Economy

Washington’s move to double tariffs on many Indian goods poses a huge risk to India’s biggest export market.

The United States has doubled tariffs on many imports from India to 50 percent, as US President Donald Trump followed through on his threat to punish New Delhi for buying discounted Russian oil.

The steep tariffs, which came into force on Wednesday, risk inflicting significant damage on the Indian economy by threatening trade with its largest export market. India exported more than $87bn worth of goods to the US in 2024.

The Indian government, which has criticised the move as “unfair, unjustified and unreasonable”, estimates the tariffs will impact more than $48bn worth of exports. Indian officials warn that the new duties could make exports to the US commercially unviable, leading to job losses and slowing growth in the world’s fifth-largest economy, The Associated Press news agency reported.

The US had already slapped 25 percent tariffs on Indian goods earlier this month, as part of a wave of additional duties on goods from allies and competitors alike since Trump returned to the White House.

But the latest hike on Indian products doubles that rate, in a move to punish New Delhi for buying Russian oil, which the White House argues is indirectly funding Russia’s war on Ukraine.

More than one-third of India’s crude oil imports came from Russia last year, a trade relationship that has spurred criticism from Washington. Trump’s trade adviser, Peter Navarro, told reporters last week that “India doesn’t appear to want to recognise its role in the bloodshed” in Ukraine.

The move leaves Indian exporters facing among the highest US duties Trump has slapped on goods from overseas. Brazil is also grappling with 50 percent tariffs on many of its exports to the US.

‘Strategic shock’

Garima Kapoor, Executive Vice President and Economist at Elara Securities, told Al Jazeera that the impact would likely be felt in labour intensive industries such as textiles, garments, gems and jewellery, marine exports, some auto exports and leathers.

“All of these categories … are small and medium scale enterprise intensive. So we will see an impact being pretty severe in terms of employment.”

A New Delhi-based think tank, Global Trade Research Initiative (GTRI), says the tariffs could eliminate India’s presence in the US.

“The new tariff regime is a strategic shock that threatens to wipe out India’s long-established presence in the US, causing unemployment in export-driven hubs and weakening its role in the industrial value chain,” Ajay Srivastava, GTRI founder and former Indian trade official, told the AP.

The US has, for now, exempted some key sectors, such as pharmaceuticals and electronic goods, from additional tariffs. The Trump administration has launched investigations into these and other sectors that could yet result in further duties.

The tariffs come as the Trump administration pushes for greater access to India’s agriculture and dairy sectors, amid Indian resistance to opening the sectors to cheaper US imports.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi has said India should not yield to the pressure.

“For me, the interests of farmers, small businesses and dairy are topmost. My government will ensure they aren’t impacted,” Modi said at a rally this week in his home state of Gujarat.

US restaurant chain abandons rebrand after new logo prompts firestorm of criticism online.

Cracker Barrel, the US restaurant chain known for its southern-style cuisine, has abandoned a controversial rebrand following a backlash stoked by prominent right-wing figures including Donald Trump.

The Lebanon, Tennessee-based chain said on Tuesday that it would bring back its decades-old logo after its announcement of a simplified design provoked a firestorm of criticism online.

“We said we would listen, and we have. Our new logo is going away and our ‘Old Timer’ will remain,” the company said in a statement.

“At Cracker Barrel, it’s always been – and always will be – about serving up delicious food, warm welcomes, and the kind of country hospitality that feels like family. As a proud American institution, our 70,000 hardworking employees look forward to welcoming you to our table soon.”

Cracker Barrel, which has more than 600 stores across the US, last week unveiled a new logo as part of the “fifth evolution” of its brand, ditching the image of a seated man leaning against a barrel in favour of a simplified, text-only design.

The redesign prompted a swift backlash in right-wing circles, with some commentators claiming the company had gone “woke” – a term used by conservatives to mock what they see as an excessive fixation on racial and gender diversity.

Shares in Cracker Barrel, which had fallen sharply amid the backlash, rose more than 7 percent in after-hours trading following the reversal.

Weighing in on the furore shortly before Cracker Barrel’s announcement on Tuesday, Trump called on the company to revert to its old logo and “admit a mistake”.

“They got a Billion Dollars worth of free publicity if they play their cards right. Very tricky to do, but a great opportunity,” the US president wrote on his platform Truth Social.

Following Cracker Barrel’s U-turn, Trump congratulated the chain on the change.

“All of your fans very much appreciate it,” Trump wrote on Truth Social.

“Good luck into the future. Make lots of money and, most importantly, make your customers happy again!”

Since returning to the White House in January, Trump has used the presidency to exert an extraordinary level of influence over private businesses.

Trump last week announced that the US government had taken a 10 percent stake in Intel, days after confirming that chip giants Nvidia and AMD had agreed to pay 15 percent of revenues from chip sales in China into Washington’s coffers.

Last month, Coca-Cola announced that it would release a version of its signature drink made with cane sugar in the US after Trump claimed to have persuaded the company to start using the sweetener in favour of high-fructose corn syrup.

Maputo, Mozambique – Down the main aisle of a bustling conference pavilion in Mozambique’s capital, Maputo, Lucia Matimele stands surrounded by lush green leaves, peppers on the stalk, and bunches of ripe bananas.

“We have land, we have water, we have farmers!” she enthuses. “What we need is investment.”

Matimele is the director of industry and commerce for Gaza province, a region about 200km (125 miles) away that is one of the country’s main breadbaskets. She and her team packed up some of their most promising crops and joined thousands of others – from within and outside Mozambique – to exhibit their wares and make industry connections as the government works to promote economic growth and development in what has been a politically challenging year.

More than 3,000 exhibitors from nearly 30 countries are in Mozambique this week for the 60th annual Maputo International Trade Fair (FACIM) – the largest of its kind in the country. Tens of thousands are expected to attend the seven-day event, the government said.

Crowds of exhibitors and eager attendees gathered at the sprawling conference site on the outskirts of Maputo for day one of the event on Monday. A dozen pavilions are hosting local businesses, provincial industry leaders, such as Matimele, and regional and international companies looking to trade in or with Mozambique.

Standing before delegates and businesspeople at the opening ceremony, Mozambican President Daniel Chapo focused on the need to ensure a good environment for foreign investors, while also building an inclusive and sustainable local economy.

“Mozambique has a geostrategic location, with ports, development corridors and various other potentialities; vast resources, mineral, natural, agricultural, tourist, and above all a humble, hard-working, friendly and welcoming people,” Chapo said in Portuguese, highlighting the country’s “unique opportunities” for international partners.

But at home, he affirmed, “economic independence starts with agriculture workers, farmers, the youth, women – all of us together”.

With that in mind, the government, with financing from the World Bank, has instituted a new $40m Mutual Guarantee Fund to help finance small and medium enterprises in the country. It will provide credit guarantees to at least 15,000 businesses and aims to assist mainly women and young people, the president said.

“One of the concerns we hear repeatedly at all the annual private sector conferences is the difficulty in accessing financing,” Chapo said while launching the fund at FACIM on Monday.

“We know that high interest rates have been almost insurmountable barriers for small- and medium-sized businesses, which represent the heart of the national business fabric, hence the creation of this fund, specifically dedicated to this group of companies, because they are responsible for 90 percent of the dynamism of our economy, generating income mainly for young people.”

He added: “This instrument is not just a financial mechanism, it is a bridge to the recovery of the Mozambican economy.”

‘We can feed our people best’

Mozambique has “ample resources”, the World Bank says, including arable land, abundant water sources, energy, mineral resources and natural gas deposits.

However, its gross domestic product (GDP) growth for 2025 is projected to be just 3 percent (it was 1.8 percent in 2024 and 5.4 percent in 2023).

Experts point to a raft of challenges facing the Southern African nation: for years it was besieged by a $2bn “hidden debt” corruption scandal that implicated senior government officials; it is still recovering from post-2024 election protests that affected tourism; and it faces an ongoing rebellion by armed fighters in the northern Cabo Delgado province, home to offshore liquefied natural gas (LNG) reserves.

The armed rebellion has halted TotalEnergies’ $20bn LNG project, and, with it, put added strain on the region’s finances and near-future economic prospects, noted Borges Nhamirre, a Mozambican researcher on security and governance with the Institute for Security Studies.

“The economy of Mozambique was prepared for the next 20, 30 years to rely on natural resources … But now the most recent problem is the insurgency in the northern part of the country. So that affects the economy of Mozambique deeply,” Nhamirre said.

“And unfortunately, Mozambique did not diversify the source of revenues, did not invest in other sectors like agriculture, industry, manufacturing – relying mostly on natural gas,” he added.

“Mozambique needs to bet on producing its own food,” the researcher said, noting that it is not affordable to keep importing when the country has the potential to feed itself. “The land for agriculture is there, water is there. So, the problem is just mentality and a bit of capital.”

At her booth in one of the pavilions at FACIM, Matimele has similar thoughts. “We can feed our people best,” she said, surrounded by fresh produce from small farms in Gaza province. Across the aisle from her, another booth boasts supplies from the province of Tete: grains, seafood, vegetables, livestock; while throughout FACIM, businesses are selling locally sourced items, including coffee and honey.

In Gaza, Matimele says, people farm rice, bananas, cashews and macadamias, much of which they send abroad to countries such as South Africa and Vietnam – and she would like to increase exports and reach new places.

The challenge for them is not production, but processing and distribution, she says.

“We need big industry getting into this business,” Matimele said, adding that small farmers need guarantees that what they produce will be sold and not go to waste.

“FACIM helps us by giving us a secure market,” she explained.

Without funding, ‘you will get stuck’

For other observers, FACIM’s focus this year on investment and the Mutual Guarantee Fund are a step in the right direction, especially for small business owners in the agricultural sector.

“Agriculture is our main resource. It employs millions of people and feeds millions more,” said Rafael Shikhani, a Mozambican historian and researcher. Yet, there remains a longstanding “problem” with the sector, he noted from Maputo.

“[Historically], we have had so many breakups in that [agriculture] cycle,” he said, highlighting the 1977-92 civil war, and in the midst of that, a severe drought that hit the country from 1982 to 1984. “It was a sort of disruption to production,” he said, one that has had ripple effects.

Current challenges facing Mozambican agriculture, the researcher said, include a lack of capital for farming, as well as some people preferring to take an easier route by importing food from neighbouring South Africa to sell locally instead of growing it from scratch.

“In many areas, the funding is a key motivation,” Shikhani said. “If you don’t have funds, you can [still] start a very nice business, but there will be a certain way you will get stuck – you’ll need equipment, you’ll need to pay people, you’ll need a truck, you’ll need to put up a fence; for whatever, you will need money.”

That is where the Mutual Guarantee Fund could come in handy.

“More investment in agriculture is good,” Shikhani said. It will also help the sector evolve from individuals farming small plots of land to small and medium-sized farming businesses that make more informed choices about “the type of land, where you farm, and how you exploit your land”.

For analyst Nhamirre, the way the Chapo government goes about tackling the country’s most pressing economic issues will go a long way in determining the outcome.

But he remarks that external factors, such as the armed rebellion in the north and internal governance issues, will also play a part.

“There are internal things that the government needs to do well … The people are still very frustrated,” he said, pointing to the past year’s post-election violence, saying there is a chance protests may flare up again.

Meanwhile, Shikhani looks at the issue through a historian’s lens. “There is a cycle of crisis: if there is an economic crisis, it leads to a political crisis, and it leads to social unrest. If you deal with economics and you feed people, there will be no more social unrest, and there will be no political crisis. So, you start with economics,” he said.

“Give people food, give people jobs, give people hope – they will work and make money.”

At her booth in FACIM, Matimele and her team stand ready in matching red shirts emblazoned with the words: “Gaza, the route of progress” in Portuguese. Ahead of them is a week of networking that they hope will lead to more – more food, more jobs, more hope.

“Investment is the right way to follow,” said the provincial industry chief. “If we have investment, we can solve all the issues.”

Australia and Japan latest countries to stop some postal services to US for goods valued at less than $800.

Australia and Japan have joined a growing list of countries suspending some parcel shipments to the United States after US President Donald Trump’s administration ended an exemption that allowed packages valued at less than $800 to enter the country duty-free.

With the “de minimis” exemption set to end on Friday, Australia Post announced that it was implementing “a temporary partial suspension”.

In a statement on Tuesday, Australia Post said it was “disappointed” but the decision was necessary “due to the complex and rapidly evolving situation”.

Packages sent to the US and Puerto Rico lodged on or after Tuesday will not be accepted until further notice, the postal service said. Gifts valued at less than $100, letters and documents are unaffected by the change.

Australia Post said it would continue to work with the US and Australian authorities and international postal partners to resume services to the US soon.

Japan Post made a similar announcement on Monday, saying the suspension of some parcel shipments was necessary.

The procedures for transport and postal operators were “not clear”, which is “making implementation difficult”, Japan Post said.

Australian public broadcaster ABC said some businesses that make products in Australia have already suspended shipments, with Australian shipping software company Shippit saying it had seen a decline in shipments from Australia to the US even before the new changes came into effect.

“There’s been a 36 percent drop in volume since April in terms of outbound shipments from Australia to the US,” Shippit’s chief executive, Rob Hango-Zada, said, according to the ABC.

The announcements from Australia and Japan come after several European postal services announced similar changes last week, including Germany, Denmark, Sweden, Italy, France, Austria and the United Kingdom.

The UK’s Royal Mail said it would halt shipments to the US beginning on Tuesday to allow time for those packages to arrive before new duties kick in.

“Key questions remain unresolved, particularly regarding how and by whom customs duties will be collected in the future, what additional data will be required, and how the data transmission to the US Customs and Border Protection will be carried out,” DHL, the largest shipping provider in Europe, said in a statement.

Since returning to the White House in January, Trump has announced a rolling wave of tariffs, or taxes paid on goods imported into the US.

The changing nature of Trump’s tariffs, which vary from country to country and are different in some cases depending on which products are being imported, has added to the confusion for postal services.

Trump had already ended the “de minimis” exemption with China and Hong Kong on May 2, closing a loophole which was widely used by fast-fashion companies Shein, Temu and others to ship duty-free.

The tax and spending bill recently signed by Trump repealed the legal basis for the “de minimis” exemption worldwide starting on July 1, 2027.

Goods shipped through the postal system will now face one of two tariffs: either an “ad valorem duty” equal to the effective tariff rate of the package’s country of origin or, for six months, a specific tariff of $80 to $200, depending on the country of origin’s tariff rate.

BREAKINGBREAKING,

The US president says Lisa Cook to be removed from position ‘effective immediately’.

United President Donald Trump has ordered the removal of Federal Reserve governor Lisa Cook amid unproven claims of mortgage fraud.

In a letter posted on social media on Monday night, Trump said Cook was being sacked “effective immediately”, in accordance with his powers under the US Constitution and the 1913 Federal Reserve Act.

Citing allegations made last week by the US federal mortgage regulator, Trump said there was “sufficient reason to believe you may have made false statements on one or more mortgage agreements”.

“The Federal Reserve has tremendous responsibility for setting interest rates and regulating reserve and members banks,” Trump said in the letter, which was shared on his platform Truth Social.

“The American people must be able to have full confidence in the honesty of the members entrusted with setting policy and overseeing the Federal Reserve. In light of your deceitful and potentially criminal conduct in a financial matter, they cannot and I do not have such confidence in your integrity.”

Trump had on Friday threatened to fire Cook, who was appointed by former President Joe Biden, if she did not resign.

Trump’s extraordinary move is set to raise further questions about the independence of the US central bank, which has been under intense pressure from Trump to lower interest rates.

In a letter addressed to US Attorney General Pam Bondi and Department of Justice official Ed Martin earlier this month, Federal Housing Finance Agency director Bill Pulte, a staunch Trump ally, alleged that Cook had listed two properties as her primary home addresses.

The Federal Reserve did not immediately respond to Al Jazeera’s request for comment.

More to follow…

SpaceX is one of the best-known companies in the world. It is privately valued at an estimated $400 billion, with a lot of that market value coming from its fast growing satellite internet service called Starlink that has a reported 6 million customers and is growing rapidly. But what if there was a company about to disrupt Starlink’s entire business model?

Enter AST SpaceMobile (ASTS 4.65%). This satellite internet upstart has innovated to eliminate the need for clunky terminals to connect devices to the internet directly from satellites. Its shares are up around 100% already this year, with its service set to become operational within the next few quarters.

Let’s dive into the numbers and see what potential AST SpaceMobile stock has for investors going forward.

No terminal, no problem

Satellite internet services like Starlink are great, but they come with one big drawback: clunky terminals. The standard dish is not ginormous, but is not something you could take out on a hike. AST SpaceMobile plans to get rid of the terminals altogether with its constellation of ultra-large satellites that can beam high speed internet directly to smartphones.

This would be a stepchange in customer value for satellite internet, and could lead to two outcomes. One is more people willing to pay for satellite internet, and two is existing customers of Starlink and equivalent services switching to AST SpaceMobile with its direct-to-device technology.

As it launches more of its satellites, AST SpaceMobile expects to turn on its service in the United States and then grow to Canada, the United Kingdom, and Japan throughout 2026. It will take steady launches of these large satellites, but eventually AST SpaceMobile has a path to true global coverage with direct-to-device internet.

Image source: Getty Images.

A huge global opportunity

Direct-to-device satellite internet could be a game changer for tens of millions of customers. The market opportunity includes geographically remote workers, hikers, fire service workers, people who work on commercial boats, and cruise ship passengers. It does not need to replace existing telecommunications infrastructure (at least, not today), but can be the perfect add-on to fill in the gaps in service.

This is why AST SpaceMobile has partnered with numerous telecommunications companies around the globe like Verizon Communications, giving it access to 3 billion potential customers. AST SpaceMobile will sell this service as an additional plan through the existing wireless contract relationships, and then sharing revenue earned with these telecommunication partners.

Revenue generation potential is immense once the AST SpaceMobile constellation goes global. For every 1 million customers who sign up at an estimated $10 a month, that is $120 million in revenue potential. If just 3% of the global addressable market signs up for AST SpaceMobile’s satellite internet service at any one time, that is 90 million customers and potentially $10 billion in revenue. The company also has contracts that it will deploy with the U.S. military, which should lead to even more sales growth.

Can AST SpaceMobile keep soaring?

Having 90 million customers is a greenfield scenario for AST SpaceMobile, and is not going to happen anytime soon. It will take years to build up the constellation to full capacity, as well as for telecommunications partners to market the add-on service to their customers. But the potential is there for AST SpaceMobile to disrupt a fast growing and lucrative sector in satellite internet, if it can execute on its growth plans.

At a market capitalization of $16 billion today, AST SpaceMobile looks cheap relative to the estimates laid out above. However, investors need to remember that this is a company generating zero revenue at the current moment and burning a boatload of cash each year. A lot can go wrong with its launch partners, like the recent delay from the India Space Agency that may keep some of its satellites from launching later this year. Even if things go all according to plan, it may be a decade before AST SpaceMobile starts posting a profit and gets to revenue and earnings figures that would make the current market capitalization reasonable.

If you have faith that AST SpaceMobile can hit $10 billion in revenue and fully disrupt the satellite internet market, then the stock will likely keep doing well for investors who buy today. Just remember there are always downsides when investing in highly risky companies like AST SpaceMobile.

Rocket company postpones 10th test-flight to troubleshoot issue at Texas launch site.

Elon Musk’s SpaceX has called off a planned test flight of its Starship megarocket following an issue at the launch site.

About 30 minutes before the planned liftoff at its Texas launch facility on Sunday, SpaceX said that it was abandoning its 10th test flight to “allow time to troubleshoot an issue with ground systems”.

SpaceX said it would attempt the launch again on Monday.

The launch failure is the latest in a series of botched missions by SpaceX.

Test flights of the rocket’s upper stage in January, March and May ended in mid-flight explosions, while a “static fire” test in June resulted in the vehicle exploding on the launchpad.

Starship is designed to eventually be fully reusable, but SpaceX has so far been unable to get the vehicle’s upper stage to deliver a payload to space or return to the launch site.

The 403-feet (123-metre) spacecraft is key to Musk’s goal of colonising Mars, while NASA plans to use a customised version of the vehicle for its planned crewed missions to the Moon.

If SpaceX’s latest launch went ahead as planned, the Starship upper stage would have separated from the Super Heavy booster dozens of miles in altitude.

Super Heavy, which has returned for a landing at its launchpad in giant mechanical arms in past tests, would have targeted the Gulf of Mexico for a soft water landing to test a backup engine configuration.

Starship was to briefly ignite its own engines to blast further into space, where it would have attempted to release its first batch of mock Starlink satellites and reignite an engine while on a suborbital path around the planet.

If Starship’s 10th test flight eventually succeeds, SpaceX will still face formidable technical hurdles, from making the system fully and rapidly reusable at low cost to proving it can refuel super-cooled propellant in orbit.

Seoul, South Korea – South Korean President Lee Jae-myung is set to meet United States President Donald Trump for the first time in a high-stakes visit to his country’s closest and most important ally.

After a one-day meeting with Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba in Tokyo, Lee arrived in Washington, DC, on Sunday ahead of an official working-level meeting at the White House with Trump.

It will be the first time the two heads of state meet.

Their summit follows a trade deal in July in which Washington agreed to cut its reciprocal tariff on South Korea to 15 percent from an initially proposed 25 percent.

The meeting is crucial for South Korea, whose engagement with the Trump administration was disrupted by domestic political turmoil, ignited by the brief declaration of martial law announced in December by the country’s impeached former president, Yoon Suk-yeol.

Discussion will focus on ironing out details of the unwritten July trade deal, which involves South Korea agreeing to buy $100bn in US energy and invest $350bn in the US economy.

On top of those dizzying sums are direct investments in the US, which are expected from South Korean companies, and which Trump has mentioned will be decided during their talks.

Accompanied by first lady Kim Hea-kyung, Lee will lead a delegation formed by the heads of South Korean top conglomerates, including Samsung Electronics, SK Group, Hyundai Motor and LG Group.

The four companies alone are already known to contribute approximately 126 trillion won ($91.2bn) in direct investments to the US, according to the South Korean daily Maeil Business Newspaper.

Choi Yoon-jung, a principal research fellow at the Sejong Institute in Seoul, said Lee needs to be deliberate and direct with Trump in the talks, as “South Korea is in a tough predicament in terms of trade with the US compared to the past”.

“It will be important for President Lee to explain how investments will be designed to serve US national interests and to remind Trump that the two nations are close trading partners who went through large ordeals to realise their Free Trade Agreement over two decades ago,” Choi told Al Jazeera.

Mason Richey, a professor of international politics at the Hankuk University of Foreign Studies (HUFS), said the direction of the talks on investments is likely to be “unpredictable”.

“Not only are the current 15 percent tariffs overwhelmingly likely to stay on, but the investment part of the deal is likely to remain unclear and subject to unpredictable adjustment by the White House,” Richey told Al Jazeera.

Analysts say shipbuilding is one area where Trump clearly desires to have South Korea as a key partner to play catch-up to China’s naval fleet, which leads in terms of sheer numbers and is also making technological advancements.

Officials in Seoul have previously stated that a key component of the tariff deal with Washington would include a partnership worth about $150bn to assist in rebuilding the US shipbuilding industry.

To that end, after visiting the White House, Lee will head to Philadelphia to visit the Philly Shipyard, which was bought by the South Korean company Hanwha Group last year.

Analysts also say that battery production and semiconductors are some other sectors where Trump has set clear objectives to increase US capacity, and where South Korea has shown willingness and interest in being that partner.

“The South Korean government is also willing to actively participate in the ‘modernisation’ of its alliance with the US, that could include increasing contributions to upholding the region’s security and development,” said the Sejong Institute’s Choi.

Another major discussion point will be Seoul and Washington’s defence posture regarding the growing threats from North Korea, as well as the development of a strategic alliance to address the changing international security and economic environment.

“The pressures for the role of US forces on the Korean Peninsula to evolve has been growing for years,” Jenny Town, the director of the Washington, DC-based research programme 38 North, told Al Jazeera.

This evolution was especially so with great power competition increasing from China, Town said.

“The Trump administration is focused on how to maximise resources for US interests and priorities, so it is likely that some changes will be made during this term,” Town said.

“How drastic or dramatic those changes will depend on a number of factors, including the state of the US domestic political infrastructure that provides checks and balances to executive decisions,” she said.

A US Senate defence policy bill for fiscal year 2026 includes a ban on the use of funds to reduce the number of US Forces Korea (USFK) troops to below the current level of 28,500 service members.

“This makes it unlikely that there will be an immediate change in troop deployment numbers in South Korea,” Choi said.

“So, the big point of contention will be the job assignment of the troops to match US interests. I think there’s a possibility of Trump asking South Korea to take on a bigger role in regional security, such as taking part in the conflict involving Taiwan.”

Financial negotiations between Trump and Lee may also tip into security details, as the US president has regularly called for South Korea to pay more for the US troops stationed on its soil.

Trump has made that same call since his first presidential term.

In addition to providing more than $1bn for the presence of USFK forces, South Korea also paid the entire cost of building Camp Humphreys, the largest US base overseas, situated 64km (39 miles) south of Seoul.

Trump has said that he wants defence spending to reach closer to 5 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) for all US allies.

Today, South Korea’s defence budget is at 3.5 percent of GDP.

Transfer of wartime operational command – referring to the transfer of control of South Korean forces during wartime from the US to South Korea – has long been a point of discussion between Seoul and Washington.

Under the Lee administration’s five-year governance plan, Seoul hopes to have the transition happen by 2030.

The Trump-Lee meeting also comes after North Korean leader Kim Jong Un’s powerful sister recently dismissed Washington and Seoul’s stated desires to restart diplomacy aimed at defusing Pyongyang’s nuclear programme.

Kim Yo Jong said that Seoul could never be a “diplomatic partner” with Pyongyang.

For Town, there were “interesting nuances” in Kim Yo Jong’s statements.

“While rejecting any kind of denuclearisation narrative as the basis of negotiations, her statements did create an opening for the US to engage North Korea to improve overall relations,” Town said.

“Kim suggested that there’s a reason for two countries with nuclear weapons to avoid confrontational relations. This begs the question of whether the US is actually interested in building a different relationship with North Korea that is not hinged on denuclearisation, and how US allies would see such an agenda,” Town said.

For Richey, the HUFS professor, the possibility of “Trump bypassing Lee in diplomacy with North Korea” poses a serious risk for South Korea down the road, in terms of influence and security.

In contrast to today’s lack of contact between Washington and Pyongyang, Trump’s first presidential term featured a suspension of US military exercises with South Korea and three separate meetings between the US president and North Korea’s Kim.

His desire to earn a Nobel Peace Prize could also offer another set of motivations for Trump to extend a US hand of friendship to Kim.

The South Korean president’s White House visit also coincides with annual, large-scale South Korean and US joint military exercises, which run for 11 days.

During a visit to North Korea’s most advanced warship last week, Kim denounced the drills as rehearsals for an invasion of North Korea and “an obvious expression of their will to provoke war”.

Also, last week, Beyond Parallel, a project of the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies, unveiled an undocumented North Korean missile base about 25km (15.5 miles) from the border with China, which likely has intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) capable of reaching the US.

Town added that Russia could also play a cameo role in this summit.

“Lee may bring up the issue of how Russia’s relations with North Korea, especially their military cooperation, poses potential dangers to the alliance’s security interests,” she said.

“Talks could wind up to consideration of whether Trump’s relationship with [Russian President Vladimir] Putin may help mitigate the situation,” she said.

North Korea’s recent dealings with Russia adds another dimension to these inter-country relationships, as reciprocal exchanges of military troops for the receipt of food, energy, cash, weapons and technology have created a stable strategic bond between Moscow and Pyongyang.

Furthermore, North Korea has shown an interest in strengthening ties with another of the US’s biggest rivals – China.

“Ultimately, I believe Trump will continue to make overtures toward North Korea,” Choi said.

“He may seem to be pushing an isolationist strategy, but the matter of fact is that the US continues to be in the middle of negotiations and talks whenever a big conflict arises in the world,” she said.

US Vice President JD Vance hit the road on August 21 to promote President Donald Trump’s legislative accomplishment, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act tax and spending bill.

The law permanently extended tax cuts from a 2017 law Trump signed, which would have expired at the end of 2025 had Congress not reauthorised them. The law also included some new tax cuts, including for tips, overtime and Americans 65 and older.

Speaking in Peachtree City near Atlanta, Vance said, “We had the biggest tax cut for families that this country has ever seen.”

The tax cuts were significant, but they weren’t the biggest in US history, which was a phrase Trump has often used to inaccurately describe his 2017 tax cut law. The 2025 tax cuts rank either third-biggest since 1980 or tied for seventh, depending on the yardstick.

At the same time, many Americans could see relatively modest changes to the taxes they owe starting in 2026, because the 2025 law mostly extended existing tax cuts.

The White House did not provide a response before publication.

Comparing historical tax cut laws

We examined the tax revenue decreases from major laws passed since 1980. (On balance, most tax laws prior to 1980 either raised taxes or cut them modestly.)

Tax bill dollar amounts tend to rise over time because of inflation, so we looked at tax cuts as a percentage of gross domestic product (GDP), which evens out the differences over time. And because some early laws have tax cut data available only for the first five or six years of the law’s life, we compared laws by looking at the cumulative tax savings during a law’s first five years in effect.

We found that the law with the biggest tax savings was 1981 legislation passed by the Democratic Congress and signed by President Ronald Reagan, who won office promising large tax cuts. That law cut taxes by 3.5 percent of the nation’s cumulative five-year GDP.

A 2012 bill passed by the Republican Congress and signed by President Barack Obama ranked second. That bill, which cut taxes by 1.7 percent of GDP, extended the tax cuts passed in 2003 under President George W Bush.

Based on current projections, Trump’s 2025 law ranks third, at 1.4 percent of GDP when factoring in Trump’s 2017 cuts.

Trump’s 2017 law ranks fourth at 1 percent, tied with a 2010 law Obama signed that extended Bush’s 2001 tax cuts. Bush’s 2001 and 2003 tax cuts ranked sixth and seventh, with 0.7 percent and 0.5 percent, respectively.

If considering only new tax cuts and not the re-upped 2017 tax cuts, then Trump’s 2025 law would tie for seventh at 0.5 percent of GDP.

Joseph Rosenberg, a senior fellow at the Urban Institute-Brookings Institution Tax Policy Center, said that it’s legitimate to measure the scale of the cuts in the 2025 tax law either way.

What will Americans see in their taxes starting in 2026?

There could be a disconnect between the historical scale of Trump’s 2025 bill and the impact that Americans will notice when filing 2026 taxes.

Because Americans are already paying the lower rates that began in 2017 and that the 2025 law extended, they won’t necessarily notice a sizeable reduction in taxes owed.

“For most families, they are going to see a child tax credit that increases by a maximum of $200 per child, from $2,000 to $2,200,” said Margot Crandall-Hollick, principal research associate at the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center. “Some are going to pay a little less because of the tips and overtime provisions and a slightly higher standard deduction.”

The law preserves a more generous standard deduction that had been set to expire and increases it slightly to $15,750 for single filers and $31,500 for joint filers in 2025, to be indexed to inflation annually.

At the same time, Crandall-Hollick said, some families, especially those with lower incomes, will pay higher taxes because of the expiration of health insurance premium tax credits, which were not extended by the Big Beautiful Bill.

Uganda is the latest of several countries to strike a deportation deal with the United States as President Donald Trump ramps up controversial efforts to remove migrants from the country.

In a statement on Thursday, Uganda’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs stated that Kampala had agreed for Washington to send over third-country nationals who face deportation from the US, but are unwilling to return to their home countries. The ministry said that the agreement was made under certain conditions.

Rights groups and law experts have condemned Trump’s controversial plans to deport millions of undocumented migrants. Those already deported include convicted criminals and “uniquely barbaric monsters,” according to the White House.

African countries, such as Eswatini, formerly known as Swaziland, have accepted similar deals, reportedly in exchange for lower tariffs. The US’s actions are exploitative and tantamount to treating the continent as a “dumping ground,” Melusi Simelane of the Southern Africa Litigation Centre (SALC) told Al Jazeera, adding that Washington was especially focusing on countries with weak human rights protection.

Here’s what you need to know about the Uganda deal and what countries might be getting in return for hosting US deportees:

What did Uganda agree to?

In a statement posted on X on Thursday, Bagiire Vincent Waiswa, the permanent secretary of Uganda’s Foreign Ministry, said the country had agreed to a “temporary arrangement” with the US. He did not state the timelines for when the deportations would begin or end.

There are caveats regarding the people who would be transferred, the statement continued, including that Uganda will not accept people with criminal records or unaccompanied minors and that it “prefers” that Africans be transferred as part of the deal.

“The two parties are working out the detailed modalities on how the agreement shall be implemented,” the statement added.

A US State Department statement confirmed that Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni and US Secretary of State Marco Rubio had held discussions over the phone regarding “migration, reciprocal trade, and commercial ties”.

The deal’s announcement came after weeks of speculation in local Ugandan media regarding whether the East African nation would accept US deportees.

On Wednesday, Foreign Affairs Minister Henry Okello Oryem denied the media reports, saying Uganda did not have the facilities to accommodate deportees.

Speaking to The Associated Press news agency, Oryem said Uganda was discussing issues of “visas, tariffs, sanctions and related issues” with the US, but not of migration.

“We are talking about cartels: people who are unwanted in their own countries. How can we integrate them into local communities in Uganda?” he told the AP.

A day later, Uganda’s narrative had flipped.

What might Uganda gain from this?

The Foreign Ministry’s statement on Thursday did not state what Uganda might be getting in return.

Other countries, including Eswatini, have reportedly accepted deportees in exchange for lower tariffs.

Uganda has been hit with 15 percent tariffs on goods entering the US, as part of Trump’s reciprocal tariff wars. Senior government officials in early August told local media that the tariffs would disrupt Ugandan exports, especially in the agricultural sector, and that Kampala would enter negotiations for a better deal.

Coffee, vanilla, cocoa beans and petroleum products are some of Uganda’s key exports to the US. Kampala is particularly keen on boosting coffee exports to the US and competing with bigger suppliers like Colombia. The US, on the other hand, exports machinery, such as aircraft parts, to Uganda, which imposes an 18 percent tariff on imported products.

The US and Uganda have historically enjoyed friendly ties, with the US routinely sending aid to Kampala. However, after Uganda passed an anti-homosexuality bill into law in 2023, relations turned sour, and the US accused Uganda of “human rights violations”. The law proscribes punishment, including life sentences, for same-sex relations.

Washington thereafter cut aid funding for HIV programs and issued visa restrictions on Ugandan government officials “complicit in undermining the democratic process.” The US also banned Uganda from the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA), a trade programme that helped African countries trade tariff-free with the US, but that Trump’s tariffs have effectively killed.

The World Bank additionally banned Uganda from its loans for two years, although the restriction was lifted this June.

Rights activists say the deal on deportees could make the US administration more favourably inclined towards Uganda, but at the expense of those deported.

“The proposed deal runs afoul of international law,” human rights lawyer Nicholas Opiyo told the AP. He added that such an arrangement leaves the legal status of deportees unclear as to whether they are refugees or prisoners.

“We are sacrificing human beings for political expediency; in this case, because Uganda wants to be in the good books of the United States,” Opiyo said.“That I can keep your prisoners if you pay me; how is that different from human trafficking?”

Does Uganda already host refugees?

Yes, Uganda is Africa’s largest refugee host country. It already hosts some 1.7 million refugees, largely from neighbouring South Sudan, Sudan and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, which are all dealing with armed conflict and unrest.

The United Nations has, in the past, hailed the country as having a “progressive refugee policy” and “maintaining an open-door approach to asylum”.

However, opposition activists are sounding the alarm over the government’s dismal human rights record. Uganda has been ruled by Museveni since 1986, with his party winning contested elections in landslides. Opposition members and journalists are often targeted in arrests. Some report being tortured in detention.

Speaking to the AP, opposition lawmaker Muwada Nkunyingi said the US deal could give Museveni’s government further Western legitimacy ahead of general elections scheduled for January 2026.

The deal was struck to “clear their image now that we are heading into the 2026 elections,” Nkunyingi said. He urged the US not to ignore what he described as human rights issues in Uganda.

What other countries has the US sent people to?

Eswatini, Rwanda and South Sudan have struck similar agreements with the US.

Eswatini, in July, accepted five unnamed men from Vietnam, Jamaica, Laos, Cuba and Yemen.

Tricia McLaughlin, Department for Homeland Security assistant secretary, described them as “individuals so uniquely barbaric that their home countries refused to take them back”. She added that they were convicted of offences ranging from child rape to murder, and faced up to 25 years in jail. The men are presently held in detention facilities and will be sent back to their countries, according to officials who did not state a timeline.

Activists accuse the Eswatini government of engaging in the deal in exchange for lower tariffs from the US. The tiny country, which exports apparel, fruits, nuts and raw sugar to the US, was hit with a 10 percent tariff.

“No country should have to be engaged in the violation of international human rights laws, including breaching its domestic laws, to please the Global North in the name of trade,” Simulane of SALC, who is leading an ongoing court case challenging the Eswatini government’s decision, told Al Jazeera. The move, he said, was against the country’s constitution, which mandates that international agreements pass through parliament.

“What we want, at the core, is for the agreement to be published for public scrutiny, and for the public to understand (if) it indeed is in line with our national interest,” Simulane said. “We further want the agreement declared unconstitutional because it lacked parliamentary approval.”

South Africa, which borders Eswatini on three sides, summoned the smaller country’s diplomats earlier in August to raise security concerns about the arrangement.

Similarly, the US sent eight “barbaric” criminals to South Sudan in July. The DHS listed them as being from Cuba, Myanmar, Vietnam, Laos, Mexico and South Sudan. They were convicted of crimes such as first-degree murder, robbery, drug trafficking, and sexual assault, the DHS said.

The men were initially diverted to Djibouti for months pending a legal challenge in the US. However, in late June, the US Supreme Court approved the move to South Sudan.

Rwanda, too, has confirmed that it will take 250 deportees from the US at an unnamed date. According to government spokesperson Yolande Makolo, the deportees will enjoy “workforce training, health care and accommodation”. The country previously struck a controversial migrant deal for a fee with the United Kingdom. That deal, however, fell through when the new Labour government was elected in the UK in 2024.

Outside Africa, El Salvador has taken in 300 migrants, mainly from Venezuela, for a $6m fee.

Costa Rica accepted 200 asylum seekers from Afghanistan, China, Ghana, India and Vietnam. While many have been repatriated, some 28 people were still in detention by June. It is unclear what the US offered in return.

Nearly 300 people from countries like Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran, and China were sent to Panama in February.

The extraordinary development follows a meeting between CEO Lip-Bu Tan and Trump after he called for Tan’s removal.

The United States government will take a 10 percent stake in Intel under an agreement with the struggling chipmaker, President Donald Trump has said, marking the latest extraordinary intervention in corporate affairs.

Trump made the announcement on Friday. Intel, whose shares rose more than 6 percent, declined to comment.

The development follows a meeting between CEO Lip-Bu Tan and Trump earlier this month that was sparked by Trump’s demand for the Intel chief’s resignation over his ties to Chinese firms.

“He walked in wanting to keep his job and he ended up giving us $10bn for the United States,” Trump said on Friday.

The move marks a clear change of direction and also follows a $2bn capital injection from SoftBank Group in what was a major vote of confidence for the troubled US chipmaker in the middle of a turnaround.

Federal backing could give Intel more breathing room to revive its loss-making foundry business, analysts said, but it still suffers from a weak product roadmap and challenges in attracting customers to its new factories.

Trump, who met Tan on August 11, has taken an unprecedented approach to national security.

The US president has pushed for multibillion-dollar government tie-ups in semiconductors and rare earths, such as a pay-for-play deal with Nvidia and an arrangement with rare-earth producer MP Materials to secure critical minerals.

Tan, who took the top job at Intel in March, has been tasked to turn around the US chipmaking icon, which recorded an annual loss of $18.8bn in 2024 — its first such loss since 1986. The company’s last fiscal year of positive adjusted free cash flow was 2021.

Earlier this week, US Senator Bernie Sanders supported the plan. He and Senator Elizabeth Warren had previously said that the US Treasury Department should receive a warrant, equity stake or senior debt instrument from any company that receives government grants like Intel had under the 2022 CHIPS and Science Act, which sought to lure chip production away from Asia and boost US domestic semiconductor output with $39bn in subsidies.

A formal announcement of the investment is expected later on Friday.

Cook, who has been accused of mortgage fraud, has said she will not be bullied by Trump into resigning.

The United States Department of Justice plans to investigate Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook, with a top official informing Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell of the probe and encouraging him to remove her, Bloomberg News has reported.

A letter to Powell from Ed Martin, a Department of Justice (DOJ) official who has led similar investigations into Senator Adam Schiff of California and New York Attorney General Letitia James, said Cook’s case “requires further examination”, Bloomberg reported on Thursday.

“At this time, I encourage you to remove Ms Cook from your Board,” Martin wrote, according to Bloomberg. “Do it today before it is too late! After all, no American thinks it is appropriate that she serve during this time with a cloud hanging over her.”

The DOJ did not immediately reply to a request for comment.

Asked about the report, a Fed spokesperson referred to Cook’s statement on Wednesday, when she said she had no intention of being “bullied” into resigning after President Donald Trump called for her to step down on the basis of allegations made by a member of his administration about mortgages she holds in Michigan and Georgia.

The Federal Reserve Act provides no authority for a Fed chair to remove another member of the Board of Governors.

Cook, the first Black woman to be a Fed governor, is serving a 14-year term that began after her second Senate confirmation in 2023.

The effort to remove Cook comes as the administration has unleashed a campaign against diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI), and intensifies Trump’s ongoing effort to gain influence over the US central bank and push it to lower interest rates.

Fed under pressure

Central bankers from around the world gathered on Thursday in Grand Teton National Park for the opening of the Kansas City Fed’s annual Jackson Hole symposium, where Powell will give a keynote speech on Friday, sketching out his view of the economy and, investors hope, where rates are headed.

“I would just say that I know her to be an outstanding economist and a person of high integrity,” Cleveland Fed President Beth Hammack told Yahoo Finance at the event.

US Federal Housing Finance Agency director William Pulte, who referred the allegations of Cook’s wrongdoing to the Department of Justice this week, said they arose as part of regular investigations into mortgage fraud by his agency and were not a “witch-hunt”.

“Defrauding people is nothing new,” Pulte told Bloomberg Television. “I believe that she committed mortgage fraud.”  He said that public records clearly show fraud and that a special exemption should not be made for the powerful. He said the fraud is “self-evident”.

Cook has yet to expressly address Pulte’s accusation, saying only in Wednesday’s statement: “I do intend to take any questions about my financial history seriously as a member of the Federal Reserve, and so I am gathering the accurate information to answer any legitimate questions and provide the facts.”

The Fed has held borrowing costs steady all year in the 4.25 percent to 4.5 percent range out of concern that Trump’s tariffs could reignite inflation that is still running above the Fed’s 2 percent goal. Recent weaker labour market data – including a report showing job gains averaged a paltry 35,000 from May to July – has increased Fed policymaker concern that borrowing costs may be a bit too high, and financial markets are priced for the likelihood of a quarter-point interest-rate cut at the Fed’s September meeting.

That would be far short of the several percentage points that Trump has called for.

Trump can name a new chair when Powell’s term ends in May. US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, who is leading the search, has nearly a dozen candidates, and all have voiced their support for big rate cuts and big changes to the central bank. Traditionally, Fed chairs resign when their leadership term ends, but there is some speculation that Powell would stay on until his term as governor ends in 2028, denying Trump the chance to install more loyalists to consolidate his control over the central bank.

Trump has nominated Council of Economic Advisers Chairman Stephen Miran, a Fed critic and enthusiastic supporter of Trump’s tariffs and other policies, to serve at the Fed in the seat vacated by the surprise resignation this month of Adriana Kugler.

Walmart’s second-quarter results are showing that United States consumers across the spectrum are still flocking to the retailer’s stores despite economic headwinds, but its shares have dipped as the company’s margins ebbed and inventory costs rose.

The world’s largest retailer has scooped up market share from rivals as wealthier consumers frequent the store more often, worried about the effects of tariffs on prices, the company’s results on Thursday showed.

That has fueled an 85 percent surge in the stock over the last year-and-a-half that some analysts say has made its valuation too lofty.

Shares were down 4 percent in midday trading in New York, as its second-quarter profit was lower than expected, registering Walmart’s first earnings miss in more than three years.

Investors also focused on Walmart’s gross margins for the quarter, which fell short of their expectations, even though the company raised its fiscal year sales and profit forecasts.

Overall gross margins were about flat at 24.5 percent versus 24.4 percent last quarter, missing consensus estimates of 24.9 percent, according to brokerage DA Davidson.

“Expectations were high for a margin beat and we didn’t get that, so we’re getting a little bit of a pullback on the stock,” said Steven Shemesh, RBC Capital Markets analyst.

Still, the Bentonville, Arkansas-based chain’s results showed it has continued to benefit from growing price sensitivity among Americans, earning revenue of $177.4bn in the second quarter. Analysts on average were expecting $176.16bn, according to LSEG data. Adjusted earnings per share of 68 cents in the second quarter fell short of analyst expectations of 74 cents.

Consumer sentiment has weakened due to fears of tariffs fueling higher inflation, hitting the bottom lines of some retail chains, but Walmart’s sales have remained resilient. Companies have been able to withstand paying those import levies through front-running of inventories, but as those products are sold, the next shipments are pricier, Walmart CEO Doug McMillon said.

“As we replenish inventory at post-tariff price levels, we’ve continued to see our cost increase each week,” he said on a call with analysts, noting those costs will continue rising in the second half of the year. The effects of tariffs have so been gradual enough for consumer habits to change only modestly.

Walmart had warned it would increase prices this summer to offset tariff-related costs on certain goods imported to the US, a move that drew criticism from President Donald Trump. Consumer-level inflation is increasing modestly, while wholesale inflation spiked in July to its fastest rate in more than three years.

According to an S&P Global survey released on Thursday, input prices paid by businesses hit a three-month high in July, with companies citing tariffs as the key driver. Prices charged by businesses for goods and services hit a three-year high, as companies passed along costs to consumers. A day earlier, rival Target warned of tariff-induced cost pressures.

Walmart got a boost from a sharper online strategy as more customers relied on home deliveries. Its global e-commerce sales jumped 25 percent during the second quarter, and Walmart said one-third of deliveries from stores took three hours or less.

Shoppers adjust to higher prices

McMillon expects current shopping habits to persist through the third and fourth quarters. He noted middle- and lower-income households are making noticeable adjustments in response to rising prices, either by reducing the number of items in their baskets or by opting for private-label brands. This shift has not been seen among higher-income households, which Walmart defines as those earning over $100,000 annually.

Walmart expects annual sales to grow in the range of 3.75 percent to 4.75 percent, compared to its prior forecast of a 3 percent to 4 percent increase. Adjusted earnings per share are expected in the range of $2.52 to $2.62, compared to its previous range of $2.50 to $2.60.

Chief Financial Officer John David Rainey said the company is looking at more possible financial outcomes than before because of trade policy talks, uncertain demand, and the need to stay flexible for future growth. Based on what it saw in the second quarter, Walmart expects the impact on margins and earnings from the higher cost of goods to be smaller in the current quarter than it previously thought, Rainey said.

“Broad consumer and macro trends remain favourable to Walmart, especially in the shape of consumers wanting to maximise bang for their buck,” said Neil Saunders, managing director of retail consultancy GlobalData.

Walmart’s total US comparable sales rose 4.6 percent, beating analysts’ estimates of a 3.8 percent increase. The company noted strong customer response to over 7,400 “rollbacks,” its term for discounted prices, with 30 percent more rollbacks on grocery items.

Average spending at the till rose 3.1 percent from an increase of 0.6 percent last year, but growth in customer visits fell to 1.5 percent from 3.6 percent in the year-earlier period. Walmart logged 40 percent growth in marketplace sales, including electronics, automotive, toys, and media and gaming.

Two-thirds of what Walmart sells in the US is domestically sourced, executives had said last quarter, which gave it some insulation from tariffs compared to competitors.

The new stake in the tech giant aims to increase US semiconductor chip production.

United States Senator Bernie Sanders has thrown his support behind US President Donald Trump’s plan to convert US grants to chipmakers, including $10.9bn for Intel, into government stakes in the companies.

The senator for the state of Vermont announced his support on Wednesday.

“If microchip companies make a profit from the generous grants they receive from the federal government, the taxpayers of America have a right to a reasonable return on that investment,” Sanders, an independent who caucuses with Democrats, said in a statement to the Reuters news agency.

The awards were part of the 2022 CHIPS and Science Act, which sought to lure chip production away from Asia and boost American domestic semiconductor output with $39bn in subsidies.

The acronym CHIPS in the name of the legislation stands for “Creating Helpful Incentives to Produce Semiconductors”.

US Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick is now looking into the government taking equity stakes in embattled Intel and other chipmakers in exchange for the grants as the Trump administration seeks “equity” in return for “investments”.

Rare bipartisanship

The unusual alignment between Sanders and Trump on government ownership stakes in private companies highlights a marked shift by Trump toward policies of state intervention in the economy that are typically associated with the left.

Since Trump took office for a second time in January, he agreed to allow AI chip giants Nvidia and AMD to sell AI chips to China in exchange for the US government receiving 15 percent of revenues from the sales.

The Pentagon is also set to become the largest shareholder in a small mining company to boost the output of rare earth magnets. And the US government negotiated for itself a “golden share” with certain veto rights as part of a deal to allow Nippon Steel to buy US Steel.

Sanders and Senator Elizabeth Warren, a Democrat, had proposed an amendment to the CHIPS Act that would have forbidden the Commerce Department from granting a CHIPS Act award without the Treasury Department receiving a warrant, equity stake or senior debt instrument issued by the recipient company.

“I am glad the Trump administration is in agreement with the amendment I offered three years ago,” Sanders said. “Taxpayers should not be providing billions of dollars in corporate welfare to large, profitable corporations like Intel without getting anything in return.”

Much of the funding for CHIPS Act award recipients such as Micron, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co and Samsung has not been disbursed.

Trump’s interest in Intel is also being driven by his desire to boost chip production in the US, which has been a focal point of the trade war that he has been waging throughout the world. By lessening the country’s dependence on chips manufactured overseas, the president believes the US will be better positioned to maintain its technological lead on China in the race to create artificial intelligence.

Earlier this month, Trump called on Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan to resign.

The demand was triggered by reports raising national security concerns about Tan’s past investments in Chinese tech companies while he was a venture capitalist. But Trump has since backed off after Tan professed his allegiance to the US to Intel employees and went to the White House to meet with the president, who applauded the Intel CEO for having an “amazing story”.

This comes as Intel is also in talks with other large investors to receive an equity infusion at a discounted price just days after the chipmaker got a $2bn capital injection from the SoftBank Group, according to CNBC.

On Wall Street, investors have not responded well to the government’s potential new role. Intel stock is down 7.1 percent from the market open as of 1:30pm in New York (17:30 GMT).

Trump’s investments include Meta, Wells Fargo, Morgan Stanley, Citigroup, and T-Mobile, according to filing.

United States President Donald Trump has bought more than $100m in company and municipal bonds since his return to the White House, financial disclosures show, providing a window into the management of the billionaire’s wealth in office.

The filings released by the US Office of Government Ethics on Wednesday detail nearly 700 financial purchases made by Trump from his January 21 inauguration to August 1.

The purchases include bonds issued by the financial giants Wells Fargo, Morgan Stanley and Citigroup, as well as those from corporate household names such as Meta, UnitedHealth, T-Mobile and The Home Depot.

Dozens of US states, including Texas, Florida and New York, are represented in the purchases of municipal bonds, with Trump’s investments spanning hospitals, schools, airports, ports and gas projects.

The documents do not provide the value of each transaction, only broad ranges, such as $100,001-$250,000 and $1,000,001-$5,000,000.

Trump did not report any sales during the period.

A type of fixed-income investment, bonds are a loan to a government authority or company in exchange for a specified rate of interest.

The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment, but US media cited administration officials as saying that Trump and his family were not directly involved in the transactions.

Under legislation passed in 1978 in the wake of the Watergate scandal, US presidents are required to disclose a broad accounting of their finances, but they are not obligated to divest from assets that could potentially raise conflicts of interest.

Before Trump, all US presidents going back to 1978, set up a blind trust or committed to limiting their investments to diversified mutual funds upon taking office.

Trump controversially dispensed with that tradition, instead passing control of his business empire to a trust managed by his children.

Government ethics experts have for years raised concerns about the intersection between Trump’s governance and his personal fortune.

Richard Painter, who served as the chief White House ethics lawyer in the administration of former President George W Bush, noted that Trump’s bond holdings stand to rise in value if the Federal Reserve lowers interest rates as he has demanded.

“When interest rates go down, bond prices go up,” Painter told Al Jazeera. “No wonder he’s leaning on the Fed for a rate cut!”

While Trump’s exact net wealth is unclear, the Bloomberg Billionaires Index last month estimated the US president to be worth $6.4bn.

The resignation calls intensify Trump’s attempts to yield influence over the central bank.

United States President Donald Trump has called on Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook to resign, intensifying his effort to gain influence over the central bank on the basis of allegations made by one of his allies about mortgages Cook holds in Michigan and Georgia.

US Federal Housing Finance Agency Director Bill Pulte alleged in a post on X earlier on Wednesday that Cook had designated a condo in Atlanta as her primary residence after taking a loan on her home in Michigan, which she also declared as a primary residence.

Loans for a primary residence can carry easier terms than for second homes or investment properties. Pulte said the loans date to mid-2021, before Cook was appointed to the Fed by former President Joe Biden and confirmed by the Senate the following year. She is a native of Georgia and, at the time, was an economics professor at Michigan State University.

Pulte asked Attorney General Pam Bondi to investigate, and Trump quickly amplified the allegation. The Department of Justice was taking the matter very seriously, a department official told Reuters.

“We’re also probing some property that she has in Massachusetts to see if there’s something there. But I don’t have anything yet on that,” Pulte said in an interview on CNBC.

Cook’s federally filed financial disclosure documents show three mortgages taken out in 2021, including a 15-year 2.5 percent loan on an investment property and two loans for personal residences, including a 30-year 3.25 percent mortgage and a 15-year 2.875 percent mortgage. The weekly average rate for 30-year loans during 2021 ranged between 2.9 percent and 3.3 percent, Mortgage Bankers Association data shows. Cook started at the Fed in 2022 and was reappointed to a 14-year term in 2023.

Spokespersons for the Fed and for Cook did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

“Cook must resign, now!!!” Trump wrote in a post on his social media platform, his latest remarks aimed at reshaping the makeup of the US central bank, a body designed to set benchmark interest rates independent of White House influence.

Trump has told aides he is considering attempting to fire Cook, according to the Wall Street Journal, which cited a senior White House official and another person familiar with the matter.

White House at odds with the central bank

Cook is one of three Biden appointees to the Fed whose term extends beyond Trump’s time in office, complicating the president’s efforts to get more control by appointing a majority of its seven-member board.

Currently, two of the Fed’s remaining six board members were appointed by Trump: Governor Christopher Waller and Vice Chair for Supervision Michelle Bowman.

Trump has repeatedly blasted Fed Chair Jerome Powell over benchmark rates that he wants sharply reduced, calling for his resignation while acknowledging that the Fed’s unique status in US governance prevents him from firing Fed board members over monetary policy disputes.

Trump can name a new chair when Powell’s term ends in May, but claiming a majority on the board may take more time. Powell could continue serving as a governor until 2028, near the end of Trump’s term, should he buck convention and continue sitting on the board under a new chair.

Until Powell’s departure, Trump at this point has only one other seat to fill, vacated recently by the surprise resignation of former Governor Adriana Kugler. Earlier this month, Trump nominated Council of Economic Advisers Chairman Stephen Miran to serve out the rest of her term.

United States President Donald Trump has threatened to slap new sanctions on Russia and secondary sanctions on countries that buy Moscow’s crude in efforts to end the Russia-Ukraine war.

While Trump imposed an additional 25 percent tariff earlier this month – to a total of 50 percent – on India’s goods, citing its continued imports of Russian oil, he has not instigated similar punitive actions against China, the largest buyer of Russian energy.

So, why has the Trump administration mounted pressure on India to stop purchasing Russian oil while taking little action against China?

Who is buying Russia oil, and how does Trump want to prevent that?

As the largest purchaser of Russian oil, China imported a record 109 million tonnes of this product last year, representing nearly 20 percent of its total energy imports, Chinese customs data showed.

India, by contrast, imported 88 million tonnes of Russian oil in 2024.

As such, China has arguably been Russia’s key economic lifeline, leading to accusations that Beijing is indirectly helping Moscow in its war on Ukraine, now in its fourth year.

It is understood that lawmakers from both main US political parties are pushing for a bill – the Sanctioning Russia Act of 2025 – that would target any country that buys Russian oil and natural gas.

The bill would give Trump the authority to impose 500 percent tariffs against nations that are perceived to be helping Russia. US senators are reportedly waiting on Trump’s OK to move the bill forward.

What reasons has Trump cited for not imposing new tariffs on China?

Asked by Fox News on August 15 if he was considering secondary sanctions on Beijing after he and Russian President Vladimir Putin failed to agree on a Russia-Ukraine ceasefire in Alaska last week, Trump said, “Well, because of what happened today, I think I don’t have to think about that.”

“Now, I may have to think about it in two weeks or three weeks or something, but we don’t have to think about that right now,” he said.

Observers suspect Trump is buying time to allow negotiations on a broad trade deal that would include rare earth minerals.

Rare earths are a group of 17 elements essential to numerous manufacturing industries, from auto parts to clean energy and military technology. China has long dominated the mining and processing of rare earth minerals.

Because numerous US industries are heavily reliant on Chinese minerals, they remain a central issue in ongoing trade talks.

Trump has other reasons for giving China an easier ride than India. In particular, he’s keen to avoid a tariff spike just as US retailers stock up on inventories of Chinese goods ahead of December’s Christmas holiday season.

For his part, Trump has taken steps to reduce trade flashpoints in recent weeks. Earlier this month, the US eased some of its export restrictions on advanced semiconductors – a key demand from China.

On August 11, Trump permitted US company Nvidia to sell advanced chips to China – even if the tech giant would have to pay 15 percent of its China sales to the federal government. Trump had previously barred the deal.

Speaking to CNBC news on Tuesday, US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent defended Washington’s decision not to impose secondary sanctions against China saying, Beijing purchased 13 percent of Russian oil before the Ukraine war, which has now increased to 16 percent. “So China has a diversified input of their oil,” he said.

He added that China had not engaged in the kind of “arbitrage” done by India.

But Bessent accused India of “profiteering”. He pointed out that before the Ukraine war, India’s import of Russian oil was less than 1 percent. But “now, I believe, it’s up to 42 percent,” he said. “This is what I would call the Indian arbitrage – buying cheap Russian oil, reselling it as product,” he told CNBC.

“They’ve made $16bn in excess profits – some of the richest families in India.”

On Monday, White House trade adviser Peter Navarro became the second senior Trump administration official to accuse India of financing Russia’s war in Ukraine. Earlier this month, Stephen Miller, deputy chief of staff at the White House, said that New Delhi’s purchase of Russia crude was “not acceptable”.

What have other officials said?

On August 12, US Vice President JD Vance declined to say whether Trump would move against Beijing as he did with New Delhi the previous week, when Washington announced an extra 25 percent tariff on India’s imports over its continued purchase of Russian oil.

“The president said he’s thinking about it, but he hasn’t made any firm decisions … the China issue’s a little bit more complicated because our relationship with China, it just, it affects a lot of other things that have nothing to do with the Russian situation,” Vance said.

Earlier this week, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio warned that energy prices could rise if the US imposes secondary sanctions on China for refining Russian oil.

In an interview with Fox News on Monday, Rubio said, “If you put secondary sanctions on a country – let’s say you were to go after the oil sales of Russian oil to China. Well, China just refines that oil. That oil is then sold into the global marketplace, and anyone who’s buying that oil would be paying more for it.”

Meanwhile, Beijing’s embassy in Washington said China’s trade with Russia falls within the scope of international law.

“The international community, including China, has conducted normal cooperation with Russia within the framework of international law,” said Liu Pengyu, the embassy’s spokesman, on July 6.

How would heightened tariffs impact the US and Chinese economies?

A ceasefire deal in Ukraine, with the resulting reduction of sanctions on Russia, would bring greater stability to the international system and a boon for China’s economy, not least after the last subdued economic data in July.

Last month, China’s economy slowed as factory activity, investment and retail sales fell from June, suggesting that spillovers from Trump’s tariffs are casting a pall over the world’s number-two economy.

Elsewhere, China’s youth unemployment rate rose to its highest level in 11 months in July, as the urban jobless rate for the 16-24 age group, excluding students, rose to 17.8 percent – up from 14.5 percent in June.

Alicia Garcia Herrero, chief Asia Pacific economist at Natixis in Hong Kong, told Al Jazeera that “Cracks are starting to show [in the Chinese economy] and the overall picture is not great.”

Still, she said that “Chinese banks and firms have been preparing for the possibility of secondary sanctions for a long time already. They already started worrying about this under the [Joe] Biden administration.”

In recent years, Beijing has stepped up its efforts to diversify trade routes and build greater numbers of strategic products at home, making China’s economy “harder to strangle through elevated or secondary sanctions”, said Garcia Herrero.

“Clearly,” she said, “given the high level of goods imports from China to the US, higher tariffs would also raise inflation for American consumers.”

Last year, the US trade deficit with China was $295.4bn, marking a 5.8 percent rise from 2023.

What is the current state of US-China trade?

On August 12, the US and China extended a pre-existing tariff pause – and avoided an all-out trade war – for 90 days. With the extension, the imposition of higher US tariffs on China was suspended until November 10, with all other elements of the truce remaining in place.

The two sides agreed to their first tariff pause on May 11.

In April, China was slapped with a tariff of 145 percent while Beijing slapped a reciprocal tariff of 125 percent on the US – rates that amounted to a virtual trade embargo between the countries.

High tariffs prompted the US trade deficit with China to fall to its narrowest level since 2004 in June, according to US Census Bureau data. The US trade gap with China fell by $22.2bn from March to August. That amounts to a 70 percent drop from one year earlier.

But the tariff truce agreed to in May in Geneva, Switzerland, lowered the temperature by temporarily slashing US tariffs on Chinese imports to 30 percent, while Chinese levies on US exports fell to 10 percent. Beijing also agreed to resume some rare earth exports.

“I think there will be a [trade] deal of some sort soon,” Garcia Herrero said. “Nothing dramatic, as the levels of trust on both sides are low. But the US and China both need some positive news, or they face hitting economic walls.”

United States President Donald Trump has threatened to impose tariffs of up to 300 percent on semiconductor imports, with exemptions for foreign companies that commit to manufacturing in the US.

Trump has cast the proposed tariff as a way to drive investment to the US, but experts say it could also disrupt global supply chains and even penalise companies already making chips in the US.

What are the details of Trump’s plan?

Few details have been released since Trump announced plans for a 100 percent tariff at a White House event on August 7.

The US president said exemptions would be given to companies that build research or manufacturing facilities in the US, but tariffs could be applied retroactively if they failed to follow through on their planned investments.

“If, for some reason, you say you’re building, and you don’t build, then we go back, and we add it up, it accumulates, and we charge you at a later date, you have to pay, and that’s a guarantee,” Trump told reporters.

On Friday, Trump told reporters on board Air Force One that more details would be announced soon and that the tariff could be much higher than previously suggested.

“I’ll be setting tariffs next week and the week after, on steel and on, I would say chips – chips and semiconductors, we’ll be setting sometime next week, week after,” Trump said en route to Alaska to meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

“I’m going to have a rate that is going to be 200 percent, 300 percent,” he added.

Why does Trump want to impose tariffs on chip imports?

Trump wants to impose a tariff on chips for several reasons, but the main one is to re-shore investment and manufacturing to the US, said G Dan Hutcheson, the vice chair of Canada’s TechInsights.

“The primary goal is to reverse the cost disadvantage of manufacturing in the US and turn it into an advantage. It’s mainly focused on companies that are not investing in the US,” Hutcheson told Al Jazeera.

“Exclusions are negotiable for entities that align with his goal of bringing manufacturing back to the US.”

More broadly, the tariff is also intended to address the US dependence on imported semiconductors and buttress Washington’s position in its ongoing rivalry with China, another chip-making powerhouse.

Both issues are bipartisan concerns in the US.

The Trump administration earlier this year launched a Section 301 investigation into alleged unfair trade practices in China’s semiconductor industry, and a Section 232 investigation into the national security implications of US reliance on chip imports and finished products that use foreign chips.

Who will be impacted by the tariff?

Foreign tech giants that have already invested in the US, including the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) and South Korea’s Samsung, would likely not be affected by the tariff.

It is less clear how the measure could affect other companies, including chip makers in China, where companies face barriers to US investment from both US and Chinese regulators.

Yongwook Ryu, an assistant professor at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy in Singapore, said the tariff could be used as leverage by the US as it negotiates the rate of its so-called “reciprocal tariffs” on China.

The US has imposed blanket tariffs of 10-40 percent on most trade partners since August 7, but negotiators are still hammering out a comprehensive trade deal with Beijing.

“My view is that while the reciprocal tariffs are generally aimed more at addressing the US trade deficit problem and re-shoring manufacturing back to the US, product-specific or sectoral tariffs [like semiconductors] are aimed at serving the strategic goal of strengthening US technological hegemony and containing China,” Ryu told Al Jazeera.

What is the value of US chip imports each year?

The US imported about $40bn in chips in 2024, according to a report by the American Enterprise Institute, citing United Nations trade data.

Imports mainly came from Taiwan, Malaysia, Israel, South Korea, Ireland, Vietnam, Costa Rica, Mexico and China, but experts say this data does not capture the full picture of chip flows in and out of the US.

Chips can cross borders multiple times as they are manufactured, packaged, or added to finished goods.

Chris Miller, the author of Chip War: The Fight for the World’s Most Critical Technology, estimates that another $50bn worth of chips entered the US in 2024 via products like smartphones, auto parts and home appliances from countries like China and Vietnam.

Miller also estimates that a “substantial portion” of US chip imports are manufactured in the US before being sent overseas for packaging – a labour-intensive process – and then re-imported.

“Many of the chips imported from key trading partners like Mexico, Malaysia and Costa Rica are likely actually manufactured by US firms like Texas Instruments and Intel, which have manufacturing in the US but often have their test and assembly facilities abroad,” Miller told Al Jazeera.

Why is the tariff a concern for the global chip industry?

Trump’s tariff plans have injected further uncertainty into an industry already grappling with his administration’s sweeping efforts to reorder global trade.

“It’s unclear whether the US government has the capacity to effectively enforce this and… there’s not really any guidance in terms of what these tariffs are actually going to look like,” Nick Marro, the lead analyst for global trade at the Economist Intelligence Unit, told Al Jazeera.

The White House has yet to provide details on whether the tariff will apply to chips originally made in the US and chips contained in finished products.

If the latter were included in the tariff plans, the fallout would extend to industries like electronics, home appliances, automobiles and auto parts. 

Miller said that it would be consumers in the US and elsewhere who would be among those most affected by the tariff. 

“Initially, it appears that most costs would be paid by companies via lower profit margins, though in the long run, consumers will pay the majority of the cost,” he said.

New US tariffs covering 407 products will take effect immediately.

The United States Commerce Department is set to hike steel and aluminium tariffs on more than 400 products including wind turbines, mobile cranes, bulldozers and other heavy equipment, along with railcars, furniture and hundreds of other products.

The government agency announced the new development on Tuesday.

The department said 407 product categories are being added to the list of “derivative” steel and aluminium products covered by sectoral tariffs, with a 50 percent tariff on any steel and aluminium content of these products.

The department is also adding imported parts for automotive exhaust systems and electrical steel needed for electric vehicles to the new tariffs.

A group of foreign automakers had urged the department not to add the parts, saying the US does not have the domestic capacity to handle current demand.

The new tariffs take effect immediately and also cover compressors and pumps.

“Today’s action expands the reach of the steel and aluminum tariffs and shuts down avenues for circumvention – supporting the continued revitalisation of the American steel and aluminum industries,” said Under Secretary of Commerce for Industry and Security Jeffrey Kessler.

Steelmakers including Cleveland-Cliffs had petitioned the administration to expand the tariffs to include additional steel and aluminium auto parts.

Since returning to the presidency, Trump has imposed a 10 percent tariff on almost all US trading partners, alongside varying steeper levels on dozens of economies such as the European Union and Japan.

Certain sectors have been spared from these countrywide tariff levels, but instead were targeted under different authorities by even higher duties.

Some businesses have already had to raise prices because of increased tariffs. On Tuesday, on the heels of its earnings report, Home Depot said it would need to raise prices on imported goods that it sells.

“There will be modest price movement in some categories,” Home Depot Chief Financial Officer Richard McPhail said on a Tuesday conference call.

Other brands that have recently announced price increases include the world’s largest consumer goods company, Procter and Gamble, which last month said it would need to raise prices on a quarter of the goods it produces.

Officials in US President Donald Trump’s administration made comments saying the equity stake was not to run the firm.

United States Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick has said the US government wants an equity stake in Intel in exchange for cash grants approved during the administration of former President Joe Biden.

Separately, also on Tuesday, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said any US investment in Intel would be aimed at helping the troubled chipmaker stabilise.

Asked about reports that the US was considering taking a 10 percent stake in Intel, Bessent told CNBC’s “Squawk Box” programme: “The stake would be a conversion of the grants and maybe increase the investment into Intel to help stabilise the company for chip production here in the US.”

Bessent gave no details about the size or timing of any US stake in Intel, but said any investment would not be aimed at forcing US companies to buy chips from Intel.

Bessent’s comments were the first official response from the Trump administration after Bloomberg News reported on Monday that the US government is in talks to take a 10 percent Intel stake in exchange for $7.9bn in grants that were approved for the US chip company during the Biden administration.

‘Not governance’

“We should get an equity stake for our money,” Lutnick told CNBC. “We’ll get equity in return for that … instead of just giving grants away.”

Lutnick said the US does not want control of the company.

“It’s not governance, we are just converting what was a grant under Biden into equity for the Trump administration for the American people.” He suggested any stake would be “non-voting,” meaning it would not enable the US government to tell the company how to run its business.

He made his comments a day after SoftBank Group agreed to invest $2bn into the chipmaker, which has struggled to compete after years of management blunders.

“The Biden administration literally was giving Intel money for free and giving TSMC money for free, and all these companies just giving the money for free, and Donald Trump turned it into saying, ‘Hey, we want equity for the money. If we’re going to give you the money, we want a piece of the action for the American taxpayer,’” Lutnick said.

Intel and TSMC, a Taiwan-based chipmaker, did not immediately comment.

Intel helped launch Silicon Valley, but has fallen behind rivals like Nvidia Corp and Advanced Micro Devices Inc and is shedding thousands of workers and slashing costs under its new CEO, Lip-Bu Tan. It recorded an annual loss of $18.8bn in 2024, its first such loss since 1986.

Intel plans to end the year with 75,000 “core” workers, excluding subsidiaries, through layoffs and attrition, down from 99,500 core employees at the end of 2024. The company previously announced a 15 percent workforce reduction.

Trump recently said Tan, who was made CEO in March, should resign. But after meeting with him last week, Trump relented, saying Tan had an “amazing story”.