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Nvidia chief Jensen Huang on Tuesday showcased cutting-edge chips for artificial intelligence and new applications for the technology, shrugging off talk of China’s DeepSeek disrupting the market and dangers from US President Donald Trump’s trade wars.Huang gave a hotly anticipated keynote presentation at Nvidia’s annual developers conference that packed the SAP Center in the Silicon Valley city of San Jose, home of the Sharks NHL hockey team.Billing the event as an AI “Super Bowl,” the Taiwan-born tech titan was greeted by an audience of more than 20,000 who sat through his two-hour-plus address announcing the company’s latest updates.”The difference is that everyone is a winner at this Super Bowl,” he said, promoting the universal benefits of AI technology.Huang used the annual speech to unveil developments and tie-ups at the company he co-founded more than three decades ago. Nvidia has seen stratospheric growth, with the AI frenzy stemming largely from the company’s core product: graphics processing units (GPUs).Huang spotlighted the updates to Nvidia’s latest Blackwell line of GPUs, as well as new hardware and software for robotics and telecommunications.The announcements included a partnership with General Motors focused on developing driverless vehicles that would feature an Nvidia-made, in-vehicle computing system that can deliver up to 1,000 trillion operations per second.He also unveiled a telecoms project, involving T-Mobile and Cisco Systems, where Nvidia will help create AI-ready hardware for wireless 6G networks, the successor to today’s 5G.- Stock pressure -The AI boom has propelled Nvidia stock prices to historic levels, though it saw a steep sell-off earlier this year triggered by the sudden success of DeepSeek and the instability of Trump’s tariff battles with key trading partners.Trump has threatened to slap extra tariffs on imports of computer chips to the United States, which will heap pressure on Nvidia’s business, which depends on imported components mainly from Taiwan.High-end versions of Nvidia’s chips face US export restrictions to the major market of China, part of Washington’s efforts to slow its Asian adversary’s advancement in the strategic technology.Against those headwinds, Nvidia stock, one of the most traded on Wall Street, is down more than 17 percent since Trump took office and the release of DeepSeek, an AI model, in January.China-based DeepSeek shook up the world of generative artificial intelligence with the debut of a low-cost, high-performance model that challenges the hegemony of OpenAI and other big-spending behemoths.Several countries have questioned DeepSeek’s handling of data and believe that the secretive company may be subject to the control of the Chinese government.Nvidia high-end GPUs are in hot demand by tech giants building data centers to power artificial intelligence, and some say a low-cost option could weaken the Silicon Valley chip star’s business.But Nvidia and others argue that cheaper AI models will spur their wider expansion, increasing the needs for computing and Nvidia’s technology.”In essence, Nvidia’s chips remain the new oil or gold in this world for the tech ecosystem as there is only one chip in the world fueling this AI foundation… and it’s Nvidia,” said Dan Ives of Wedbush Securities.Riding the AI wave, Nvidia has ramped up production of its top-of-the-line Blackwell processors for powering AI, logging billions in sales in just months.Huang on Tuesday presented the Blackwell Ultra, an upgraded version, which will be supplanted by yet another line in 2026, the Vera Rubin, a new GPU named after the US astronomer who discovered dark matter.Nvidia reported it finished last year with record high revenue of $130.5 billion, driven by demand from cloud computing giants including AWS and Microsoft.

A federal judge ordered an immediate halt on Tuesday to the shutdown of the main US aid agency by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). Musk and DOGE’s dismantlement of the US Agency for International Development (USAID) “likely violated the United States Constitution in multiple ways,” District Court Judge Theodore Chuang said.Chuang issued his ruling in response to a lawsuit brought by current and former USAID employees and contractors challenging the legal authority of the billionaire tapped by President Donald Trump to slash federal government spending and jobs.They argued that under the Appointments Clause of the US Constitution, Musk needed to be confirmed by the Senate in order to exercise his authority.The judge agreed, saying that allowing Musk to continue to wield enormous power over the government “would open the door to an end-run around the Appointments Clause” and reduce it to “nothing more than a technical formality.”Chuang said the actions by Musk and DOGE had violated the authority of Congress to decide when and how to close down USAID, where most of the workers have been placed on leave or fired since January. The agency was created by Congress in 1961.Secretary of State Marco Rubio said last week that the United States was cancelling 83 percent of programs at USAID, which distributes humanitarian aid around the world, with health and emergency programs in around 120 countries.The judge’s ruling was the latest legal setback to Trump’s cost-cutting and government staff reduction drive. Another judge recently ordered the rehiring of thousands of probationary workers in multiple agencies who had been fired by Musk’s DOGE.Chuang ordered that access to email and other electronic systems be reinstated to current USAID employees and contractors.He said the agency should also be allowed to reoccupy its Washington headquarters unless the court receives confirmation from the acting administrator of USAID or another authorized officer of the United States that the building is being permanently closed.Trump signed an executive order in January demanding a freeze on all US foreign aid to allow time to assess overseas expenses.

Vaccine skeptic Robert F. Kennedy Jr is off to a turbulent start as US health secretary as he grapples with a deadly measles outbreak, resignations among his staff and a snub in the Senate.Kennedy took over in mid-February facing a major health crisis, with an outbreak of the highly contagious disease that had previously been declared eradicated in the United States.More than 300 people, mostly children, have now been infected with measles in Texas and New Mexico and two unvaccinated people have died — the first US fatalities from the disease in a decade.”Some years we have hundreds of measles outbreaks, measles outbreaks every year,” the man known as RFK Jr. said in a recent interview with Fox News at a fast food restaurant.In recent weeks he has alarmed and angered medical professionals with comments downplaying the gravity of the crisis, and ambiguous remarks on vaccination and others promoting alternative remedies.”He couldn’t do a worse job than he’s doing,” said Paul Offit, a renowned pediatrician specializing in infectious diseases, vaccines, immunology, and virology.”People assumed that when he became secretary of health and human services he would become somewhat more responsible to the public health, and they were wrong,” Offit told AFP.- Crisis management -In an opinion piece published early this month by Fox News, Kennedy said: “Vaccines not only protect individual children from measles, but also contribute to community immunity, protecting those who are unable to be vaccinated due to medical reasons.”Still, he has raised doubts and stirred anger by continuing to question the safety of vaccines.He claimed on Fox News in mid-March that the measles vaccine itself causes deaths “every year.””It causes all the illnesses that measles itself cause, encephalitis and blindness, etc. And so people ought to be able to make that choice for themselves.”Offit disagreed. “He says that the measles vaccine can cause blindness and deafness. He says that measles immunity fades so that adults are no longer protected. All of those things are false, clearly and plainly false,” he said, also rejecting Kennedy’s suggestion of using vitamin A as an alternative treatment against measles.Kennedy’s crisis management skills have reportedly been criticized even within his own staff, with US media reporting one of his spokespersons resigned, and even by some Republicans.Last week the White House withdrew at the last minute the candidacy of David Weldon, a close associate of Kennedy, to run the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) — the main public health agency in America — after concluding he would lose a Senate confirmation vote.- Transparency and beef fat -Measles is making a comeback amid a decline in vaccination rates as more and more Americans, wary of the safety of vaccines, ignore warnings from health authorities to get shots.Kennedy is accused of contributing to this problem by arguing that there is a link between the measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccine and autism — a debunked theory that came from a study based on manipulated data and disproven by later research.Still, Kennedy’s health department recently ordered a new study of this alleged link. A spokesman told AFP, “the rate of autism in American children has skyrocketed. CDC will leave no stone unturned in its mission to figure out what exactly is happening.”That pledge of transparency is a kind of mantra for Kennedy, a nephew of the late president John F. Kennedy, as he promises to make Americans healthy again, in part by fighting against consumption of heavily processed food.Kennedy has set out to toughen rules on food additives but has also endorsed a fast food chain that cooks its French fries in beef tallow, or rendered fat, which had been phased out in America as unhealthy decades ago.As for transparency, Kennedy critics say he has achieved just the opposite by doing away with a policy that let the public voice comments on health policy.Under Kennedy, expert level meetings have been cancelled and new policies have been announced with no internal discussion in the department. Nate Brought, who used to work for a US health agency but resigned last month, criticized Kennedy’s management style.”The way things are being handled is very much not transparent,” he told AFP. “Everybody is intentionally being kept in the dark.”

Vladimir Putin agreed Tuesday in a call with Donald Trump Tuesday to halt attacks against Ukrainian energy targets but would not accept an immediate full ceasefire and insisted that the West halt all military aid for Kyiv.The US and Russian leaders spoke for more than an hour and a half and both expressed hopes for repairing relations wrecked by Moscow’s full-scale invasion of its pro-Western neighbor three years ago.But the highly anticipated call failed to produce the breakthrough Trump had hoped for, as there was no agreement from the Russian president for Washington’s proposed 30-day ceasefire, already agreed to by Ukraine.In Kyiv, President Volodymyr Zelensky said he backed the energy truce but believed Putin’s refusal of a wider peace showed he was not “ready” and still seeks to “weaken” Ukraine.Trump insisted on his Truth Social network they had “an understanding that we will be working quickly to have a Complete Ceasefire and, ultimately, an END to this very horrible War.”The Kremlin, however, made it clear that any full truce was a way off — and dependent on Russian demands that both Ukraine and its Western allies would find hard to accept.A Kremlin statement said Putin agreed to pause strikes against Ukraine energy targets for 30 days and that Putin had already given the order to his military. The White House said separately that the “leaders agreed that the movement to peace will begin with an energy and infrastructure ceasefire.”Russia has launched a series of devastating attacks on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure throughout the winter. Ukraine has used drones to bomb multiple Russian oil installations.- Sirens in Kyiv -Trump and Putin also agreed that broader truce talks would “begin immediately,” the White House said in its statement, citing a “huge upside” if Russia and the United States repair their relations.But the Kremlin statement said the “key condition” for peace would be a “complete cessation” of Western military and intelligence support to Ukraine’s embattled military.Explosions rang out and air raid sirens wailed over the Ukrainian capital Kyiv a few hours after the call, AFP journalists reported, in a sign that Russia appeared determined to press on with its wider offensive.Trump has been intent on delivering on an election pledge to end fighting in Ukraine, blaming his predecessor Joe Biden’s policy on Russia for fueling the war.He stunned the world in February when he announced a surprise call with Putin and the start of talks with Russia to end the conflict, sparking fears among allies that he was pivoting too far towards Moscow. As Trump upended years of US policy staunchly backing Ukraine, he then had a televised shouting match with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in the Oval Office.But Western allies have been skeptical that Putin is ready for a ceasefire.German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and French President Emmanuel Macron vowed after the Kremlin statement that they would keep sending military aid to Ukraine.”Ukraine can count on us,” Scholz said.- Wary allies -The Europeans have also been wary that Trump will try to force through a deal that punishes Ukraine without demanding concessions of Russia.Trump said at the weekend that he was ready to discuss “dividing up certain assets” of Ukraine’s, including land and power plants.Under US pressure, Ukraine had already agreed to Washington’s proposal for a full 30-day ceasefire. It has also accepted a US plan to give it preferential access to Ukraine’s mineral resources.But Putin has repeatedly said that there were further issues that needed discussion, mostly centering on its maximalist demands for the West to halt all support for Ukraine.Russia has pressed on with a grinding advance in recent months in southern and eastern Ukraine.Moscow has also seized back much of Russia’s Kursk region, parts of which Kyiv seized last year and was hoping to use as a bargaining chip.Russia said on Tuesday that Ukrainian forces attempted a ground assault on the Belgorod region earlier but were pushed back, casting it as an attempt to undermine the Trump talks.burs-dk/sms

Hundreds of Hollywood stars including Ben Stiller, Cate Blanchett and Cynthia Erivo have urged Donald Trump’s White House to protect film, TV and music copyrights against big tech and artificial intelligence.The open letter — signed by over 400 actors, directors and artists — hits back against tech giants like Google and OpenAI, who say their AI models must be allowed to train on a vast range of copyrighted work or risk being left behind by Chinese rivals.But “weakening copyright protections” and allowing tech giants to “exploit America’s creative and knowledge industries” would threaten “the world’s most vibrant creative economy,” says the Hollywood letter.The US entertainment industry supports over 2.3 million jobs that generate some $230 billion in annual wages, as well as “providing the foundation for American democratic influence and soft power abroad,” it says.The intervention comes after Trump in January signed an executive order committing to remove “unnecessary government control” of AI and boost “America’s global AI dominance.”The White House invited companies and other interested parties to submit suggestions.Google and OpenAI said they must be allowed to train their AI models on the widest possible range of copyrighted content, warning that rival countries could otherwise gain a dangerous advantage.If Chinese developers “have unfettered access to data and American companies are left without fair use access, the race for AI is effectively over,” wrote OpenAI, noting China’s rapid progress with models like DeepSeek.The Hollywood counter-letter was first sent to the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy last week. Organizers said they are continuing to gather signatures.AI has become an existential concern in Hollywood, where studios and producers are keen to explore its cost-cutting potential, but many creatives fear that its use could destroy jobs and damage the quality of content.Artificial intelligence was a central issue in the strikes that in 2023 brought the US entertainment industry to an expensive, months-long halt.Writers and actors eventually agreed deals with studios including strict AI protections, requiring consent and compensation if AI models train on writers’ movie scripts, or build computer-generated characters using actors’ likenesses.But the issue has returned to the fore with Trump’s election and the ever-increasing grip of major tech companies on Hollywood, and the US economy more broadly.”Make no mistake: this issue goes well beyond the entertainment industry, as the right to train AI on all copyright-protected content impacts all of America’s knowledge industries,” says the letter.

The Trump administration plans to lay off hundreds of scientists and researchers from the US federal government as part of drastic cuts to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), lawmakers warned Tuesday.The firings would result from the EPA, which tackles environmental issues including pollution, clean water and climate change, eliminating its scientific research arm that employs over 1,500 people.Documents reviewed by Democratic staff of the US House Committee on Science, Space and Technology said the cuts would mean a majority of employees “will not be retained,” while the remaining positions would be moved to other departments within the agency.The layoffs, which have not been finalized, would further President Donald Trump’s goal of slashing government spending by reducing the federal workforce as well as rolling back environmental and public health regulation.Trump in February said EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin, his pick to oversee the agency, plans to slash around 65 percent of the agency’s 17,000-strong staff.When asked about the planned cuts, EPA spokesperson Molly Vaseliou said the agency “is taking exciting steps as we enter the next phase of organizational improvements.” “We are committed to enhancing our ability to deliver clean air, water, and land for all Americans,” Vaseliou continued. “While no decisions have been made yet, we are actively listening to employees at all levels to gather ideas on how to increase efficiency and ensure the EPA is as up-to-date and effective as ever.”Plans to scrap the EPA’s research office sparked outcry from Democratic lawmakers.”Every decision EPA makes must be in furtherance of protecting human health and the environment, and that just can’t happen if you gut EPA science,” said Congresswoman Zoe Lofgren of California, the top Democrat on the House science committee.”Last time around, Trump and his cronies politicized and distorted science…now, this is their attempt to kill it for good” Lofgren said, adding that the “EPA cannot meet its legal obligation to use the best available science” without the researchers.The Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS), a nonprofit advocacy group, emphasized the role that the affected staff play in the EPA’s stated mission. “The scientists and experts in this office conduct and review the best available science to set limits on pollution and regulate hazardous chemicals to keep the public safe,” said Chitra Kumar, UCS managing director of climate and energy, in a statement.”The administration knows, and history shows, that industry will not regulate itself.”

A pair of NASA astronauts unexpectedly stuck in space for more than nine months were hours away from returning to Earth on Tuesday, closing out a mission that has captured the world’s attention.Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, accompanied by fellow American Nick Hague and Russian cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov, left the International Space Station earlier in the morning after exchanging final farewells and hugs with remaining crew members.Their SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule named Freedom is orbiting around the planet on a 17-hour-journey that will culminate in a parachute-assisted splashdown off the coast of Florida, near Tallahassee, around 5:57 pm (2157 GMT). A recovery vessel will then retrieve the quartet and they will be flown to Houston, where they will complete a 45-day rehabilitation program.Wilmore and Williams, both ex-Navy pilots and veterans of two prior space missions, flew to the orbital lab in June last year, on what was supposed to be a days-long roundtrip to test out Boeing’s Starliner on its first crewed flight.But the spaceship developed propulsion problems and was deemed unfit to fly them back, instead returning empty.They were subsequently reassigned to NASA’s SpaceX Crew-9 mission, which arrived at the ISS last September with a reduced crew of two — rather than the usual four — to accommodate the pair, who had become widely referred to as the “stranded” astronauts.NASA however rejected this characterization, emphasizing that they could have been evacuated in an emergency if necessary.Early Sunday, a relief team called Crew-10 docked with the station, paving the way for the Crew-9 team to depart.”Colleagues and dear friends who remain on the station… we’ll be waiting for you. Crew-9 is going home”, Hague said.- ‘Unbelievable resilience’ -Wilmore and Williams’ 286-day stay exceeds the usual six-month ISS rotation but ranks only sixth among US records for single-mission duration.Frank Rubio holds the top spot at 371 days in 2023, while the world record remains with Russian cosmonaut Valeri Polyakov, who spent 437 consecutive days aboard the Mir station.That makes it “par for the course” in terms of health risks, according to Rihana Bokhari of the Center for Space Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine.Challenges such as muscle and bone loss, fluid shifts that can lead to kidney stones and vision issues, and the readjustment of balance upon returning to a gravity environment are well understood and effectively managed.”Folks like Suni Williams are actually known for their interest in exercise, and so I believe she exercises beyond what is even her normal prescription,” Bokhari told AFP.Still, the unexpected nature of their extended stay — away from their families and initially without enough packed supplies — has drawn public interest and sympathy.”If you found out you went to work today and were going to be stuck in your office for the next nine months, you might have a panic attack,” Joseph Keebler, a psychologist at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, told AFP.”These individuals have shown unbelievable resilience.”- Trump weighs in -Their unexpected stint also became a political lightning rod, with President Donald Trump and his close advisor, Elon Musk — who leads SpaceX — repeatedly suggesting former president Joe Biden abandoned the astronauts and refused an earlier rescue plan.”They shamefully forgot about the Astronauts, because they considered it to be a very embarrassing event for them,” Trump posted Monday on Truth Social.Such accusations have prompted an outcry in the space community, especially as Musk offered no specifics and NASA’s plan for the astronauts’ return has remained largely unchanged since their Crew-9 reassignment.Trump has also drawn attention for his bizarre remarks, referring to Williams, a decorated former naval captain, as “the woman with the wild hair” and speculating about the personal dynamic between the two.”They’ve been left up there — I hope they like each other, maybe they love each other, I don’t know,” he said during a recent White House press conference.

Google said Tuesday it will acquire cloud security platform Wiz for $32 billion, citing the need for greater cybersecurity capacity as artificial intelligence embeds itself in technology infrastructure.The all-cash deal brings Wiz into the Google Cloud operation, boosting the capacity of consumers to use “multiple clouds” and providing “an end-to-end security platform for customers, of all types and sizes, in the AI era,” the companies said in a joint statement.The deepening influence of AI makes “cybersecurity increasingly important in defending against emergent risks and protecting national security,” they added.The transaction, the largest ever sought by Google or parent Alphabet, will test US President Donald Trump’s openness to large takeovers after resistance to such deals by the administration of his predecessor Joe Biden.Alphabet had been close to a Wiz takeover last summer, but company leaders opted to stay independent at the time with an eye towards an initial public offering, CEO Assaf Rappaport said in a message to employees after the earlier deal fell apart.Started in 2020 by the Israeli-born Rappaport and a team who sold a previous venture to Microsoft, Wiz is based in New York, with offices in three other US cities and Tel Aviv.In a webcast after the deal was announced, Rappaport said the service “continuously scans an organization’s code and cloud environments, monitoring them in real time” to “prioritize the most critical risk based on real impact and blocks active threats.”After the deal closes, Wiz will operate as a Google company that still provides services to other tech giants including Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure, making it like the operation of Mandiant, another cybersecurity company Google acquired three years ago, said Thomas Kurian, CEO of Google Cloud.”With Wiz, we believe we will vastly improve how security is designed, operated and automated, providing an end-to-end security platform for customers to prevent, detect and respond to incidents across all major clouds,” Kurian said.Google’s cloud business has grown significantly over the last decade, garnering more than $43 billion in revenue in 2024, up nearly 31 percent from the prior year.Wedbush analyst Dan Ives said the Google-Wiz deal could be the first of many with the departure of Lina Khan, the Biden-era head of the Federal Trade Commission, who was considered hostile to tech industry consolidation.”While the merger & acquisition environment has been extremely quiet to start the year, we believe that this acquisition will open the door to a massive wave of M&A across the tech landscape,” Ives said in a note.The cybersecurity industry is especially well suited “as more cloud operators look to secure their cloud portfolios while more cyber names look to capitalize on their all-in-one platform approaches by scooping up undervalued companies and improving their offerings,” Ives said.Shares of Google parent Alphabet fell 3.8 percent in morning trading.

US President Donald Trump and Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin began a critical phone call on Tuesday, with the White House saying the talks on securing a ceasefire in Moscow’s invasion were “going well.”Trump has already made clear that he is ready to discuss what parts of occupied Ukraine that Russia will be allowed to keep, saying at the weekend Moscow and Washington are talking about “dividing up certain assets.” The call comes amid concerns in Kyiv and European capitals that the 78-year-old Republican will cede too much ground to Putin, a leader for whom he has repeatedly expressed admiration in the past.”President Trump is currently in the Oval Office speaking with President Vladimir Putin of Russia since 10:00am (1400 GMT)” deputy chief of staff Dan Scavino said on X almost an hour later.”The call is going well, and still in progress.”A ceasefire is still far from guaranteed. Kyiv has agreed to halt fighting for 30 days and enter talks with Russia more than three years into Moscow’s invasion, but Putin has set a string of conditions.Trump said on his Truth Social network late Monday that “many elements of a final agreement have been agreed to, but much remains” to be settled.The talks were “getting down to a very critical stage,” Trump added.- Putin speech -Putin gave a hardline anti-Western speech Tuesday before the call, saying the West would still try to undermine Russia even if it lifted sanctions imposed over its invasion of Ukraine.He mocked the G7 to wild applause from the audience, saying it was too small to “see on a map.”Kyiv said it expected Moscow to “unconditionally” accept to the ceasefire.”It is time for Russia to show whether it really wants peace,” Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Andriy Sybiga said.Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has warned Putin does not want peace and is trying to achieve a better position militarily ahead of any halt in fighting.  Russia has attacked Ukraine with near daily barrages of drones and missiles for more than three years, occupying swathes of southern and eastern Ukraine and pressing a grinding advance in recent months.Putin has said that a ceasefire only benefits Kyiv and not the Russian army, that he said was “advancing”. Moscow has also made clear that it would not accept NATO troops deployed as peacekeeping forces in Ukraine and has said it was against the US arming Ukraine — demands that he could put forward to Trump.The push towards a ceasefire began in February when Trump announced last month that he had spoken to Putin — a surprise call that broke Western efforts to isolate the Russian leader while his invasion continues.As Trump upended years of US policy he then had a televised shouting match with Zelensky in the Oval Office on February 28, which led to the United States temporarily suspending its billions of dollars in military aid to Kyiv.- ‘End NOW’ -On Sunday Trump said he would discuss issues of “land” and “power plants” with Putin — a likely reference to the Moscow-occupied Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant, Europe’s largest that fell to Russia in the first days of its invasion.  Zelensky said over the weekend that any discussions over territory should take place at the negotiating table only after a ceasefire.Trump is intent on delivering on an election pledge to end fighting in Ukraine, blaming his predecessor Joe Biden’s policy on Russia for fueling the war.”It must end NOW,” he said on Truth Social.As Washington and Moscow prepared for the talks, authorities in Russia’s Kursk region were evacuating several hundred civilians from areas retaken from Ukraine last summer.The Kremlin has hailed Moscow’s quick offensive there last week as a major success, with Putin calling for Ukrainian soldiers to surrender or be killed.Russian pensioner Olga Shkuratova’s husband was killed last week during fighting as Russia ousted Ukrainian troops from her village of Goncharovka. “A shell hit. Everything was blown apart in a second. No house, no garage, no barn,” the 62-year-old told AFP as she was taken to safety by volunteers. burs-dk/sms

US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent on Tuesday said Washington could hold off reciprocal tariffs for countries that halt practices it deems unfair, adding that officials will produce a list of levies on April 2.This is the date on which President Donald Trump has promised reciprocal duties set to affect both US allies and competitors, with tariffs tailored to each trading partner.”What’s going to happen on April 2 — each country will receive a number that we believe represents their tariffs,” Bessent told Fox Business in an interview, adding that the level could vary.”We are going to go to them and say, look, here’s where we think the tariff levels are, non-tariff barriers, currency manipulation, unfair funding, labor suppression,” he added.If they stop these practices, Bessent said, “we will not put up the tariff wall.”He expressed optimism that on April 2, some duties “may not have to go on because a deal is pre-negotiated” or because countries swiftly approach Washington for talks once they receive their number.- ‘No reason’ for recession -Bessent also told Fox Business that he saw “no reason we need to have a recession” in the world’s biggest economy, saying “the underlying economy is healthy.”But he dismissed the premise of guaranteeing there will not be a downturn.He raised the idea of “a pause” as officials transition from an “unsustainable” level of government spending, saying that the Trump administration would rein in expenditures and bring manufacturing home.Trump’s tariff plans and the uncertainty surrounding them have shaken markets in recent times, fanning fears that an economic ebb could be in the cards.The president has referred to tariffs as a way to raise revenue, remedy trade imbalances and pressure countries to act on US concerns.On Tuesday, Bessent stressed that Trump has identified “critical industries” — like steel and aluminum among manufacturing sectors — for which he hopes to bring production back to the United States.He added that “we’re going to take in substantial revenues,” pointing to these as a means to offset the government deficit.Economists note that while tariffs raise revenue for the government, they also shift demand towards domestic industries that make the protected goods.They caution that this does not always mean a net expansion of demand.Bessent also said Tuesday that the Treasury is working with Congress on further outbound investment rules: “We will make sure that our outbound investment doesn’t turn around and get used against us.”