Category World News

United States President Donald Trump’s latest tariffs on the auto sector have made one thing clear, experts say: The US is no longer a beacon of free market trade, and businesses need to switch to the reality of “America first”.

On Wednesday, Trump announced 25 percent tariffs from this Thursday on all cars, light trucks and auto parts imported into the US, a move experts called “devastating” for the industry.

Almost half of the 16 million cars sold in the US last year were imported with a total value exceeding $330bn, according to news reports quoting Goldman Sachs analysts.

It is not clear whether the tariffs will go into effect as laid out in Trump’s latest announcement or if there will be exceptions or any rollback.

“But one thing we know for sure”, said Ilhan Geckil, senior economist at the Anderson Economic Group (AEG), is that “Trump’s policies are protectionist and not free market and free trade the way that the US has done]things] for decades. Now that’s shifting. … That’s the new rule, and companies have to play accordingly and will have to increase business presence in the US”.

Some car manufacturers, including South Korea’s Hyundai and Kia, have announced plans to boost production in the US.

While that gives the impression that Trump is right to argue tariffs will force manufacturers to produce more in the US, the full picture is more complicated, Geckil said.

“The US really is the best in terms of the size of the market” and accounts for nearly 25 percent of global auto sales, Geckil said, explaining why automakers do not want to lose access to the US market.

But the reason a lot of manufacturing moved out of the US was to take advantage of lower prices and cheaper goods.

Bringing manufacturing back to the US will lead to higher prices for their products, hitting demand, he said.

“Prices are going to go up significantly, and that will have a spillover effect”, Geckil said, adding that he expects to see higher sticker prices within a month or so of the tariffs kicking in.

“A $50, 000 vehicle will become a $75, 000 to $80, 000 vehicle in a couple of years, and that price hike is going to stay there forever”, he said.

That, in turn, will eventually lead to job losses, contrary to Trump’s stated goal of protecting American workers, Geckil said.

As per an earlier estimate by AEG, tariff proposals floated by Trump in February would raise the price of a car assembled in the US, Canada and Mexico from $4, 000 to $10, 000 for most vehicles and $12, 000 or more for electric vehicles (EVs)

The estimate did not include the impact of retaliatory tariffs that other countries might impose.

In addition, Trump’s 25 percent tariffs on steel and aluminium, which kicked in on March 12, are expected to increase prices of conventional engine vehicles by $250 to $800 and those of EVs by $2, 500 or more, AEG previously said.

AEG said the measures unveiled on March 26 would be “much more costly” for European- and Asian-manufactured cars than its previous estimate and potentially more expensive or less expensive for North American-produced vehicles.

Ford CEO Jim Farley told employees in an email on Friday that “the impacts of the tariffs are likely to be significant across our industry – affecting automakers, suppliers, dealers and customers”, the Reuters news agency reported. He gave the warning even though about 80 percent of Ford vehicles sold in the US are assembled domestically.

Integrated industry

One reason auto tariffs have such a wide-ranging impact is because the industries of different countries are so deeply intertwined.

In North America, the US and Canadian auto industries have been broadly integrated since the 1965 signing of a pact that facilitated the duty-free movement of vehicles and parts, said David Adams, president and CEO of Global Automakers of Canada.

That was followed by free trade agreements in 1989 and 1994 that bound the industries of the two countries and that of Mexico more closely together.

Over the years, the three countries have built up specialisations for certain auto parts, partly driven by costs, Adams said.

For instance, the Canadian dollar is typically lower than the US dollar and since Canada has a public healthcare system, employers usually do not have to bear health insurance costs for their workers, making it cheaper to do some work in Canada over the US.

For a vehicle made in Canada, half the parts would come from the US, and for one made in Mexico, 30 percent to 35 percent of its parts would be from the US on average.

“By tariffing Canadian vehicles you’re effectively tariffing American suppliers”, Adams told Al Jazeera.

Since Canada and Mexico – and all other nations that the latest tariffs apply to – are likely to retaliate, prices will almost certainly spiral further.

“We don’t want to cut off our nose to spite our face, but what we’re looking at hurts everybody. … Because of the high degree of integration, the impact will be to a same degree on both sides”, Adams said.

The tariffs on auto parts, which do not apply to components deemed to be “US content”, complicate things even further.

In car production, raw materials are typically turned into a component in one jurisdiction before being folded into a larger component or components elsewhere. It is common for parts to cross borders three to five times per vehicle.

In practice, this means the tariff burden may vary wildly for different companies and different vehicles.

“It is highly confusing and complex”, Adams said.

“Trump’s desire seems to be not to have a Canadian auto sector. But that would cost $50bn to $60bn to relocate everything to the US. This is not a short-term proposition. We’re ultimately looking for a long-term solution that creates stability not just in the auto sector but in the North American economy, so we can focus on doing business”.

That solution needs to include Mexico because a globally competitive auto industry needs a low-cost region for carrying out the most labour-intensive parts of the manufacturing process, Adams said.

“Part of the current challenge is that]Trump] is looking at the auto industry from a myopic view of the auto sector as an American industry rather than a North American industry”, he said.

Adding to the uncertainty hanging over the sector is Trump’s pledge to impose “reciprocal” tariffs on all countries and specific duties on Canada and Mexico over their alleged failure to stem the flow of fentanyl and undocumented immigrants into the US.

Some of Trump’s claimed rationale for the tariffs is based on “false” information, given that little fentanyl flows from Canada to the US, said Brett House, an economics professor at Columbia University’s Business School.

In her work at hospitals or in-home healthcare, Parker explained she has often talked to patients about the importance of vaccines. Some listen. Many don’t.

While Parker has seen plenty of misinformation and disinformation over the years, she said the COVID-19 pandemic made matters worse.

“There was a petri dish there just waiting for that mess to proliferate”, she said in reference to vaccine scepticism.

“And then the right wind came along, and it blew those spores all over the place: the spores of ignorance and misinformation”.

Rekha Lakshmanan observed something similar. She is the chief strategic officer for The Immunization Partnership, a Houston-based nonprofit that aims to eradicate preventable diseases.

She argued that Texas has long been a site of vaccine misinformation. But the pandemic “made the nation catch up with Texas”.

False rumours flooded the internet, warning that vaccines could alter DNA or render people infertile. Some conspiracy theories even posited that the vaccine could be used for implanting chips into patients ‘ bodies for surveillance.

Not all vaccine sceptics believe the misinformation. The way Lakshmanan sees it, vaccine hesitancy falls on a continuum. At the far end, there are those who cannot be convinced to get a vaccine, regardless of the data you present. Unfortunately, she said, that’s the loudest group.

Yet, others can be convinced.

“You have to take a step back and see that there’s a bigger part of that continuum that’s parents, and they just have questions”, Lakshmanan said.

She explained that parents are often sifting through reams of misinformation, trying to understand what is real and what isn’t.

For example, the anti-vaccine organisation Children’s Health Defense recently published a website that bore a striking resemblance to materials published by the CDC.

But its site was riddled with disinformation about vaccines. Kennedy, who served as a leader at Children’s Health Defense before joining the government, ultimately ordered the organisation to take the site down.

“The challenge with misinformation is that it could look legit”, Lakshmanan said, “which is why we have to approach these conversations with empathy”.

That includes arguments about “parents ‘ rights”, which she says is entirely misleading. Anti-vaccine leaders like Kennedy have accused the government of forcing vaccination on parents.

Eid al-Fitr is supposed to be a time filled with joy and celebration. Children should be running around in new clothes, laughing, collecting Eidiya (Eid money the grown-ups distribute) and visiting relatives.

Homes should be filled with the aroma of maamoul and kaak, the traditional Eid cookies, and streets should be alive with gatherings and celebration.

But in Gaza, this is a time of grief. The air is thick with dust from the rubble of destroyed buildings, and the sound of bombardments doesn’t abate.

Instead of joyful reunions, families sit among the ruins, mourning their loved ones.

Many of us are starving, barely holding onto life, wondering if the next bomb will fall on us. Nights are sleepless, haunted by memories and nightmares that do not fade away.

This will be my first Eid without my little sister, Rahaf. She was my only sister, my best friend. During the genocide, we clung to each other, finding comfort in each other.

We spent 13 Eids together on this Earth, and Rahaf was the joy of every one of them. Ever since she could walk, she would wake up before everyone else, running through the house, announcing it had begun.

She would put on her new clothes and ask me to do her hair before we visited our grandmothers in their homes, sitting with the extended family gathered there, drinking tea and eating the sweets the mothers had spent days preparing.

This year, there is nothing to prepare, no place to go, no Rahaf to share it with.

I never thought I would lose her, and I was not prepared for her absence. We dreamed of a future when we would always be by each other’s side to celebrate milestones, creating lives filled with art and words.

I longed to see her become the artist she always dreamed of being, to watch her paintings come to life and witness the world recognise her talent.

We imagined the day I would publish my first book. How we would celebrate together, knowing that no matter where life took us, we would always be each other’s biggest supporters.

Rahaf was taken away from me on December 28.

We were sleeping at home when, at 4am, my uncle’s home right next door was bombed. The explosion destroyed our home too.

Rahaf was asleep in the room closest to my uncle’s house and was crushed.

That was the room I used to sleep in. We had switched places only four days before she was killed.

Ever since then, there has been no time to grieve, no space to process loss. Grief does not ease amid bombs.

How can you heal when every moment threatens to take yet another loved one? How can you find a path forward when the future you envisioned has been stolen?

In the midst of my own grief, I have been reminded that there are those who understand her killing even less than I do.

As we adults carry unbearable anguish, children are left to navigate their own pain alone. They, too, have dreams interrupted by loss, by fear, by the absence of those who once made their world feel safe. My seven-year-old cousin Qamar recently called my attention to that.

One afternoon as I sat on a couch in the home of another uncle who had taken us in when our house was destroyed, Qamar came and sat beside me.

Her little hand reached up, gently touching my arm. I could tell she had been thinking.

“Shahd”, she began, her voice heavy with curiosity, “why aren’t you at your home? Why isn’t it there anymore”?

My heart skipped a beat at the simplicity of her question, yet I felt like it carried the weight of a thousand memories I didn’t know how to explain to those innocent eyes.

“Our home – it was destroyed. There was nothing left after the bombing. We lost everything – the walls, the memories and Rahaf”.

She stared at me for a moment, her eyes wide: “And Rahaf, where is she”?

I knew that Qamar had been told Rahaf was gone, so her question hit me like a cold gust of wind.

The weight of losing Rahaf felt impossible to put into words again for someone so young, especially someone like Qamar, who had known Rahaf’s warm laughter and gentle spirit.

I closed my eyes for a moment. My voice was barely a whisper. “Rahaf is in heaven now. She was taken from us during the bombing, and we can’t bring her back”.

Her face was filled with confusion and innocence. “Why did she have to go? Why did they take her”?

My hands shook as I pulled her close. “I don’t know, Qamar. I wish I could explain it to you in a way that makes sense”.

She whispered, “I want to see her again. I miss her”.

Tears welled up in my eyes, my heart aching. “I miss her too. Every single day. But she will always be with us, in our hearts”.

In that moment, I couldn’t help but wonder about the day when Qamar would understand what war does – not just to the land, but to people. How long before she realises that even when we try to move on, the pain of loss lingers like a shadow.

I don’t want her to understand these things. She’s too young for the weight of this harsh reality. She shouldn’t have to feel this kind of pain and loss.

I wish I could take the children of Gaza and hide them in my heart to protect them from terror, fear and grief.

The world expects us to be strong, to have sumoud (perseverance), but the emotional exhaustion of living through war and loss leaves little room for anything else.

The weight of survival without the luxury of healing is a burden. There is no closure in a genocide that continues to unfold.

There’s no space to grieve when survival demands every ounce of strength.

But we hold onto the love of those we have lost, keeping them alive in our memories, our words and our fight to exist.

Hope, however fragile, is an act of resistance.

It keeps us searching for light in the ruins, for meaning in absence, for life beyond mere survival.

Facebook&nbsp, has platformed&nbsp, more than 100 paid advertisements promoting illegal settlements and far-right settler activity in the occupied West Bank, an Al Jazeera investigation has found, raising concerns that the social media giant is profiting from content that may violate international law.

Among the advertisements identified were also calls for the demolition of Palestinian homes, schools, and playgrounds, as well as fundraising appeals for Israeli military units operating in Gaza.

Facebook’s parent company Meta told Al Jazeera that any advertisements that ran on its platforms were reviewed by the company. While it admitted that some of the advertisements had since been removed for “violating our social issues, elections, and politics policies”, it did not specify whether the promotion of illegal settlements built on stolen Palestinian land breached those standards.

Legal experts told Al Jazeera that Meta could be complicit in violations of international law by approving, accepting payment, and publishing these advertisements. Brian Leishman, an MP in the United Kingdom parliament, described the findings as “extremely concerning”.

Illegal settlements advertised on Facebook

At least 52 paid advertisements from Israeli real estate companies were found promoting property sales in settlements across the occupied West Bank, targeting buyers from across Israel as well as some users in the UK and the United States. These advertisements were first published in March 2024, and many remain active on Facebook.

“We have robust processes and teams to review ads, and our ad review system is designed to review ads before they go live”, Meta told Al Jazeera. “This system relies primarily on automated technology to apply our Advertising Standards to the millions of ads that run across our apps, while relying on our teams to build and train these systems, and in some cases, to manually review ads”.

Among the advertisements identified by Al Jazeera were at least four promoting property sales in the illegal Israeli settlement of Ariel, 20km (12 miles) east of the Green Line in the occupied West Bank. The listings, written in Hebrew and targeting Israeli Facebook users, were paid for by a Facebook page called “Ramat Aderet”, which describes itself as offering “penthouses for a perfect quality of life”.

According to the website, the Ramat Aderet (Hillside Crown) project is “two neighbourhoods – north and south – with a total of 27 … buildings of between 4 to 8 floors. The apartments provide a complete urban living experience in a perfect neighbourhood”. The company has a valuation of $300m, according to PitchBook, a research firm and financial data provider.

Ramat Aderet did not respond to Al Jazeera’s request for comment.

The real estate company selling apartments and houses in Ariel is Ram Aderet, which has received financing from the First International Bank of Israel.

The Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement has long called for a boycott of the bank over its role in financing illegal settlements. Following pressure, in January 2014, the Dutch pension fund PGGM withdrew investments from the bank, while insurance giant AXA&nbsp, divested in 2022.

Another 48 advertisements were posted by Gabai Real Estate, advertising homes in the occupied West Bank settlement of Ma’ale Adumim and the Efrat settlement.

These homes are part of an expansion approved in March 2024 by Israel’s “Higher Planning Committee”, which is overseen by far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, who, since 2023, no longer needs political or military approvals for expansion plans.

Yaniv Gabbay, the co-owner of Gabai Real Estate, told Al Jazeera: “Unfortunately, we were only able to post 48 ads because our budget is limited, and we advertise on many different platforms. But as we sell more homes to Jews returning home to Judea, our advertising budget will increase, and we can post more”.

Some Israelis refer to the occupied West Bank as Judea and Samaria, and the far-right government has made a push towards annexing the Palestinian territory.

The advertisements attempt to portray living in the settlements as idyllic. One lists an eight-bedroom mansion with a “huge garden, large succah area (seats 50+), above-ground pool, Jacuzzi, sauna, cold plunge, and breathtaking desert mountain views… A dream home just 20 minutes from Jerusalem! Don’t miss out”!

Carolina Are, a platform governance researcher at the Centre for Digital Citizens at Northumbria University, told Al Jazeera that “the real estate ads have been expertly framed as standard property listings, allowing them to elude moderation”.

“Moderators may not be aware of the nuances of international law either”, she added.

Under international law, all Israeli settlements in the West Bank are illegal. The transfer of an occupying power’s civilian population into occupied territory is considered a war crime under the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court.

Professor Aoife O’Donoghue, international law expert from Queen’s University Belfast, said: “On the West Bank, property can be privately bought and sold. However, whether they have the legal title to sell that land at all would be highly questionable.

” If the Israeli government is facilitating it, and they are settlements, then they would be in violation of the Third Geneva Convention. Here, the Israeli government has a duty to prevent illegal settlements. “

Settler groups pushing for demolitions

Al Jazeera also identified 50 advertisements posted by Regavim, a far-right settler group founded by Smotrich in 2006, that has called for the destruction of Palestinian homes, schools, and a children’s water park. The group receives funding from the Israeli government via the West Bank settlement councils, and also Amana, another pro-settlement organisation sanctioned by the UK and US governments.

One advertisement celebrated the demolition of a Palestinian school, boasting:” Following our petition, Civil Administration forces tore down an illegal Palestinian school built in the Herodian Nature Reserve… This school is only one out of more than 100 illegal school buildings. “

Another advertisement called for a Palestinian water park to be demolished, claiming:” Palestinians are enjoying themselves at our expense. “

Regavim defended the campaign against the school, saying it was” built for the sole purpose of creating confrontation”.

“]It] was deemed by the]Israeli] courts to pose a very serious and imminent danger to the safety and wellbeing of the Palestinian children who were being bussed in to fill the makeshift structure, “Naomi Linder Kahn of Regavim said.

The European Union has previously condemned the demolition of schools in the West Bank, and Human Rights Watch has described the practice as” discriminatory and violates children’s right to education”.

In October last year, nearly 90 US legislators urged then-President Joe Biden to impose sanctions on Regavim.

Regavim denies being a far-right or settler group, instead claiming to be a” mainstream, professional contributor to public discourse and is a frequent participant in national policy discussion and debate”.

But Leishman, the British MP, said:” Revelations that Israeli far-right pro-settler groups as well as businesses – and allegedly even active Israeli soldiers – may be using social media to promote what could be seen as illegal under international law are extremely concerning. “

Facebook fundraisers for Israeli soldiers in Gaza

Beyond settlement expansion, Meta has also platformed fundraising advertisements for Israeli military units operating in Gaza, even after a ceasefire was declared.

Legal experts say allowing such advertisements may violate international humanitarian law by promoting military operations in occupied territory.

Nine advertisements, paid for by Israeli singer Mayer Malik, sought donations for sniper teams, drone units, and special forces battalions deployed in Gaza. One advertisement, still active on Facebook, reads:” We urgently need shooting tripods to complete our mission in Jabalia. “

Other advertisements requested funding for drones for the Yasar Battalion and an elite Israeli army unit in Rafah, as well as night-vision goggles for the Golani Brigade.

Malik did not respond to two requests for comment from Al Jazeera.

According to Meta’s advertising guidelines”, Ads must not promote the sale or use of weapons, ammunition or explosives. This includes ads for weapon modification accessories. “

Professor Neve Gordon of Queen Mary University, UK, said:” Facebook is making money from criminal activity.

“By allowing third parties to post such ads, Facebook becomes complicit in their criminal activity, since the ads themselves play a role in whitewashing, normalising and legitimising acts that, according to international humanitarian law and the Rome Statute, are egregious crimes”.

Leishman added: “Social media giants should be a lot more careful about what they allow to appear on their platforms, rather than profiteering from organisations with a dangerous and divisive agenda.

” It is time for them to start taking responsibility so that they are not complicit in systematic violations of international law.