Tariffs on steel, semiconductors coming soon: Trump
Donald Trump boards Air Force One as he departs for Alaska to meet with Vladimir Putin. Photo: Reuters
US President Donald Trump said on Friday he plans to announce tariffs on steel and semiconductors in the coming weeks.
"I'll be setting tariffs next week and the week after, on steel and, I would say, chips. Chips and semiconductors, we'll be setting sometime next week, the week after," Trump said on board Air Force One as he headed to Alaska for a summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Trump said the levy rate would be "lower at the beginning" but "very high after a certain period of time," as a way to encourage businesses to relocate operations to the United States.
The president said his policy would prompt companies in key industries like automobiles and artificial intelligence to relocate in order to "beat the tariffs," which could be 200 or 300 percent.
Trump has also said he would employ this strategy with pharmaceuticals.
On August 6, Trump announced a 100 percent tariff on semiconductors from firms that do not invest in the US.
Trump has already instituted tariffs on steel, announcing an initial 25 percent levy that was later doubled to 50 percent. (AFP)
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
AllAfrica
21 minutes ago
- AllAfrica
80% of American troops would disobey illegal orders: study
With his August 11, 2025, announcement that he was sending the National Guard – along with federal law enforcement – into Washington, DC to fight crime, President Donald Trump edged US troops closer to the kind of military-civilian confrontations that can cross ethical and legal lines. Indeed, since Trump returned to office, many of his actions have alarmed international human rights observers. His administration has deported immigrants without due process, held detainees in inhumane conditions, threatened the forcible removal of Palestinians from the Gaza Strip and deployed both the National Guard and federal military troops to Los Angeles to quell largely peaceful protests. When a sitting commander in chief authorizes acts like these, which many assert are clear violations of the law, men and women in uniform face an ethical dilemma: How should they respond to an order they believe is illegal? The question may already be affecting troop morale. 'The moral injuries of this operation, I think, will be enduring,' a National Guard member who had been deployed to quell public unrest over immigration arrests in Los Angeles told The New York Times. 'This is not what the military of our country was designed to do, at all.' Troops who are ordered to do something illegal are put in a bind – so much so that some argue that troops themselves are harmed when given such orders. They are not trained in legal nuances, and they are conditioned to obey. Yet if they obey 'manifestly unlawful' orders, they can be prosecuted. Some analysts fear that US troops are ill-equipped to recognize this threshold. We are scholars of international relations and international law. We conducted survey research at the University of Massachusetts Amherst's Human Security Lab and discovered that many service members do understand the distinction between legal and illegal orders, the duty to disobey certain orders, and when they should do so. President Donald Trump, flanked by Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth and Attorney General Pam Biondi, announced at a White House news conference on Aug. 11, 2025, that he was deploying the National Guard to assist in restoring law and order in Washington. Photo: Hu Yousong / Xinhua via Getty Images / The Conversation US service members take an oath to uphold the Constitution. In addition, under Article 92 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice and the US Manual for Courts-Martial, service members must obey lawful orders and disobey unlawful orders. Unlawful orders are those that clearly violate the US Constitution, international human rights standards or the Geneva Conventions. Service members who follow an illegal order can be held liable and court-martialed or subject to prosecution by international tribunals. Following orders from a superior is no defense. Our poll, fielded between June 13 and June 30, 2025, shows that service members understand these rules. Of the 818 active-duty troops we surveyed, just 9% stated that they would 'obey any order.' Only 9% 'didn't know,' and only 2% had 'no comment.' When asked to describe unlawful orders in their own words, about 25% of respondents wrote about their duty to disobey orders that were 'obviously wrong,' 'obviously criminal' or 'obviously unconstitutional.' Another 8% spoke of immoral orders. One respondent wrote that 'orders that clearly break international law, such as targeting non-combatants, are not just illegal — they're immoral. As military personnel, we have a duty to uphold the law and refuse commands that betray that duty.' Just over 40% of respondents listed specific examples of orders they would feel compelled to disobey. The most common unprompted response, cited by 26% of those surveyed, was 'harming civilians,' while another 15% of respondents gave a variety of other examples of violations of duty and law, such as 'torturing prisoners' and 'harming US troops.' One wrote that 'an order would be obviously unlawful if it involved harming civilians, using torture, targeting people based on identity, or punishing others without legal process.' A tag cloud of responses to UMass-Amherst's Human Security Lab survey of active-duty service members about when they would disobey an order from a superior. UMass-Amherst's Human Security Lab, CC BY But the open-ended answers pointed to another struggle troops face: Some no longer trust US law as useful guidance. Writing in their own words about how they would know an illegal order when they saw it, more troops emphasized international law as a standard of illegality than emphasized US law. Others implied that acts that are illegal under international law might become legal in the US. 'Trump will issue illegal orders,' wrote one respondent. 'The new laws will allow it,' wrote another. A third wrote, 'We are not required to obey such laws.' Several emphasized the US political situation directly in their remarks, stating they'd disobey 'oppression or harming US civilians that clearly goes against the Constitution' or an order for 'use of the military to carry out deportations.' Still, the percentage of respondents who said they would disobey specific orders – such as torture – is lower than the percentage of respondents who recognized the responsibility to disobey in general. This is not surprising: Troops are trained to obey and face numerous social, psychological and institutional pressures to do so. By contrast, most troops receive relatively little training in the laws of war or human rights law. Political scientists have found, however, that having information on international law affects attitudes about the use of force among the general public. It can also affect decision-making by military personnel. This finding was also borne out in our survey. When we explicitly reminded troops that shooting civilians was a violation of international law, their willingness to disobey increased 8 percentage points. As my research with another scholar showed in 2020, even thinking about law and morality can make a difference in opposition to certain war crimes. The preliminary results from our survey led to a similar conclusion. Troops who answered questions on 'manifestly unlawful orders' before they were asked questions on specific scenarios were much more likely to say they would refuse those specific illegal orders. When asked if they would follow an order to drop a nuclear bomb on a civilian city, for example, 69% of troops who received that question first said they would obey the order. But when the respondents were asked to think about and comment on the duty to disobey unlawful orders before being asked if they would follow the order to bomb, the percentage who would obey the order dropped 13 points to 56%. While many troops said they might obey questionable orders, the large number who would not is remarkable. Military culture makes disobedience difficult: Soldiers can be court-martialed for obeying an unlawful order, or for disobeying a lawful one. Yet between one-third to half of the US troops we surveyed would be willing to disobey if ordered to shoot or starve civilians, torture prisoners or drop a nuclear bomb on a city. The service members described the methods they would use. Some would confront their superiors directly. Others imagined indirect methods: asking questions, creating diversions, going AWOL, 'becoming violently ill.' Criminologist Eva Whitehead researched actual cases of troop disobedience of illegal orders and found that when some troops disobey – even indirectly – others can more easily find the courage to do the same. Whitehead's research showed that those who refuse to follow illegal or immoral orders are most effective when they stand up for their actions openly. The initial results of our survey – coupled with a recent spike in calls to the GI Rights Hotline – suggest American men and women in uniform don't want to obey unlawful orders. Some are standing up loudly. Many are thinking ahead to what they might do if confronted with unlawful orders. And those we surveyed are looking for guidance from the Constitution and international law to determine where they may have to draw that line. Charli Carpenter is professor of political science, UMass Amherst and Geraldine Santoso is a PhD student in political science, UMass Amherst Zahra Marashi, an undergraduate research assistant at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, contributed to the research for this article. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
South China Morning Post
21 minutes ago
- South China Morning Post
Ukraine-Russia land swap, security guarantees ‘largely agreed', Trump says after Putin summit
land swap and security guarantees to end the Ukraine wa r have been 'negotiated' and 'agreed', US President Donald Trump has said following talks with his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin in Alaska. Advertisement In an interview with Fox News soon after the summit on Friday , Trump said the points 'were negotiated' and 'largely agreed on', but one 'big thing' of disagreement remained. 'I think [Putin] wants to see it done,' Trump said, refusing to say what the outstanding issue was. Trump also accused his predecessor, Joe Biden, of pushing China and Russia together, countries that he said should have been 'natural enemies.' 'He did something that was unthinkable. He drove China and Russia together. That's not good,' he said. Advertisement 'It's the one thing you didn't want to do because they're basically natural enemies. Russia has tremendous amounts of land. China has tremendous amounts of people, and China needs Russian land.
RTHK
an hour ago
- RTHK
No truce as Trump pins hope on Putin-Zelensky summit
No truce as Trump pins hope on Putin-Zelensky summit US President Donald Trump talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin after their post-summit press conference. Photo: Reuters US President Donald Trump and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin made no apparent breakthrough on Ukraine in a high-stakes summit, pointing to areas of agreement and rekindling a friendship but offering no news on a ceasefire. Trump told Fox News' Sean Hannity after the summit on Friday that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and Putin were going to set up a meeting to try to reach a ceasefire to end the war between Russia and Ukraine. "Now, it's really up to President Zelensky to get it done," he said. "And I would also say the European nations, they have to get involved a little bit. But it's up to President Zelensky... And if they'd like, I'll be at that next meeting." Trump said he and Putin negotiated on issues that included Nato, security measures and land, and advised Zelensky to get a deal done with Putin. He told Hannity he will not have to think of retaliatory tariffs on countries buying Russian oil right now but may have to "in two or three weeks". "Well, because of what happened today, I think I don't have to think about that," he said. "Now, I may have to think about it in two weeks or three weeks or something, but we don't have to think about that right now. I think, you know, the meeting went very well." Trump, fond of calling himself a master deal-maker, rolled out the red carpet for Putin at an Alaska air base in the first time the Russian leader was allowed on Western soil since he ordered the invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. After three hours of talks with top aides, Trump and Putin offered warm words but took no questions from reporters – highly unusual for the US president. "We had an extremely productive meeting, and many points were agreed to," Trump said. "There are just a very few that are left, some are not that significant, one is probably the most significant. But we have a very good chance of getting there. We didn't get there, but we have a very good chance of getting there." Putin also spoke in general terms of cooperation in a joint press appearance that lasted just 12 minutes. "We hope that the understanding we have reached will... pave the way for peace in Ukraine," he said. As Trump mused about a second meeting, Putin smiled and said in English: "Next time in Moscow." Putin warned Ukraine and European countries to "not create any obstacles" and not "make attempts to disrupt this emerging progress through provocation or behind-the-scenes intrigues". The former KGB agent quickly tried to flatter Trump, who has voiced admiration for the Russian leader in the past. Putin told Trump he agreed with him that the Ukraine war, which Putin ordered, would not have happened if Trump were president instead of Joe Biden. Trump for his part again complained of a "hoax" that Russia intervened to help him the 2016 election – a finding backed by US intelligence. But Trump said he would soon consult Zelensky as well as Nato leaders, who have voiced unease about the US leader's outreach to Putin. (AFP/Reuters)
