Jaishankar's FIERY Attack On Trump Over Tariff Threats To India
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Time of India
12 minutes ago
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Trump Tells NATO Allies He Could Meet Putin And Zelensky Alone Next Week
/ Aug 07, 2025, 09:01AM IST US President Donald Trump plans to meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin as early as next week, according to a New York Times report. The meeting, revealed during a call with Western leaders, could lead to trilateral talks including Ukrainian President Zelensky. Trump called recent diplomatic progress with Russia 'highly productive,' raising questions about a possible peace deal in Ukraine.
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First Post
12 minutes ago
- First Post
21 days before India, how Brazil is riding out 50% Trump tariff
The lower stakes for the Brazilian economy give President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva more room to stand his ground against Trump than most Western leaders, after calling him an unwanted global 'emperor' and comparing his tariff threats to blackmail read more A drone view shows a ship and containers at the Port of Santos, in Santos, Brazil April 3, 2025. Reuters Brazilian goods imported by the United States will soon carry one of the highest tariffs imposed by President Donald Trump, but that will not likely derail Latin America's largest economy, due to ample exemptions and stronger trade ties with China. The lower stakes for the Brazilian economy give President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva more room to stand his ground against Trump than most Western leaders, after calling him an unwanted global 'emperor' and comparing his tariff threats to blackmail. STORY CONTINUES BELOW THIS AD Lula has said he is open to negotiating a trade deal, but dismissed Trump's complaints about the trial of right-wing ally Jair Bolsonaro as a threat to Brazilian sovereignty and judicial independence. Brazil's Supreme Court is trying the ex-president for allegedly plotting to overturn the 2022 election he lost to Lula. Those tensions, stoked by Bolsonaro's house arrest on Monday, are likely to make negotiations about the 50% U.S. tariff on Brazilian goods between Washington and Brasilia thorny and drawn out, even as the fallout for Brazil's economy looks limited. Unlike Mexico and Canada, which sell about three-quarters of their exports to the United States, Americans buy just 12% of Brazilian exports. By comparison, Brazil's exports to China have doubled in value over the past decade, now accounting for 28% of the country's total shipments. After exemptions laid out in Trump's executive order last week, including on aircraft, energy, and orange juice, the tariff taking effect on Wednesday will apply to just under 36% of Brazilian exports to the U.S. by value, according to estimates in Brasilia. Many of the affected exports are commodities such as beef and coffee, which should find alternative markets at modest discounts, according to economists. 'We were already expecting a limited impact, but it dropped further with the exemptions,' said Luiza Pinese, an economist at XP, who halved her forecast for the tariff impact on Brazil's gross domestic product this year to 0.15 percentage points. STORY CONTINUES BELOW THIS AD Goldman Sachs maintained its projection for Brazil's economy to grow 2.3% this year in light of the 'notable' exemptions, adding that government support for affected sectors, expected in the coming days, should further soften the economic blow. 'Brazil depends on the United States, that's true, but also on BRICS countries, on Europe, on Mercosur,' Planning Minister Simone Tebet said at a public event last week, referring to major developing nations such as China, India, and Russia and a South American trade bloc. She said almost half of Brazil's agribusiness trade, an engine for Brazil's economy in recent years, is concentrated in Asia, compared to just 10% with the United States. 'When it comes to industry, the ratio is four to one - four times more to Asia than to the United States,' she added. Smaller role for trade Brazil is far less open to trade than most major global economies, limiting fallout from trade disruptions. Exports and imports amounted to 36% of its GDP last year, less than half the share in Mexico and nearby Paraguay, and just a quarter of the level in trade-focused Asian economies such as Thailand and Malaysia, according to World Bank data. STORY CONTINUES BELOW THIS AD Much of Brazil's exports are commodities easily redirected to different markets over time, said Thiago Carlos, a PIMCO portfolio manager for emerging markets. In the short term, more domestic food supply may even help to bring down inflation, he added. 'With inflation likely to trend lower, the central bank may find room to begin easing monetary policy sooner than expected,' said Carlos, noting the benchmark rate at the current level of 15% keeps monetary policy extremely tight, dragging on growth. Analysts polled by Reuters estimated that even without a U.S. trade deal and before exemptions, Brazil's growth outlook for 2026 would remain virtually unchanged from their consensus of 1.6%-1.7%. Still, Luis Otavio Leal, chief economist at asset manager G5 Partners, warned of potential knock-on effects if government aid is not well targeted to protect vulnerable sectors and jobs. 'Exemptions applied to nearly 700 products - and Brazil exports about 4,000 different goods to the U.S.,' said Leal. 'A large number of firms that sell to the U.S. were not covered.' Brazil's central bank said on Monday that U.S. levies on Brazilian goods could have 'significant' effects on specific sectors, but broader macroeconomic effects are uncertain and will depend on negotiations and market risk perceptions. STORY CONTINUES BELOW THIS AD Flavio Ataliba, a researcher at Brazilian university FGV, noted that the vast country's regional variety will result in uneven impacts. The Northeast region, in particular, could be hit harder due to its export base of low-value-added, labor-intensive goods such as fresh fruit, seafood, textiles, and footwear - all now subject to the full 50% tariff, he added.
Economic Times
41 minutes ago
- Economic Times
'I won't humiliate myself': Brazil's president sees no point in tariff talks with Trump
Synopsis Brazilian President Lula da Silva expressed reluctance to engage in direct talks with U.S. President Trump following increased U.S. tariffs, deeming it potentially humiliating. He emphasized Brazil's focus on domestic policies to mitigate the economic impact and exploring joint responses with BRICS nations. ANI Brazil President Lula Da Silva As U.S. tariffs on Brazilian goods jumped to 50% on Wednesday, Brazil's President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva told Reuters in an interview that he saw no room for direct talks now with U.S. President Donald Trump that would likely be a "humiliation." Brazil is not about to announce reciprocal tariffs, he said. Nor will his government give up on cabinet-level talks. But Lula himself is in no rush to ring the White House. "The day my intuition says Trump is ready to talk, I won't hesitate to call him," Lula said in an interview from his presidential residence in Brasilia. "But today my intuition says he doesn't want to talk. And I won't humiliate myself." Despite Brazil's exports facing one of the highest tariffs imposed by Trump, the new U.S. trade barriers look unlikely to derail Latin America's largest economy, giving Lula more room to stand his ground against Trump than most Western leaders. Lula described U.S.-Brazil relations at a 200-year nadir after Trump tied the new tariff to his demands for an end to the prosecution of right-wing former President Jair Bolsonaro, who is standing trial for plotting to overturn the 2022 election. The president said Brazil's Supreme Court, which is hearing the case against Bolsonaro, "does not care what Trump says and it should not," adding that Bolsonaro should face another trial for provoking Trump's intervention, calling the right-wing former president a "traitor to the homeland." "We had already pardoned the U.S. intervention in the 1964 coup," said Lula, who got his political start as a union leader protesting against the military government that followed a U.S.-backed ouster of a democratically elected president. "But this now is not a small intervention. It's the president of the United States thinking he can dictate rules for a sovereign country like Brazil. It's unacceptable." The Brazilian president said he had no personal issues with Trump, adding that they could meet at the United Nations next month or U.N. climate talks in November. But he noted Trump's track record of dressing down White House guests such as South African President Cyril Ramaphosa and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy. "What Trump did with Zelenskiy was humiliation. That's not normal. What Trump did with Ramaphosa was humiliation," Lula said. "One president can't be humiliating another. I respect everyone and I demand respect." Lula said his ministers were struggling to open talks with U.S. peers, so his government was focused on domestic policies to cushion the economic blow of U.S. tariffs, while maintaining "fiscal responsibility." The president declined to elaborate on pending measures to support Brazilian companies, which are expected to include credit lines and other export assistance. He also said he was planning to call leaders from the BRICS group of developing nations, starting with India and China, to discuss the possibility of a joint response to U.S. tariffs. "There is no coordination among the BRICS yet, but there will be," Lula said, comparing multilateral action to the strength of collective bargaining in his union days. "What is the negotiating power of one little country with the United States? None." Separately, he said Brazil was looking at lodging a collective complaint with other countries at the World Trade Organization. "I was born negotiating," said Lula, who was raised in poverty and rose through union ranks to serve two terms as president from 2003 to 2010, then re-entered politics in the 2022 election to defeat the incumbent Bolsonaro. But he said he was in no rush to strike a deal or retaliate against U.S. tariffs: "We need to be very cautious," he said. Asked about countermeasures targeting U.S. companies, such as greater taxation of big technology companies, Lula said his government was studying ways to tax U.S. firms on equal standing with Brazilian companies. Lula also described plans to create a new national policy for Brazil's strategic mineral resources, treating them as a matter of "national sovereignty" to break with a history of mining exports that added little value in Brazil.
