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    Rich Americans flock to apply for New Zealand’s ‘golden visas’ after rules relaxed

    Wealthy Americans are leading the charge in applications for New Zealand’s “golden visas” after rules on applying were relaxed.New Zealand’s coalition government in February loosened the requirements for its Active Investor Plus visa – commonly known as the golden visa – offering residency to wealthy foreigners in a bid to boost the flagging economy.The new rules, which came into effect in April, lowered investment thresholds, removed English-language requirements and cut the amount of time applicants must spend in the country to establish residency from three years to three weeks.Immigration New Zealand says the scheme has attracted 189 applications, representing 609 people, under the new rules. Prior to the changes, the visa attracted 116 applications over 2.5 years.Nearly half the investors who have applied hail from the US, representing 85 applications, followed by China, 26, and Hong Kong, 24. Residents from countries across Asia and Europe make up the rest of the applicants.“Nearly everyone who is applying is applying because of the changes they’re seeing under the Trump administration,” said Stuart Nash, a former Labour party minister, who now runs Nash Kelly Global, an immigration and relocation consultancy.Under the new rules, 149 applied under the visa’s “growth” category, which requires a minimum $5m investment over three years, and 40 applied under the “balanced” category, which requires a minimum $10m investment over five years.Immigration has approved 100 applications in principle and seven have transferred their funds – netting New Zealand $45m.There has been a significant increase in interest in the visa since the changes, with investors drawn to New Zealand’s stability and innovation in sustainable business and technology, said Benny Goodman, New Zealand Trade and Enterprise’s general manager for investment.“This is a rare combination, and one that deeply resonates with investors thinking about legacy, not just returns,” he said.Global instability makes New Zealand – with its stable democracy, independent judiciary and safe banking system – an attractive destination, particularly to Americans, Nash said.“We are seeing more people looking for a safe haven than a tax haven – and that’s what we have got here in New Zealand, Nash said.It is not the first time New Zealand has attracted the interest of Trump-weary Americans and other wealthy foreigners seeking to make New Zealand their “bolthole” at a time of societal division.Following Trump’s 2016 election, visits to the country’s immigration website rose almost 2,500%. After the supreme court decision removing abortion rights, New Zealand’s immigration site visits quadrupled to 77,000. After Trump’s 2024 election win, New Zealand’s property market saw a surge of interest from the US.Meanwhile, billionaires acquiring residency or citizenship in New Zealand have been subject to political controversy in the past. In 2017, news broke that Peter Thiel, the billionaire co-founder of PayPal, was granted citizenship despite spending only 12 days in the country, prompting former Labour prime minister Jacinda Ardern to tighten the rules on investment visas and foreign home ownership in 2018.The loosening of the visa rules is one of a number of Ardern-era policies the right-wing coalition has wound back in its bid the boost the economy. Earlier this year it relaxed other more restrictive visa settings to attract so-called ‘digital nomads’ to New Zealand.New Zealand’s economy suffered as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic and the country experienced the biggest contraction in GDP of any developed country in the world in 2024, due to high interest rates and unemployment.In a statement on Monday, economic growth minister Nicola Willis said so far the visa could represent “a potential $845 million of new investment in New Zealand business”.“New investors don’t just bring their dollars to our shores, they also bring skills, knowledge and experience that will drive future economic development,” Willis said. “It’s a win-win.” More

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    Trump trade deal shows how vital China’s rare-earth metals are to US defense firms

    The draft trade agreement with China announced by Donald Trump on Wednesday would ease concerns from top US military suppliers about rare-earth metals and magnets that, if cut off permanently, could hobble production of everything from smart bombs to fighter jets to submarines and other weapons in the US arsenal.While the deal has not yet been finalised, it may reassure major defense companies such as Lockheed Martin, the largest US user of samarium – a rare-earth metal used in military-grade magnets – whose supply is entirely controlled by China.The issue of China’s export restrictions on the metals and magnets was so important that Trump specifically mentioned them as part of his announcement of a broader trade agreement with China that would reduce US tariffs to 55% and Chinese tariffs to 10%.“Our deal with China is done, subject to final approval with President Xi and me,” Trump wrote. “Full magnets, and any necessary rare earths, will be supplied, up front, by China.”Rare earths are crucial to the production of F-35 fighter jets, Virginia- and Columbia-class nuclear-powered submarines, Tomahawk missiles, radar systems, unmanned aerial vehicles and smart bombs, according to Gracelin Baskaran of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a thinktank.China in April imposed export restrictions on seven rare earth elements during the tough negotiations over Trump’s new tariffs. China also targeted the aerospace and defense industries by limiting 15 US entities with ties to the industry from receiving dual-use goods.“The United States is already on the back foot when it comes to manufacturing these defense technologies,” Baskaran said in an interview published by CSIS. “China is rapidly expanding its munitions production and acquiring advanced weapons systems and equipment at a pace five to six times faster than the United States. While China is preparing with a wartime mindset, the United States continues to operate under peacetime conditions.”Trump has amassed a team of foreign policy China hawks, including a number who have warned that the US should focus more on the pacing threat posed by China over the coming decades instead of current conflicts in Ukraine or the Middle East.“Even before the latest restrictions, the US defense industrial base struggled with limited capacity and lacked the ability to scale up production to meet defense technology demands,” she continued. “Further bans on critical minerals inputs will only widen the gap, enabling China to strengthen its military capabilities more quickly than the United States.”China and the US had agreed last month in Geneva to pause the implementation of sky-high tariffs that would have delivered a severe economic blow to manufacturers and consumers in the US, as well as exporters in China.But China maintained export licenses on rare-earth metals used by both defense producers and carmakers that threatened to upend global supply chains and imperil production in the US.In particular, China has a stranglehold on the production and export of samarium, a magnet used in combination with cobalt to provide highly durable magnets used to withstand the intense temperatures in military-grade tech. China produces the entire world’s supply of the rare-earth metal.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionIn particular, the magnets are important for the production of guided missiles, satellite-guided “smart bombs”, and aircrafts, including fighter jets, according to Apex Magnets, a supplier.Those supplies of weapons have been depleted through deliveries of missiles and other ordnance to Ukraine and to the Israeli military. Pentagon planners and other officials in the administration of Joe Biden, regularly squared off over whether foreign weapons deliveries expose a US vulnerability in case it faced off with a major military power.In order to break the deadlock, secretary of state Marco Rubio also abruptly announced plans to cancel hundreds of thousands of visas for Chinese students in the US. While publicly that was said as a plan to root out Chinese spies in US higher education, Axios reported that the visa ban was also motivated by China’s obstinance on resuming rare earths exports.The breakthrough comes as Trump is planning to display US military prowess at a parade in Washington DC this weekend that has been seen as an attempt to flex American muscle and reinforce the US president’s bonafides as a supporter of the military.Trump in 2019 ordered the Pentagon to find new sources of procuring rare earth minerals, in particular samarium, because the US did not have the capacity to produce them domestically. The initiative was “essential to the national defense”, he said then. More

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    Trump warms to Nippon Steel, backing ‘partnership’ with US Steel

    Donald Trump has thrown his weight behind a “partnership” between US Steel and Nippon Steel, months after insisting he was “totally against” a $14.9bn bid by the Japanese firm for its US rival.While the US president stopped short of an all-out endorsement of the takeover, he announced a deal between the two businesses on social media on Friday.Trump’s predecessor, Joe Biden, had blocked Nippon’s acquisition of US Steel, citing national security concerns, during his final weeks in office. The Trump administration has since been reviewing the proposal.Under the arrangement announced by Trump on Friday, US Steel would remain in the US, with its headquarters in Pittsburgh, he stressed, announcing plans to hold a “big rally” in the state next week.“This will be a planned partnership between United States Steel and Nippon Steel, which will create at least 70,000 jobs, and add $14 Billion Dollars to the U.S. Economy,” the president claimed on Truth Social, his social network. “The bulk of that Investment will occur in the next 14 months.”Shares in US Steel surged more than 21% after Trump’s announcement on Friday afternoon.Nippon and US Steel did not immediately respond to requests for comment.The United Steelworkers union had urged the president to reject Nippon’s bid, dismissing the firm’s commitments to invest in the US as “flashy promises” and claiming it was “simply seeking to undercut our domestic industry from the inside”.Trump’s position on Nippon’s approach has shifted significantly. Just in December, he declared he was vehemently opposed to the transaction. “As President, I will block this deal from happening,” he wrote. “Buyer Beware!!!”By last month, however, he had somewhat softened his stance, stating only that he wanted US Steel to remain in the US. “We don’t want to see it go to Japan,” he said. More

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    Trump officials deported Vietnamese and Burmese migrants to South Sudan, say lawyers

    Immigrant rights advocates have accused the Trump administration of deporting about a dozen migrants from countries including Myanmar and Vietnam to South Sudan in violation of a court order, and asked a judge to order their return.The advocates made the request in a motion directed to a federal judge in Boston who had barred the Trump administration from swiftly deporting migrants to countries other than their own without first hearing any concerns they had that they might be tortured or persecuted if sent there.Lawyers for a group of migrants pursuing the class action lawsuit before US district judge Brian Murphy said they learned that nearly a dozen migrants held at a detention facility in Texas were flown to South Sudan on Tuesday morning.Those migrants included an individual from Myanmar whose lawyer received an email on Monday from an official with the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement informing the attorney of the intent to deport his client to South Sudan.The migrant’s lawyers said they learned their client had been flown to South Sudan on Tuesday morning.The spouse of a Vietnamese man who was held at the same detention center in Texas emailed his lawyer, meanwhile, saying he and 10 other individuals were deported as well, according to the motion.The Department of Homeland Security did not immediately respond to a request for comment.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionSouth Sudan, the world’s youngest country, gained independence from Sudan in 2011, and has since struggled with armed conflict and poverty. Between 2013 and 2018, fighting between factions loyal to the current president, Salva Kiir Mayardit, and his vice-president, Riek Machar, killed nearly 400,000 people. More

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    This pause in the trade war will be brief. Small businesses, plan accordingly

    Donald Trump’s massive Chinese tariffs are on pause. The media debated. Wall Street rejoiced. Many of my clients breathed a sigh of relief. Big retailers jumped for joy. But for how long?For starters, the tariffs that weren’t paused – a 10% levy on all Chinese goods, plus a bonus 20% tax that somehow relates to fentanyl, are still in place. When you take into consideration existing tariffs on steel from previous Trump and Biden administrations, the effective tariff rate on Chinese goods is actually closer to 40%, according to an analysis done by the Wall Street Journal.That’s a big number. Maybe that won’t deter people from buying underwear at Target. But for companies that rely on steel and aluminum, semiconductors, synthetic fabrics, plastics, minerals, coatings and solvents as well as certain bearings, motors, pumps and parts, a 30-40% hike is a major impact on their margins, which will affect their spending and investments. Ultimately, the costs of the end products that use these materials will also rise as companies simply pass them down.Just as important, Trump’s animosity towards China – unfounded or not – isn’t going to just magically disappear. He’s called the Chinese cheaters, polluters and thieves. And his past actions – particularly in his first administration – do not bode well for a quick resolution to this issue.In 2018, the Trump administration not only imposed onerous tariffs on China but also issued some very harsh requirements to address trading issues with its closest economic rival.There were specific quotas set to limit our trade deficit. There were demands made to reduce the Chinese requirement forcing American companies to share or transfer technology with their Chinese counterparts. There were rules aimed at stopping the alleged (ha, ha) stealing of data and intellectual property by the Chinese.The problem is that none of this happened. What happened – shortly after the negotiations started – was Covid. And then 2020 and a new administration. But don’t think that Trump won’t raise these issues again. He will, and when this happens we’ll be back to the same place we started: excessive tariffs and a trade war with China.That doesn’t mean that businesses are completely stuck. Many – those that have the funds – are using the tariff suspension to buy up products from China like it’s a fire sale at Costco on Black Friday. Others are contracting with bonded warehouses and storage facilities in free-trade zones to accept products that are temporarily tariff-free, hoping that when they pull materials from these storage units those rates will have come down.I have clients who are aggressively searching for alternative suppliers. I have others who are bringing their assembly and manufacturing back to the US. Those that aren’t able to make these kinds of investments are trying to work out how and how much they can change pricing and what the market will take. A few have already created special line items on their invoices to separate out the tariff charge in an effort to say: “Hey, don’t blame me for this stuff!”My smartest clients started doing this stuff the day after Trump was elected. They listened to what he’d said during the previous couple of years. They read the writing on the wall. Now they’re ahead of the game. Good for them.Companies that didn’t do this – especially small businesses that have fewer resources and are more reliant on just a supplier or two – are in trouble, particularly if they buy from China. For any business still reliant on Chinese suppliers and markets, this pause isn’t going to last as long as you think. There will be a lot more coming in this trade war – and let’s hope it doesn’t turn into an actual war. The outlook is precarious and risky. Trump is volatile and emotional and has a history of knocking China. Plan accordingly. More

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    Brazil’s president seeks ‘indestructible’ links with China amid Trump trade war

    The Brazilian president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, has heralded his desire to build “indestructible” relations with China, as the leaders of three of Latin America’s biggest economies flew to Beijing against the backdrop of Donald Trump’s trade war and the profound international uncertainty his presidency has generated.Lula touched down in China’s capital on Sunday for a four-day state visit, accompanied by 11 ministers, top politicians and a delegation of more than 150 business leaders.Hours later Colombia’s president, Gustavo Petro, arrived, making a beeline for the Great Wall of China and declaring his desire for the South American country to not “only look one way” towards the US. “We have decided to take a profound step forward between China and Latin America,” Petro said.Chile’s Gabriel Boric has also travelled to Beijing to attend Tuesday’s meeting between members of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (Celac) and Chinese representatives.Addressing hundreds of Chinese and Brazilian business chiefs in the Chinese capital on Monday, Lula hit out at Trump’s tariffs, saying he could not accept the measures “that the president of the US tried to impose on planet Earth, from one day to the next”.The Brazilian leftist said he hoped to build an “indispensable” relationship with China – already Brazil’s top trading partner – and heaped praise on his Communist party hosts as his officials announced $4.6bn (£3.5bn) of Chinese investment in their country. On Tuesday, Lula is scheduled to meet China’s leader, Xi Jinping, who is expected to return the visit in July, when Xi travels to the Brics summit in Rio.“China has often been treated as though it were an enemy of global trade when actually China is behaving like an example of a country that is trying to do business with countries which, over the past 30 years, were forgotten by many other countries,” said Lula, who is expected to seek major Chinese investments in Brazilian infrastructure projects.The visit of the three South American leaders to China underlines the east Asian country’s rapidly growing footprint in a region where, over the past 25 years, it has become a voracious consumer of commodities such as soybeans, iron ore and copper. Chinese companies have also poured into the region. Electric cars made by the Chinese manufacturer BYD can be seen cruising the streets of Brazilian cities, from Brasília to Boa Vista, deep in the Amazon.The visits also come amid global jitters over Trump’s volatile presidency and Latin American anxiety and suspicion over the US president’s plans for a region where he has threatened to “take back” the Panama canal – by force if necessary.Matias Spektor, an international relations professor at the Getúlio Vargas Foundation, a Brazilian thinktank and university, said the presence of the three South American presidents in Beijing underscored how, in the Trump era, with the US in retreat, such leaders were increasingly reaching out to other parts of the world.“It tells us that countries around the world are willing to go out … to exploit all the opportunities that are there in the international system – and there are many. Because, as America turns away from free trade and as America adopts a policy that is … instead of transactional, predatory – countries have an incentive to engage with those who are transactional,” Spektor said, pointing to recent trips Lula made to Japan and Vietnam.“[Lula] is very proactively trying to open trade for Brazil at a time when America is undoing the previous rules of the game, and the new rules of the game are not yet born … These [Latin American] countries want to shape the norms that are likely to emerge now. And those rules are not going to emerge in Washington DC. They are going to be made globally,” Spektor added.Spektor said Latin American leaders such as Lula had long considered the world a multipolar place. “What happened on 20 January [with Trump’s return to power] is that the barrage of policy change coming from Washington DC has accelerated the belief that was already in place that the axis of global power has for a while been moving towards the east, and somewhat towards the south.” More

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    China and US agree 90-day pause to trade war initiated by Donald Trump

    China and the US have agreed a 90-day pause to the deepening trade war that has threatened to upend the global economy, with reciprocal tariffs to be lowered by 115%.Speaking to the media after talks in Geneva, the US treasury secretary, Scott Bessent, said both sides had shown “great respect” in the negotiations.Bessent said: “The consensus from both delegations this weekend was neither side wants a decoupling.”The 90-day lowering of tariffs applies to the duties announced by Donald Trump on 2 April, which ultimately escalated to 125% on Chinese imports, with Beijing responding with equivalent measures.China also imposed non-tariff measures, such as restricting the export of critical minerals that are essential to US manufacturing of hi-tech goods.The US trade representative, Jamieson Greer, said China’s retaliation had been disproportionate and amounted to an effective embargo on trade between the world’s two biggest economies.With the 115% deduction, Chinese duties on US goods will be lowered to 10%, while the US tax on Chinese goods will be lowered to 30%. That is because the US tariffs include a 20% rate imposed by Trump before the latest trade war, which the president said was related to China’s role in the US’s fentanyl crisis. The fentanyl-related tariff will still apply.A spokesperson for China’s ministry of commerce said: “This move meets the expectations of producers and consumers in both countries, as well as the interests of both nations and the common interest of the world.“We hope that the US side will, based on this meeting, continue to move forward in the same direction with China, completely correct the erroneous practice of unilateral tariff hikes, and continually strengthen mutually beneficial cooperation.”China’s yuan jumped to a six-month high on the signal that the trade war would be paused. Up to 16m jobs were at risk in China, according to some estimates, while the US faced rising inflation and empty shelves thanks to dizzying tariffs on the biggest supplier of US goods.Bessent said he was impressed by the level of Chinese engagement on the fentanyl issue during the talks in Switzerland. “For the first time the Chinese side understood the magnitude of what is happening in the US,” Bessent said.A joint statement published by the US and China on Monday said that both sides would “continue to advance related work in a spirit of mutual openness, continuous communication, cooperation and mutual respect”.William Xin, the chair of the hedge fund Spring Mountain Pu Jiang Investment Management, told Reuters: “The result far exceeds market expectations. Previously, the hope was just that the two sides can sit down to talk, and the market had been very fragile. Now, there’s more certainty. Both China stocks and the yuan will be in an upswing for a while.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionHu Xijin, the former editor of the nationalist Chinese tabloid the Global Times, said on social media the agreement was a “great victory for China in upholding the principles of equality and mutual respect”. Hu noted on Weibo that the recently agreed UK-US trade deal maintained the US’s 10% tariff on UK imports, “while the UK did not implement reciprocal measures”.Wang Wen, the head of the Chongyang Institute for Financial Studies at Renmin University in Beijing, said: “This is an unexpected achievement in Sino-US tariff negotiations.”However, Wang also urged caution, as he said the agreement “does not represent the resolution of the structural contradictions between China and the United States, nor does it mean that there will be no friction and serious differences between China and the United States in the future”.Stock markets across Europe rose in the aftermath of the US-China announcement. Germany’s DAX index jumped by 1.5%, with Mercedes-Benz, Daimler Trucks and BMW among the biggest risers. France’s CAC index rose by 1.2%.Additional research by Lillian Yang More

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    US treasury secretary says ‘there is a path’ with China over tariff negotiations

    The US treasury secretary, Scott Bessent, said “there is a path” to an agreement with China over tariffs after he had interactions with his Chinese counterparts last week in Washington.“I had interaction with my Chinese counterparts, but it was more on the traditional things like financial stability, global economic early warnings,” Bessent told ABC News’s This Week on Sunday, explaining that he had spoken to the Chinese during International Monetary Fund meetings in Washington. “I don’t know if President Trump has spoken with President Xi,” he added.On Friday, Donald Trump asserted in an interview that tariff negotiations were under way with China, comments he repeated on his way to Rome to attend the funeral of Pope Francis, but were later denied by China’s foreign ministry, which said the US “should stop creating confusion”.A day later, China’s foreign minister, Wang Yi, said Beijing abides by international rules on US-imposed tariffs and would seek solidarity with other countries.“Certain countries adhere to their own priorities, engage in bullying pressure and coercive transactions, and provoke trade wars for no reason, exposing their extreme egoism,” Wang said on the sidelines of a regional meeting in Kazakhstan.On Sunday, Bessent attempted to weave through the conflicting signals over what progress was being made to de-escalate a trade war threatening to sap global growth.“The Chinese will see this high tariff level is unsustainable for their business,” he said. He added that Beijing’s denial that negotiations are ongoing was for a Chinese audience.“I think they’re playing to a different audience,” Bessent said. “We have a process in place and, again, I just believe these Chinese tariffs are unsustainable.“The first path will be, again, a de-escalation, which I think the Chinese are going to have to have. Then I think there can be an agreement in principle, these 17 or 18 important trade deals that we’re negotiating.”But Bessent warned that “a trade deal can take months” and said negotiations with other significant US trading partners were progressing. “Some of those are moving along very well, especially the – with the Asian countries,” he said, praising Trump’s negotiating strategy.“In game theory it’s called strategic uncertainty,” he said. “So, you’re not going to tell the person on the other side of the negotiation where you’re going to end up. And nobody’s better at creating this leverage than President Trump.”The treasury secretary’s comments come as top US retailers have reportedly warned the White House that tariffs will cause empty store shelves and price hikes within weeks.Bloomberg reported that Chinese fast-fashion giant Shein raised US prices of its products from dresses to kitchenware on Friday ahead of imminent tariffs on small parcels. The average price for the top 100 products in the beauty and health category increased by 51%, and more than 30% for home and kitchen products and toys, including a 377% increase in the price of a 10-piece set of kitchen towels.Trump predicted on Sunday that tariffs would ultimately benefit US taxpayers and boost employment. “When Tariffs cut in, many people’s Income Taxes will be substantially reduced, maybe even completely eliminated,” Trump wrote in a Truth Social post.“Focus will be on people making less than $200,000 a year. Also, massive numbers of jobs are already being created, with new plants and factories currently being built or planned.” He called it a “bonanza” for Americans and said “the external service is happening”.Separately on Sunday, US agriculture secretary Brooke Rollins said the US was holding daily conversations with China over tariffs. “Every day we are in conversation with China, along with those other 99, 100 countries that have come to the table,” Rollins said on CNN’s State of the Union.Rollins said the president was prepared to bail out American farmers if the trade war continues squeezing commodity exports, particularly soybean and pork sales to China.“First of all, the prayer is that that doesn’t need to happen – but secondly, if it does, for the short term, just as in Trump 1, we are preparing for that,” Rollins said.Rollins said it could take months before it is known whether a bail-out is needed.“I don’t think we’re going to need it, but if we do, it will be there,” Rollins said. More