Senior US and Chinese officials are in Switzerland this weekend for talks aimed at de-escalating a burgeoning trade war sparked by President Donald Trump’s sweeping tariff rollout, and fueled by strong retaliatory measures from Beijing. US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer are set to confer with China’s Vice Premier He Lifeng in the Swiss city of Geneva on Saturday and Sunday — the first such talks between the two sides since Trump slapped steep new levies on China last month.  Tariffs imposed on the Asian manufacturing giant since the start of the year currently total 145 percent, with cumulative duties on some goods reaching a staggering 245 percent.In retaliation, China slapped 125 percent levies on US goods, cementing what is effectively a trade embargo between the world’s two largest economies.Trump signaled on Friday that he could lower the sky-high tariffs on Chinese imports, taking to social media to suggest that an “80% Tariff on China seems right!” His press secretary Karoline Leavitt later clarified he would not do so unilaterally, adding that China would need to make concessions as well.- ‘A good sign’ -“The relationship is not good,” said Bill Reinsch, a senior advisor at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), referring to current ties between Washington and Beijing. “We have trade-prohibitive tariffs going in both directions. Relations are deteriorating,” said Reinsch, a longtime former member of the American government’s US-China Economic and Security Review Commission. “But the meeting is a good sign.””I think this is basically to show that both sides are talking, and that itself is very important,” Xu Bin, professor of economics and finance at the China Europe International Business School, told AFP. “Because China is the only country that has tit-for-tat tariffs against Trump’s tariffs.” Beijing has insisted the United States must lift tariffs first and vowed to defend its interests.Bessent has said the meetings in Switzerland would focus on “de-escalation” and not a “big trade deal.”The head of the Geneva-based World Trade Organization (WTO) on Friday welcomed the talks, calling them a “positive and constructive step toward de-escalation.””Sustained dialogue between the world’s two largest economies is critical to easing trade tensions, preventing fragmentation along geopolitical lines and safeguarding global growth,” WTO Director-General Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala said, according to a spokesperson.Swiss President Karin Keller-Sutter also sounded an upbeat note.”Yesterday the Holy Spirit was in Rome,” she said Friday, referring to the election of Pope Leo XIV. “We must hope that he will now go down to Geneva for the weekend.” – 10 percent ‘baseline’ – Bessent and He will meet two days after Trump unveiled a trade agreement with Britain, the first deal with any country since he unleashed a blitz of sweeping global tariffs last month.The five-page, non-legally binding document confirmed to nervous investors that the United States is willing to negotiate sector-specific relief from recent duties — in this case on British cars, steel and aluminum. In return, Britain agreed to open up its markets to US beef and other farm products.But a 10 percent baseline levy on most British goods remained intact, and Trump remains “committed” to keeping it in place for other countries in talks with the United States, Leavitt told reporters Friday. A few hours later, Trump appeared to contradict her, suggesting there could be some flexibility to the baseline — but only if the right deals could be reached. “There could be an exception at some point, we’ll see,” he said during an Oval Office event. “If somebody did something exceptional for us, that’s always possible.”Reinsch from CSIS said one of big issues for both the United States and China going into the talks in Geneva was their starkly different negotiating strategies.”Trump’s approach is generally top-down,” he said. “He wants to meet with (Chinese President) Xi Jinping, and thinks that if the two of them can get together, they can make a big deal and then have the subordinates go work out the details.””The Chinese are the reverse,” he said. “They want to have all the issues settled and everything agreed to at lower levels before there’s any leaders meeting.”burs-da/acb

Louis Prevost is still reckoning with what just happened in his family.His little brother, Robert Francis Prevost, is now Pope Leo XIV, the first American pope in the Catholic Church’s history, an incredible fate for a boy from Chicago who dreamt of becoming a priest.”We knew from a very early time, maybe when he was five or six, he was going to be a priest. There was no doubt in my mind,” Prevost, 73, told AFP from his home in Port Charlotte, Florida.”When we played games, as kids, he liked to play priest a lot. I thought: ‘what the heck? Priest?'”He bought Necco wafers, little candy discs, and he’d pretend those were communion and give it to all our friends the yard,” Prevost recounted with a smile.”We were teasing him when he was six years old: ‘you’re gonna be the Pope.’ And he didn’t like that.”On Thursday, after white smoke billowed out of the chimney of the Sistine Chapel, Prevost recalled feeling nervous because he felt the cardinal chosen to be pope would be his brother.He turned on the TV, trying to calm down during the prolonged wait got the announcement.When Cardinal Dominique Mamberti said his brother’s name at the Vatican, Prevost burst with joy.”I was in the bed, sitting down. It’s good thing I was because I probably would have fallen over,” Prevost said.”When I thought: ‘My brother’s the Pope. You’re kidding me.’ My mind was blown out of this world, it was crazy, ridiculous. So excited.”- ‘Out of reach’ -Now with the initial excitement subsiding, he is left wondering how his youngest brother’s new role might affect their personal relationship.”This could be bad for the family. Will we ever see him again? Will we ever get to talk to him like brothers again? Or will it have to be all official? How are you Holy Father, blah, blah, blah. It opens up a lot of questions,” Prevost said. “He’s still there, but he’s out of reach. We can’t just pick up the phone and call him. Now it’s got to be really special when you get to call the Pope,” he added.Prevost hopes his other brother, John, will be able to give him some answers when he visits Rome from their hometown of Chicago.He thinks his brother’s papacy will be able to unite the Catholic Church, attract more faithful and make the world a more peaceful place.”Whether he has the ability to settle, like the Gaza thing or the Russia and Ukraine conflict, who knows? But I’ve seen him take two warring parties and make peace in five minutes between them,” Prevost said. “He’s got a gift to communicate to people and make them open their eyes.”He also hopes having an American pope will revitalize the Catholic Church in the United States.”When he comes to America, he’s going to speak English, not Latin or Spanish or Italian,” Prevost said.”People will understand what he’s saying. They’ll see him, they’ll realize he’s one of us.”

A senior White House official said Friday that President Donald Trump, as part of his sweeping immigration crackdown, is looking at suspending habeas corpus, the right of a person to challenge their detention in court.”The Constitution is clear, and that, of course, is the supreme law of the land, that the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus can be suspended in a time of invasion,” White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller told reporters.”So it’s an option we’re actively looking at,” Miller said. “A lot of it depends on whether the courts do the right thing or not.”Trump campaigned for the White House on a pledge to deport millions of undocumented migrants and has repeatedly referred to their presence in the United States as an “invasion.”Since taking office in January, Trump has been seeking to step up deportations, but his efforts have met with pushback from multiple federal courts which have insisted that migrants targeted for removal receive due process.Among other measures, the Republican president invoked an obscure wartime law in March to summarily deport hundreds of alleged Venezuelan gang members to a prison in El Salvador.Several federal courts have blocked further deportations using the 1798 Alien Enemies Act and the Supreme Court also weighed in, saying migrants subject to deportation under the AEA must be given an opportunity to legally challenge their removal in court.The AEA was last used to round up Japanese-Americans during World War II and was previously invoked during the War of 1812 and World War I.Suspending habeas corpus could potentially allow the administration to dispense with individual removal proceedings and speed up deportations, but the move would almost certainly be met with stiff legal challenges and end up in the Supreme Court.It has been suspended only rarely in US history, most notably by president Abraham Lincoln during the 1861-1865 Civil War and in Hawaii after the December 1941 Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.

Paula Hambrick never imagined that in her lifetime the Catholic Church would be led by a pope from the United States, never mind her hometown of Chicago.But at a mass on Friday in her Midwestern city in honor of the newly elected Pope Leo XIV, a native son of the so-called Windy City, the 77-year-old was counting her blessings.”There’s probably three things that I would have hoped for in my life: to see the Cubs win the World Series, a woman become president and an American pope,” she told AFP, naming one of the local professional baseball teams.”I got two out of three! It’s pretty good odds, right?” said Hambrick, who like the new pope hails from the city’s southern suburbs.”It’s terrific. I’m thrilled,” she added, speaking under the wood vault of Chicago’s Holy Name Cathedral.By 8 am the pews were fuller compared to one hour earlier for the first mass to celebrate the new pope, but still relatively sparse.Alejandro Mendoza, who was among the several hundred people to turn out for the service, said he had become more proud of Chicago.”I’m telling everybody that the pope is from where I’m from,” the 24-year-old said.”It feels like you know him. It’s very special, this sense of pride.”- ‘A prophetic figure’ -Maryjane Okolie, a nun who has been working in the southern suburbs of Chicago for more than a decade, said people there were “excited” and “surprised” that Robert Francis Prevost had become the 267th pope.”Everybody is talking about it,” she told AFP. She said she hoped Leo would follow in the footsteps of his predecessor, pope Francis, who gained a reputation for attending to the disadvantaged.Nate Bacon, a 61-year-old deacon who has been working in Guatemala for more than 10 years and was in town to visit his son, said he was “shocked” by the news.”At a time when the United States is in a really dominating kind of posture, to have a pope from the United States felt it had a cringe factor to it,” he said.Those concerns were assuaged when Bacon learned that Prevost had performed years of missionary service in Peru and that the new pope “was someone who built bridges and would continue the work of pope Francis.””I became enthusiastic,” Bacon told AFP.He said he hopes Leo can undo some of the “destruction” wrought by the administration of US President Donald Trump, who has adopted an aggressive anti-immigration stance since taking office this year.”I’m hoping a pope who was born in the United States could be a prophetic figure and a sign of a return to true values of justice, peace, and welcoming strangers and immigrants, and standing with those whom society has thrown away,” he added.Bishop Lawrence Sullivan, who helped lead Friday’s mass, said a return to Chicago by Leo would bring “tremendous excitement and joy.”