Israel orders evacuation of West Bank's Tulkarem
03/07/2025
Trump close to victory on flagship 'Big Beautiful' tax bill
03/07/2025
A 'tsunami of need' feared as US House close to final vote on Trump tax bill
03/07/2025
French diplomat visits detainees held in Iran in first 'proof of life' since Israeli strikes
03/07/2025
Sean 'Diddy' Combs denied bail after prostitution conviction
03/07/2025
Ukraine scrambling for clarity as US downplays halt to arms shipments
03/07/2025
Italy to issue half million non-EU work visas over next three years
03/07/2025
Palestinians mourn director of key Gaza hospital killed in Israeli strike
03/07/2025
French air traffic controllers' strike disrupts early summer season travel
03/07/2025
Dozens still missing after ferry sinks on way to Indonesia's Bali
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LeMonde
20 minutes ago
- LeMonde
'Europeans are more wary than ever of a hastily negotiated deal between Washington and Tehran'
The silence between the French president and his Russian counterpart, who has been accused of war crimes, lasted a little less than three years. But the stakes over Iran's nuclear program were so high that Emmanuel Macron decided to reestablish contact on Tuesday, July 1, with Vladimir Putin, despite the ongoing war in Ukraine. While he still speaks with Donald Trump, the Russian president remains a pariah in Europe, as he refuses any prospect of a ceasefire at a time when his army is making gains on Ukrainian territory. Before agreeing to end "his" war, he once again demanded during his conversation with Emmanuel Macron that the "root causes" of the conflict be addressed – essentially, the alleged expansion of NATO – for which he places blame on "the West." Nevertheless, the French president intends to mobilize the members of the United Nations Security Council, including Russia and China, to step up efforts for negotiations over the Iranian nuclear program. After Vladimir Putin, who assured him that he was not encouraging his Iranian ally to acquire the bomb, the current resident of the Elysée plans to speak 'soon' with his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping. For Macron, the time has come to return to diplomacy following Israeli and American strikes, as the ceasefire between Iran and Israel, announced on June 24, ended what President Trump had dubbed the "Twelve-Day War." The French president is not alone in wanting a negotiated solution to quickly follow the American and Israeli military operations. His German counterpart, Friedrich Merz, and British counterpart, Keir Starmer – whose countries signed the Vienna Agreement on July 14, 2015, along with the United States, the European Union, Iran, France, China, and Russia – are essentially on the same page. However, they refuse to speak with the Russian president, whose word they deem "unreliable." In fact, the return of diplomacy is only just beginning to take shape, under the watchful eye of the unpredictable Donald Trump, a Nobel Prize candidate eager to be at the forefront seven years after tearing up the Vienna Agreement, which had been signed by Barack Obama to strictly oversee Iran's nuclear program. After the strikes, the diplomatic outlook remains extremely unclear. The American president has been stalling for time, saying he had "nothing to offer" Iran. Tehran, for its part, has refused to negotiate with Israel's main ally, whose military intervention has shaken the regime.
Fashion Network
26 minutes ago
- Fashion Network
Trump aims to shut trade loopholes China uses to evade tariffs
President Donald Trump 's two-tiered trade deal with Vietnam aims squarely at practices China has long used to skirt US tariffs: The widespread legal shifting of production to Southeast Asian factories and the murkier and illegal 'origin washing' of exports through their ports. The agreement slaps a 20% tariff on Vietnamese exports to the US and a 40% levy on goods deemed to be transshipped through the country. With details still scarce, economists said much will hinge on the framework Washington establishes to determine what it sees as 'Made in Vietnam' and what it sees as transshipments. Complicating matters is the fact that Chinese businesses have rushed to set up shop across Southeast Asia since Trump launched his first trade war back in 2018. The lion's share of Vietnam's exports to the US are goods like Airpods, phones or other products assembled with Chinese components in a factory in Vietnam and then shipped to America. That's not illegal. 'A lot will depend on how the 40% tariffs are applied. If the Trump administration keeps it targeted, it should be manageable,' said Roland Rajah, lead economist at the Lowy Institute in Sydney. 'If the approach is too broad and blunt, then it could be quite damaging' for China, Vietnam and for the US, which will have to pay higher import prices, he said. The think tank estimates that 28% of Vietnamese exports to the US were made up of Chinese content in 2022, up from 9% in 2018. Pham Luu Hung, chief economist at SSI Securities Corp. in Hanoi, said a 40% levy on transshipped goods would have limited impact on Vietnam's economy because they aren't of Vietnamese origin in the first place. Re-routed exports accounted for just 16.5% of Vietnam's shipments to the US in 2021, a share that's likely declined over the past couple of years amid stronger enforcement actions by both governments, Hung said. 'An important caveat is that the rules of origin remain under negotiation,' Hung said. 'In practice, these rules may have a greater impact than the tariff rates themselves.' Duncan Wrigley, chief China economist at Pantheon Macroeconomics, said he's skeptical the latest deal will be effective in stamping out Chinese exports via Vietnam to the US. 'The devil is in the details, but I think China's exports will either go via other markets to the US, or some value-added will be done in Vietnam so the product counts as made in Vietnam, rather than a transshipment,' he said. As officials across Asia rushed to negotiate lower US tariff levels with their US counterparts this year, Chinese businesses have been just as quick to ramp up their exports through alternative channels in order to skirt punitive US levies. Shipments from China to Southeast Asia have reached record highs in Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand and Vietnam this year. And there's been a 'significant increase in correlation' to the region's increase in exports to the US during the same period, Citigroup Inc. economists said in a recent report. Much of that is likely due to the shifting of legitimate production across the region. Goods destined for the US market may be sent from their factories in Southeast Asia, and what they make in their factories in China will be sent to the rest of the world, said Derrick Kam, Asia economist at Morgan Stanley. 'If you try to represent that in the trade data, it will look exactly like rerouting, but it's not,' Kam said. 'It's essentially the supply chain working itself out.' But it's transshipment that's been a major concern for Trump's top trade advisers including Peter Navarro, who described Vietnam as 'essentially a colony of communist China' during an April interview with Fox News. And it's not just been happening in Vietnam. Not long after Trump unveiled his 'Liberation Day' tariffs on April 2, garment makers in Indonesia started receiving offers from Chinese companies to be 'partners in transshipment,' said Redma Gita Wirawasta, chairman of the Indonesian Filament Yarn and Fiber Producers Association. Chinese products would be rerouted to Indonesia, undergo minimal processing like repacking or relabeling, then secure a certification that they were made in the Southeast Asian country, Wirawasta said. When the goods are then exported to the US, they'd be subject to the 10% universal levy that Trump has imposed on nearly all countries, instead of the tariff for China that still equates to an effective level of over 50%, even after a recent 'deal' that lowered levies from a peak of 145%. With the huge scope for arbitrage, coupled with little policing, that process will prove tough to stamp out. 'Chinese exporters and their affiliates and partners in Southeast Asia are highly skilled at adapting to changing rules, identifying loopholes, and sometimes overstating the extent of value-add by non-China countries,' said Gabriel Wildau, managing director at advisory firm Teneo Holdings LLC in New York. Some final assembly or transshipment may shift to rival Southeast Asian transshipment hubs like Cambodia, Thailand and Singapore, or farther afield to Turkey, Hungary or Poland, Wildau said. 'Another possibility is that the definitions and enforcement mechanisms are fuzzy, rendering the latest deal cosmetic and toothless,' he said. 'Rigorous enforcement would also require a significant boost of resources to enable US customs to verify compliance with the tougher rules of origin.' There have been efforts across the region to at least be seen to be making an effort to curb the practice. Indeed, Vietnam has made a big deal about cracking down on trade fraud and illegal activity in recent months. In April, South Korea said it seized more than $20 million worth of goods with falsified origin labels — the majority of which were destined for the US. The Airfreight Forwarders Association of Malaysia issued a warning in May as Chinese brokers promoted illegal rerouting services on social media. Malaysia has centralized the issuance of certificates of origin with its Ministry of Investment, Trade and Industry, while tapping its customs agency to help curb transshipment. Thailand has expanded its watch list for high-risk products, including solar panels, cars and parts, and is mulling stricter penalties for violators. Casey Barnett, the president of the American Chamber of Commerce in Cambodia, is already seeing the changes in action. One factory that exports to major US retailers, including Walmart, Home Depot and Lowe's, said that customs officials were very carefully reviewing their products before being sent to the US, he said. 'It's creating some additional paperwork and a little bit of red tape here,' Barnett said. A senior manager at a logistics company in Cambodia, who asked not to be identified because the matter is sensitive, said export processing time has now stretched to as much as 14 working days — double what it was before. But in Indonesia, getting a certificate of origin is fairly quick and painless when goods are marked for export, often just requiring a product list and a letter to the provincial trade office, according to Wirawasta. Authorities prioritize checking products that enter the country to ensure they pay the right duties and comply with regulations, he explained. It's rare for them to inspect factories where an export good was supposedly made. So much so that sometimes, Chinese companies don't even need to muster up some local processing. 'The T-shirt could be finished in China, with a 'Made in Indonesia' label already sewn on,' Wirawasta said. 'Some traders won't even bother to unload the goods from the shipping container,' he added. 'Unloading costs money.'
Fashion Network
an hour ago
- Fashion Network
Shein faces government crackdown in France as minister confirms ongoing investigations
The French government has sent a clear signal to the ultra-fast fashion sector. On July 3, Trade Minister Véronique Louwagie announced that Shein had been fined €40 million for deceptive business practices. Speaking at the annual event hosted by Alliance du Commerce—an organization representing 16,000 stores and 150,000 retail workers in France—Louwagie addressed an audience of retail chain and department store representatives in Paris. During the morning's discussions, concerns were repeatedly raised about the competitive imbalance posed by ultra-fast fashion players who operate outside the regulatory frameworks that European retailers must follow. The fine issued against Shein followed an investigation by the DGCCRF (Directorate-General for Competition, Consumer Affairs and Fraud Control). Louwagie added that 'other investigations are underway,' although she declined to provide further details. Responding to frustration within the retail sector over the perceived disparity in enforcement between domestic and foreign platforms, Louwagie announced new enforcement measures. 'I've asked for stricter controls on foreign platforms—specifically, a threefold increase in product sampling to verify compliance,' she said. 'We're also implementing full-spectrum checks on all elements involved.' She noted that, in coordination with Customs Minister Amélie de Montchalin, a new protocol would ensure systematic information sharing between customs authorities and the DGCCRF regarding incoming parcels. Louwagie emphasized that enforcement is also expanding at the European level. 'At the end of 2024, we began verifying platform compliance with the Digital Services Act,' she explained. 'A specific procedure has been initiated by the European Commission targeting Temu, and a separate investigation is underway concerning Shein. France, along with Germany and Ireland, is challenging multiple practices that violate EU regulations. Shein has 30 days to respond.' Amid calls to replicate the 2021 delisting of the e-commerce site Wish, the minister acknowledged that such action remains an option. 'Wish failed to comply with official injunctions, which led to its removal. While today's platforms often respond to enforcement measures, I'm pushing the European Commission to revise the legal framework so that platforms can still be delisted under certain conditions—even if they cooperate.' Highlighting the scale of the issue, Louwagie noted that 800 million parcels valued under €150 enter France annually, part of a broader influx of 1.5 billion parcels into the country and 4.5 billion across Europe. The stakes, she said, are high—not only in terms of consumer health and safety but also in protecting European businesses from unfair competition. She reiterated the government's support for ending customs exemptions on low-value imports. After months of scrutiny surrounding Shein's business model and its impact on the local economy, the July 3 announcement marks a significant turning point. Whether it paves the way for lasting structural change across the industry remains to be seen.
