Latest US blanket tariffs 'unjustified'

0:03Hello and welcome to NewsHour. It's coming to you live from the BBC World Service Studios in central London. I'm Tim Franks. We're beginning with a news story which might seem, if you haven't been following developments too closely, not really like a news story, because it's about a sweeping imposition of tariffs by the Trump administration on dozens of countries. Your natural reaction might well be either, hang on, I thought these were already in place. Hasn't Donald Trump spent much of his second term in office imposing these taxes on imports? Or you might be thinking, hang on, didn't the US Supreme Court strike these tariffs down earlier this year?

0:41Well, both those things are true. But these new tariffs, set at between 10 % and 12.5 % on all goods, will cover almost all US imports and, in fact, exports from 60 countries. They're being seen as more legally watertight than the previous tariffs, but they still raise big questions, principally about what effect they'll have on the US and around the world. In terms of a political effect, well, that's been pretty clear. Here is the profoundly unimpressed Australian Trade Minister, Don Farrell. Can I say how disappointed we are in the decision of the United States Trade Representative to increase tariffs on some Australian products going into the United States?

1:27We do not believe it was justified, and we will continue to lobby the United States Trade Representative to remove all tariffs on Australian goods. So what does that US trade representative whom Mr Farrell was berating have to say for himself? It so happened that a couple of days ago, Jameson Greer was testifying before the Senate Finance Committee on President Trump's trade and tariff policies. The problems the President's trade policy seeks to solve are generational. These things were not broken in a day and they won't be fixed overnight, but they must be fixed. This is why I'm pleased to report that the combination of tariffs and deals core to the President's trade policy has yielded quick and impressive results.

2:07Everyone said trade would collapse. We've never exported as much as we are now. And on the other side of the ledger, capital goods represent the largest share of our imports ever. In other words, the United States has not stopped trading with the world, but the composition of that trade has changed in a way that benefits Americans. We're selling more to the world than ever before because of our increased capacity to produce, and our imports are increasingly the type of goods that help us produce even more here in America. And these dynamics have helped reduce our trade deficit. The US Trade Representative, Jason Greer.

2:36Well, there's one person we often turn to at these times, and that's Stephanie Flanders, Head of Economics and Politics at Bloomberg News. And Stephanie joins me now from Washington. Thank you for your time, Stephanie. The basis for these new tariffs is what? It's actually a bill that was passed in 1974 by Congress, which, among other things, said that the US could take action against countries that were not making sufficient steps to prevent the products of false labour from entering their country. But as you have sort of indicated, and we heard a little bit in that quote from the US trade representative, obviously, that is the sort of formal reason for these.

3:17But the practical reason was that the Supreme Court had told the president that he didn't have the jurisdiction to just sort of put blanket tariffs on everyone. He really wanted to do that. And so he had to do a sort of emergency step a few months ago after that decision. Those emergency tariffs to keep the sort of baseline around where he wanted it, around 10 percent, expired yesterday. today. So today, this was another way of doing that, which actually, you could continue to have the tariffs. And you could say this time, it was linked to an action by Congress. So on a much safer legal basis.

3:50But less susceptible to legal challenge, less susceptible. This is on a more solid basis. Yeah, okay. And similarly, as far as those trading partners are concerned, I mean, are we to expect that there will be reciprocal tariffs? I mean, what we learned last year is that most countries decided that this was just going to be the price of doing business with the American economy under Donald Trump and that they had no interest or economic stake in actually having a sort of negative bidding war with him or indeed other countries over tariffs. So by and large, countries have been willing to take this and not impose tariffs on their own of their own.

4:32And the global economy has been reasonably able to withstand them. Well, in which case, I guess the question is, what does the balance sheet look like for the US? Because you might imagine, look, this is an import tax that will lead to inflation. It would be interesting to hear how much evidence there is for that. But also, I mean, if there aren't reciprocal tariffs, you might think, well, this is essentially free money for the US Treasury. So what do the figures suggest? I mean, it's interesting. So the revenues, looking at least at the forecasts for the Congressional Budget Office, it's definitely not nothing.

5:06It's looking at around$190 billion of revenues a year, which is significantly more than the US was raising. With further tariffs that we might get in the next few months on China and other places, it may go closer to 300 billion. You know, that's a relatively small chunk of the 1.3 trillion deficit, but every little helps. And, you know, it's definitely noticeable. And we have seen, in fact, that in Congress, lawmakers have started to think, hmm, well, we know that these are very unpopular with voters, these tariffs, but if we get rid of them, what are we going to replace them with revenue-wise?

5:42So there's a slight shift politically around tariffs as well. Are they unpopular with voters? Because, I mean, again, you sort of read some alarming figures that suggest that the prices are going up. This is essentially costing the average American family$1 ,100 a year. Is that something that you think people are noticing? It has put the onus on this administration for inflation in a way that is very surprising given that when President Trump came in, inflation was very much tied around the neck of the Biden administration and one of the big reasons why the Democrats lost. And just with these tariffs alone, Trump has managed to sort of take ownership over the high cost of living, even though actually only a small part of the inflation we've seen in the last year can be really related to tariffs.

6:36In fact, there's probably much more direct impact of the war in Iran, which is, of course, also very unpopular. Are there more duties and tariffs that we can expect? I mean, I mentioned that this is set at between 10 and 12 and a half percent, but there's also been talk about, you know, 50 percent tariffs on Canada, I think 25 percent on Brazil. Is this the start of it for some countries? For some countries, and actually, so Brazil does have a higher rate now, and the Canada we're going to see, I think, in mid-August if those go through the 50 % tariffs. And what we have coming down the track are some measures, again, to replace the higher tariffs that were on countries like China that are responsible for a lot of exports to the US.

7:21So all of this is about trying to replace what was taken away by the Supreme Court. He's done quite a lot of the job with these. But for countries like China, they're actually in a much better position than they were before the Supreme Court judgment. And I think the administration is looking to change that. Stephanie Flanders from Bloomberg Economics. Thank you so much for joining us.

7:53It was a month ago today that devastating dual earthquakes in Venezuela left at least 5 ,000 people dead tens of thousands of thoughts still to be missing The Government of Acting President Delcy Rodriguez insists that it has done everything in its power to help but families remain angry and have raised questions about the quality of public housing blocks which collapsed. Our correspondent, Will Grant, has travelled back to the worst-affected region of La Guayra, meeting those who are still searching for the bodies of their loved ones.

8:26Families in Venezuela are still looking for their missing loved ones and still finding them. Delicately and with dignity, the body of an 11-year-old girl is removed from a collapsed public housing block. her father finally able to grieve now that his desperate month-long search for her has come to an end. If anywhere could be considered ground zero of the twin earthquakes in Venezuela, it's here, the public housing complex in Caraballera. It is a strange and disturbing sight still. A month on a child's body has just been brought out and wrapped in plastic sheeting and taken to the morgue. Sitting on the rubble, a member of another search group, Maguina Nandez, weeps quietly.

9:15Retrieving the bodies is soul-destroying, he tells me through his face mask, for the rescue teams, the families, the friends, just soul-destroying.

9:27One man's soul is crushed more than most. The neighbours tell me of Victor Calderón, a fisherman who was at sea when the earthquake struck. He returned to dry land to find 26 members of his immediate family were gone, all in the same social housing block.

9:47The relatives include Victor's two sisters, their children and grandchildren, as well as his stepfather and nine cousins. It's almost too much to fathom, I say. I haven't cried for them yet, he answers stoically. I'll do that after I find the ones that are missing. Victor's daughter and granddaughter survived, but their much reduced family now lives in a tent on a golf course.

10:15In a slickly produced video, the acting president, Delcy Rodriguez, gave 200 homes to affected families. A first step, but tens of thousands remain homeless. Critics say the government's social housing was shoddily built and collapsed easily, killing thousands. A point I put to the Public Works Minister, Juan José Ramírez.

10:43This wasn't one, but two almost simultaneous earthquakes, both moving in different directions, he argues. All around us you can see public and private buildings were brought down. The earthquake didn't discriminate between the two, he adds.

11:02In one of those private buildings, Hernan Gil, a security guard, was trapped in an underground car park for eight days before being pulled alive from the rubble, a moment which briefly raised Venezuela's spirits.

11:19After the euphoria faded, though, other families were left searching the same building for their loved ones alone. Laura Barrios is still there, looking for her brother-in-law. A day earlier, they found her sister-in-law and the children, aged 10 and 3. It was just the day of the child, but we had no children to celebrate, louder sobs. What more can we say that this rubble doesn't already tell us, she asks. Lost T-shirts and sets of cutlery, entire lives gone in just 39 seconds.

12:05When the earthquake struck, the stretch of beach at Playa Pirata was full of visitors for a public holiday. They watched in horror as their homes collapsed in front of them and ran towards their apartments to try to save relatives and pets trapped inside. It's just one of a thousand stories along this northern coastline in a month that Venezuelans still struggle to comprehend and which has forever scarred a nation ill-equipped to cope. And that was Will Grant reporting from La Guayra in Venezuela. You can see more of what Will has discovered, including some really quite dramatic drone footage on our website, bbc.com forward slash news.

12:48He's written up his piece that you just heard. And as I say, you can also see drone footage there of the aftermath of the earthquakes in La Guaira. This is NewsHour from the BBC with me, Tim Franks. Today could be a big day for the International Criminal Court, not because of a case that it's bringing against somebody accused of the gravest war crimes, but because of a case that's been brought internally against the court's chief prosecutor, Karim Khan. He's been accused of sexual misconduct involving a junior member of staff. Khan denies wrongdoing, but ICC member states are due to vote today at the United Nations in New York on whether he should be dismissed.

13:28A correspondent to Anna Holligan has been following the case closely. He's accused of sexual misconduct and this is a court, of course, that was created to hold the most powerful leaders to account, but it's the court's own leader who is at the heart of this and making history because there has never been a process like this at the ICC. So it feels like this has been going on for a long time now. It's been two years since the allegations of sexual misconduct were first made. And during the intervening period, there have been various hearings and conclusions made by various parts of the ICC. And now this is the ultimate stage where the members of the court will vote on whether or not he should continue as prosecutor or be dismissed.

14:15As you say, I mean, this has been dragging on for ages. Exactly. And just for a quick bit of background, Kareem Kahn, he's a 56-year-old British barrister. He was elected as the ICC's third prosecutor in 2021, officially stripped of his duties last month in June after the Executive Committee of the Court's oversight body found he had committed a serious breach of duty and serious misconduct by engaging in an improper sexual relationship with a junior ICC staff member. and seeking to stop her from pursuing her complaint. And we should say throughout this, he has denied any wrongdoing. His lawyers have said he has done nothing wrong.

14:56Explain to me this process whereby the member states are going to be voting on whether he should continue because I guess a lot of people listening to this would think, well, if, you know, internally your employer has decided that you have failed the disciplinary action against you and on this a very serious charge, Well, that would be enough. It's partly about the layers of bureaucracy within the court, and it's partly about the ICC's founding treaty, the Rome Statute, which says in issues like this, internal disciplinary measures, it's up to the member states to decide. So they have now the opportunity to vote.

15:35125 member states, at least 63 countries must back his dismissal in a secret ballot at the UN headquarters in New York. We don't know much about which way the countries will vote because Kareem Khan's lawyers have pointed out that a judicial panel actually found that there was insufficient evidence to show that he had committed the sexual misconduct. So because of that rather convoluted process that the ICC itself has been criticised for, it's coming to the conclusion where the member states will vote. It's a secret ballot. But after the session in New York, there will be some kind of public statement.

16:17And the final section of that session will be live streamed. So it's at that point we will find out whether or not he will remain in position. And regardless of all of this, it's bigger than one prosecutor. This is about the court itself and its rather shaky foundations at this point. And there is no doubt that this is ammunition for the court's critics, of which there are many. Karim Khan won't be at the session himself. He's already barred from entering the United States under earlier sanctions imposed by Donald Trump's administration over the court's investigation into alleged war crimes by Israeli officials in Gaza.

16:55that external pressure from the US. The US has never been a member of the ICC, but over the last few years, it's moved from a longstanding position of resistance to the ICC to active confrontation, especially when the court has touched on US or Israeli interests. So that's included sanctions, 11 officials now sanctioned by the US, visa bans, explicit efforts to weaken the court's ability to operate. Within the last few weeks, US officials have talked about an effort to try to dismantle the ICC brick by brick. So there is massive pressure outside, and there is no doubt that these sexual misconduct allegations happening in parallel have done very little to help the court.

17:43And that was the BBC's Anna Holligan following that case at the ICC.

18:04The magic and the mystery of birdsong, that sound which has transfixed and bewitched us humans forever. And now it seems a team of scientists in France say they've discovered the building blocks behind the astonishing diversity of birdsong. They've analysed more than 100 ,000 songs and 3 ,000 bird species and reckon they've now identified each key ingredient. The lead researcher is Quentin Bacallé, a PhD student from the University of Saint -Étienne. We found eight building blocks of bird songs. Those eight building blocks are actually quite simple. So first you have the trills. So the trills are a repetition of the same notes in rhythm.

18:48and you are going from slow, fast to ultra fast trills. So it's just the same trill, but you change the speed of the rhythm. Then you have three whistles from flat, slow to fast modulated whistles. So the whistles, they are just pure tones, but you change how they are modulated from something very flat with the same pitch to something where the pitch is changing a lot, something very complex and fancy as a song. And then you have the chaotic notes which are more complex and harsh notes. You also have the harmonic stacks.

19:37Multiple tones in the same time. You can think of the crows, for instance. So you've got your trills, you've got your whistles, you've got what you described as chaotic notes. That's a rather good way of describing it, but it's sort of bird song that feels as if it's all over the place. And then what you describe as harmonic stacks. Just explain that to me again. So harmonic stacks are sounds where the tone is not a pure tone, so it's not a single tone. You have multiple tones in the same time. So you have to imagine a sound which is also high and low in pitch. One of the things that, from what I've been reading about your research, that you then managed to work out is how these songs, they are adapted for their environments.

20:28So if it's a very noisy environment or an environment where birds need to communicate in long distances, then they sort of adapt their songs to fit the places in which they are. Exactly. You have to think about it as a trade-off, a trade-off between two different constraints. First, as I said, the communication distance. So some songs are more adapted to travel through the forest at long distances. And then the second part of the trade-off is the amount of information you have inside the song. Because when you are trying to mate and trying to afraid the competitors, then a more modulated song with more information is more adapted.

21:16So the birds, they have to choose between simple songs that are adapted to transmission and they have to choose between more complex songs that are less adapted to transmission but with more information for sexual selection and to protect their territories. fascinating Quentin Bacalé, PhD student from the University of Saint-Etienne who along with his colleagues reckoned that they managed to identify those eight motifs as he put it, the building blocks of birdsong this is News Hour

21:58Welcome back to News Hour French authorities have ordered the complete evacuation of one of France's most popular holiday areas on the Atlantic coast, the Kap Fere Peninsula on the southwest coast. Hundreds of people have had to escape the area by boat. Two forest fires are defying efforts to bring them under control. President Macron has requested help from the European Union to tackle the fires. Planes and helicopters from Portugal, Croatia, the Czech Republic and Slovakia are due to join the firefighting efforts later today. Jo Kent is a BBC journalist who is on holiday in the affected area and had to evacuate from her campsite with her family yesterday.

22:35We were on holiday in Cap Forêt, which is a small peninsula of land stretching down sort of west of Bordeaux and there are 10 little villages down this peninsula. We were at the northernmost one, nearest to the fire, so we were evacuated yesterday. The fire broke out on Wednesday and we actually saw it quite early on from the very tip of this peninsula, having where we've been for lunch, and we could see this huge mushroom of smoke in the air. It did look very bad then. That was literally a couple of hours after it broke out. We thought it was further around the bay away from us. But as we cycled back to the village where we were staying, there was ash falling on us on the cycle paths.

23:18You could smell the smoke in the air. It really was quite an apocalyptic scene. Did you at that point decide, look, it's better if I and the rest of the family that we move, that we relocate? Or was it an evacuation order that you were obeying? The next morning, we were told by the staff at the site where we were staying that there was a possibility we might be evacuated, but they weren't sure yet. We went into the local town, the local market was deserted, the supermarket was deserted. And when we got back to the site where we were staying, we could see that the local police, the gendarmes, were there with their two big vans.

23:54They had officers going around the whole place talking to people and just telling them that they had 30 minutes to pack up and go. I'm just wondering if you've had a chance at all while you have been on holiday to speak to any of the locals, because I guess summers are often hot and dry. that there always have been wildfires in these areas, but just a sense from local people or from what you've been hearing locally about whether this is really unusual. We didn't really speak to many people about it because it developed so quickly. However, it is a known risk in this area that it's on the other side of the peninsula, it's the Atlantic Ocean, but it's backed by these pine forests and they've become completely dry and the ground was just so tinder dry and there was such an increased risk of fire and with more people being there, it is at risk and it's a vulnerable area.

24:51Joe Kent, BBC journalist in the southwest of France and Spain has declared a national emergency in the Madrid region and the nearby province of Avila because of wildfires. Two of three fires burning to the western Madrid are said to be on the verge of merging into one and the state of emergency aims to speed up the deployment of resources to fight the fires and places the response to the crisis in the hands of a specialist military unit.