International Trade

The US Supreme Court has questioned US President Donald Trump’s authority to use emergency powers to impose sweeping tariffs on trading partners around the world.

In a closely watched hearing on Wednesday in Washington, DC, conservative and liberal Supreme Court judges appeared sceptical about Trump’s tariff policy, which has already had ramifications for US carmakers, airlines and consumer goods importers.

The US president had earlier claimed that his trade tariffs – which have been central to his foreign policy since he returned to power earlier this year – will not affect US businesses, workers and consumers.

But a legal challenge by a number of small American businesses, including toy firms and wine importers, filed earlier this year, has led to lower courts in the country ruling that Trump’s tariffs are illegal.

In May, the Court of International Trade, based in New York, said Trump did not have the authority to impose tariffs and “the US Constitution grants Congress exclusive authority to regulate commerce”. That decision was upheld by the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in Washington, DC, in August.

Now, the Supreme Court, the country’s top court, is hearing the issue. Last week, the small business leaders, who are being represented by Indian-American lawyer Neal Katyal, told the Court that Trump’s import levies were severely harming their businesses and that many have been forced to lay off workers and cut prices as a result.

In a post on his Truth Social Platform on Sunday, Trump described the Supreme Court case as “one of the most important in the History of the Country”.

“If a President is not allowed to use Tariffs, we will be at a major disadvantage against all other Countries throughout the World,” he added.

What happened in Wednesday’s Supreme Court hearing, and what could happen if the court rules against Trump’s tariffs?

Here’s what we know:

What was discussed at the Supreme Court on Wednesday?

During a hearing which lasted for nearly three hours, the Trump administration’s lawyer, Solicitor General D John Sauer, argued that the president’s tariff policy is legal under a 1977 national law called the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA).

According to US government documents, IEEPA gives a US president an array of economic powers, including to regulate trade, in order “to deal with any unusual and extraordinary threat, which has its source in whole or substantial part outside the United States, to the national security, foreign policy, or economy of the United States, if the President declares a national emergency with respect to such threat”.

Trump invoked IEEPA in February to levy a new 25 percent tax on imports from Canada and Mexico, as well as a 10 percent levy on Chinese goods, on the basis that these countries were facilitating the flow of illegal drugs such as fentanyl into the US, and that this constituted a national emergency. He later paused the tariffs on Canada and Mexico, but increased China’s to 20 percent. This was restored to 10 percent after Trump met Chinese President Xi Jinping last month.

In April, when he imposed reciprocal tariffs on imports from a wide array of countries around the world, he said those levies were also in line with IEEPA since the US was running a trade deficit that posed an “extraordinary and unusual threat” to the nation.

Sauer argued that Trump had imposed the tariffs using IEEPA since “our exploding trade deficits have brought us to the brink of an economic and national security catastrophe”.

He also told the court that the levies are “regulatory tariffs. They are not revenue-raising tariffs”.

But Neal Katyal, the lawyer for the small businesses that have brought the case, countered this. “Tariffs are taxes,” Katyal said. “They take dollars from Americans’ pockets and deposit them in the US Treasury. Our founders gave that taxing power to Congress alone.”

What did the judges say about tariffs?

The judges raised another sticking point: Also, under the US Constitution, only Congress has the power to regulate tariffs. Justice John Roberts noted that “the [IEEPA] statute doesn’t use the word tariff.”

Liberal Justice Elena Kagan also told Sauer, “It has a lot of actions that can be taken under this statute. It just doesn’t have the one you want.”

Conservative Justice Amy Coney Barrett, who was appointed by Trump during his first term as president, asked Sauer, “Is it your contention that every country needed to be tariffed because of threats to the defence and industrial base?

“I mean, Spain, France? I could see it with some countries, but explain to me why as many countries needed to be subject to the reciprocal tariff policy,” Coney Barrett said.

Sauer replied that “there’s this sort of lack of reciprocity, this asymmetric treatment of our trade, with respect to foreign countries that does run across the board,” and reiterated the Trump administration’s power to use IEEPA.

Liberal Justice Sonia Sotomayor took issue with the notion that the tariffs are not taxes, as asserted by Trump’s team. She said, “You want to say that tariffs are not taxes, but that’s exactly what they are.”

According to recent data released by the US Customs and Border Protection agency, as of the end of August, IEEPA tariffs had generated $89bn in revenues to the US Treasury.

During the court’s arguments on Wednesday, Justice Roberts also suggested that the court may have to invoke the “major questions” doctrine in this case after telling Sauer that the president’s tariffs are “the imposition of taxes on Americans, and that has always been the core power of Congress”.

The “major questions” doctrine checks a US executive agency’s power to impose a policy without Congress’s clear directive. The Supreme Court previously used this to block former President Joe Biden’s policies, including his student loan forgiveness plan.

Sauer argued that the “major questions” doctrine should not apply in this context since it would also affect the president’s power in foreign affairs.

Why is this case the ultimate test of Trump’s tariff policy?

The Supreme Court has a 6-3 conservative majority and generally takes several months to make a decision. While it remains unclear when the court will make a decision on this case, according to analysts, the fact that this case was launched against Trump at all is significant.

In a recent report published by Max Yoeli, senior research fellow on the US and Americas Programme at UK-based think tank Chatham House, said, “The Supreme Court’s outcome will shape Trump’s presidency – and those that follow – across executive authority, global trade, and domestic fiscal and economic concerns.”

“It is likewise a salient moment for the Supreme Court, which has empowered Trump and showed little appetite to constrain him,” he added.

Penny Nass, acting senior vice president at the German Marshall Fund’s Washington DC office, told Al Jazeera that the verdict will be viewed by many as a test of Trump’s powers.

“A first impact will be the most direct judicial restraint at the highest level on Presidential power. After a year testing the limits of his power, President Trump will start to see some of constraints on his power,” she said.

According to international trade lawyer Shantanu Singh, who is based in India, the global implications of this case could also be huge.

“One objective of these tariffs was to use them as leverage to get trade partners to do deals with the US. Some countries have concluded trade deals, including to address the IEEPA tariffs,” he told Al Jazeera.

After the imposition of US reciprocal tariffs in April and again in August, several countries and economic blocs, including the EU, UK, Japan, Cambodia and Indonesia, have struck trade deals with the US to reduce tariffs.

But those countries were forced to make concessions to get those deals done. EU countries, for example, had to agree to buy $750bn of US energy and reduce steel tariffs through quotas.

Singh pointed out that an “adverse Supreme Court ruling could bring into doubt the perceived benefit for concluding deals with the US”.

“Further, trade partners who are currently negotiating with the US will have to also adjust their negotiating objectives in light of the ruling and how the administration reacts to it,” he added.

Other countries including India and China are currently actively engaged in trade talks with the US. Trade talks with Canada were terminated by Trump in late October over what Trump described as a “fraudulent” advertisement featuring former President Ronald Reagan speaking negatively about trade tariffs, which was being aired in Canada.

What happens if the judges rule against Trump?

Following Wednesday’s Supreme Court Hearing, US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, who was at the court with Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick, told Fox News that he was “very optimistic” that the outcome of the case would be in the government’s favour.

“The solicitor general made a very powerful case for the need for the president to have the power,” he said and refused to discuss the Trump administration’s plan if the court ruled against the tariff policy.

However, Singh said if the Supreme Court does find these tariffs illegal, one immediate concern will be how tariffs collected so far will be refunded to businesses, if at all.

“Given the importance that the current US administration places on tariffs as a policy tool, we can expect that it would quickly identify other legal authorities and work to reinstate the tariffs,” he said.

Nass added: “The President has many other tariff powers, and will likely quickly recalibrate to maintain his deal-making efforts with partners,” she said, adding that there would still be very complicated work for importers on what to do with the tariffs already collected in 2025 under IEEPA.

During Wednesday’s hearing, Justice Coney Barrett asked Katyal, the lawyer for the small businesses contesting Trump’s tariffs, whether this process of paying money back would be “a complete mess”.

Katyal said the businesses he’s representing should be given a refund, but added that it is “very complicated”.

“So, a mess,” Coney Barrett stated.

“It’s difficult, absolutely, we don’t deny that,” Katyal said in response.

In an interview with US broadcaster CNN in September, trade lawyers said the court could decide who gets the refunds. Ted Murphy, an international trade lawyer at Sidley Austin, told CNN that the US government “could also try to get the court to approve an administrative refund process, where importers have to affirmatively request a refund”.

What tariffs has Trump imposed so far, and what has their effect been?

Trump has imposed tariffs of varying rates on imports from almost every country in the world, arguing that these levies will enrich the US and protect the domestic US market. The tariff rates range from as high as 50 percent on India and Syria to as low as 10 percent on the UK.

The US president has also imposed a 50 percent tariff on all copper imports, 50 percent on steel and aluminium imports from every country except the UK, 100 percent on patented drugs, 25 percent levies on cars and car parts manufactured abroad, and 25 percent on heavy-duty trucks.

According to the University of Pennsylvania’s Penn Wharton Budget Model, which analyses the US Treasury’s data, tariffs have brought in $223.9bn as of October 31. This is $142.2bn more than the same time last year.

In early July, Treasury Secretary Bessent said revenues from these tariffs could grow to $300bn by the end of 2025.

But in an August 7 report, the Budget Lab at Yale University estimated that “all 2025 US tariffs plus foreign retaliation lower real US Gross Domestic Product (GDP) growth by -0.5pp [percentage points] each over calendar years 2025 and 2026”.

Meanwhile, according to a Reuters news agency tracker, which follows how US companies are responding to Trump’s tariff threats, the first-quarter earnings season saw carmakers, airlines and consumer goods importers take the worst hit from tariff threats. Levies on aluminium and electronics, such as semiconductors, also led to increased costs.

Reuters reported that as tariffs hit factory orders, big manufacturing companies around the world are also struggling.

In its latest World Economic Outlook report released last month, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) said the effect of Trump’s tariffs on the global economy had been less extreme.

“To date, more protectionist trade measures have had a limited impact on economic activity and prices,” it said.

However, the IMF warned that the current resilience of the global economy may not last.

“Looking past apparent resilience resulting from trade-related distortions in some of the incoming data and whipsawing growth forecasts from wild swings in trade policies, the outlook for the global economy continues to point to dim prospects, both in the short and the long term,” it said.

Russia has reserves of 15 rare-earth metals totalling 28.7 million tonnes, according to the Natural Resources Ministry.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has ordered his cabinet to draw up a roadmap for the extraction of rare-earth minerals by December 1, as global interest in the metals heightens due to their use in modern technologies and a desire to reduce reliance on the Chinese-dominated market.

In a list of tasks for ministers published on the Kremlin website, Putin on Tuesday also ordered the cabinet to take measures to develop transport links at Russia’s borders with China and North Korea.

Rare earths – used in smartphones, electric vehicles and weapons systems – have taken on vital strategic importance in international trade.

In April, United States President Donald Trump signed a deal with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy that will give the US preferential access to new Ukrainian minerals deals and fund investment in the country’s reconstruction.

Russia says it is also interested in partnering with the US on rare-earth projects.

In March, Putin’s investment envoy – Kirill Dmitriev – claimed that Russia and the US had started talks on rare-earth metals projects in Russia, and that some US companies had expressed an interest in them. However, prospects between the US and Russia have been held up by a lack of progress towards ending Russia’s war in Ukraine.

China, the dominant producer of rare earths, has hit back at US tariffs this year by placing restrictions on rare earths exports. Its almost total global control has focused Washington’s attention on developing its own supplies.

Putin’s order – a summary of action points from a Far Eastern Economic Forum he attended in Vladivostok in September – did not go into detail about Russia’s rare earths plan.

The US Geological Survey estimates Russia’s reserves of rare earth metals at 3.8 million tonnes, but Moscow has far higher estimates.

According to the Natural Resources Ministry, Russia has reserves of 15 rare-earth metals totalling 28.7 million tonnes, as of January 2023.

But even accounting for this possible margin of error, Russia still only accounts for a tiny fraction of global stockpiles.

Among other points, Putin also instructed the government to develop “multimodal transport and logistics centres” on the Chinese and North Korean borders.

Putin said the locations should include two existing railway bridges linking Russia and China and a planned new bridge to North Korea, which he said must be commissioned in 2026.

Both of Russia’s far eastern neighbours have deepened economic ties with Moscow since Western countries imposed sanctions on it over its war in Ukraine.

US President Donald Trump has appeared on the CBS News programme 60 Minutes just months after he won a $16m settlement from the broadcaster for alleged “deceptive editing”.

In the interview with CBS host Norah O’Donnell, which was filmed last Friday at his Mar-a-Lago residence and aired on Sunday, Trump touched on several topics, including the ongoing government shutdown, his administration’s unprecedented crackdowns on undocumented migrants, the US’s decision to restart nuclear testing, and the trade war with China.

Trump, who regularly appears on Fox News, a right-wing media outlet, has an uneasy relationship with CBS, which is considered centrist.

In October 2020, the president walked out of a 60 Minutes interview in the lead-up to the 2020 election he lost, claiming that the host, Lesley Stahl, was “biased”.

Here are some key takeaways from the interview:

The interview took place one year to the day after Trump sued CBS

The president’s lawyers sued CBS owner Paramount in October 2024 for “mental anguish” over a pre-election interview with rival candidate Kamala Harris that Trump claimed had been deceptively edited to favour Democrats and thus affected his campaign.

CBS had aired two different versions of an answer Harris gave to a question on Israel’s war on Gaza, posed by host Bill Whitaker. One version aired on 60 Minutes while the other appeared on the programme Face the Nation.

Asked whether Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, listened to US advice, Harris answered: “We are not going to stop pursuing what is necessary for the United States – to be clear about where we stand on the need for this war to end.”

In an alternative edit, featured in earlier pre-broadcast promotions, Harris had given a longer, more rambling response that did not sound as concise.

The network argued the answer was edited differently for the two shows due to time restrictions, but Trump’s team claimed CBS “distorted” its broadcasts and “helped” Harris, thereby affecting his campaign. Trump asked for an initial $10bn in damages before upping it to $20bn in February 2025.

Paramount, in July 2025, chose to settle with Trump’s team to the tune of $16m in the form of a donation to a planned Trump presidential library. That move angered journalist unions and rights groups, which argued it set a bad precedent for press freedom.

Paramount executives said the company would not apologise for the editing of its programmes, but had decided to settle to put the matter to rest.

The company was at the time trying to secure federal approval from Trump’s government for a proposed merger with Skydance, owned by Trump ally Larry Ellison. The Federal Communications Commission has since approved the merger that gives Ellison’s Skydance controlling rights.

On October 19, Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, and Steve Witkoff, US special envoy to the Middle East, were interviewed on 60 Minutes regarding the Israel-Gaza war.

He solved rare-earth metals issue with China

After meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping in South Korea last Thursday, Trump praised his counterpart as a “strong man, a very powerful leader” and said their relationship was on an even keel despite the trade war. However, he blamed China for “ripping off” the US through its dominance of crucial rare earth materials.

Trump told 60 Minutes he had cut a favourable trade agreement with China and that “we got – no rare-earth threat. That’s gone, completely gone”, referring to Chinese export restrictions on critical rare-earth metals needed to manufacture a wide range of items including defence equipment, smartphones and electric vehicles.

However, Beijing actually only said it would delay introducing export controls for five rare-earth metals it announced in October, and did not mention restrictions on a further seven it announced in April this year. Those restrictions remain in place.

Xi ‘knows what will happen’ if China attacks Taiwan

Trump said President Xi did not say anything about whether Beijing planned to attack autonomous Taiwan.

However, he referred to past assurances from Xi, saying: “He [Xi] has openly said, and his people have openly said at meetings, ‘We would never do anything while President Trump is president’, because they know the consequences.”

Asked whether he would order US forces to action if China moved militarily on Taiwan, Trump demurred, saying: “You’ll find out if it happens, and he understands the answer to that … I can’t give away my secrets. The other side knows.”

There are mounting fears in the US that China could attack Taiwan. Washington’s stance of “strategic ambiguity” has always kept observers speculating about whether the US would defend Taiwan against Beijing. Ahead of the last elections, Trump said Taiwan should “pay” for protection.

He doesn’t know who the crypto boss he pardoned is

When asked why he pardoned cryptocurrency multibillionaire and Binance founder Changpeng Zhao last month, Trump said: “I don’t know who he is.”

The president said he had never met Zhao, but had been told he was the victim of a “witch hunt” by the administration of former US President Joe Biden.

Zhao pleaded guilty to enabling money laundering in connection with child sex abuse and “terrorism” on his crypto platform in 2023. He served four months in prison until September 2024, and stepped down as chief executive of Binance.

Binance has been linked to the Trump family’s cryptocurrency company World Liberty Financial, and many have questioned if the case is a conflict of interest.

In March 2025, World Liberty Financial launched its own dollar-pegged cryptocoin, USD1, on Binance’s blockchain and the company promoted it to its 275 million users. The coin was also supported by an investment fund in the United Arab Emirates, MGX Fund Management Limited, which used $2bn worth of the World Liberty stablecoin to buy a stake in Binance.

This part of the interview appeared in a full transcript of the 90-minute interview, but does not appear in either the 28-minute televised version or the 73-minute extended online video version. CBS said in a note on the YouTube version that it was “condensed for clarity”.

Other countries ‘are testing nuclear weapons’

Trump justified last week’s decision by his government to resume nuclear testing for the first time in 33 years, saying that other countries – besides North Korea – are already doing it.

“Russia’s testing, and China’s testing, but they don’t talk about it,” Trump said, also mentioning Pakistan. “You know, we’re an open society. We’re different. We talk about it. We have to talk about it, because otherwise you people are gonna report – they don’t have reporters that gonna be writing about it. We do.”

Russia, China, and Pakistan have not openly conducted tests in recent years. Analyst Georgia Cole of UK think tank Chatham House told Al Jazeera that “there is no indication” the three countries have resumed testing.

He’s not worried about Hamas disarming

The president claimed the US-negotiated ceasefire and peace plan between Israel and Hamas was “very solid” despite Israeli strikes killing 236 Gazans since the ceasefire went into effect. It is also unclear whether or when the Palestinian armed group, Hamas, has agreed it will disarm.

However, Trump said he was not worried about Hamas disarming as the US would force the armed group to do so. “Hamas could be taken out immediately if they don’t behave,” he said.

Venezuela’s Maduro’s ‘days are numbered’

Trump denied the US was going to war with Venezuela despite a US military build-up off the country’s coast and deadly air strikes targeting alleged drug-trafficking ships in the country’s waters. The United Nations has said the strikes are a violation of international law.

Responding to a question about whether the strikes were really about unseating Venezuela’s President Nicolas Maduro, Trump said they weren’t. However, when asked if Maduro’s days in office were numbered, the president answered: “I would say, yeah.”

US government shutdown is all the Democrats’ fault

Trump, a member of the Republican Party, blamed Democrats for what is now close to the longest government shutdown in US history, which has been ongoing since October 1.

Senators from the Democratic Party have refused to approve a new budget unless it extends expiring tax credits that make health insurance cheaper for millions of Americans and unless Trump reverses healthcare cuts made in his tax-and-spending bill, passed earlier this year.

The US president made it clear that he would not negotiate with Democrats, and did not give clear plans for ending the shutdown affecting 1.4 million governent employees.

US will become ‘third-world nation’ if tariffs disallowed

Referring to a US Supreme Court hearing brought by businesses arguing that the Trump government’s tariff war on other countries is illegal and has caused domestic inflation, Trump said the US “would go to hell” and be a “third world nation” if the court ordered tariffs to be removed.

He said the tariffs are necessary for “national security” and that they have increased respect from other countries for the US.

ICE raids ‘don’t go far enough’

Trump defended his government’s unprecedented Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids and surveillance on people perceived to be undocumented migrants.

When asked if the raids had gone too far, he responded: “No. I think they haven’t gone far enough because we’ve been held back by the judges, by the liberal judges that were put in by [former US Presidents Joe] Biden and [Barack] Obama.”

Zohran Mamdani is a ‘communist’

Regarding the New York City mayoral race scheduled for November 4, Trump said he would not back democratic socialist Zohran Mamdani, and called him a “communist”. He said if Mamdani wins, it will be hard for him to “give a lot of money to New York”.

Canadian PM says anti-tariff ad featuring Ronald Reagan ‘offended’ Trump, who has since cut off trade talks with Canada.

Canada’s Prime Minister Mark Carney says he apologised to Donald Trump over an anti-tariff advertisement that has drawn the United States president’s ire and disrupted trade talks between the two countries.

During a news conference in South Korea at the end of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit on Saturday, Carney stressed that he is responsible for negotiating Canada’s ties with its largest trading partner.

“I did apologise to the president. The president was offended,” the prime minister said of the advertisement, which was produced by the Canadian province of Ontario.

“I’m the one who’s responsible, in my role as prime minister, for our relationship with the president of the United States, and the federal government is responsible for the foreign relationship with the US government,” Carney added.

“So, things happen – we take the good with the bad – and I apologised.”

The US-Canada relationship has deteriorated over the past year amid Trump’s global tariffs push, which saw him impose steep duties on his country’s northern neighbour.

Ontario’s commercial, which featured a 1980s speech by former US President Ronald Reagan in which Reagan said tariffs can lead to “fierce trade wars” and unemployment, worsened that already tense situation.

The Trump administration suspended trade talks with Canada over the advertisement, which Washington has claimed misrepresented Reagan’s views and sought to unfairly influence a looming US Supreme Court decision on Trump’s tariff policy.

Last weekend, the US government also announced an additional 10 percent levy on Canadian goods after the commercial was not immediately pulled from broadcasts in the US.

On Friday, Trump told reporters that he did not plan to resume trade negotiations with Canada despite getting an apology from Carney.

“I have a very good relationship, I like him a lot – but you know, what they did was wrong,” the US president said.

“He [Carney] was very nice, he apologised for what they did with the commercial because it was a false commercial. It was the exact opposite; Ronald Reagan loved tariffs and they tried to make it look the other way.”

The Ontario commercial used real excerpts of Reagan’s speech, but the statements were presented in a different order than how they were originally delivered.

The US and Canada, which share the world’s longest land border, traded $761.8bn worth of goods last year, according to the Office of the US Trade Representative.

China and the United States have agreed to ease their trade war – for now.

There have been concessions from both, with some of the most painful measures put on hold for a year.

So, what tactics did each side use in the battle between the world’s two biggest economies? Will they work? And what’s the longer-term outlook: agreement, or more trouble ahead?

Presenter: Nick Clark

Guests:

Andy Mok – Senior Research Fellow at the Center for China and Globalization think tank in Beijing

Neil Thomas – Fellow on Chinese Politics at the Asia Society Policy Institute’s Center for China Analysis in Washington, DC

William Lee – Chief Economist at the Milken Institute in Los Angeles

Relations nosedived in 2018 after Canada arrested a senior Huawei executive and have remained rocky ever since.

The leaders of China and Canada have taken a step towards mending the long-fractured ties between their countries with a meeting in South Korea during the Asia-Pacific Economic Summit.

Chinese President Xi Jinping and Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney met on Friday and called for improving ties in a pragmatic and constructive manner, according to both sides.

“The leaders agreed that their meeting marked a turning point in the bilateral relationship,” a Canadian statement said.

Xi was quoted as saying that relations are showing signs of recovery, thanks to the joint efforts of both sides.

“We are willing to work together with Canada to take this meeting as an opportunity to promote the return of bilateral relations to a healthy, stable and sustainable track as soon as possible,” Xi said, according to an official report distributed by China’s state media.

Carney, who became prime minister in March, accepted an invitation from Xi to visit China, the Canadian statement said, without specifying any date.

Carney also later told reporters he was “very pleased” with the outcome.

“We now have a turning point in the relationship, a turning point that creates opportunities for Canadian families, for Canadian businesses and Canadian workers, and also creates a path to address current issues,” he said.

“The meeting signals a change in tone and an openness to relations at the highest levels, but this is not a return to strategic partnership,” said Vina Nadjibulla, vice president of the Asia Pacific Foundation of Canada. “Canada needs to proceed with caution because there’s nothing to suggest the Chinese Communist Party’s actions have changed since the prime minister named China as a foreign security threat.”

She said Carney should keep talking with Chinese leaders but stay mindful of China’s threats to Canada’s security interests, including its efforts to play a greater role in Arctic affairs.

Shaky relations

Relations took a nosedive in late 2018 after Canadian authorities arrested a senior executive of Chinese tech giant Huawei as part of its extradition agreement with the United States. China then arrested two Canadian citizens and charged them with espionage.

Ties did not improve much even after the 2021 release of the two Canadians, Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor, and the Chinese executive, Meng Wanzhou, who is the daughter of Huawei’s founder.

More recently, relations have been shaken by Canada’s decision to levy a 100 percent tariff on electric vehicles (EVs) from China in 2024 and a 25 percent tariff on steel and aluminium. China retaliated with its own steep tariffs on canola, seafood and pork, and has offered to remove some of those import taxes if Canada drops the EV tariff.

Canada made the move last in tandem with the US.

The Canadian statement said that both leaders directed their officials to move quickly to resolve trade issues and irritants and discussed solutions for specific products such as EVs, canola and seafood.

Xi called for expanding “pragmatic” cooperation in areas such as the economy, trade and energy. Both Canada and China have been hit by tariffs imposed by US President Donald Trump.

The attempt at rapprochement comes as Carney looks to diversify Canada’s trade away from the US and as Trump says he plans to raise tariffs on imports of Canadian goods by an extra 10 percent. Canada’s free trade agreement with the US is up for review.

Earlier on Friday, Carney told a business event that the world of rules-based liberalised trade and investment had passed, adding that Canada aimed to double its non-US exports over the next decade.

Nadjibulla said China should not be viewed as the solution to Canada’s issues with the US, however.

“We should not diversify away from the US and go deeper into China,” she said. “Canada’s overdependence on both the US and China has been shown to be a vulnerability we cannot afford.”

Tensions between China and the US have escalated amid Donald Trump’s tariff threats and new restrictions on exports.

Gyeongju, South Korea – As US President Donald Trump and Chinese leader Xi Jinping prepare to meet for the first time since 2019, Washington and Beijing appear poised to reach a deal to lower the temperature of their fierce rivalry.

But while Trump and Xi are widely expected to de-escalate US-China tensions in South Korea on Thursday, expectations are modest for how far any agreement will go to resolve the myriad points of contention between the world’s two largest economies.

Many details of the expected deal that have been flagged in advance relate to avoiding future escalation, rather than rolling back the trade war that Trump launched during his first term and has dramatically expanded since returning to office this year.

Some of the proposed measures involve issues that have only arisen within the last few weeks, including China’s plan to impose strict export controls on rare earths from December 1.

Whatever Trump and Xi agree to on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit in Gyeongju, there is little doubt that Washington and Beijing will continue to butt heads as they jockey for influence in a rapidly shifting international order, according to analysts.

“I have modest expectations for this meeting,” said Deborah Elms, head of trade policy at the Hinrich Foundation in Singapore.

“I think, no matter what happens this week, we haven’t seen the end of economic tensions, tariff threats, export controls and restrictions, and the use of unusual levers like digital rules,” Elms told Al Jazeera.

Contours of a deal

While the exact parameters of any deal are still to be determined by Trump and Xi, the contours of an agreement have emerged in recent days.

US Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent said in media interviews this week that he expected China to defer its restrictions on rare earths and that Trump’s threatened 100 percent tariff on Chinese goods was “effectively off the table”.

Bessent said he also anticipated that the Chinese side would agree to increase purchases of US-grown soya beans, enhance cooperation with the US to halt the flow of chemicals used to manufacture fentanyl, and sign off on a finalised TikTok deal.

While heading off a further spiralling in US-China ties, a deal along these lines would leave intact a wide array of tariffs, sanctions and export controls that hinder trade and business between the sides.

Since Washington and Beijing reached a partial truce in their tit-for-tat tariff salvoes in May, the average US duty on Chinese goods has stood at more than 55 percent, while China’s average levy on US products has hovered at about 32 percent.

Washington has blacklisted hundreds of Chinese firms deemed to pose national security risks, and prohibited the export of advanced chips and key manufacturing equipment related to AI.

China has, in turn, added dozens of US companies to its “unreliable entity” list, launched antitrust investigations into Nvidia and Qualcomm, and restricted exports of more than a dozen rare earths and metallic elements, including gallium and dysprosium.

US-China trade has declined sharply since Trump re-entered the White House.

China’s exports to the US fell 27 percent in September, the sixth straight month of decline, even as outbound shipments rose overall amid expanding trade with Southeast Asia, Latin America, Europe and Africa.

China’s imports of US goods declined 16 percent, continuing a downward trend since April.

“The structural contradictions between China and the United States have not been resolved,” said Wang Wen, dean of the Chongyang Institute for Financial Studies at Renmin University of China in Beijing, predicting continuing friction and “even worse” relations between the superpowers in the future.

“Most importantly, China’s strength is increasing and will surpass that of the United States in the future,” Wang told Al Jazeera.

‘De-escalation unlikely’

Shan Guo, a partner with Shanghai-based Hutong Research, said he expects the “bulk” of the deal between Trump and Xi to be about avoiding escalation. “A fundamental de-escalation is unlikely given the political environment in the US,” Guo told Al Jazeera.

But with the US having no alternative to Chinese rare earths and minerals in the near-term, Washington and Beijing could put aside their differences for longer than past trade truces, Guo said.

“This means reduced downside risks in US-China relations for at least a year, or perhaps even longer,” he said.

Dennis Wilder, a professor at Georgetown University who worked on China at the CIA and the White House’s National Security Council, said that while he is optimistic the summit will produce “positive tactical results”, it will not mark the end of the trade war.

“A comprehensive trade deal is still not available,” Wilder told Al Jazeera.

“Bessent and his Chinese counterpart will continue negotiating in hopes of a more lasting agreement if and when President Trump visits China next year.”

Trump and Xi’s go-to language on the US-China relationship itself points to the gulf between the sides.

While Trump often complains about the US being “ripped off” by China, Xi has repeatedly called for their relations to be defined by “mutual respect” and “win-win cooperation”.

“The United States should treat China in a way that China considers respectful,” said Wang of Renmin University.

“They have to respect China, and if they don’t, then the United States will receive an equal response until they become able to respect others,” he added.

China and 11-member regional bloc sign an upgraded version of their free trade pact, as both weather the impact of the US tariffs.

Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia – China and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) have upgraded their free trade agreement as trade between the two regions continues to rise in the shadow of United States President Donald Trump’s trade war.

The trade pact was signed on the sidelines of the 47th ASEAN Summit in Kuala Lumpur on Tuesday, in a ceremony witnessed by Chinese Premier Li Qiang and Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim.

The “3.0 version” of the deal will broaden collaboration on “infrastructure, digital and green transition, trade facilitation and people-to-people exchanges”, according to China’s State Council. It builds on the region’s first free trade pact with China, which came into force in 2010.

The 11-member ASEAN and China have become each other’s largest trade partners in recent years, thanks to the China Plus One supply chain that emerged after Trump’s trade war with China in 2018.

Trade between China and ASEAN has already hit $785bn in the nine months of 2025, up 9.6 percent year-on-year. Much of this trade reflects integrated manufacturing supply chains, but it also increasingly includes finished goods from China that are destined for Southeast Asian consumers.

In his remarks to the ASEAN summit on Tuesday, Li praised China and the bloc’s deepening trade relationship, and spoke of his expectation for “expanded and higher-quality economic cooperation” under the upgraded trade pact.

“Cooperation in various fields has yielded fruitful results, trade volume continues to grow steadily, and ASEAN governments have promoted even closer people-to-people exchanges,” he said.

Zhiwu Chen, a professor of finance at the University of Hong Kong, told Al Jazeera that the “3.0” trade pact comes at a time when China is trying to shore up its relationship with ASEAN.

“This is very important for China, as its trade tensions with the US and EU have been rising, and China needs ASEAN countries. At the same time, this is a time for ASEAN to take advantage of the window of opportunities precisely for the same reason,” he said, describing the deal as a “win-win outcome for both sides”.

In his remarks, Li also took aim at Trump’s tariffs, which have disrupted global trade, and marked the most protectionist policy pursued by the US government since the 1930s.

“Unilateralism and protectionism have seriously disrupted the global economic and trade order. External forces are increasingly interfering in our region, and many countries have been unfairly subjected to high tariffs,” Li said.

The US president also attended the ASEAN summit on Sunday, and is due to meet with Chinese President Xi Jinping in South Korea later this week.

While at ASEAN, Trump signed trade deals with Cambodia and Malaysia, as well as framework agreements with Thailand and Vietnam, highlighting his preference for bilateral trade deals hammered out in one-on-one discussions.

The deals appeared to finalise Trump’s “reciprocal tariff” rate on the four countries, which were set earlier this year at 19 to 20 percent.

Tariffs and trade barriers are also expected to headline Trump’s meeting with Xi, after US Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent announced that the two sides had reached a “framework agreement” on tariffs this week.

Earlier this month, Trump had threatened to impose a tariff of 100 percent on Chinese goods by November 1, after China strengthened export controls on rare earth minerals. Bessent said the framework agreement should help both sides “avoid” a tariff hike, according to Reuters.

Officials signal that trade deal is close as Trump and Xi prepare to meet for the first time since 2019.

Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia – The United States and China have hailed the outcome of trade talks in Malaysia, raising expectations that Donald Trump and Xi Jinping will seal a deal to de-escalate their trade war at their first meeting since 2019.

US and Chinese officials on Sunday said the sides had made significant progress towards a deal as they wrapped a weekend of negotiations on the sidelines of the ASEAN summit in Kuala Lumpur.

Trump and Xi are set to meet on Thursday on the sidelines of the APEC summit in Gyeongju, South Korea, marking their first face-to-face talks since the US president returned to the White House and embarked on a radical shake-up of global trade.

US Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent told reporters in Kuala Lumpur that the sides had come up with a “framework” for Trump and Xi to discuss in South Korea.

Bessent said in a subsequent interview with NBC News that he expected the sides to reach a deal that would defer China’s threatened export controls on rare earths and avoid a 100 percent tariff that Trump has threatened to impose on Chinese goods.

Bessent also said in an interview with ABC News that Beijing had agreed to make “substantial” purchases of US agricultural products, which the treasury secretary said would make US soya bean farmers “feel very good”.

Chinese Vice Premier He Lifeng, Beijing’s top trade negotiator, said the sides had reached “a basic consensus” on “arrangements to address each side’s concerns”.

He said they agreed to “finalise specific details” and “proceed with domestic approval processes”, according to a readout from China’s Ministry of Commerce.

Asian stock markets surged on Monday on hopes of easing US-China tensions.

Japan’s Nikkei 225 and South Korea’s KOSPI both hit record highs, with the benchmark indexes up about 2.1 percent and 2.3 percent, respectively, shortly after midday, local time.

Hong Kong’s Hang Seng also saw strong gains, rising about 0.85 percent.

After attending the ASEAN summit, Trump on Monday departed for Japan, where he will meet newly sworn-in Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi.

The US president is scheduled to then travel on to South Korea on Wednesday.

While Trump has imposed significant tariffs on almost all US trade partners, he has threatened to hit China with higher levies than anywhere else.

Countries have been anxiously anticipating a breakthrough in the tensions, hoping Washington and Beijing can avoid a full-blown trade war that could do catastrophic damage to the global economy.

In a major escalation in US-China tensions earlier this month, Beijing announced that it would require companies everywhere to acquire a licence to export rare-earth magnets and some semiconductor materials that contain even trace amounts of minerals sourced from China or are produced using Chinese technology.

The proposed rules, which are set to take effect on December 1, have raised fears of substantial disruption to global supply chains.

Rare earths, a group of 17 minerals including holmium, cerium and dysprosium, are critical to the manufacture of countless high-tech products, including smartphones, electric cars and fighter jets.

Trump responded to Beijing’s move by threatening to impose a 100 percent tariff on Chinese goods from November 1.

Analysts have cast the tit-for-tat moves as efforts by the Chinese and US sides to gain leverage in their negotiations ahead of the Trump-Xi summit.

US president begins trip to Malaysia, Japan and South Korea, with international trade and China on the agenda.

Ontario to stop running advertisement featuring voice of US President Ronald Reagan saying that trade tariffs were a bad idea.

The Canadian province of Ontario has said it will pull an anti-tariff advertisement featuring former United States President Ronald Reagan’s voice, which prompted current US leader Donald Trump to scrap all trade talks with Canada.

Trump announced on his Truth Social network on Thursday that he had “terminated” all negotiations with Canada over what he called the “fake” advertising campaign that he said misrepresented fellow Republican President Reagan.

Less than 24 hours later, Ontario’s Premier Doug Ford said he was suspending the advertisement after talking to Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney about the spiralling row with Washington.

“In speaking with Prime Minister Carney, Ontario will pause its US advertising campaign effective Monday so that trade talks can resume,” Ford said in a post on X.

Ford added, however, that he had told his team to keep airing the advertisement during two baseball World Series games this weekend, in which Canada’s Toronto Blue Jays will face the Los Angeles Dodgers.

The advertisement used quotes from a radio address on trade that Reagan delivered in 1987, in which he warned against ramifications that he said high tariffs on foreign imports could have on the US economy.

Reagan is heard in the advertisement saying that “high tariffs inevitably lead to retaliation by foreign countries and the triggering of fierce trade wars”, a quote that matches a transcript of his speech on the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library’s website.

Our intention was always to initiate a conversation about the kind of economy that Americans want to build and the impact of tariffs on workers and businesses. We’ve achieved our goal, having reached U.S. audiences at the highest levels. I’ve directed my team to keep putting our…

— Doug Ford (@fordnation) October 24, 2025

The Ronald Reagan Foundation wrote on X on Thursday that the Ontario government had used “selective audio and video” and that it was reviewing its legal options.

An Al Jazeera analysis of the words used in the advertisement found that while it spliced together different parts of the 1987 speech by Reagan, it also appeared sincere to the meaning of Reagan’s message: that tariffs, if wielded as an economic weapon, must be used only sparingly and for a short time, or they can hurt Americans.

President Trump did not immediately react to the Ontario premier’s decision to pull the advertisement.

White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller told reporters that Trump had made his “extreme displeasure” known and was expected to respond later to news of the advertisement’s impending removal.

A senior US official said that Trump would probably encounter Carney at a dinner on the sidelines of an Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit in South Korea on Wednesday.

“They will likely see each other,” the official told the AFP news agency.

In his original social media post announcing the launch of the advertising campaign featuring Reagan’s voice, Ontario’s Ford says, “Using every tool we have, we’ll never stop making the case against American tariffs on Canada.”

It’s official: Ontario’s new advertising campaign in the U.S. has launched. 

Using every tool we have, we’ll never stop making the case against American tariffs on Canada. The way to prosperity is by working together.

Watch our new ad. pic.twitter.com/SgIVC1cqMJ

— Doug Ford (@fordnation) October 16, 2025

The probe comes as the US government seeks additional leverage against Beijing amid escalating trade tensions.

The United States has launched an investigation into whether China is out of compliance with a 2020 trade deal they struck together, as trade tensions ratchet up between the world’s two largest economies.

US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer announced the investigation on Friday, as President Donald Trump travels to Asia to meet with his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping. China denies that it has failed to abide by the deal.

“China has scrupulously fulfilled its obligations in the Phase One Economic and Trade Agreement,” a spokesperson for the Chinese embassy in Washington said in a social media post.

The probe into unfair trade practices could grant President Trump greater authority to impose more tariffs on China, which he has hit with massive trade duties during his second term in office.

“The administration seems to be looking for new sources of leverage to use against Beijing, while adding another pressure point to get China to buy more US soybeans as well as other goods,” Wendy Cutler, a former US trade negotiator who is now vice president at the Asia Society Policy Institute, told The Associated Press news agency.

The “Phase One” deal came at the end of Trump’s first term in office in 2020, when the US imposed a series of tariffs on China in the name of bringing greater “balance” to their commercial exchange.

In that agreement, Beijing agreed to buy more US agricultural and manufacturing goods.

A Federal Register notice (PDF) from the Office of the US Trade Representative alleges that China has not followed up on that promise or others related to intellectual property protections, forced technology transfers or financial services.

September, for instance, marked the first month since 2018 that China imported no soya beans from US farmers.

“The initiation of this investigation underscores the Trump Administration’s resolve to hold China to its Phase One Agreement commitments, protect American farmers, ranchers, workers, and innovators, and establish a more reciprocal trade relationship with China for the benefit of the American people,” Greer said in a statement.

A new round of US-China trade talks is set to take place on Saturday, and discussions will focus on China’s restrictions on the export of rare earth metals, essential for many US tech products.

Canadian PM Mark Carney says Ottawa “can’t control” US trade policy but will “stand ready” to resume talks “when the Americans are ready.” His remarks came after President Donald Trump halted negotiations and accused Canada of “cheating” over ads opposing US tariffs.

DEVELOPING STORYDEVELOPING STORY,

US president says fraudulent advertisement featuring the late President Ronald Reagan to blame for termination of talks.

United States President Donald Trump said all trade talks with Canada have been terminated following what he called a fraudulent television advertisement in which the late President Ronald Reagan spoke negatively about tariffs.

“The Ronald Reagan Foundation has just announced that Canada has fraudulently used an advertisement, which is FAKE, featuring Ronald Reagan speaking negatively about Tariffs,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform late on Thursday.

“The ad was for $75,000. They only did this to interfere with the decision of the US Supreme Court, and other courts,” Trump wrote.

“Based on their egregious behavior, ALL TRADE NEGOTIATIONS WITH CANADA ARE HEREBY TERMINATED,” Trump added.

Earlier on Thursday, the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation & Institute said on social media that a TV advertisement created by the government of Ontario in Canada “misrepresents the ‘Presidential Radio Address to the Nation on Free and Fair Trade’ dated April 25, 1987.”

The foundation also said that Ontario had not received its permission “to use and edit the remarks” of the late US president.

The foundation added that it was “reviewing legal options in this matter” and invited the public to watch the unedited video of Reagan’s address.

Ontario’s Premier Doug Ford said earlier this week that the advertisement in question – featuring President Reagan criticising tariffs on foreign goods while saying they caused job losses and trade wars – had caught Trump’s attention.

“I heard that the president heard our ad. I’m sure he wasn’t too happy,” Ford said on Tuesday.

In an earlier post on social media, Ford posted a link to the advertisement and the message: “Using every tool we have, we’ll never stop making the case against American tariffs on Canada. The way to prosperity is by working together,” he said.

It’s official: Ontario’s new advertising campaign in the U.S. has launched. 

Using every tool we have, we’ll never stop making the case against American tariffs on Canada. The way to prosperity is by working together.

Watch our new ad. pic.twitter.com/SgIVC1cqMJ

— Doug Ford (@fordnation) October 16, 2025

Trump’s announcement on the end of trade talks also followed after Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney said he aimed to double his country’s exports to countries outside the US because of the threat posed by the Trump administration’s tariffs.

Carney also told reporters that Canada would not allow unfair US access to its markets if talks on various trade deals with Washington fail.

Canada and the US have been in talks for weeks on a potential deal after Trump imposed tariffs on Canadian steel, aluminium and autos earlier this year, prompting Canada to respond in kind.

The Canadian prime minister’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Trump’s announcement that all talks had ended because of the advertisement.

More than three-quarters of Canadian exports go to the US, and nearly 3.6 billion Canadian dollars ($2.7bn) worth of goods and services cross the border daily.

Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia – When US President Donald Trump lands in Malaysia for Southeast Asia’s headline summit this weekend, he will be delivering Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim a diplomatic coup.

US presidents rarely visit Malaysia, a multiracial nation of 35 million people sandwiched between Thailand and Singapore, which for decades has maintained a policy of not picking sides in rivalries between great powers.

Trump is just the third US leader to travel to the Southeast Asian country, which is hosting a Sunday-to-Tuesday summit for the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), following visits by former US Presidents Barack Obama and Lyndon B Johnson.

After skipping ASEAN summits in 2018, 2019 and 2020, Trump, whose disdain for multilateralism is renowned, will be attending the gathering of Southeast Asian nations for just the second time.

The US president will be joined by a host of high-profile leaders from non-ASEAN countries, including Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi, Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, and South African President Cyril Ramaphosa.

Opting not to attend are Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Russian President Vladimir Putin, and Chinese President Xi Jinping, who Trump is expected to meet in South Korea at next week’s Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit.

Trump’s visit, in many ways, is emblematic of the delicate balancing act that Anwar’s government has sought to maintain as Malaysia navigates the headwinds of the heated rivalry between the US and China.

Malaysia is deeply entwined with both the US and Chinese economies.

The US, which has a large footprint in Malaysia’s tech and oil and gas industries, was the Southeast Asian country’s top foreign investor and third-biggest trading partner in 2024.

China, a major purchaser of Malaysian electronics and palm oil, the same year took the top spot in trade and was third for investment.

But Malaysia’s efforts to walk a fine line between Washington and Beijing have become increasingly fraught as the superpowers roll out tit-for-tat tariffs and export controls while butting heads over regional flashpoints such as Taiwan and the South China Sea.

“Optimally, Malaysia wants to productively engage both China and the US on a variety of issues,” said Thomas Daniel, an analyst at the Institute of Strategic & International Studies in Kuala Lumpur.

“It is in our interest,” Daniel told Al Jazeera.

Anwar has cast Trump’s visit as a chance to bolster economic ties, champion regional peace and stability, and elevate ASEAN’s standing on the international stage.

Anwar has also pledged to use the rare opportunity for face time with Trump to constructively raise points of difference between Washington and Kuala Lumpur, particularly the Palestinian cause.

“The through-line is autonomy: avoid entanglement, maximise options, and extract benefits from both poles without becoming anyone’s proxy,” Awang Azman Awang Pawi, a professor at the University of Malaya, told Al Jazeera.

During Trump’s visit, US tariffs on Malaysia, currently set at 19 percent, and China’s mooted export controls on rare earths are expected to be high on the agenda.

For Malaysia, the priority is preserving “rules-based” trade that allows for countries to deepen economic ties despite their political differences, said Mohd Ramlan Mohd Arshad, a senior lecturer at the MARA University of Technology in Shah Alam, near Kuala Lumpur.

A prolonged economic cold war between the US and China is the “worst thing” that could happen to Malaysia, Arshad told Al Jazeera.

Trump, who has made no secret of his ambitions for the Nobel Peace Prize, is also expected to witness the signing of a peace accord between Thailand and Cambodia, which engaged in a brief border conflict in July that left at least 38 people dead.

For Anwar, who has led a multiracial coalition of parties with diverse and competing interests since 2022, the balancing act also involves political considerations at home.

US support for Israel’s war in Gaza has been a bone of contention in Muslim-majority Malaysia, where the plight of Palestinians has inspired frequent public protests.

In the run-up to the summit, critics have demanded that Anwar rescind Trump’s invitation over his role in supporting the war, which a United Nations commission of inquiry last month determined to constitute genocide.

“A person like Trump, no matter how powerful, should not be welcomed in Malaysia,” former Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad, Anwar’s former mentor-turned-nemesis, said in a video message last month.

Defending the invitation, Anwar has stressed his view of diplomacy as “practical work” for advancing his country’s interests “in an imperfect world”.

“It demands balance, discipline, and the courage to stay the course even when the ground shifts beneath us,” he told a conference in Kuala Lumpur earlier this month.

As a small power, Malaysia has always put pragmatism at the centre of its foreign policy, said Sharifah Munirah Alatas, an international relations lecturer at the National University of Malaysia.

“Anwar and Malaysia cannot afford to do otherwise,” Alatas told Al Jazeera.

“And given the current highly unpredictable Sino-American tension induced by the Trump 2.0 era, ASEAN will remain actively non-aligned, without taking sides.”

Awang Azman, the University of Malaya professor, said that while Trump’s visit will elevate Malaysia and ASEAN’s profile by itself, the true test of the summit’s success will be tangible outcomes on issues such as the Thailand-Cambodia conflict and trade.

“It’s not just a photo op if a ceasefire accord and concrete trade language land on paper,” Awang Azman said.

“If either track stalls, the visit is still symbolically significant – given the rarity of US presidential trips to Malaysia – but the narrative will revert to optics over outcomes.”

Petro, however, did acknowledge that a disruption in the two countries’ military cooperation could have serious consequences.

Colombia’s President Gustavo Petro has indicated that a suspension of aid from the United States would mean little to his country, but that changes to military funding could have an effect.

“What happens if they take away aid? In my opinion, nothing,” Petro told journalists on Thursday, adding that aid funding often moved through US agencies and employed Americans.

But a cut to military cooperation would matter, he added.

“Now, in military aid, we would have some problems,” Petro said, adding that the loss of US helicopters would have the gravest impact.

US President Donald Trump had threatened over the weekend to raise tariffs on Colombia and said on Wednesday that all funding to the country has been halted.

Colombia was once among the largest recipients of US aid in the Western Hemisphere, but the flow of money was suddenly curtailed this year by the shuttering of USAID, the government’s humanitarian assistance arm. Military cooperation has continued.

The Trump administration has already “decertified” Colombia’s efforts to fight drug trafficking, paving the way for potential further cuts, but some US military personnel remain in Colombia, and the two countries continue to share intelligence.

Petro has objected to the US military’s strikes against vessels in the Caribbean, which have killed dozens of people and inflamed tensions in the region. Many legal experts and human rights activists have also condemned the actions.

Trump has responded by calling Petro an “illegal drug leader” and a “bad guy” – language Petro’s government says is offensive.

Petro has recalled his government’s ambassador from Washington, DC, but he nevertheless met with the US’s charge d’affaires in Bogota late on Sunday.

Although Trump has not announced any additional tariffs on top of the 10-percent rate already assessed on Colombian goods, he said on Wednesday he may take serious action against the country.

Petro said Trump is unlikely to put tariffs on oil and coal exports, which represent 60 percent of Colombia’s exports to the US, while the effect of tariffs on other industries could be mitigated by seeking alternative markets.

An increase in tariffs would flip a long-established US policy stance that free trade can make legitimate exports more attractive than drug trafficking, and analysts say more duties could eventually bolster drug trafficking.

Although his government has struggled to take control of major hubs for rebel and criminal activity, Petro said it has made record seizures of 2,800 metric tonnes of cocaine in three years, partly through increased efforts at Pacific ports where container ships are used for smuggling.

He also repeated an accusation that Trump’s actions are intended to boost the far right in Colombia in next year’s legislative and presidential elections.

Economists credit US President Donald Trump’s tariff campaign with reducing trade between Germany and the US, its top trading partner last year.

China overtook the United States as Germany’s largest trading partner during the first eight months of 2025, preliminary data from the German statistics office has shown.

The data indicated that German imports and exports with China totalled $190.7bn (163.4 billion euros) from January to August, while trade with the US amounted to $189bn (162.8 billion euros), according to Reuters calculations.

The US was Germany’s top trading partner in 2024, ending an eight-year streak for China. Germany had sought to reduce its reliance on China, citing political differences and accusing Beijing of unfair practices.

But trade dynamics shifted again this year, with US President Donald Trump’s return to the White House and his renewed tariff campaign.

The tariffs have pushed down German exports to the US, which fell 7.4 percent in the first eight months of the year compared with 2024.

In August, exports to the US also fell 23.5 percent year-on-year, showing that the trend is accelerating.

“There is no question that US tariff and trade policy is an important reason for the decline in sales,” said Dirk Jandura, president of the BGA foreign trade association.

Jandura added that US demand for classic German export goods, such as cars, machinery and chemicals, had fallen.

With the ongoing tariff threat and the stronger euro, German exports to the US are unlikely to rebound any time soon, said Carsten Brzeski, global head of macro at the financial institution ING.

Exports to China fell even more sharply than those to the US, dropping 13.5 percent year-on-year to $63.5bn (54.7 billion euros) in the first eight months of 2025.

By contrast, imports from China rose 8.3 percent to $126.4bn (108.8 billion euros).

“The renewed import boom from China is worrying – particularly as data shows that these imports come at dumping prices,” said Brzeski.

He warned that the trend not only increases German dependence on China, but could add to stress in key industries where China has become a major rival.

“In the absence of economic dynamism at home, some in Germany may now be troubled by any shifts on world markets,” said Salomon Fiedler, an economist at the bank Berenberg.

Relations between the United States and China are tense, once again, with experts saying that the administration of US President Donald Trump “doesn’t quite know how to deal with China”.

The latest flare-up took place when Beijing, on October 9, expanded its restrictions on the export of rare-earth metals, increasing the number of elements on the list.

China has the largest reserves and the majority of processing facilities of rare-earth metals that are used in a range of daily and critical industries like electric vehicles, smartphones, laptops and defence equipment.

In a first, it also required countries to have a licence to export rare-earth magnets and certain semiconductor materials that contain even trace amounts of minerals sourced from China or produced using Chinese technology.

China’s actions on rare-earths also came after the US expanded its Entity List, a trade restriction list that consists of certain foreign persons, entities or government, further limiting China’s access to the most advanced semiconductor chips, and added levies on China-linked ships both to boost the US shipbuilding industry and loosen China’s hold on the global shipping trade. China retaliated by applying its own charges on US-owned, operated, built or flagged vessels.

“For the US, its actions on chip exports and shipping industry fees were not related to the trade deal with China,” said Vina Nadjibulla, vice president for research and strategy at the Asia Pacific Foundation of Canada.

Since then, the two countries have also been in an “information war”, said Nadjibulla, each blaming the other for holding the world hostage with its policies.

But beyond the rhetoric, the world is seeing China really up its game.

“For the first time, China is doing this extra-terrestrial action that applies to other countries as well [with its amped up export restrictions on rare-earths]. They are prepared to match every US escalation, and have the US back down,” Nadjibulla said. “This is a very different kind of a trade war than we were experiencing even three months ago.”

This was a “power play” by China in the run-up to a planned meeting later this month between Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in South Korea because “China has decided that the leverage is on their side,” said Dexter Tiff Roberts, a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council Global China Hub, pointing out that after some initial noise with Trump saying there was no reason to meet Xi any longer, the meeting is back on.

“If you look at the approach of the Trump administration right now, they are all over the place,” said Roberts.

Roberts was referring not only to the multiple tariff threats that the US has issued both on China and on specific industries and the carve-outs that were soon announced on those, but also in its statements on the Trump-Xi meeting, with Trump saying it was not happening, only to reverse that two days later.

“The Trump administration doesn’t quite know how to deal with China,” said Roberts. “They don’t understand that China is willing to accept a lot of pain,” and will not be easily cowed by US threats.

Beijing, on the other hand, has realised that Trump is determined to get his big deal with China and wants his state visit to seal that, maybe because “he feels that is important to his credentials as a big deal maker,” added Roberts, but that he cannot get there without giving more to China.

“China saw that they could push harder in the lead-up to the meeting.”

Wei Liang, a professor at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies who specialises in international trade and Chinese economic foreign policy, agrees.

“Trump has a track record of TACO,” she said, referring to a term coined by a Financial Times columnist in May, which stands for “Trump always chickens out” in reference to his announcing tariffs and then carving out exemptions and pushing out implementation dates.

“He cares more than any other US president [about] stock market reactions, so definitely will be more flexible to making concessions. This is the inconsistency that has been captured by his negotiation partners,” Liang said.

China’s defiant stance also comes at a time of its own political concerns, Liang added.

While the domestic economy is “a black box” with no reliable data available on growth, employment and other criteria, the consensus among China experts is that the country has been hit by the tariffs, economic growth has slowed, and unemployment has ramped up.

As China started its four-day fourth plenary session on Monday where it plans to approve the draft of its next five-year national economic and social development plan, Xi can use the moment to tell his domestic audience that the country’s problems are stemming from Trump’s policies and the whole world is suffering because of those tariffs and it’s not related to Chinese policies, Liang said.

A possible decoupling

All of this also signals that Beijing seems to be prepared to “decouple” from the US more than ever, a significant change in mentality, as, in the past, the standard response to the idea was that it would be a “lose-lose” situation for both countries, Liang told Al Jazeera.

But in the last few years, China has diversified its exports to other countries, especially those in its Belt and Road Initiative, the ambitious infrastructure project that it launched in 2013 to link East Asia through Europe and has since expanded to Africa, Oceania and Latin America.

Even when it comes to things that it needs from the US – soya beans, aeroplanes and high-tech chip equipment – it can find other suppliers or has learned to work around that need, as is the case for the chip equipment, Liang pointed out.

In the meantime, especially in the years since the US-China trade war started under Trump as president in his first term, China has brought in a set of national security laws – including its version of the US Entity List, through which it is setting limits on those exports, Nadjibulla said.

“Everybody should have been preparing the way the Chinese have been preparing. We breathed a sigh of relief when there was a change in government [in the US after the first Trump administration], but China kept preparing,” she said.

“This should be a wake-up call for all countries to find other sources for its needs. Everyone should be redoubling their efforts to diversify, because we have now seen the Chinese playbook.”

US President Donald Trump said the deal had been negotiated over the last four to five months.

United States President Donald Trump and Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese have signed an agreement on rare earth and critical minerals as China tightens control over global supply.

The two leaders signed the deal on Monday at the White House.

Trump said the agreement had been negotiated over four or five months. The two leaders will also discuss trade, submarines and military equipment, Trump said.

Albanese described it as an $8.5bn pipeline “that we have ready to go”.

The full terms of the agreement were not immediately available. The two leaders said part of the agreement had to do with processing of the minerals. Albanese said both countries will contribute $1bn over the next six months for joint projects.

China has the world’s largest rare earths reserves, according to the US Geological Survey data, but Australia also has significant reserves.

The two leaders also planned to discuss the $239.4bn agreement, reached in 2023 under then-US President Joe Biden, in which Australia is to buy US nuclear-powered submarines in 2032 before building a new submarine class with Britain.

US Navy Secretary John Phelan told the meeting the US and Australia were working very closely to improve the original framework for all three parties “and clarify some of the ambiguity that was in the prior agreement”.

Trump said these were “just minor details”.

“There shouldn’t be any more clarifications, because we’re just, we’re just going now full steam ahead, building,” Trump said.

Australian officials have said they are confident it will proceed, with Defence Minister Richard Marles last week saying he knew when the review would conclude.

China’s rare earth export controls

Ahead of Monday’s meeting between the two leaders, Australian officials have emphasised Canberra is paying its way under AUKUS — a trilateral military partnership between the US, Australia and the United Kingdom, contributing $2bn this year to boost production rates at US submarine shipyards, and preparing to maintain US Virginia-class submarines at its Indian Ocean naval base from 2027.

The delay of 10 months in an official meeting since Trump took office has caused some anxiety in Australia as the Pentagon urged Canberra to lift defence spending. The two leaders met briefly on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly in New York last month.

Australia is willing to sell shares in its planned strategic reserve of critical minerals to allies including Britain, as Western governments scramble to end their reliance on China for rare earths and minor metals.

Top US officials last week condemned Beijing’s expansion of rare earth export controls as a threat to global supply chains. China is the world’s biggest producer of the materials, which are vital for products ranging from electric vehicles to aircraft engines and military radars.

Resource-rich Australia, wanting to extract and process rare earths, put preferential access to its strategic reserve on the table in US trade negotiations in April.