Citi to lay off 3500 tech staff in China
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The jobs affected are mostly in the information technology services unit, providing software technology development, testing and maintenance and operational services for Citi's global business.
Citi say some of the roles will be relocated to the US and other sites, but declined to provide specific details.
'China has always been an important part of Citi's global network and business development. We will continue to firmly serve corporate and institutional clients in China and serve their cross-border banking needs,' Marc Luet, president of Citi Japan North Asia and Australia said in a statement.
The switch comes amid heightened tensions between China and the US, as Donald Trump's tariffs mania leads to a further deteriortation in relations between the two global superpowers.
Citi in May hired former US trade representative Robert Lighthizer to advise on tariff implications. Lighthizer served during Trump's first term, imposing tariffs on China and renegotiating the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) with Mexico and Canada.
A business survey from the American Chamber of Commerce in China showed the share of US companies in China considering to relocate manufacturing or sourcing out of China hit a record high, at the outset of Trump's second term.
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The Independent
30 minutes ago
- The Independent
ICE turned Louisiana into America's deportation capital. The inspiration was Amazon and FedEx ‘with human beings'
After he was arrested outside his Virginia apartment in March, Georgetown University professor Badar Khan Suri was briefly detained in the state before being put on a plane bound for an immigration detention center more than 1,000 miles away. Suri — who was targeted by Immigration and Customs Enforcement for his Palestinian activism and his family ties to Gaza — arrived at the only ICE facility that doubles as an airport, without his attorneys having any idea where he was. Officers told Suri that he had entered the nation's ' super deportation center, ' according to his attorneys. The college professor was shackled at the ankles and handcuffed then marched into a 70,000 square foot 'staging facility' in Alexandria, Louisiana, which has emerged as the nexus point for President Donald Trump's mass deportation machine. Suri is far from alone. Since Trump returned to the White House, more than 20,000 people en route to other detention centers have passed through the Louisiana facility — which ICE officials have long aspired to operate like corporate giants FedEx and Amazon. ICE's acting director Todd Lyons has bluntly compared the movement of people to packages. 'We need to get better at treating this like a business, where this mass deportation operation is something like you would see and say, like, Amazon trying to get your Prime delivery within 24 hours,' Lyons told a law enforcement conference in Phoenix earlier this year. 'So, trying to figure out how to do that with human beings,' he said. The idea of 'running the government like a business' has taken root inside ICE over the last decade with lucrative public-private partnerships between the federal government and for-profit contractors, which operate roughly 90 percent of all ICE detention centers. Since before the Trump administration, the ICE field office in New Orleans — which is responsible for removal operations in Alabama, Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi and Tennessee — was modeling operations after shipping giant FedEx and its 'spoke-hub' model. Detainees are temporarily held in detention 'hubs' before they're sent to a network of detention center 'spokes' where they wait to be deported. In Suri's case, he arrived at the Alexandria 'hub' before he was moved to a regional 'spoke' in Texas. The idea for a staging facility in Louisiana ' started on a cocktail napkin ' at Ruth's Chris steakhouse, according to Philip Miller, a former ICE official in New Orleans who went on to work for an IT firm that contracts with federal law enforcement. Miller sought 'a more effective and efficient way of moving the growing number of foreign detainees,' according to 2015 newsletter from GEO Group, the private prison contractor that operates the Alexandria facility. Trump's border czar Tom Homan tapped former GEO Group executive David Venturella to support the administration's deportation agenda, and he is now serving in a top role at ICE managing contracts for immigrant detention centers, according to The Washington Post. Meanwhile, Daniel Bible, who worked at ICE for 15 years, including a year as the executive associate director of removal operations, left the agency in November 2024 to join GEO Group as its executive vice president. Lyons, who has helmed ICE since March, addressed his now-viral remarks about treating immigrants like packages in an interview the following month. 'The key part that got left out of that statement was, I said, they deal with boxes, we deal with human beings, which is totally different,' he told Boston 25 News. ICE 'should be run like a corporation', he told the outlet. 'We need to be better about removing those individuals who have been lawfully ordered out of the country in a safe, efficient manner,' Lyons continued. 'We can't trade innovation and efficiency for how we treat the people in our custody.' The Independent has requested comment from ICE on its removal operations at the Alexandria facility. Fourteen of the 20 largest ICE detention centers in the U.S. are in Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas, a network that immigrant advocates have labelled 'deportation alley.' The jails — most of which are operated by private prison companies — hold thousands of people each year. More than 7,000 people are currently jailed in Louisiana's immigration detention centers while Texas facilities are holding more than 12,000. More than 56,000 people are in ICE detention across the country. But Louisiana is home to the nation's only ICE detention center with a tarmac. The facility in Alexandria has become the nation's busiest deportation airport with 1,200 flights to other U.S. detention centers and more than 200 planes leaving the country since Trump took office. ICE has operated at least 209 deportation flights in June, the highest level since 2020. During the first six months of Trump's second presidency, ICE removed nearly 150,000 people from the U.S. Alexandria, a city of roughly 44,000 people, is the ninth largest in the state but surrounded by forest and swampland, with summer temperatures regularly climbing into triple digits with humidity levels exceeding 70 percent. Detainees at the facility in Alexandria cannot be held for more than 72 hours, and the facility does not permit access to visitors or even legal counsel, according to attorneys. Suri was held there for three days before being transferred to a Texas detention center where he was housed in the 'TV room,' according to his attorneys. He was given only a thin plastic mattress. Suri was released after spending eight weeks in detention amid an ongoing legal battle. Louisiana locks up more people per capita than any other U.S. state, in a country with one of the highest incarceration rates on the planet. Most incarcerated people in Louisiana are in local jails, and the state pays sheriffs a daily rate per inmate, creating what civil rights groups fear is a cruel pay-to-play system that incentivizes locking people up. In 2017, the state's Democratic Governor John Bel Edwards advanced legislation to reduce the state's prison population, which ultimately fell by more than 8,000 over the next five years. But at the same time, the first Trump administration was ramping up immigration arrests and expanding capacity to hold immigrants in detention. Following Trump's 2016 victory, ICE expanded the nation's immigration detention system by more than 50 percent, with contracts for private companies to operate at least 40 new detention facilities. Companies including GEO Group, CoreCivic and LaSalle Corrections own or operate facilities that jail the majority of immigrants. All but one of Louisiana's nine facilities are run by private prison firms. The 400-bed detention center in Alexandria is run by GEO Group, whose stock is valued at roughly $4 billion. Inside, dorm-style units hold up to 80 people each, and each includes an expansive 'processing area' with rows of benches and walls lined with hundreds of shackles. People who are processed at the facility from arriving flights are placed in five-point restraints and forced to sit on the benches, according to immigration attorneys. Before it opened in 2014, ICE transported people by bus from different jails to a local commercial airport or Alexandria International Airport, a converted military base that has emerged as what human rights groups called a 'national nerve center' for ICE Air, the group of charter airlines contracted with the agency to operate deportation flights. 'Alexandria allows the concentrated detention and staging of hundreds of people at a time, optimizing efficiency of ICE's deportation machine,' according to a 2024 report from a coalition of human rights groups. In August 2017, the Department of Homeland Security's Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties found that the Alexandria facility 'is not properly screening for and identifying detainees at risk for suicide' and 'does not provide mental health treatment and programming,' the report found. That civil rights office was among bureaus within Homeland Security that have been abruptly shuttered under Trump's second administration. Alexandria is a two-hour drive from Baton Rouge and more than three hours away from New Orleans, where most of the state's immigration attorneys live and practice. That distance has made access to legal counsel for the nearly 8,000 people in Louisiana's detention facilities enormously difficult. There is little if any access to the internet or law libraries and few chances to privately speak with family or attorneys. To visit detainees at another facility, the Pine Prairie ICE Processing Center, roughly 200 miles from New Orleans, Tulane University law professor Mary Yanik and students with the Immigrants' Rights Law Clinic said they leave by 5:30 a.m. and return as late as 10 p.m., in order to speak with as many people as possible. 'That is a grueling schedule, if you think about the number of hours for a single visit with a client for a single court hearing,' she told The Independent earlier this year. 'They feel forgotten. They feel like they're screaming into a void.' The most common question among them is 'why am I here?' 'They're so disoriented by what was happening to them, and so confused. At least one person thought they were in Texas,' she said. ''What is going on? Can't I just go home?''
BreakingNews.ie
30 minutes ago
- BreakingNews.ie
'It is a terrible deal': UCD economist says EU was 'robbed' in US negotiations
The EU-US deal confirmed earlier this week was "terrible" and the trading bloc was "robbed" during negotiations, according to a professor of economics at University College Dublin (UCD). On Sunday, t he United States and the European Union agreed to a trade deal setting a 15 per cent tariff on most goods, staving off higher import taxes on both sides that might have sent shockwaves through economies around the world. Advertisement While the overall reaction to the deal has been positive — with the Taoiseach saying it " avoided a damaging trade war " — others have been more critical of the agreement. Speaking to UCD professor of economics, Ronald Davies said the EU gave in too easy to Donald Trump. "Essentially, Trump said: 'Give me your wallet and your car'. We gave him the car. 'So, yeah, we got to keep the wallet, but we still got robbed." Advertisement Prof Davies said people can paint it as it could have been worse, "but this was in no way a deal: we got mugged." He claims Ursula von der Leyen should have initiated a trade war with Trump as "he is somebody that only respects force, to the extent he respects anything." "People can have differing opinions on what the better approach is. I think Europe needs to cut the US out entirely," he said. Prof Davis thinks the EU should reorganise their supply chains and bypass the US entirely. Advertisement "What I'm saying is, if progress is going to be made on a global scale, it is got to be Europe, working with China or working with Latin America." While that may seem extreme, I asked him whether he thinks it is worth renegotiating with a possibly less unpredictable Democrat administration in four years. His outlook was quite bleak: "The reason why it does not matter is that the US is fundamentally broken. "You can tell by the accent where I grew up, right? I've been in Ireland for nearly 20 years now. I think it's just going to be this pendulum swinging back and forth. Advertisement "In terms of its own domestic, internal policies, the US will make no progress. Every incoming administration is just going to try to undo what the last one did, and whatever they achieve is going to be undone by the next." In terms of how the deal will impact the European single market, being part of a globalised world complicates things. "This deal is going to have an impact on European consumers," he said, noting half of what the US imports are intermediate inputs from other countries, including Europe. "60 per cent of what Europe imports are intermediate inputs, including what we get from the US. The idea that we are not adding the tariff and therefore not going to have higher prices, while being part of global supply chains, does not work." Advertisement In 2024, Irish exports to the United States totalled $78.61 billion (€67.45 billion), with pharmaceutical products accounting for $33 billion or 42 per cent of all exports. How the deal will impact Irish businesses overall depends on the sector in question. Elastic products Photo:"So, the question is, okay, if prices go up by 15 per cent, how much are (US) consumers going to buy for something like alcohol? He described it as an elastic product, so if Irish whiskey is more expensive, consumers might switch to scotch or Kentucky bourbon because there is only a 10 per cent tariff on it. 'That is something where people actually have the ability to move to a different product easily or cut back. 'Something like dairy or butter, that is also one that I think is probably fairly elastic too." He has concerns about the Irish agri-food sector and how there could be a drop in demand for Irish produce as a result. Meanwhile, for pharmaceuticals, it is a different story. "If you cannot get your usual drug. What's the next best option? A lot of the time, there is not one. "Ireland is the leading producer of Viagra, you know, if you cannot get your magic blue pill, what's the next best option?" The long-term outlook makes for grim reading, with tariffs likely to add to the already skyrocketing cost of living. "This is not going to be good. We will sort of bump along for a while until things even out. But, you know, it is a trade war and make no mistake, we are in a trade war. 'We just kind of surrendered. There is also the Russian-Ukraine war, there is an impending AI war. It is going to be a turbulent decade," he said. Ultimately, the deal for the EU is about bringing some semblance of certainty to things, even if that means taking a substantial hit in the short term. "They are saying, 'Okay, this is a crap deal, but it's 15 per cent; we know what's going on. Now let's get on with things'." World US-EU deal sets 15% tariff on most goods and avert... Read More In terms of how quickly we can expect to see the impact of the deal on prices, there will be some lag. "It will take a while. Even in the US, where they have had the tariffs, at some level, they have not seen prices go up as fast as one might expect. "That is because there is a lot of drawing down of stockpiles in place before tariffs kicked in. Come autumn, those stockpiles are going to be largely evaporated. That is when the US will start to see prices rise," he said. For Europe, Davis reckons it will be hard to pinpoint when exactly we could see the impact, but as winter comes along and rising energy costs ensue, we will likely see the real impact of this deal.
Telegraph
30 minutes ago
- Telegraph
Why Britain faces a bigger Trump tariff blow than no-deal Canada
Britain is facing a bigger hit from Donald Trump's tariffs than Canada, despite Sir Keir Starmer's trade deal with the US. Goods exported from the UK to the US are charged an average tariff rate of 9.3pc, while the average rate charged on goods from Canada is just 9pc, according to data from Capital Economics. The findings come after the US president singled out Canada as he launched a sweeping tariff blitz last week, imposing a 35pc levy on its North American neighbour. Meanwhile, Britain has secured a rate of 10pc, the lowest levy in a trade deal secured by any nation. However, experts said the reality was less favourable for the UK. David Henig, director of the UK Trade Policy Project, said: '10pc suggests we got the best deal, but actually if you dig underneath it, in some areas that is not the case.' This is because the headline 35pc tariff only applies to Canada's exports that are not compliant with the pre-existing United States Mexico Canada Agreement (USMCA). This exempts goods that originate in North America, which make up around 90pc of Canada's goods exports to the US. Stephen Brown, deputy chief North America economist at Capital Economics, said: 'This increase in the tariff rate is not really a big deal for the Canadian economy, even though the optics look bad.' Mr Trump last week said Canada had 'failed to cooperate' on curbing the trade of fentanyl, and criticised the retaliatory tariffs Canada has imposed on the US. Canada had been pushed hard for a deal with 11th-hour lobbying in Washington. However, its prime minister, Mark Carney, angered Mr Trump after he said the country would join the UK in recognising a Palestinian state. Canada's steel, aluminium and car exports to the US are still subject to Mr Trump's respective sectoral tariffs of 50pc and 25pc, but there are exemptions for USMCA-compliant car parts. Under the terms of the UK trade deal, Sir Keir secured a quota of 100,000 cars that would be subject to tariffs of only 10pc, instead of 25pc. But the UK has so far been unable to secure an exemption from Mr Trump's sectoral tariffs on steel and aluminium, though the rate for Britain has been fixed at 25pc instead of 50pc. Trade Secretary, Jonathan Reynolds, said last week he was optimistic that Britain will be able to get this 25pc tariff lifted. A government spokesman said: 'Thanks to our landmark trade deal with the US, the UK is now the only country in the world to have secured a 10pc tariff for car exports, the only country not paying the 50pc global tariff on steel and aluminium, as well as receiving the lowest reciprocal tariff rate of 10pc. 'We will continue to work with the US to get this deal implemented as soon as possible to give industry the security they need, protect vital jobs, and put more money in people's pockets through the Plan for Change.' The UK's effective tariff rate is lower than the headline 10pc rate because some key goods, such as pharmaceuticals, have so far been exempted from tariffs. Although Canada's effective tariff rate is lower than the UK's, Mr Trump's tariffs are likely to have a bigger impact on Canada because its exports to the US make up a much larger share of its economy.
