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G20 communique delivers rare show of unity amid Trump trade war

G20 communique delivers rare show of unity amid Trump trade war

Japan Times5 days ago
Group of 20 finance ministers and central bank chiefs committed to international policy cooperation in a communique adopted Friday, finding rare consensus amid escalating tensions over the U.S. trade war.
"The global economy is facing heightened uncertainty and complex challenges, including ongoing wars and conflicts, geopolitical and trade tension,' the communique said. "We emphasize the importance of strengthening multilateral cooperation to address existing and emerging risks to the global economy.'
The agreement, forged during the G20 summit in South Africa's eastern KwaZulu-Natal province, was reached despite simmering tensions over U.S. President Donald Trump's trade war, which is set to intensify when higher tariffs take effect on Aug. 1.
They have strained the G20's multilateral foundations and complicated South Africa's efforts — as this year's rotating president — to keep the group's agenda on course.
"The fact that all members consented to language covering debt relief, climate finance, tax cooperation, and financial stability during such a period demonstrates the success of the approach that we have adopted,' said South African Finance Minister Enoch Godongwana.
It was the first G20 communique this year.
Tariffs were not explicitly mentioned in the five-page document. But Godongwana played that down, noting it was a relatively recent issue "and in any case I feel that our discussion on the broad number issues affecting global growth have included the range of risk to economic growth, without singling out tariffs.'
The G20 communique did note the importance of the World Trade Organization to advance trade issues, while adding that it recognized "the WTO has challenges and needs meaningful, necessary, and comprehensive reform to improve all its functions.'
Officials also sided with Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell, who Trump has excoriated for opposing him by not lowering interest rates, out of concern the levies could spur inflation.
"Central banks are strongly committed to ensuring price stability, consistent with their respective mandates, and will continue to adjust their policies in a data-dependent manner,' the communique said. "Central bank independence is crucial to achieving this goal.'
South African Reserve Bank Gov. Lesetja Kganyago told reporters at a closing news conference that the issue of independence "came out strongly in the conversation.'
Powell did not attend this G20, with the Fed being represented by Vice Chair Philip Jefferson.
The communique also included a prominent reference to "frequent extreme weather events and natural disasters which impact economic growth, financial and price stability.' Climate-change language has been a sticking point with the Trump administration in the past.
U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent skipped the event in favor of a trip to Japan, but Washington still sent a delegation to represent its interests.
By imposing trade levies, scorning South Africa's G20 motto of "solidarity, equality and sustainability' and pulling billions of dollars in funding for climate finance and international aid, the U.S. is testing a world order that has dominated since the end of World War II.
That makes achieving a communique all the more impressive, said German Finance Minister Lars Klingbeil prior to its adoption.
"This is a major achievement for the G20 presidency, which has conducted these negotiations with prudence and skill,' he told reporters at the gathering, at a lush resort on the Indian Ocean near the port city of Durban. Issuing the communique sends "a strong signal in favor of multilateralism,' he said.
Still, tariff uncertainty has dented global economic growth. The International Monetary Fund in April cut its projection for 2025 to 2.8% from a January forecast of 3.3% and IMF First Deputy Managing Director Gita Gopinath, who attended the G20, said that while financial conditions have improved, vigilance was important.
"While we will update our global forecast at the end of July, downside risks continue to dominate the outlook and uncertainty remains high,' she said in a statement as the gathering concluded.
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Columbia University Agrees to Pay More Than $220m in Deal with Trump to Restore Federal Funding
Columbia University Agrees to Pay More Than $220m in Deal with Trump to Restore Federal Funding

Yomiuri Shimbun

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  • Yomiuri Shimbun

Columbia University Agrees to Pay More Than $220m in Deal with Trump to Restore Federal Funding

NEW YORK (AP) — Columbia University announced Wednesday it has reached a deal with the Trump administration to pay more than $220 million to the federal government to restore federal research money that was canceled in the name of combating antisemitism on campus. Under the agreement, the Ivy League school will pay a $200 million settlement over three years, the university said. It will also pay $21 million to resolve alleged civil rights violations against Jewish employees that occurred following the October 7, 2023, Hamas attack on Israel, the White House said. 'This agreement marks an important step forward after a period of sustained federal scrutiny and institutional uncertainty,' acting University President Claire Shipman said. The school had been threatened with the potential loss of billions of dollars in government support, including more than $400 million in grants canceled earlier this year. The administration pulled the funding because of what it described as the university's failure to squelch antisemitism on campus during the Israel-Hamas war. Columbia has since agreed to a series of demands laid out by the Republican administration, including overhauling the university's student disciplinary process and applying a contentious, federally endorsed definition of antisemitism not only to teaching but to a disciplinary committee that has been investigating students critical of Israel. Wednesday's agreement — which does not include an admission of wrongdoing — codifies those reforms while preserving the university's autonomy, Shipman said. 'Columbia's reforms are a roadmap,' Trump administration says Education Secretary Linda McMahon called the deal 'a seismic shift in our nation's fight to hold institutions that accept American taxpayer dollars accountable for antisemitic discrimination and harassment.' 'Columbia's reforms are a roadmap for elite universities that wish to regain the confidence of the American public by renewing their commitment to truth-seeking, merit, and civil debate,' McMahon said in a statement. As part of the agreement, Columbia agreed to a series of changes previously announced in March, including reviewing its Middle East curriculum to make sure it was 'comprehensive and balanced' and appointing new faculty to its Institute for Israel and Jewish Studies. It also promised to end programs 'that promote unlawful efforts to achieve race-based outcomes, quotes, diversity targets or similar efforts.' The university will also have to issue a report to a monitor assuring that its programs 'do not promote unlawful DEI goals.' In a post Wednesday night on his Truth Social platform, President Donald Trump said Columbia had 'committed to ending their ridiculous DEI policies, admitting students based ONLY on MERIT, and protecting the Civil Liberties of their students on campus.' He also warned, without being specific, 'Numerous other Higher Education Institutions that have hurt so many, and been so unfair and unjust, and have wrongly spent federal money, much of it from our government, are upcoming.' Crackdown follows Columbia protests The pact comes after months of uncertainty and fraught negotiations at the more than 270-year-old university. It was among the first targets of Trump's crackdown on pro-Palestinian campus protests and on colleges that he asserts have allowed Jewish students be threatened and harassed. Columbia's own antisemitism task force found last summer that Jewish students had faced verbal abuse, ostracism and classroom humiliation during the spring 2024 demonstrations. Other Jewish students took part in the protests, however, and protest leaders maintain they aren't targeting Jews but rather criticizing the Israeli government and its war in Gaza. Columbia's leadership — a revolving door of three interim presidents in the last year — has declared that the campus climate needs to change. Columbia agrees to question international students Also in the settlement is an agreement to ask prospective international students 'questions designed to elicit their reasons for wishing to study in the United States,' and establishes processes to make sure all students are committed to 'civil discourse.' In a move that would potentially make it easier for the Trump administration to deport students who participate in protests, Columbia promised to provide the government with information, upon request, of disciplinary actions involving student-visa holders resulting in expulsions or suspensions. Columbia on Tuesday announced it would suspend, expel or revoke degrees from more than 70 students who participated in a pro-Palestinian demonstration inside the main library in May and an encampment during alumni weekend last year. The pressure on Columbia began with a series of funding cuts. Then Mahmoud Khalil, a former graduate student who had been a visible figure in the protests, became the first person detained in the Trump administration's push to deport pro-Palestinian activists who aren't U.S. citizens. Next came searches of some university residences amid a federal Justice Department investigation into whether Columbia concealed 'illegal aliens' on campus. The interim president at the time responded that the university was committed to upholding the law. University oversight expands Columbia was an early test case for the Trump administration as it sought closer oversight of universities that the Republican president views as bastions of liberalism. 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White House Escalates Attack on Obama, Relitigating 2016 Grievances
White House Escalates Attack on Obama, Relitigating 2016 Grievances

Yomiuri Shimbun

timean hour ago

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White House Escalates Attack on Obama, Relitigating 2016 Grievances

The White House on Wednesday escalated its effort to portray former president Barack Obama and members of his administration as part of a vast 'treasonous conspiracy' to undermine President Donald Trump, sending its top intelligence official to the White House podium to assert that they should be investigated for criminal wrongdoing. 'This is not about Democrats or Republicans. This has to do with the integrity of our Democratic republic and American voters,' Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard said during an unusual appearance in the press briefing room. The campaign to revisit the 2016 election and its aftermath responds to grievances the president has nursed for eight years over what he considers to be unfair treatment by the intelligence community – feelings of being wrongly targeted that inflamed his distrust of the government he has set out to remake. He has repeatedly focused on the issue in recent days, with Gabbard declassifying two batches of election-related investigative documents in less than a week. On Wednesday, she and White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt batted away criticism that elevating what they described as fresh findings in the case was an effort to deflect attention from Trump's own political struggles. Trump is under steady attack, including by some of his allies, for his administration's handling of the release of Justice Department files concerning the late, disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein. Gabbard spent more than 13 minutes detailing what she claimed was a 'years-long coup' by Obama-era officials against Trump that laid the groundwork for nearly a decade's worth of efforts to undermine, impeach and prosecute him. Gabbard said she had referred recently declassified documents to the Justice Department and FBI for criminal investigation, including into Obama. On Wednesday afternoon, the Justice Department said it would be launching a 'strike force' to assess evidence to support the criminal referrals and determine the next legal steps, though any effort to prosecute Obama would face formidable legal hurdles. 'We will investigate these troubling disclosures fully and leave no stone unturned to deliver justice,' Attorney General Pam Bondi said in a statement. Gabbard's appearance at the White House to denounce former senior government officials whom Trump considers political enemies appeared to be an unprecedented act for a serving senior intelligence official, who are supposed to remain apolitical. Gabbard pledged at her Senate confirmation hearing to check 'my own views at the door' and deliver intelligence without bias or political influence. Trump himself has not been shy about his desire for retribution. 'Whether it's right or wrong, it's time to go after people,' he said during a lengthy diatribe against Obama on Tuesday, speaking in the Oval Office while the visiting president of the Philippines sat by and watched. A major Supreme Court ruling in 2024 granted presidents broad immunity from criminal prosecutions for acts committed while they are in office. Even if the Justice Department found that Obama committed any wrongdoing, as Gabbard alleges, courts could dismiss charges if they determined that his actions were committed while he was carrying out the responsibilities of being president. Trump hailed that high court decision when it was released because it made it harder for the Justice Department to prosecute him on charges that he tried to subvert the results of the 2020 election. Now it could, in turn, thwart his efforts to go after his predecessors. Other federal officials might be shielded in other ways. 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But it has been upheld by several investigations, including a years-long bipartisan probe by the Senate Intelligence Committee and the report of special counsel Robert S. Mueller III. Mueller concluded that Russian government actors successfully hacked computers and obtained emails from people associated with Clinton's campaign and Democratic Party organizations to sow discord in the United States, hurt Clinton and help Trump. The 46-page report that Gabbard released Wednesday contains an investigation by Republican staff working for Rep. Devin Nunes (R-California), who was then chairman of the House Intelligence Committee. The panel was riven by partisan tensions at the time, and the probe ultimately concluded that the spy agencies' finding that Putin wanted Trump to win was based on intelligence reports that contained flawed information or were subject to multiple interpretations. Nunes currently works as CEO of Trump's social media company, Truth Social. 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The House intelligence report stated that the assessment that Putin favored Trump's election was based on 'one scant, unclear and unverifiable fragment of a sentence from a single' human source. The sentence fragment – 'whose victory Putin was counting on' – was the only classified information cited by the assessment for its conclusion, the report stated. The report cited a senior CIA operations officer saying of the fragment, 'We don't know what was meant by that' and 'five people read it five ways.' But Michael van Landingham, a former CIA Russia analyst and one of the assessment's lead authors, said the source was 'very reliable and well-regarded' and that analysts familiar with the source material believe it clearly indicated Putin wanted Trump to win – something a CIA assessment said was consistent with raw intelligence. Further, he noted, a recent CIA tradecraft review of the assessment found that the assessment authors' 'interpretation of [the clause's] meaning was most consistent with the raw intelligence.' Susan Miller, a retired CIA officer who led the compiling and writing of the January 2017 intelligence assessment, disputed the House report's findings on the underlying intelligence. 'We had all the good sourcing. We did exactly what should have been done,' she said. 'We had very, very exquisite access,' Miller said of the CIA's sources in Russia. 'There's no doubt,' she said, that Moscow tried to influence the election in Trump's favor. Trump praised Gabbard's work on the Russia investigation, a sharp contrast to his public rebukes of her last month over her statements that Iran's leaders had not actively sought to build a nuclear weapon. The top Democrats on the House and Senate intelligence committees denounced her release of the report. 'It's appropriate that this shoddy and partisan report was released by Director Gabbard on the day that House Republicans are quite literally fleeing Washington, DC for six weeks rather than releasing the Epstein files that Trump is so desperate to cover up,' said Rep. Jim Himes (D-Connecticut), the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee.

Trump Denies Maryland's Request for FEMA Aid after Devastating Floods
Trump Denies Maryland's Request for FEMA Aid after Devastating Floods

Yomiuri Shimbun

timean hour ago

  • Yomiuri Shimbun

Trump Denies Maryland's Request for FEMA Aid after Devastating Floods

The White House on Wednesday denied Democratic Gov. Wes Moore's request for $15.8 million in disaster relief funds from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, or FEMA, to pay for repairs after heavy floods swept through Western Maryland in May. From May 12 to 14, extreme rainfall caused water to rise to a historic 12.4 feet in Georges Creek, which spilled over and forced evacuations in Allegany and Garrett counties. Schoolchildren were ferried to safety by boat. The floods damaged more than 200 homes, numerous businesses, roads, bridges, railroads, sewer systems, drinking water and public utilities in several Western Maryland towns, including Westernport. 'These communities demonstrated a clear need through FEMA's own process, and Maryland will appeal the decision to seek all available resources to support the recovery efforts,' Moore said in a statement responding to the denial. Maryland's need met federal thresholds – $321,460 for Allegany County and $11,674,953 for the state – that typically trigger public assistance from FEMA, Moore said. Still, the state's request for aid was denied. A letter from a senior FEMA official said the agency 'determined that supplemental federal assistance under the Stafford Act is not warranted.' The letter did not further explain the decision or the process that officials used to deny the funding. The agency did not immediately return an inquiry about how often it rejects applications for public assistance. Another kind of aid provided by FEMA, known as individual assistance, helps households pay for housing and repairs after natural disasters. According to a Government Accountability Office report published in May, about 38 percent of individual assistance applications nationally were rejected between fiscal years 2020 and 2023. The rejection rate was even higher in previous years, the report found, with as many as 45 percent of requests denied. People who apply for individual assistance in states such as Maryland and Virginia, where wealthy communities skew statewide property-value figures higher than property values in rural pockets of the state, may be disadvantaged in applying for individual assistance because of the formula that FEMA uses to administer that aid. That formula probably contributed to Virginia getting public assistance to repair flood damage in April, even though FEMA did not grant individual assistance at the same time. The rejection of Moore's request for federal aid came a day after President Donald Trump announced that he was granting requests for disaster relief from several other states, including West Virginia, Kentucky, Indiana and Michigan. Trump has in the past threatened to deny disaster relief to his political adversaries, including in Democratic-run states like California, which requested aid for devastating wildfires last year. Recent relief went to states run by governors of both parties, although all were states that voted for Trump in 2024. Last month, Maryland's congressional delegation – including the state's lone Republican, Rep. Andy Harris, who chairs the far-right House Freedom Caucus – wrote a letter to the president asking him to authorize FEMA funds to help repair the flood damage. After Trump denied the request, Sens. Chris Van Hollen and Angela Alsobrooks and Rep. April McClain Delaney made a joint statement urging Trump to reconsider providing aid to the two counties, which lean heavily Republican, though they are represented in the U.S. House by Delaney, a Democrat. 'Marylanders in Allegany and Garrett Counties were hard-hit by May's historically intense storms,' the three federal lawmakers said in a statement. 'Two months after flash flooding tore through these communities, they are still in need of support to repair public schools and libraries that were inundated, roads and bridges that were washed out, and homes and businesses that were left severely damaged.' In a statement shared with The Washington Post, the White House emphasized the responsibility of local and state governments to help pay for damages following natural disasters. 'The President responds to each request for Federal assistance under the Stafford Act with great care and consideration, ensuring American tax dollars are used appropriately and efficiently by the states to supplement – not substitute, their obligation to respond to and recover from disasters,' White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson said in an email. 'The Trump administration remains committed to empowering and working with State and local governments to invest in their own resilience before disaster strikes, making response less urgent and recovery less prolonged.' Maryland has faced several recent setbacks in its relationship with the federal government. Last month, the state lost 3,500 federal jobs, making the largest single-month drop in that job sector in nearly three decades. Trump this month also reneged on a plan to move the FBI headquarters to Greenbelt, Maryland, instead vowing to keep the agency in D.C. and move it to the Ronald Reagan Building and International Trade Center. Maryland can formally appeal the decision with FEMA within 30 days, and Moore said he would do so. In the meantime, the state has provided some money to communities in Allegany and Garrett counties to begin rebuilding. The state has provided $459,375 from the State Disaster Recovery Fund, which lawmakers created in 2023 but which has since shrunk because of budget shortfalls. The state allocated $2 million to the fund in fiscal 2025 but reduced that allocation by $500,000 this year. The governor also provided an additional $1 million through the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program. 'We will continue to stand with our fellow Marylanders in Western Maryland as they rebuild from the damage caused in May,' Moore said.

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