World
‘A historic moment’: Donald Trump unveils sweeping ‘reciprocal’ tariffs
United States President Donald Trump has unveiled his long-anticipated “reciprocal tariffs”, in a move that is expected to rattle global trade relations.
On Wednesday, Trump appeared in the White House Rose Garden, where the colonnades had been draped with large US flags, to sign the executive orders authorising the tariffs.
He framed the tax hikes as a blow against unfair trade practices, painting a portrait of the US as a country exploited by even its closest allies.
“For decades, our country has been looted, pillaged, raped and plundered by nations near and far, both friend and foe alike,” Trump told an audience of manufacturing workers, cabinet members and journalists.
“ Foreign leaders have stolen our jobs. Foreign cheaters have ransacked our factories. And foreign scavengers have torn apart our once-beautiful American dream.”
But he proclaimed that Wednesday would mark a turning point in US history, marking an end to the “vicious attacks” he said the country had weathered.
“ April 2, 2025, will forever be remembered as the day American industry was reborn, the day America’s destiny was reclaimed,” Trump said.
Invoking the International Emergency Economic Powers Act of 1977, Trump announced a 10-percent tariff on all countries, scheduled to take effect on April 5.
Then, he revealed there would be “individualised” tariffs for countries that have the largest trade deficits with the US. Those tariffs would come into effect four days later, on April 9.
Trump explained that his team calculated the “individualised” tariffs by taking half of what he claimed those countries had charged the US for its exports.
“ We will charge them approximately half of what they are — and have — been charging us. So the tariffs will be not a full reciprocal,” Trump said. “I could have done that, I guess, but it would’ve been tough for a lot of countries. We didn’t want to do that.”
He then beckoned Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick to the Rose Garden podium with a chart that illustrated some of the upcoming tariffs.
The graph showed the European Union was headed for 20-percent tariffs. China, meanwhile, had been assigned 34 percent. Vietnam would receive 46 percent, and Thailand 36 percent.
Noticeably absent were Mexico and Canada, the US’s two largest trading partners and its immediate neighbours.
Those countries, the White House explained, would remain under punitive tariffs, designed to bring them in line with Trump’s policies on border security.
All goods not covered under the US-Mexico-Canada free-trade agreement would face a 25-percent tariff, with the exception of energy products. They face 10-percent tariffs instead.
Wednesday’s announcement, while widely expected, still sent shockwaves across the globe.
“Long story short, this is a historic moment,” said Dan Ciuriak, the director of the Canada-based Ciuriak Consulting firm, giving a nod to the isolationist policies of the Trump administration.
“I think it will reshape the world. I think we are seeing the possibility of the emergence of something like a ‘Fortress North America’.”
He noted that poorer countries in places like Southeast Asia appear to be among the hardest hit by the impending tariffs.
“ The developing countries have been hit by very, very high tariffs. And that will have geopolitical ramifications,” Ciuriak said.
“These countries are the poorest in the world, and the notion that they have been getting rich on the back of American workers is not very tenable. I don’t think that this is going to play well in the rest of the world. So we will see, I think, tectonic shifts in international relations as a result of that.”
Within minutes of Trump’s announcement, the international backlash started to erupt, with world leaders denouncing the sweeping tariffs as unjustified.
“The unilateral action that the Trump administration has taken today against every nation in the world does not come as a surprise,” Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said in a news conference. “But let me be clear: They are totally unwarranted.”
Australia faces 10-percent tariffs from the Trump administration. Like many leaders, Albanese pledged to protect his country’s workers from the repercussions of those taxes.
“The administration’s tariffs have no basis in logic, and they go against the basis of our two nations’ partnership. This is not the act of a friend,” he added.
Ireland’s Taoiseach Micheal Martin, meanwhile, offered a broad message warning of the damage to both global trade relations and to the US’s own consumers.
“I strongly believe that tariffs benefit no one. They’re bad for the world economy. They hurt people. They hurt businesses,” he said. “So I regret deeply the decision of the US administration this evening to levy a tariff of 20 percent on all goods imported from the European Union.”
Even Canada, which was exempt from the so-called reciprocal tariffs, chimed in with its outrage over the US’s broader policy of lashing out at longtime trading partners.
“During this crisis, we must act with purpose and force,” Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney wrote on social media. “My government will fight U.S. tariffs, protect Canadian workers and industries, and build the strongest economy in the G7.”
Canada is among the countries that have pledged to respond to the Trump administration’s tariffs with retaliatory measures. Other countries, including Mexico, have demurred: Earlier on Wednesday, Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum said she would avoid pursuing “tit-for-tat” tariffs.
Experts say tariffs — a kind of import tax — very often fall on the shoulders of consumers.
Trump has framed his tariffs as a means of reducing trade deficits and bringing foreign manufacturing back to US shores. He also said he plans to use the tariffs to offset the US debt and pave the way for tax cuts.
But critics point out that trade deficits — when the money spent on exports is greater than earnings from imports — are not necessarily a bad thing. They can be a sign of consumer habits or a strong currency.
Opponents of the tariffs also argue that it will take years for new factories to be established in the US, making any economic benefit a distant prospect.
Reporting from the New York Stock Exchange, Al Jazeera correspondent Kristen Saloomey noted that market volatility has been an issue for investors this week, as they braced for the tariffs and the resulting economic uncertainty.
“President Donald Trump’s tariff announcement came after stock markets in the United States had closed in positive territory and immediately sent the futures market into negative territory, signalling another shaky start to the markets on Thursday,” Saloomey said.
What might follow Trump’s announcement, she added, is unclear. Economists have been watching stock market indexes like the S&P 500 for signs of what’s to come.
“Market analysts have been disagreeing as to whether or not we’ve seen the worst of this policy’s impact on markets,” Saloomey explained.
“Some have argued that — with a 10-percent drop in the S&P last month — markets had already priced in the cost of doing business with these tariffs. Others have warned that things might get worse with inflation and even a recession possible in the future as a result of these policies.”
But Trump and his allies have brushed aside fears of an economic downturn. From the Rose Garden, Trump offered a preemptive rebuttal to the foreign leaders who might “complain”.
“To all of the foreign presidents, prime ministers, kings, queens, ambassadors and everyone else who will soon be calling to ask for exemptions from these tariffs, I say: Terminate your own tariffs. Drop your barriers. Don’t manipulate your currencies,” Trump said.
He also signalled he felt the tariffs were relatively generous, given the abuse he felt the US had faced.
“We are being very kind. We’re kind people, very kind,” he said, before adding: “You are not so kind when you get ripped off.”
A magnitude 7.1 earthquake shook north-central Venezuela on Wednesday afternoon, near capital Caracas, with residents in neighboring Colombia also reporting feeling tremors.
Residents in Caracas rushed to evacuate as the quake shook buildings. One witness said that cracks had formed up the side of their apartment and glass in the entryway had shattered.
The U.S. Tsunami Warning System issued a tsunami threat for Puerto Rico and the U.S. and British Virgin Islands following the earthquake, adding that islands off the coast of Venezuela – Aruba, Curacao and Bonaire – could also be hit by hazardous waves.
(Reporting by Reuters staff; Editing by Chris Reese and Daina Beth Solomon)
World
Israel slams UN report as ‘political blood libel’ for alleging deliberate targeting of Palestinian children
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Israel reacted angrily over a new United Nations’ Commission of Inquiry report alleging the Jewish state had engaged in the “deliberate targeting of Palestinian children.”
Prior reports from the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, Including East Jerusalem, and Israel garnered accusations of antisemitism and incitement to violence.
The latest report, released Wednesday, said that, “based on the evidence reviewed, and consistent with its previous reports, the Commission finds on reasonable grounds that the Israeli authorities and the Israeli security forces have continued to commit the crime of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes in the Gaza Strip and war crimes in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem.”
UN EXPERT REPEATS ISRAEL ‘GENOCIDE’ CLAIMS AFTER US CALLS FOR HER REMOVAL
A woman kneels by a memorial site in Kibbutz Kfar Aza, southern Israel, as the community commemorates members killed, taken hostage, or who died in captivity following the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack. (Hannah McKay/Reuters)
Israel’s Ambassador to the U.N., Danny Danon, told Fox News Digital that “this is not an investigative report. It is a political blood libel disguised as a U.N. document. This commission reaches its conclusions before examining the facts and repeatedly publishes reports that serve one purpose only: to vilify Israel. Instead of addressing Hamas’ crimes, the October 7 massacre, the hostages, and Hamas’ cynical use of children and civilians as human shields, the commission has once again chosen to place Israel in the dock.”
Danon added that “Israel will continue to defend its citizens and fight terrorism, regardless of how many false reports are published by fringe actors within U.N. institutions.”
Representatives from the COI and Human Rights Council did not respond to Fox News Digital’s requests for comment on the concerns addressed about the report.
Asked for a reaction from U.N. chief Antonio Guterres to the report, his spokesman, Stéphane Dujarric, told Fox News Digital “it’s not his report to comment on.”
ISRAELI AMBASSADOR LASHES OUT AT UN OFFICIAL, CONDEMNS UK, FRANCE, CANADA STATEMENT ON AID
A bloodied handprint stains a wall inside a house in the Nir Oz kibbutz near the Gaza border after a Hamas attack days earlier. (Alexi J. Rosenfeld/Getty Images)
Srinivasan Muralidhar, Chair of the Commission told reporters during a press briefing that, “The evidence shows that Palestinian children have been deliberately targeted and killed by the Israeli security forces.” He said “Even after the October 2025 ceasefire, children continue to be killed and seriously injured, with continued disregard by Israel for the ceasefire and for the protection owed to Palestinian children under international law.”
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Anne Bayefsky, President of Human Rights Voices and Director of the Touro Institute on Human Rights and the Holocaust, told Fox News Digital that the COI’s “sham ‘inquiry’ makes the totally unjustified claim of legal authority, while at the same time systematically violating every conceivable legal rule of fairness, impartiality, and due process. Since its creation in 2021, every call for submissions, every consultation and every hearing held, has been contrived to take seriously the allegations of only one side – trashing literally millions of data points both historical and current to the contrary.”
She said, “the first COI report focused on children…fails to even mention the sickening murders of 9-month-old Kfir Bibas and 4-year-old Ariel Bibas.” She says that “also ignored in the COI report are the hundreds of thousands of Israeli children traumatized by October 7th, by the subsequent mass displacement, and by the excruciating longing for parents absent while defending their country against an inhumane foe.”
Photos of the Bibas family and Oded Lifshitz, 84, who were kidnapped during the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack and later killed, are displayed next to candles in the dining room in Kibbutz Nir Oz, Israel, on Feb. 25, 2025, the day of Lifshitz’s funeral after their bodies were returned under a ceasefire agreement. (Amir Cohen/Reuters)
NETANYAHU SHOWS PICTURE OF BIBAS FAMILY AT COMBAT OFFICERS’ GRADUATION: ‘REMEMBER WHAT WE ARE FIGHTING FOR’
Bayefsky complained that though the current COI report “was produced weeks ago,” the COI members “deliberately withheld” the report when appearing before the Human Rights Council last week. “They didn’t publish it until June 23, minutes prior to holding a stage-managed press conference designed to avoid accountability for their wild, unverified accusations,” she claimed.
Another member of the commission told reporters in Geneva that, “There can be no doubt in anyone who reads today’s report that every international legal norm has been violated by the actions of the Israeli authorities towards Palestinian children and they need to be held accountable.”
United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres speaks during a Security Council meeting at the United Nations headquarters in New York on April 18, 2024. (Yuki Iwamura/AP)
Jonathan Conricus, senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and former Israel Defense Forces spokesperson, told Fox News Digital that the latest report contains “no evidence to support any of the claims against Israel” and is filled with “inconsistencies in methodology.”
He said the report represents “an escalation, and it marks maybe the most severe attempt by the U.N. ecosystem to delegitimize Israel.”
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Salo Aizenberg, director of media watchdog group HonestReporting, who has researched and debunked many of the claims made by those claiming genocide in Gaza, told Fox News Digital that the COI’s “report is built on a fictional battlefield where Hamas and [Palestinian Islamic Jihad] do not exist, and where hospitals are treated as purely civilian spaces despite extensive evidence of their military use and infiltration by Hamas operatives. It then accuses Israel of deliberately targeting children without producing a single incident supported by evidence of intent.”
Conricus said the report erases “Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad from the battlefield to create the false kind of perception that Israel was operating out of wanton aggression in a vacuum without there ever being a need for Israeli operations and this is a reoccurring theme.” He also noted that this report and others “use the statements of medical professionals as evidence, even when it’s way beyond their medical expertise, specifically when it comes to how wounds were inflicted.”
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Europe is breaking heat records. These extreme events pose a threat to people’s health both at home and at work. The European Trade Union Institute (ETUI), a research centre affiliated with the European Trade Union Confederation, presented a report on Thursday laying out solutions aimed at safeguarding workers’ health in the face of climate change.
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One of the report’s authors emphasised that the danger is not limited to the south of the continent.
“The problem is the worst in the south, of course; that’s where we see most of the accidents. At the same time, though, we have been recording the highest increases in accidents in central and northern Europe,” said Andreas Flouris, professor of physiology at the University of Thessaly.
“The south is already hot, and it’s a problem. But the centre and the north are catching up very fast.”
According to the report, around 130 million workers across Europe are exposed to workplace heat stress, resulting in 277,000 related injuries and 230 deaths annually.
An EU-OSHA (European Agency for Safety and Health at Work) survey from 2025 found that around one in five workers in the EU reported exposure to extreme heat at work in the previous 12 months. Climate change is increasing the frequency and intensity of these heatwaves, which affect health and reduce work capacity.
“The optimum temperature to work at is 16°C. Beyond that, for every 1°C rise, there is an average productivity loss of around 2%,” Flouris told Euronews.
“During an average heatwave in southern Europe, productivity losses reach around 20 to 25%. In central Europe, the figure is between 8 and 14%, and even in Scandinavia, we have recorded losses of 3 to 6% due to heatwaves over the course of a year,” he added.
Based on scientific evidence, the report’s authors propose that the European Union introduce legislation specifically targeting heat risks in the workplace.
“What we propose is a mandatory heat risk assessment, in order to oblige employers to assess and identify the risks related to heat exposure in their workplace. Only by knowing what we are dealing with can we protect workers and prevent the risks associated with heat exposure at work,” said Marouane Laabbas-el-Guennouni, a researcher at the European Trade Union Institute.
The report also proposes using a broader index to assess heat stress exposure. The authors argue that temperature should not be the sole indicator, and that humidity and wind speed should also be factored in when determining exposure levels.
The researchers emphasised that heatwaves are a measurable, predictable, and therefore preventable phenomenon.
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