Trump threatens additional 100% tariff on China

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This is the Global News podcast from the BBC World Service.

Among Kadesign in the early hours of Saturday, October the 11th, these are our main stories.

President Trump threatens China with additional 100% tariffs over its rare earth export restrictions.

Palestinians in Gaza are returning to their homes following the ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, so they've been shocked by the scale of destruction.

The French Prime Minister Sébastien Le Corneux gets his job back just four days after he resigned.

Also in this podcast, in a major conservation victory, green turtles have been rescued from the brink of extinction.

Sea turtles are a really iconic and charismatic species.

They inspire people.

All of that coming up later in the program.

Donald Trump is locking horns with China again, saying he will impose 100% import tariffs on Chinese goods by next month, as well as impose export controls on any and all critical software.

He says it's a response to China, placing new restrictions on exports of crucial rare earth minerals.

China produces most of them, elements that are absolutely critical for U.S.

manufacturing.

President Trump is due to meet China's President Xi on the sidelines of the Apex Summit, which is in South Korea later this month.

He's denied rumors that he's cancelled that meeting, but said he's shocked by Beijing's actions.

I'm going to be there regardless, so I would assume we might have it.

But,

you know, they hit the world with something that really is not anything that people are going to do.

And

it was shocking, I can tell you.

Well, not so long ago, it seemed that U.S.-China relations were back on track.

So what prompted Mr.

Trump to do this?

I put that question to our North America correspondent, David Willis.

That's absolutely right.

They did indeed anchor, and all of a sudden, everything is up in the air again, as it was back at the beginning of this year, isn't it?

As you mentioned there, Donald Trump is incensed by China's move to restrict the export of these rare earth minerals, which are crucial to the manufacturing of many things, smartphones and so on.

And he's responded by threatening to impose tariffs of 100% on Chinese goods entering the US on top of existing tariffs of thirty percent and impose export controls on US software exports and parts for Boeing airplanes and so on.

And that has rekindled fears of a trade war involving the world's two largest economies.

And it's also sent the financial markets into something of a tailspin.

But the key to this, I think, is the deadline that Donald Trump set of November the 1st.

Now, things can change very quickly, particularly where this president is concerned.

And by setting the November the 1st deadline, that day for the implementation of these new tariffs, that does leave time for talks to take place between the two nations.

And I think it's significant that having initially suggested that he might call off his meeting with Xi Jinping, Mr.

Trump later told reporters that that meeting was still on.

Okay, so just to finish on a question, I guess twofold.

How crucial are some of these rare earth components that you mentioned?

And also the markets have responded with a massive fall.

Is this another negotiating tactic from the US President?

Well, they are crucial, to answer your first question, those rare earth minerals, to the manufacturing of everything from electric vehicles to military hardware, smartphones, as I mentioned, renewable energy technology and so on.

China dominates global production of this material at the moment and on his truth social social media platform.

And Mr Trump wrote that there is no way that China should be allowed to hold the world captive.

And he went on to describe China's stance on this matter as very hostile.

As to your second question, it amounts to a sudden escalation of a potential tit-for-tat trade war that seemed to be receding in probability after President Trump postponed the implementation of tariffs on Chinese imports until next month.

For a while, it seemed as though the two nations were going to work things out, but now we have this very deep, renewed concern over this very important trade relationship.

David Willis in Los Angeles.

It's day two of the first phase of a ceasefire between Hamas and Israel, and already there have been significant developments in Gaza.

The Israeli military says it has partially withdrawn troops from some parts of the shattered Palestinian territory.

This has allowed around 200,000 Palestinians who are subjected to almost daily Israeli bombardment to return home.

Under the terms of the deal, aid lorries have also begun entering the territory, although much more is desperately needed.

A few months ago, the UN declared a famine in parts of Gaza, although Israel disputes that claim.

Our international editor, Jeremy Bowen, sent this report from Jerusalem.

The coast road has been filled with thousands of Gaza's Palestinians taking the long walk home, carrying bundles of possessions, moving slowly past the ruins of homes, businesses and the promenades where families used to go before the war to enjoy the beach.

It must have been a terrible journey for people deprived by Israel's blockades of adequate food and clean water.

A ride north in a car to Gaza city costs around £900,

impossible money for people who've lost everything.

They were warned by Israel's military, the IDF, to stick to the coast road and told that going near Israeli troops would endanger their lives.

More aid is already moving into Gaza, according to the UN Humanitarian Office, but not yet at the scale that's needed.

The UNICEF spokesman, James Elder, who's just left Gaza, spelt out what that requires.

Many, many more entry points.

Not one entry point, five or six.

There are entry points in the north of Gaza that would reach people in 20 minutes, entry points across there that could suddenly flood that Gaza Strip.

So you now need 1,000 trucks a day.

United Nations and everyone is ready to do that.

We want to see all the hindrances removed, all the political handicaps removed, and allow that aid to flow freely and safely.

No more aid workers killed, no more obstructions.

By the middle of the day, IDF troops and armor had pulled back to the agreed new line.

It still leaves Israel occupying more than half of the Gaza Strip.

Clause 4 of the ceasefire agreement says that the IDF will not return to areas they've withdrawn from, as long as Hamas fully implements its side of the bargain.

Whether that is Benjamin Netanyahu's decision or Donald Trump's is not clear.

Potentially, there are other big problems ahead in the implementation of the Trump twenty point peace plan.

It's light on detail.

For example, it says that Gaza must be demilitarized through an agreed process of decommissioning weapons.

But there is no agreed process.

Hamas wants to keep some weapons.

Israel says they must all go.

Prime Minister Netanyahu made the point again in a televised address.

We are surrounding Hamas from every direction ahead of the next stages of the plan, in which Hamas will be disarmed and Gaza will be demilitarized.

If this is achieved the easy way, so much the better.

And if not, it will be achieved the hard way.

Mr.

Netanyahu also took credit alongside Donald Trump for the deal to release the hostages, calling it a tremendous achievement.

In Tel Aviv, the square where the families of hostages have campaigned for their return is full of expectation and hope now that the clock is counting down to their journey home.

In that square, over the last two years, I've heard many families of Israelis held in Gaza condemning the Prime Minister, saying he could have had a deal much earlier in the war.

The controversy over the way that Mr.

Netanyahu has fought the war will determine whether he wins the next election.

And around the world, it's left Israel isolated, much more dependent on the United States.

Our international editor, Jeremy Bowen, reporting from Jerusalem.

All Palestinians returning home have been shocked by the scale of the destruction of Gaza, as our Middle East correspondent Lucy Williamson reports.

Through the dust-filled streets, surrounded by rubble, residents returned to Gaza's main cities.

No one looked at the rubble around them.

Even with the buildings gone, their feet knew the way.

This situation is tragic, said Tammam Radwan in Khanuna city centre.

There are no houses, no streets, there's nothing.

Further north in Gaza city, Mohammed Sharif found the path to his old front door in Sheikh Radwan, despite the path and the door having gone.

He carried his bicycle carefully over the mountain of rubble and climbed in through his shattered wall.

He prized open a suitcase sandwiched between the grey concrete wreckage, a time capsule from his earlier life, a jacket perfectly preserved, a familiar shirt.

The first moment I saw the house was very difficult.

It brought back memories of my late father, my late mother,

my siblings, and my childhood.

I honestly wish I never had to experience this moment.

It was indescribable, as if I was dreaming.

The task of rebuilding here is enormous, and many families have homes beyond the line Israeli troops have withdrawn to in this first stage of the deal.

The conflict may have stopped for now, but many families are still in limbo, unable to go home, unable to move on.

Lucy Williamson with that report.

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President Trump has confirmed that he'll be heading to Egypt on Monday for talks on the reconstruction of Gaza.

And he will also visit Israel and address parliament the Knesset.

Another key part of this phase of the ceasefire involves the release of both the remaining Israeli hostages and hundreds of Palestinian prisoners being held in Israeli jails.

With more details, here's our correspondent, Barbara Platasha, in Jerusalem.

The ceasefire has triggered the countdown for the release of the hostages, which is supposed to happen by Monday morning.

There are twenty hostages believed to be alive, and hospitals in Israel have been preparing to receive them.

Some of the images that have been released of some of them show them to be looking frail and emaciated.

The Israelis have also published the list of Palestinian prisoners to be released in exchange for the hostages, 250 of them serving life sentences.

Now Hamas had asked that seven key high-value prisoners be released, but Israel has rejected them, we understand, despite intervention by the mediators.

There is another group,

that is 1,700 Gazans who have been detained over the course of the war.

They are also set to be released.

We don't have that list yet, but it's hoped that among them will be more than 100 healthcare workers who are currently in prison.

Barbara Plet usher in Jerusalem.

Now to a major conservation victory.

Green turtles have been on the endangered list since the 1980s, but good good news, they've now been rescued from the brink of extinction.

They were once hunted extensively for their meat, eggs and decorative shells, but decades of global conservation efforts have finally paid off.

Experts say the species had had its status downgraded from endangered to least concern on a list of threatened animals.

Helen Briggs reports.

Green turtles are among the largest sea turtles, known for their long migrations, nesting on sandy beaches and feeding on seagrass.

Once hunted heavily heavily for turtle soup and their decorative shells, their numbers fell sharply, and they've been listed as globally endangered on the so-called red list of species facing extinction since the 1980s.

But after decades of conservation work to protect the beaches where the turtles lay their eggs and to reduce accidental capture in fishing nets, green turtle populations are bouncing back.

Professor Brendan Godley, a conservation scientist at the University of Exeter, says while this work must continue for years to come, it gives cause for optimism.

Sea turtles are a really iconic and charismatic species.

They inspire people.

Armies of young people all over the world patrol the beaches, look after the nests, dig up the eggs.

Hundreds of thousands of people have been working for decades.

to try and look after these creatures and undoubtedly it has had an impact.

It's hoped this conservation success story will inspire more action to protect marine life and put a spotlight on wider issues affecting the oceans, from plastic pollution to unsustainable fishing.

Authorities correspondent Helen Briggs.

Still to come, we speak to Ala Abdel Fatah, one of the world's best-known political prisoners.

As for the question of how do you cope, I'm not sure that I did cope.

At some point, I drowned in suicidal ideation and it was despair, so I I don't know that I coped, but you know, but I survived.

A massive search and rescue operation is underway in the United States after a blast at a military explosives plant near Nashville, Tennessee.

Several people have been killed, and a number of others are missing.

The building was completely destroyed, and the FBI has launched an investigation to determine what caused the blast.

Our correspondent, Neda Tofik, has the details from the U.S.

A military explosives factory once stood tucked into the trees in rural Tennessee until a deadly blast ripped through.

It happened just before 8 in the morning, close to a regular shift change at the facility.

In the parking lot, the cars of workers, but little else remains.

Tens of miles away, the impact shook homes and jolted residents.

Emergency workers rushed to the scene but stayed back because of threats of secondary explosions.

The local sheriff called this one of the most devastating scenes he's witnessed in his career.

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It's not yet known what caused the explosion, and officials say given the massive destruction, they may not have answers anytime soon.

Neder Tawfiq reporting

Until his release last month, Allah Abdel Fatah was amongst the world's best-known political prisoners.

An Egyptian and British citizen through his mother Layla, Allah has spent most of the past decade behind bars in Egypt.

In 2015, he was jailed for taking part in an unauthorised protest, and in 2019, he was detained again for sharing a Facebook post about torture.

After years of campaigning and lobbying by the British government, Allah has finally been released.

In his first interview, he's been talking to the BBC's Anna Foster.

She began by asking Allah how he's doing.

I'm doing much better than I would have expected, much better than most people would have expected.

Sensory stuff that overwhelms.

The first week I couldn't sleep at all.

I was like, ah, this is the night, and there's the moon, and there's the sun, and the sun on my skin for the first time.

What were the conditions like when you were in prison?

Well, I was in two places, and the conditions were very different.

The better part of the first three years was spent in, you know, it has a nickname as Scorpion, so there's Scorpion 1 and Scorpion 2.

So I was in Scorpion 2, total lockdown.

We don't get out of the cell at all, no exercise hour, no reading, no music, no nothing.

And it was also in a like a damp underground cell, so I didn't even get a lot of sunlight, even indirect, you know.

There was violence at the um when they received me, but not afterwards.

Eventually I was moved to a better facility.

A few months later, even the these terrible prisons were completely shut down.

And now everyone has been moved to a better facilities.

There's still maximum security, you're monitored all the time with the cameras, but the living conditions are much more humane, cleaner, more sanitary.

And I was allowed exercise hours, I was allowed music, I was allowed books and I was allowed a TV.

It was a long ordeal, like things happened gradually, but yeah, after ending that first hunger strike, my conditions improved considerably.

And so also coping became easier.

I cooked, I watched TV

and I read.

Even when my mom started her strike, hunger strike, and even when I started, the conditions and the treatment and so on remained kind and humane.

And I continued to have access to these things.

And there was respect for my need to learn and read and communicate with the world.

I wonder how did you cope with the difficulty of not knowing how long this was going to last?

Because for most prisoners, they are given a sentence with an end date.

And for you, one of the great difficulties was that this just kept going on and on and on.

So there was this sense that there is no rules, there is no logic.

And I was explicitly told, I I mean, by the officer running the prison, so I don't know that it was a statement of policy, but I was explicitly told that this is indefinite incarceration.

And that's when despair really hit.

As for the question of how do you cope, I mean, I'm not sure that I did cope.

At some point, I drowned in suicidal ideation, and it was despair.

So I don't know that I coped, but you know, but I survived.

French politics feels like they're being written like a soap opera right now.

Things just seem to go from bad to worse.

They say a week is a a long time in politics.

Well, on Monday, Prime Minister Sebastian Le Cornu resigned over criticism from the opposition.

Then on Friday, President Macron gave him his job back, and that decision has been met with surprise and derision from the opposition.

Mr.

Le Cornu now has to put together a government and a new budget, but rumours of an imminent no-confidence vote in him are already swirling.

Our Paris correspondent, Hugh Schofield, has some clarification.

To some surprise, though I have to say not universal surprise, the man who's the new Prime Minister of France is the man who started the week as Prime Minister of France, but who resigned.

If you remember at the beginning of the week, this tumultuous week started with the resignation of Sebastian Le Corgnu.

That was the nominee of President Macron to try to get the country and the political system out of its current travails.

He'd had three weeks to form a government.

He formed a government last Sunday, but it collapsed overnight and he resigned on Monday morning, first thing.

We've had since then this weird, weird, weird, tumultuous week in which

the government, or I should say, the president, was casting around to see if he could find someone to lead a government to see whether there was any possibility of having a government, given the fractured nature of parliament and whether there's any way of avoiding new elections, which is above all what he wants to do.

We were promised a new name.

There's been another long day of talks between Macron and the various political parties.

And at the end of the day, after all of this, it's Sebastian Le Corneau again who's going to be the Prime Minister of France.

And he's got the job of this monumental job now of trying to find some kind of consensus around a government or at least a non-aggression pact with some of the parties in parliament so that it can at least get the basic business done of this country, which is getting a budget through for next year.

But of course, budgets are by nature the most controversial of all acts of legislation.

So, you know, the odds of this government lasting, I have to say, are not particularly good.

Our Paris correspondent, Hugh Schofield.

The price of gold is soaring worldwide, a reflection of economic uncertainty and instability, perhaps.

But researchers say the high price of gold is a reason that illegal gold mining is soaring, particularly in the Amazon, and it's having a negative impact on wildlife.

Dr.

Fernando Trujillo studies pink dolphins in the Colombian Amazon and he's been talking to my colleague, Rebecca Kesby.

For years, we have illegal gold mining in the Amazon.

We don't know exactly how much gold is going out because it's illegal, but what we know is the problem with the mercury.

And we estimate that during the last four centuries of gold mining in the Amazon, more than 200,000 tons of mercury have been poured in the waters of the Amazon.

And I think it has incremented during the last couple of years because the price of the gold is going up.

This is particularly an issue with illegal gold mining, is it?

Because I think mercury has been banned for use in mining by the government.

Yes, most of the government have signed the Minamata Agreement that forbid the use of mercury.

But we know that a lot of mercury comes from Mexico, through Venezuela and go inside Brazil and Colombia for these operations.

And how do they use it?

Why do they use mercury for it?

Well, basically, the mercury isolate the gold.

So trap the gold.

It's a process called amalgamation.

And you need 1.3 kilograms of mercury for 1 kilogram of gold.

And sometimes people are using 10 kilograms of mercury for just 1 kilogram of gold.

And then this mercury goes into the water and transforms into metal mercury.

That is the most toxic form of the mercury.

And this mercury just goes into the food chain.

And then the dolphins eat the fish, the people eat the fish, and we have a very huge problem with human health in the region.

Have you noticed that the dolphins are being affected by the mercury?

We are doing a lot of health assessments with dolphins in different countries, and we have found very high levels of mercury on the dolphins and also in fish that people are eating.

The maximum level of mercury you can have in your body is one milligram per kilogram, and we have dolphins with 49 milligrams per kilogram.

We are producing maps trying to show where are the areas with more problems.

But the difficulty here is that in some areas of Colombia, you don't have gold mining, but the fish are by accumulating all this mercury and just travel upstream and then it's captured for the fishermen or for the dolphins.

And then the mercury starts to circulate everywhere.

What are some of the symptoms of mercury poisoning?

I used to call the mercury the invisible enemy in the Amazon because if you eat fish with a lot of mercury, you are not going to have a stomach ache.

It silently goes inside your body and starts to attack your central nervous system.

So you have different symptoms like a lot of headaches, you lose the sense of smell, you have malformations on babies, you have polydactylia in children.

So what's the answer then?

Because this is an illegal industry, it's totally unregulated.

How can the mercury use at least be stopped?

We are looking at the change of the technologies to try to get the gold without mercury.

Also there are some colleagues in Switzerland that they are producing a bank of gold everywhere.

So they are buying gold in different mines in Africa, in South America, and they are studying from the molecular point of view and now they can identify where this gold is coming from.

So they can trace it back to the illegal mines.

Exactly.

So I think we can put a little bit of pressure on the companies when they are buying the gold and try to avoid gold from areas where there are deforestation, pollution, and organized crime behind this.

Dr.

Fernando Trojelio ending that interview with Rebecca Kesby.

And that's all from us for now, but there will be a new edition of the Global News podcast a little later.

If you want to comment on this episode or the topics covered in it, you can send us an email.

The address is globalpodcast at bbc.co.uk.

We'd also love to hear from you if you think there's a story that we've missed or one that you want us to revisit.

Please do send us your ideas.

You can also find us on X at BBC World Service and you can use the hashtag globalnewspod.

This edition was mixed by Darcy O'Brie and is produced by Arian Kochi and Wendy Urquhart.

The editor is Karen Martin.

I'm Uncle Desai.

Until next time, goodbye.

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