As global financial markets plunge in the wake of US President Donald Trump’s “Liberation Day” tariffs, Americans must also grapple with the potentially long-lasting impact of the move on household budgets.The tariffs — which are paid in the first instance by US importers — will likely push up the price of many household items in the United States and reduce consumers’ spending power. – Grocery store costs -The US imports a growing share of the fresh fruits and vegetables consumed each year, according to the US Department of Agriculture (USDA).Many of the fresh goods come from Canada and Mexico, two countries not immediately affected by the tariffs announced Wednesday. But other goods will be hit by the stinging duties set to come into effect this month.For example, the United States imports large quantities of bananas from the Latin American countries of Guatemala, Ecuador and Costa Rica, which will all face a 10 percent tariff from April 5.Coffee — around 80 percent of which is imported, according to the USDA — is likely to see a price increase, given that top exporters Brazil and Colombia will also face the new baseline 10 percent rate.Olive oil and alcohol imports from Italy, Spain and Greece will be hit with a new 20 percent levy against the European Union from April 9. And Thai jasmine rice and Indian basmati rice will face tariffs of 36 percent and 26 percent respectively, while Indian shrimp — which the US imports large quantities of — will face the same 26 percent rate. – Electronics and cars -Consumer electronics are also set to be hit with steep tariffs this month, given how many of products are manufactured or assembled in India and China. Despite moves to expand its supply chain, Apple still makes the vast majority of its iPhones in China, through supplier Foxconn, where hardware exports will be hit with a tariff totaling 54 percent from April 9.Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo predicted that US buyers of high-end iPhones, who account for as much as 70 percent of sales, are “relatively more accepting of price increases.”On top of the measures announced Wednesday, the Trump administration has also rolled out a 25 percent tariff against vehicles not made in the United States — a step analysts have warned could add thousands to the cost of the average car. – Shoes, clothes -Shares of clothing and textile companies, which rely on cheap labor in countries including China and Vietnam, fell sharply Thursday, with Nike sinking more than 13 percent and Gap tanking more than 20 percent.The new tariffs announced Wednesday mean imports to the United States from China and Vietnam will be taxed at 54 percent and 46 percent respectively. Yale’s Budget Lab estimated the effect of recent tariffs, up to and including Wednesday’s announcement, would cause a 17 percent rise in the cost of clothing and textiles.The think tank calculated that the overall effect on prices of the tariffs announced so far was equivalent to an average per household consumer loss of $3,800.Speaking to reporters on Thursday, Trump insisted that tariffs would make the United States “very rich.””The operation is over,” he said, referring to the recent tariff announcement. “And now we let it settle in.”

President Donald Trump said his administration was “very close” to a deal to find a buyer for TikTok, which faces a US ban if not sold by its Chinese owner by the weekend.”We’re very close to a deal with a very good group of people,” Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One, adding that it involved “multiple” investors but giving no further details.The hugely popular video-sharing app, which has over 170 million American users, is under threat from a US law that passed overwhelmingly last year and orders TikTok to split from its Chinese owner ByteDance or face a ban in the United States.Motivated by national security fears and widespread belief in Washington that TikTok is ultimately controlled by the Chinese government, the law took effect on January 19, one day before Trump’s inauguration.But the Republican president quickly announced a delay that has allowed it to continue to operate; that delay is set to expire on April 5.Trump has downplayed risks that TikTok is in danger of being banned in the United States, saying he remains confident of finding a buyer for the app’s US business.The US president also suggested TikTok could even be part of a broader deal with China to ease the stinging tariffs he imposed on Beijing as part of a worldwide blitz of levies.Asked Thursday if he was willing to make deals with countries on tariffs, he said: “As long as they are giving us something that is good. For instance with TikTok.”He added: “We have a situation with TikTok where China will probably say we’ll approve a deal but will you do something on the tariffs. The tariffs give us great power to negotiate.”According to reports, the most likely solution would see existing US investors in ByteDance roll over their stakes into a new independent global TikTok company.Additional US investors, including Oracle and Blackstone, the private equity firm, would be brought on to reduce the proportion of Chinese investors.Much of TikTok’s US activity is already housed on Oracle servers, and the company’s chairman, Larry Ellison, is a longtime Trump ally.But uncertainty remains, particularly over what would happen to TikTok’s valuable algorithm. The New York Times suggested the new company could licence it from ByteDance.Amazon has also reportedly made a last-minute bid to buy TikTok.

At first glance, Mexico got off lightly from Donald Trump’s “Liberation Day” tariffs blitz.The US president has repeatedly threatened the United States’ top trading partner with punishing tariffs over illegal migration and drug smuggling.So it was a surprise when he left Mexico off the list of nations on which he imposed levies ranging from 10 to 50 percent.The relief in Mexico, which has a free-trade deal with the United States and Canada, was tempered by concern over the 25-percent levies Trump slapped on foreign-made imported vehicles.That includes some of the three million vehicles the Latin American country sends north across the border each year.AFP looks at how Mexico, whose President Claudia Sheinbaum has been walking a diplomatic tightrope with Trump, fared generally:- The good – Mexico avoided the 10-percent blanket tariffs imposed by Trump on several Latin American countries, including ones with staunchly pro-Trump governments such as Argentina and El Salvador.For the moment at least, some Mexican exports to the United States remain tariff-free.Analysts at BBVA bank said the fact that Mexico faced a lower level of relative protectionism “could give it advantages in accessing the US market and, therefore, attracting investment.”They said it could act as an incentive for nearshoring — companies moving their operations to Mexico from other countries to use it as a tariff-free or low-tariff port of entry to the United States.”It would simply be more profitable or less expensive to export these goods from Mexico than from countries with higher tariffs,” BBVA said.During Trump’s first presidency from 2017-2021, scores of Chinese companies relocated their production to northern Mexico to avoid tariffs — a bone of contention for the Republican leader.- The bad -Parts of Mexico’s vital automotive industry are reeling after being hit with 25 percent tariffs, which come a month after Trump imposed levies on other goods from Mexico and Canada not covered by the United States-Mexico-Canada-Agreement (USMCA) trade deal.Mexico’s steel and aluminum exports to the United States have, since March, also been subject to 25 percent tariffs.”We shouldn’t be subject to these tariffs simply because the USMCA agreement provides otherwise,” Juan Francisco Torres-Landa, a partner at consulting firm Hogan Lovells in Mexico City, told AFP.The automotive tariffs are particularly painful for Mexico.In recent years, several major automakers including Ford, General Motors, BMW, and Audi have outsourced part of their production to Mexico because of its tariff-free access to the United States.Under Trump’s new rules, US vehicle parts will not face tariffs. But manufacturers say that with automotive components crossing the US-Mexico border multiple times during the assembly process, it is nearly impossible to ascertain which are American.Torres-Landa called the provision “gibberish.” “A car must have about 10,000 parts; tracking them to see what you pay (tariffs) for and what you don’t pay for is a very complex equation,” he said.A day after the tariffs were announced, the shockwaves are still being felt.Stellantis (born out of the merger of Fiat Chrysler and Renault) said it would immediately pause production at some of its Mexican and Canadian plants.Volkswagen, meanwhile, indicated it would halt rail shipments of vehicles made in Mexico to the United States, Automotive News said.The Mexican government said Thursday that over the next 40 days it will attempt to negotiate “the best conditions” with the Trump administration for the automotive, steel, and aluminum industries.- The unknown -The uncertainty caused by Trump’s repeated threats of steep tariffs has already caused a slowdown in manufacturing activity.While the Mexican government has forecast economic growth of about 1.5 percent this year, analysts surveyed by the central bank said this week they expected it to come in much lower, at 0.5 percent.In the country’s northern industrial borderlands, home to thousands of factories built to serve the US market, Mexicans fear mass layoffs.”I think difficult times are coming,” trucker Omar Zepeda told AFP in the border city of Tijuana this week.

Palestinian director Basel Adra, who won an Oscar this year for co-directing a documentary on Israeli violence in the West Bank, sounded the alarm at the UN on Thursday, saying the situation was worsening despite the film’s success.Adra was invited to speak by the UN Committee on the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People at a screening of his film, “No Other Land.”The documentary chronicles the forced displacement of Palestinians by Israeli troops and settlers in Masafer Yatta — an area Israel declared a restricted military zone in the 1980s.”I wanted the world to know that we live in this land, that we exist, and to see what we face on daily basis, this brutal occupation,” Adra told the UN.The film depicts events like bulldozers demolishing houses and a school, as well as the provocations by Israeli settlers on Palestinian residents — including those which escalate to violence.After a prolonged legal battle, the Israeli Supreme Court ruled in 2022 in favor of the Israeli army, allowing the expulsion of residents from eight villages in the region.”Even after winning the Oscar, we went back to the same reality,” Adra said, adding that the situation was “only changing from worse to worse.””Almost every day, there is settlers attacks on Masafer Yatta and all over communities across the West Bank,” Adra continued.Last week, Adra’s co-director and fellow Palestinian Hamdan Ballal reported he was attacked by Israeli settlers for winning the Oscar, saying he was detained by Israeli police for “hurling rocks” at which point he suffered a beating and “brutality.”Rights groups have said that since the start of the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza — a separate Palestinian territory — there has been a spike in attacks by Israeli settlers in the West Bank.Occupied by Israel since 1967, the West Bank is home to around three million Palestinians, as well as nearly half a million Israelis who live in settlements that are illegal under international law.”No Other Land,” despite winning a prestigious Oscar, has struggled to find distribution in the United States, screening at only a handful of cinemas.

President Donald Trump’s administration may have acted in “bad faith” and violated a court order with its deportation last month of alleged Venezuelan gang members to El Salvador, a US judge said Thursday.District Judge James Boasberg has issued a temporary restraining order barring the Trump administration from using an obscure wartime law to carry out rapid deportations.The federal judge held a hearing in a Washington courtroom Thursday to determine whether the government had complied with his orders or should be held in contempt.Trump’s administration has asked the Supreme Court to overturn the lower court’s order and allow for a resumption of the deportation flights under the 1798 Alien Enemies Act (AEA), which has only been used previously during the War of 1812, World War I and World War II.In invoking the act, Trump said he was targeting transnational gangs he had declared foreign terrorist organizations, including the Venezuelan group Tren de Aragua.But attorneys for several of the deported Venezuelans have said that their clients were not Tren de Aragua members, had committed no crimes and were targeted largely on the basis of their tattoos.On March 15, Boasberg ordered a halt to deportation flights under the wartime act, as two planes were headed to El Salvador. He also ordered that the planes be turned around, but they were not.The Alien Enemies Act was invoked on March 14 but not made public until the next day — when the deportations were already well underway — and Boasberg said at the hearing that this was an indication the administration may have “acted in bad faith.””If you really believed everything you did that day was legal and would survive a court challenge, you wouldn’t have operated the way you did,” the judge told Justice Department attorney Drew Ensign.Boasberg peppered Ensign with questions as he sought to determine whether a contempt finding was warranted.The judge said the Justice Department was aware he had called a hearing for 5:00 pm on March 15 to consider a lawsuit filed by rights groups seeking to halt the deportations.”Why wouldn’t the prudent thing be to say — ‘Let’s slow down here and see what the judge has to say?'” Boasberg asked.Ensign replied that he was not privy to the “operational details” of the deportations.The Justice Department has said previously that the planes were already en route to El Salvador and in international airspace when the judge issued his written order asking that they be turned around.The Trump administration has used images of the alleged gang members being shackled and having their heads shaved in the Central American prison as proof it is serious about cracking down on illegal immigration.In its appeal to the Supreme Court, acting Solicitor General Sarah Harris described the case as a key test of presidential authority over the courts.