AFP USA

The IMF on Wednesday called on the United States to work with trading partners and find ways to mutually ease trade curbs, as it issued a review of the world’s biggest economy.The International Monetary Fund’s findings covered the first year of Donald Trump’s second presidency, in which he unleashed wide-ranging tariffs on allies and competitors alike as he sought to shrink the US trade deficit and boost domestic manufacturing.But his on-again, off-again tariffs have roiled supply chains and financial markets.During the year, the Trump administration also sought to lower reliance on unauthorized immigrant workers and reduce the federal government’s role in the economy, the IMF noted.But the fund said Wednesday that Washington should work constructively with partners “to address concerns over unfair trade practices and agree on a coordinated reduction in trade restrictions and industrial policy distortions that have negative cross-border effects.””Where trade and investment measures (including tariffs and export controls) are put in place for national security reasons, such policies should be applied narrowly,” it urged.IMF chief Kristalina Georgieva told journalists that the report was prepared before the Supreme Court struck down many of Trump’s tariffs last Friday, adding that it would digest this development.Since the ruling, Trump has tapped a different law to impose a new 10-percent global tariff, which he also threatened to hike to 15 percent.Georgieva met with Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell before the report’s release.She noted that the fund shares the Trump administration’s concern about the size of the US trade and current account deficit. She added that the country’s current account gap is “too big.”- ‘Stability risk’ -The continuing rise in public debt also “remains a major issue” to keep in mind, Georgieva said.The IMF said that “while the risk of sovereign stress in the US is low, the upward path for the public debt-GDP ratio and increasing levels of short-term debt-GDP represent a growing stability risk to the US and global economy.”Overall, the fund projects US GDP growth to come in at 2.6 percent in 2026, picking up from 2.2 percent last year.While the economy is “buoyant,” the IMF warned that “uncertainty around trade policies could represent a larger-than- expected drag on activity.”It noted in the concluding statement of its “Article IV” consultation that the country saw “continued strong productivity growth even though the government shutdown took a bite out of activity in the fourth quarter.”The IMF last issued US-related policy suggestions in 2024.At that time, it raised concern over growing trade restrictions under then-president Joe Biden’s administration, urging officials to unwind obstacles to free trade.The fund in 2024 also pushed for a reversal in the rise in public debt, noting that officials could raise taxes among other reforms.

US Vice President JD Vance on Wednesday announced a freeze on funding for medical benefits for the Democratic-led state of Minnesota, a day after President Donald Trump tapped him to lead a “war on fraud.”Minnesota has been in the Republican administration’s crosshairs over claims of benefit fraud, which it has blamed on the Somali community, and an immigration crackdown in which federal agents shot dead two Americans in January.”We have decided to temporarily halt certain amounts of Medicaid funding that are going to the state of Minnesota,” Vance told a news conference, referring to the US health insurance program for low-income Americans.The federal government would freeze $259 million in payments to Minnesota, said Mehmet Oz, the TV doctor who is now Trump’s administrator for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS).The freeze is almost certain to be challenged in court, as have previous attempts by the Trump administration to withhold federal funds to states.Trump announced in his State of the Union address on Tuesday that he was appointing Vance to the new fraud role as he railed against alleged abuses of government benefits in Democratic-controlled states.The Trump administration has alleged public benefits fraud is widespread in Minnesota’s Somali community as a whole, while Trump himself has repeatedly lashed out at Somali immigrants, including in his speech.Minnesota has the largest Somali community in the United States.Vance’s new role comes amid heavy speculation that he will be a frontrunner for the 2028 Republican presidential nomination.But it will also put the ambitious Vance, 41, in a long line of US vice presidents to be given thorny jobs by their bosses. His predecessor Kamala Harris struggled after then-president Joe Biden tasked her with finding a solution to the causes of migration from Central America.

Cuba’s coast guard said Wednesday it shot dead four people and wounded six others traveling in a US-registered speedboat during an exchange of fire near Cuba’s shores that came amid heightened tensions with Washington.Havana did not reveal the nationalities of the passengers aboard the Florida-registered boat nor why it was approaching the communist-run island, which is under strict US sanctions.US Vice President JD Vance said the White House was “monitoring” the situation and that “hopefully it’s not as bad as we fear it could be.”Vance added that he had been briefed by Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who is attending a summit of the Caribbean Community but “we don’t know a whole lot of details.”The attorney general of Florida, which lies just 100 miles (160 kilometers) from Cuba across the Florida Straits, said he had ordered an investigation into the killings.The Cuban interior ministry said the coast guard encountered the “illegal” US vessel, registration number FL7726SH, one nautical mile from Cayo Falcones island off Cuba’s north coast.As the coast guard vessel approached, “shots were fired from the illegal speedboat,” injuring the commander of the Cuban vessel, the ministry said.”As a result of the clash, at the time of this report, on the foreign side, four aggressors were killed and six others were wounded,” the ministry said, adding that the injured were evacuated and received medical assistance.It did not give the exact origin of the boat.The Cuban government frequently reports incursions by speedboats from the United States into its territorial waters.The interior ministry said it was still investigating the incident and remained committed to protecting Cuban waters.- People smuggling -Incursion incidents are often related to people smuggling to the United States or drug trafficking, and have included chases, shootouts and armed attacks on border guards.Shortages of food and medicine and daily blackouts drove an exodus from the island in recent years, with many heading to southern Florida, which has received waves of Cuban migration since the 1960s. Wednesday’s shootings came as Washington softened a virtual oil siege of the island imposed by President Donald Trump in January after the US ouster of top Cuba ally, Nicolas Maduro of Venezuela.Before Maduro’s ouster by US forces on January 3, Cuba had relied on Venezuela, once a major oil producer, for about half its fuel needs.Faced with an outcry from Caribbean leaders, worried that starving 9.6 million Cubans of oil would cause the economy to collapse, Washington said it would allow shipments of Venezuelan oil for “commercial and humanitarian use.”The announcement came during a summit of Caribbean nations attended by US Secretary of State  Rubio, a Cuban-American who has spent his career hoping to topple Havana’s government.The Treasury Department said the Venezuelan oil would need to go through private businesses and not the Cuban government or the military apparatus that controls much of the island’s economy.The US oil blockade in place for over a month has brought an already crumbling Cuban economy, which has been under a US trade embargo since shortly after Fidel Castro’s 1959 revolution, to the brink.Mexico on Tuesday dispatched two military vessels carrying nearly 2,200 tons of aid to the island — its second aid shipment in under a month.Canada also announced Can$8 million ($5.8 million) in aid on Wednesday.

British far-right activist Tommy Robinson announced he had visited the US State Department on Wednesday, as the Trump administration ramps up its criticism of European allies over speech restrictions and has sided with far-right parties across the continent.”In America making alliances & friendships, today I had the privilege of an invite to the @StateDept,” Robinson wrote on X, with a photo apparently taken from a balcony of the State Department headquarters in Washington.US official Joe Rittenhouse added in a post on X he was “honored to have” Robinson at the State Department, calling the British activist a “free speech warrior.””The World and the West is a better place when we fight for freedom of speech and no one has been on the front lines more than Tommy,” wrote Rittenhouse, an advisor in the State Department’s consular affairs office.Robinson, whose real name is Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, boasts a significant online following and is a highly contentious figure in Britain, spearheading a fervent anti-Muslim and anti-migrant agenda.The 43-year-old former football hooligan increasingly fuses those themes with claims that Britain is now hostile to free speech.In September, the self-described journalist drew around 150,000 people onto London’s streets for one of the country’s largest far-right protests ever.He has faced a string of criminal convictions, including for mortgage fraud, public order and contempt of court, dating back decades.Robinson was jailed in the UK in 2013 for using someone else’s passport to enter the United States, which had refused him entry because of drug offences.Illegal immigration has been a key issue for US President Donald Trump, under whom authorities have carried out a wide-ranging deportation drive that advocacy groups say has often violated people’s rights.Robinson has also been blamed for helping to fuel anti-migrant riots that rocked the United Kingdom in 2024, something he denies.The State Department declined to comment when asked by AFP about Robinson’s visit.

A US federal judge ruled on Wednesday that the Trump administration policy of deporting undocumented migrants to countries that are not their own is unlawful.District Judge Brian Murphy put his ruling on so-called “third-country deportations” on hold for 15 days to allow the government to file an appeal.”This case is about whether the Government may, without notice, deport a person to the wrong country, or a country where he is likely to be persecuted, or tortured,” Murphy wrote.The Department of Homeland Security has said it is “fine” to deport a migrant to a third country so long as DHS knows they will not be shot on arrival, Murphy said.”It is not fine, nor is it legal,” he said.The judge noted that Congress has made it US policy not to deport people to countries where their lives would be in danger or they could be subject to torture.Under the DHS policy, however, “immigration officers need not give notice or any opportunity to object before removing someone to an unfamiliar and potentially dangerous country,” Murphy said.A person may be deported if the government has received “‘assurances’ that no persecution or torture will happen there,” he said.”This new policy — which purports to stand in for the protections Congress has mandated — fails to satisfy due process for a raft of reasons, not least of which is that nobody really knows anything about these purported ‘assurances,'” Murphy said.”Whom do they cover? What do they cover? Why has the Government deemed them credible? How can anyone even know for certain that they exist?” he asked.Murphy, an appointee of Democratic president Joe Biden, previously sought to block the deportation of a group of migrants to war-torn South Sudan but was overruled by the conservative-dominated Supreme Court.According to the US authorities, the eight men — two from Myanmar, two from Cuba, and one each from Vietnam, Laos, Mexico and South Sudan — were convicted violent criminals.The Trump administration has defended third-country deportations as necessary since the home nations of some of those who are targeted for removal sometimes refuse to accept them.Donald Trump campaigned for president promising to expel millions of undocumented migrants from the United States, and he has taken a number of actions aimed at speeding up deportations since returning to the White House.

The United States on Wednesday eased its ban on Venezuelan oil exports to Cuba after the communist-run island plunged into an economic crisis, which Caribbean leaders warned could bring instability to the region.US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, a Cuban-American from Florida who has spent his political career hoping to topple Havana’s government, attended a summit of the Caribbean Community where he staunchly defended the January 3 US attack that deposed Venezuela’s leftist leader Nicolas Maduro.As Rubio held the talks in the tiny island nation of Saint Kitts and Nevis, Cuba’s coastguard shot dead four people on a speedboat registered in the US state of Florida.The Cuban interior ministry said the boat was “illegal” and that shots were fired from it first. The United States did not have immediate comment.Cuba’s economy has been in freefall since the United States snatched Maduro and forced Venezuela to stop oil shipments to the island, which relied on its leftist ally for half its fuel needs. The Treasury Department said Thursday that the United States would allow “transactions that support the Cuban people” that include Venezuelan oil for “commercial and humanitarian use.”To qualify, the exports would need to go through private businesses and not the vast government or military apparatus in the communist state.- Warnings on crisis -Speaking at the opening of the CARICOM summit on Tuesday, Jamaican Prime Minister Andrew Holness warned that a further deterioration in Cuba would impact stability across the Caribbean and trigger migration — Trump’s top political concern.”Humanitarian suffering serves no one,” Holness said. “A prolonged crisis in Cuba will not remain confined to Cuba.”Holness called for “constructive dialogue between Cuba and the United States aimed at de-escalation, reform and stability.”Canada, which has long broken with its southern neighbor by maintaining warm relations with Havana, announced Can$8 million ($5.8 million) in aid for Cuba, which has experienced rolling blackouts and acute fuel shortages.The Caribbean summit’s host, Saint Kitts and Nevis Prime Minister Terrance Drew, studied in Cuba to be a doctor and said friends have told him of food scarcity and garbage strewn in the streets.”A destabilized Cuba will destabilize all of us,” Drew said.The United States has maintained an embargo on Cuba almost continuously since Fidel Castro’s 1959 communist revolution.Since becoming the top US diplomat, Rubio has publicly toned down calls for regime change and Trump has held off on further measures pushed by Cuban-American hardline critics of Havana, such as prohibiting the transfer of remittances.- ‘Without apology’ on Venezuela -Addressing the summit, Rubio staunchly defended the deadly operation that seized Maduro, saying that Venezuela has made “substantial” progress since then.”I will tell you this without any apology or without any apprehension: Venezuela is better off today than it was eight weeks ago,” Rubio said.Rubio said he believed Venezuela had moved to a new phase and that there was a need for “fair, democratic elections,” although he did not lay out a timetable.”Our initial priority in the aftermath of Maduro’s capture was to ensure that there wasn’t instability, that there wasn’t mass migration, that there wasn’t spillover violence, and we believe we have achieved that,” Rubio said.The United States once championed Venezuela’s democratic opposition but since removing Maduro it has worked with interim president Delcy Rodriguez, who was Maduro’s deputy.Trump has voiced satisfaction with Rodriguez, including her welcome to US oil companies, and has threatened her with violence if she does not do his bidding.Rubio separately met at the summit with beleaguered Haiti’s prime minister, Alix Didier Fils-Aime. A transitional council set up nearly two years ago handed power to Fils-Aime this month with US support, after it failed to tackle rampant gang violence or hold elections.Rubio is the highest-ranking sitting US official ever to visit Saint Kitts and Nevis, a tiny former British colony reliant on beach tourism that was the birthplace of a US founding father, Alexander Hamilton.

US President Donald Trump spoke with his Ukrainian counterpart Volodymyr Zelensky ahead of a fresh round of talks Thursday aimed at ending Russia’s invasion, both sides said on Wednesday.A White House official gave AFP no further details about the call, which came a day before Ukrainian and US envoys were to meet, and ahead of new trilateral talks with Russia expected in early March.But Zelensky wrote on social media that he had spoken with Trump, and that his envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner were on the call.”Our teams work intensively and I thanked them for all their work and for their active involvement in the negotiations and the efforts to end the war,” he added.According to Ukrainian presidential adviser Dmytro Lytvyn, the conversation “lasted about 30 minutes”.Ukraine’s lead negotiator Rustem Umerov will meet Witkoff and Kushner in Geneva on Thursday, Kyiv announced.Russian state news agency Tass later said that the Kremlin’s economic affairs envoy, Kirill Dmitriev, also plans to be in the city.”Dmitriev plans to arrive in Geneva on Thursday to pursue negotiations with the Americans on economic issues,” it cited an unnamed source as saying.The meetings are the latest round of negotiations spearheaded by Trump that so far have failed to make meaningful progress on ending Europe’s deadliest conflict since World War II.Washington is pushing to bring an end to the war triggered by Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine four years ago, which has left hundreds of thousands dead and destroyed swathes of territory, particularly in eastern and southern Ukraine.- Preparatory talks -Zelensky said his call with Trump “discussed the issues that our representatives will address tomorrow in Geneva during the bilateral meeting, as well as preparations for the next meeting of the full negotiating teams in a trilateral format at the very beginning of March”.”We expect this meeting to create an opportunity to move talks to the leaders’ level. President Trump supports this sequence of steps. This is the only way to resolve all the complex and sensitive issues and finally end the war,” he added.The Ukrainian leader has already said that a meeting with his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, should take place to resolve the most difficult issues in the talks.The talks, based on an American plan unveiled at the end of last year, are deadlocked primarily on the fate of the Donbas, the industrial region in eastern Ukraine that has been the epicentre of the fighting.Russia is pushing for full control of Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region, and has threatened to take it by force if Kyiv does not cave at the negotiating table.But Ukraine has rejected the demand and signalled it would not sign a deal without security guarantees that deter Russia from invading again.

US Vice President JD Vance told Iran on Wednesday to take Washington’s threats of military action “seriously,” a day after President Donald Trump appeared to build the case for war in his State of the Union address.As US forces mass in the Middle East, Trump claimed in his speech to Congress on Tuesday that Iran was seeking to develop missiles that can strike the United States.Trump also accused the Islamic republic, whose negotiators will meet US officials in Geneva on Thursday, of having “sinister nuclear ambitions” and working to rebuild a nuclear program that was targeted by US strikes last year.Vance said that while Trump was going to try to get Iran to make a deal “diplomatically,” the US president also had the “right” to use military action.”You can’t let the craziest and worst regime in the world have nuclear weapons,” Vance told “America’s Newsroom” on Fox News.Iran has repeatedly denied that it is seeking to acquire nuclear weapons, and has rejected Trump’s claims about its missile program as “big lies.””The president has a number of other tools at his disposal to ensure this doesn’t happen,” said Vance. “He’s shown a willingness to use them and I hope the Iranians take it seriously in the negotiations tomorrow because that’s certainly what the president prefers.”The US vice president said the Trump administration was “hopeful that we’re able to come to a good resolution without the military but if we have to use the military the president of course has that right as well.”His comments came as the United States announced fresh sanctions targeting Iran, pressing on with what Washington calls its “maximum pressure” campaign.Iran’s President Masoud Pezeshkian earlier struck an upbeat tone, saying there was a “favorable outlook” for the negotiations as his Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi and his team arrived in Switzerland.But while Trump said he preferred a diplomatic solution, he also set out what appeared to be the justifications for possible military action in the first State of the Union address of his second term.It was the same forum in which then-president George W. Bush laid out the case for the invasion of Iraq in 2003.Trump claimed in his address that Tehran had “already developed missiles that can threaten Europe and our bases overseas, and they’re working to build missiles that will soon reach the United States of America.”The United States is also demanding that Iran agree that any future nuclear deal should remain in effect indefinitely, the Axios news outlet quoted Trump’s envoy Steve Witkoff as telling a private gathering on Tuesday.Under the previous 2015 nuclear deal with Iran, which Trump tore up during his first term in office in 2018, the restrictions on Iran’s program were due to expire over a number of years.Iran insists its nuclear program is for civilian purposes.

The United States on Wednesday eased its ban on Venezuelan oil exports to Cuba after the communist-run island plunged into an economic crisis, which Caribbean leaders warned could bring instability to the region.US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, a Cuban-American who has spent his political career hoping to topple Havana’s government, attended a summit of the Caribbean Community where he staunchly defended the January 3 US attack that deposed Venezuela’s leftist leader.As Rubio held the talks in the tiny island nation of Saint Kitts and Nevis, President Donald Trump’s administration softened a sweeping ban imposed after the Caracas raid on Venezuelan oil heading to Cuba, which had relied on its ally for around half its fuel needs.The Treasury Department said it would allow “transactions that support the Cuban people” that include Venezuelan oil for “commercial and humanitarian use.”To qualify, the exports would need to go through private businesses and not the vast government or military apparatus in the communist state.- Warnings on crisis -Speaking at the opening of the CARICOM summit on Tuesday, Jamaican Prime Minister Andrew Holness warned that a further deterioration in Cuba would impact stability across the Caribbean and trigger migration — Trump’s top political concern.”Humanitarian suffering serves no one,” Holness said. “A prolonged crisis in Cuba will not remain confined to Cuba.”Holness called for “constructive dialogue between Cuba and the United States aimed at de-escalation, reform and stability.”Canada, which has long broken with its southern neighbor by maintaining warm relations with Havana, announced Can$8 million ($5.8 million) in aid for Cuba, which has experienced rolling blackouts and acute fuel shortages.The Caribbean summit’s host, Saint Kitts and Nevis Prime Minister Terrance Drew, studied in Cuba to be a doctor and said friends have told him of food scarcity and garbage strewn in the streets.”A destabilized Cuba will destabilize all of us,” Drew said.The United States has maintained an embargo on Cuba almost continuously since Fidel Castro’s 1959 communist revolution.Since becoming the top US diplomat, Rubio has publicly toned down calls for regime change and Trump has held off on further measures pushed by Cuban-American hardline critics of Havana, such as prohibiting the transfer of remittances.- ‘Without apology’ on Venezuela -Addressing the summit, Rubio staunchly defended the deadly operation that seized Maduro, saying that Venezuela has made “substantial” progress since then.”I will tell you this without any apology or without any apprehension: Venezuela is better off today than it was eight weeks ago,” Rubio said.Rubio said he believed Venezuela had moved to a new phase and that there was a need for “fair, democratic elections,” although he did not lay out a timetable.”Our initial priority in the aftermath of Maduro’s capture was to ensure that there wasn’t instability, that there wasn’t mass migration, that there wasn’t spillover violence, and we believe we have achieved that,” Rubio said.The United States once championed Venezuela’s democratic opposition but since removing Maduro it has worked with interim president Delcy Rodriguez, who was Maduro’s deputy.Trump has voiced satisfaction with Rodriguez, including her welcome to US oil companies, and has threatened her with violence if she does not do his bidding.Kamla Persad-Bissessar, the prime minister of Trinidad and Tobago, took issue with Caribbean counterparts who defended Cuba or criticized the United States on Venezuela.”We cannot advocate for others to live under communism and dictatorship,” she said.Trinidad and Tobago, whose coast is visible from Venezuela, gave access to the US military in the run-up to the operation that ousted Maduro.Rubio is the highest-ranking sitting US official ever to visit Saint Kitts and Nevis, a tiny former British colony reliant on beach tourism that was the birthplace of a US founding father, Alexander Hamilton.