27/07/2026

BIZ & FINANCE MONDAY | JULY 27, 2026

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US tariff wall set to stay: Analysts

Officials have since launched Section 301 investigations, including on forced labour, to reinstate duties. Lincicome warns however that past investigations were more substantive. A probe into China during Trump’s first term took a year to result in duties. This time, probes into 60 economies including EU and India spanned just four months. US tariffs are tough to undo. Former president Joe Biden, the Democrat who succeeded Trump after his first term, kept his predecessor’s tariffs on China intact. Even if a future leader wanted to reverse Trump’s duties, revenue considerations will complicate the situation, Lipsky predicts. Many countries were likely hoping the worst of trade wars are behind them, he said, but some may now have doubts. The Trump administration has struck 19 framework or reciprocal tariff deals. Yet, threats of further duties loom with Washington investigating 16 economies including China, the EU and Japan over excess industrial capacity. “The administration has been careful not to exceed the tariff levels agreed to in bilateral agreements,“ Cutler said. “But partners are concerned that this assurance may not hold.” Chad Bown of the Peterson Institute for International Economics believes Trump is missing a chance to address bigger problems like China’s rare earth export curbs. Trading partners have to “fight a two-front trade war – dealing with Trump’s tariffs and China’s export restrictions – instead of just being able to focus on China”, he said. While countries have expressed disappointment, Cutler said, there are no signs of retaliation, “knowing full well they would risk further US tariff escalation.” – AFP

that has previously been used to impose levies. Trump separately tapped an untested justification for 50 per cent tariffs on many Canadian goods. The actions and threats “underscore the president’s continued affection for tariffs, and that they are not going away as long as he is in the White House”, Asia Society Policy Institute senior vice-president Wendy Cutler told AFP. Trump’s latest tariffs of 10 per cent to 12.5 per cent apply to goods from 60 economies starting from last Friday. They came after probes over forced labour concerns, under Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974. Cutler said this has a lower likelihood of being overridden by courts, noting Trump’s top trade official Jamieson Greer had carefully navigated procedural requirements before imposing duties. More concerning was Trump’s targeting of Canada using the untested Section 338 of the Tariff Act of

1930, the Atlantic Council’s Josh Lipsky told AFP. The justification was Canada’s alleged discriminatory treatment of US exports, with duties effective after a month. “That’s more tariff-as-punishment” and could signal that Washington intends to keep less conventional tools at its disposal, Lipsky said. This is an “uncertainty generator”, added Scott Lincicome of the libertarian Cato Institute. Already, Trump’s newest tariffs face legal challenges from small businesses. As courts have earlier allowed the use of Section 301 for imposing duties, arguments against Trump’s latest salvo would likely focus on official findings that justified action, Lincicome said. “That’s just not something that courts typically want to weigh in on,” he added. Still, some argue that Trump lacks such broad powers to impose sweeping tariffs. Within months of returning to the presidency, Trump unleashed a barrage of tariffs on US trading partners. He invoked emergency economic powers to impose a swath of these duties quickly, a move deemed illegal by the high court this February. Trump’s sector-specific tariffs,

WASHINGTON: Circumventing the US Supreme Court, President Donald Trump has found a way to resurrect his tariff wall in a fashion that analysts say could prove more durable to legal challenges. Last week, Trump slapped sweeping new tariffs on 60 trading partners and saw 25 per cent duties take effect on Brazilian products. Both cases involved an authority o Latest duties have lower likelihood of being overridden by courts

imposed under different legal authorities on steel, automobiles and other goods, are unaffected.

Shipping containers are seen at Port Newark Container Terminal in New Jersey. – AFPPIC

Meta quits clean energy pledge WASHINGTON: Meta has abandoned a global pledge by leading companies to source all of their electricity from renewable sources, the social media giant confirmed last week. since 2020, according to its website, by partnering with renewable energy providers on long-term power purchase agreements. But the Climate Group told Recharge News that was no longer enough.

Paramount agrees to delay Warner Bros merger SAN FRANCISCO: Paramount Skydance agreed last week to delay its US$110 billion merger with Warner Bros Discovery while a US lawsuit seeking to block the deal moves forward. The Trump administration approved the blockbuster deal on June 12 without demanding a single change, clearing the way for one of the largest media mergers in years.

A federal judge in California ordered the companies to temporarily pause the deal in a ruling last Monday, just two days before the European Union gave the merger a conditional green light. The US states raised “serious questions” about the deal’s potential to be anticompetitive, the judge said in her ruling, adding that “the balance of equities and public interest tip sharply in favour of the Plaintiff States”. In their complaint, the 12 states claim the combined company would control roughly 27% of wide-release theatrical film distribution and a similar percentage of basic cable channel licensing. California’s attorney-general said the combination of two of Hollywood’s five major film distributors would lead to “higher prices, lower quality, and less content” for audiences. The merger would put a sprawling roster of assets under the control of a single company. Those media assets include CNN, Warner Bros Pictures and the HBO Max streaming service. – AFP

RE100, an initiative of the UK-based nonprofit Climate Group, aims to spur corporate climate action, and counts Apple, Google and Microsoft among its 444 members. The Climate Group’s website no longer lists Meta, the company behind Facebook and Instagram, as a member. The news was first reported by Recharge News, a renewable energy industry outlet. Meta joined the pledge in 2016 according to a Wayback Machine archive of RE100’s website. The departure comes amid a frenzied data centre buildout by leading tech companies. Meta has struck deals paying utilities to bring new natural gas power plants online, including 10 to power its Hyperion data centre in Louisiana alone. A Meta spokesperson told AFP the company is continuing to scale up investments in renewable energy, and that leaving RE100 does not change its goal of matching its electricity use with 100% clean energy. It has met that goal on an annualised basis

If the merger eventually closes, the new combined company would reshape the entertainment and media industry, in addition to delivering a major win to its owners, the Ellison family, who are close allies of US President Donald Trump. Paramount agreed to delay the deal through June 2027, the company said in a court filing. Rob Bonta, attorney-general of California, which is leading a coalition of 12 states which sued to block the deal, welcomed the agreement. “We are eager to continue to make our case in court and celebrate another tremendous win in our effort to ensure this unlawful merger never sees the light of day,” Bonta said in a statement. The other 11 states joining the suit, all Democratic-led, are Arizona, Colorado, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon and Washington. “Halting this merger while our case proceeds is a critical victory in our efforts to uphold the law and protect the film and television industries,“ New York attorney-general Leticia James said in a statement.

“After several in-depth conversations between Meta and Climate Group, Meta has withdrawn from the RE100 initiative, as it is no longer able to meet the technical criteria due to investments made in new gas power,“ a Climate Group spokesperson told the website. Natural gas has long been billed as a“bridge fuel” between dirtier polluting fossil fuels and renewables such as wind and solar. While its emissions are lower, drilling and extracting it causes the leakage of methane, a powerful greenhouse gas and the main component of natural gas. Burning natural gas also causes significant air pollution in the form of nitric oxides, sulfur, mercury and particulates, while hydraulic fracturing or “fracking,“ can contaminate ground water supplies. Meta is not alone in its pivot. Microsoft signed a deal with Chevron last month to supply natural gas electricity to a data centre in West Texas, while Google has also been linked to similar partnerships in press reports. – AFP