Category World News

In an effort to end a trade war between the world’s two largest economies, the United States and China have reached an agreement to speed up the delivery of rare earth minerals to the US.

Donald Trump, the president of the US, claimed on Thursday that he had already signed a deal with China the day before, but he would not provide further details. He also said that he anticipates signing a trade agreement with India in the coming days.

The US and China’s reduction of mutual tariffs came after talks in Geneva in May led to Thursday’s announcement.

Talks in London began in June, setting the stage for negotiations. The announcement made on Thursday appeared to confirm that understanding.

A White House official stated on Thursday that the Trump administration and China had reached an additional understanding regarding the implementation of the Geneva agreement.

China’s Ministry of Commerce stated that it would review and approve applications for items that fall under the export control laws, as well as providing a framework for a deal.

What are our current knowledge of the US-China deal?

Following Donald Trump’s “Liberation Day” announcement on April 2 during US-China trade talks in Geneva, Beijing pledged to remove non-tariff countermeasures imposed against the US.

Washington first announced so-called “reciprocal” import duties when it halted them for 90 days, with the exception of its 145 percent tariff on China. On July 9, this pause is scheduled to come to an end.

China retaliated by imposing a 125 percent tariff on US goods, suspending exports of a wide range of crucial minerals, and endangering US carmakers, semiconductor companies, and military contractors’ supply chains.

However, US Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick stated to Bloomberg TV on Thursday that “they’re]China going to deliver rare earths to us,” and that “we’ll take down our countermeasures” once they do so. Export restrictions on materials like chip software and ethane, which are used to make plastic, are among those US countermeasures.

The Chinese Commerce Ministry’s spokesperson stated on Friday that “both sides have further confirmed details about the framework after approval.”

According to the spokesperson, “The Chinese side will evaluate and approve eligible applications for controlled item exports in accordance with the law.” A number of restrictive measures against China will also be repealed by the US side.

According to two people with knowledge of the situation, China granted temporary export licenses to the top three US automakers in early June as supply chain disruptions started to appear as a result of export restrictions on those goods.

By codifying the conditions set out in Geneva, such as a commitment from China to deliver rare earths to all US businesses, Lutnick claimed the agreement from this week, which was signed on Wednesday, would amount to a wider agreement.

What makes Chinese rare earth minerals so crucial?

The US’s ongoing trade negotiations with China are centered on their export of rare earth elements. The world’s rare earths are mined to roughly 90 percent of their size, and Beijing is almost at the top of that field.

The auto industry, which relies on rare earth magnets for steering systems, engines, and catalytic converters, has grown particularly interested in critical minerals, a group of 17 elements that are crucial to a number of manufacturing processes.

Automobile manufacturers have already voiced concerns about the lack of rare earths and the magnets used to make them in their factories, which have already been shut down. A Ford executive claimed earlier this week that the business was “hand to mouth.”

Rare earths are used in a variety of products, including televisions, smartphones, and windmills, which are essential for the transition to clean energy. Additionally, they are used to produce AI processors, missile systems, and fighter jets.

What other trade agreements does Trump claim to be close to reaching?

Before his July 9 deadline for reinstating higher trade tariffs, which he paused on April 9, Lutnick told Bloomberg that Trump is also working on a number of trade agreements in the near future.

He said, “We’re going to do the top 10 deals, put them in the right category, and then these other countries will fall behind.”

Which countries would be included in that first wave of trade agreements, Lutnick did not specify. Trump made the suggestion that the US was close to reaching an agreement with India earlier on Thursday.

According to Bloomberg News, chief negotiator Rajesh Agarwal and other Indian trade officials are scheduled to meet in Washington for two days this week.

US officials have also spoken with nations like Vietnam, South Korea, Japan, and the EU in recent months.

Only the UK and the US have so far reached a trade agreement, while China and the United Kingdom have both signed lower reciprocal tariffs in Geneva.

Despite the agreement with the UK, there were still some issues raised, including the discounts that were imposed on some British metal exports.

What agreements are the US still trying to strike?

Prior to the expiration of reciprocal tariffs in early July, the majority of America’s major trade partners, including Canada, Vietnam, and South Korea, are anticipated to engage in contentious discussions with Washington.

There is no certainty for any of them as of yet, but the majority of nations are hoping to have their tariffs as much as possible and, if not, to extend the deadline for July.

Talks on particular topics have included:

European Union

A deal with the European Union, which had a $ 235.6 billion trade surplus with the US in 2024, remains a significant stumbling block.

The issue is whether EU leaders and the European Commission, which oversees trade issues for the 27-member bloc, agree to an “asymmetrical” trade agreement with the US, which would require terms that would be more advantageous to the US in order to close a deal more quickly.

Some member states are viewed as opposed to tit-for-tat retaliation, favoring a quick tariff cut over a flawless one.

Others are in opposition, though. France has pushed for the removal of tariffs and has rejected the idea of any deal favoring the US.

Japan

Japan wants to ratchet up any potential US tariffs in one go. However, Trump’s 25 percent tariffs on cars and car parts have been a sticking point in the negotiations.

Because autos account for the majority of its trade deficit with Japan, Washington is focused on the auto industry.

Tokyo’s automotive sector, which accounts for about 10% of the country’s GDP, is seen as a key component of its economy.

Tokyo’s top trade negotiator, Ryosei Akazawa, reiterated Tokyo’s position on Thursday by saying, “We find the 25 percent car tariff to be unacceptable.”

Could the US’s tariff deadline go beyond July?

The White House said on Thursday that President Trump might choose to extend the deadline for reimposition of tariffs on most of the world’s nations.

Trump’s July deadline for resuming tariffs is “not critical,” according to White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt.

Leavitt said, “Perhaps it could be extended, but the president has to make that choice.”

She added that the president can “merely provide these countries with a deal” if any of those nations refuse to sign a trade agreement with the US by the deadlines.

The president can choose a reciprocal tariff rate that she believes will benefit both the American worker and the United States, she continued.

The United States Supreme Court has ruled that lower courts likely overstepped their authority in issuing nationwide injunctions against presidential actions, limiting the ability of the judicial branch to check executive power.

Friday’s decision came in response to injunctions from federal courts in Washington, Maryland and Massachusetts which sought to block President Donald Trump’s ability to curtail the right to birthright citizenship.

“Universal injunctions likely exceed the equitable authority that Congress has given to federal courts,” the court’s majority said in its decision. “The Court grants the Government’s applications for a partial stay of the injunctions.”

But the majority added that its decision applies “only to the extent that the injunctions are broader than necessary”. The injunctions could still apply, the court suggested, to the plaintiffs in the cases at hand.

The ruling split the court once again along party lines, with its six conservative judges forming the majority and its three liberal judges issuing a dissent. Amy Coney Barrett, the court’s newest judge and a Trump appointee, penned the majority’s decision.

The Supreme Court’s decision was a major victory for the Trump administration, which has denounced “judicial overreach” as an unconstitutional obstacle to its policies. It will likely have wide-ranging ramifications for other cases where Trump’s agenda has been blocked by lower-court injunctions.

“Today, the Supreme Court instructed district courts to STOP the endless barrage of nationwide injunctions against President Trump,” Attorney General Pam Bondi wrote on the social media platform X.

Trump himself celebrated the decision on his platform Truth Social: “GIANT WIN in the United States Supreme Court!”

The Supreme Court’s ruling, however, did not allow Trump’s executive order on birthright citizenship to come into immediate effect.

It provided a 30-day period before Trump’s order could be applied and ordered the lower courts to bring their injunctions in line with the new decision. Class action appeals are likely to be filed within that window.

How did this case arrive at the Supreme Court?

Lower courts had come out strongly against Trump’s efforts to redefine birthright citizenship, a right established under the Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution, which was adopted in the wake of the US Civil War.

The amendment declared that “all persons born” in the US and “subject to the jurisdiction thereof” would be citizens.

The courts have repeatedly interpreted that text as granting citizenship to nearly all people born in the US, regardless of their parents’ nationalities. There were limited exceptions, including for the children of diplomats.

But in his 2024 re-election bid, Trump campaigned on a platform that would see the Fourteenth Amendment reinterpreted to exclude the children of undocumented immigrants.

The new policy, his platform said, “will make clear that going forward, the children of illegal aliens will not be granted automatic citizenship”.

On the first day of his second term, January 20, he followed through on that campaign promise, signing an executive order called, “Protecting the Meaning and Value of American Citizenship”.

But immigration advocates said that Trump’s policy violated the Constitution and could render some children stateless. Lower courts sided with them, issuing nationwide injunctions that barred the executive order from taking effect.

What did the Supreme Court majority say?

In Friday’s decision, the Supreme Court sidestepped making any decisions about the constitutionality of Trump’s proposed interpretation of birthright citizenship.

Instead, it focused specifically on the federal court injunctions that would stymie the president’s executive orders.

The decision came on the last day of the Supreme Court’s 2024-2025 term, when big decisions are often unveiled.

Writing for the majority, Justice Coney Barrett advanced an argument with threads of originalism, saying that the judicial system had strayed from its original mandate with such wide-reaching injunctions.

“Nothing like a universal injunction was available at the founding, or for that matter, for more than a century thereafter,” she wrote.

The majority asserted that injunctions historically had a limited scope, pertaining to the specific parties involved in a lawsuit.

“Traditionally, courts issued injunctions prohibiting executive officials from enforcing a challenged law or policy only
against the plaintiffs in the lawsuit,” Coney Barrett wrote.

Violence begets violence, so many religions say. Americans should know. After all, the United States – a nation founded on Indigenous genocide, African enslavement and open rebellion against an imperial power to protect its wealthiest citizens – cannot help but be violent. What’s more, violence in the US is political, and the violence the country has carried out overseas over the generations has always been connected to its imperialist ambitions and racism. From the US bombing of Iran’s nuclear sites on June 21 to the everyday violence in rhetoric and reality within the US, the likes of President Donald Trump continue to stoke the violent impulses of a violence‑prone nation.

The US news cycle serves as continual confirmation. In June alone, there have been several high‑profile shootings and murders. On June 14, Vance Boelter, a white male vigilante, shot and killed former Minnesota House Speaker Melissa Hortman and her husband, Mark, after critically wounding State Senator John Hoffman and his wife, Yvette. That same day, at a No Kings mass protest in Salt Lake City, Utah, peacekeepers with the 50501 Movement accidentally shot and killed Samoan fashion designer Arthur Folasa Ah Loo while attempting to take down Arturo Gamboa, who was allegedly armed with an AR‑15.

On June 1, the start of Pride Month, Sigfredo Ceja Alvarez allegedly shot and murdered gay Indigenous actor Jonathan Joss in San Antonio, Texas. On June 12, Secret Service agents forcibly detained and handcuffed US Senator Alex Padilla during Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem’s news conference in Los Angeles.

Mass shootings, white vigilante violence, police brutality, and domestic terrorism are all normal occurrences in the United States – and all are political. Yet US leaders still react with hollow platitudes that reveal an elitist and narcissistic detachment from the nation’s violent history. “Such horrific violence will not be tolerated in the United States of America. God bless the great people of Minnesota…” said Governor Tim Walz after Boelter’s June 14 shootings. On X, Republican Representative Derrick Van Orden wrote: “Political violence has no place in America. I fully condemn this attack…”

Despite these weak condemnations, the US often tolerates – and sometimes celebrates – political violence. Van Orden also tweeted, “With one horrible governor that appoints political assassins to boards. Good job, stupid,” in response to Walz’s message. Senator Mike Lee referred to the incident as “Nightmare on Waltz Street” before deleting the post.

Political violence in the US is commonplace. President Trump has long fostered it – such as during a presidential debate in Philadelphia, when he falsely claimed Haitian immigrants “eat their neighbours’ pets”. This led to weeks of threats against the roughly 15,000 Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio. On June 9, Trump posted on Truth Social: “IF THEY SPIT, WE WILL HIT… harder than they have ever been hit before.”

That led to a federally-sanctioned wave of violence against protesters in Los Angeles attempting to end Trump’s immigration crackdowns, including Trump’s takeover and deployment of California’s National Guard in the nation’s second-largest city.

But it’s not just that Trump may have a lust for political violence and is stoking such violence. The US has always been a powder keg for violence, a nation-state that cannot help itself.

Political violence against elected officials in the US is too extensive to list fully. Assassins murdered Presidents Abraham Lincoln, James A Garfield, William McKinley, and John F Kennedy. In 1804, Vice‑President Aaron Burr killed Alexander Hamilton in a duel. Populist candidate Huey Long was assassinated in 1935; Robert F Kennedy in 1968; Congresswoman Gabby Giffords was wounded in 2011.

Many assassins and vigilantes have targeted those fighting for social justice: Dr Martin Luther King Jr, Malcolm X, Elijah Parish Lovejoy, Marsha P. Johnson, and civil‑rights activists like Medgar Evers, James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, Michael Schwerner, Viola Liuzzo, and Fred Hampton. Jonathan Joss and Arthur Folasa Ah Loo are more recent examples of marginalised people struck down in a white‑supremacist society.

The most chilling truth of all is that, because of the violent nature of the US, there is no end in sight – domestically or overseas. The recent US bomb mission over Iran is merely the latest unprovoked preemptive attack the superpower has conducted on another nation. Trump’s unilateral use of military force was done, presumably, in support of Israel’s attacks on Iran, allegedly because of the threat Iran poses if it ever arms itself with nuclear weapons. But these are mere excuses that could also be violations of international law.

It wouldn’t be the first time the US has sought to start a war based on questionable intelligence or reasons, however. The most recent example, of course, is the US invasion of Iraq in 2003, a part of George W Bush’s “preemptive war” doctrine, attacking Iraq because they supposedly had a stockpile of WMDs that they could use against the US in the future. There was never any evidence of any stockpile of chemical or biological weapons. As many as 2.4 million Iraqis have died from the resulting violence, statelessness, and civil war that the initial 2003 US invasion created. It has not gone unnoticed that the US mostly bombs and invades nation-states with majority people of colour and non-Christian populations.

Malcolm X said it best, a week after Lee Harvey Oswald assassinated John F Kennedy in 1963: “Being an old farm boy myself, chickens coming home to roost never did make me sad; they’ve always made me glad.” Given that Americans consume nine billion chickens a year, that is a huge amount of retribution to consider for the nation’s history of violence. Short of repealing the Second Amendment’s right-to-bear-guns clause in the US Constitution and a real commitment towards eliminating the threat of white male supremacist terrorism, this violence will continue unabated, with repercussions that will include terrorism and revenge, domestically and internationally. A country with a history of violence, elitism, and narcissism like the US – and an individual like Trump – cannot divorce themselves from their own violent DNA, a violence that could one day consume this nation-state.

Claudia Sheinbaum, the president of Mexico, has threatened to sue SpaceX and Elon Musk for falling debris from a rocket launch across the American border.

According to SpaceX, “trespassers” had hampered its attempts to retrieve debris from Mexico.

What is happening between SpaceX and Mexico is explained more here.

What transpired?

A SpaceX “Starship” rocket detonated in a massive fireball during a routine launch test in Texas on June 19 as part of Elon Musk’s plan to launch people into space.

The majority of the steel used to make starship rockets is made of stainless steel, measuring 120 meters (400 feet).

At 04:00 GMT, the rocket, known as the Starship 36, “catastrophic failure and exploded” at the Starbase launch facility, according to Cameron County authorities.

In Cameron County, Texas, close to the US-Mexico border, the facility is located at Starbase, which was formerly Boca Chica Village.

What is Mexico’s position on contamination?

Sheinbaum stated in her morning press conference on Wednesday that “there is indeed contamination” in Mexico following the SpaceX explosion.

She claimed that Mexican authorities are looking into the negative impact Tamaulipas, which is located less than 300 kilometers (190 miles) from Starbase.

Americo Villarreal Anaya, the governor of the Tamaulipas, claimed that authorities were looking into “the internationally required distances are being respected in order to have these types of facilities, so that there is no risk to urban centers.”

Sheinbaum said, “We are reviewing everything that comes with the launch of rockets that are very close to our borders.”

She continued, “Mexico is currently attempting to determine whether international laws have been broken so that it can file the necessary lawsuits.”

What is said by SpaceX?

In an X-post on Thursday, SpaceX claimed that delays had prevented its recovery of the fallen debris from Mexican soil.

The X account stated that despite SpaceX’s efforts to recover the anomaly-related debris, which is and continues to be SpaceX’s tangible property, unauthorised parties have been attempting to trespass on private property. It did not specify who these individuals were or what “trespassing” they were.

Additionally, SpaceX added that the rocket debris “no risks to the surrounding area.” “Previous independent tests on the materials used in Starship, including toxicology analyses, confirm that they don’t pose any chemical, biological, or toxicological risks.

The Mexican government has reportedly requested local and federal assistance with the recovery, it continued.

The surrounding area is safe from any danger, as previously stated. Materials inside Starship have previously been subject to independent tests, including toxicology analyses, which established that they don’t pose any chemical, biological, or toxicological risks.

And as is the case with all tests, there is a safety check https://t.co/lJHGInE5vj.

Where else did SpaceX rockets detonate?

The US Federal Aviation Administration approved SpaceX’s request to increase the number of Starships it launches annually from five to 25 in May.

A Starship prototype exploded over the Indian Ocean later that month.

Two Starships collided before that during test flights in January and March when they first flew out of Texas&nbsp. Airlines were forced to divert flights in January to avoid falling debris.

Does the Earth risk being harmed by space debris?

A 500 kg (1, 100 kg) metallic object fell on a village in Makueni county, Kenya, 115 kilometers (70 miles) southeast of Nairobi in January of this year. The debris, according to the Kenyan space agency, was a spacecraft fragment.

A Russian rocket making its second attempt into the Earth’s atmosphere was predicted to fall into international waters off the southeast coast of Tasmania on March 3th, according to an advisory from the Australian Space Agency. The agency claimed the following day that it had “observed a space debris re-entry over the southeast coast of Tasmania” but was “unaware of any reports or sightings of the debris.”

In general, there is very little chance that space debris will pose a threat to people, aircraft, or the Earth. However, recent studies have revealed that space debris is getting more and more common.

Uncontrolled re-entries of rocket bodies or space debris into the Earth are on the rise, according to a study by Canadian researchers at the University of British Columbia in January 2025, which may increase the risk of collision for aircraft.

The European Space Agency (ESA) released a separate study in March this year, titled The Space Environment Report, which found that at least three “intellectual” objects are reintroduced onto Earth every day. This is in addition to the numerous space debris fragments that are deposited on Earth.

There are millions of pieces of space debris in the Earth’s orbit, according to NASA’s warning, but there are no laws governing how to remove it.