
Trump says Iran willing to talk
As Iran and Israel continue their attacks, US President Donald Trump said that Tehran had signalled it is prepared to talk, in comments on Monday.
The Iranians would 'like to talk, but they should have done that before,' Trump said. 'They have to make a deal, and it's painful for both parties,' he said on the sidelines of the G7 summit in Canada when asked whether there were any signs of a possible de-escalation from Iran.
'But I'd say Iran is not winning this war, and they should talk, and they should talk immediately, before it's too late,' the US president said.
Trump evaded a question about what could lead the US to intervene militarily in the conflict. 'I don't want to talk about that,' he said. (DPA)

Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles


Al Jazeera
26 minutes ago
- Al Jazeera
Trump leaves G7 summit early warning Tehran to evacuate
NewsFeed Trump leaves G7 summit early warning Tehran to evacuate US President Donald Trump left the G7 summit in Canada early, warning people in Tehran they should evacuate immediately. His departure fuelled speculation about US involvement in the Israel-Iran war. Al Jazeera's Phil Lavelle unpacks what may lie ahead.


Qatar Tribune
8 hours ago
- Qatar Tribune
Donald Trump throws curveball at Japan tea giant's United States expansion swing
Agencies Top Japanese tea brand Ito En's latest push to win over health-conscious U.S. customers with its traditional unsweetened brew has hit a new road bump: President Donald Trump's trade tariffs. The company, which splashed out on a tie-up with Major League Baseball star Shohei Ohtani and launched a less bitter tea to capture a bigger slice of the lucrative growth market, is now debating whether to hike prices or move some production across the Pacific, executives said in interviews with Reuters. The dilemmas facing Ito En can be found across Japan, the biggest foreign investor in the United States, as Tokyo's trade negotiators returned to Washington this weekend to try and strike a deal to cushion the blow to its fragile economy. Makoto Ogi, Ito En's general manager of international business development, told Reuters the company may raise prices of its products in the U.S. to compensate for Trump's 24% levy on Japanese goods set to come into force next month. The problem is their retailers and distributors may resist for fear of losing sales. 'We may not be able to ask them to raise our prices despite what Trump is saying,' he said. The last time Ito En raised prices in the U.S. - by approximately 10% in 2022 - sales dropped by around 5%. The company said the decline reflected the price hike as well as factors such as COVID-19 that affected market conditions. The company is also considering making tea bags in the United States, and bottling drinks there rather than in Japan, Taiwan and Thailand as it does presently, Ogi and other executives explained during interviews in Tokyo. These details of the firm's potential plans to counter tariffs have not been previously reported. The executives did not disclose the costs of such moves. In its latest results released this month, Ito En reported its profit shrank by 8.2% in the year to April, but forecast an 11% jump this year. It set a modest 3.7% profit growth target for its U.S. tea business, versus 20.7% growth achieved last year, an outlook partly related to tariffs, a company spokesperson said. Its shares rose to nearly a four-month high in the wake of the results, with its president later telling investors the forecasts were 'conservative'. Many Japanese firms have set up war rooms to chalk out plans to restructure supply chains or cut costs to offset tariffs and keep their U.S. growth plans on track, said Mizuho Bank analyst Asuka Tatebayashi. A survey of 3,000 Japanese companies by export promotion organization JETRO late last year before Trump's tariffs found the level of interest in U.S. markets at the highest in nearly a decade, with food and beverage companies like Ito En the most enthusiastic. 'When you talk to companies in Japan, the U.S. comes first,' said Tatebayashi, adding that they face shrinking domestic demand and are generally cautious about expanding into riskier emerging markets. For Ito En, the U.S. has long been a market it is eager to years ago, Joshua Walker, the newly-appointed head of U.S. non-profit Japan Society, hosted Ito En's North America head Yosuke Honjo in his New York office. Honjo gestured to the green-colored bottles of their flagship Oi Ocha brand lining the shelves and said he wanted them to spread around the world like Coca-Cola's red bottle. 'It was refreshing. Japanese companies would not normally have ambition of that type of grandeur,' said Walker, recounting the executive's previously unreported remarks. Honjo, via a company spokesperson, confirmed the remarks. Founded in the 1960s by Honjo's father and uncle, Ito En has grown to dominate Japan's tea market, using around a quarter of the country's total crude tea production. Since expanding into the U.S. in 2001, it has dabbled in selling sweet and flavored tea varieties familiar to Americans. But more recently it has focused on the unsweetened tea popular in its home market, hoping to tap health-conscious customers and a boom in Japanese food and cultural exports. Honjo said growth has also been aided by a sharp rise in Asian Americans, estimated at nearly 25 million in 2023, or around 7% of the U.S. population, according to the Pew Research Center. Japan's exports of green tea surged 24.6% to 36.4 billion yen last year, with nearly half destined for the United States, official data showed. Some equity analysts like Jiang Zhu of Tokyo-based rating agency R&I have highlighted the high marketing cost of Ito En's international push at a time it faces tough competition at home from tea brands such as Coca-Cola's Ayataka. The company said it has around a 2% share of the U.S. market for tea beverages, ranking eighth largest, with Unilever's Pure Leaf leading the sector. But it has a long way to catch up with the 3.9 billion gallons of Coca-Cola's trademark Coke drinks sold in the U.S. last year, at only 3.1 million gallons by comparison, according to research firm Beverage Marketing Corporation. 'Kikkoman's soy sauce is probably in every American household now, but it took about 50 years for it to become a part of the culture,' said Akihiro Murase, Ito En's public relations manager, referencing the Japanese food manufacturer as a template for success. 'We are not there yet but we would like to make unsweetened green tea a part of the food culture,' he said.


Qatar Tribune
8 hours ago
- Qatar Tribune
Innovation takes a backseat at small firms as tariffs become a full-time preoccupation
Agencies Toy robots that teach children to code. Sneakers made in America. Mold-resistant kitchen gadgets. The three items are among new products that have gotten stuck in the pipeline due to President Donald Trump's unpredictable trade policies, according to the brand founders behind the stalled items. They say that instead of fostering U.S. innovation, Trump's tariffs are stifling it with extra costs and unexpected work. At Learning Resources in Vernon Hills, Illinois, Made Plus in Annapolis, Maryland, and Dorai Home in Salt Lake City, research and development have taken a backseat to recalculating budgets, negotiating with vendors and tracking shipments in the shifting tariff environment. 'If we don't have enough cash to cover just the restocks of the things that we know we need, do we want to take a risk on this new thing when we don't know how well it will sell yet?' Dorai Home founder Kelsey O'Callaghan said. O'Callaghan started the eco-friendly home goods company with a stone bath mat and now offers about 50 kitchen and bathroom accessories, which are made in China with a non-toxic material that dries quickly. New launches are critical to increasing sales and attracting customers, she said. As Trump increased the tariff on Chinese goods to 20% and as high as 145% before reducing the import tax rate to 30% for 90 days, Dorai Home postponed introducing new merchandise. O'Callaghan said she had to lay off the CEO as well as the head of product development, who helped the company jump on new trends. 'I haven't really put the time or the emphasis on (innovation) because I'm covering too many other people's roles,' she said. The company paused shipments from China in early April but resumed some on a staggered basis after the president's rate reduction. On Wednesday, Trump touted progress in U.S.-China trade talks. With details still sketchy and a deal not finalized, entrepreneurs interviewed by The Associated Press said they viewed the tariffs war as an ongoing threat. The potential stunting of innovation follows an economic slowdown during the coronavirus pandemic, when companies also had to put projects on hold. Some experts think the on-again-off again tariffs may have more enduring consequences because they rewire markets and upend business strategies. 'When executive attention shifts from innovation to regulatory compliance, the innovation pipeline suffers. Companies end up optimizing for the political landscape rather than technological advancement,' economists J. Bradford Jensen, a nonresident senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, and Scott J. Wallsten, president of the Technology Policy Institute think tank, wrote in an April blog post. Trump has argued that curtailing foreign imports with tariffs would help revive the nation's diminished manufacturing base. Analysts and various trade groups have warned that fractured trade ties and supply chains may depress R&D activity of U.S. tech and health care companies that rely on international partnerships or foreign suppliers. Small companies, which often drive the innovations that create jobs and economic growth, already are under strain. With fewer people on staff and tighter budgets compared to large corporations, entrepreneurs say they are spending more time on cutting costs, suspending or arranging orders, and deciding how much of their tariff-related costs to charge customers. That means they're spending less time thinking of their next big ideas. Schylling Inc., a Massachusetts company that produces modern versions of Lava lamps, Sea-Monkeys, My Little Pony and other nostalgic toys, has its products made in China. As part of its strategy to account for tariffs, the company put a group of employees on temporary unpaid leave last month to reduce expenses. Beth Muehlenkamp, who was marketing director at the company, was one of them, but now she and several others who were furloughed, were permanently laid off early this month. She noted that she and other staff members typically would have been planning products for the final months of 2026. But Schylling isn't focusing on designing new products given the unstable trade outlook. 'It's really hard to focus on innovation and creativity when you're consumed with this day-to-day of how we're just going to balance the books and deal with the changing rates,' Muehlenkamp said. Even some companies that do their manufacturing in the U.S. are scaling back investments in new products. Made Plus, a Maryland company that makes athletic shoes at a small factory in the state capital, put a planned golf line on hold because two key components — a foam insole and the tread for the bottom of the shoe — currently are made in China, founder Alan Guyan said. The company customizes its shoes on demand and charges $145 to $200 a pair. The footwear is made from recycled plastic bottles with advanced knitting, 3D printing and computerized stitching techniques. It's looking into getting components from Vietnam instead of new technology is essential to restoring manufacturing capability in the U.S. and competing with Asia, Guyan said. But given ongoing trade frictions, he said he does not want to invest time or money evaluating the latest embroidery and knitting machines, which come from Germany, Italy, China and the U.S. 'We're just battening down the hatches a little bit and just hoping that there's enough influence in the community of footwear that it will somewhat change and get resolved and we can move forward,' he said of the tariff roller coaster. In contrast, many big companies are forging on. Google parent Alphabet confirmed late last month that it still planned to spend $75 billion on capital expenditures this year, with most of the money going toward artificial intelligence Lapinsky, a managing director at consulting firm AlixPartners, has advised her clients to limit tariff discussions to a small group of executives and to keep their product creation cycles in motion. Businesses have an even greater imperative to come up with attention-grabbing innovations when consumers may be reluctant to open their wallets, she said. Yet smaller companies may struggle to wall off tariff discussions from the rest of the Resources CEO Rick Woldenberg said that roughly 25% to 30% of the 350 employees at the educational toy company's headquarters, including product developers, are working at least part-time on tariff-related tasks. The company usually develops 250 different products a year and expects to get half that many off the drawing board for 2026, Woldenberg said.