EU's Costa to travel to Brazil to strengthen investment ties
European Council President Antonio Costa attends a press conference at the UK-EU summit at Lancaster House on May 19, 2025 in London, England. Carl Court/Pool via REUTERS/File Photo
BRUSSELS - Antonio Costa, head of the European Council that represents the 27 EU countries, will travel to Brazil from May 27-May 29 to strengthen partnerships and investment ties between the European Union and Brazil.
The European Council said on Friday that Costa would meet Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva during his trip and make a speech at an EU-Brazil investment forum.
The EU is Brazil's second-largest trading partner and Brazil's largest foreign investor, with more than 300 billion euros ($340.7 billion) worth of direct investment stocks.
"Brazil is not just a close friend, it is a strategic partner for the EU – a global player and a key ally in promoting democracy, multilateralism and shaping a more just and sustainable world," Costa said in a statement.
"In times when these values are challenged globally, it is even more crucial that countries like Brazil and the European Union stand together to uphold them," he added.
Costa's trip to Brazil also comes as the EU aims to ratify a long-delayed trade deal between the South American bloc Mercosur and the EU, which mainly covers farming matters. REUTERS
Join ST's Telegram channel and get the latest breaking news delivered to you.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Straits Times
37 minutes ago
- Straits Times
China-backed militia secures control of new rare earth mines in Myanmar
A satellite image shows an overview of West River rare earth mine, in Myanmar, May 6, 2025. Maxar Technologies/Handout via REUTERS BANGKOK - A Chinese-backed militia is protecting new rare earth mines in eastern Myanmar, according to four people familiar with the matter, as Beijing moves to secure control of the minerals it is wielding as a bargaining chip in its trade war with Washington. China has a near-monopoly over the processing of heavy rare earths into magnets that power critical goods like wind turbines, medical devices and electric vehicles. But Beijing is heavily reliant on Myanmar for the rare earth metals and oxides needed to produce them: the war-torn country was the source of nearly half those imports in the first four months of this year, Chinese customs data show. Beijing's access to fresh stockpiles of minerals like dysprosium and terbium has been throttled recently after a major mining belt in Myanmar's north was taken over by an armed group battling the Southeast Asian country's junta, which Beijing supports. Now, in the hillsides of Shan state in eastern Myanmar, Chinese miners are opening new deposits for extraction, according to two of the sources, both of whom work at one of the mines. At least 100 people are working day-to-night shifts excavating hillsides and extracting minerals using chemicals, the sources said. Two other residents of the area said they had witnessed trucks carrying material from the mines, between the towns of Mong Hsat and Mong Yun, toward the Chinese border some 200km away. Reuters identified some of the sites using imagery from commercial satellite providers Planet Labs and Maxar Technologies. Business records across Myanmar are poorly maintained and challenging to access, and Reuters could not independently identify the ownership of the mines. The mines operate under the protection of the United Wa State Army, according to four sources, two of whom were able to identify the uniforms of the militia members. The UWSA, which is among the biggest armed groups in Shan state, also controls one of the world's largest tin mines. It has long-standing commercial and military links with China, according to the U.S. Institute of Peace, a conflict resolution non-profit. Details of the militia's role and the export route of the rare earths are reported by Reuters for the first time. University of Manchester lecturer Patrick Meehan, who has closely studied Myanmar's rare earth industry and reviewed satellite imagery of the Shan mines, said the "mid-large size" sites appeared to be the first significant facilities in the country outside the Kachin region in the north. "There is a whole belt of rare earths that goes down through Kachin, through Shan, parts of Laos," he said. China's Ministry of Commerce, as well as the UWSA and the junta, did not respond to Reuters' questions. Access to rare earths is increasingly important to Beijing, which tightened restrictions on its exports of metals and magnets after U.S. President Donald Trump resumed his trade war with China this year. While China appears to have recently approved more exports and Trump has signalled progress in resolving the dispute, the move has upended global supply chains central to automakers, aerospace manufacturers and semiconductor companies. The price of terbium oxide has jumped by over 27% across the last six months, Shanghai Metals Market data show. Dysprosium oxide prices have fluctuated sharply, rising around 1% during the same period. CHINESE INFLUENCE A prominent circular clearing first appears in the forested hills of Shan state, some 30 km (18.6 miles) away from the Thai border, in April 2023, according to the satellite images reviewed by Reuters. By February 2025 - shortly after the Kachin mines suspended work - the site housed over a dozen leaching pools, which are ponds typically used to extract heavy rare earths, the images showed. Six km away, across the Kok river, another forest clearing was captured in satellite imagery from May 2024. Within a year, it had transformed into a facility with 20 leaching pools. Minerals analyst David Merriman, who reviewed two of the Maxar images for Reuters, said the infrastructure at the Shan mines, as well as observable erosion levels to the topography, indicated that the facilities "have been producing for a little bit already." At least one of the mines is run by a Chinese company using Chinese-speaking managers, according to the two mine workers and two members of the Shan Human Rights Foundation, an advocacy group that identified the existence of the operations in a May report using satellite imagery. An office at one of the two sites also had a company logo written in Chinese characters, said one of the workers, who spoke on condition of anonymity in order to discuss sensitive matters. The use of Chinese operators in the Shan mines and transportation of the output to China mirrors a similar system in Kachin, where entire hillsides stand scarred by leaching pools. Chinese mining firms can produce heavy rare earth oxides in low-cost and loosely regulated Myanmar seven times cheaper than in other regions with similar deposits, said Neha Mukherjee of London-based Benchmark Mineral Intelligence. "Margins are huge." Beijing tightly controls the technology that allows for the efficient extraction of heavy rare earths, and she said that it would be difficult to operate a facility in Myanmar without Chinese assistance. The satellite imagery suggest the Shan mines are smaller than their Kachin counterparts but they are likely to yield the same elements, according to Merriman, who serves as research director at consultancy Project Blue. "The Shan State deposits will have terbium and dysprosium in them, and they will be the main elements that (the miners) are targeting there," he said. STRATEGIC TOOL The UWSA oversees a remote statelet the size of Belgium and, according to U.S. prosecutors, has long prospered from the drug trade. It has a long-standing ceasefire with the junta but still maintains a force of between 30,000 and 35,000 personnel, equipped with modern weaponry mainly sourced from China, according to Ye Myo Hein, a senior fellow at the Southeast Asia Peace Institute. "The UWSA functions as a key instrument for China to maintain strategic leverage along the Myanmar-China border and exert influence over other ethnic armed groups," he said. Some of those fighters are also closely monitoring the mining area, said SHRF member Leng Harn. "People cannot freely go in and out of the area without ID cards issued by UWSA." Shan state has largely kept out of the protracted civil war, in which an assortment of armed groups are battling the junta. The fighting has also roiled the Kachin mining belt and pushed many Chinese operators to cease work. China has repeatedly said that it seeks stability in Myanmar, where it has significant investments. Beijing has intervened to halt fighting in some areas near its border. "The Wa have had now 35 years with no real conflict with the Myanmar military," said USIP's Myanmar country director Jason Towers. "Chinese companies and the Chinese government would see the Wa areas as being more stable than other parts of northern Burma." The bet on Shan's rare earths deposit could provide more leverage to China amid a global scramble for the critical minerals, said Benchmark's Mukherjee. "If there's so much disruption happening in Kachin, they would be looking for alternative sources," she said. "They want to keep the control of heavy rare earths in their hands. They use that as a strategic tool." REUTERS Join ST's Telegram channel and get the latest breaking news delivered to you.
AsiaOne
2 hours ago
- AsiaOne
Trump says willing to extend trade talks deadline, but says that won't be necessary, World News
WASHINGTON — US President Donald Trump said on Wednesday (June 11) he would be willing to extend a July 8 deadline for completing trade talks with countries before higher US tariffs take effect, but did not believe that would be necessary. Trump told reporters before a performance at the Kennedy Center that trade negotiations were continuing with some 15 countries, including South Korea, Japan and the European Union. "We're rocking in terms of deals," he said. "We're dealing with quite a few countries and they all want to make a deal with us." He said he did not believe a deadline extension would be "a necessity." Trump said the US would send out letters in coming weeks specifying the terms of trade deals to dozens of other countries, which they could then embrace or reject. "At a certain point, we're just going to send letters out... saying, 'This is the deal. You can take it, or you can leave it,'" Trump said. "So at a certain point we'll do that. We're not quite ready." US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told lawmakers earlier that the Trump administration could extend the July trade deal deadline — or "roll the date forward" for countries negotiating in good faith, in certain cases. A 90-day pause in Trump's broadest, "reciprocal" tariffs will end on July 8, with only one trade deal agreed with Britain and some 17 others at various stages of negotiation. "It is highly likely that those countries — or trading blocs as is the case with the EU — who are negotiating in good faith, we will roll the date forward to continue the good-faith negotiations," Bessent told the House Ways and Means Committee. "If someone is not negotiating, then we will not." Bessent's remarks marked the first time a Trump administration official has indicated some flexibility around the expiration date for the pause. Bessent reiterated the possibility of more negotiating time at a second hearing before the Senate Appropriations Committee on Wednesday, saying it was "my belief that countries that are negotiating in good faith could be rolled forward." He said the European Union had previously been slower to come forward with robust proposals, but was now showing "better faith," without providing specifics. Trump echoed that more upbeat view on Wednesday, saying, "They do want to negotiate." A deal struck on Tuesday in London with China to de-escalate that bilateral trade war is proceeding on a separate track and timeline, with an August 10 deadline set last month. The president has been the final decision-maker on his administration's tariff and trade policies, but Bessent's influence has increased in recent months and the Treasury chief has been viewed by many trading partners as a moderating voice. Trump announced the pause on April 9, a week after unveiling "Liberation Day" tariffs against nearly all US trading partners that proved to be so unexpectedly large and sweeping that it sent global financial markets into near panic. The S&P 500 Index plunged more than 12 per cent in four days for its heftiest run of losses since the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic in early 2020. Investors were so rattled they bailed out of safe-haven US Treasury securities, sending bond yields rocketing higher. The dollar sank. Markets started their recovery on April 9 when Trump unexpectedly announced the pause. The recovery continued in early May when the Trump team agreed to dial back the triple-digit tariff rates it had imposed on goods from China. Those events have given rise to what some on Wall Street have parodied as the "TACO" trade — an acronym for Trump Always Chickens Out. "The only time the market has reacted positively is when the administration is in retreat from key policy areas," Democratic Representative Don Beyer of Virginia told Bessent before pressing him on what to expect when the July deadline expires. "As I have said repeatedly there are 18 important trading partners. We are working toward deals with those," Bessent said before going on to signal a willingness to offer extensions to those negotiating in good faith. [[nid:718987]]
Straits Times
2 hours ago
- Straits Times
US envoy plans to meet Iran's foreign minister on June 15, US official says
US Special Envoy Steve Witkoff will be making the visit to Oman, where discussions about Iran's response to an American proposal for a nuclear deal will be discussed. PHOTO: REUTERS US envoy plans to meet Iran's foreign minister on June 15, US official says WASHINGTON - US Special Envoy Steve Witkoff plans to meet Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi in Oman on June 15 and discuss Iran's response to a recent American proposal for a nuclear deal, a US official said late on June 11. Iran said on June 9 it will soon hand a counterproposal for a nuclear deal to the US in response to a US offer that Tehran deems "unacceptable," while US President Donald Trump said talks would continue. Mr Trump told a podcast on June 9 he was less confident that Iran will agree to stop uranium enrichment in a nuclear deal with Washington. He has been seeking a new nuclear deal to place limits on Iran's disputed uranium enrichment activities and has threatened the Islamic Republic with bombing if no agreement is reached. Iran has long said it has no plans to develop nuclear weapons and is only interested in atomic power generation and other peaceful projects. During his first White House term, Mr Trump withdrew the US from a 2015 deal between Iran and world powers that placed limits on Tehran's uranium enrichment drive in exchange for relief from international sanctions. Uneasy relations between Iran and the US go back decades. Tehran says Washington has interfered in its affairs, citing events ranging from a 1953 coup against a prime minister to the 2020 killing of its military commander in a US drone strike. Washington cites Iran's backing of militant groups in the Middle East including Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Houthis in Yemen to say that Iran poses a threat to US ally Israel and Washington's interests in the region. The militant groups describe themselves as the "Axis of Resistance" to Israeli and US influence in the Middle East. Mr Trump said on June 11 that US personnel were being moved out of the Middle East because "it could be a dangerous place." The decision by the US to evacuate some personnel comes at a volatile moment in the region. Mr Trump's efforts to reach a nuclear deal with Iran appear to be deadlocked and US intelligence indicates that Israel has been making preparations for a strike against Iran's nuclear facilities. REUTERS Join ST's Telegram channel and get the latest breaking news delivered to you.
