Reuters: US customs receipts quadruple to record $23 bil. in May due to tariffs
Reuters news agency says US customs receipts nearly quadrupled in May from a year earlier to a record 23 billion dollars, "due to President Donald Trump's steep new import tariffs."
Reuters says Trump's tariffs on goods from nearly all trading partners that took effect in April began to show through the following month in significant amounts in port-of-entry collections. The news agency quoted a report by the US Treasury Department.
Trump has also imposed tariffs on imports of steel products, aluminum and automobiles from countries and regions including Japan.
In a social media post in May, Trump praised the "strong" jobs figures and hailed the "billions of dollars" pouring into the country from tariffs.
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The Mainichi
38 minutes ago
- The Mainichi
Japan draws up 100 bil. yen policy to attract foreign researchers
TOKYO (Kyodo) -- The Japanese government unveiled on Friday a 100 billion yen ($700 million) policy package designed to attract foreign researchers, some of whom may have joined the exodus of talent from the United States due to research funding cuts. The measures aim to create an elite research environment in Japan, as competition to lure talent intensifies globally in fields such as artificial intelligence and semiconductors. The government also plans to use profits generated from a 10 trillion yen investment fund set up by the state to help universities produce internationally competitive research. "We will make utmost efforts to make our country the most attractive in the world for researchers," said science and technology policy minister Minoru Kiuchi at a press conference. Many researchers have departed the United States as President Donald Trump's administration has pushed elite universities to prioritize American students over those from other countries and slashed federal funding for many programs. Japan's new policy package will fund many existing programs, including a plan by Tohoku University to spend around 30 billion yen to recruit about 500 researchers from Japan and abroad. An education ministry project in which hubs will be created to promote top-level research is also included. The government aims to raise salaries for researchers and reduce their administrative burden, allowing them to concentrate on their work. It also seeks to acquire advanced technology for use at institutions. Kiuchi said the government will consider additional measures to retain researchers after bringing them in from abroad. Despite the government's recent efforts to promote science and technology research, an education ministry institute said that last year Japan remained ranked at a record-low 13th place in the number of highly cited scientific papers.
Japan Times
2 hours ago
- Japan Times
Presidents have been treating journalists badly since Lincoln
I don't know whether The Associated Press will ultimately prevail in its legal challenge to the Trump administration's reckless and petty decision to kick the venerable organization out of the press pool, which has more White House access than other credentialed journalists. The lawsuit took a hit on last week when a panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit tossed a lower court's preliminary injunction, allowing the White House to reinstate parts of the ban. But as the litigation continues, it's worth noting that punishing the press out of presidential pique is nothing new. The current controversy arose in February, after the AP refused to revise its style guide to refer to the Gulf of Mexico by President Donald Trump's preferred "Gulf of America.' The administration, with its typical small-mindedness, stripped the AP of its usual insider's seat. But punishing journalists for refusing to follow government orders is pretty much the opposite of freedom of the press. Still, nobody should have been surprised. The administration's action, although wrong, was not without Trumpian precedent. And not without non-Trumpian precedent either. Although I have some sympathy with Judge Cornelia Pillard's dissenting opinion in the AP case, I fear she's imprecise when she asserts that "participation in the Press Pool or the broader White House press corps has never been conditioned on the viewpoint expressed outside the Pool by any participating news organization — until now.' The unfortunate truth is that presidents have acted badly toward reporters who criticize them for as long as we've had presidents and reporters. History abounds with examples. Indeed, long before there existed a White House press corps, presidential peevishness led to the punishment of newspapers. We could go back to Abraham Lincoln and John Adams, who might reasonably rank first and second on the list of the nation's best presidents, but both of whose administrations jailed journalists whose reporting they didn't like. A better point of departure might be 1904, when Jesse Carmichael of the Boston Herald filed a story about the Thanksgiving Day antics of Theodore Roosevelt's children, who the paper claimed had chased a turkey across the lawn. "Why should the Roosevelt children be allowed to torment and frighten an innocent bird?' the article concluded. The president's secretary — the office of press secretary did not yet exist — denied that the incident had taken place. But the denial did not satisfy Roosevelt, who ordered both Carmichael and his paper barred from receiving any news releases, not only from the White House, but from all executive departments. The Herald was not even permitted access to official weather forecasts. (The newspaper stood its ground, insisting that Roosevelt had been "misinformed' about the contents of the story.) Roosevelt's hostility toward the press was legendary. When, just before the 1908 election, Joseph Pulitzer's New York World reported that the Roosevelt family had profited from the Panama Canal deal, the president informed Congress ominously that the attorney general "has under consideration' charges against the newspaper — a message condemned even by editors friendly to the administration. Roosevelt was undeterred by the criticism. Shortly before leaving office, he filed a lawsuit for criminal libel against theWorld and a second newspaper. The U.S. Supreme Court would ultimately throw out the case, not because it offended freedom of the press, but on the ground that the federal judiciary lacked jurisdiction. Speaking of Roosevelts, when Franklin D. Roosevelt was in the White House, reporters were forbidden to photograph the chief executive in his wheelchair. The historian Harold Holzer, in his engrossing 2020 book on the history of the relationship between the press and presidents, tells us that what FDR's White House styled as a "request' was firmly enforced: "Persistent offenders risked losing their press credentials.' How effective was the ban? According to Holzer, a later study found that of 35,000 surviving photographs of FDR, only two showed him in his wheelchair. On the other hand, it apparently isn't true, as often reported, that President Richard Nixon barred The Washington Post from covering his daughter Tricia's 1971 wedding. What did happen, according to biographer John A. Farrell, is that Nixon was so incensed by what he considered the Post's "snide' coverage of the event that he ordered Ron Ziegler, his press secretary, to keep the newspaper from attending future White House social events. Then, says Farrell, the president went further: "They're never to be in the White House again. Never! Is that clear?' It does not appear that the ban was ever enforced. Perhaps Ziegler knew enough to let his boss calm down. And for those who can stretch their memories back to that ancient year 2023, it was Joe Biden's administration that rewrote the credentialing rules to rid itself of Cameroonian journalist Simon Ateba, whose offense was evidently shouting over others to get his questions heard. The White House called him disruptive; Ateba claimed that he had to interrupt because he was never called on — and that he was never called on because the administration disliked his views. Either way, the new rules, which limited credentials to those employed by news organizations, excluded hundreds of others as well. None of this history is meant to excuse the Trump administration's decision to kick the AP out of the Oval Office over a line in the organization's style guide. The decision was petty, disquieting and wrong. Perhaps the courts will yet strike it down. My point, rather, is that it's been a tragedy of our history that presidents good and bad have frequently taken out their anger on the press. That the news media have survived White House pettishness might be described as a glory of our democracy. Stephen L. Carter is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist, a professor of law at Yale University and author of "Invisible: The Story of the Black Woman Lawyer Who Took Down America's Most Powerful Mobster.'
The Mainichi
2 hours ago
- The Mainichi
Members of the Fulbright scholarship board resign, accusing Trump of meddling
(AP) -- Nearly all the members of a board overseeing the prestigious Fulbright scholarships resigned Wednesday in protest of what they call the Trump administration's meddling with the selection of award recipients for the international exchange program. A statement published online by board members said the administration usurped the board's authority by denying awards to "a substantial number of people" who already had been chosen to study and teach in the U.S. and abroad. Another 1,200 foreign award recipients who were already approved to come to the U.S. are undergoing an unauthorized review process that could lead to their rejection, the board members said. "To continue to serve after the Administration has consistently ignored the Board's request that they follow the law would risk legitimizing actions we believe are unlawful and damage the integrity of this storied program and America's credibility abroad," the statement reads. Congress established the Fulbright program nearly 80 years ago to promote international exchange and American diplomacy. The highly selective program awards about 9,000 scholarships annually in the U.S. and in more than 160 other countries to students, scholars, and professionals in a range of fields. All but one of the 12 board members resigned, according to Carmen Estrada-Schaye, who is the only remaining board member. "I was appointed by the president of the United States and I intend to fill out my term," Estrada-Schaye said. Fulbright scholars include recent U.S. college graduates who pursue further study or teach English overseas, American professors who spend a year at a university in another country and international scholars who come to the U.S. to study or work at universities here. Alumni of the program have gone on to serve as heads of state or government and have received Nobel and Pulitzer prizes. Notable alumni include Leslie Voltaire, president of Haiti's transitional presidential council; Muhammad Yunus, chief adviser of Bangladesh; Luc Frieden, prime minister of Luxembourg; and King Felipe VI of Spain. Award recipients are selected in a yearlong process by nonpartisan staff at the State Department and other countries' embassies. The board has had final approval. The recipients who had their awards canceled are in fields including biology, engineering, agriculture, music, medical sciences, and history, the board members said. All the board members who resigned were selected under former President Joe Biden. The State Department, which runs the scholarship program, said they were partisan political appointees. "It's ridiculous to believe that these members would continue to have final say over the application process, especially when it comes to determining academic suitability and alignment with President Trump's Executive Orders. The claim that the Fulbright Hayes Act affords exclusive and final say over Fulbright Applications to the Fulbright board is false. This is nothing but a political stunt attempting to undermine President Trump," the department said. The resignations were first reported by The New York Times. The intervention from the Trump administration undermines the program's merit-based selection process and its insulation from political influence, the board members wrote. "We believe these actions not only contradict the statute but are antithetical to the Fulbright mission and the values, including free speech and academic freedom, that Congress specified in the statute," the statement said. "It is our sincere hope that Congress, the courts, and future Fulbright Boards will prevent the administration's efforts to degrade, dismantle, or even eliminate one of our nation's most respected and valuable programs." The announcement comes as the Trump administration ratchets up scrutiny of international students on several fronts. The administration has expanded the grounds for revoking foreign students' legal status, and recently paused scheduling of new interviews for student visas as it increases vetting of their social media activity. The government also has moved to block foreign students from attending Harvard as it pressures the Ivy League school to adopt a series of reforms. ___ This story has been corrected to reflect 11 of the 12 board members resigned, not all of them.
