Trump urges Senate to cancel August recess, speed up confirmations
'Hopefully the very talented John Thune, fresh off our many victories over the past two weeks and, indeed, 6 months, will cancel August recess (and long weekends!), in order to get my incredible nominees confirmed. We need them badly!!' Trump posted on Truth Social.
The Senate is currently scheduled to confirm six of Trump's nominees on Monday, including advancing his pick to head the Drug Enforcement Administration.
Among the nominations is Emil Bove, a Justice Department official tapped for a federal appeals court seat, and Jeanine Pirro, a former Fox News host, nominated to serve as U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia.
Bove's nomination has drawn criticism from Senate Democrats after a whistleblower alleged he advised the Justice Department to defy court orders related to migrant deportations—claims he has denied.
Trump has also nominated candidates to restore a quorum to the National Labor Relations Board, which has remained inactive since January after he dismissed its lone Democratic member. — Agencies
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Arab News
5 hours ago
- Arab News
Trump tariffs would hit Hungary hard despite warm relations with MAGA-friendly Orbán
BUDAPEST: Hungary's populist prime minister has spent years building a close political relationship with US President Donald Trump and aligning himself with the MAGA movement. But despite Viktor Orbán's success in gaining favor with the culturally conservative and nationalist wing of Trump's administration, his country is poised to be among those hard hit by Trump's tariffs against the European Union. Trump earlier this month announced he would levy tariffs of 30 percent against Mexico and the EU beginning Aug. 1 — a move that could cause massive upheaval between the United States and the 27-member EU, of which Hungary is a member. As a small, export-oriented economy with major automobile, pharmaceutical and wine industries — some of the main categories of products Europe exports to the US — Hungary will be particularly vulnerable to Trump's tariffs. The duties 'would put the Hungarian economy in a very, very difficult situation, because then the entire possibility for Hungary to export to America would be essentially eliminated,' Péter Virovácz, chief analyst at ING Hungary, told The Associated Press. 'Not the best way to make money' Hungary's largest trading partners are other EU countries like Germany, Italy and Romania, as well as China, but many Hungarian companies export their goods across the Atlantic. Outgoing trade to the United States represents around 15 percent of all Hungarian exports to countries outside the EU. One such enterprise, a Budapest-based company specializing in Hungarian wine, said it will likely cease doing business in the US altogether if the 30 percent duty is levied on its products. 'If it's really going to be 30 percent, then there is no more shipment ... We might just call it a day at the end of the year,' said Gábor Bánfalvi, co-owner of Taste Hungary. Bánfalvi's company has been shipping around 10,000 bottles of premium Hungarian wine per year to the US for about half a decade. With a base in Washington D.C., it exports a range of red and white wines to clients in numerous US states including specialty wine shops and bars. Until now, 'it's been a thin profit margin, but it's been fine because we want Hungarian wine to be available' to US consumers, Bánfalvi said. 'Then came 2025,' he said. When Trump began imposing tariffs on EU exports earlier this year, the cost of Taste Hungary's shipments tripled, Bánfalvi said — price hikes he had to build into the sticker price of the wine. The imposition of 30 percent tariffs would make exporting 'unsustainable.' 'You just start to think, why are we doing this? Is it really worth it? It's just not the best way to make money,' he said. In total, the value of EU-US trade in goods and services in 2024 amounted to 1.7 trillion euros ($2 trillion.) Doubts that political ties could soften the blow Hungary's government, a vocal proponent of Trump's 'patriotic' foreign policy prioritizing national interests, has acknowledged that the tariffs would present a challenge. But, careful not to criticize the Trump administration, it has instead blamed the EU, a frequent target of Orbán's scorn, for failing to reach a comprehensive trade agreement with Washington. Confident that his right-wing populist policies would help win him favor with Trump's administration, Orbán said in an interview in April that while tariffs 'will be a disadvantage,' his government was negotiating 'other economic agreements and issues that will offset them.' But Péter Krekó, director of the Budapest-based Political Capital think tank, expressed doubt that political affinities could play a meaningful role in mitigating damage to Hungary's economy caused by Trump's trade policy. 'The unquestionably good bilateral relations simply cannot compensate for the trade conflicts between the EU and the US, and as a consequence, Hungary will suffer the tariffs the same way that the EU will,' Krekó said. 'Mutual nationalisms cannot be coordinated in a way that it is going to be a win-win situation.' Car manufacturing and pharmaceuticals Virovácz, the economist, pointed out that Hungary is home to numerous automobile factories for major automakers like Audi and Mercedes. The manufacturing of cars and motor vehicle parts represents an 'overwhelming majority' of the country's total exports, he said. Pharmaceuticals make up an even larger share of Hungarian exports to the United States — an industry on which Trump this month threatened to impose 200 percent tariffs. That 'will essentially kill European and thus Hungarian exports to America,' Virovácz said. 'It's impossible for tariffs to be levied on EU products but not on Hungarian ones,' he said. 'A theoretical option is that Trump could somehow compensate Hungary because he's on good terms with the Hungarian political leadership, but if that only starts happening now, it's way too late.' Krekó, the political analyst, said Trump's administration 'gives practically nothing for free. If Hungary ... cannot fulfill the interests of the US, then I think Hungary is not going to receive gifts.' 'Hungary just doesn't have the cards, to use Trump's terminology,' he added.
Saudi Gazette
12 hours ago
- Saudi Gazette
Australia to lift import ban on US beef after Trump tariffs tiff
SYDNEY — Australia will lift restrictions on the import of beef from the US, a trade barrier which had angered the Trump administration. American beef has effectively been banned from the country — which has some of the strictest biosecurity laws in the world — since 2003 after an outbreak of bovine spongiform encephalopathy, commonly known as mad cow disease. The White House cited the restrictions when explaining tariffs imposed on Australia in April, as part of US President Donald Trump's so-called Liberation Day scheme. The Australian government has denied the timing of the decision was related to the trade tiff, saying a decade-long department review found the US had improved beef safety measures. Canberra technically lifted the ban on US beef in 2019, but cattle from Mexico and Canada remained on the blacklist, and the integration of their supply chains meant this essentially barred beef from the States too. However, the US has recently introduced better cattle tracing protocols, allowing authorities to track where they were raised and respond more effectively in the event of a disease outbreak. Australia's Agriculture Minister Julie Collins said the department had undertaken a "rigorous science and risk-based assessment" and was now "satisfied" that the US is managing any biosecurity threats. "This decision has been purely based on science," she said in a statement. "The Albanese Labor government will never compromise on biosecurity." But the opposition has suggested the government may have done just that. "It looks as though [the ban has] been traded away to appease Donald Trump, and that's what we don't want," Nationals leader David Littleproud told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC). "I want to see the science." 'Not the act of a friend': Australia angry over Trump tariffs Cattle Australia chief executive Will Evans, however, told the ABC he was "comfortable" with the decision and that the industry had to "put faith" in the department. He added that US was an important trading partner with whom Australia needed to maintain a good relationship. The US is Australia's biggest beef export market, worth A$14bn (£6.8bn, $9.2bn) last year. Trump singled out the industry when imposing what he called "reciprocal" tariffs of at least 10% on all Australian exports. However, a report by Meat and Livestock Australia released in June found the beef tariff had not hurt trade, which had risen by about a third so far this year. — BBC
Arab News
13 hours ago
- Arab News
Trump's trip to Scotland highlights his complex relationship with his mother's homeland
LONDON: US President Donald Trump 's trip to Scotland this week will be a homecoming of sorts, but he's likely to get a mixed reception. Trump has had a long and at times rocky relationship with the country where his mother grew up in a humble house on a windswept isle. He will be met by both political leaders and protesters during the visit, which begins Friday and takes in his two Scottish golf resorts. It comes two months before King Charles III is due to welcome him on a formal state visit to the UK A daughter of Scotland Trump's mother was born Mary Anne MacLeod in 1912 near the town of Stornoway on the Isle of Lewis, one of the Outer Hebrides off Scotland's northwest coast. 'My mother was born in Scotland — Stornoway, which is serious Scotland,' Trump said in 2017. She was raised in a large Scots Gaelic-speaking family and left for New York in 1930, one of thousands of people from the islands to emigrate in the hardscrabble years after World War I. MacLeod married the president's father, Fred C. Trump, the son of German immigrants, in New York in 1936. She died in August 2000 at the age of 88. Trump still has relatives on Lewis, and visited in 2008, spending a few minutes in the plain gray house where his mother grew up. A long golf course battle Trump's ties and troubles in Scotland are intertwined with golf. He first proposed building a course on a wild and beautiful stretch of the North Sea coast north of Aberdeen in 2006. The Trump International Scotland development was backed by the Scottish government. But it was fiercely opposed by some local residents and conservationists, who said the stretch of coastal sand dunes was home to some of the country's rarest wildlife, including skylarks, kittiwakes, badgers and otters. Local fisherman Michael Forbes became an international cause célèbre after he refused the Trump Organization's offer of 350,000 pounds ($690,000 at the time) to sell his family's rundown farm in the center of the estate. Forbes still lives on his property, which Trump once called 'a slum and a pigsty.' 'If it weren't for my mother, would I have walked away from this site? I think probably I would have, yes,' Trump said in 2008 amid the planning battle over the course. 'Possibly, had my mother not been born in Scotland, I probably wouldn't have started it.' The golf course was eventually approved and opened in 2012. Some of the grander aspects of the planned development, including 500 houses and a 450-room hotel, have not been realized, and the course has never made a profit. A second 18-hole course at the resort is scheduled to open this summer. It's named the MacLeod Course in honor of Trump's mother. There has been less controversy about Trump's other Scottish golf site, the long-established Turnberry resort in southwest Scotland, which he bought in 2014. He has pushed for the British Open to be held at the course for the first time since 2009. Turnberry is one of 10 courses on the rotation to host the Open. But organizers say there are logistical issues about 'road, rail and accommodation infrastructure' that must be resolved before it can return. Protests and politicians Trump has had a rollercoaster relationship with Scottish and UK politicians. More than a decade ago, the Scottish government enlisted Trump as an unpaid business adviser with the GlobalScot network, a group of business leaders, entrepreneurs and executives with a connection to Scotland. It dumped him in 2015 after he called for Muslims to be banned from the US The remarks also prompted Robert Gordon University in Aberdeen to revoke an honorary doctorate in business administration it had awarded Trump in 2010. This week Trump will meet left-leaning Scottish First Minister John Swinney, an erstwhile Trump critic who endorsed Kamala Harris before last year's election — a move branded an 'insult' by a spokesperson for Trump's Scottish businesses. Swinney said it's 'in Scotland's interest' for him to meet the president. Some Scots disagree, and a major police operation is being mounted during the visit in anticipation of protests. The Stop Trump Scotland group has encouraged demonstrators to come to Aberdeen and 'show Trump exactly what we think of him in Scotland.' UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer is also expected to travel to Scotland for talks with Trump. The British leader has forged a warm relationship with Trump, who said this month 'I really like the prime minister a lot, even though he's a liberal.' They are likely to talk trade, as Starmer seeks to nail down an exemption for UK steel from Trump's tariffs. There is no word on whether Trump and Starmer — not a golfer — will play a round at one of the courses.
