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      Out-of-touch Trump talks up economy among sycophants and stars in Miami

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      It was the week in which Republicans took a beating at the polls, the government shutdown became the longest in history, and 42 million people across the country, including 3 million in Florida, saw their federal food aid slashed.But in the alternative reality of Miami, where tickets to an overwhelmingly conservative business conference headlined by Donald Trump cost up to $1,990, and billionaires from Saudi Arabia rubbed shoulders with equally wealthy American tycoons such as Jeff Bezos and Ken Griffin, those events created barely a ripple.Instead, in a gesture that appeared almost to mock the widening disparity between the city’s haves and have-nots, organizers of the America Business Forum cooked up a little treat for attendees: a $50 gift card to spend on food to sustain themselves while they listened to their president congratulate himself for a “golden age” he said his “economic miracle” had delivered.Advocates say the move, along with the high-budget opulence of the conference itself, was an ill-timed insult to more than a half-million Miami-Dade county residents who just saw their own ability to buy essential groceries for their families kiboshed by the gutting of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (Snap).“There’s just a massive cognitive dissonance between what real people are going through, and the elite,” said Larry Hannan, communications and policy director of State Voices Florida, a coalition of more than a hundred non-partisan, pro-democracy and civic engagement groups.“Jeff Bezos does not need a $50 food card. But we saw that with the Great Gatsby theme party last week. They just can’t seem to stop doing things that are shockingly out of touch.“We’ve been through shutdowns before, and while obviously the White House bubble is always somewhat insane, presidents are usually smart enough, they usually know not to flaunt this type of stuff. But this administration does not seem to care.”The president’s hour-long address on Thursday had the flavor of a political rally, with familiar insults for old political foes such as the Senate minority leader, Chuck Schumer, and California’s governor, Gavin Newsom, and a new one: Zohran Mamdani, the newly elected democratic socialist mayor of New York.View image in fullscreenTrump touched on his economic agenda, and lauded a host of speakers from the worlds of politics, sport and business that filled the two-day agenda, created largely by Francis Suarez, mayor of the city of Miami, to showcase south Florida and its investment opportunities.Lionel Messi, the Argentina soccer star and World Cup winner, provided celebrity glitz from sporting circles, along with tennis champions Rafael Nadal and Serena Williams. A conversation between Suarez and María Corina Machado, the Venezuelan opposition leader and democracy activist who last month won the Nobel peace prize that Trump coveted, was well received on day one.Yet overall it was a curious and unmistakably politically charged event with a field of Trump sycophants on the stage, loudly cheered by a crowd of mostly younger and affluent supporters of the president in the audience, some blending business suits with his trademark red Make America Great Again (Maga) caps.How else to explain the presence of Javier Milei, the rightwing president of Argentina, the country whose shaky economy Trump helped shore up last month with a $20bn currency swap lifeline? Or that of Saudi Arabians Fahad AlSaif, head of its $925bn Public Investment Fund, and Reema Bandar Al-Saud, Riyadh’s ambassador to the US, touting their country as ripe for investment while the Trump family’s financial ties and influence there come under greater scrutiny?Then there was Gianni Infantino, head of Fifa, international soccer’s governing body, dropping hints that Trump is in line for the organization’s first peace prize, an unwanted new award that observers see created specially for the president as consolation for his Nobel snub.Other speakers, including Jamie Dimon, the chief executive of JP Morgan; Adam Neumann, founder of WeWork and Flow; and Griffin, the hedge-fund manager and Republican donor; have all previously praised, worked with or voted for Trump, offering more than a suggestion of a politically skewed lineup.Suarez, unsurprisingly, saw it differently.“We wanted it to be a sort of a cross-section from different verticals, right?” he told the Guardian.“We got in a room. We said, ‘Hey, what are the leading voices?’ People from different backgrounds, different ethnicities, different genders … sports, business, politics, technology, things that touch everyone’s lives.”He pointed to discussions of upcoming, money-spinning notable events in Miami, including the Formula One grand prix, next year’s G20 economic summit at Trump’s Doral golf resort, and games during the 2026 World Cup, which he called “a generational opportunity”.“Our hope is that Miamians are transformed by the experience,” Suarez said. “We want them to leave thinking, ‘I can be on that stage.’”View image in fullscreenThe advocates of State Voices Florida, however, believe many Miamians are more focused right now on other issues, especially soaring housing and food costs. Florida’s Republican governor, Ron DeSantis rejected a call from Hannan’s group and others to declare an emergency over Snap benefits and tap state reserves to fund urgent food distribution.“Any civics teacher would tell you it’s his job to look after the people of Florida, and he’s doing the exact opposite,” Hannan said, noting the juxtaposition of a conference of billionaires taking place in the same county in which almost 25% of households rely on Snap benefits to survive.“There just seems to be this detachment at the top. I don’t think the answer is electing a Democrat or electing a Republican, I just think we have to have more empathy for people who are struggling in this state.”Empathy was in short supply in Miami from Trump, a president not known for ever taking responsibility during a crisis.“The radical left Democrats are causing millions of Americans who depend on food stamps to go without benefits,” he said, blaming the out-of-office opposition party for the government shutdown.“I just want to have a country that’s great again. Is that OK?” More

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      Trump’s supreme court strategy is to redefine ‘tariffs’. Will the justices buy it?

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      Donald Trump faced arguably the biggest test so far of his contentious use of executive power at the US supreme court on Wednesday. The stakes could not be higher – “literally, LIFE OR DEATH” for the US, at least according to the president.Trump’s signature, globe-rattling economic policy, his sweeping tariffs regime, was in the dock – specifically, the legal mechanism his administration has used to enforce it. And the man dispatched to defend the White House put forward a somewhat puzzling argument.“These are regulatory tariffs,” D John Sauer, US solicitor general, assured the court. “They are not revenue-raising tariffs. The fact that they raise revenue is only incidental.”It was a curious, and more than a little confusing, explanation – tariffs on goods from overseas might raise revenue, but are not revenue-raising – designed to counter rulings by lower courts that set the stage for this test before the highest court in the land.A federal appeals court in Washington DC ruled in August that the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA), a 1977 law Trump invoked to impose many of his tariffs, did not grant “the power to tax” to the president.Congress is granted sole authority under the constitution to levy taxes. Trump bypassed Congress – lawfully, his aides insist – to drive through a policy estimated to equate to the largest tax hike since 1993.Thus, on Wednesday morning, the administration appeared to argue before the supreme court that these tariffs – taxes paid by myriad US companies on imported products – were not really taxes at all.Critics are not having it. “Anybody can look up in the dictionary,” Maria Cantwell, Democratic senator from Washington, told the Guardian. “Tariffs are an import tax, plain and simple. I would assume the administration understands that.”“I actually am surprised that it was so lacking,” Cantwell added, of the administration’s case.The court did not appear persuaded, either. “You want to say tariffs are not taxes,” said the liberal justice Sonia Sotomayor. “But that’s exactly what they are.”Some conservatives on the bench also sounded skeptical. “The vehicle is the imposition of taxes on Americans, and that has always been a core power of Congress,” said the chief justice John Roberts.The administration’s argument that the fact tariffs raise money is “only incidental” might be more persuasive if the president spent less time boasting about the amount of money they raised. “My tariffs are bringing in hundreds of billions of dollars,” Trump declared in a speech hours after the hearing.The president has argued – in typically binary terms – that the fate of his flagship economic strategy is aligned with that of the nation. But there are many business owners in the US, grappling with the abrupt imposition of steep tariffs, who believe the fate of their companies has been jeopardized by this regime.While official statistics (at least, those published before the government shutdown) have shown persisting inflation and a stalling jobs market, Trump continues to erroneously claim his agenda is producing stellar results. “Our Economy is BOOMING, and Costs are coming way down,” he wrote on social media during Wednesday’s hearing.It is ultimately down to voters, as some did on Tuesday, to deliver their verdict on Trump’s agenda. For now, a handful of small firms, together with a dozen states, have joined forces to challenge the way in which he has rammed it through.“We think that this case is really about executive overreach,” said Stephen Woldenberg, senior vice-president of sales at Learning Resources, a toy company based near Chicago that sued the administration to invalidate Trump’s tariffs as exceeding his authority.At the heart of this case is really a “broader issue”, according to Woldenberg, of who sets taxes – and how – across the US. “We weren’t really willing to let politicians, and really a single politician, decide our fate,” he said.That fate is now in the hands of a court Trump has shaped. The justices have pledged to fast-track their decision. On Wednesday, at least, most sounded unpersuaded by the administration’s defense. More

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      in UK Politics

      Budget: Pound plummets after Reeves hints at tax rises – but government bonds rally

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      The pound has dropped to a six-month low after Rachel Reeves gave her strongest hint yet that taxes will rise at the Budget in a major speech on Tuesday morning.The pound, which was already lower ahead of the speech, fell further after the comments to stand 0.3 per cent lower at 1.31 US dollars and 0.3 per cent weaker at 1.14 euros, not far off last week’s over two-year low against the single currency.Sterling has been under pressure in recent days amid worries over the UK economy and ahead of the Bank of England’s interest rate decision on Thursday, with another cut seen as being increasingly likely.Experts appear split on whether that cut will come in November or December, but the chances of a further reduction from 4 per cent currently have increased as inflation is thought to have peaked now at 3.8 per cent while the jobs market outlook looks more shaky.Meanwhile Britain’s long-term borrowing costs edged lower after the chancellor reiterated an “ironclad” commitment to her fiscal rules.Rachel Reeves refused to be drawn when asked if the government would break the manifesto pledge not to raise income tax, national insurance or VAT More

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      Top 10 US billionaires’ collective wealth grew by $698bn in past year – report

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      The collective wealth of the top 10 US billionaires has soared by $698bn in the past year, according to a new report from Oxfam America published on Monday on the growing wealth divide.The report warns that Trump administration policies risk driving US inequality to new heights, but points out that both Republican and Democratic administrations have exacerbated the US’s growing wealth gap.Using Federal Reserve data from 1989 to 2022, researchers also calculated that the top 1% of households gained 101 times more wealth than the median household during that time span and 987 times the wealth of a household at the bottom 20th percentile of income. This translated to a gain of $8.35m per household for the top 1% of households, compared with $83,000 for the average household during that 33-year period.Meanwhile, over 40% of the US population, including nearly 50% of children, are considered low-income, with family earnings that are less than 200% of the national poverty line.When pitting the US against 38 other higher-income countries in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), the US has the highest rate of relative poverty, second-highest rate of child poverty and infant mortality, and the second-lowest life expectancy rate.“Inequality is a policy choice,” said Rebecca Riddell, senior policy lead for economic justice at Oxfam America. “These comparisons show us that we can make very different choices when it comes to poverty and inequality in our society.”The report outlines the way that systems in the US, including the tax code, social safety nets, and worker’s rights and protections, have been slowly dismantled, allowing concentrated wealth to turn into concentrated power.Donald Trump’s “one big, beautiful bill”, passed by Congress in May, has been one of the “single largest transfers of wealth upwards in decades”, according to the report, by cutting tax for the wealthy and corporations.But over the last few decades, Republicans have not acted alone.“Policymakers have been choosing inequality, and those choices have had bipartisan support,” Riddell said. “Policy reforms over the last 40 years, from cuts to taxes and the social safety net, to labor issues and beyond, really had the backing of both parties.”Policy recommendations outlined in the report fall into four categories: rebalancing power through campaign finance reform and antitrust policy; using the tax system to reduce inequality through taxes on the wealthy and corporations; strengthening the social safety net; and protecting unions.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThese solutions can be tricky to carry out politically because of long-term stigmatization, particularly of social safety nets and taxation. The report refers to the concept of the “welfare queen” popularized during Ronald Reagan’s presidency in the 1980s, while taxation has always been seen as repressive for all rather than as a tool for addressing inequality.“What’s really needed is a different kind of politics,” Riddell said. “One that’s focused on delivering for ordinary people by really rapidly reducing inequality. There are sensible, proven reforms that could go a long way to reversing the really troubling trends we see.”The report features interviews with community leaders who are actively working to reduce inequality, even as progress has seemingly stalled on the national stage. In one interview in the report, union representatives for United Workers Maryland said the current moment seems ripe with opportunity because many Americans are starting to see how the current set-up isn’t working for them, but only for the people at the very top.“I think it’s brilliant that they see this as an opportunity,” Riddell said. “I love thinking about this moment as an opportunity to look around us and realize our broader power.” More

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      Trump policies spur economic anxiety in US Republican heartland: ‘Tariffs are affecting everything’

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      For decades, a line of storefronts in Jeffersonville, Ohio, a town of 1,200 people 40 minutes south-west of Columbus, lay empty.But now locals are hard at work renovating the downtown and paving streets in anticipation of a potential economic boom fueled by a huge new electric vehicle battery manufacturing plant.Two miles south of Jeffersonville, Korean and Japanese companies LG Energy Solution and Honda are in the midst of sinking $3.5bn into a facility that is expected to begin production in the coming months.Hundreds of people have been employed in the construction of the plant, and more than 525 people have been hired to work in engineering and other manufacturing roles at the facility. In total, about 2,200 people are expected to be employed on a site that, until several years ago, was open farmland.But some locals are concerned.A host of Trump administration policies – tariff measures and the end of clean vehicle tax credits worth thousands of dollars to car buyers – are causing multinational manufacturing companies to consider pausing hundreds of millions of dollars in future investments, a move that would hit small, majority-Republican towns such as Jeffersonville especially hard.Moreover, a raid by ICE immigration officers on a Hyundai-LG battery plant in Ellabell, a small town in south-east Georgia in September that saw more than 300 South Korean workers detained and sent home has sent shock waves through places like Jeffersonville and the C-suites of international companies alike.View image in fullscreen“The construction process has been slowing down. My fear is that the whole thing is going to stop, and we’re left with just unfinished concrete out there,” says Amy Wright, a Fayette county resident, of the under-construction battery plant.“What’s more, a lot of the people hired to do the construction of the plant are not locals. They are from out-of-state; I’ve met them at the gym.”While in last year’s presidential election, 77% of voters in Fayette county backed Trump, recent polls suggest his popularity in rural America has taken a nosedive.One poll suggests that his approval rating among rural Americans has slipped from 59% in August to 47% in October. Others chart his net approval rating in states he won in last year’s presidential election – Ohio, Michigan and Indiana – in negative territory by as much as 18.9 points.Wright says her son, who works for a local company that supplies Honda with parts, recently received notice that a prior promise of overtime work was being rescinded. She says she believes Honda is reeling in spending due to US government policies.“Tariffs are affecting everything,” says Wright.What’s happening in Jeffersonville is being mirrored across the midwest.In Kentucky, Michigan and elsewhere, global giants Toyota and Stellantis have spent billions of dollars in small communities, much of which came in the form of clean energy tax breaks from the Biden administration’s Inflation Reduction Act of 2022.Toyota’s biggest production facility on the planet is in a small Kentucky town called Georgetown, where the company employs more than 10,000 people and has invested $11bn in the local economy since the late 1980s. These workers churn out nearly half a million vehicles and hundreds of thousands of engines every year.However, in August Toyota warned that it faced a $9.5bn financial hit to it and its suppliers due to tariffs imposed by the Trump administration, the largest estimate of any automotive manufacturer. In July, Kentucky’s governor, Andy Beshear, said Trump’s tariffs were undermining investments in the state such as Toyota’s, calling them “chaos”.View image in fullscreenSixty-three per cent of voters in Georgetown’s Scott county backed Trump in last year’s presidential election.Last April, Stellantis laid off 900 workers at locations across the midwest due to Trump’s tariffs.In Indiana, one of the largest employers in the state, the Swiss pharmaceutical company Roche is reportedly considering pulling out of $50bn worth of investment in the coming years if Trump follows through on his executive order to target companies that don’t reduce drug prices.“No [manufacturer] wanted to alienate customers, but those days are past. So, the bulk of tariff price increases will hit in the coming months. This matters, because factory employment is a major share of rural counties in the midwest – about 30% in Indiana, and similar in Illinois, Ohio, Michigan and Wisconsin,” says Michael Hicks, an economist and professor at Ball State University in Indiana.“These things will clearly have a political effect, but my hunch is not fully for several months. Overlaying all this is the risk of a significant [economic] downturn, where tariffs combine with a financial bubble that would surely hit rural – red – communities very hard.”Still, others believe that the tariffs will benefit small American towns in the long run.“Toyota is doing fine and I don’t see [tariffs] as being a big hurt for us here in Georgetown,” says Robert Linder, co-owner of the Porch restaurant that’s situated a mile north of the huge facility, and who worked at the plant for 29 years.In April, Toyota suggested it might move more vehicle production to Georgetown to beat the tariffs, though that move could be years in the making. Sales of Toyota brands in the US have been growing this year, with the company thus far eating the cost of tariffs rather than passing it on to consumers.“They just announced a $10bn investment in the United States for more Toyota plants. If Toyota was worried about [tariffs] they wouldn’t be expanding,” says Linder. Recent reports, however, suggest the $10bn figure referred to previously announced investments.However, large multinationals have a track record of announcing major projects only for reality to play out in a very different way.In Wisconsin, the Taiwanese tech company Foxconn claimed it would spend $10bn on a facility outside the town of Mount Pleasant. Instead, local taxpayers today find themselves on the hook for $1.2bn spent on highways, attorneys and other infrastructure for a facility that has never transpired.In Arizona, the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC), backed directly by Trump, has been plagued with lawsuits related to safety and other issues, and missed project deadlines following promises to become a major employer of local talent.Despite Ohio’s governor, Mike DeWine, recently claiming there was no need to worry about the future of the LG-Honda battery plant, on 28 October, Honda announced it was reducing production at plants across Ohio due to a semiconductor chip shortage.While more than two dozen jobs are available at the Jeffersonville site, according to the LG-Honda plant’s hiring website, it’s a far cry from the more than 2,000 positions cited by officials previously.For Amy Wright, policies coming out of the White House are having a clear effect on residents of rural Ohio. As an organizer of four local No Kings protests against Trump’s policies she’s noticed a change in the people who are coming to the rallies.“We’ve had more and more people who have voted for [Trump] show up and say: ‘This is not good, this is not what we voted for,’” she says. More

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      Donald Trump says rare earths dispute ‘settled’ after Xi Jinping meeting in South Korea – live updates

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      In case you’re just joining us, here’s a rundown on what happened at the high-stakes talks between Donald Trump and Xi Jinping in South Korea.Trump said afterwards that Washington’s dispute with Beijing over the supply of rare earths had been settled, China would resume buying US soybeans and Washington would reduce its tariffs on China.Trump shook hands with Xi after their talks and boarded Air Force One to return to Washington, saying onboard that the meeting had been a “great success”.He told reporters the Chinese leader had agreed to work “very hard” to prevent the production of the synthetic opioid fentanyl – blamed for many American deaths – and in exchange the US would reduce fentanyl-linked tariffs from 20% to 10%, lowering the overall tariff burden from 57% to 47%.Trump also said he would visit China in April and that Xi would come to the US some time afterwards.In key developments:

      Xi said after the meeting that he and Trump had reached “consensus” on trade issues, Chinese state media reported. Xi said both sides should “finalise follow-up work as soon as possible, maintain and implement the consensus and provide tangible results to set minds at ease about the economies of China, the United States and the world”.

      Trump said they had agreed to work together on Ukraine, adding that the war “came up very strongly” as an issue. “We talked about it for a long time, and we’re both going to work together to see if we can get something.”

      Taiwan was not discussed at the meeting, Trump said. Earlier, both leaders ignored a question about the self-governing democracy, amid concern in Taipei that Trump may be willing to make concessions to Xi.

      Before the meeting at Gimhae airbase in Busan, South Korea – their first face-to-face meeting in six years – Trump and Xi shook hands in front of their countries’ flags and the US president said: “We’re going to have a very successful meeting.” He added: “He’s a tough negotiator – that’s not good,” before patting the Chinese leader on the back.

      Trump had suggested before the meeting – at which their delegations faced each other across a negotiating table – that it could last three or four hours. The two leaders parted after one hour and 40 minutes.

      Xi said China and the US should “stay on the right course” and “be partners and friends” and should “work together to accomplish more great and concrete things for the good of our two countries and the whole world”.

      The optimism in Busan was in stark contrast to the recent exchanges of aggressive rhetoric over trade that had threatened to set the US and Chinese on an economic collision course, with potentially disastrous consequences globally. China’s yuan retreated from a near one-year high against the dollar on Thursday after the meeting met expectations but gave investors few new reasons for trade optimism.

      Minutes before meeting Xi, Trump said in a social media post that he had ordered the Pentagon to start nuclear weapons testingat the same level of China and Russia. He did not respond to a reporter’s question about the decision as he and Xi began their summit.With Justin McCurry and agencies
      Donald Trump has used his Truth Social platform to declare the trade tensions with China are “very close to being resolved” as he urges US farmers to go out and buy “more land and bigger tractors” as Beijing ends its soya bean embargo.The US exports about £18bn worth of soya bean a year, half of which goes to China, but China stopped buying the product leaving Trump contemplating a multi-billion dollar bailout for farmers.Trump said on Truth Social:
      I had a truly great meeting with President Xi of China. There is enormous respect between our two Countries, and that will only be enhanced with what just took place.
      We agreed on many things, with others, even of high importance, being very close to resolved. I was extremely honored by the fact that President Xi authorized China to begin the purchase of massive amounts of Soybeans, Sorghum, and other Farm products.
      Our Farmers will be very happy! In fact, as I said once before during my first Administration, Farmers should immediately go out and buy more land and larger tractors.
      The deal covers Fentanyl, rare earths and critical minerals such as refined lithium used in electric vehicle car batteries – a sector in which China dominates the world.China has also agreed to liberalise the sale of magnets used in everything from dishwasher doors to car window openings, he said.It will also buy oil and gas from Alaska, Trump added.Donald Trump had first laid out his intention to pursue nuclear arms control efforts in February, saying he wanted to begin discussions with both Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping about imposing limits on their arsenals, reports Reuters.Most major nuclear powers except North Korea stopped explosive nuclear testing in the 1990s. North Korea conducted its last nuclear test in 2017. Russia’s last confirmed test was in 1990, followed by the last US test in 1992, and by China’s in 1996.The reaction to Donald Trump’s announcement on nuclear testing was swift in the US also.Representative Dina Titus, a Democrat from Nevada, said on X:
      I’ll be introducing legislation to put a stop to this.
      Daryl Kimball, director of the Arms Control Association, said it would take the US at least 36 months to resume contained nuclear tests underground at the former test site in Nevada. Kimball said on X:
      Trump is misinformed and out of touch. The US has no technical, military, or political reason to resume nuclear explosive testing for the first time since 1992.
      Apart from providing technical data, a US test would be seen in Russia and China as a deliberate assertion of Washington’s strategic power. Russian president Vladimir Putin has repeatedly said that Russia will test if the US does.In August, Trump said he had discussed nuclear arms control with Putin and wanted China to get involved. Beijing responded by saying it was “unreasonable and unrealistic” to ask the country to join in nuclear disarmament negotiations with the two countries, since its arsenal was much smaller.Reuters has some reaction to Donald Trump’s post on Truth Social about the US defence department to immediately begin nuclear testing on a par with Russia and China’s testing (see 1.49am GMT)A senior Russian lawmaker said Trump’s decision would herald a new era of unpredictability and open confrontation, state news agency RIA reported, while China’s foreign ministry called for the US to abide by its commitment to a moratorium on nuclear testing and uphold the global strategic balance and stability.It was not immediately clear whether Trump was referring to nuclear-explosive testing, which would be carried out by the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), or flight testing of nuclear-capable missiles. No nuclear power, other than North Korea, has carried out explosive testing in more than 25 years.Russian senator Vladimir Dzhabarov said on Thursday that US president Donald Trump should negotiate with Russia, rather than imposing sanctions on it, state news agency RIA cited him as saying.US president Donald Trump said on Thursday he has given South Korea approval to build a nuclear-powered submarine, a dramatic move that would admit Seoul to a small club of nations possessing such vessels.The submarine will be built in a Philadelphia shipyard, where South Korean firms have increased investment, Trump wrote on social media.Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform:I have given them approval to build a Nuclear Powered Submarine, rather than the old fashioned, and far less nimble, diesel powered Submarines that they have now.The US president, who met South Korean president Lee Jae Myung and other regional leaders during his visit, also said Seoul had agreed to buy vast quantities of US oil and gas.Trump and Lee finalised details of a fraught trade deal at a summit in South Korea on Wednesday. Lee had also been seeking US permission for South Korea to reprocess nuclear fuel.However, South Korea’s industry ministry said its officials had not been involved in any detailed discussions about building the submarines in Philadelphia.While South Korea has a sophisticated shipbuilding industry, Trump did not spell out where the propulsion technology would come from for a nuclear-powered submarine, which only a handful of countries currently possess.One opposition lawmaker said on Thursday the Philadelphia shipyard does not have facilities to build submarines, reports Reuters.Asked about Trump’s submarine announcement, Hanwha Ocean, which owns the shipyard with another Hanwha affiliate, said it was ready to cooperate with both countries and provide support with advanced technology, but did not mention specifics.Defence minister Ahn Gyu-back told lawmakers that plans called for South Korea to build its own submarins and modular reactors, and receive a supply of enriched uranium fuel from the US.US president Donald Trump said on Thursday that China agreed to begin the process of purchasing US energy.Trump said in a Truth Social post:
      China also agreed that they will begin the process of purchasing American Energy. In fact, a very large scale transaction may take place concerning the purchase of Oil and Gas from the Great State of Alaska. Chris Wright, Doug Burgum, and our respective Energy teams will be meeting to see if such an Energy Deal can be worked out.
      Chinese state media reported shortly after the meeting that the US and China had reached a “consensus” on trade, but the language was a little vague.We’ve now had more information which confirms the consensus Xi referred to in the meeting was actually developed by the US and China trade negotiation teams which met last Sunday in Kuala Lumpur. After that meeting we were told they had developed a “framework” for trade deals, including the forthcoming sale of TikTok.A short time ago, China’s commerce ministry told reporters that consensus included:

      The US will remove the 10% fentanyl tariff on goods from mainland China, Hong Kong and Macao, and will extend its suspension of a 24% equitable tariff for another year. In return China will “adjust its countermeasures against the aforementioned US tariffs accordingly”. Both sides also agreed to extend certain tariff exclusions.

      The US will suspend its 50% penetration rule on export controls, and in return China will suspend its own export control measures – understood to be its ban on sales of rare earths to foreign countries for suspected dual-use purposes.

      The US will suspend for one year its Section 301 (harmful trade practises) investigations against China’s maritime, logistics, and shipbuilding industries for one year. In return China will suspend its related countermeasures.
      The ministry said the two sides also reached agreement on issues including fentanyl control, the expansion of agricultural trade, and “handling individual cases involving relevant companies”, which could refer to trade blacklists or investigations against US or American firms based in the other country.“Both sides further affirmed the outcomes of the Madrid trade consultations, with the US side making positive commitments in areas such as investment, and China agreeing to work with the US to properly resolve issues related to TikTok.”Additional research by Lillian YangChina’s defence ministry has said Beijing maintains an open attitude towards developing military relations with the US.Zhang Xiaogang, a spokesperson for the defence ministry, told a press briefing that China hopes the US will work with them to jointly build equal, just, peaceful and stable military ties.Oil prices have fallen slightly as investors digest the new trade deal between Trump and Xi.The two world leaders met in South Korea this morning, with Trump agreeing to reduce tariffs on China from 57% to 47% in a one-year deal, in exchange for Beijing resuming purchases of US soybeans, the continuation of rare earth exports and a crackdown on the trade of fentanyl.Brent crude futures dropped by 0.31% to $64.72 a barrel this morning, while US West Texas Intermediate crude futures dropped by 0.33% to $60.28.The drops suggest that some investors are sceptical that the new agreement marks an end to the trade war. But president Trump has said his discussions with Xi were “fantastic”, and emphasised their “great relationship”.You can follow more market reaction to the meeting in our business live blog:Earlier we reported that Donald Trump said he would visit China next year.A Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson has now confirmed that, saying the trip has been scheduled for April.In case you’re just joining us, here’s a rundown on what happened at the high-stakes talks between Donald Trump and Xi Jinping in South Korea.Trump said afterwards that Washington’s dispute with Beijing over the supply of rare earths had been settled, China would resume buying US soybeans and Washington would reduce its tariffs on China.Trump shook hands with Xi after their talks and boarded Air Force One to return to Washington, saying onboard that the meeting had been a “great success”.He told reporters the Chinese leader had agreed to work “very hard” to prevent the production of the synthetic opioid fentanyl – blamed for many American deaths – and in exchange the US would reduce fentanyl-linked tariffs from 20% to 10%, lowering the overall tariff burden from 57% to 47%.Trump also said he would visit China in April and that Xi would come to the US some time afterwards.In key developments:

      Xi said after the meeting that he and Trump had reached “consensus” on trade issues, Chinese state media reported. Xi said both sides should “finalise follow-up work as soon as possible, maintain and implement the consensus and provide tangible results to set minds at ease about the economies of China, the United States and the world”.

      Trump said they had agreed to work together on Ukraine, adding that the war “came up very strongly” as an issue. “We talked about it for a long time, and we’re both going to work together to see if we can get something.”

      Taiwan was not discussed at the meeting, Trump said. Earlier, both leaders ignored a question about the self-governing democracy, amid concern in Taipei that Trump may be willing to make concessions to Xi.

      Before the meeting at Gimhae airbase in Busan, South Korea – their first face-to-face meeting in six years – Trump and Xi shook hands in front of their countries’ flags and the US president said: “We’re going to have a very successful meeting.” He added: “He’s a tough negotiator – that’s not good,” before patting the Chinese leader on the back.

      Trump had suggested before the meeting – at which their delegations faced each other across a negotiating table – that it could last three or four hours. The two leaders parted after one hour and 40 minutes.

      Xi said China and the US should “stay on the right course” and “be partners and friends” and should “work together to accomplish more great and concrete things for the good of our two countries and the whole world”.

      The optimism in Busan was in stark contrast to the recent exchanges of aggressive rhetoric over trade that had threatened to set the US and Chinese on an economic collision course, with potentially disastrous consequences globally. China’s yuan retreated from a near one-year high against the dollar on Thursday after the meeting met expectations but gave investors few new reasons for trade optimism.

      Minutes before meeting Xi, Trump said in a social media post that he had ordered the Pentagon to start nuclear weapons testingat the same level of China and Russia. He did not respond to a reporter’s question about the decision as he and Xi began their summit.With Justin McCurry and agencies
      On his Truth Social account before the meeting, Trump had described the Busan catch-up as the “G2”, a nod to the US and China being the world’s biggest economies and a play on the names of other formal multilateral groupings like the G7 and G20.Even though it’s not an official name, “G2” has been welcomed by some Chinese people online.“Clearly, the core of the global order is the US-China relationship”, said one popular post on Weibo.Another said:
      Americans’ attitudes are shifting quickly; they are gradually adapting to the idea that the US and China are starting to stand on equal footing, and the world is big enough to accommodate a G2.
      With Lillian Yang More

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      Meta reports mixed financial results amid spree of AI hiring and spending

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      Meta reported mixed financial results for the third quarter of 2025. The company brought in record quarterly revenue but reported a major tax bill that dampened earnings per share, the company announced on Wednesday. The financial results come as Meta ends a multibillion-dollar hiring spree focused on artificial intelligence talent.The tech giant earned $51.24bn in quarterly revenue, beating Wall Street’s expectations and the company’s own projections for third-quarter sales. However, it reported earnings per share (EPS) of $1.05, far below Wall Street expectations of $6.70 in EPS. The major drop was due to a one-time non-cash income tax charge of $15.93bn. The EPS would have been $7.25 without this one-time charge, the company said.The report, and the scheduled investor call, gives investors another opportunity to find out whether the company’s lavish spending on AI infrastructure is justified. The company projected full-year total expenses would be between $116 to $118bn, upping the lower end of the range from $114bn. The company also expects 2025 capital expenditures to be between $70 and $72bn, up from a previously projected range of $66 and $72bn. Meta said its fourth-quarter revenue would likely fall somewhere between $56 and $59bn.“We had a strong quarter for our business and our community,” said Mark Zuckerberg, Meta’s founder and CEO. “Meta Superintelligence Labs is off to a great start and we continue to lead the industry in AI glasses. If we deliver even a fraction of the opportunity ahead, then the next few years will be the most exciting period in our history.”Jesse Cohen, senior analyst at Investing.com, said the latest report reveals “the growing tension between the company’s massive AI infrastructure investments and investor expectations for near-term returns”.It’s the first financial update since Meta said it planned to lay off 600 staffers from its AI unit – the same unit the company went on a spending and hiring spree to restructure and fill with the top AI talent from other companies. The company said the layoffs were an effort to reduce the bloat within the company’s “super-intelligence” unit and brought the number of employees there down to just under 3,000.Investors will also likely be hearing more about the company’s latest move to fund and support the development of its network of data centers. Earlier this month, the company announced a new joint venture with Blue Owl Capital that would help the firms build and finance the new $27bn Hyperion data center campus in Louisiana, the biggest Meta is involved in developing.The company’s stock has been on a steady rise over the past six months. Its previous two earnings reports have beaten Wall Street expectations. The wider US stock market likewise reached record highs the week.Meta also launched its new Ray-Ban Display glasses last month, which feature a screen embedded in the lenses, and analysts are eager to hear sales figures. Meta’s original camera glasses, simply dubbed Meta Ray-Bans, proved to be a popular gadget. Both types of glasses have already prompted privacy concerns. While Meta has designed the glasses not to work if a light that notifies people that the glasses are recording is covered, a $60 modification can disable the light, 404 Media reported.“I suspect these glasses, in particular, will predominantly appeal to early ‘tech-curious’ adopters, and that scheduled demos will far outpace sales,” said Mike Proulx, Forrester VP, research director.On the advertising side, Meta lost its accreditation from the Media Rating Council, a non-profit that sets industry wide standards for brand safety, after the company decided to pull out of the organization’s annual audits. The accreditation signals to advertisers that the content on the platform that their ads may appear next to would not be harmful to their brand. Meta received the accreditation just four months before it was stripped.Analysts were optimistic that the loss of accreditation would not ultimately hurt Meta’s ability to attract advertisers.“While this may raise eyebrows among advertisers, it won’t deter them from investing in Meta due to its sheer audience reach and brand reliance,” Proulx said. “Brands will overlook potential brand safety risks as long as their Meta media investments continue to perform.” More

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      Haitians helped boost Springfield’s economy – now they’re fleeing in fear of Trump

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      Every morning, Alicia Mercado makes the 50-minute drive from her home in Columbus to Springfield, where she runs the Adasa Latin Market store. She opened the business next to a Haitian restaurant in 2023, having spotted a gap in the market for Caribbean and Latin foods – the neighborhood’s Haitian population was booming at the time.But over the past year, she says her business, which includes an international money transfer kiosk, has taken a major hit.“About 80 to 90% of our customers were Haitians; now that’s down to about 60% over the past six months,” she says. “No more people are moving to Springfield.”Mercado’s experiences are being echoed around the city of 58,000 people that garnered international attention last year when Donald Trump falsely claimed during a presidential debate that immigrants were eating people’s pets.Until the end of last year, Springfield was something of a surprise economic juggernaut.A report from the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland found that it ranked second among all Ohio cities for job growth since the pandemic.New housing projects, worth hundreds of millions of dollars, are among the biggest investments the city has ever made.That growth was partly fueled by the availability of manufacturing and blue-collar jobs that were eagerly filled by the more than 15,000 Haitian immigrants who had moved to the city over the past eight years, fueling businesses such as Mercado’s.Local companies got cheap, reliable labor, while Haitian workers received stable income, health insurance and a safe place to live. Many bought homes and invested their hard-earned income into improving the city’s housing stock that, in turn, padded the city’s tax coffers. For the most part, it was a win for all involved.But since then, the city’s economic fortunes have spiraled.Springfield businesses, big and small, are struggling in the aftermath of thousands of Haitians fleeing the town after the Trump administration’s termination of the humanitarian parole program for citizens of several countries, including Haiti, in June. On top of that, the government has ended temporary protected status, affecting the immigration status of more than half a million Haitians, which comes into effect on or before 5 February 2026.The Department of Homeland Security says conditions in Haiti have improved to allow US-based Haitians to return. However, violence prompted Haiti’s government in August to issue a state of emergency in parts of the country. The US Department of State currently has a level four “do not travel” advisory for Haiti.The consequences of these moves are being keenly felt in places such as Springfield.Since January, when the Trump administration took office, the percentage of manufacturing jobs in Springfield has been falling by double digits as the civilian labor force also declines, something thought to be partly fueled by Haitians leaving the city due to fear of the administration’s anti-immigrant rhetoric.At Topre America, an automotive parts manufacturing company north-east of downtown Springfield, dozens of jobs that Haitians had once filled – forklift drivers, supervisors and stackers – have remained unfilled on the company’s employment webpage for months.Unemployment has ticked up slightly in the city – but still at a rate twice the state’s increase – in the 12 months since Trump’s racist comments.In a city where income tax makes up the majority of municipal funding, the loss of thousands of Haitian workers means fewer dollars for public services for all residents.“Our tax revenue, which is the backbone of our general fund, has flattened. After years of strong growth post-pandemic, the rebound is behind us,” Springfield’s city finance director, Katie Eviston, reported at a city commission public meeting in June.Previous estimates had tracked that 2025 would see a 3.5% increase in income tax funds for the city. By June, that anticipated growth, however, had been wiped out in what Eviston said was a “level of decline [that] hasn’t occurred since the early days of the Covid shutdown”.Moreover, the city faces a worrying $4.25m financial hole due to the cancellation of a host of Biden-era programs and grants by the Trump administration.Springfield and its businesses aren’t alone in dealing with the fallout of the Trump administration’s immigration policies.Experts say it has consequences for businesses and companies right across the country. In June, the Association of Equipment Manufacturers (AEM) said that ending visas for international workers would leave 85,000 jobs unfilled.“Stripping [immigrants’] ability to work and threatening them with removal is not just a human cost; it is an economic one,” an AEM executive wrote in the Washington Examiner.Small communities in Indiana, Pennsylvania and elsewhere in Ohio that enjoyed an economic rebound in the aftermath of the pandemic are also experiencing depressed purchasing power due to White House-fueled job cuts.“Trump’s immigration policy slowed inflows. Suddenly, more firms have seen their immigrant worker supplies decline, forcing them to pay more to attract native workers, thereby placing upward pressure on inflation,” says Mark Muro, a senior fellow at the Brookings Metro thinktank.“This, combined with Trump’s tariffs, has created serious upward price pressure along with the rise in labor costs – not a great combination for many US producers in the heartland.”Without the ability to work, many Haitians are leaving the US.According to the Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada, more than 26,000 Haitians sought asylum there in the first six months of 2025, many of whom are thought to have fled the US. By contrast, just 21,756 claims were made for all of 2024.Many Haitians in Springfield, however, are stuck in place, without jobs and with bills mounting up.“A lot of people have work problems – we have lost half our customers,” says Youdins Solon, who helps out at his family’s Keket Bongou Caribbean restaurant in south-east Springfield. Solon moved to Springfield last March, having lived in Florida for 18 months prior. But by the summer, he lost his job at a local Amazon distribution center when his immigration status was revoked. He says he is one of hundreds who have been laid off.“I’m lucky because I have my family here, but for a lot of people, they moved [out of Springfield] because they were afraid of the situation.”But for those who have staked their businesses on a thriving immigrant community in Springfield, it’s not easy to pack up and leave.“We order Haitian food from companies in Florida and Chicago every two weeks,” says Mercado, “but now, that’s greatly reduced.” More