Video: Iran's president says country won't abandon its nuclear programme
Iran's President Masoud Pezeshkian has told Al Jazeera his country is committed to continuing its nuclear program for peaceful purposes, after the 12-day assault by Israel supported by the US.
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Al Jazeera
37 minutes ago
- Al Jazeera
Trump announces 100 percent tariff on semiconductor imports
United States President Donald Trump says he will impose a 100 percent tariff on foreign-made semiconductors, although exemptions will be made for companies that have invested in the US. 'We'll be putting a tariff on of approximately 100 percent on chips and semiconductors, but if you're building in the United States of America, there's no charge, even though you're building and you're not producing yet,' Trump told reporters at the Oval Office on Wednesday evening. The news came after a separate announcement that Apple would invest $600bn in the US, but it was not unexpected by US observers. Trump told CNBC on Tuesday that he planned to unveil a new tariff on semiconductors 'within the next week or so' without offering further details. Details were also scant at the Oval Office about how and when the tariffs will go into effect, but Asia's semiconductor powerhouses were quick to respond about the potential impact. Taiwan, home of the world's largest chipmaker TSMC, said that the company would be exempt from the tariff due to its existing investments in the US. 'Because Taiwan's main exporter is TSMC, which has factories in the United States, TSMC is exempt,' National Development Council chief Liu Chin-ching told the Taiwanese legislature. In March, TSMC – which counts Apple and Nvidia as clients – said it would increase its US investment to $165bn to expand chip making and research centres in Arizona. South Korea was also quick to extinguish any concerns about its top chipmakers, Samsung and SK Hynix, which have also invested in facilities in Texas and Indiana. Trade envoy Yeo Han-koo said South Korean companies would be exempt from the tariff and that Seoul already faced 'favourable' tariffs after signing a trade deal with Washington earlier this year. TSMC, Samsung and SK Hynix are just some of the foreign tech companies that have invested in the US since 2022, when then-President Joe Biden signed the bipartisan CHIPS Act offering billions of dollars in subsidies and tax credits to re-shore investment and manufacturing. Less lucky is the Philippines, said Dan Lachica, president of Semiconductor and Electronics Industries in the Philippines Foundation. He said the tariffs will be 'devastating' because semiconductors make up 70 percent of the Philippines' exports. Trump's latest round of blanket tariffs on US trade partners is due to go into effect on Thursday, but the White House has also targeted specific industries like steel, aluminium, automobiles and pharmaceuticals with separate tariffs.
Al Jazeera
2 hours ago
- Al Jazeera
US-India relations at their ‘worst' as Trump slaps 50 percent tariff
Even as the United States slaps India with a 50 percent tariff, the highest among all countries so far and one that will push their relationship to its lowest moment in years, one thing is clear: US President Donald Trump is more interested in onshoring than friend-shoring, experts say. On Wednesday, the US announced an additional 25 percent tariff on India over its import of Russian oil, taking the total to 50 percent. The move caught most experts by surprise as New Delhi was one of the first to start trade negotiations with Washington, DC, and Trump and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi have repeatedly admired each other in public statements and called each other friends. Brazil is the only other country facing tariffs as high as India's. 'The breakdown of the trade negotiations was a surprise,' said Vina Nadjibulla, vice president of strategy and research at the Asia Pacific Foundation of Canada. 'This is a very difficult moment, arguably the worst in many, many years in their relationship and puts India in a very small group of countries that find themselves without a deal and with the highest tariff rates. They now need some pragmatic path forward and need to find a way to rebuild trust,' Nadjibulla said. While the 50 percent tariffs, set to kick in in three weeks, have come as a shock, there has been a series of events in the past few weeks that hinted at disagreements between the two countries. Just last week, Trump threatened that he would penalise New Delhi for buying Russian oil and arms, venting his frustration over an impasse in trade talks and referred to both countries as 'dead economies'. Negotiations deadlock Last year, bilateral trade between India and the US stood at approximately $212bn, with a trade gap of about $46bn in India's favour. Modi has said in the past that he plans to more than double trade between the two countries to $500bn in the next five years. As part of the tariff negotiations, New Delhi had offered to remove levies from US industrial goods and said it would increase defence and energy purchases, the Reuters news agency reported. It also offered to scale back taxes on cars, despite a strong auto lobby at home pressuring it not to. But it refused to remove duties from farm and dairy products, two politically sensitive sectors that employ hundreds of millions of predominantly poor Indians, and a stance similar to some other countries like Canada. There are also geopolitical layers to what was supposed to be a trade conversation, pointed out Farwa Aamer, director of South Asia Initiatives at the Asia Society Policy Institute in New York. A very public one was the difference in perception on how the latest clash between India and archenemy Pakistan in May was brought to an end. Trump has repeatedly said that he mediated a ceasefire. India has repeatedly said that Trump had no role in bringing about a truce and has said that Modi and Trump never spoke during the conflict. Pakistan, on the other hand, has said it will nominate Trump for the Nobel Peace Prize and has so far walked away with deals with the US to explore its reserves of critical minerals and oil as its efforts to reset ties with the US play out after years of ambivalence under former US President Joe Biden, said Aamer. All of this has caused unease for New Delhi, which is now trying to navigate a tough road. 'This will test India's foreign policy,' said Aamer, 'and the question is if we will see it grow with the US even as it maintains its ties with Russia,' its longstanding defence and trade partner. New Delhi has called Wednesday's tariff 'unfair, unjustified and unreasonable' and said its imports of Russian oil are based on its objective of securing the energy needs of its nation of 1.4 billion people. But beyond that, 'India doesn't want to look weak', said Aamer. 'India has this global standing, and Modi has this global standing, so it has to hold its own. It will maintain its stance that its national security is driving its foreign policy.' Adding instability For now, India can focus on strengthening its bilateral trade agreements, said Aamer, such as the one it signed with the United Kingdom last month and another with the European Union, which is currently in the works. India is also trying to stabilise relations with China – just as Australia, Canada and Japan have done in recent months since Trump took office and hit allies with tariffs. Modi is planning to attend the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation summit at the end of the month. It would be his first visit to China since the two countries had a face-off in 2020 in the Galwan River valley. But the trade blow from the US also comes at a time when India has been trying to position itself as a manufacturing hub and as an option for businesses that were looking to add locations outside China. In April, Apple, for instance, said all iPhones meant to be sold in the US would be assembled in India by next year. While electronics are exempt for now from the tariffs, a country with a 50 percent tariff tag on it is hardly attractive for business, and this just 'adds to the instability and uncertainty that businesses were already feeling' because of all the Trump tariffs, Nadjibulla said. 'Trump has made it clear that he's interested in onshoring rather than friend-shoring.'
Al Jazeera
2 hours ago
- Al Jazeera
Public opinion splits over nuclear weapons on 80th anniversary of Hiroshima
On August 6, 1945, the United States became the first and only country in history to carry out a nuclear attack when it dropped an atomic bomb on the Japanese city of Hiroshima. While the death toll of the bombing remains a subject of debate, at least 70,000 people were killed, though other figures are nearly twice as high. Three days later, the US dropped another atomic bomb on the city of Nagasaki, killing at least 40,000 people. The stunning toll on Japanese civilians at first seemed to have little impact on public opinion in the US, where pollsters found approval for the bombing reached 85 percent in the days afterwards. To this day, US politicians continue to credit the bombing with saving American lives and ending World War II. But as the US marks the 80th anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima, perceptions have become increasingly mixed. A Pew Research Center poll last month indicated that Americans are split almost evenly into three categories. Nearly a third of respondents believe the use of the bomb was justified. Another third feels it was not. And the rest are uncertain about deciding either way. 'The trendline is that there is a steady decline in the share of Americans who believe these bombings were justified at the time,' Eileen Yam, the director of science and society research at Pew Research Center, told Al Jazeera in a recent phone call. 'This is something Americans have gotten less and less supportive of as time has gone by.' Tumbling approval rates Doubts about the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the advent of nuclear weapons in general, did not take long to set in. 'From the beginning, it was understood that this was something different, a weapon that could destroy entire cities,' said Kai Bird, a US author who has written about Hiroshima and Nagasaki. His Pulitzer Prize-winning book, American Prometheus, served as the basis for director Christopher Nolan's 2023 film, Oppenheimer. Bird pointed out that, even in the immediate aftermath of the bombing, some key politicians and public figures denounced it as a war crime. Early critics included physicist Albert Einstein and former President Herbert Hoover, who was quick to speak out against the civilian bloodshed. 'The use of the atomic bomb, with its indiscriminate killing of women and children, revolts my soul,' Hoover wrote within days of the bombing. Over time, historians have increasingly cast doubt on the most common justification for the atomic attacks: that they played a decisive role in ending World War II. Some academics point out that other factors likely played a larger role in the Japanese decision to surrender, including the Soviet Union's declaration of war against the island nation on August 8. Others have speculated whether the bombings were meant mostly as a demonstration of strength as the US prepared for its confrontation with the Soviet Union in what would become the Cold War. Accounts from Japanese survivors and media reports also played a role in changing public perceptions. John Hersey's 1946 profile of six victims, for instance, took up an entire edition of The New Yorker magazine. It chronicled, in harrowing detail, everything from the crushing power of the blast to the fever, nausea and death brought on by radiation sickness. By 1990, a Pew poll found that a shrinking majority in the US approved of the atomic bomb's use on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Only 53 percent felt it was merited. Rationalising US use of force But even at the close of the 20th century, the legacy of the attacks remained contentious in the US. For the 50th anniversary of the bombing in 1995, the National Air and Space Museum in Washington, DC, had planned a special exhibit. But it was cancelled amid public furore over sections of the display that explored the experiences of Japanese civilians and the debate about the use of the atomic bomb. US veterans groups argued that the exhibit undermined their sacrifices, even after it underwent extensive revision. 'The exhibit still says in essence that we were the aggressors and the Japanese were the victims,' William Detweiler, a leader at the American Legion, a veterans group, told The Associated Press at the time. Incensed members of Congress opened an investigation, and the museum's director resigned. The exhibit, meanwhile, never opened to the public. All that remained was a display of the Enola Gay, the aeroplane that dropped the first atomic bomb. Erik Baker, a lecturer on the history of science at Harvard University, says that the debate over the atomic bomb often serves as a stand-in for larger questions about the way the US wields power in the world. 'What's at stake is the role of World War II in legitimising the subsequent history of the American empire, right up to the current day,' he told Al Jazeera. Baker explained that the US narrative about its role in the defeat of Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan — the main 'Axis Powers' in World War II — has been frequently referenced to assert the righteousness of US interventions around the world. 'If it was justifiable for the US to not just go to war but to do 'whatever was necessary' to defeat the Axis powers, by a similar token, there can't be any objection to the US doing what is necessary to defeat the 'bad guys' today,' he added. A resurgence of nuclear anxiety But as the generations that lived through World War II grow older and pass away, cultural shifts are emerging in how different age groups approach US intervention — and use of force — abroad. The scepticism is especially pronounced among young people, large numbers of whom have expressed dissatisfaction with policies such as US support for Israel's war in Gaza. In an April 2024 poll, the Pew Research Center found a dramatic generational divide among Americans over the question of global engagement. Approximately 74 percent of older respondents, aged 65 and up, expressed a strong belief that the US should play an active role on the world stage. But only 33 percent of younger respondents, aged 18 to 35, felt the same way. Last month's Pew poll on the atomic bomb also found stark differences in age. People over the age of 65 were more than twice as likely to believe that the bombings were justified than people between the ages of 18 and 29. Yam, the Pew researcher, said that age was the 'most pronounced factor' in the results, beating out other characteristics, such as party affiliation and veteran status. The 80th anniversary of the Hiroshima bombing also coincides with a period of renewed anxiety about nuclear weapons. US President Donald Trump, for instance, repeatedly warned during his re-election campaign in 2024 that the globe was on the precipice of 'World War III'. 'The threat is nuclear weapons,' Trump told a rally in Chesapeake, Virginia. 'That can happen tomorrow.' 'We're at a place where, for the first time in more than three decades, nuclear weapons are back at the forefront of international politics,' said Ankit Panda, a senior fellow in the nuclear policy programme at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, a US-based think tank. Panda says that such concerns are linked to geopolitical tensions between different states, pointing to the recent fighting between India and Pakistan in May as one example. The war in Ukraine, meanwhile, has prompted Russia and the US, the world's two biggest nuclear powers, to exchange nuclear-tinged threats. And in June, the US and Israel carried out attacks on Iranian nuclear facilities with the stated aim of setting back the country's ability to develop nuclear weapons. But as the US marks the 80th anniversary of the Hiroshima bombings, advocates hope the shift in public opinion will encourage world leaders to turn away from nuclear sabre-rattling and work towards the elimination of nuclear weapons. Seth Shelden, the United Nations liaison for the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, explained that countries with nuclear weapons argue that their arsenals discourage acts of aggression. But he said those arguments diminish the 'civilisation-ending' dangers of nuclear warfare. 'As long as the nuclear-armed states prioritise nuclear weapons for their own security, they're going to incentivise others to pursue them as well,' he said. 'The question shouldn't be whether nuclear deterrence can work or whether it ever has worked,' he added. 'It should be whether it will work in perpetuity.'
