Latest news with #AndreaShalal
Yahoo
16-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
World Bank says Syria eligible for new loans as arrears cleared
By Andrea Shalal WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The World Bank on Friday said it had cleared Syria's $15.5 million in outstanding debt after receiving payments from Saudi Arabia and Qatar, making the country eligible to apply for millions of dollars in grants for reconstruction and budget support. Saudi Arabia and Qatar said in April that they would cover Syria's arrears with the multilateral development bank, which will make it eligible for new grant programs, subject to the bank's operational policies. The step follows a surprise announcement by U.S. President Donald Trump that he would order the lifting of all sanctions on Syria, which is struggling to rebuild after 13 years of civil war. The United States is likely to begin providing some sanctions relief in the coming weeks. As of May 12, Syria has no outstanding balances with the International Development Association, the bank's fund for the poorest countries, the World Bank said. "We are pleased that the clearance of Syria's arrears will allow the World Bank Group to reengage with the country and address the development needs of the Syrian people," the bank said in a statement. "After years of conflict, Syria is on a path to recovery and development." The bank said it would work with other countries to help mobilize public and private financing for programs that can help the Syrian people build better lives, stabilizing the country and the region. It said its first project with Syria would focus on access to electricity, which would enable economic progress and aid the delivery of essential services, from health and education to water and livelihoods. "The proposed project is the first step in a planned increase in World Bank Group support designed to confront Syria's urgent needs and invest in long-term development," the bank said.
Zawya
16-05-2025
- Business
- Zawya
World Bank says Syria arrears cleared, making country eligible for new loans
The World Bank on Friday said it had cleared Syria's $15.5 million in outstanding debt after receiving payments from Saudi Arabia and Qatar, making the country eligible to apply for millions of dollars in grants for reconstruction and budget support. Saudi Arabia and Qatar announced in April that they would cover Syria's arrears with the multilateral development bank, which will make it eligible for new grant programs, subject to the bank's operational policies. As of May 12, Syria has no outstanding balances with the International Development Association, the bank's fund for the poorest countries, the World Bank said. (Reporting by Andrea Shalal; editing by Susan Heavey)
Yahoo
13-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Analysis-Trump's tariff blitz yields deals but misses global trade fix
By Andrea Shalal WASHINGTON (Reuters) -Donald Trump's tariff blitz is yielding some initial deals, including a 90-day pause in sky-high U.S. and Chinese duties and a limited trade pact with Britain, but the U.S. president is far from rebalancing global commerce flows, trade experts and analysts said. The weekend U.S.-China tariff truce unleashed a surge in global stock prices and may stave off damage from price spikes and critical minerals shortages until August, but does nothing to address longstanding U.S. complaints about China's state-dominated, export-driven economic model. Instead, it sets a tight new deadline for complex negotiations with Beijing that will take place alongside talks with dozens of other countries facing an earlier, July 8 deadline to avoid higher tariffs - stretching the Trump administration's limited negotiating resources. Some other early Trump trade deals are expected in the coming weeks, with Switzerland, India and Japan likely to lead the pack. But like the British deal, these are expected to be agreements in principle, with more work to finalize them, and durably shifting supply chains and trade flows can take years to accomplish. "The jury's still out, and we won't be able for some time to look back and say this was a successful strategy," said Greta Peisch, a former senior trade official under President Joe Biden who is now a partner in the Wiley Rein law firm. "This is round one." Kelly Ann Shaw, a senior U.S. official during Trump's first term who is now with the Akin Gump law firm, said Trump deserved credit for bringing China, the UK and other countries to the negotiating table after years of concerns about U.S. trade deficits. "Whether you agree or disagree with the tactic, at least Trump is thinking outside the box," Shaw said. "They're negotiating some of the deals at record speed, and that is not something that has ever happened before." WAITING FOR TALKS Diplomats with the European Union, a top U.S. trade partner that has drawn Trump's ire, are still waiting for in-depth negotiations to begin. And it's unclear how quickly a substantive agreement with China could be reached. U.S. and Chinese negotiators issued a rare joint statement after two days of meetings in Switzerland, but did not set dates or a venue to meet again. The negotiations will also include measures to curb trafficking of fentanyl, the source of Trump's 20% duties on Chinese goods. Democrats and Republicans alike have criticized China for producing too much steel, too many solar panels and other goods and then dumping them in Western markets, but those policies haven't changed despite repeated entreaties. China had long proven resistant to changing its economy and allowing more U.S. companies to compete for orders, Peisch said. "You're up against China's whole theory of its economic policy and how it is operating in the world," she said. Robert Kuttner, co-founder of liberal magazine The American Prospect, said Beijing was not about to jettison its mercantilist system, which benefits from state-led capitalism to create or capture technology and product advantages, "and certainly not in 90 days." Even if agreements were eventually reached in which Beijing pledged to reform its intellectual property laws or lower barriers to entry by U.S. firms, assessing compliance would be extremely difficult, Peisch added. Beijing's failure to fulfill its commitments to vastly increase purchases of U.S. manufactured and farm goods, energy and services in Trump's first-term "Phase 1" agreement also remains a sore point, said Ryan Majerus, a trade lawyer who worked under both the Trump and Biden administrations and is now a partner at King & Spalding. "This is a positive development, but the devil is in the details on where the talks go from here," Majerus said. "We have a lot of longstanding trade concerns with China where the administration will want to see meaningful commitments." UNCERTAINTY REIGNS Miriam Sapiro, a nonresident fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and former acting USTR chief under then-President Barack Obama, said long-term solutions were needed to resolve deep U.S.-China trade differences, but it would be nearly "nearly impossible" to address non-tariff barriers on the compressed 90-day time line. "What we really need is more consistency. U.S. companies need to be able to plan instead of scramble to reroute supply chains, which can be difficult to do quickly. And American families are quite spooked by the impact these and other tariffs are going to have on their pocketbook," she said. Matt Priest, President and CEO of the Footwear Distributors and Retailers of America, agreed the deal marked a good step toward easing tensions, but said high tariffs remained in place on some Chinese imports, including some shoes facing duties approaching 90%. "We're not across the finish line yet." Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
Ya Libnan
12-05-2025
- Business
- Ya Libnan
Global stocks rally after US, China pause tariff war
Photo: Dow leaps over 1100 points on Monday By Andrea Shalal , Emma Farge , Olivia Le Poidevin and Lisa Baertlein WASHINGTON – Global stock markets surged on Monday after the U.S. and China agreed to slash steep tariffs for at least 90 days, tapping the brakes on a trade war between the world's two biggest economies that had fed fears of a global recession. But the temporary pause did little to address the underlying schisms that led to the dispute, including the U.S. trade deficit with China and U.S. President Donald Trump 's demand for more action from Beijing to combat the U.S. fentanyl crisis. The Reuters Tariff Watch newsletter is your daily guide to the latest global trade and tariff news. Sign up here. While investors cheered the move, businesses were seeking more clarity. Under the temporary truce, the U.S. will cut extra tariffs it imposed on Chinese imports last month from 145% to 30% for the next three months, the two sides said, while Chinese duties on U.S. imports will fall to 10% from 125%. Financial markets cheered the reprieve in a conflict that had brought nearly $600 billion in two-way trade to a standstill, disrupting supply chains and triggering layoffs. Wall Street stocks finished sharply higher, with the S&P 500 closing at its highest level since March 3 and the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite recording its highest close since February 28. The dollar rose, while safe-haven gold prices fell as the news eased – but did not erase – concerns that Trump's trade war could crater the global economy. Trump and his allies hailed the agreement as proof his aggressive tariff strategy was paying dividends, after the U.S. struck preliminary pacts with Britain and now China. It was not yet clear whether the deep trade imbalances that have hollowed out U.S. manufacturing will be addressed. Even U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, who hammered out Monday's agreement with Chinese counterparts in weekend talks in Geneva, has acknowledged it will take years to reset Washington's trade relationship with Beijing. China's state media said Beijing held firm to its principles while opening a path to more cooperation with the U.S., breaking from its tone of defiance a week earlier. 'Economic and trade cooperation between China and the U.S. has a deep foundation, great potential and broad space,' government-run broadcaster CCTV said in a commentary. Trump campaigned in the 2024 election on addressing unfair trade practices and resurrecting U.S. manufacturing capacity. He won votes from blue-collar workers in states like Michigan and Pennsylvania that have lost manufacturing jobs for decades. But Trump's tariff policy also drew fire from a range of groups. Small businesses and truckers were girding for major repercussions from the China tariffs, while American consumers worried about rising costs. Scott Kennedy, a China business and economics expert at the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies, said the administration needed to pull back or risk severe damage to the U.S. economy. 'This is 100% a retreat by the U.S., not a Chinese cave,' Kennedy said. 'The U.S. was the one that launched the trade war and escalated it. The Chinese retaliated and they've only withdrawn their retaliatory measures.' But Kelly Ann Shaw, an attorney with Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld who worked as a key trade adviser during Trump's 2017-2021 term, said Trump was simply fulfilling his campaign promises. 'The president is doing what he said he would. This is absolutely about resolving disparities in the trading relationship,' she said. She acknowledged that 90 days was not much time to address major U.S. concerns over non-tariff barriers such as subsidies for capital and labor. 'They've got their work cut out for them.' ON-AND-OFF APPROACH Seeking to reduce the U.S. trade deficit, Trump targeted countries worldwide with an array of tariffs and especially aggressive levies on China, which he blames for exacerbating the U.S. fentanyl crisis. Markets shuddered in response, and last month Trump quickly paused most of his 'reciprocal' tariffs on dozens of countries, except China. Trump's on-and-off approach has rattled investors and weakened his approval ratings among U.S. voters worried tariffs will lift prices on everything from toys to cars. The remaining U.S. tariffs on Chinese imports are still stacked atop prior duties. Even before Trump took office in January, China was saddled with 25% U.S. tariffs he had imposed on many industrial goods during his first term, with lower rates on some consumer goods. The agreement leaves these duties unchanged, along with tariffs of 100% on electric vehicles and 50% on solar products imposed by former Democratic President Joe Biden. Retailers may take a wait-and-see approach to 30% tariffs that would drive up prices for shoppers, said Gene Seroka, executive director of the Port of Los Angeles, the nation's busiest and the No. 1 ocean entry point for imports from China. Monday's accord also does not include the 'de minimis' exemptions for low-value e-commerce shipments from China and Hong Kong, which the Trump administration terminated on May 2. However, the tariffs were cut by more than many analysts had anticipated. Last week, Trump floated a much higher rate of 80%. Shipping industry representatives said the temporary cuts may prompt many companies to restart loadings of goods while tariffs remain low, but uncertainty around any eventual deal may leave businesses wary of ramping up orders dramatically. Mike Abt, co-president of family-owned Abt Electronics in Chicago, said the company is working down inventories squirreled away before tariffs went live. 'Everyone wants consistency, and that's been the hard part of this whole thing,' he said. 'It's so fluid. It's like a game of Risk, you really don't know what the right answer is.' Within the administration, the truce marked a victory for Bessent, a former hedge fund executive who had advocated for the earlier 90-day pause in the global reciprocal tariffs to allow time for negotiation. 'The consensus from both delegations this weekend is neither side wants a decoupling,' Bessent said after the talks in Geneva. 'We want more balanced trade, and I think that both sides are committed to achieving that.' Bessent told U.S. media that the next meeting had not yet been set but that the sides were ready to continue negotiating. (Reuters)
Yahoo
08-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Trump says we know China tariffs will come down from 145 percent
By Andrea Shalal and Jeff Mason WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump said on Thursday he expects there to be substantive negotiations between the United States and China on trade this weekend and said tariffs couldn't get higher than 145 percent. "You can't get any higher. It's at 145, so we know it's coming down," Trump said. "I think it's a very friendly meeting. They look forward to doing it in an elegant way." U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and chief trade negotiator Jamieson Greer will meet China's economic tsar He Lifeng in Switzerland this weekend for talks that could be the first step toward resolving a trade war disrupting the global economy. Trump said he believed China very much wanted to make a deal. He said he would like to see China open up its economy. "I think we're going to have a good weekend with China. I think they have a lot to gain. I do think they have far more to gain than we do, in a sense," Trump said. Asked if he would speak to Chinese President Xi Jinping after the talks, Trump said he might. "I might, yeah, sure," Trump said. Trump said China had a "tremendous trade surplus" with the United States and that was unacceptable. "I would like to see China open," he said. Trump set an optimistic tone going into the weekend talks. "I think it's going to be substantiative," he said. "China wants to do something, and look, they have to at this point."
