Trump | Pakistan

Move comes after billionaire clashed with Trump over "big, beautiful" tax bill

US President Donald Trump said on Friday that he had signed 12 trade letters to be sent out next week ahead of an impending deadline for his tariffs to take effect. “I signed some letters and they’ll go out on Monday, probably 12,” Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One, adding that the countries to which the letters would be sent will be announced on the same day. His comments come days before steeper duties — which the president said on Thursday would range between 10 and 70 per cent — are set to take effect on dozens of economies, from Taiwan to the European Union. The tariffs were part of a broader announcement in April where Trump imposed a 10pc duty on goods from almost all trading partners, with a plan to step up these rates for a select group within days. But he swiftly paused the hikes until July 9, allowing for trade talks to take place. With less than a week to go before July 9, Pakistan and the United States concluded a critical round of trade negotiations yesterday, reaching an understanding o...

United States President Donald Trump’s signature tax and spending bill passed through Congress on Thursday, meaning it was ready to be signed into law by the 47th president. The Republican-controlled House of Representatives earlier launched a final yes-or-no vote on the ‘One Big, Beautiful Bill’ after the chamber’s top Democrat delayed action with a record-breaking speech that lasted more than eight hours. Republicans called the vote after a marathon overnight session in which they cleared a procedural hurdle, setting the stage for final passage. “Now we are finally ready to fulfil our promise to the American people,” House Speaker Mike Johnson said on the House floor. Republicans control the chamber 220-212 and can afford to lose no more than three votes from their side. The bill would extend Trump’s 2017 tax cuts, cut healthcare and food safety net programmes, fund the president’s immigration crackdown and eliminate many green-energy incentives. It also includes a $5 trillion increase in the nation’s debt ...

Russian President Vladimir Putin told United States President Donald Trump in a phone call on Thursday that Moscow wants a negotiated end to the Ukraine war, but will not step back from its original goals, a Kremlin aide said. In a wide-ranging conversation that also covered Iran and the Middle East, Trump “again raised the issue of an early end to military action” in Ukraine, the aide, Yuri Ushakov, told reporters. “Vladimir Putin, for his part, noted that we continue to seek a political and negotiated solution to the conflict,” Ushakov said. Putin briefed Trump on the implementation of agreements reached between Russia and Ukraine last month to exchange prisoners-of-war and dead soldiers, Ushakov said, and told him that Moscow was ready to continue negotiations with Kyiv. “Our president also said that Russia will achieve the goals it has set: that is, the elimination of the well-known root causes that led to the current state of affairs, to the current acute confrontation, and Russia will not back down from...

President Donald Trump’s signature tax and spending bill was in limbo early Thursday as Republican leaders in the US Congress scrambled to win over a group of rebels threatening to torpedo the centrepiece of the president’s domestic agenda. Trump is seeking final approval in the House of Representatives for his Senate-passed “One Big Beautiful Bill” — but faces opposition on all sides of his fractious party over provisions set to balloon the national debt while launching a historic assault on the social safety net. As midnight (9am PKT) struck, House Speaker Mike Johnson was still holding open a key procedural vote — the bill’s last hurdle before it can advance to be considered for final approval — more than two hours after it was first called. With no clear sign of the stalemate breaking, his lieutenants huddled in tense meetings behind the scenes with the rebels who had either voted no or had yet to come to the House floor. “We’re going to get there tonight. We’re working on it and very, very positive about...

US President Donald Trump urged Hamas on Tuesday to accept a 60-day ceasefire in Gaza, saying that Israel had agreed to finalise such a deal, as its forces also stepped up operations in the Palestinian territory. Nearly 21 months of relentless Israeli bombardment have created dire humanitarian conditions for the more than two million people in the Gaza Strip, where Israel has recently expanded its military operations. The civil defence agency said Israeli strikes killed at least 14 people today. Trump, in a post on social media, said his representatives had met with Israeli officials about the raging conflict, ahead of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s visit to Washington next week. “Israel has agreed to the necessary conditions to finalise the 60-day ceasefire, during which time we will work with all parties to end the war,” Trump wrote. He said representatives of Qatar and Egypt, mediators in the conflict, would deliver “this final proposal”. “I hope, for the good of the Middle East, that Hamas takes this...

The Republican-led US Senate approved President Donald Trump’s mammoth domestic policy bill on Tuesday by the narrowest of margins, despite misgivings over delivering deep welfare cuts and another $3 trillion in national debt. Republican leaders had struggled to corral support during a record 24-hour “vote-a-rama” amendment session on the Senate floor, as Democrats offered dozens of challenges to the most divisive aspects of the package. But Senate Majority Leader John Thune was able to turn around wavering moderates to deliver a 50-50 vote, with Vice President JD Vance breaking the tie. The sprawling text now heads to the House of Representatives, where it faces unified Democratic opposition and multiple Republicans baulking at the budget-busting costs, as well as slashed health care and food aid programmes for poor Americans. Trump’s bill proposes a $4.5tr extension of his first-term tax cuts, contentiously offset with $1.2tr in savings mainly targeting the Medicaid health insurance programme, as well as fe...

WASHINGTON DC: The Republican-led US Senate approved President Donald Trump’s mammoth domestic policy bill Tuesday by the narrowest of margins, despite misgivings over delivering deep welfare cuts and another $3 trillion in national debt. Republican leaders had struggled to corral support during a record 24-hour “vote-a-rama” amendment session on the Senate floor, as Democrats offered dozens […]

Donald Trump and Elon Musk reignited their bitter feud on Tuesday, with the US president threatening to deport the tech tycoon and strip federal funds from his businesses for criticising Trump’s flagship spending bill. The world’s richest person was Trump’s biggest political donor in the 2024 election, and became his inseparable ally during his first months back in the White House as head of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). But the Space X and Tesla boss is now threatening to turn his riches against Trump, mulling a rival political party to challenge Republican lawmakers who vote for the president’s “One Big Beautiful Bill”. Trump, 79, reacted vengefully today as he headed to the opening of a new migrant detention centre in Florida dubbed “Alligator Alcatraz”. “We’ll have to take a look,” he told reporters when asked if he would consider deporting Musk, who has held US citizenship since 2002. View this post on Instagram Trump also signalled that he could take aim at the huge contracts and subsi...

President Donald Trump signed on Monday an executive order terminating a US sanctions programme on Syria, allowing an end to the country’s isolation from the international financial system and building on Washington’s pledge to help it rebuild after a devastating civil war. The move will allow the US to maintain sanctions on Syria’s ousted former president Bashar al-Assad, his associates, human rights abusers, drug traffickers, people linked to chemical weapons activities, the Islamic State and ISIS affiliates and proxies for Iran, White House spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt told reporters in a briefing. Assad was toppled in December in a lightning offensive by Islamist-led rebels and Syria has since taken steps to re-establish international ties. Syrian Foreign Minister Asaad al-Shibani said Trump’s termination of the Syria sanctions programme would “open door of long-awaited reconstruction and development,” according to a post by the foreign minister on social media platform X. He said the move would “lift the...

Iran-linked hackers have threatened to disclose more emails stolen from US President Donald Trump’s circle, after distributing a prior batch to the media ahead of the 2024 US election. In online chats with Reuters on Sunday and Monday, the hackers, who go by the pseudonym Robert, said they had roughly 100 gigabytes of emails from the accounts of White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles, Trump lawyer Lindsey Halligan, Trump adviser Roger Stone and porn star-turned-Trump antagonist Stormy Daniels. Robert raised the possibility of selling the material but otherwise did not provide details of their plans. The hackers did not describe the content of the emails. US Attorney General Pam Bondi described the intrusion as “an unconscionable cyber-attack”. The White House and the FBI responded with a statement from FBI Director Kash Patel, who said: “Anyone associated with any kind of breach of national security will be fully investigated and prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.” “This so-called cyber ‘attack’ is ...

US President Donald Trump branded the winner of New York City’s mayoral Democratic primary a “pure communist” in remarks that aired Sunday, an epithet the progressive candidate dismissed as political theatrics. Zohran Mamdani’s shock win last week against a scandal-scarred political heavyweight resonated as a thunderclap within the party, and drew the ire of Trump and his collaborators, who accused Mamdani of being a radical extremist. The Republican’s aggressive criticism of the self-described democratic socialist is sure to ramp up over the coming months as Trump’s party seeks to push Democrats away from the political centre and frame them as too radical to win major US elections. “He’s pure communist” and a “radical leftist … lunatic,” Trump fumed on Fox News talk show ‘Sunday Morning Futures with Maria Bartiromo’. “I think it’s very bad for New York,” added Trump, who grew up in the city and built his sprawling real estate business there. “If he does get in, I’m going to be president and he is going to ha...

US President Donald Trump said in a Fox News interview aired on Sunday that he found a buyer for the TikTok social media app, which he described as a group of “very wealthy people” whose identities he will reveal in about two weeks. Trump made the remarks in an interview on Fox News programme ‘Sunday Morning Futures with Maria Bartiromo’ and said that the deal he is developing would probably need China’s approval to move forward, predicting that Chinese President Xi Jinping would likely approve it. The US president earlier this month extended a deadline for China-based ByteDance to divest the US assets of TikTok to September 17, despite a law that mandated a sale or shutdown without significant progress. A deal had been in the works this spring that would have spun off TikTok’s US operations into a new US-based firm — majority-owned and operated by US investors — but it was put on hold after China indicated it would not approve it following Trump’s announcements of steep tariffs on Chinese goods. “We have a b...

The Republican-controlled US Senate narrowly advanced President Donald Trump’s, sweeping tax-cut and spending bill on Saturday, during a marathon weekend session marked by political drama, division and lengthy delays as Democrats sought to slow the legislation’s path to passage. Lawmakers voted 51-49 to open debate on the 940-page megabill, with two of Trump’s fellow Republicans joining Democrats to oppose the legislation that would fund the president’s top immigration, border, tax-cut and military priorities. Trump on social media hailed the “great victory” for his “great, big, beautiful bill”. After hours of delay, during which Republican leaders and Vice President JD Vance worked behind closed doors to persuade last-minute holdouts to support the measure, Democrats demanded that the megabill first be read aloud in the chamber — a task that could delay the start of the debate until Sunday afternoon. Democrats say the bill’s tax cuts would disproportionately benefit the wealthy at the expense of social progr...

President Donald Trump on Saturday lashed out at prosecutors in Israel over the corruption trial that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has faced, saying Washington, having given billions of dollars worth of aid to Israel, was not going to “stand for this”. Netanyahu was indicted in 2019 in Israel on charges of bribery, fraud and breach of trust - all of which he denies. The trial began in 2020 and involves three criminal cases. “It is INSANITY doing what the out-of-control prosecutors are doing to Bibi Netanyahu,” Trump said in a Truth Social post, adding that the judicial process was going to interfere with Netanyahu’s ability to conduct talks with Palestinian militants Hamas, and Iran. Trump’s second post over the course of a few days defending Netanyahu and calling for the cancellation of the trial went a step further to tie Israel’s legal action to US aid. “The United States of America spends Billions of Dollar [sic] a year, far more than on any other Nation, protecting and supporting Israel. We ...

United States President Donald Trump said on Friday that he is calling off trade negotiations with Canada in retaliation for taxes impacting major US tech firms, adding that Ottawa will learn of their tariff rate within a week. “Based on this egregious tax, we are hereby terminating all discussions on trade with Canada, effective immediately,” Trump said in a post on his Truth Social platform. He added that Canada will soon find out the levy it needs to pay to do business in the United States, calling his country’s northern neighbour “very difficult” to trade with. Washington has previously taken issue with Canada’s digital services tax, requesting dispute settlement talks last year over the matter. While Canada’s digital services tax is not new — it was enacted last year — US service providers are “on the hook for a multi-billion dollar payment in Canada” by June 30, noted the Computer and Communications Industry Association. While Canada has been spared from some of Trump’s most sweeping duties, such as a 1...

The United States Supreme Court handed President Donald Trump a major victory on Friday by curbing the power of lone federal judges to block executive actions. In a 6-3 ruling stemming from Trump’s bid to end birthright citizenship, the court said nationwide injunctions issued by district court judges “likely exceed the equitable authority that Congress has granted to federal courts”. The top court did not immediately rule on the constitutionality of Trump’s executive order seeking to end automatic citizenship for children born on American soil. But the broader decision on the scope of judicial rulings will remove a big roadblock to Trump’s often highly controversial orders and reaffirm the White House’s power. “Federal courts do not exercise general oversight of the Executive Branch; they resolve cases and controversies consistent with the authority Congress has given them,” said Justice Amy Coney Barrett, author of the opinion. “When a court concludes that the Executive Branch has acted unlawfully, the answ...

THE HAGUE: Nato Secretary General Mark Rutte on Wednesday likened President Donald Trump to a “daddy” intervening in a schoolyard brawl after the US leader repeatedly berated Middle East foes Israel and Iran this week including with a profanity. Talking to reporters alongside Rutte at a Nato alliance summit, Trump again berated Israel and Iran. “They’ve had a big fight, like two kids in a schoolyard. You know, they fight like hell, you can’t stop them. Let them fight for about 2-3 minutes, then it’s easy to stop them,” he said. In response, Rutte laughed and said: “And then daddy has to sometimes use strong language to get (them to) stop.” On Tuesday, after a ceasefire deal, Trump had raised eyebrows by saying Israel and Iran had been fighting “so long and so hard that they don’t know what the f*** they’re doing”. With the 32-member Nato alliance endeavouring to placate Trump after complaints that it was over-reliant on US financial and military muscle, Rutte was asked if he might be over-flattering the US pr...

WASHINGTON: US President Donald Trump on Wednesday once again credited Field Marshal Asim Munir for helping prevent a nuclear conflict with India, adding that he persuaded both sides to back down by linking peace to trade. Explaining how he helped defuse tensions across the globe — from Ukr­­aine to Serbia — Trump said “the most impo­r­­tant” of these conflicts was last month’s war scare between India and Pakistan. “And that was not whether or not they may someday have nukes, like we are talking about the Middle East, like we are talking about with Israel and Iran. This is — they have nuclear weapons,” President Trump said at his news conference in The Hague, at the conclusion of a Nato summit. Referring to recent tensions between the two South Asian neighbours, Trump said, “I ended that with a series of phone calls on trade. I said, ‘Look, if you are going to be fighting each other…’ It was getting very bad — you know how bad that last attack was. It was very bad. If you are really going to go fighting with ...

United States President Donald Trump said on Tuesday that China can continue to purchase Iranian oil after Israel and Iran agreed to a ceasefire, a move that the White House clarified did not indicate a relaxation of US sanctions. “China can now continue to purchase oil from Iran. Hopefully, they will be purchasing plenty from the US, also,” Trump said in a post on Truth Social, just days after he ordered US bombings of three Iranian nuclear sites. Trump was drawing attention to no attempts by Iran so far to close the Strait of Hormuz to oil tankers, as a closure would have been hard for China, the world’s top importer of Iranian oil, a senior White House official told Reuters. “The president continues to call on China and all countries to import our state-of-the-art oil rather than import Iranian oil in violation of US sanctions,” the official said. After the ceasefire announcement, Trump’s comments on China were another bearish signal for oil prices, which fell nearly 6 per cent on Tuesday. Any relaxation o...