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Here’s where things stand on Tuesday 8 July 2025:
- The UN warns that US President Donald Trump’s decision to delay implementing major tariff hikes on most US trading partners may have offered some relief but the extension is also prolonging global trade uncertainty.
- Shortly before the three-month pause on the “Liberation Day” tariffs was to expire on Wednesday, Trump says he will give governments an extra three weeks to hammer out deals.
- Major stock markets mostly rise after Trump extends his tariffs deadline and hints at a further pushback although uncertainty over US trade policy caps the gains.
- Trump says the US will send additional weapons to Ukraine, triggering Russian criticism after Moscow claims new gains in the grinding war against its neighbour.
Trump says he will visit Texas on Friday
The US president says he will travel to Texas, where flash floods killed dozens of people.
“I’ll be going down on Friday with the First Lady,” he said.
DHS Secretary Kristi Noem said that people remain missing.
“We are still looking for people. We’re still looking for a lot of little girls and other family members that were camping along that river. They will continue until they find every single person, and we will continue to help them and assist in that,” she said, adding that some people in the area were finding pieces of clothing or personal items from their missing children.
Japanese prime minister says US tariffs ‘extremely regrettable’
Shigeru Ishiba says during a cabinet meeting in Tokyo that while Trump’s announcement that Japanese goods would face a 25 percent tariff is “extremely regrettable”, negotiations would continue in search of a mutually beneficial agreement.
The Japanese leader also noted that the 25 percent rate was lower than previous duties threatened by Trump.
UN experts warn of torture risk as US deports migrants to third countries
United Nations experts have decried the US resumption of migrant deportations to third countries, including to war-torn South Sudan, stressing Washington’s obligation to ensure it is not sending people into harm’s way.
The experts, who are appointed by the UN Human Rights Council but who do not speak on behalf of the United Nations, voiced alarm at the rights implications of a recent Supreme Court ruling allowing Trump’s administration to go ahead with deportations of foreign nationals to countries other than their own.
“International law is clear that no one shall be sent anywhere where there are substantial grounds for believing that the person would be in danger of being subjected to … torture, enforced disappearance or arbitrary deprivation of life,” 11 independent UN rights experts said in a statement.
Following the ruling, a group of eight migrants deported from the United States and stranded for weeks at a military base in Djibouti arrived in South Sudan on Saturday.
Only one of the deportees is from South Sudan, but the Trump administration has sought to remove unwanted migrants to third countries as other nations sometimes refuse to accept returnees.
“To protect people from torture and other prohibited cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment, enforced disappearances, and risks to life, they must be given an opportunity to express their objections to removal in a legally supervised procedure,” said the experts, including the UN special rapporteurs on torture and on the rights of migrants.
Trump begins cabinet meeting
The US president began his cabinet meeting by praising his agency leaders for doing a “beautiful job” in the first six months of the administration.
We will bring updates as they come in.
Palestinians reject Trump’s calls for forced displacement
Palestinians in Gaza say Trump’s talks with Netanyahu about a scheme that would remove Palestinians from the Strip under the guise of humanitarian relief is a ploy to expel them from their homeland.
“This is our land,” Mansour Abu Al-Khaier told the news agency Reuters. “Who would we leave it to. Where would we go?”
Trump said during talks with Netanyahu on Monday that Palestinians would have a “better future” elsewhere, and he has previously mused about Gaza’s potential for a real estate venture.
“I will not leave Gaza. This is my country,” said Abu Samir el-Fakaawi.
“Our children who were martyred in the war are buried here,” he added. “Our families. Our friends. Our cousins. We are all buried here. Whether Trump or Netanyahu or anyone else likes it or not, we are staying on this land.”
You can follow the latest developments in Gaza on our Middle East live page.
US using Guantanamo Bay prison camp to detain foreigners from 26 countries: Report
The US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) says it is detaining foreigners from 26 countries in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, the site of a US naval base and prison camp that gained notoriety as a site of torture and indefinite detentions during what the US called the “war on terror”.
DHS said in a release that it was holding nearly 30 “criminal illegal aliens” at Guantanamo as part of the Trump administration’s push to expand the facility’s use for immigrant detentions. Immigrants are held in a separate area from the remaining “terrorism” detainees.
Trump set to meet with his cabinet
The US president is expected to convene members of his cabinet soon, the first such meeting since April 30.
Trump typically uses such occasions to tout his recent successes, while cabinet officials praise his leadership.
EU says it hopes to reach quick deal with US over tariffs
European Union officials have said that they hope to swiftly reach a trade agreement with the US.
“The faster we can reach the agreement, the better, because that would remove uncertainty surrounding these tariff questions and indeed we see that it is weighing on the economy and also on investment decisions of the companies,” European Commissioner for Trade Valdis Dombrovskis said in Brussels.
“We have been working with this ninth of July deadline in mind, but as I outlined, as it seems, the US have now postponed in a sense this deadline to first of August, so that gives us a bit more time, but from our side, we remain concentrated,” Dombrovskis added.
Group says social media companies should do more to combat hateful content
Debate continues over the role that social media companies should play in moderating content on their platforms as the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) says a retreat from such policies has resulted in an “explosion of hate”.
ADL CEO Jonathan Greenblatt said anti-Semitism has surged since the start of Israel’s war on Gaza, which has killed at least 57,575 people in the Strip.
“Social media companies and big tech more broadly has a critical role to play,” Greenblatt told the news agency AFP.
The ADL, which calls itself a civil rights watchdog group, has been frequently criticised for defining criticisms of Israel and expressions of Palestinian identity as forms of anti-Semitic hate speech and for supporting crackdowns on pro-Palestine activism that have drawn concerns from civil liberties groups.
Muslim, Arab and Jewish communities have all reported sharp upticks in harassment and discriminatory acts amid tensions over Israel’s war in Gaza.
Follow our live coverage of Israel’s war on Gaza here.
White House declines to say if Texas floods will delay plans to scrap FEMA
Asked if Trump will reconsider his plans to phase out the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), a federal agency that helps oversee disaster relief and recovery, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said that authorities in Texas are doing a “tremendous job” and that Trump wants to see states take greater control.
“The president has always said he wants states to do as much as they can,” she said.
Cambodian garment workers express concern over possible tariff increases
As the US and Cambodia continue talks over tariff rates, workers in the Southeast Asian country’s garment industry worry that the duties could severely impact their sector.
“If they charge a high tariff, it is only workers who are going to suffer,” 38-year-old Im Sothearin told the news agency AFP.
“Factories might be closed or workers will have their wages lowered or be forced to work faster.”
“If the tariff is that high, companies won’t have money to pay,” 28-year-old worker Sreymom said.
“I am worried that we won’t have jobs to do,” she added. “I want the tariff to be reduced more.”
Cambodia hails Trump tariff reduction as a ‘huge victory’
Cambodian Deputy Prime Minister Sun Chanthol, who is the country’s negotiator in trade talks with the US, has said that an agreement bringing threatened tariffs of 49 percent down to 36 percent is a “huge victory”. He added that more time remains before the August 1 deadline.
“This is a huge victory for Cambodia in the first phase of negotiations on the tariff for us,” Chanthol said to reporters. “We are so successful in negotiations.”
“We still have a chance to negotiate further to reduce the tariff rate more,” he added.
USDA will curb farmland purchases by ‘adversaries’, including China, Rollins says
US Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins says the Department of Agriculture (USDA) will curb farmland purchases by “foreign adversaries”, including China.
Rollins said she will be a member of the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States “as of this afternoon”.
Trump says US will send more weapons to Ukraine
The US president said on Monday that he would send more weapons to Ukraine, adding that they would be mostly defensive in nature after a wave of recent Russian strikes.
“They have to be able to defend themselves,” Trump said. “They’re getting hit very hard now. We’re going to send some more weapons — defensive weapons primarily.”
The statement appears to reverse course after the Pentagon announced the suspension of some weapons deliveries last week amid concerns over stockpile declines.
Trump says new tariff deadline is not ‘100 percent firm’
Asked on Monday night whether the August 1 deadline was set in stone, Trump said he would be open to haggling over the process with individual countries.
“I would say firm, but not 100 percent firm,” he said. “If they call up and they say would like to do something a different way, we’re going to be open to that.”
Markets steady amid Trump tariff pause
Major stock markets mostly rose after Trump extended his tariffs deadline and hinted at a further pushback, though uncertainty over US trade policy capped gains.
Shortly before the three-month pause on his “Liberation Day” tariffs was set to expire, Trump said he would give governments an extra three weeks to hammer out deals to avoid sky-high levies on exports to the world’s biggest economy.
“The Trump administration’s latest announcements on tariffs offered some relief to financial markets,” noted AJ Bell investment analyst Dan Coatsworth.
“On the flipside, this only extends the uncertainty with markets likely to spend the next three weeks trying to guess the ultimate outcome.”
The dollar traded mixed against main rivals, and oil prices dropped.
UN warns of continued uncertainty over US tariffs
The United Nations has said that looming uncertainty over Trump’s tariff policies could undermine long-term investing, as constant changes deny businesses the sense of stability they need to make decisions about where to invest.
“While the reciprocal tariffs will no longer go into effect tomorrow as originally announced, but be (postponed) for another few weeks until first of August, this move actually extends the period of uncertainty,” Pamela Coke-Hamilton, director of the UN-backed International Trade Centre, told reporters in Geneva.
Trump signed an executive order on Monday temporarily delaying a round of tariff increases that would have ratcheted up import duties on a number of countries.
The order moves the deadline from July 9 to August 1, which the White House says will give countries more time to negotiate individual agreements with the US.
Here’s what’s been happening
- In a meeting at the White House, Trump and Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu discussed the forcible transfer of Palestinians out of Gaza, which experts have said would be a grave violation of international law.
- US envoy Steve Witkoff told reporters at the same meeting that the US could hold talks with Iran, doing so “Very quickly. In the next week or so.”
- A US judge has paused a portion of Trump’s tax-and-spending bill that would have barred Planned Parenthood from receiving Medicaid funds.
- Several top US medical organisations filed a lawsuit against the Department of Health and Human Services and its leader, Robert F Kennedy Jr, after it advised certain groups against taking the COVID-19 vaccine.
- The death toll from recent flash floods in Texas reached 104 as the search continues for missing people.
- Trump signed an executive order ending tax credits for wind and solar green energy sources, while the Department of Veterans Affairs said that it will reduce staffing by 30,000 by the end of fiscal year 2025.
Welcome to our live coverage
Hello and thank you for joining our live coverage of the 170th day of United States President Donald Trump’s second term.
Stay with Al Jazeera’s live team as we bring you all the latest developments, analysis and reactions throughout the day.
