Play wisely
Even his attempt to stall the Israel-Iran-Russia war had failed miserably. As regards our ceasefire with Pakistan, though our prime minister, home, defence, and the external affairs ministers have time and again explained that there was no third party intervention to stop the war and was stopped purely at the request of Pakistan, our opposition leaders are not ready to believe our prime minister and his ministers, which is really unfortunate.
With their counting the number of trumpeting of Trump, they are only degrading themselves in our country. It would be better if they act like a constructive opposition, instead of destructive and try to do something good for our nation and the Common man.
Capt. N. Viswanathan,
Coimbatore, India
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Zawya
9 minutes ago
- Zawya
Markets' tariff resilience challenges long-standing economic orthodoxy: McGeever
(The opinions expressed here are those of the author, a columnist for Reuters.) ORLANDO, Florida - Investors have been living in a real-time economic experiment ever since U.S. President Donald Trump returned to the White House in January. Whether it's tariffs, "America First" isolationism, overt politicization of independent economic institutions, or upended global economic norms, markets are having to deal with challenges few investors have faced before. So how are they reacting to the leader of the free world ripping up the economic playbook that has shaped the global financial system for 40 years? Wall Street and world stocks are at record highs, U.S. high yield corporate bond spreads are the tightest since before the 2007-08 global financial crisis, and Treasuries are remarkably calm, with the 10-year yield below its average of the last two years. It's not all serene, of course. The U.S. "term premium" - a measure of the extra compensation investors demand for holding long-dated Treasuries over short-term debt - is the highest in over a decade. Inflation expectations and long-dated yields have shot up too. And one needs to acknowledge that the full impact of Trump's tariffs has yet to be fully felt. But, at this point there has been no U.S. recession, even if growth is slowing. And the market plunge on the back of Trump's April 2 "Liberation Day" tariff debacle lasted a few weeks. The powerful stock market recovery since then suggests investors were less bothered by the actual tariffs than the shock of the initial announcement, the chaotic way it was delivered, and the amateurish way the levies were calculated. This outcome is not what economic textbooks would have predicted. ONE FOR YOU, 19 FOR ME Tariffs are a tax. And the overall U.S. average effective tariff rate looks likely to be around 18%, according to the Budget Lab at Yale. That's down from an estimated 28% in May but still nearly eight times higher than the level in December. Who will ultimately pay this tax is up for debate, but if sustained at that level, the president of the United States will have effectively imposed a tax hike worth around 1.8% of GDP, one of the largest in U.S. history. But wait. Aren't higher taxes bad for business, markets and growth? Don't higher taxes sap consumers' spending power, stunt investment and hiring, and crush the private sector's entrepreneurial spirit? Markets' relatively speedy acceptance raises the question: What happened to the last 40 years of economic orthodoxy, symbolized by the so-called "Washington Consensus"? This was the set of principles drawn up in the late 1980s that broadly mirrored the views of the Washington-based International Monetary Fund, World Bank and U.S. Treasury, ostensibly to help direct policy in Latin America but which ultimately served as the economic framework for Western liberal democracies and global markets. They included support for privatization, deregulation, the free flow of capital, fiscal discipline, and lower taxes. They also entailed lower barriers to trade, a cornerstone of globalization. For years these tenets were regarded by policymakers, business leaders and investors as sacrosanct. Some, like rigid adherence to tight fiscal policy, were put to the test - and shown to be flimsy, at best - during the GFC and pandemic. So now that the tariff line has been crossed, what about other economic commandments? Could governments look to raise tax revenue from other sources, such as wealth taxes on the super rich, a "Tobin tax" on foreign exchange transactions, or other "soft" capital controls? These are obviously anathema to the doctrine of free market capitalism. But then so were tariffs. To be fair, we are just entering this new era. And as my colleague Mike Dolan observed earlier this week, even if tariffs don't send the economy or markets into a tailspin, they may still lead to a "slow burn," with many years of lost economic potential, elevated volatility and lower investment returns. But investors aren't looking that far ahead. What they see right now is a pretty resilient U.S. economy, solid earnings growth, and red-hot optimism around U.S. tech and AI. And some of the old orthodoxies may be in the rear-view mirror. (The opinions expressed here are those of the author, a columnist for Reuters) (By Jamie McGeever; editing by Mark Heinrich)
Zawya
an hour ago
- Zawya
Trump says he could impose more tariffs on China, similar to India duties, over Russian oil
WASHINGTON: U.S. President Donald Trump on Wednesday said he could announce further tariffs on China similar to the 25% duties announced earlier on India over its purchases of Russian oil, depending on what happens. "Could happen," Trump told reporters, after saying he expected to announce more secondary sanctions aimed at pressuring Russia to end its war in Ukraine. He gave no further details. "It may happen ... I can't tell you yet," Trump said. "We did it with India. We're doing it probably with a couple of others. One of them could be China." Trump on Wednesday imposed an additional 25% tariff on Indian goods, on top of a 25% tariff announced previously, citing its continued purchases of Russian oil. The White House order did not mention China, which is another big purchaser of Russian oil. Last week, U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent warned China that it could also face new tariffs if it continued buying Russian oil. (Reporting by Andrea Shalal; Editing by Leslie Adler and Daniel Wallis)
Zawya
an hour ago
- Zawya
'I won't humiliate myself': Brazil's president sees no point in tariff talks with Trump
BRASILIA: 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. (Reporting by Brad Haynes and Lisandra Paraguassu; Editing by Alistair Bell)
