Japan PM and President Trump meet on sidelines of G7 amid tariff concerns
KANANASKIS, Alberta, June 16 (Reuters) - Japan's Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba met with U.S. President Donald Trump on the sidelines of the Group of Seven meeting in Canada on Monday as Tokyo urges Washington to drop import auto tariffs that threaten to slow Japan's economy, the Japanese government said.
Ishiba wants Trump to end the 25% auto tariff he imposed on Japanese cars and a 24% reciprocal tariff paused until July 9.
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The Guardian
an hour ago
- The Guardian
‘Climate is our biggest war', warns CEO of Cop30 ahead of UN summit in Brazil
'Climate is our biggest war. Climate is here for the next 100 years. We need to focus and … not allow those [other] wars to take our attention away from the bigger fight that we need to have.' Ana Toni, the chief executive of Cop30, the UN climate summit to be held in Brazil this November, is worried. With only four months before the crucial global summit, the world's response to the climate crisis is in limbo. Fewer than 30 of the 200 countries that will gather in the Amazonian city of Belém have drafted plans, required by the 2015 Paris agreement, to stave off the worst ravages of climate breakdown. And that crisis is escalating. In the last two years, for the first time, global land temperatures soared to more than 1.5C above pre-industrial levels – breaching the limit that governments have promised at multiple climate meetings to keep. Meanwhile, the US president, Donald Trump, has withdrawn from the Paris agreement and is intent on expanding fossil fuels and dismantling carbon-cutting efforts. The EU is mired in tense arguments over its plans. China, the world's biggest emitter of greenhouse gases, is rumoured to be considering weak targets that would condemn the world to much greater heating. And the attention of world leaders is elsewhere, as the conflict in the Middle East threatens to spiral further. Poor countries are labouring under a mountain of debt, and the continuing cost of living crisis in many countries is fuelling populism and a backlash against green policy. Toni, a respected Brazilian economist, told the Guardian: 'There's no doubt that the wars that we've seen – military wars and trade wars … are very damaging – physically, economically, socially – and they divert the direction and the attention from climate.' Vulnerable countries fear their concerns will be lost amid the push for militarisation. 'Spending more on defence means spending less on climate,' said Michai Robertson, adviser to the Alliance of Small Island States (Aosis). But the questions for Belém cannot be ignored. Can the world cut greenhouse gas emissions far enough and fast enough to stabilise global temperatures? Is the lack of progress inevitable when hundreds of countries are trying to agree a way forward, or are more sinister forces at play, trying to throw up roadblocks? Has a recent meeting in Bonn done anything to bring more resolution and collaboration? Beyond 1.5C of heating, the impacts of climate chaos – heatwaves, sea level rises, species die-offs, droughts, floods and storms – will rapidly become catastrophic and irreversible. And we now know that the world could already be traversing vital 'tipping points', beyond which runaway climate change will be impossible to recover from within human timeframes. Anna Rasmussen, the chief negotiator for Aosis, said: 'Around the world, the 'unprecedented' has become our new norm. The economics of small island states are stymied by disasters we did not cause. Not even a year ago, the Caribbean was ravaged by Hurricane Beryl, the earliest category 5 hurricane in the Atlantic ever recorded.' Since the Paris agreement was signed in 2015, global greenhouse gas emissions have continued to rise. Temperatures are affected by the cumulative quantity of carbon in the atmosphere, so every additional tonne counts: scientists have now calculated that we can only carry on producing current levels of carbon dioxide for two more years, ensuring the breach of the 1.5C limit becomes permanent. But while temperatures have soared, and weather records have tumbled, any sense of urgency inside the negotiating halls seems to have cooled. Two weeks of preliminary talks, intended to lay the groundwork for Cop30, have just finished in Bonn. They started two days late because countries could not agree an agenda, and ended without clear negotiating texts for the key points. Some of the frustrating lack of progress is inevitable, as countries grapple with geopolitics and the complexity of getting nearly 200 governments in line. But several negotiators told the Guardian they saw more sinister motives in play – deliberate attempts by some recalcitrant countries or their allies, usually fossil fuel producers, to throw up roadblocks. 'These are not accidents we are seeing, they are attempts to slow things down, no question,' said one. At one point, according to an observer, a key discussion degenerated into speculation about the buttons on a putative website presenting data, rather than addressing the substantive points. At the core of the Cop30 summit will be the national plans on emissions. Known as 'nationally determined contributions' (NDCs), these are the bedrock of the Paris agreement, setting out not just overall targets on how far governments intend to cut emissions over the next decade, but also indicating what measures might be taken in different sectors to meet those goals, such as boosting renewable energy or improving efficiency. The Brazilian hosts of the Cop30 summit are urging governments to finish their NDCs by September, so the UN can assess them ahead of the scheduled start of Cop30 in November. 'We are really far from where we need to go, even in quantity of NDCs, let alone how ambitious [they are] and the quality of them,' Toni told the Guardian. 'I don't think there is any excuse [for countries not to come up with new NDCs]. We are expecting NDCs that are improved, both in terms of ambitions and on their quality.' Most closely watched will be China. The world's second biggest economy and biggest emitter of greenhouse gases is also the global renewable energy powerhouse. China's green economy has outstripped all expectations, with about a third of electricity now coming from clean sources, and renewable generation capacity on track to double by 2030, compared with 2022 levels. China is also the biggest exporter of renewable energy components and electric vehicles, so stands to benefit from other countries setting stiffer targets on emissions. Experts believe that China could halve its emissions by 2035 without difficulty – yet the government is thought to be considering tabling reductions of only about 10%. Coal is the reason. While coal fell to its lowest share of electricity generation on record in May 2024, this year a surge of approvals of new coal-fired power plants, and investment in mining, has alarmed analysts. Sign up to Down to Earth The planet's most important stories. Get all the week's environment news - the good, the bad and the essential after newsletter promotion Gao Yuhe, of Greenpeace East Asia, said China could cause its emissions to peak this year if renewable energy growth continues. 'The year 2025 marks a pivotal moment in the country's energy transition,' she said. 'There is already enough existing capacity to meet today's peak demand. Approving a new wave of large-scale coal projects risks creating overcapacity, stranded assets, and higher transition costs. That will ultimately undermine progress toward a cleaner, more flexible power system.' The EU is locked in tense negotiations over its carbon target for 2040, which will be thrashed out next week. That target, which is expected to involve a cut in carbon of at least 90% compared with 1990 levels, would be the steepest yet presented, but arguments are raging over whether, and how much of, this could be met by trading carbon credits with other countries. When the 2040 figure is agreed, it must then also be translated into a commensurate 2035 goal – the end date for the current commitment period under the Paris agreement – and published along with further policy details as a fully fledged NDC in September. Other countries, including major emerging economies such as India, are still to submit their plans. 'There is a lot of watching and waiting going on,' says Arunabha Ghosh, the chief executive of the Council on Energy, Environment and Water, a prominent thinktank in India and one of the Cop30 envoys chosen by Brazil to support the aims of the talks. 'We should be judging countries on implementation – climate leaders are those who get things done, rather than those who say things.' A few countries have already presented their NDCs. The UK's is judged to be fairly ambitious, with an 81% cut in emissions compared to 1990 levels by 2035. Canada's effort and Japan's have both been found 'insufficient', however, by the Climate Action Tracker, which monitors the levels of countries' emissions reduction. A further problem is that none of the NDCs so far, which are pegged to 2035 or 2040, have contained revisions of countries' existing near-term targets. Current NDCs, set at Cop26 in Glasgow in 2021, are inadequate to stay within 1.5C. At Glasgow, countries agreed that the 'ratchet' – the system for updating NDCs – should allow for the upward revision of targets more frequently than the five-yearly system laid out in the Paris agreement. Disappointingly, no countries have availed themselves of the opportunity, said Niklas Höhne, of the NewClimate Institute. '[To stay within the 1.5C limit] needs drastic reductions. None of the NDCs on the table have updated 2030 numbers. But if we do not do more by 2030, it will be very difficult to catch up later.' Last year's conference of the parties (Cop) focused on finance, and that will also play a major role this year. Developing countries need assistance from the rich world, to help them cut emissions and cope with the impacts of extreme weather. At Cop29, they were assured of $1.3tn a year by 2035, with $300bn of this coming in the form of public finance from developed countries. Those numbers will be harder to reach now that the US has pulled out of climate finance and other forms of overseas aid. Poor countries want to see concrete plans for how the financial flows will be reached, and Brazil is working with last year's host, Azerbaijan, on a 'Baku to Belém roadmap' due in October. Yalchin Rafiyev, the chief negotiator for Azerbaijan at Cop29 last year in Baku, warned that not enough was being done to meet the financial commitments made last year, particularly from the taxpayer-funded development banks. 'We have seen very low-profile engagement of MDBs [multilateral development banks, such as the World Bank] in climate-related issues,' he told the Guardian in an interview. 'We have opened the Baku to Belém roadmap to $1.3tn for wider stakeholders for their written submissions. So far, we have received 102 submissions, and only two of them are from MDBs. That's quite surprising, because they have always expressed their interest to be part of the process.' Juan Carlos Monterrey Gómez, the chief negotiator for Panama, said being able to show substantial progress on finance was crucial. 'We need to define what is the roadmap to close the finance gap towards developing nations, because if we don't address that, if we don't fill that gap, if we don't provide these resources, then we cannot expect developing nations to fulfil the goals of the Paris agreement,' he said. 'It's all about the money.' Brazil's agenda for Cop30 also gives little room for what many activists still see as the key question: fossil fuels. At Cop28, in Dubai, countries made a landmark commitment to 'transition away from fossil fuels'. At Cop29, attempts to flesh that out with a timeframe and details of what it would mean were stymied by opposition from petrostates, including Saudi Arabia. Activists had hoped to bring the commitment back to Cop30, to be elaborated and formalised into a coherent plan that countries would sign up to. But Brazil appears wary of reopening the debate, and would prefer to regard such past resolutions as settled. The presidency has been resistant even to the idea of a 'cover text', the catch-all outcome document that in most Cops captures the key resolutions. At Bonn, it was not clear where in the Cop30 agenda it would be possible to discuss the transition away from fossil fuels. 'We tried to get to discuss it [in various forums] but we keep getting it moved away,' said Stela Herschmann, of the Observatório do Clima network of civil society groups in Brazil. 'It's like nobody wants us.' Despite the frustrations of the last two weeks of pre-talks in Bonn, the goodwill that Brazil enjoys as host nation was much in evidence. The presidency has drawn on expertise from around the world, creating a 'circle' of the former Cop presidents since the Paris agreement was forged in 2015, a 'circle' of finance ministers from around the world, and a group of economists. Indigenous people will play a key role, with a 'global ethical stocktake' intended to reflect their concerns, involving Brazil's environment minister, Marina Silva, and well-known climate activists including Mary Robinson, the former president of Ireland. Brazil has also set out an 'action agenda' to track progress on initiatives from previous Cops and to foreground key issues related to the climate crisis, such as food and agriculture, forestry and nature, water, oceans, social justice and equity. The irony is that the most substantive issue of Cop30 – the NDCs – will be out of Brazil's hands, decided in national capitals long before any leaders hop on planes for Belém. 'We don't negotiate NDCs at Cops – this is nationally determined, so what we will have at Cop30 is the report of those nationally determined decisions that have been taken,' said Toni. 'And yes, that can be frustrating. There can be a good picture or very bad picture, we will see, but it will be a reflection of national politics more than anything. We are obviously the designated president of Cop30, but it is a collective responsibility.'
The Guardian
2 hours ago
- The Guardian
Trump news at a glance: fate of president's ‘big, beautiful bill' in doubt amid Senate vote
US senators on Saturday were scrambling to open debate on Donald Trump's 'big, beautiful' budget bill, which is key to the president's second-term agenda. The bill cannot advance to the House until a debate is held and a final vote on the legislation passes the Senate. But Republicans have been divided by the controversial bill, with some rejecting the proposal to cut welfare programmes in order to cover tax breaks, and others demanding deeper cuts. After the procedural vote to move to a floor debate on the measure opened on Saturday evening, several Republican had voted against it, putting pressure on the remaining holdouts to toe the party line. Meanwhile, the tech billionaire Elon Musk has again voiced criticism of bill, describing it as 'utterly insane and destructive'. Here are the key stories at a glance: A vote in the US Senate, on whether or not to open debate on Donald Trump's package of tax breaks, spending cuts and bolstered deportation funds, formally titled 'the One Big Beautiful Bill Act', stalled for hours on Saturday, as Republicans inclined to vote against the measure were pressured to support it. Soon after the vote opened at 7.30pm local time in Washington, three Republican senators joined all 47 Democrats to vote against the bill, meaning the remaining 50 Republican senators all needed to vote in favor to give vice-president JD Vance the chance to cast the tie-breaking vote and clear the procedural hurdle. Read the full story The billionaire tech entrepreneur Elon Musk on Saturday criticized the latest version of Donald Trump's sprawling tax and spending bill, calling it 'utterly insane and destructive'. 'The latest Senate draft bill will destroy millions of jobs in America and cause immense strategic harm to our country!' Musk wrote on Saturday. Read the full story The Democratic former Minnesota state house speaker Melissa Hortman was honored for her legislative accomplishments and her humanity during a funeral on Saturday that was attended by Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. The former president and vice-president were joined by more than 1,000 other mourners. Read the full story Eric Trump has hinted that he or another of the Trump family could run for president when his father's second term in the White House comes to an end. Eric, who is co-executive vice-president of the Trump Organization, said, the road to the White House 'would be an easy one' if he decided to follow in his father's footsteps. Read the full story Police in southern California arrested a man suspected of posing as a federal immigration officer this week, the latest in a series of such arrests, as masked, plainclothes immigration agents are deployed nationwide to meet the Trump administration's mass deportation targets. Read the full story The son of an American citizen and military veteran – but who has no citizenship to any country – was deported from the US to Jamaica in late May. Jermaine Thomas's deportation, recently reported on by the Austin Chronicle, is one of a growing number of immigration cases involving military service members' relatives or even veterans themselves who have been ensnared in the Trump administration's mass deportation program. Read the full story Two men face spending their lives in prison after a federal judge sentenced them for their roles in the deaths of 53 people found dead in an abandoned tractor-trailer in Texas in 2022. The sudden loss of key US satellite data could send hurricane forecasting back 'decades', scientists say. Mark Zuckerberg's secret list of top AI talent to poach has the tech world atwitter. Catching up? Here's what happened on 27 June 2025.
Daily Mail
2 hours ago
- Daily Mail
Kamala's comeback bid sparks Democrat donor meltdown amid fears she'll sink party in California
' potential comeback bid for California 's gubernatorial race is falling flat as the state's liberal donors say they are still 'traumatized' from her loss to Donald Trump. The former Democratic nominee for president has been considering a run for California Governor, with several declared candidates promising to drop out of the race if she enters. Harris would instantly become the frontrunner in the race, but Democratic donors say they are less than enthusiastic about the former vice president's resurgence. Insiders told Politico that donors are still suffering a hangover from Harris' landslide loss to Donald Trump in November, after she burned through hundreds of millions of dollars only to ultimately lose every swing state. 'Kamala just reminds you we are in this complete s*** storm,' one donor told the outlet. 'With Biden, we got bamboozled… I think she did the best she could in that situation, but obviously she knew about the cognitive decline too. 'I've written so many checks because I knew the Trump administration would be horrible, but we're living in a nightmare because of the Democrats. I'm furious at them, truly.' Harris has not publicly said she will enter the race, but sources told The Hill this week that she is 'leaning toward' entering the Democratic primary, saying the chance to get back in the spotlight has given her 'a glimmer in her eyes.' But while Harris is said to be excited by the prospect of re-entering public office, many of the donors who supported her last run for the White House say they are less enthused. 'There was more enthusiasm at first,' Mather Martin, a San Francisco-based fundraiser who has worked for past Harris campaigns, told Politico. 'I think it waned a bit.' One California donor who contributed six-figures to Harris' run against Donald Trump said they fear a comeback campaign would only remind Democrats of how 'traumatizing' her loss to Trump was. Harris reportedly held several meetings in the Bay Area this month to feel out a possible run for governor, and believes she would have an advantage in the field as she remains a big name in a Democratic Party that has not found a new leader following Trump's landslide in November. She was reportedly considering another run for the presidency in 2028, but is leaning toward California Governor. One insider told The Hill: 'She has a lot of people in her ear telling her that it makes the most sense and she can do the most good.' One key sticking point looming over any potential run appears to be the reported cognitive decline of former President Joe Biden, raising questions over whether Harris was privy to his struggles in office. One of Harris' would-be opponents in the race, former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, used this as ammunition in a recent X post last month. 'Voters deserve to know the truth, what did Kamala Harris and Xavier Becerra know, when did they know it, and most importantly, why didn't either of them speak out?' he wrote - also referencing former California Attorney General Xavier Becerra, who was also a member of the Biden administration as secretary of Health and Human Services. 'This cover up directly led to a second Donald Trump term.' As one Democrat donor put it to Politico, fundraisers 'realize it's just going to bring up the whole pathetic last presidential, which no one wants to hear about again. And then it's the whole 'Did you know Joe Biden?' thing.' They concluded: 'She still would probably lead, but honestly, no one is incredibly pumped.'
