WASHINGTON: President Donald Trump announced that he had suspended plans to impose tariffs on Mexico, tweeting that the country “has agreed to take strong measures” to stem the flow of Central American migrants into the United States. But the deal the two neighbors agreed to falls short of some of the dramatic overhauls the US had pushed for.
A “US-Mexico Joint Declaration” released by the State Department late Friday said the US “will immediately expand the implementation” of a program that returns asylum-seekers who cross the southern border to Mexico while their claims are adjudicated. Mexico will “offer jobs, health care and education” to those people, the agreement stated.
Mexico has also agreed, it said, to take “unprecedented steps to increase enforcement to curb irregular migration,” including the deployment of the Mexican National Guard throughout the country, especially on its southern border with Guatemala. And Mexico is taking “decisive action to dismantle human smuggling and trafficking organizations as well as their illicit financial and transportation networks,” the State Department said.
The move puts to an end — for now — a threat that had sparked dire warnings from members of Trump’s own party, who warned the tariffs would damage the economy, drive up prices for consumers and imperil an updated North American trade pact. Trump’s Friday night tweet marked a sharp reversal from earlier in the day, when his spokeswoman Sarah Sanders told reporters: “Our position has not changed. The tariffs are going forward as of Monday.”
Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador tweeted, “Thanks to the support of all Mexicans, the imposition of tariffs on Mexican products exported to the USA has been avoided.” He called for a gathering to celebrate in Tijuana Saturday.
The changes, in part, continue steps the Trump administration was already taking. The US announced in December that it would make some asylum seekers wait in Mexico while their cases were being proceeded — a begrudging agreement with Mexico that has taken months to scale and that has been plagued with glitches, including wrong court dates, travel problems and issues with lawyers reaching their clients.
Homeland Security officials have been ramping up slowly, and were already working to spread the program along the border before the latest blowup. About 10,000 people have been returned to Mexico to wait out the processing of their immigration cases since the program began Jan. 29. More than 100,000 migrants are currently crossing the US border each month, but not everyone claims asylum and migrants can wait an entire year before making a claim.
Any sizable increase may also be difficult to achieve. At the San Ysidro crossing alone, Mexico had been prepared to accept up to 120 asylum seekers per week, but for the first six weeks only 40 people per week were returned.
Trump had announced the tariff plan last week, declaring in a tweet that, on June 10, the US would “impose a 5% Tariff on all goods coming into our Country from Mexico, until such time as illegal migrants coming through Mexico, and into our Country, STOP.” US officials had laid out steps Mexico could take to prevent the tariffs, but many had doubts that even those steps would be enough to satisfy Trump on illegal immigration, a signature issue of his presidency and one that he sees as crucial to his 2020 re-election campaign.
After returning from Europe Friday, though, Trump tweeted, “I am pleased to inform you that The United States of America has reached a signed agreement with Mexico.” He wrote that the “Tariffs scheduled to be implemented by the US on Monday, against Mexico, are hereby indefinitely suspended.”
He said Mexico has agreed to work to “stem the tide of Migration through Mexico, and to our Southern Border” and said those steps would “greatly reduce, or eliminate, Illegal Immigration coming from Mexico and into the United States.”
The 5% tax on all Mexican goods , which would increase every month up to 25% under Trump’s plan, would have had enormous economic implications for both countries. Americans bought $378 billion worth of Mexican imports last year, led by cars and auto parts. Many members of Trump’s Republican Party and business allies had urged him to reconsider — or at least postpone actually implementing the tariffs as talks continue — citing the potential harm to American consumers and manufactures.
From the moment Trump announced the tariff threat, observers wondered whether he would pull the trigger, noting his habit of creating problems and then claiming credit when he rushes in to solve them.
In late March, Trump threatened to shut the entire US-Mexico border if Mexico didn’t immediately halt illegal immigration. Just a few days later, he backed off that threat, saying he was pleased with steps Mexico had taken. It was unclear, however, what — if anything — Mexico had changed.
US and Mexican officials met for more than 10 hours Friday during a third day of talks at the US State Department trying to hash out a deal that would satisfy Trump’s demand that Mexico dramatically increase its efforts to crack down on migrants.
The talks had been focused, in part, on attempting to reach a compromise on changes that would make it harder for migrants who pass through Mexico from other countries to claim asylum in the US, those monitoring the situation said. Mexico has long opposed such a change but appeared open to considering a potential compromise that could include exceptions or waivers for different types of cases. The joint declaration, however makes no mention of the issue.
Leaving the State Department Friday night, Mexican Foreign Secretary Marcelo Ebrard said he thought the deal struck “a fair balance” because the US “had more drastic proposals and measures at the start.”
But Leticia Calderón Cheluis, a migration expert at the Mora Institute in Mexico City, said the agreement is essentially a series of compromises solely by Mexico, which she said committed to “a double clamp at both borders.”
Trump in recent months has embraced tariffs as a political tool he can use to force countries to comply with his demands — in this case on his signature issue of immigration. Beyond Trump and several White House advisers, though, few in his administration had believed the tariffs were a good idea, according to officials familiar with internal deliberations. Those people had worried about the negative economic consequences for Americans and argued that tariffs — which would likely spark retaliatory taxes on US exports — would also hurt the administration politically.
Republicans in Congress had also warned the White House that they were ready to stand up to the president to try to block his tariffs, which they worried would spike costs to US consumers, harm the economy and imperil a major pending US-Mexico-Canada trade deal .
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., greeted Friday night’s news with sarcasm. “This is a historic night!” he tweeted. “Now that that problem is solved, I’m sure we won’t be hearing any more about it in the future.”
Trump says US, Mexico reach agreement to prevent tariffs
Trump says US, Mexico reach agreement to prevent tariffs
- Trump has nonetheless embraced tariffs as a political tool he can use to force countries to comply with his demands — in this case on his signature issue of immigration
China, Philippines trade barbs over disputed reef
- The Sandy Cay reef lies near Thitu Island, or Pag-asa, where the Philippines stations troops and maintains a coast guard monitoring base
- Chinese state broadcaster CCTV said Saturday that the country’s coast guard had ‘implemented maritime control’ over Tiexian Reef, part of Sandy Cay
The Sandy Cay reef lies near Thitu Island, or Pag-asa, where the Philippines stations troops and maintains a coast guard monitoring base.
Chinese state broadcaster CCTV said Saturday that the country’s coast guard had “implemented maritime control” over Tiexian Reef, part of Sandy Cay, in mid-April.
The Philippines and China have been engaged in months of confrontations over the South China Sea, which Beijing claims nearly in its entirety despite an international ruling that its assertion has no legal basis.
“There is no truth whatsoever to the claim of the China Coast Guard that the (Sandy Cay sandbanks) have been seized,” National Security Council spokesman Jonathan Malaya told a Monday press conference.
“It’s in the interest of the People’s Republic of China to use the information space to intimidate and harass,” he said, calling the Sandy Cay report a “made-up” story that had been “irresponsible” to disseminate.
CCTV on Saturday published a photograph of four coast guard officials posing with a national flag on the reef’s white surface, in what the broadcaster described as a “vow of sovereignty.”
On Monday, the Philippine Coast Guard released its own photo showing Filipino sailors holding the country’s flag over the same disputed reef during an early morning mission the day before.
There do not appear to be any signs that China has permanently occupied or built a structure on the reef, which is a group of small sandbanks in the Spratly Islands.
Beijing’s foreign ministry on Monday reiterated the reef was part of China’s territory and said its moves constituted “rights protection and law enforcement activities.”
Spokesman Guo Jiakun said the steps were “aimed at countering the Philippines’ illegal landing and other acts of infringement and provocation” as well as “firmly safeguarding national territorial sovereignty.”
In recent months, Beijing and Manila have blamed each other for causing what they describe as the ecological degradation of several disputed landforms in the South China Sea.
The US and Philippine militaries are currently conducting joint exercises that Beijing has said constitute a threat to regional stability.
Chinese warships have been spotted in Philippine waters since those bilateral “Balikatan” exercises kicked off last week, with aircraft carrier Shandong reportedly coming within 2.23 nautical miles (about four kilometers) of northern Babuyan Island.
India, Pakistan exchange small arms fire, China urges restraint
- After the April 22 attack that killed 26 people, India has identified two of the three suspected militants as Pakistani
- The attack triggered outrage and grief in Hindu-majority India, along with calls for action against Islamic Pakistan
SRINAGAR, India: India said on Monday it had responded to ‘unprovoked’ small arms firing from Pakistan along the de facto border for the fourth consecutive night, as it deepens its search for militants in the region following last week’s deadly attack on tourists in Kashmir.
After the April 22 attack that killed 26 people, India has identified two of the three suspected militants as Pakistani, although Islamabad has denied any role and called for a neutral probe.
Security officials and survivors have said the militants segregated the men at the site, a meadow in the Pahalgam area, asked their names and targeted Hindus before shooting them at close range.
The attack triggered outrage and grief in Hindu-majority India, along with calls for action against Islamic Pakistan, whom New Delhi accuses of funding and encouraging terrorism in Kashmir, a region both nations claim and have fought two wars over.
The nuclear-armed nations have unleashed a raft of measures against each other, with India putting the critical Indus Waters Treaty in abeyance and Pakistan closing its airspace to Indian airlines.
China, a key player in the region, said on Monday it hoped India and Pakistan will exercise restraint and welcomed all measures that will help cool down the situation.
The Indian Army said it had responded to “unprovoked” small arms fire from multiple Pakistan Army posts around midnight on Sunday along the 740-km de facto border separating the Indian and Pakistani areas of Kashmir. It gave no further details and reported no casualties.
The Pakistani military did not respond to a request for comment.
In a separate statement, the Pakistan army said it has killed 54 Islamist militants who were trying to enter the country from the Afghanistan border to the west in the last two days.
India’s defense forces have conducted several military exercises across the country since the attack. Some of these are routine preparedness drills, a defense official said.
Security forces have detained around 500 people for questioning after they searched nearly 1,000 houses and forests hunting for militants in Indian Kashmir, a local police official told Reuters on Monday.
At least nine houses have been demolished so far, the official added.
Political leaders in the state have called for caution to ensure the innocent are not harmed in the government’s actions against terrorism after the deadliest incident of its kind in India in nearly two decades.
“This is the first time in 26 years that I have seen people coming out in this way...to say we are not with this attack,” Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Omar Abdullah told the legislature.
“It (militancy) will finish when people are with us, and today it seems like people are getting there,” he said.
Kashmir Resistance, also known as The Resistance Front, said in a post on X that it “unequivocally” denied involvement in last week’s attack, after an initial message that claimed responsibility.
The group, considered an offshoot of the Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Taiba by a Delhi-based think tank, blamed a ‘cyber intrusion’ for the previous social media post that claimed responsibility.
China says ‘no phone call’ recently between Xi and Trump
- The world’s two biggest economies are locked in an escalating tit-for-tat trade battle
BEIJING: Beijing on Monday insisted that “no phone call” took place recently between President Xi Jinping and his US counterpart, after Donald Trump said he had spoken with the Chinese leader.
The world’s two biggest economies are locked in an escalating tit-for-tat trade battle triggered by Trump’s levies on Chinese goods, which have reached 145 percent on many products.
In an interview conducted on April 22 with TIME Magazine and published Friday, Trump insisted Chinese leader Xi called him despite Beijing denying there had been any contact between the two countries over their bitter trade dispute.
The US president did not say when the call took place or specify what was discussed.
Asked about the comments Monday, foreign ministry spokesman Guo Jiakun said: “As far as I know, there has been no phone call between the two heads of state recently.”
“China and the United States are not conducting consultations or negotiations on tariff issues,” he added.
Trump’s NATO warnings jolt Europe into rethinking defense
- Trump has accused NATO allies of spending too little on their own defense
- Europe-wide, industry leaders and experts have pointed out challenges the continent must overcome to be a truly self-sufficient military power
MADRID: Inside a sprawling hangar in Spain, workers bolt together a fuselage for European aerospace giant Airbus, which churns out jets and other military equipment.
The multinational conglomerate is a rarity in Europe’s defense industry, backed by Spain, Germany, France and Britain. The norm for defense industries on the continent is big-name national champions and hundreds of small companies mostly working to fill orders for state governments.
That piecemeal paradigm could hinder Europe’s plan for spending more on defense, which has been given a jolt — and previously unimaginable political backing — following US President Donald Trump’s threats to not protect NATO allies in the context of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
For years, Trump has accused NATO allies of spending too little on their own defense. In recent months, the chasm in trans-Atlantic ties has grown. The Trump administration has signaled that US priorities lie beyond Europe and Ukraine and that the time has come “for Europe to stand on its own feet.”
The shortfall in defense spending is most evident is Spain.
Last year, it trailed all NATO allies in defense spending as a share of GDP, forcing the country to play catch-up this year to reach the alliance’s 2 percent spending goal. NATO leaders are expected to again increase that goal this summer.
Europe-wide, industry leaders and experts have pointed out challenges the continent must overcome to be a truly self-sufficient military power, chiefly its decades-long reliance on the US as well as its fragmented defense industry.
“Europe procures a majority of its defense material outside of Europe, and that’s really something we have to depart from,” said Jean-Brice Dumont, head of air power at Airbus Defense and Space at the aircraft maker’s factory outside Madrid. “The journey until we get full autonomy is a long journey, but it has to be started.”
Moving out of Washington’s shadow
The pro-defense shift in Europe can be seen in the stock markets, where major European arms makers such as BAE Systems (UK), Leonardo (Italy), Rheinmetall (Germany), Thales (France) and Saab (Sweden) have all been on the rise despite recent turmoil caused by Trump’s tariffs.
European companies are poised to benefit from a push by European Union policy makers to ensure that as many euros as possible end up in European companies, as opposed to flowing across the Atlantic. The challenge is daunting, but not as scary as having to face a potential military threat without American help.
One question is: How quickly can production scale up?
An EU white paper published last month bluntly stated that Europe’s defense industry is not able to produce defense systems and equipment sufficient for what member states need. It noted where much of the bloc’s spending has taken place: the US
Europe has relied on the US not just for military equipment but also intelligence, surveillance and even software updates. Supply chain complexities mean that European-made equipment often use software or other components built and even operated by US companies.
Airbus’ A330 MRTT air-to-air refueling plane, made outside Madrid, is an example of specialized equipment called enablers that Europe largely lacks.
Another example is Sweden’s Gripen fighter made by Saab, which has an engine made by American firm General Electric, noted Lorenzo Scarazzato, a researcher at the Stockholm Peace Research Institute who studies Europe’s arms industry.
According to a recent SIPRI report, more than half of Europe’s arms imports from 2020 to 2024 came from the US
Changing this paradigm will take years of sustained investment, Scarazzato said, and common vision across the bloc. “It’s going to be a massive overhaul of the whole command and control structure.”
A fragmented industry
A fragmented defense industry in Europe reduces the interoperability of equipment, experts say, and makes it harder to build economies of scale.
For example, there are at least 12 types of tanks produced across the 27-nation EU, compared to just one used by the US military, according to the European Defense Agency.
But there have been some recent positive developments in the private sector, the International Institute for Strategic Studies noted in its 2025 Military Balance report. Leonardo and Rheinmetall started a joint venture last year for combat vehicles.
Europe’s capitals have historically looked to spend on their own local industries — not neighboring ones — to ensure jobs and feed national pride ingrained in manufacturing military hardware, said Douglas Barrie, senior fellow for military aerospace at IISS.
“The fundamental economic heft is there. Partly it’s a question of political will, partly the question of national pride and national identities,” Barrie said. “While politicians can kind of advocate for consolidation, it has to be driven by individuals within industry, and it will be the industrialists who will see a logic in this.”
The urge for European governments to favor local manufacturers — instead of shopping among other European companies for better value — was evident this month when Spain announced that it will raise defense spending by an additional 10.5 billion euros ($12 billion) this year.
The government said 87 percent of that money would go to Spanish companies in the hopes of generating nearly 100,000 direct and indirect jobs and boosting Spain’s GDP by 0.4 to 0.7 percentage points.
“Every time there is a political interest in consolidation, that’s what you bump into,” Barrie said.
Hope for the future?
The European Commission is offering 150 billion euros ($170 billion) for member states and Ukraine to buy air defense systems, drones and strategic enablers like air transport, as well as to boost cybersecurity.
It’s part of a package of measures that include easing budgetary rules for defense spending and reshuffling EU funds to reflect security priorities.
Under the proposals, member states will be invited to buy at least 40 percent of defense equipment “by working together” and trade at least 35 percent of defense goods between EU countries, as opposed to outside ones, by 2030.
Airbus’ Dumont said his message for Europe’s leaders was clear.
“Europe has to fund its European industry to prepare the defense of tomorrow, for the day after tomorrow and for the years to come. And that’s what we see happening now.”
Australia’s ruling party to hike student visa fees again in pre-election pledge
- The visa fee hike, from A$1,600 currently, will bring in A$760 million over the next four years
- Almost 200,000 international students arrived in Australia in February 2025, government statistics show
SYDNEY: Australia’s ruling Labour Party said on Monday it would raise visa fees for international students to A$2,000 ($1,279) if reelected, the latest measure aimed at the lucrative education sector that has been a major source of immigration.
The visa fee hike, from A$1,600 currently, will bring in A$760 million over the next four years, Australia’s Treasurer Jim Chalmers and finance minister Katy Gallagher said in a statement on Labor’s policy costings for Saturday’s federal election.
“We think that’s a sensible measure that really prizes, I think, the value of studying here in Australia,” Gallagher told a news conference.
The government more than doubled the fee for international student visas in July last year to A$1,600 from A$710.
Australia’s conservative opposition has already pledged to raise the visa fee to a minimum of A$2,500, and A$5,000 for applicants to the country’s top universities, known as the Group of Eight.
International students are a major source of revenue for Australian universities, but are also in part responsible for a rise in net migration that has driven up housing costs.
Almost 200,000 international students arrived in Australia in February 2025, government statistics show, an increase of 12.1 percent over the previous year and 7.3 percent higher than pre-COVID levels in February 2019.
Labor has promised to cap international student commencements at 270,000 in 2025, while the opposition favors a lower figure of 240,000.
There were more than a million international students enrolled in Australia in 2024, while 572,000 students commenced their studies.
Visa fees for students in Australia are already significantly higher than similar countries such as the US and Canada, where they cost about $185 and C$150 ($108) respectively.
The government last year also tightened English language requirements for student and graduate visas, as well as introducing powers to suspend education providers from recruiting international students if they repeatedly break rules.
