Global News Podcast - EU retaliates as Trump tariffs expand globally

Episode Date: March 12, 2025

The EU retaliates as Donald Trump's 25% tariffs on all steel and aluminium imports come into effect. Also: deforestation in the Amazon ahead of COP summit, and the wait for astronauts stranded in space is almost over.

This is the Global News Podcast from the BBC World Service. I'm Andrew Peach and at 14h GMT on Wednesday 12th March these are our main stories. The EU retaliates against the Trump administration's tariffs on steel and aluminium imports. We'll look at the impact on US businesses. Pakistan's military says it's freed nearly 200 train passengers taken hostage by separatists, but the standoff continues. Also in this podcast, the US is to put proposals for a ceasefire in Ukraine to Russia after President Zelensky agreed to an interim break in the fighting.

And? They are excited to be able to contribute more to the mission. They have enough supplies to be there. And I believe that anyone who supplies to be there and I believe that anyone who wants to be an astronaut is always thrilled at the possibility to stay longer. For two astronauts, being stranded for months on the International Space Station is almost over as NASA prepares to launch a mission to bring them back.

Tariffs have come into effect today on steel and aluminium imported into the US. President Donald Trump is hoping the 25% levies will boost US production but critics say they will increase prices and slow economic growth. Lots of reaction from around the world. Australia's Prime Minister Anthony Albanese criticised the move but didn't respond with countermeasures. Britain's Prime Minister says London is working on a trade deal with Washington. But the EU has promised its own retaliatory tariffs.

Here's the European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen. The countermeasures we take today are strong but proportionate. As the United States are applying tariffs worth $28 billion, we are responding with countermeasures worth €26 billion. This matches the economic scope of the tariffs of the United States." Mr Trump says the trade imbalance across the Atlantic is proof that the US is being ripped off. But that's nonsense, according to Pascal Lamy, the EU's former trade commissioner and ex-director general of the World

Trade Organisation. Trump's numbers are dead wrong. What he brandishes as a trade deficit between the US and EU, which is his number, which is 300 billion, is wrong. The real trade deficit between the EU and US is 50 billion. That's six times less because Mr. Trump probably does not see services as a trade. Most economists agree the tariffs are a bad idea. But Mr. Trump says tariff is the most beautiful word in the English language so what exactly is his

plan? Our business editor Simon Jack told me more. His stated goal is basically to reduce the trade deficit. He's saying that Americans are fed up of buying more from the rest of the world and the rest of the world buys from the US. For example, in the EU, that example you just heard there, he says they don't take our cars, whereas the EU export in Volkswagen's, Mercedes and BMW's there. That's the overall picture to try and reduce that imbalance. However, the US is not an isolated economy and we have comparative trade, some people are better at producing some things and some people are better than others.

Most economists fear that this has two effects. It can push up prices for US consumers and it can reduce growth or a bit of both. If you talk to business leaders in the US, what they tell me is that it's getting very hard to plan what we're going to do because I don't know what my supply chain is going to cost. Even Donald Trump has conceded that there will be what he called disturbances. You've seen some of that in business sentiment and also in the financial markets, which have seen a 10% pullback, which is a very significant move in US markets since the height we saw earlier this year.

Markets are freaked of freaked out. I think what they're all so nervous about is the fact that there used to be something known in financial circles as the Trump put, which is, if you like, a bit of insurance policy. It was the idea that if markets freak out a bit, then that would modify behavior and Donald Trump would back off a bit. That doesn't seem to have happened. This one foot in, one foot out, this hokey-cokey on tariffs is sapping business confidence and with people not knowing how

they can plan on an hour-to-hour basis, given how volatile this is. And Trump's response to the market turmoil is interesting because in his first term, he used to really care about the performance of the market. He took that as a sort of one barometer that he recognised as a benchmark of success and now he doesn't seem so bothered about it. That's exactly right though because we've been down this road before Andrew. We've had for example steel tariffs and then we had the EU and the UK putting tariffs on things like bourbon, whiskey, Harley-Davidson motorcycles. What's very interesting about the EU response, the EU's retaliated,

the UK and Australia have not, but the EU interestingly have given them a 1st of April deadline for when these reciprocal tariffs come in, giving him enough time to change his mind, which as we've seen, he has want to do from time to time. Our business editor, Simon Jack, let's have a look now at those real world consequences of tariffs in the US. North America business correspondent Michelle Fleury's been looking at businesses in New York and New Jersey. Right now we are pulling a sample off of the Bright Tank, Bright Tank because it's bright beer in it, ready to be packaged.

Jason Goldstein runs Icarus Brewing in New Jersey, making craft beer for the past eight years. He says he'll feel the effects of the tariffs because he depends on aluminium and steel to make, package and sell beer. A few cents a can, it might seem like nothing, but it's a lot. Our market works on very thin margins so seeing any of our costs go up, especially so suddenly, impacts us. especially so suddenly, impacts us. He fears it will go beyond metal tariffs, causing even more damage to his business. Right now it's cans, it's kegs,

but at the same time, you know, you hear about what were the tariffs on the EUB? Will grain be affected? We're bringing in barley from Canada, we're bringing barley from the UK, we're bringing hops from around the world. And if, you know, our trade partners suddenly start increasing prices because of these tariffs,

it's gonna hit us in every angle. The metal tariffs cut deep into the heart of America's manufacturing base. At Linda Tool, they make parts for the aerospace industry. They use mostly domestic milled steel. This is 15.5 stainless steel. Like Mr Trump, company president Mike DiMarrino wants to see more goods made in America. But he's not sure if tariffs are the best way to achieve this.

A lot of the manufacturing that we're involved with, you can't turn it on like a light switch. It's not, okay, we were buying this from China, but next week we're gonna move everything here and do it here. Very few products can happen like that. So what happens in the meantime? Business is very challenging.

The new tariffs come as the US clashed with Canada over new 50% tariffs on Canadian metals, triggered by a surcharge Ontario placed on electricity exports to the United States. After several hours, both sides backed down. Ontario Premier Doug Ford said he reversed his decision after speaking to US Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick. Rather than going back and forth and having threats

to each other. We have both agreed, let cooler heads prevail. We need to sit down and move this forward. Still Mr Trump's new confrontation with Canada sent jittery markets tumbling again. The new tariffs come just as investors have shown that their enthusiasm for Donald Trump's favourite foreign policy tool is very limited. Michelle Fleury reporting. Greenland is not for sale.

That's the message from the winner of the election there, which took place in the shadow of President Trump's threats to take over the territory. Jens Frederik Nielsen, the leader of the Democratic Party, has been an outspoken critic of foreign interference and also supports a slow path to independence from Denmark. From Copenhagen here's Adrienne Murray. The Democrats they've won the most votes. Until now they've been a very small player in Parliament. They've taken 30% of the vote and there's no other party that can catch

them. The Democrats they do favor a slower more gradual approach but it's also been a good night for Nalurak, the party that wanted a quick divorce from Copenhagen. But it's also been a really bruising night for the past government, the coalition. They were seen as a steady hand and having dealt well with the pressure from Donald Trump. But the two parties that were in government

both had big losses. Next to Pakistan, where security sources say 190 passengers have been freed after armed militants bombed a section of railway track and stormed a train in the southwest on Tuesday. One passenger who escaped has spoken of doomsday scenes and described an explosion followed by gunfire. I've been talking to our Pakistan correspondent Azadeh Mashiri in Islamabad. Information has been very difficult to get because this isn't a remote area with very limited mobile phone coverage. Even families who are trying to reach those on board are having difficulty.

But the information we do have has so far been from security sources. Now, we have also spoken to a railway police officer who said he was standing guard and witnessed militants firing rockets at the train when the attack happened. He said he and other security officials also fired back for nearly an hour and a half before they were caught. And he claims he saw dozens of dead bodies with attackers killing both military personnel and civilians. Now, again, this is not something that we've been able to independently verify, but this is testimony from an eyewitness rather than just the security sources who have been releasing information. So it's giving us a bit more of a picture. And it also is a reminder that this is very much an active operation. The Baloch Liberation

Army, the separatist militant group that has claimed this attack, claims that it's still in control of the train. As far as what we've been able to gather, the BBC has seen a carriage that was loaded with empty wooden coffins at Quetta railway station. Official sources have told us that it was headed towards the nearest railway station to the hijacking. So as all of this is happening, the information is still being tightly controlled, but we are getting a sense of the situation and clearly it's still very much an ongoing one with

a lot at stake. Very serious. And all the info we've got about numbers of passengers and how many were on board in the first place, how many have now left the train. That's all from the military in Pakistan because journalists have no other way of finding out. Well, it's not from official statements. It's from security sources who have been releasing some of this information unofficially to local journalists. You're right to point out how complicated it is to get independently

verified information when it comes to this story. But a lot of this, with the context that's really important to keep in mind, is that this is a militant group that has been calling for an independent Balochistan and has been behind many deadly incidents in this province in the last few years. Azadeh Mashiri in Islamabad. Two days ago, a US registered tanker carrying aviation fuel collided with a cargo ship, the Salong, off the coast of the UK. Now British police say the arrested captain of that vessel is a Russian national.

He's in custody, arrested on suspicion of gross negligence manslaughter after a member of his crew went missing and is now presumed dead. Rowan Bridge is the BBC's North of England correspondent. The 59-year-old captain that's along this Russian national is in police custody. He remains in police custody for questioning at the moment. Humbassai police say they're working to establish the full circumstances of what happened in this crash.

They are leading the criminal investigation into this. There is also an investigation being carried out by the Marine Accident Investigation Branch also looking into the circumstances of what happened. I think the other thing that we've seen this morning is we've seen new aerial footage of the salon which is still on fire and I think one of the big concerns now will be trying to put out those flames on board the ship before they can begin any proper salvage operation. The big concern there has been is around pollution and the threat, particularly from the oil tanker.

It was carrying 220,000 barrels of jet fuel on board when it was struck and some of that has leaked into the sea. Now the initial estimates we've had is that the impact may in fact be more limited than was first feared and that is because when the collision happened it caused a series of explosions and then fire some of which is just said is still burning and that seems to have burnt off some of that jet fuel and some of it is also evaporated but I think the focus now is on making sure that the fires are out on both vessels

and then a recovery effort and a salvage effort for those two vessels. Our correspondent, Rowan Bridge, reporting. Still to come, we'll hear from part of the Amazon rainforest earmarked for a new four-lane highway. Someone will come here and say, we're gonna need this area to build a gas station, to build a warehouse that will be used by trucks and then we will have to leave here.

The Ukrainian president Vladimir Zelenskyy has welcomed a US proposal for a 30-day ceasefire with Russia. The plan includes a truce in the air, at sea and along the entire front line. In response, the United States has also agreed to resume military aid and intelligence sharing with Ukraine. When asked about Moscow's reaction to the ceasefire proposal, the Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Russia didn't want to get ahead of itself and first needed more clarification from the United States. The US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said a minerals deal between the US and Ukraine

would give Washington invested economic and protection interest but stopped short of calling it a security guarantee. Mr Rubio urged the Russians to consider ending all hostilities. Now it is up to Russia to say yes. If Russia says yes, that's very good news and we will begin that process and do everything we can to move that process forward. If they say no, then obviously we'll have to examine everything and sort of figure out where we stand in the world and what their true intentions are. I think it will be, if they say no, it will

tell us a lot about what their goals are and what their mindset is. BBC asked some people in Moscow how they feel about the ceasefire proposal. I'm waiting for the results of Russia's negotiations with Ukraine and probably our negotiations with the US even more. I hope that everything will be OK, that all this will end. But we must win. Of course I would like them to agree to a ceasefire, an end to the war. I don't trust the US.

Their position constantly changes, first one way and then the other. I think if there's some big ceasefire initiative, then it will happen. Of course, I hope all this ends soon. Our people are dying there. And I feel sorry for the other guys too. I asked Vitaly Shevchenko of BBC Monitoring what the Russian response might be. It's clear that there's one man that will be taking decisions of that magnitude and his name is Vladimir Putin. If history is anything to go by, none of the numerous attempts to establish a ceasefire in Ukraine, none of them have worked so far. Less than a week ago, the Russian Foreign Ministry

rejected proposals, similar proposals of a ceasefire coming from France and the UK. And of a ceasefire coming from France and the UK. And it remains to be seen whether the fact that this one is coming from America will make any difference. But if this ceasefire is implemented, if it holds, that is going to be unprecedented in the history of this 11-year war. Mason Harkness And you'd think what Russia will do is to come back demanding more concessions, demanding them from the US rather than from Ukraine. Any idea what they might want? So far, what we've heard from Russia doesn't suggest that their appetites are in any way diminished when it comes to Ukraine. They're still saying

that they intend to capture more territory. The special military operation goes on. When it comes to America, that's where Russia has much less leverage. In fact, a couple of weeks ago, Vladimir Putin made the unprecedented step of offering America to jointly exploit Russia's mineral resources and also resources in the captured parts of Ukraine. That's not something that Russia had said before, and it suggests a degree of concern in the Kremlin about Donald Trump. And it looks like Moscow may be trying to offer Donald Trump a better deal than Ukraine is able to offer. Vitaly Shevchenko from BBC Monitoring. He was once the most powerful man in Georgia, but now Mikhail Tsarvili is languishing in prison and his jail time

just got longer. The former president has been sentenced to a further nine years in custody after a court found him guilty of embezzling state funds. He's already serving six years for abuse of power. Our correspondent Rehan Demetri is following the story. Georgia's prosecutor's office published a detailed list of what it described as personal, comfort and luxury items of Mikhail Saakashvili. Prosecutors argued that while serving as president, Mikhail Saakashvili spent over 3 million US dollars of public money purchasing expensive gifts, clothing, cosmetic procedures and other luxuries. A judge found the ex-president guilty and sentenced him to nine years in prison.

That is in addition to the six years he is already serving for abusers of power. Mikhail Saakashvili's defense argued that the expenses were for official presidential functions. Saakashvili has long maintained that his imprisonment is politically motivated, driven by revenge from the current de facto ruler of the country, billionaire Bezina Ivanishvili. During Saakashvili's 10 years president, Georgia became an economic success story in the region, but it also fought a war with Russia in 2008. After leaving presidential office in 2013, Mikhail Saakashvili spent eight years in exile before smuggling himself back into Georgia in October 2021. He was promptly arrested and has remained incarcerated since then.

In Zimbabwe, supporters of President Emerson Mungugwa are calling for a change to the constitution so he can extend his term of office beyond 2028. Jameson Timber, who leads a faction of the main opposition party, the Citizens Coalition for Change, is accusing the president of criminalising opposition politics. Mr Timber was convicted of inciting violence and spent five months in jail after he was arrested last June when he and others were marking International Day of the African Child. Shingai Nyoko, the BBC's correspondent in the capital Harare, has been talking to Mr Timber. I was arrested for gathering at my own residence, private residence, with my own guests. So I

therefore do not find this arrest and or conviction justified. The prosecution and the police say that you were talking about protesting, about holding protests, and that's essentially why they arrested you because, as they say, you were trying to incite violence. That is absolutely nonsense. First of all, 6959 of our constitution allows people to protest or demonstrate. If we wanted to protest or demonstrate, we just simply write a letter and notify the police that that's our intention. But why do you think you were arrested then? Paranoia. There was a summit of the Southern African development community leaders. The

government was just paranoid, believing that ordinary Zimbabweans, organised by the opposition, would like to disrupt that summit. Was it your intention to do that? Why would we want to disrupt the summit when we actually wanted to have spoken to the leaders who had come to Zimbabwe so that we could appraise them of the situation in the country, would achieve more by engaging them diplomatically than disrupting their meeting. How would you characterise the opposition right now? Some would say it's an absolute disarray and really the way it looks to many people is that there's no hope of revival.

How would you characterize the opposition? Yes, there are, I would say there are contradictions among differences between and amongst leaders. And some of us feel that some of our colleagues within the opposition have been compromised by the state and therefore impacting on the operations of the opposition. So we need to decontaminate. So what happens now with the opposition? We have the Zanupierre party that is emboldened. It's pushing for the extension of the presidential term of office, but the opposition is flailing.

I actually don't think that Zanupierre is emboldened. I actually don't think that they are stronger. Actually, I think that Zanupierre isboldened, I actually don't think that they are stronger. I actually think that Zanpere are actually their weakest. There is tension politically in and around the reported extension of term of office of the president and current parliament to 2030. Any leader or government with its sort would actually call for an early election to check and determine whether they still have the mandate of the people that they are leading. So what happens now? How would you characterise the political environment? Definitely the pressure is increasing. But I would also say that the economic situation

is deteriorating fast and that in itself is a recipe for disaster. We need to arrest the economic situation before we start seeing instability. James Simtimba with Xinguay Nioka. A new four-lane highway cussing through tens of thousands of acres of protected Amazon rainforest is being built for the COP30 climate summit in the Brazilian city of Belém. It's being built to ease traffic for the city city which is expecting tens of thousands of visitors for the conference. Scientists say it will fragment the ecosystems and disrupt the wildlife. The government says it's all being done in a sustainable way. From Belém, here's our

South America correspondent, Ioni Wells. I'm standing in what was once a protected area of the Amazon rainforest. There are huge lush green trees on either side as you would expect, but through the middle there is now this huge cleared space where a new highway is being built. There are piles of logs on the side where trees have been deforested. This is where the government is building a new highway to ease traffic for the city ahead of the COP climate summit. You can see machines and diggers clearing and paving the road.

Claudio Veracchisi lives in the forest about 200 metres from here. He used to make his living from harvesting acai berries from trees here. Now that isn't possible. Those acai trees are gone. We no longer have the income to support our family. Our fear is someone will come here and say we're going to need this area to build a gas station, to build a warehouse that will be used by trucks, and then we will have to leave here.

We were born and raised here in this community. Then, where are we going to go? This is our job, and we only know how to do this. The government in Brazil has made a big deal about hosting the COP Summit in the Amazon, about it being used to show the world the importance of protecting the Amazon, and yet preparations for this summit have already deforested some of the last remaining protected forests in this area. Someone who knows a lot about the potential impact that the road might have here is Professor

Silvia Sardinha, a vet and wildlife researcher. At this university hospital she looks after injured wild animals and releases them back into the wild, something that now might get a lot harder. We are going to lose an area to release these animals back into the wild, which is the natural environment of these species. It does directly affect the conservation of these animals. Land animals will no longer be able to cross to the other side too, reducing the areas where they occur. This highway is part of a whole range of construction works that are happening in this

city to prepare it to host tens of thousands of people for COP in November. New hotels are being frantically built, the airport is tripling in size, the conference centre is being developed and the port is getting ready to hold cruise ships to house some of the people that there won't be hotel rooms for. Atla Silveira, the state government's Infrastructure Secretary, thinks the highway and other works here will bring benefits. We have more than 30 projects happening in the city. We have viaducts being built, the Avenida Liberdade highway, which is a new exit route

from the capital to the interior of the state. This is an important mobility intervention for our capital. It's a sustainable highway where we have, for example, 34 wildlife crossings. We will have solar energy for lighting and bike paths to save CO2. In Veropesso, the city's huge open-air market, some business owners are hopeful all this development will bring positive economic benefits to that region. I think it's a good opportunity for many people, for tourism, to show the beauties of the city. I think the works are being done in a very good way. I hope that COP30 leaves a really great legacy for us.

We hope that the discussions aren't just on paper but become real actions so that the population in the future will have cleaner air." That's the hope of those who organise these climate summits too. But with tens of thousands of people flying around the world to attend them and the infrastructure needed to host them, scrutiny is growing over whether they're counterproductive to their cause. Ione Wells reporting. The US space agency NASA is launching a mission to the International Space Station later on Wednesday, a key step in bringing home two astronauts stranded there for over nine months.

Sunita Williams and Butch Wilmore were meant to be there for eight days, but technical issues left them stuck. The BBC's James Cotmel spoke to Ezin Uzo-Akoro, a senior fellow at the Harvard-Belfast Center and former Assistant Director for Space Policy at the White House. She's also a NASA veteran with experience of dozens of missions and programs. So the astronauts discovered that there was a problem with the thrusters as they were docking onto the International Space Station. And then NASA and Boeing proceeded to conduct a number

of tests until they realized that it was safer to send the vehicle back on crewed and have the astronauts come back on a later flight. And that later flight, it looks like it may well be on its way, but it's been an extraordinarily long wait for those astronauts in space. What will that have been like for them, do you think? Well, the great thing about the International Space Station is that there's a lot of work for astronauts to do in space. So they are excited to be able to contribute more to the mission, to support NASA, to support

scientific experiments, and they have supplies. So they have enough supplies to be there. And I believe that anyone who wants to be an astronaut is always thrilled at the possibility to stay longer. Talk us through then what's going to happen next, how they will be brought back down to Earth. They will come back with a SpaceX vehicle, the Dragon, which has flown three times. And then once they come back, they will go through a recovery period, medical recovery period before they get reunited with their families.

I read also that you are involved in a program to produce food in both the US and Nigeria as a precursor to growing food in space. Tell us about that. Yes, I was involved in that. We have the capability to grow food and test them in space at the International Space Station on surfaces in space. And we had tested Arabidopsis, which are mustard seeds. And that effort continues with the scientific research of growing vegetables at the International Space Station. And we'll see if there is a future where we can grow crops in space, hopefully soon.

Yeah, what are the particular challenges then? Why is it not as easy as doing it where we are right now? Light source, you don't have as much sunlight, the gravitational challenges, and it's quite cold. Right, but this is all presumably building towards a possibility of us being able to sustain ourselves somewhere other than on Earth, is that correct? That's right, and there are innovations here with synthetic biology on, you know, you've probably heard of cellular meat and other sources of food that could be grown elsewhere that are made palatable. So there are lots of inventions and research and experiments going on to ensure

that we have a food source in space. Now staying with space, we'd like to ask for your help. Next week we're hoping to do a special Q&A edition on space weather so we need your questions. In case you're wondering what that is, here's our weather presenter Simon King. In its very simple definition it refers to the changing environmental conditions on Earth created by solar activity. Now the beautiful side of space weather is one that we'll all be familiar with and that's the Northern Lights or the Aurora Borealis. But space weather is actually also really important for security because we can

get these geomagnetic storms that can impact spacecraft, it can interrupt with our satellites and how much do we rely on now on our smartphones and a big geomagnetic storm can actually wipe all that out. We're aiming to record something next week so if there's something you'd like to know please email globalpodcast at bbc.co.uk or on X we are at BBC World Service just use the hashtag global news pod. It would be even better if you could record your question as a voice note. And that's all from us for now. There will be a new edition of Global News to download later. This one was mixed by Holly Smith, the producer was Marion Straughan, the editor

is Karen Martin. I'm Andrew Peach, thanks for listening and until next time, goodbye.