Donald Trump knows his policies could wreck the economy, but he’s doing it anyway,” said Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer of New York. “Why are they doing all these crazy things that Americans don’t like? One reason, and one reason alone: tax breaks for billionaires, the north star of the Republican party’s goals.

In many ways, the president is addressing what he perceives as unfinished business from his first term. Trump meaningfully increased tariffs, but the revenues collected by the federal government were too small to significantly increase overall inflationary pressures.
Outside forecasts by the Budget Lab at Yale University, Tax Policy Center and others suggest that US families would have the costs of the taxes passed onto them in the form of higher prices.
With Wednesday’s tariffs on steel and aluminum, Trump is seeking to remedy his original 2018 import taxes that were eroded by exemptions.
After Canada and Mexico agreed to his demand for a revamped North American trade deal in 2020, they avoided the import taxes on the metals. Other US trading partners had import quotas supplant the tariffs. And the first Trump administration also allowed US companies to request exemptions from the tariffs if, for instance, they couldn’t find the steel they needed from domestic producers.
While Trump’s tariffs could help steel and aluminum plants in the United States, they could raise prices for the manufacturers that use the metals as raw materials.
Moreover, economists have found, the gains to the steel and aluminum industries were more than offset by the cost they imposed on “downstream’’ manufacturers that use their products.
At these downstream companies, production fell by nearly $3.5 billion because of the tariffs in 2021, a loss that exceeded the $2.3 billion uptick in production that year by aluminum producers and steelmakers, the US International Trade Commission found in 2023.
Trump sees the tariffs as leading to more domestic factories, and the White House has noted that Volvo, Volkswagen and Honda are all exploring an increase to their US footprint. But the prospect of higher prices, fewer sales and lower profits might cause some companies to refrain from investing in new facilities.
“If you’re an executive in the boardroom, are you really going to tell your board it’s the time to expand that assembly line?” said John Murphy, senior vice president at the US Chamber of Commerce.
The top steel exporters to the US are Canada, Mexico, Brazil, South Korea and Japan, with exports from Taiwan and Vietnam growing at a fast pace, according to the International Trade Administration. Imports from China, the world’s largest steel producer, account for only a small fraction of what the US buys.
The lion’s share of US aluminum imports comes from Canada.


First white South Africans board plane for US under Trump refugee plan

First white South Africans board plane for US under Trump refugee plan
Updated 55 sec ago
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First white South Africans board plane for US under Trump refugee plan

First white South Africans board plane for US under Trump refugee plan
  • Trump’s offer of asylum to white South Africans coincides with heightened racial tensions over land and jobs
  • Trump said descendants of mostly Dutch early settlers, the Afrikaners, were 'victims of unjust racial discrimination'

The first white South Africans granted refugee status under a program initiated by US President Donald Trump boarded a plane to leave from the country’s main international airport in Johannesburg on Sunday.
A queue of white citizens with airport trolleys full of luggage, much of it wrapped in theft-proof cellophane, waited to have their passports stamped, a Reuters reporter saw, before they entered the departure lounge for their charter flight.
“One of the conditions of the permit was to ensure that they were vetted in case one of them has a criminal issue pending,” South African transport department spokesperson Collen Msibi told Reuters, adding that 49 passengers had been cleared.
Journalists were not granted access to those headed to the US Msibi said they were due to fly to Dulles Airport just outside Washington, D.C., and then on to Texas. They had boarded the plane but not yet left as 18:30 GMT.
Trump’s offer of asylum to white South Africans, especially Afrikaners — the group with the longest history in South Africa and who make up the bulk of whites — has been divisive in both countries. In the United States, it comes as the Trump administration has blocked mostly non-white refugee admissions from the rest of the world. In South Africa, it coincides with heightened racial tensions over land and jobs that have dogged domestic politics since the end of white minority rule.
Despite a wider freeze on refugees, Trump called on the US to prioritize resettling Afrikaners, descendants of mostly Dutch early settlers, saying they were “victims of unjust racial discrimination.”
The granting of refugee status to white South Africans — who have remained by far the most privileged race since apartheid ended 30 years ago — has been met with a mixture of alarm and ridicule by South African authorities, who say the Trump administration has waded into a domestic political issue it does not understand.
Three decades since Nelson Mandela ushered democracy into South Africa, the white minority that ruled it has managed to retain most of the wealth that was amassed under colonialism and apartheid. Whites still own three quarters of private land and about 20 times the wealth of the Black majority, according to the Review of Political Economy, an international academic journal. Whites are also the race least affected by joblessness. Yet the claim that minority white South Africans face discrimination from the Black majority has been repeated so often in online chatrooms that is has become orthodoxy for the far right, and has been echoed by Trump’s white South African-born ally Elon Musk.


At least three die, including two children, in Libya-Italy crossing

At least three die, including two children, in Libya-Italy crossing
Updated 30 min 1 sec ago
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At least three die, including two children, in Libya-Italy crossing

At least three die, including two children, in Libya-Italy crossing
  • The migrants were intercepted on Saturday on a rubber boat floating adrift south of the Italian island of Lampedusa that had been spotted by a surveillance aircraft of the EU border agency Frontex

ROME: At least three people have died, including two children aged 3 and 4, in a Mediterranean sea crossing from Libya to Italy, a German sea rescue charity said on Sunday, adding that it had rescued 59 survivors.

The migrants were intercepted on Saturday on a rubber boat floating adrift south of the Italian island of Lampedusa that had been spotted by a surveillance aircraft of the EU border agency Frontex.

“By the time (we) reached the rubber boat at around 4.30pm (1430 GMT), it was too late to help some of the people,” the RESQSHIP charity said in a statement.

“Two bodies of infants aged 3 and 4 were handed over to us,” the charity quoted one of its paramedics identified only as Rania as saying. “They had died the day before, probably of thirst.”

A man was found unconscious and declared dead after attempts to resuscitate him were unsuccessful, RESQSHIP said, adding that it was told by survivors that another migrant had drowned on Friday after going overboard.

Many of the survivors, who were taken to Lampedusa, suffered chemical burns from salt water and fuel, the group said. Two children and four adults in critical condition were handed over to the Italian coast guard to be brought ashore more quickly.

The rubber boat had set off from the port of Zawiya in western Libya on Wednesday, but its engine failed after one day of navigation, leaving the migrants on board exposed to wind and weather, the NGO said.

Lampedusa lies between Tunisia, Malta and the larger Italian island of Sicily and is the first port of call for many migrants seeking to reach the EU from North Africa, in what has become one of the world’s deadliest sea crossings.

Almost 25,000 migrants have died or gone missing on this central Mediterranean route since 2014, according to the International Organization for Migration, including around 1,700 last year and 378 so far this year.


Passenger bus skids off a cliff in Sri Lanka, killing 21

Passenger bus skids off a cliff in Sri Lanka, killing 21
Updated 44 min 38 sec ago
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Passenger bus skids off a cliff in Sri Lanka, killing 21

Passenger bus skids off a cliff in Sri Lanka, killing 21
  • Deadly bus accidents are common in Sri Lanka, especially in the mountainous regions

COLOMBO: A passenger bus skidded off a cliff in Sri Lanka’s tea-growing hill country on Sunday, killing 21 people and injuring at least 14 others, an official said.

The accident occurred in the early hours of Sunday near the town of Kotmale, about 140 kilometers (86 miles) east of Colombo, the capital, in a mountainous area of central Sri Lanka, police said.

Deputy Minister of Transport and Highways Prasanna Gunasena told the media that 21 people died in the accident and 14 others are being treated in hospitals.

Local television showed the bus lying overturned at the bottom of a precipice while workers and others helped remove injured people from the rubble.

The driver was injured and among those admitted to the hospital for treatment. At the time of the accident, nearly 50 people were traveling on the bus.

The bus was operated by a state-run bus company, police said.

Deadly bus accidents are common in Sri Lanka, especially in the mountainous regions, often due to reckless driving and poorly maintained and narrow roads.


Zelensky says he will meet Putin after Trump tells him not to await truce

Zelensky says he will meet Putin after Trump tells him not to await truce
Updated 11 May 2025
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Zelensky says he will meet Putin after Trump tells him not to await truce

Zelensky says he will meet Putin after Trump tells him not to await truce
  • Russian president proposed that Ukraine and Russia hold direct talks in Istanbul next Thursday, May 15

KYIV: Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said he would agree to meet Kremlin leader Vladimir Putin in Turkiye on Thursday after US President Donald Trump told him immediately to accept Putin’s proposal of direct talks.

The Ukrainian leader had responded guardedly earlier on Sunday after the Russian president, in a night-time televised statement that coincided with prime time in the US, proposed that Ukraine and Russia hold direct talks in Istanbul next Thursday, May 15.

It was not clear that Putin had proposed to attend in person, however.

“I will be waiting for Putin in Türkiye on Thursday. Personally. I hope that this time the Russians will not look for excuses,” Zelensky wrote on X.

Putin’s proposal came hours after major European powers demanded on Saturday in Kyiv that Putin agree to an unconditional 30-day ceasefire or face “massive” new sanctions, a position that Trump’s Ukraine envoy Keith Kellogg endorsed on Sunday.

Zelensky too had said Ukraine would be ready for talks with Russia, but only after Moscow agreed to the 30-day ceasefire.

But Trump, who has the power to continue or sever Washington’s crucial supply of arms to Ukraine, took a different line.

“President Putin of Russia doesn’t want to have a Cease Fire Agreement with Ukraine, but rather wants to meet on Thursday, in Turkiye, to negotiate a possible end to the BLOODBATH. Ukraine should agree to this, IMMEDIATELY,” Trump wrote on Truth Social.

“At least they will be able to determine whether or not a deal is possible, and if it is not, European leaders, and the US, will know where everything stands, and can proceed accordingly!“

Putin sent Russia’s armed forces into Ukraine in February 2022, unleashing a conflict that has killed hundreds of thousands of soldiers and triggered the gravest confrontation between Russia and the West since the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis.

With Russian forces grinding forward, the Kremlin chief has offered few, if any, concessions so far.

In his overnight address, he proposed what he said would be “direct negotiations without any preconditions.”

But almost immediately, senior Kremlin aide Yuri Ushakov told reporters the talks must take into account both an abandoned 2022 draft peace deal and the current situation on the ground.

This language is shorthand for Kyiv agreeing to permanent neutrality in return for a security guarantee and accepting that Russia controls swathes of Ukraine.

Putin also dismissed what he said was an attempt to lay down “ultimatums” in the form of Western European and Ukrainian demands for a ceasefire starting on Monday. His foreign ministry spelled out that talks about the root causes of the conflict must precede discussions of a ceasefire.

Trump, who says he wants to be remembered as a peacemaker and has repeatedly promised to end the war, earlier responded to Putin’s address by saying that this could be “A potentially great day for Russia and Ukraine!.”


Taliban govt suspends chess in Afghanistan over gambling

Taliban govt suspends chess in Afghanistan over gambling
Updated 11 May 2025
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Taliban govt suspends chess in Afghanistan over gambling

Taliban govt suspends chess in Afghanistan over gambling
  • Gambling is illegal under the Taliban government’s morality law
  • An Afghani cafe owner said he would respect the suspension but that it would hurt his business and those who enjoyed the game

KABUL: Taliban authorities have barred chess across Afghanistan until further notice over concerns it is a source of gambling, which is illegal under the government’s morality law, a sports official said on Sunday.
The Taliban government has steadily imposed laws and regulations that reflect its austere vision of Islamic law since seizing power in 2021.
“Chess in sharia (Islamic law) is considered a means of gambling,” which is prohibited according to the Propagation of Virtue and Prevention of Vice law announced last year, sports directorate spokesperson Atal Mashwani told AFP.
“There are religious considerations regarding the sport of chess,” he said.
“Until these considerations are addressed, the sport of chess is suspended in Afghanistan,” he added.
Mashwani said the national chess federation had not held any official events for around two years and “had some issues on the leadership level.”
Azizullah Gulzada owns a cafe in Kabul that has hosted informal chess competitions in recent years, but denied any gambling took place and noted chess was played in other Muslim-majority countries.
“Many other Islamic countries have players on an international level,” he told AFP.
He said he would respect the suspension but that it would hurt his business and those who enjoyed the game.
“Young people don’t have a lot of activities these days, so many came here everyday,” he told AFP.
“They would have a cup of tea and challenge their friends to a game of chess.”
Afghanistan’s authorities have restricted other sports in recent years and women have been essentially barred from participating in sport altogether in the country.
Last year, the authorities banned free fighting such as mixed martial arts (MMA) in professional competition, saying it was too “violent” and “problematic with respect to sharia.”