Latest news with #US-Canada
New York Post
3 days ago
- Politics
- New York Post
Leaders of Canada's ‘Freedom Convoy' facing up to eight years in prison: ‘political vengeance'
The leaders of Canada's 'Freedom Convoy' are facing up to eight years in prison, an 'abusive' sentencing recommendation critics are ripping as 'political vengeance.' Tamara Lich and Chris Barber sat in an Ottawa courtroom for their sentencing hearings this week after being found guilty in April of mischief for organizing the trucker protest against then Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's ultra-strict vaccine mandate. 4 At the height of the protest, thousands of trucks joined in to push back against COVID mandates. REUTERS The protest paralyzed the Great White North's capital for three weeks in 2022. The Crown is seeking seven years for Lich, 51, of Alberta, and eight for Barber, of Saskatchewan — who was also found guilty of counseling others to disobey a court order. 'It seems like a considerable overreach,' Lich told The Post Friday, during a stop on her three-day drive back to Alberta. 'They're trying to deter others, I believe, from ever protesting something like this again.' Prosecutors are also pushing to seize Barber's truck, 'Big Red,' which was used in the protest — through a forfeiture order they filed three years after the fact. 4 Prosecutors want to seize Barber's truck. Chris Barber "Big Red" official /Facebook 'I've owned this truck for 21 years,' said Barber, 50, who runs a family trucking business and co-owns 'Big Red' with his son. 'This is how I make a living. And the Crown wants to remove that from me and destroy it, which is absolutely disheartening to see that they will go to such a level of vileness.' 'It's just this vindictive vendetta of pettiness,' Lich added. 4 Lich was one of the organizers of the 'Freedom Convoy.' REUTERS Barber's lawyer slammed the Crown's sentencing recommendation as 'excessive, abusive and unconstitutional.' Both Lich and Barber have been under bail conditions for the past three and a half years. 'This is political vengeance, not actual justice, and it's why trust in our institutions is dwindling,' fumed Conservative Party Deputy Leader Melissa Lantsman. 4 The protest lasted close to a month during the winter of 2022. Getty Images The convoy started in revolt of Trudeau's vaccine mandate for US-Canada cross-border truckers — but quickly grew into a mass demonstration against the government's excessive COVID-19 restrictions. 'The Freedom convoy is peacefully protesting the harsh policies of far-left lunatic Justin Trudeau who has destroyed Canada with insane COVID mandates,' President Trump said at the time. Lich and Barber are set to be sentenced on Oct. 7, with their lawyers pushing for absolute discharges, which would absolve them of any criminal record.
Yahoo
4 days ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Trump signals stalled US-Canada trade talks as tariff deadline looms
-- As the clock ticks toward a critical August 1 deadline, U.S.-Canada trade negotiations show few signs of progress, with officials on both sides signaling a hardening of positions. U.S. President Donald Trump said Friday that talks with Ottawa have been largely unsuccessful, raising the possibility that tariffs may be the administration's primary course of action. 'We will have most of our deals finished, if not all. We haven't really had a lot of luck with Canada,' Trump told reporters. 'I think Canada could be one where they just pay tariffs. It's not really a negotiation.' Washington's immediate focus has turned toward the European Union, while Canada remains on the periphery of the White House trade agenda. 'We're working very diligently with Europe, the EU, which covers a lot of territory... That's the big one right now... We don't have a deal with Canada, we haven't been focused on it,' Trump added. Without a new trade pact in place, existing tariffs on certain Canadian exports are scheduled to rise to 35% from 25%, particularly on non-CUSMA goods. Canadian Minister of Intergovernmental Affairs Dominic LeBlanc concluded talks in Washington this week, meeting briefly with U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick. 'We've made progress, but we have a lot of work in front of us,' LeBlanc said following the meetings. Prime Minister Mark Carney has tempered expectations for any breakthrough, reiterating the government's commitment to national interest over expediency. "The Government of Canada will not accept a bad deal,' Carney stated, adding that Ottawa would proceed only 'in the best interest of Canadians.' Analysts from BofA Securities have cited tariff exemptions for CUSMA goods as leaving Canada and Mexico as the best-positioned countries currently subject to U.S. levies. The exemptions afford Canada some leeway, aligning with Trump's comments that the government may potentially foot the tariff bill, all in hopes of a better deal. Related articles Trump signals stalled US-Canada trade talks as tariff deadline looms These Under-the-Radar Stocks Offer Better Risk-Reward Ratio Than Nvidia Risks Rising? Smart Money Dodged 46%+ Drawdowns on These High-Flying Names Error al recuperar los datos Inicia sesión para acceder a tu cartera de valores Error al recuperar los datos Error al recuperar los datos Error al recuperar los datos Error al recuperar los datos
Telegraph
5 days ago
- Business
- Telegraph
Europe faces an economic war on two fronts
China's charm offensive in Europe did not last long. Xi Jinping has abandoned all pretence of a combined Sino-European front to defend world trade against Donald Trump. It would be more accurate to say that he has joined the kill, sharpening his tools of coercion and activating China's rare-earth weapon against Europe just as aggressively as he has against his American nemesis. 'It was never that charming in the first place,' said Andrew Small, from the German Marshall Fund in Berlin. 'They were slightly more civil for a bit, but now almost everybody in Europe recognises that there isn't going to be any rapprochement. China has made that absolutely clear,' he said. Mr Small said China has seized on the transatlantic rift to hit Europe while it is down, much as it did to Canada at the low point of US-Canada relations. 'Beijing treats this simply as a moment of vulnerability to exploit,' he said. The slimmed down EU-China summit this week marks a 50-year nadir in bilateral relations, a charade of wooden smiles and gritted teeth. 'We have not always seen eye to eye,' was the warmest that Antonio Costa, the European council president, could come up with. Europe now finds itself in an economic war on two fronts at once. The Trump ordeal is the lesser of the two. American tariffs on EU goods look likely to settle at 15pc, with a few carve-outs but also prohibitive tariffs on steel, aluminium, and (later) pharma. Such a level is not as harmless as euphoric markets seem to imply. Citigroup's Giada Giani said the eurozone's growth spurt earlier this year was an illusion of 'tariff frontloading'. She expects zero growth for the next three quarters. It would not take much to push Europe into outright recession. But the much greater long-term danger comes from the massive and systemic dumping of Chinese excess capacity on European markets. China's trade surplus with the EU hit €305bn (£265bn) last year. The monthly data shows that it is on an exploding trajectory this year. Europe is suffering the brunt of the China shock 2.0. The first China shock in the 1990s and early 2000s flooded the world with cheap goods and convulsed the global economy. It led to deflation, ultra-low interest rates, and debt bubbles. It rendered finance too proud and caused the worst inequality in a century. Free capital flows and a globalised workforce allowed the owners of capital to exploit labour arbitrage, playing off Chinese wages against wages in the West. The politics were, and still are, toxic. Goldman Sachs says the China shock 1.0 peaked at 0.6pc of global GDP in 2008. That was enough to destabilise our democracies. It is heading for 1pc this year as China remains mired in a post-bubble deflationary slump and as Chinese companies seek foreign markets to stay afloat. 'The China shock 2.0 is even worse than the first one. It is going to be slow torture for Europe,' said George Magnus, from Oxford University's China Centre. The US political class has concluded that the trading relationship is unworkable on current terms and has taken drastic action to defend America. The EU has allowed itself to become the market of last resort by default. The French grumble that German companies made a Faustian pact with China and long ago hijacked EU policy in their own interests. 'The Europeans are at last getting this, and there's been a shift even in Germany because the shock is really hitting home,' said Mr Magnus. 'It's reached a point where it threatens to destroy Europe's industrial capacity and know-how. It would be utterly myopic to ignore this for the sake of cheaper consumer goods,' he said. Europe has imposed calibrated tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles and launched 18 trade defence measures of various kinds, but this ponderous pedantry is overwhelmed by larger forces. China has been suppressing the yuan via two disguised mechanisms: wage deflation and by linking the yuan to a weakening US dollar. The combined effect has been a depreciation of China's 'real effective exchange rate' against the euro of almost 30pc since 2022. We can argue over whether or not this is currency manipulation. Brad Setser, from the US Council on Foreign Relations, says Beijing is intervening surreptitiously and on a huge scale through the offshore dollar holdings of the state-owned banks. Of course, China would slide into even deeper deflation if it revalued, but that only goes to show that the 'Leninist-capitalist' model of the Communist Party cannot coexist with the world's open trading system. One or the other has to go. China's export surge is not happening because its products are better or because its economic model is more competitive. It is the result of a system that favours chronic over-investment, with warped incentives that defy market price signals. Policy is geared to the state-owned behemoths and honed to ensure absolute party control. The whole structure crushes consumption. It is why Chinese households enjoy just 37pc of GDP, compared to 51pc in Germany, 62pc in the UK, and 68pc in the US. It is why China produces 32pc of the world's manufacturing goods but accounts for 13pc of world consumption. The rest of us have to absorb this surplus. Chinese economists have been calling for deep change to boost welfare spending and move to a modern consumption economy, if only in China's own self-interest. That is how you get out of a deflation trap. Xi Jinping will have none of it. Welfarism leads to 'lazy people' and wastes money needed for the techno-military Cold War against the West, and to sustain the national security state. 'Once welfare benefits go up, they never come down,' he says. The evidence of the last year, from the third plenum onwards, is that China is doubling down on its deformed model of industrial over-capacity. This is what Europe is facing. Any attempt to defend itself is met by Xi's coercive use of China's rare earth monopoly and its hold over critical choke points in the global supply chain. At the same time, any attempt by Europe to defend itself against Donald Trump's tariff shakedown is met by veiled threats to throw Ukraine to the wolves, or to let gas-short Europe freeze in winter. Europe is learning what it means to have no leverage in a Hobbesian world of lawless bruisers. But for all of Trump's pyrotechnics, China poses by far the greater menace. Charles Parton from Germany's Mercator Institute says the Communist Party sees diplomacy as a zero-sum 'struggle against hostile forces'. Leaked internal documents leave no doubt that the Politburo thinks it is in an ideological knife-fight against liberal democratic values, economic freedoms, and the pluralist society. 'These elements add up to a geopolitical war. Many third countries fail to recognise this reality,' he said. Europe has long been among the blind. The dependency now runs so deep that the EU cannot extract itself without serious damage. Its belated and half-hearted policy of 'de-risking' has failed from top to bottom. Markets are talking up a European economic renaissance over the next three years. It is a bet on Nato rearmament and military-Keynesian growth. I can see the logic but there must be a very high risk that Europe will disappoint yet again and slip deeper into its second lost decade. The tragedy for the West is that it stands divided in the critical civilisational battle of our time. Donald Trump is single-handedly to blame for this. He really is Xi Jinping's useful idiot.
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Business Standard
17-07-2025
- Business
- Business Standard
Trump likely to impose 10-15% tariff rates for more than 150 countries
US President Donald Trump on Wednesday (local time) said that he would be sending out letters to more than 150 nations, informing them of their new tariff rates, which could range from 10 per cent or 15 per cent, Bloomberg reported. Speaking to journalists at the White House, Trump said, 'We'll have well over 150 countries that we're just going to send a notice of payment out, and the notice of payment is going to say what the tariff rate will be.' He further said, 'It's all going to be the same for everyone, for that group,' stating that the trading partners that would be receiving these letters were 'not big countries, and they don't do much for business.' In an interview with Real America's Voice on Wednesday, Trump said that his administration has not yet decided on the rate, adding that it would probably be 10 or 15 per cent. US-Europe deal in the pipeline? During his interview, Trump reiterated that the US is very close to finalise a deal with India soon. He further added that an agreement with Europe is also likely. He said, 'We could make a deal possibly with Europe. You know, it's, I'm very indifferent to it.' His comments on a possible deal with Europe come as the European Union's trade chief, Maros Sefcovic, was headed to Washington for tariff discussions. Speaking on a deal with the European Union, Trump said, '(The) European Union has been brutal, and now they're being very nice. They want to make a deal, and it'll be a lot different than the deal that we've had for years.' It was previously reported that Trump threatened a 30 per cent tariff on imports from the European Union from August 1, a level which, according to Europe, is unacceptable and would end normal trade between two of the world's largest markets. 25 per cent tariff for Japan On Wednesday, Trump announced that the US will probably 'live by the letter' on tariffs with Japan. Trump imposed 25 per cent tariffs on Japan on July 7, which will take effect on August 1. Trump cited persistent trade deficits and 'unfair' practices as he announced a new tariff rate for Japan and South Korea. He announced the new tariff rates by posting letters addressed to the leaders of the two countries, warning the countries against retaliatory measures. US-Canada trade deal When asked about a deal with Canada, which, like the European Union, is preparing countermeasures, if the talks with the US fail, Trump said, 'Too soon to say.' His remarks on Canada come after Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney on Tuesday (local time) said that there is little evidence Ottawa can secure a deal with the US that avoids tariffs. Carney's recent statement marks a shift from the more hopeful tone his government had maintained in the last few months. US-India trade deal On Wednesday, Trump reiterated that the US is 'very close to a deal with India'. This comes after he suggested on Tuesday that the US could soon gain access to the Indian market. He said, 'We've made deals with a lot of great places. We have another one coming up — maybe with India. I don't know, we're in negotiation. When I send out a letter, that's a deal.' His remarks come at a time when a team from India's Commerce Ministry is in Washington to negotiate a proposed Bilateral Trade Agreement (BTA) ahead of the August 1 deadline.
AsiaOne
16-07-2025
- Entertainment
- AsiaOne
Producers of all-Asian rom-com Worth The Wait reject Hollywood pressure to cast white actors, Entertainment News
SINGAPORE — Producers on the US-Canada romantic comedy-drama Worth The Wait wanted their movie to showcase Asians falling in love, navigating awkward encounters with former lovers and coping with loss. But they faced pressure from Hollywood financiers, who suggested a change they thought was minor, but was anything but to Rachel Tan. The Malaysia-born, Los Angeles-based producer says they wanted to add a white male to the cast rather than letting the film be an all-Asian ensemble. "They gave me a list of white guys we could cast. If we could give one of the roles to them, we could get funded. It was so tempting," the 43-year-old recalls. She was in town with her producing partner and husband, Chinese-American Dan Mark, for a screening of their film — which the couple also co-wrote — at Tanglin Club on July 10. The investors held the belief that, except for genres such as martial arts, Asian male characters are not bankable, with little appeal for Western audiences, she says. [embed] Tan and her team ignored the suggestion, completing Worth The Wait without watering down their goal of an all-Asian cast in stereotype-breaking stories. For years, Asian Americans have been viewed by the majority as the "model minority", the ethnic group to be the most well educated, well adjusted and upwardly mobile, but the film seeks to show a more complete picture, she says. Slated to open in Singapore cinemas in August, Worth The Wait is directed by Taiwanese film-maker Tom Shu-Yu Lin, known for his Golden Horse-nominated drama The Garden Of Evening Mists (2019), adapted from the 2011 Booker Prize-shortlisted novel of the same name by Malaysian author Tan Twan Eng. Set in Seattle and Kuala Lumpur, it revolves around a group of singles and couples of different ages, and features actors of Asian or mixed descent from North America and Europe, including Ross Butler, Lana Condor, Andrew Koji, Sung Kang and Elodie Yung, as well as Singapore actors Tan Kheng Hua and Lim Yu-Beng. Producer Mark, 43, says audiences will see that Butler (Shazam!, 2019; 13 Reasons Why, 2017 to 2020) fits the profile of the romantic lead, while also being Asian. "He's a masculine Asian man. He's stereotype-breaking, and we love that — we need to have that in our culture," he says. Singapore-born American actor Butler plays Kai, the son of a corporate bigwig (Lim). On why on-screen white male-Asian female couples are the more common representation, Butler feels it has to do with Asian men being seen as not desirable. "It's a deep topic to talk about. In the West, for a hundred years, the Asian man has been emasculated," the 35-year-old tells The Straits Times at the same event. Butler drew on his personal experience to play Kai, who is under pressure to live up to his father's goals for him. The performer took chemical and biomolecular engineering at Ohio State University, but left his studies to pursue acting as a career. "A lot of this was generational legacy pressure from my mum. She is from Malaysia, and she took me to the US for the opportunities. We all know about the immigrants' dream," he adds. In another of the film's intertwining story threads, a couple played by Chinese-Canadian actors Osric Chau and Karena Lam find their marriage becoming strained after a miscarriage, while a young man, Blake (Chinese-Canadian actor Ricky He), has priorities other than school. Rachel Tan says: "Osric's character is vulnerable and Blake failed maths. There are so many layers to the characters. We are so much more than what's usually shown." Worth The Wait opens in Golden Village cinemas on Aug 8 and EagleWings Cinematics on Aug 14. [[nid:720270]] This article was first published in The Straits Times . Permission required for reproduction.
