WASHINGTON: US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said in a Tuesday speech that the ongoing tariffs showdown against China is unsustainable and expects a “de-escalation” in the trade war between the world’s two largest economies.
But in a private speech in Washington for JPMorgan Chase, Bessent also cautioned that talks between the United States and China had yet to formally start. Trump placed import taxes of 145 percent on China, which has countered with 125 percent tariffs on US goods. Trump has placed tariffs on several dozen countries, causing the stock market to stumble and interest rates to increase on US debt as investors worry about slower economic growth and higher inflationary pressures.
Details of the speech were confirmed by two people familiar with the remarks who insisted on anonymity to discuss them.
“I do say China is going to be a slog in terms of the negotiations,” Bessent said according to a transcript obtained by The Associated Press. “Neither side thinks the status quo is sustainable.”
The S&P 500 stock index rose after Bloomberg News initially reported Bessent’s remarks.
The Trump administration has met for talks with counterparts from Japan, India, South Korea, the European Union, Canada and Mexico, among other nations. But Trump has shown no public indications that he plans to pullback his baseline 10 percent tariff, even as he has insisted he’s looking for other nations to cut their own import taxes and remove any non-tariff barriers that the administration says have hindered exports from the US
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters Tuesday that Trump told her “we’re doing very well” regarding a “potential trade deal with China.”
China on Monday warned other countries against making trade deals with the United States that could negatively impact China.
“China firmly opposes any party reaching a deal at the expense of China’s interests,” China’s Commerce Ministry said in a statement.
Leavitt said the Trump administration has received 18 proposals from other countries for trade deals with the US, adding that “everyone involved wants to see a trade deal happen.”
The uncertainty over tariffs in the financial markets has also been amplified by Trump calling on the Federal Reserve to cut its benchmark interest rate, with the president saying he could fire Fed Chair Jerome Powell if he wanted to do so.
Leavitt said Trump believes the Fed has by holding rates steady as it awaits the impacts of tariffs “in the name of politics, rather in the name of what’s right for the American economy.”
US Treasury secretary says trade war with China is not ‘sustainable’
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US Treasury secretary says trade war with China is not ‘sustainable’
- Bessent also cautioned that talks between the United States and China had yet to formally start
- “I do say China is going to be a slog in terms of the negotiations,” Bessent said
US worker safety agency notifies employees of firings
WASHINGTON: The Trump administration sent termination notices late on Friday to employees of a worker health and safety agency that provides research and services for coal miners, firefighters and others, despite appeals by a lawmaker from Trump’s Republican Party to preserve its programs.
Employees of the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health received reduction-in-force notices that said the job losses were necessary to reshape the workforce of the Department of Health and Human Services, according to a copy of the notices reviewed by Reuters.
Nearly all NIOSH employees were placed on administrative leave in February but around 40 who worked on coal-mining and firefighter safety were asked to return temporarily to work several days ago, the union for the agency’s employees said. At least two of those employees have now been notified of termination.
US Senator Shelley Moore Capito, a Republican from West Virginia, had lobbied Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to restore the programs, including the coal-focused work of its Morgantown, West Virginia, office.
The Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees NIOSH, did not immediately respond to a request for comment after regular business hours. A spokesperson earlier this week said NIOSH’s functions would join the new Administration for a Healthy America, alongside multiple agencies. It was not clear whether any of the terminated employees would be transferred elsewhere.
Reuters reported last month that the halting of NIOSH’s key services ended vital health and safety programs for coal miners, such as mobile health and lung screenings, and a program to relocate miners afflicted with black lung disease to less dusty parts of a mine.
There has been a resurgence of black lung disease in the last decade, including among young coal miners. At the same time, President Donald Trump has led a high-profile campaign to revive coal mining and use, which had been declining in the US.
Lives on hold in India’s border villages with Pakistan
- Relations between the neighbors have plummeted after India accused Pakistan of backing an attack in disputed Kashmir region
- Islamabad has rejected the charge of aiding gunmen who killed 26 people, with both countries since exchanging diplomatic barbs
SAINTH: On India’s heavily fortified border with arch-rival Pakistan, residents of farming villages have sent families back from the frontier, recalling the terror of the last major conflict between the rival armies.
Those who remain in the farming settlement of Sainth, home to some 1,500 people along the banks of the broad Chenab river, stare across the natural division between the nuclear-armed rivals fearing the future.
“Our people can’t plan too far ahead,” said Sukhdev Kumar, 60, the village’s elected headman.
“Most villagers here don’t invest beyond a very basic house,” he added.
“For who knows when a misdirected shell may fall from the other side and ruin everything?”
Relations between the nuclear-armed neighbors have plummeted after India accused Pakistan of backing the worst attack on civilians in Indian-administered Kashmir in years.
Indian police have issued wanted posters for three men accused of carrying out the April 22 attack at Pahalgam — two Pakistanis and an Indian — who they say are members of the Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Taiba group, a UN-designated terrorist organization.
Islamabad has rejected the charge of aiding gunmen who killed 26 people, with both countries since exchanging diplomatic barbs including expelling each other’s citizens.
India’s army said Saturday its troops had exchanged gunfire with Pakistani soldiers overnight along the de facto border with contested Kashmir — which it says has taken place every night since April 24.
Muslim-majority Kashmir has been divided between India and Pakistan since their independence from British rule in 1947, with both governing part of the disputed territory separately and claiming it in its entirety.
Sainth, with its open and lush green fields, is in the Hindu-majority part of Indian-run Jammu and Kashmir.
Security is omnipresent.
Large military camps dot the main road, with watchtowers among thick bushes.
Kumar said most families had saved up for a home “elsewhere as a backup,” saying that only around a third of those with fields remained in the village.
“Most others have moved,” he said.
The region was hit hard during the last major conflict with Pakistan, when the two sides clashed in 1999 in the high-altitude Himalayan mountains further north at Kargil.
Vikram Singh, 40, who runs a local school, was a teenager at the time.
He remembers the “intense mortar shelling” that flew over their heads in the village — with some exploding close by.
“It was tense then, and it is tense now,” Singh told AFP.
“There is a lot to worry since the attack at Pahalgam... The children are scared, the elderly are scared — everyone is living in fear.”
International pressure has been piled on both New Delhi and Islamabad to settle their differences through talks.
The United States has called for leaders to “de-escalate tensions,” neighboring China urged “restraint,” with the European Union warning Friday that the situation was “alarming.
On the ground, Singh seemed resigned that there would be some fighting.
“At times, we feel that war must break out now because, for us, it is already an everyday reality,” he said.
“We anyways live under the constant threat of shelling, so, maybe if it happens, we’d get to live peacefully for a decade or two afterwards.”
There has been a flurry of activity in Trewa, another small frontier village in Jammu.
“So far, the situation is calm — the last cross-border firing episode was in 2023,” said Balbir Kaur, 36, the former village head.
But the villagers are preparing, clearing out concrete shelters ready for use, just in case.
“There were several casualties due to mortar shelling from Pakistan in the past,” she said.
“We’ve spent the last few days checking our bunkers, conducting drills, and going over our emergency protocols, in case the situation worsens,” she added.
Kaur said she backed New Delhi’s stand, with Prime Minister Narendra Modi vowing “to punish every terrorist and their backer” and to “pursue them to the ends of the Earth.”
Dwarka Das, 65, a farmer and the head of a seven-member family, has lived through multiple India-Pakistan conflicts.
“We’re used to such a situation,” Das said.
“During the earlier conflicts, we fled to school shelters and nearby cities. It won’t be any different for us now.”
Woman dies when a bomb she is carrying explodes in the Greek city of Thessaloniki, police say
ATHENS: A woman was killed early Saturday in the northern Greek city of Thessaoloniki when a bomb she was carrying exploded in her hands, police said.
The 38-year-old woman was apparently was carrying the bomb to place it outside a nearby bank around 5 a.m., police said.
Several storefronts and vehicles were damaged by the explosion.
The woman was known to authorities after taking part in several past robberies, according to police, who said they are investigating her possible ties to extreme leftist groups.
Vatican workers install Sistine Chapel stove where ballots are burned during conclave to elect pope
VATICAN CITY: Vatican workers have installed the simple stove in the Sistine Chapel where ballots will be burned during the upcoming conclave to elect a new pope.
The Holy See released a video Saturday of the preparations for the May 7 conclave, which included installing the stove and a false floor in the frescoed Sistine Chapel to make it even. The footage also showed workers lining up simple wooden tables where the cardinals will sit and cast their votes on Wednesday, and a ramp leading to the main seating area for any cardinal in a wheelchair.
On Friday, fire crews were seen on the chapel roof attaching the chimney from which smoke signals will indicate whether a pope has been elected.
The preparations are all leading up to the solemn pageantry of the start of the conclave to elect a successor to Pope Francis, history’s first Latin American pope, who died April 21 at age 88.
Wednesday morning begins with a Mass in St. Peter’s Basilica celebrated by the dean of the College of Cardinals, Cardinal Giovanni Battista Re, after which the cardinal electors are sequestered from the rest of the world. In the afternoon, they will process into the Sistine Chapel, hear a meditation and take their oaths before casting their first ballots.
As of now, 133 cardinals are expected to take part in the conclave. If no candidate reaches the necessary two-thirds majority, or 89 votes, on the first ballot, the papers will be burned and black smoke will indicate to the world that no pope was elected.
The cardinals will go back to their Vatican residence for the night and return to the Sistine Chapel on Thursday morning to conduct two votes in the morning, two in the afternoon, until a winner is found.
After every two rounds of voting, the ballots are burned in the stove. If no pope is chosen, the ballots are mixed with cartridges containing potassium perchlorate, anthracene — a component of coal tar — and sulfur to produce black smoke out the chimney. If there is a winner, the ballots are mixed with potassium chlorate, lactose and chloroform resin to produce the white smoke.
The white smoke came out of the chimney on the fifth ballot on March 13, 2013, and Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio was introduced to the world as Pope Francis a short time later from the loggia of St. Peter’s Basilica.
The preparations are underway as the cardinals meet privately in more informal sessions to discuss the needs of the Catholic Church going forward and the type of pope who can lead it.
Two women shot on campus of small technical college near Los Angeles
- The Los Angeles Police Department said officers detained a male subject from a car matching the description of a vehicle linked to the shooting
- The school went on lockdown for at least an hour after the shooting
INGLEWOOD: Two female employees of a Southern California technical college were shot on campus Friday and taken to the hospital in an incident that authorities attributed to workplace violence.
The shooting occurred around 4 p.m. in an office at the Spartan College of Aeronautics and Technology campus in Inglewood, where Mayor James Butts said the suspect was believed to be a former employee.
Aerial TV video showed a heavy police presence outside the campus in the city, which abuts Los Angeles to the southwest.
One of the victims was in critical condition, Butts said. The Los Angeles County Fire Department confirmed on the social platform X that two people were taken to the hospital.
A person was taken into custody after initially leaving the scene, Butts said.
The Los Angeles Police Department said officers detained a male subject from a car matching the description of a vehicle linked to the shooting, which had been sent to local law enforcement agencies by the Inglewood Police Department. The Inglewood police did not immediately respond to a request for more information.
The school went on lockdown for at least an hour after the shooting.
Chris Becker, president and chief administrator of the campus, told KABC-TV that the campus is patrolled regularly and, as an aviation school, safety is one of its primary focuses.
“It’s a peaceful campus,” Becker said. “It’s a nice community of students and teachers and staff.”
The Spartan College of Aeronautics and Technology has campuses across the country. The college’s Inglewood location, about a mile (about 1.5 kilometers) from the Los Angeles International Airport, accommodates 500 students and offers training programs focused on aviation maintenance technology, according to its website.
