As President Donald Trump ramps up tariff threats on US trading partners, his administration is taking aim at a tactic said to be used by Chinese companies to dodge the levies by moving goods through third countries.The issue is “transshipping,” or having products pass through a country to avoid harsher trade barriers elsewhere, a practice Washington has accused Chinese companies of.”Goods transshipped to evade a higher Tariff will be subject to that higher Tariff,” Trump warned in letters issued since Monday, days after unveiling a trade pact with Vietnam that promised steeper duties for such goods too.”The clause is less about Vietnam per se and more about signaling that rules-of-origin games across the broader Asian production network will attract a premium penalty,” said Barath Harithas, senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.He told AFP the White House is likely making two points at once: closing a back door to China and putting the rest of Asia on notice.Noting that Vietnam was “the single biggest winner from Chinese supply-chain diversion since the first Trump tariffs in 2018,” Harithas said the US administration is keen to avoid a repeat of this situation.Ten of the 14 countries first to receive Trump’s tariff letters this week were in Asia and mostly Southeast Asia, which sits between Chinese component suppliers and western consumer markets.”Washington’s message seems to be: ‘Either help us police Chinese evasion or absorb higher duties yourselves,'” Harithas said.- ‘Whack-a-mole’ -“I think it is clear that transshipment of Chinese goods so far this year is massive,” said Robin Brooks, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution.While there has been a drop in direct exports from China to the United States, this is “more than offset by” trade shifts elsewhere, he told AFP. In a recent report, Brooks noted that Chinese exports to both Thailand and Vietnam started surging “anomalously” in early 2025 as Trump began threatening widespread tariffs.It is unclear if all of these goods end up in the United States.But he cast doubt on the likelihood that domestic demand in both these countries rocketed right around the time that Washington imposed fresh duties, saying tariffs tend to instead bog down global trade due to uncertainty.Similarly, Chinese exports to the European Union, he said, also rose markedly in early 2025.”It’s a little bit like whack-a-mole,” Brooks said, adding that as long as Washington maintains different tariff rates for different countries, business will try to take advantage of the lowest levels.This in turn could be a reason that US inflation remains muted despite wide-ranging duties including a 10 percent rate on almost all US trading partners, and levels of up to 50 percent on sector-specific imports like steel and aluminum.Transshipment is not a China-specific issue. Concerns also flared in recent years over goods bound for Russia — skirting European export controls — after Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine.- Complications -But it is difficult to draw a line defining product origins.While Washington may take issue with Chinese-headquartered companies moving production facilities to third countries, for example, many firms genuinely export components for value-added manufacturing to take place.In Vietnam, raw materials from the world’s second biggest economy are the lifeblood of manufacturing industries. There is massive uncertainty over how an incoming 40 percent US tariff on goods passing through the country — double the 20 percent rate applied to Vietnamese goods — might be applied.Emily Benson, head of strategy at Minerva Technology Futures, said the Trump administration appears to be trying to simplify an otherwise complex web of legal definitions.”But whether or not that will work for other trading partners remains to be seen,” she said.While products from China might be impacted, she believes the White House’s intentions stretch beyond Beijing.”They’re trying to load a bunch of negotiations on to this reciprocal (tariffs) vehicle,” she added. “And they want other countries to play by the rules.”

Canada will face a 35 percent tariff on exports to the United States starting August 1, President Donald Trump said Thursday in a letter to Prime Minister Mark Carney.It was the latest of more than 20 such letters issued by Trump since Monday, as he continues to pursue his trade war threats against dozens of economies.Canada and the US are locked in trade negotiations in hopes to reach a deal by July 21 and the latest threat seemed to put that deadline in jeopardy.Canada and Mexico are both trying to find ways to satisfy Trump so that the free trade deal uniting the three countries – known as the USMCA – can be put back on track.The United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement replaced the previous NAFTA accord in July 2020, after Trump successfully pushed for a renegotiation during his first term in office.It was due to be reviewed by July next year, but Trump accelerated the process by launching his trade wars after he took office in January.Canadian and Mexican products were initially hard hit by 25 percent US tariffs, with a lower rate for Canadian energy.Trump targeted both neighbors saying they did not do enough on illegal immigration and the flow of illicit drugs across borders.But he eventually announced exemptions for goods entering his country under the USMCA, covering large swaths of products. Potash, used as fertilizer, got a lower rate as well.The letter on Thursday came despite what had been warming relations between Trump and Carney.The Canadian leader came to the White House on May 6 and had a cordial meeting with Trump in the Oval Office. They met again at the G7 summit last month in Canada, where leaders pushed Trump to back away from his punishing trade war. 

Mahmoud Khalil, one of the most prominent leaders of US pro-Palestinian campus protests, sued the Trump administration Thursday for $20 million over his arrest and detention by immigration agents.Khalil, a legal permanent resident in the United States who is married to a US citizen and has a US-born son, had been in custody following his arrest in March.The 30-year-old was freed from a federal immigration detention center in Louisiana last month, hours after a judge ordered his release on bail.”The administration carried out its illegal plan to arrest, detain, and deport Mr. Khalil ‘in a manner calculated to terrorize him and his family,’ the claim says,” according to the Center for Constitutional Rights which is backing Khalil.Khalil suffered “severe emotional distress, economic hardship (and) damage to his reputation,” the claim adds.The Columbia University graduate was a figurehead of student protests against US ally Israel’s war in Gaza, and the Trump administration labeled him a national security threat.Khalil called the lawsuit a “first step towards accountability.””Nothing can restore the 104 days stolen from me. The trauma, the separation from my wife, the birth of my first child that I was forced to miss,” he said in the statement.”There must be accountability for political retaliation and abuse of power.”Khalil has previously shared his “horrendous” experience in detention, where he “shared a dorm with over 70 men, absolutely no privacy, lights on all the time.”Assistant Department of Homeland Security Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said “the Trump Administration acted well within its statutory and constitutional authority to detain Khalil, as it does with any alien who advocates for violence, glorifies and supports terrorists, harasses Jews, and damages property.”President Donald Trump’s government has justified pushing for Khalil’s deportation by saying his continued presence in the United States could carry “potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences.”Khalil’s detention came amid Trump’s campaign against top US universities in recent months, with the president facing off against Columbia, Harvard and other schools over foreign student enrollment while cutting federal grants and threatening to strip accreditation. Beyond his legal case, Khalil’s team has expressed fear he could face threats out of detention.