NATO chief says Brazil, China and India could be slammed by sanctions
Rutte made the comment while meeting with senators in the US Congress the day after President Donald Trump announced new weapons for Ukraine and threatened 'biting' secondary tariffs of 100 percent on the buyers of Russian exports unless there is a peace deal in 50 days.
'My encouragement to these three countries, particularly is, if you live now in Beijing, or in Delhi, or you are the president of Brazil, you might want to take a look into this, because this might hit you very hard,' Rutte told reporters, who met with Trump on Monday and agreed the new steps.
'So please make the phone call to Vladimir Putin and tell him that he has to get serious about peace talks, because otherwise this will slam back on Brazil, on India and on China in a massive way,' Rutte added.
Republican US Senator Thom Tillis praised Trump for announcing the steps, but said the 50-day delay 'worries' him.
He said he was concerned that 'Putin would try to use the 50 days to win the war, or to be better positioned to negotiate a peace agreement after having murdered and potentially collected more ground as a basis for negotiation.
'So we should look at the current state of Ukraine today and say, no matter what you do over the next 50 days, any of your gains are off the table,' he added.
Rutte said Europe would find the money to ensure Ukraine was in the best possible position in peace talks.
He said that under the agreement with Trump, the US would now 'massively' supply Ukraine with weapons 'not just air defense, also missiles, also ammunition paid for by the Europeans.'
Asked if long-range missiles for Ukraine were under discussion, Rutte said: 'It is both defensive and offensive. So there's all kinds of weapons, but we have not discussed in detail yesterday with the president. This is really being worked through now by the Pentagon, by the Supreme Allied Commander in Europe, together with the Ukrainians.'
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Al Arabiya
an hour ago
- Al Arabiya
Trump to Put Tariffs of Over 10% on Smaller Nations, Including Those in Africa and the Caribbean
President Donald Trump told reporters Tuesday that he plans to place tariffs of over 10 percent on smaller countries including nations in Africa and the Caribbean. 'Well probably set one tariff for all of them,' Trump said, adding that it could be a little over 10 percent tariff on goods from at least 100 nations. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick interjected that the nations with goods being taxed at these rates would be in Africa and the Caribbean, places that generally do relatively modest levels of trade with the US and would be relatively insignificant for addressing Trump's goals of reducing trade imbalances with the rest of the world. The president had this month been posting letters to roughly two dozen countries and the European Union that simply levied a tariff rate to be charged starting August 1. Those countries generally faced tax rates on the goods close to the April 2 rates announced by the US president, whose rollout of historically high import taxes for the US caused financial markets to panic and led to Trump setting a 90-day negotiating period that expired July 9. Trump also said he would probably announce tariffs on pharmaceutical drugs at the end of the month. The president said he would start out at a lower tariff rate and give companies a year to build domestic factories before they faced higher import tax rates. Trump said computer chips would face a similar style of tariffs.
Al Arabiya
2 hours ago
- Al Arabiya
Immigration agency flexes authority to sharply expand detention without bond hearing
US Immigration and Customs Enforcement has moved to detain far more people than before by tapping a legal authority to jail anyone who entered the country illegally without allowing them a bond hearing. Todd Lyons, ICE's acting director, wrote employees on July 8 that the agency was revisiting its extraordinarily broad and equally complex authority to detain people, and that, effective immediately, people would be ineligible for a bond hearing before an immigration judge. Instead, they cannot be released unless the Homeland Security Department makes an exception. The directive, first reported by The Washington Post, signals wider use of a 1996 law to detain people who had previously been allowed to remain free while their cases wind through immigration court. Asked Tuesday to comment on the memo, a copy of which was obtained by The Associated Press, Homeland Security spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin said, 'The Biden administration dangerously unleashed millions of unvetted illegal aliens into the country – and they used many loopholes to do so. President (Donald) Trump and Secretary (Kristi) Noem are now enforcing this law as it was actually written to keep America safe.' McLaughlin said ICE will have plenty of bed space after Trump signed a law that spends about 170 billion on border and immigration enforcement. It puts ICE on the cusp of staggering growth, infusing it with 76.5 billion over five years, or nearly 10 times its current annual budget. That includes 45 billion for detention. Greg Chen, senior director of government relations at the American Immigration Lawyers Association, began hearing from lawyers across the country last week that clients were being taken into custody in immigration court under the new directive. One person who was detained lived in the United States for 25 years. While it won't affect people who came legally and overstayed their visas, the initiative would apply to anyone who crossed the border illegally, Chen said. 'The Trump administration has acted with lightning speed to ramp up massive detention policy to detain as many people as possible now without any individualized review done by a judge. This is going to turn the United States into a nation that imprisons people as a matter of course,' Chen said. Matt Adams, legal director of the Northwest Immigrant Rights Project, said the administration is adopting a draconian interpretation of the statute to jail people who may have lived in the US for decades, have no criminal history, and have US citizen spouses, children, and grandchildren. His organization sued the administration in March over what it said was a growing practice among immigration judges in Tacoma, Washington, to jail people for prolonged mandatory periods. Lyons wrote in his memo that detention was entirely within ICE's discretion, but he acknowledged a legal challenge was likely. For that reason, he told ICE attorneys to continue gathering evidence to argue for detention before an immigration judge, including potential danger to the community and flight risk. ICE held about 56,000 people at the end of June, near an all-time high, and above its budgeted capacity of about 41,000. Homeland Security said new funding will allow for an average daily population of 100,000 people. In January, Trump signed the Laken Riley Act, named for a slain Georgia nursing student, which required detention for people in the country illegally who are arrested or charged with relatively minor crimes, including burglary, theft, and shoplifting, in addition to violent crimes.
Arab News
3 hours ago
- Arab News
Trump unveils investments to power AI boom
PITTSBURGH: US President Donald Trump went to Pennsylvania on Tuesday to announce $92 billion in energy and infrastructure deals intended to meet big tech's soaring demand for electricity to fuel the AI boom. Trump made the announcement at the inaugural Pennsylvania Energy and Innovation Summit at Carnegie Mellon University, with much of the talk about beating China in the global AI race. 'Today's commitments are ensuring that the future is going to be designed, built and made right here in Pennsylvania and right here in Pittsburgh, and I have to say, right here in the United States of America,' Trump said at the event. The tech world has fully embraced generative AI as the next wave of technology, but fears are growing that its massive electricity needs cannot be met by current infrastructure, particularly in the United States. Generative AI requires enormous computing power, mainly to run the energy-hungry processors from Nvidia, the California-based company that has become the world's most valuable company by market capitalization. Officials expect that by 2028, tech companies will need as much as five gigawatts of power for AI — enough electricity to power roughly five million homes. Top executives from Palantir, Anthropic, Exxon and Chevron attended the event. The funding will cover new data centers, power generation, grid infrastructure, AI training, and apprenticeship programs. Among investments, Google committed $25 billion to build AI-ready data centers in Pennsylvania and surrounding regions. 'We support President Trump's clear and urgent direction that our nation invest in AI... so that America can continue to lead in AI,' said Ruth Porat, Google's president and chief investment officer. The search engine giant also announced a partnership with Brookfield Asset Management to modernize two hydropower facilities in Pennsylvania, representing 670 MW of capacity on the regional grid. Investment group Blackstone pledged more than $25 billion to fund new data centers and energy infrastructure. US Senator David McCormick, from Pennsylvania, said the investments 'are of enormous consequence to Pennsylvania, but they are also crucial to the future of the nation.' His comments reflect the growing sentiment in Washington that the United States must not lose ground to China in the race to develop AI. 'We are way ahead of China and the plants are starting up, the construction is starting up,' Trump said. The US president launched the 'Stargate' project in January, aimed at investing up to $500 billion in US AI infrastructure — primarily in response to growing competition with China. Japanese tech investor SoftBank, ChatGPT-maker OpenAI, and Oracle are investing $100 billion in the initial phase. Trump has also reversed many policies adopted by the previous Biden administration that imposed checks on developing powerful AI algorithms and limits on exports of advanced technology to certain allied countries. He is expected to outline his own blueprint for AI advancement later this month.
