framework

Reuters

Trump’s tariff tactics

TikTok deal done?

WASHINGTON — The U.S. remains mired in a deadly pandemic, the economy is suffering from a bout of inflation and states face challenges from climate to transportation, but with only days left in their close-fought race, the hottest issue dividing Virginia’s candidates for governor this week was the late novelist Toni Morrison.

The Republican candidate, Glenn Youngkin, who has steadily gained ground over the past two months, aired an ad featuring Laura Murphy, a parent who had campaigned years ago against the use of Morrison’s widely acclaimed, Pulitzer Prize-winning novel “Beloved” in her son’s high school Advanced Placement English class.

In 2016 and again in 2017, then-Gov. Terry McAuliffe, a Democrat, vetoed a bill aimed at “Beloved” that Murphy helped lobby through the state legislature. It would have required K-12 teachers to give parents advance notice of books with “sexually explicit content” and allow them to take their children out of class. “Beloved,” based on a true story of a woman who killed her child to save her from slavery, includes several graphic descriptions of sexual violence.

Youngkin accused the former governor, now seeking to return to the office, of wanting to “silence parents because he doesn’t believe they should have a say in their child’s education.”

McAuliffe fired back that Youngkin was “focused on banning award-winning books from our schools and silencing the voices of Black authors” such as Morrison. The Republican, he said, was engaged in “Trumpian dog whistles.”

For both candidates, the issue provided a chance to rally key audiences — conservative suburban parents on the one side, Black voters on the other — as the state hurtles toward an election Tuesday that, if polls are correct, could be among its closest in years.

President Biden and former President Trump both have a lot riding on the outcome.

A close race on Democratic turf

The Virginia election is everything that California’s recall turned out not to be — a test of whether Democrats can hold the allegiance of suburban voters stressed by nearly two years of COVID-19 restrictions and of whether Republicans can win a blue state despite Trump’s unpopularity.

Last year, Biden carried Virginia by 10 points, and Democrats currently control all the statewide elected offices. The party took control of both houses of the state legislature over the last four years, and Republicans haven’t won the governorship since 2009.

In short, while Virginia is not as deeply blue as California or New York, it’s a state Democrats recently have been able to count on.

Right now, they can’t.

Biden’s popularity in the state has tumbled, just as it has nationwide since this summer when the Delta variant of the coronavirus upended his optimistic forecasts about COVID-19. A Monmouth University poll in mid-October found Virginia voters disapproving of Biden’s job performance, 52% to 43%, sharply down from an August poll.

The president’s slumping polls are a big problem for McAuliffe, creating “headwinds” for him, as the candidate told supporters last month.

He faces several other difficulties: With Democrats having run the state for the last eight years, they’re naturally the target of voters seeking a change. And McAuliffe, as a former governor trying to make a comeback — Virginia doesn’t allow governors to run for consecutive terms — wouldn’t be a likely change candidate in any case. As a 64-year-old white, male, longtime political figure, he’s not the type to inspire huge enthusiasm among young voters or progressives.

Youngkin, a first-time candidate, has skillfully positioned himself. He’s seized on discontent over schools to take control of an issue on which Democrats have long had an advantage. The Monmouth poll showed that education had risen on the list of top voter concerns and that Youngkin had pulled even with McAuliffe as the candidate voters thought could best handle the issue.

Overall, Youngkin clearly has momentum on his side. The Monmouth poll was one of several recently that found the two candidates dead even — a big accomplishment for the Republican, who this summer trailed by around seven points. A Fox News poll released Thursday evening showed Youngkin moving into the lead among likely voters.

Democrats have dominated early voting, which the state has greatly expanded, but both parties expect Republicans to show up in large numbers to vote in person on Tuesday.

Youngkin, the former CEO of Carlyle Group, a big private equity firm, has poured at least $20 million of his own money into the race, allowing him to keep pace with McAuliffe, a prolific fundraiser. He’s used that money for a barrage of television ads that depict him in classrooms, pledging to raise teacher pay — stealing a page from the Democratic playbook.

At the same time, he has closely identified himself with parents angry over unresponsive school bureaucracies — a sentiment that has boiled over in many parts of the country.

Youngkin has used education issues to mobilize conservatives, pledging to ban teaching of critical race theory in Virginia. It’s not clear that the academic theory, which analyzes the outcomes of systemic racism, is taught anywhere in the state’s K-12 schools, but the idea that it might be has become a rallying cry on the right. That, plus Trump’s endorsement, has solidified his Republican support.

Education also has given him an entrée to less ideological voters in the state’s large suburban regions. In recent elections, those voters increasingly have turned against the GOP, but many are deeply frustrated over the last year and a half of COVID-related school disruptions.

In the California recall election, Republicans had hoped that tapping into parental anger could give them the boost they needed to defeat Gov. Gavin Newsom. That failed, in large part because the top Republican candidate, Larry Elder, lacked credibility with swing voters.

Youngkin has avoided Elder’s habit of creating controversies. Instead, it was McAuliffe who inadvertently helped his opponent with ill-chosen words. During a candidate debate in September, as he explained why he had vetoed the so-called “Beloved” bill, McAuliffe said “I’m not going to let parents come into schools and actually take books out and make their own decisions.”

Then, he added: “I don’t think parents should be telling schools what they should teach.”

Youngkin has heavily featured that line in his ads.

McAuliffe’s campaign eventually responded with an ad in which the former governor expressed respect for parents, but the damage was done.

On top of the reasons that may cause some swing voters to switch this year, McAuliffe also faces a turnout problem, according to Democratic strategists close to his campaign: After the drama of last year, many Democratic voters are exhausted with politics. Republicans, by contrast, are highly motivated to avenge their recent losses.

To counter apathy, McAuliffe has depended heavily on Democrats’ chief motivator — Trump.

In speeches and advertisements, he constantly links his opponent with the unpopular former president.

So do his surrogates, including Biden.

“I ran against Donald Trump. And Terry is running against an acolyte of Donald Trump,” Biden said Tuesday during a campaign rally with McAuliffe in northern Virginia.

Former President Obama, Georgia’s Stacey Abrams and other leading Democrats who have come into the state to campaign have stressed the same point.

Trump, in his usual way, has not been able to resist the urge to get involved. On Wednesday, his spokesperson put out a statement saying that Trump “and his MAGA movement will be delivering a major victory to Trump-endorsed businessman Glenn Youngkin.”

McAuliffe’s campaign went into overdrive to ensure the statement was widely seen.

With the contest appearing so close — tight enough that the winner might not be known until final ballots are counted late next week — there’s one forecast that’s clear: Whichever candidate wins probably can thank Donald Trump.

A ‘framework’ if not a bill

Biden, before heading to Europe, where he will participate in the G20 economic summit and an international conference on climate change, traveled to Capitol Hill on Thursday to announce that he and party leaders had negotiated the “framework” of a bill to cover his major budget priorities.

As Jennifer Haberkorn and Nolan McCaskill reported, the measure, the subject of negotiations for months, would spend roughly $1.75 trillion over the next 10 years on a host of Democratic priorities, including universal preschool for 3- and 4-year-olds, subsidies for childcare and continuation of the expanded child tax credit.

On healthcare, the bill would expand subsidies under the Affordable Care Act and close the hole in Obamacare that excludes low-income people in the dozen states, mostly in the South, that have refused to expand Medicaid. Both expansions would last through 2025. Medicare would grow to include hearing coverage.

The bill would also include about $500 billion to combat climate change.

McCaskill prepared this summary of what’s in the framework.

Biden and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi hope that agreement on the framework will allow the House to pass the separate $1 trillion infrastructure bill that cleared the Senate in early August. But a large number of progressive House Democrats are continuing to hold out. They want more concrete assurances that Sens. Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, who have been the main impediments to Biden’s budget plan in the Senate, will vote for the framework before they’ll vote to approve the infrastructure bill, which the two more-conservative senators support.

Democratic leaders hope to bring both bills to a vote as early as next week.

Several Democratic priorities fell out of the bill as the White House negotiated with Manchin and Sinema to reduce its cost. As Haberkorn reported, a key element that dropped out was a program for paid family leave. Also gone is a plan to allow Medicare to negotiate drug prices.

As Chris Megerian wrote, Biden has been pressing to get agreement on his domestic priorities before heading overseas for the summit meetings.

Friday morning, Biden began his European events with a private meeting with Pope Francis. As Megerian wrote, the meeting comes at a time when some conservative U.S. bishops have talked of denying Biden communion because of his support for abortion rights. The pope’s decision to host Biden “sends a message to the American bishops that denying communion is not something that he approves of,” said John K. White, professor of politics at the Catholic University of America in Washington.

Oil industry on the hot seat

In advance of the climate summit, a House committee has been grilling oil industry leaders about their decades-long record of downplaying the role that fossil fuels play in causing global warming. As Anna Phillips and Erin Logan reported, the hearing marked the first time that members of Congress have directly questioned oil and gas executives under oath about reported efforts to mislead the public about climate change.

The latest from California

Gov. Newsom and Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg announced $5 billion in loans to help modernize California’s seaports. The money probably won’t come in time to help clear out current snarls that have backlogged shipments, but it should help prevent future logistical nightmares, Megerian and Russ Mitchell reported.

In Sacramento, lawmakers called for changes following the oil spill off the coast of Orange County, but, as Phil Willon reported, they largely conceded that the state has little ability to ban offshore drilling, most of which occurs in federal waters.

The field of candidates for mayor of Los Angeles got another entry this week as Ramit Varma, an entrepreneur from Encino, announced his candidacy. As Dakota Smith reported, another businessman waits in the wings. Rick Caruso, the prominent developer, has been discussing a race with strategists, including Bearstar Strategies, the firm whose partners Ace Smith and Sean Clegg devised campaigns for former Gov. Jerry Brown and Vice President Kamala Harris.

Sign up for our California Politics newsletter to get the best of The Times’ state politics reporting.

Irish Foreign Minister Simon Harris (pictured in Washington, D.C., in October 2024) called Friday’s agreements between the U.K. and Irish governments a “night and day” improvement over the 2023 Legacy Act, which granted amnesty to British military veterans for killings during The Troubles. File Photo by Ron Sachs/UPI | License Photo

Sept. 19 (UPI) — The U.K. government will replace its controversial Northern Ireland Legacy and Reconciliation Act of 2023 with new laws to address killings that occurred during The Troubles era.

Representatives of the U.K. and Irish governments on Friday reached agreements on several proposals that are intended to address losses suffered by Irish families, the BBC reported.

Among points of contention is the 2023 Legacy Act that was approved by the U.K. government and provides amnesty for British military veterans for killings that occurred during The Troubles era.

A new commission and a dedicated unit within the Irish police force will investigate killings that occurred during The Troubles era in Northern Ireland to resolve decades-old cases.

Irish Foreign Minister Simon Harris called Friday’s agreements a “night and day improvement” over the Legacy Act, The Guardian reported.

Harris is among Irish officials who are to make public the agreements and other proposals to address The Troubles and related killings.

The agreements reached on Friday will not end an active interstate case filed by the Irish government in the wake of the Legacy Act’s approval in 2023.

Some British military leaders criticized the agreements for making elderly veterans vulnerable to potential prosecution.

Meanwhile, Sinn Fein leader Mary Lou McDonald said the agreements must be “victim-centered” and comply with human rights law to be accepted, according to the BBC.

The Troubles era refers to centuries-old conflicts in Northern Ireland that culminated in a 30-year conflict from the late 1960s until the signing of the Good Friday Agreement in 1998, according to the Imperial War Museums.

The agreement ended fighting that pitted the British military and many Protestants in Northern Ireland against the Irish Republican Army, other paramilitary forces and many Irish Catholics, who wanted to establish an independent Irish state.

The Troubles included many bombings and street fighting that caused the deaths of thousands of Irish civilians until the 1998 cease-fire agreement.

The conflict had its roots in the early 17th century, when Protestants from Scotland and northern England first settled in what would become Northern Ireland.

The United States and China have reached a framework agreement to transfer TikTok’s ownership to US control.

Officials from both countries made the announcement on Monday.

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The short-form video app was set to be banned in the US by Wednesday if its owner ByteDance did not agree to sell the company to a US-based operation or if the US did not extend a pause of the ban, which the White House has already done three times, most recently in June. 

US President Donald Trump applauded the deal, which will be confirmed when he discusses it with his Chinese counterpart President Xi Jinping on Friday.

“A deal was also reached on a “certain” company that young people in our Country very much wanted to save,” Trump wrote on his social media platform Truth Social on Monday.

“The relationship remains a very strong one!!!”

The White House declined to outline the terms of the deal, which was negotiated during trade talks between the two countries in Madrid. The two-day meeting, which wrapped up on Monday, was the latest in a slew of negotiations that began in May.

“We’re not going to talk about the commercial terms of the deal. It’s between two private parties, but the commercial terms have been agreed upon,” US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told reporters.

Bessent and US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer, who was also part of the trade delegation in Madrid, said China wanted concessions on trade and technology in exchange for agreeing to divest from the popular social media app.

“Our Chinese counterparts have come with a very aggressive ask,” Bessent said, adding, “We are not willing to sacrifice national security for a social media app.”

“TikTok’s divestment agreement not only keeps the app running in the US, but is also expected to help de-escalate a tense trade standoff and lay groundwork for further trade talks between the US and China,” Maria Pechurina, director of international trade at Peacock Tariff Consulting, told Al Jazeera. “Both US and Chinese delegations explicitly linked the fate of TikTok to progress on tariff reductions and related trade concessions during their conversations in Madrid.”

The deal comes despite the US pushing other nations to impose tariffs on China over purchases of Russian oil, which Bessent said was discussed briefly with the US’s Chinese counterparts.

Experts warn to be wary of the deal being set until Xi and Trump speak on Friday.

“It’s important to note that the Chinese often see the signing of a deal as the beginning, and not the end, of any negotiations. The devil would lie in the details behind the optics. Also expect much haggling on important details that may take years,” Usha Hayley, a professor of international business at Wichita State University who specialises in Chinese industry, told Al Jazeera.

“The deal, when reached, would reflect the convergence of technology, national security, and geopolitics,” said Hayley. “TikTok sits at the centre of US concerns about data access, influence over public discourse, and Beijing’s reach into global tech. Washington is stating that the US views digital platforms as strategic assets, not private businesses.”

TikTok did not respond to Al Jazeera’s request for comment.

The looming ban

Trump proposed banning TikTok during his first term as US president, signing two executive orders in August 2020 that were aimed at restricting the app.

In April 2024, under then-President Joe Biden, the White House signed a law formally banning TikTok unless it sold its US operations. The ban was supposed to take effect on January 19, the last day of the Biden administration. Biden said he would not enforce the ban and said that he would leave that decision to the next administration.

Two days before the January deadline, on January 17, the Supreme Court stepped in to weigh in on TikTok’s challenge to the law and upheld the law. The app went dark briefly before the ban was paused during the early days of Trump’s subsequent presidency.

The pause was initially for 90 days and was later extended multiple times throughout the year.

The cultural importance to Trump

TikTok’s cultural relevance has grown significantly in recent years, serving both as a tool for organising and activism, and as a platform to reach the public, particularly young voters. In April 2024, the pro-Trump videos on TikTok were nearly double those supporting Biden, who was then the Democratic nominee, the New York Times reported, citing TikTok’s internal data.

Trump’s broader use of newer media was widely cited as a factor in his 2024 election victory. His campaign regularly engaged with right-leaning podcasts and influencers — such as Joe Rogan and Theo Von — to reach conservative audiences. It also targeted disillusioned men, who were drawn to influencers promoting traditional notions of masculinity, often conflated with conservative viewpoints.

A Pew Research Center study from November found that news influencers — defined as those who discuss “current events and civic issues” and have at least 100,000 followers across any social media platform – are more likely to lean conservative. A separate report from Pew in February found that news influencers posted more content supporting Trump than former Vice President Kamala Harris, Trump’s 2024 election opponent: 28 percent for Trump versus 24 percent for Harris.

TikTok’s role in spreading far-right narratives is not limited to US politics. The platform has reportedly influenced German state elections, contributing to the rise of far-right leaders, and has similarly affected far-right candidates in Poland, Sweden, and France.

Neighbouring countries agree on terms of economic cooperation in several areas, including energy and supply chains for minerals.

The Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and Rwanda have agreed on terms of economic cooperation in several sectors, as the two countries move towards delivering on a peace deal signed in June.

The tenets agreed on Friday summarise a regional economic integration framework, which includes elements of cooperation on energy, infrastructure, mineral supply chains, national parks and public health, according to the State Department of the United States, which brokered the deal.

A source familiar with the matter said a preliminary draft of the framework has been agreed to and there would now be an input period to get reaction from the private sector and civil society before it is finalised, the Reuters news agency reported.

In the statement, Rwanda and the DRC affirmed that each country has “full, sovereign control” over the exploitation, processing and export of its natural resources, and recognised the importance of developing mineral processing and transformation capacity within each country, according to Reuters.

The DRC views the plundering of its mineral wealth as a key driver of the conflict between its forces and Rwanda-backed M23 rebels in the country’s east that has killed thousands of people.

‘Mineral deal first’

The deal signed in Washington, DC, on June 27 aims to attract Western investment to a region rich in tantalum, gold, cobalt, copper, lithium and other minerals. According to Human Rights Watch, it is “a mineral deal first, an opportunity for peace second”, linking economic integration and respect for territorial integrity with the promise of billions of dollars of investments.

The two countries are also committed to ensuring that the minerals trade no longer provides funding to armed groups and to creating a world-class industrial mining sector in the region. The deal would also ensure better cross-border interoperability on mineral supply chains, according to the statement.

They also agreed to connect new infrastructure to the US-backed Lobito Corridor, underscoring Washington’s aim of greater access to resources in the region and efforts to counter China.

The Ruzizi III hydropower project and Lake Kivu methane exploitation were the only specific projects mentioned in the statement, despite US emphasis on critical minerals. The countries said they intended to prioritise financing for Ruzizi and work together to exploit methane gas sustainably.

Friday’s announcement comes after the two countries held the first meeting of a joint oversight committee on Thursday in a step towards implementing the deal, even as other commitments are yet to be fulfilled.

In the Washington agreement, the two countries pledged to implement a 2024 agreement that would see Rwandan troops withdraw from eastern DRC within 90 days.

The Congolese military’s operations targeting the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR), a Congo-based armed group that includes remnants of Rwanda’s former army and militias that carried out a 1994 genocide, are meant to conclude over the same timeframe.

The deal also said the DRC and Rwanda would form a joint security coordination mechanism within 30 days and implement a plan agreed upon last year to monitor and verify the withdrawal of Rwandan soldiers within three months.

But 30 days from the signing have passed without a meeting of the joint security coordination mechanism.

The source familiar with the matter said the joint security coordination mechanism meeting would be held on August 7 in Addis Ababa.

The DRC is also involved in direct talks with M23 hosted by Qatar, and last month the two sides pledged to sign a separate peace agreement by August 18, though many outstanding details need to be negotiated.

The United States and China say they’ve reached in principle a framework to roll back some of the punitive measures they have taken against each other’s economies.

That means Washington could ease restrictions on selling chips to China if Beijing agrees to speed up the export of rare earths.

Whether that happens depends on the approval of presidents Donald Trump and Xi Jinping.

The plan reached after talks in London marks the latest twist in a trade war that has threatened to disrupt global supply chains.

Also, what’s behind the surge in Russia’s rouble?

Plus, are nations choosing warfare over welfare?

Negotiators say agreement will be presented to US President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping for approval.

The United States and China have agreed on a “framework” on trade after two days of talks in London aimed at deescalating tensions between the sides.

While the specifics of the framework announced on Tuesday were unclear, the apparent breakthrough comes a month after Washington and Beijing announced a 90-day pause on most of their tariffs following talks in Geneva.

US Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said the sides would work to implement the “Geneva consensus” and had “pounded through” all the issues dividing the world’s two largest economies.

Lutnick said the sides would move forward with the framework pending its approval by US President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping, who held a 90-minute phone call on trade last week.

“Once the presidents approve it, we will then seek to implement it,” Lutnick told reporters outside Lancaster House.

Lutnick indicated that US measures imposed in response to a slowdown in Chinese exports of rare earths, a key issue dividing the sides, would likely be eased once supplies of the critical minerals ticked up.

Chinese Vice Commerce Minister Li Chenggang called the talks “professional, rational, in-depth and candid”.

“The two sides will bring back and report to our respective leaders the talks in the meeting as well as the framework that was reached in principle,” Li told reporters.

“We hope that the progress we made in this London meeting is conducive to increasing trust between China and the United States.”

Asian stock markets rose on hopes of a de-escalation in the trade tensions, which have cast a shadow over the global economy.

The World Bank on Tuesday lowered its forecast for global growth from 2.7 percent to 2.3 percent, pointing to the ongoing uncertainty around trade.

Japan’s Nikkei 225 was up almost 0.5 percent as of 03:30 GMT, while the Hang Seng in Hong Kong and CSI 300 in mainland China were about 1 percent and 0.8 higher, respectively.

“I would say that meeting a 90-day deadline for complex discussions was always going to be challenging,” Deborah Elms, the head of trade policy at the Hinrich Foundation in Singapore, told Al Jazeera.

“After two rounds of apparently intense discussions, both sides seem to have reaffirmed their interest in avoiding new escalation and have started to flesh out the path forward. Despite the optimistic language from some out of the White House, these talks are not going to be easy.”