Page 36 - United States

Japan racks up trade deficit amid threat from Donald Trump's tariffs

Japan sank into a trade deficit of 2.2 trillion yen ($15 billion) for the first six month of this year, according to government data released Thursday, as exports were hit by President Donald Trump's tariffs. In June, Japan's exports slipped 0.5% from a year earlier after its shipments of vehicles and other products were slapped with a 25% tariff. Trump has postponed implementing that higher import duty until Aug. 1, to allow time for negotiations but so far no deal has been reached. Exports in June totaled nearly 9.2 trillion yen ($62 billion), in the second straight month of declines. Imports in June rose 0.2% to 9 trillion yen ($61 billion), the Finance Ministry said. That left a trade surplus of 153 billion yen (just over $1 billion). The trade deficit in May was 637.6 billion yen, or $4.4 billion. Japan's exports to the United States fell 11% in June, with auto exports plunging 25%. Shipments to China decreased by nearly 5%. Exports to Mexico, a major auto assembly hub for Nort

Trump hints at trade deal with India, says major announcements on the way

US President Donald Trump hints at new deal with India, possibly with tariffs similar to Indonesia's 19% rate

Russia launches attacks on four Ukrainian cities, at least 15 injured

Russian weapons pounded four Ukrainian cities overnight from Tuesday to Wednesday, injuring at least 15 people in an attack that mostly targeted energy infrastructure, officials said. The latest bombardment in Russia's escalating aerial campaign against civilian areas came ahead of a Sept 2 deadline set by US President Donald Trump for the Kremlin to reach a peace deal in the three-year war, under the threat of possible severe Washington sanctions if it doesn't. No date has yet been publicly set for a possible third round of direct peace talks between delegations from Russia and Ukraine. Two previous rounds delivered no progress apart from prisoner swaps. Russia launched 400 Shahed and decoy drones, as well as one ballistic missile, during the night, the Ukrainian air force said. The strikes targeted northeastern Kharkiv, which is Ukraine's second-largest city, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy's hometown of Kryvyi Rih in central Ukraine, Vinnytsia in the west and Odesa in the ...

US sends third-country deportees to small African kingdom of Eswatini

The United States has sent five men to the small African nation of Eswatini in an expansion of the Trump administration's third-country deportation programme, the US Department of Homeland Security said on Tuesday. The US has already deported eight men to another African nation, South Sudan, after the Supreme Court lifted restrictions on sending people to countries where they have no ties. In a late-night post on X, Homeland Security Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said the men, who are citizens of Vietnam, Jamaica, Cuba, Yemen and Laos, had arrived in Eswatini on a plane. She said they were all convicted criminals and individuals so uniquely barbaric that their home countries refused to take them back. There was no immediate comment from Eswatini authorities over any deal to accept third-country deportees or what would happen to them in that country. The Trump administration has said it is seeking more deals with African nations to take deportees from the US. Some have pushe

US immigration flexes authority to expand detention without bond hearing

US Immigration and Customs Enforcement has moved to detain far more people than before by tapping a legal authority to jail anyone who entered the country illegally without allowing them a bond hearing. Todd Lyons, ICE's acting director, wrote employees on July 8 that the agency was revisiting its extraordinarily broad and equally complex authority to detain people and that, effective immediately, people would be ineligible for a bond hearing before an immigration judge. Instead, they cannot be released unless the Homeland Security Department makes an exception. The directive, first reported by The Washington Post, signals wider use of a 1996 law to detain people who had previously been allowed to remain free while their cases wind through immigration court. Asked Tuesday to comment on the memo, a copy of which was obtained by The Associated Press, Homeland Security spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin said: The Biden administration dangerously unleashed millions of unvetted illegal alie

Russia may use 50-day window to wear down Ukraine, but quick gains unlikely

President Donald Trump's ultimatum to Russia to accept a peace deal in Ukraine within 50 days or face bruising sanctions on its energy exports has given the Kremlin extra time to pursue its summer offensive. The dogged Ukrainian resistance, however, makes it unlikely that the Russian military will make any quick gains. President Vladimir Putin has declared repeatedly that any peace deal should see Ukraine withdraw from the four regions that Russia illegally annexed in September 2022 but never fully captured. He also wants Ukraine to renounce its bid to join NATO and accept strict limits on its armed forces - demands Kyiv and its Western allies have rejected. A chronic shortage of manpower and ammunition has forced Ukrainian forces to focus on holding ground rather than launching counteroffensives. But despite a renewed Russian push and an onslaught of aerial attacks on Kyiv and other cities in recent weeks Ukrainian officials and analysts say it remains unlikely that Moscow can

Native American radio stations at risk as US looks to cut $1 bn funding

Dozens of Native American radio stations across the country vital to tribal communities will be at risk of going off the air if Congress cuts more than USD 1 billion from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, according to industry leaders. The US Senate is set to vote this week on whether to approve the Department of Government Efficiency's plan to rescind previously approved public broadcasting funding for 2026 and 2027. Fear is growing that most of the 59 tribal radio stations that receive the funding will go dark, depriving isolated populations of news, local events and critical weather alerts. The House already approved the cuts last month. For Indian Country in general, 80 per cent of the communities are rural, and their only access to national news, native story sharing, community news, whatever it is, is through PBS stations or public radio, said Francene Blythe-Lewis, CEO of the Lincoln, Nebraska-based Native American video programming producer Vision Maker Media. If the

Asia shares struggle, dollar soars on lowered Fed rate cut bets

Data on Tuesday showed US consumer prices rose 0.3 per cent in June, in line with forecasts, but the largest gain since January

Will place tariffs of over 10% on smaller countries, says Donald Trump

President Donald Trump told reporters Tuesday that he plans to place tariffs of over 10 per cent on smaller countries, including nations in Africa and the Caribbean. "We'll probably set one tariff for all of them," Trump said, adding that it could be "a little over 10 per cent tariff" on goods from at least 100 nations. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick interjected that the nations with goods being taxed at these rates would be in Africa and the Caribbean, places that generally do relatively modest levels of trade with the US and would be relatively insignificant for addressing Trump's goals of reducing trade imbalances with the rest of the world. The president has this month been posting letters to roughly two dozen countries and the European Union that simply levied a tariff rate to be charged starting August 1. Those countries generally faced tax rates on the goods close to the April 2 rates announced by the US president, whose rollout of historically high import taxes for the U

2 dead in New Jersey after flood carries away vehicle during heavy rains

Two people in New Jersey were killed after their vehicle was swept up in flood waters during a storm that moved across the U.S. Northeast overnight, authorities said Tuesday. Gov. Phil Murphy, a Democrat, noted the deaths occurred in the northern New Jersey city of Plainfield where there were two storm-related deaths July 3. A third person was killed in North Plainfield during that previous storm. We're not unique, but we're in one of these sort of high humidity, high temperature, high storm intensity patterns right now, Murphy told reporters after touring storm damage in Berkeley Heights. Everybody needs to stay alert. The names of the two latest victims were not immediately released Tuesday. Local officials said the vehicle they were riding in was swept into a brook during the height of the storm. Emergency personnel responded quickly, but tragically, both individuals were pronounced dead at the scene, according to a statement the city posted online. The heavy rains also caused

Mixed trajectory: India's June exports shrink but shipments to US zoom

Indian exporters currently bear a 10 per cent baseline tariff, after the US administration temporarily paused the 26 per cent reciprocal tariff on India

India's exports to US jump 23.5% in June; imports fall over 10%

India's goods exports to the US rose by 23.53 per cent to USD 8.3 billion in June while imports dipped by 10.61 per cent to about USD 4 billion during the month, according to the commerce ministry data. During April-June, the country's exports to the US increased by 22.18 per cent to USD 25.51 billion, while imports rose 11.68 per cent to USD 12.86 billion, the data showed. The US was the largest trading partner of India in the April-June quarter of 2025-26. India and the US are negotiating a bilateral trade agreement. The Indian team is in Washington for the fifth round of talks for the pact. China, another major trading partner of India, saw a 17.18 per cent jump in exports from India to USD 1.38 billion in June and a 17.87 per cent growth in April-June to USD 4.4 billion. Imports from the neighbouring country in June rose by 2.48 per cent to USD 9.51 billion while in the first quarter of 2025-26 by 16.33 per cent to USD 29.74 billion. Singapore, Germany, France, Brazil, and Ko

Indian Americans increasingly occupy liminal space between self-identities

A new survey finds multiple forms of connectivity with India and Indian-origin identity; interestingly, acknowledgement and appreciation of Indian-ness seems to be rising rather than falling

Formal process to replace Fed Chair Powell underway: US Treasury Secy

US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent says a formal process to find Jerome Powell's successor as Fed Chair has begun and suggests Powell should step down entirely after his term ends in May 2026

Drone strike halts US oil firm's work at Sarsang field in Iraqi Kurdistan

A drone strike hit the Sarsang oil field in Iraqi Kurdistan, prompting US firm HKN Energy to suspend operations. The regional government condemned it as terrorism targeting vital infrastructure

San Francisco rolls out Microsoft's AI tools to 30,000 govt workers

With Microsoft 365 Copilot, the US city aims to cut down on administrative burden, improve public services, and become a benchmark for responsible AI use in government

Waltz to face grilling over Signal chat row at Senate hearing for UN role

Mike Waltz, President Donald Trump's nominee for US ambassador to the United Nations, will face questioning from lawmakers Tuesday for the first time since he was ousted as national security adviser in the weeks after he mistakenly added a journalist to a private Signal chat used to discuss sensitive military plans. The former Republican congressman is set to appear before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee for his confirmation hearing, with Trump looking to fill his remaining Cabinet position after months of delay, including the withdrawal of the previous nominee. The hearing will provide senators with the first opportunity to grill Waltz over revelations in March that he added The Atlantic editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg to a private text chain on an unclassified messaging app that was used to discuss planning for strikes on Houthi militants in Yemen. Waltz took responsibility even as criticism mounted against Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth, who shared the sensitive plans in

US inflation likely worsened last month as Trump's tariffs start to bite

Inflation likely accelerated in June as sweeping tariffs on nearly all imports may have pushed up prices for electronics, appliances, and other goods, economists forecast. Consumer prices probably rose 2.6% last month from a year ago, up from an annual increase of 2.4% in May, according to data provider FactSet. The Labour Department will issue its inflation report at 8:30 a.m. eastern. On a monthly basis, prices likely rose 0.3% from May to June, the largest increase since January, economists project. Worsening inflation could pose a political challenge for President Donald Trump, who promised during last year's presidential campaign to immediately lower costs. The sharp inflation spike of 2022-2023 was the worst in four decades and soured most Americans on former president Joe Biden's handling of the economy. Faster price increases would also likely underscore the Federal Reserve's reluctance to cut its short-term interest rate, as Trump is loudly demanding. Excluding the volatil

US appeals court steps in as norms protecting Afghans set to expire

An appeals court has stepped in to keep in place protections for nearly 12,000 Afghans that have allowed them to work in the US and be protected from deportation after they were set to expire as part of the Trump administration's efforts to make more people eligible for removal from the country. The Department of Homeland Security in May said it was ending Temporary Protected Status for 11,700 people from Afghanistan in 60 days. That status had allowed them to work and meant the government could not deport them. CASA, a nonprofit immigrant advocacy group, sued the administration over the TPS revocation for Afghans as well as for people from Cameroon those expire August 4. A federal judge last Friday allowed the lawsuit to go forward but did not grant CASA's request to keep the protections in place while the lawsuit plays out. CASA appealed the case Monday and won a stay keeping in place the temporary status for Afghans that was set to expire Monday. The appeals court gave no reason

Over 20 states sue Trump admin over frozen funding for school programmes

More than 20 states have sued President Donald Trump's administration over billions of dollars in frozen funding for after-school and summer programmes and more other programmes. Aiden Cazares is one of 1.4 million children and teenagers around the country who have been attending after-school and summer programming at a Boys & Girls Club, the YMCA or a public school for free thanks to federal taxpayers. Congress set aside money for the programmes to provide academic support, enrichment and child care to mostly low-income families, but President Donald Trump's administration recently froze the funding. The money for the 21st Century Community Learning Centres is among more than USD 6 billion in federal education grants Trump's Republican administration has withheld, saying it wants to ensure recipients' programs align with the president's priorities. After-school programmes for the fall are in jeopardy In Rhode Island, the state stepped in with funding to keep the summer programs .