Russia starts direct commercial flights between Moscow and Pyongyang
MOSCOW--Russia on Sunday opened a regular air link between Moscow and Pyogyang, a move reflecting increasingly close ties between the two countries.
The first flight operated by Russian carrier Nordwind took off from Moscow's Sheremetyevo airport carrying over 400 passengers. Russia's Transport Ministry said there will be one flight a month to meet demand.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, who visited North Korea's new Wonsan-Kalma beach resort earlier this month to meet with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, promised to encourage Russian tourists to visit the complex.
The resort, which can accommodate nearly 20,000 people, is at the center of Kim's push to boost tourism to improve his country's troubled economy.
North Korea has been slowly easing the curbs imposed during the pandemic and reopening its borders in phases. But the country hasn't said if it would fully resume international tourism.
Regular flights between Russia's eastern port city of Vladivostok and Pyongyang reopened in 2023 following a break caused by the coronavirus pandemic.
Russia and North Korea have sharply expanded military and other ties in recent years, with Pyongyang supplying weapons and troops to back Russia's military action in Ukraine.
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The Mainichi
7 hours ago
- The Mainichi
From Laos to Brazil, Trump's tariffs leave a lot of losers. But even the winners will pay a price
WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Donald Trump's tariff onslaught this week left a lot of losers -- from small, poor countries like Laos and Algeria to wealthy U.S. trading partners like Canada and Switzerland. They're now facing especially hefty taxes -- tariffs -- on the products they export to the United States starting Aug. 7. The closest thing to winners may be the countries that caved to Trump's demands -- and avoided even more pain. But it's unclear whether anyone will be able to claim victory in the long run -- even the United States, the intended beneficiary of Trump's protectionist policies. "In many respects, everybody's a loser here,'' said Barry Appleton, co-director of the Center for International Law at the New York Law School. Barely six months after he returned to the White House, Trump has demolished the old global economic order. Gone is one built on agreed-upon rules. In its place is a system in which Trump himself sets the rules, using America's enormous economic power to punish countries that won't agree to one-sided trade deals and extracting huge concessions from the ones that do. "The biggest winner is Trump," said Alan Wolff, a former U.S. trade official and deputy director-general at the World Trade Organization. "He bet that he could get other countries to the table on the basis of threats, and he succeeded -- dramatically.'' Everything goes back to what Trump calls "Liberation Day'' -- April 2 -- when the president announced "reciprocal'' taxes of up to 50% on imports from countries with which the United States ran trade deficits and 10% "baseline'' taxes on almost everyone else. He invoked a 1977 law to declare the trade deficit a national emergency that justified his sweeping import taxes. That allowed him to bypass Congress, which traditionally has had authority over taxes, including tariffs -- all of which is now being challenged in court. Winners will still pay higher tariffs than before Trump took office Trump retreated temporarily after his Liberation Day announcement triggered a rout in financial markets and suspended the reciprocal tariffs for 90 days to give countries a chance to negotiate. Eventually, some of them did, caving to Trump's demands to pay what four months ago would have seemed unthinkably high tariffs for the privilege of continuing to sell into the vast American market. The United Kingdom agreed to 10% tariffs on its exports to the United States -- up from 1.3% before Trump amped up his trade war with the world. The U.S. demanded concessions even though it had run a trade surplus, not a deficit, with the UK for 19 straight years. The European Union and Japan accepted U.S. tariffs of 15%. Those are much higher than the low single-digit rates they paid last year -- but lower than the tariffs he was threatening (30% on the EU and 25% on Japan). Also cutting deals with Trump and agreeing to hefty tariffs were Pakistan, South Korea, Vietnam, Indonesia and the Philippines. Even countries that saw their tariffs lowered from April without reaching a deal are still paying much higher tariffs than before Trump took office. Angola's tariff, for instance, dropped to 15% from 32% in April, but in 2022 it was less than 1.5%. And while Trump administration cut Taiwan's tariff to 20% from 32% in April, the pain will still be felt. "20% from the beginning has not been our goal, we hope that in further negotiations we will get a more beneficial and more reasonable tax rate," Taiwan's president Lai Ching-te told reporters in Taipei Friday. Trump also agreed to reduce the tariff on the tiny southern African kingdom of Lesotho to 15% from the 50% he'd announced in April, but the damage may already have been done there. Bashing Brazil, clobbering Canada, shellacking the Swiss Countries that didn't knuckle under -- and those that found other ways to incur Trump's wrath -- got hit harder. Even some poorer countries were not spared. Laos' annual economic output comes to $2,100 per person and Algeria's $5,600 -- versus America's $75,000. Nonetheless, Laos got rocked with a 40% tariff and Algeria with a 30% levy. Trump slammed Brazil with a 50% import tax largely because he didn't like the way it was treating former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, who is facing trial for trying to lose his electoral defeat in 2022. Never mind that the U.S. has exported more to Brazil than it's imported every year since 2007. Trump's decision to plaster a 35% tariff on longstanding U.S. ally Canada was partly designed to threaten Ottawa for saying it would recognize a Palestinian state. Trump is a staunch supporter of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Switzerland was clobbered with a 39% import tax -- even higher than the 31% Trump originally announced on April 2. "The Swiss probably wish that they had camped in Washington'' to make a deal, said Wolff, now senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics. "They're clearly not at all happy.'' Fortunes may change if Trump's tariffs are upended in court. Five American businesses and 12 states are suing the president, arguing that his Liberation Day tariffs exceeded his authority under the 1977 law. In May, the U.S. Court of International Trade, a specialized court in New York, agreed and blocked the tariffs, although the government was allowed to continue collecting them while its appeal wend its way through the legal system, and may likely end up at the U.S. Supreme Court. In a hearing Thursday, the judges on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit sounded skeptical about Trump's justifications for the tariffs. "If (the tariffs) get struck down, then maybe Brazil's a winner and not a loser,'' Appleton said. Paying more for knapsacks and video games Trump portrays his tariffs as a tax on foreign countries. But they are actually paid by import companies in the U.S. who try to pass along the cost to their customers via higher prices. True, tariffs can hurt other countries by forcing their exporters to cut prices and sacrifice profits -- or risk losing market share in the United States. But economists at Goldman Sachs estimate that overseas exporters have absorbed just one-fifth of the rising costs from tariffs, while Americans and U.S. businesses have picked up the most of the tab. Walmart, Procter & Gamble, Ford, Best Buy, Adidas, Nike, Mattel and Stanley Black & Decker, have all hiked prices due to U.S. tariffs "This is a consumption tax, so it disproportionately affects those who have lower incomes,'' Appleton said. "Sneakers, knapsacks ... your appliances are going to go up. Your TV and electronics are going to go up. Your video game devices, consoles are going to up because none of those are made in America.'' Trump's trade war has pushed the average U.S. tariff from 2.5% at the start of 2025 to 18.3% now, the highest since 1934, according to the Budget Lab at Yale University. And that will impose a $2,400 cost on the average household, the lab estimates. "The U.S. consumer's a big loser," Wolff said.
The Mainichi
9 hours ago
- The Mainichi
It's Trump's economy now. The latest financial numbers offer some warning signs
WASHINGTON (AP) -- For all of President Donald Trump's promises of an economic "golden age," a spate of weak indicators this week told a potentially worrisome story as the impacts of his policies are coming into focus. Job gains are dwindling. Inflation is ticking upward. Growth has slowed compared with last year. More than six months into his term, Trump's blitz of tariff hikes and his new tax and spending bill have remodeled America's trading, manufacturing, energy and tax systems to his own liking. He's eager to take credit for any wins that might occur and is hunting for someone else to blame if the financial situation starts to totter. But as of now, this is not the boom the Republican president promised, and his ability to blame his Democratic predecessor, Joe Biden, for any economic challenges has faded as the world economy hangs on his every word and social media post. When Friday's jobs report turned out to be decidedly bleak, Trump ignored the warnings in the data and fired the head of the agency that produces the monthly jobs figures. "Important numbers like this must be fair and accurate, they can't be manipulated for political purposes," Trump said on Truth Social, without offering evidence for his claim. "The Economy is BOOMING." It's possible that the disappointing numbers are growing pains from the rapid transformation caused by Trump and that stronger growth will return -- or they may be a preview of even more disruption to come. Trump's economic plans are a political gamble Trump's aggressive use of tariffs, executive actions, spending cuts and tax code changes carries significant political risk if he is unable to deliver middle-class prosperity. The effects of his new tariffs are still several months away from rippling through the economy, right as many Trump allies in Congress will be campaigning in the midterm elections. "Considering how early we are in his term, Trump's had an unusually big impact on the economy already," said Alex Conant, a Republican strategist at Firehouse Strategies. "The full inflationary impact of the tariffs won't be felt until 2026. Unfortunately for Republicans, that's also an election year." The White House portrayed the blitz of trade frameworks leading up to Thursday's tariff announcement as proof of his negotiating prowess. The European Union, Japan, South Korea, the Philippines, Indonesia and other nations that the White House declined to name agreed that the U.S. could increase its tariffs on their goods without doing the same to American products. Trump simply set rates on other countries that lacked settlements. The costs of those tariffs -- taxes paid on imports to the U.S. -- will be most felt by many Americans in the form of higher prices, but to what extent remains uncertain. "For the White House and their allies, a key part of managing the expectations and politics of the Trump economy is maintaining vigilance when it comes to public perceptions," said Kevin Madden, a Republican strategist. Just 38% of adults approve of Trump's handling of the economy, according to a July poll by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs. That's down from the end of Trump's first term when half of adults approved of his economic leadership. The White House paints a rosier image, seeing the economy emerging from a period of uncertainty after Trump's restructuring and repeating the economic gains seen in his first term before the pandemic struck. "President Trump is implementing the very same policy mix of deregulation, fairer trade, and pro-growth tax cuts at an even bigger scale -- as these policies take effect, the best is yet to come," White House spokesman Kush Desai said. Recent economic reports suggest trouble ahead The economic numbers over the past week show the difficulties that Trump might face if the numbers continue on their current path: -- Friday's jobs report showed that U.S. employers have shed 37,000 manufacturing jobs since Trump's tariff launch in April, undermining prior White House claims of a factory revival. -- Net hiring has plummeted over the past three months with job gains of just 73,000 in July, 14,000 in June and 19,000 in May -- a combined 258,000 jobs lower than previously indicated. On average last year, the economy added 168,000 jobs a month. -- A Thursday inflation report showed that prices have risen 2.6% over the year that ended in June, an increase in the personal consumption expenditures price index from 2.2% in April. Prices of heavily imported items, such as appliances, furniture, and toys and games, jumped from May to June. -- On Wednesday, a report on gross domestic product -- the broadest measure of the U.S. economy -- showed that it grew at an annual rate of less than 1.3% during the first half of the year, down sharply from 2.8% growth last year. "The economy's just kind of slogging forward," said Guy Berger, senior fellow at the Burning Glass Institute, which studies employment trends. "Yes, the unemployment rate's not going up, but we're adding very few jobs. The economy's been growing very slowly. It just looks like a 'meh' economy is continuing." Trump's Fed attacks could unleash more inflation Trump has sought to pin the blame for any economic troubles on Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell, saying the Fed should cut its benchmark interest rates even though doing so could generate more inflation. Trump has publicly backed two Fed governors, Christoper Waller and Michelle Bowman, for voting for rate cuts at Wednesday's meeting. But their logic is not what the president wants to hear: They were worried, in part, about a slowing job market. But this is a major economic gamble being undertaken by Trump and those pushing for lower rates under the belief that mortgages will also become more affordable as a result and boost homebuying activity. His tariff policy has changed repeatedly over the last six months, with the latest import tax numbers serving as a substitute for what the president announced in April, which provoked a stock market sell-off. It might not be a simple one-time adjustment as some Fed board members and Trump administration officials argue. Trump didn't listen to the warnings on 'universal' tariffs Of course, Trump can't say no one warned him about the possible consequences of his economic policies. Biden, then the outgoing president, did just that in a speech last December at the Brookings Institution, saying the cost of the tariffs would eventually hit American workers and businesses. "He seems determined to impose steep, universal tariffs on all imported goods brought into this country on the mistaken belief that foreign countries will bear the cost of those tariffs rather than the American consumer," Biden said. "I believe this approach is a major mistake."
The Mainichi
11 hours ago
- The Mainichi
Trump calls on the Federal Reserve board to take full control of the central bank from Powell
WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Donald Trump on Friday called for the Federal Reserve's board of governors to usurp the power of Fed Chair Jerome Powell, criticizing the head of the U.S. central bank for not cutting short-term interest rates. Posting on his Truth Social platform, Trump called Powell "stubborn." The Fed chair has been subjected to vicious verbal attacks by the Republican president over several months. The Fed has the responsibility of stabilizing prices and maximizing employment. Powell has held its benchmark rate for overnight loans constant this year, saying that Fed officials needed to see what impact Trump's massive tariffs had on inflation. If Powell doesn't "substantially" lower rates, Trump posted, "THE BOARD SHOULD ASSUME CONTROL, AND DO WHAT EVERYONE KNOWS HAS TO BE DONE!" Two of the seven Fed governors, Christopher Waller and Michelle Bowman, issued statements Friday saying they see the tariffs as having a one-time impact on prices and the job market as most likely softening. As a result, the two dissented at the Fed meeting on Wednesday and pushed for slight rate cuts relative to what Trump was seeking. Even though Trump, who nominated Waller and Bowman, has claimed the U.S. economy is booming, he welcomed their arguments and what he called their strong dissents. After the Fed announced later Friday that governor Adriana Kugler will step down next week, Trump said Powell should follow her lead and leave, too. "She knew he was doing the wrong thing on Interest Rates. He should resign, also!" Trump said on social media. Friday's jobs report showed a rapidly decelerating economy, as just 73,000 jobs were added in July and downward revisions brought down the June and May totals to 14,000 and 19,000, respectively. Trump sees the rate cuts as leading to stronger growth and lower debt servicing costs for the federal government and homebuyers. The president argues there is virtually no inflation, even though the Fed's preferred measure is running at an annual rate of 2.6%, slightly higher than the Fed's 2% target. Trump has called for slashing the Fed's benchmark rate by 3 percentage points, bringing it down dramatically from its current average of 4.33%. The risk is that a rate cut that large could cause more money to come into the economy than can be absorbed, possibly causing inflation to accelerate. The Supreme Court suggested in a May ruling that Trump could not remove Powell for policy disagreements. This led the White House to investigate whether the Fed chair could be fired for cause because of the cost overruns in the Fed's $2.5 billion renovation projects. Powell's term as chair ends in May 2026, at which point Trump can put his Senate-confirmed pick in the seat.
