Reuters World News - 'Economic D-Day', Canada tariffs and Tesla recall

Starting point is 00:00:00 Hi, I'm Carmel Crimmons in Dublin. It's Monday, August 24th. Today, the US threatens economic D-Day for Iran and its trade partners. Tesla and other carmakers begin a record recall in China, and a cyclosporiasis is impacting farmers, even when there's been no outbreak. This is Reuters World News, bringing you everything you need to know from the front lines in 10 minutes, seven days a week. Two and five Canadians will hear the words, you have cancer. That's why every step and dollar raised matters. On September 19th, join thousands in Toronto for the Princess Margaret Cancer Foundation Walk.

Starting point is 00:00:46 Challenge yourself, friends, and family to walk 21 kilometers in support of life-saving research. Together, we can carry the fire and help create a world free from the fear of cancer. Register today at pmcfwalk.ca.ca. The U.S. is threatening Iran with what it's calling, quote, the greatest financial offensive ever marshaled. Treasury Secretary Scott Besant will hold a press conference later today, promising to reveal severe economic measures, not just on Iran, but on its trade partners. U.S. officials haven't explicitly named those partners, but China is the biggest buyer of Iran's oil exports. Tony Monroe is our Asia Energy and Commodities editor. The U.S. has sanctioned Tehran and its oil trade for years, and China has largely disregarded that.

Starting point is 00:01:44 Now, there are some nuances to that. China is the biggest buyer of Iranian oil, but its big state oil companies don't buy Iranian oil. So what China has been buying has been purchased by the independent refiners known as teapots. And over the years, the U.S. has imposed sanctions specifically, selectively against small refiners. So there have been sanctions that the U.S. has imposed on China's Iranian oil consumption, but they have not actually stopped volumes of Iranian oil from reaching China. What has had an impact, frankly, is the recent blockade. China has called for a diplomatic solution.

Starting point is 00:02:34 And as Tony says, it's an awkward time for the US if they do choose to impose fresh measures. We have seen, you know, in the recent past, quite a bit of tit-for-tat retaliation between China and the US. What is interesting contextually is that, you know, exactly a month from now, Chinese President Xi Jinping is due to visit Washington. and so it is an awkward time to impose fresh sanctions on China at this moment. I think you're going to see Mark Carney come to the table very, very quickly because it's going to be devastating for his country. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy there speaking on Fox News Sunday with Shannon Breen, accusing Canada of taking advantage of the U.S. It's a sour start to the week in terms of relations between the neighbors after trade talks.

Starting point is 00:03:29 broke down, prompting tit-for-tat tariff announcements. But how would Trump's promise tariffs hit Canada? Our economic correspondent for Canada, Promet Mukherjee, breaks it down. So these products are taking a hit on almost $20 million of Canadian exports to the United States, and which, if you look at it from a very objective point of view, it's not a huge impact, because it just affects 5% of Canada's exports to the US. But what it impacts is actually the critical sectors like the lumber, the soft food lumber, wood products industry, essentially, and the wine industry, then the dairy industry. So there will be some kind of job losses. There will be some kind of business closures in these particular sectors.

Starting point is 00:04:18 For more on how markets are digesting the prospect of tougher sanctions on Iran and a trade war with Canada. Here's Mike Dolan from our sister podcast, Morning Bid. Well, economic warfare seems to be the theme of the early part of this week. We had the collapse of the US-Canada trade talks on Friday, which means a full-blown trade war there is likely with Canada promising dollar-for-dollar retaliation. And Scott Besson, the Treasury Secretary, is about to detail economic sanctions against Iran, what he calls economic D-Day in attempt to squeeze Tehran's economy by targeting third countries. The details of that will be out later in this session. Oil prices down ahead of that and stock market's quite nervy. Thanks, Mike. You can catch morning bid wherever you get your.

Starting point is 00:05:00 your podcasts. A US sailor on board the USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier says his immigrant father has been taken into federal immigration detention. The Department of Homeland Security has confirmed that US Border Patrol arrested Louis Manuel Abelez Roja, originally from Nicaragua, after conducting a vehicle stop in Key West Florida. His son Joshua wrote on Facebook that he'd been deployed for over nine months when he got a call that his dad was taken by ICE, calling it heartbreaking. The DHS says Louis entered the U.S. illegally and would remain in detention pending removal proceedings. It says having a family member in the military doesn't give anyone a free pass. Two and five Canadians will hear the words, you have cancer. That's why every step and dollar raised

Starting point is 00:05:54 matters. On September 19th, join thousands in Toronto for the Princess Margaret Cancer Foundation Walk. Challenge yourself, friends and family to walk 21 kilometers in support of life-saving research. Together, we can carry the fire and help create a world free from the fear of cancer. Register today at pmcfwalk.ca. Now to West Africa, where a landslide at a landfill in Guinea's capital has killed at least 30 people after heavy rains overnight triggered the collapse of a massive mound of waste, engulfing nearby tents and shacks. Mamaduba Bangura was sleeping nearby.

Starting point is 00:06:36 He says a loud noise woke him around 2 a.m. He went outside to see what was happening before a second wave of trash struck and brought down the house. The incident occurred less than a week after the government announced plans to close the site and relocate the waste because of the threat it posed. Fast fashion retailer Sheen's valuation

Starting point is 00:06:59 has crumpled by about 70% from a private market peak of nearly $100 billion $1.7 billion dollars four years ago. The company is looking to raise up to $1.77 billion in a Hong Kong IPO. Summers then, our Asia Funds correspondent, explains how the U.S. and Europe imposing additional fees on small parcels from China have hit Sheen hard. For example, for a three euro t-shirt you buy on Sheen, now you need to maybe pay six euro for that product because of the fee. What's worse is that Xin's IPO comes at a challenging time. Now most investors these days are focusing on AI and tech-related names, so she has to cut valuation aggressively to attract investors.

Starting point is 00:07:49 Staying in China, Tesla and eight other automakers are recalling over 4 million vehicles there, over concerns that doors may be difficult to open in an emergency. Most of the vehicles being recalled are Tesla's. It's the country's largest automotive recall and includes software updates, warning labels, and improved markings around door handles. One specific design feature Beijing is banning is concealed door handles,

Starting point is 00:08:16 making it the first country to phase out a design popularized by Tesla. Our US Auto's editor, Mike Collias, explains. These are electrically controlled door handles, so they sit flush to the door of the car and then when the owner approaches, they pop out. it's to help with aerodynamics. That's why we see a lot of these on electric cars. It's also just kind of a minimalist cool look.

Starting point is 00:08:41 Now, Tesla and others have a manual release inside the car that you should be able to, you know, manually open the door. The issue that some people have said is that it's not clear. It's not intuitive. They're hard to figure out how to do that from inside. So the two remedies that Tesla and others are taking, they're going to have a label to better sort of indicate where to find that in the car. And also, they're pushing out a software update that would allow the windows to go down as soon as there's a collision. We don't really know

Starting point is 00:09:12 how that would work. This recall essentially is only in China, as far as we know, we have not heard from Tesla as to whether or not they plan a similar move in Europe or the United States. Regulators in both that have said they're looking at this issue, but they've not gone as far as China to ban them. Taylor Farms, the fruit and vegetable supplier at the center of the massive U.S. cyclosporiasis outbreak this summer has become a dominant force in the fresh produce industry, shipping them to some of the largest restaurant chains, including McDonald's and Taco Bell. And while the outbreak has been traced back to a supplier in Mexico, our agriculture reporter

Starting point is 00:09:52 Tom Palancek visited the Salinas Valley in California to understand how it's been impacting growers beyond Taylor Farms. No products grown in the U.S. have been linked to the outbreak, but consumers are still nervous about buying and eating fresh produce. That has hurt demand for the products from this region, and some farmers have needed to destroy their crops as a result. The downturn and demand has also reduced working hours for employees in local processing facilities and it's put a squeeze on the industry here. Taylor Farms and other companies say that they have strict food safety standards. There's also regular water testing that goes on. Farmers here are waiting for consumer confidence to return and they hope that consumers get a

Starting point is 00:10:47 better handle on which products are okay for them to buy in the grocery stores and to consume a restaurants. For warn any of the stories from today, as well as more analysis and news shaping our world, check out Reuters.com or the Reuters app. There's a link in the description to download it and start getting pure news straight from the source. Don't forget to follow us on your favourite podcast player. And if you're listening on a smart speaker, just ask for the latest news from Reuters seven days a week. We'll be back tomorrow with our daily headline show.

Reuters World News - 'Economic D-Day', Canada tariffs and Tesla recall

There aren't comments yet for this episode. Click on any sentence in the transcript to leave a comment.