'Will you shut up, man': Biden to Trump in first US Presidential debate

 President Donald Trump and Democratic challenger Joe Biden began the first presidential debate with heated exchanges over health care, the coronavirus and the future of the Supreme Court.

Fitting for an edge in their bitter campaign, the two men frequently interrupted each other with angry interjections, with Biden eventually snapping at Trump Will you shut up, man? That was after the president badgered him over his refusal to comment on whether he would try to expand the Supreme Court in retaliation if Trump's high court pick, Amy Coney Barrett, was confirmed to replace the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

The fact is that everything he's said so far is simply a lie, Biden said.

I'm not here to call out his lies. Everybody knows he's a liar. Trump struggled to define his ideas for replacing the Affordable Care Act on health care in the debate's early moments and defended his nomination of Barrett, declaring that I was not elected for three years, I'm elected for four years.

We won the election. Elections have consequences. We have the Senate. We have the White House and we have a phenomenal nominee, respected by all.

Trump and Biden arrived in Cleveland hoping the debate would energize their bases of support, even as they competed for the slim slice of undecided voters who could decide the election.

It has been generations since two men asked to lead a nation facing such tumult, with Americans both fearful and impatient about the coronavirus pandemic that has killed more than 200,000 of their fellow citizens and cost millions of jobs.

The pandemic's effects were in plain sight, with the candidates' lecterns spaced far apart, all of the guests in the small crowd tested and the traditional opening handshake scrapped. The men did not shake hands and, while neither candidate wore a mask to take the stage, their families did sport face coverings.

How you doin', man?" Biden asked the president as they entered.

With just 35 days until the election, and early voting already underway in some states, Biden stepped onto the stage holding leads in the polls significant in national surveys, close in some battleground states and looking to expand his support among suburban voters, women and seniors.

Surveys show the president has lost significant ground among those groups since 2016, but Biden faces his own questions encouraged by Trump's withering attacks.

Trump had arguably his best chance to try to reframe the campaign as a choice between candidates and not a referendum over his handling of the virus that has killed more people in America than any other nation.

Americans, according to polling, have soured on his leadership in the crisis, and the president has struggled to land consistent attacks on Biden.

Biden's performances during the primary debates were uneven, and some Democrats have been nervous as to how he would fare in an unscripted setting.

But his team also viewed the night as a chance to illuminate Trump's failings with the pandemic and economy, with the former vice president acting as a fact checker on the floor while bracing himself for the onslaught that was coming.

The tumult of 2020 was difficult to overstate: COVID-19 has rewritten the rules of everyday life; racial justice protests have swept into cities after several highly publicized killings of Black people by police, and the death of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg allowed Trump to nominate a conservative jurist to replace a liberal voice and perhaps reshape the high court for generations.

Trump paid no income tax in 10 of past 15 yrs; paid $750 in 2016: Report

 President Donald Trump paid just USD 750 in federal income taxes the year he ran for president and in his first year in the White House, according to a report on Sunday in The New York Times.

Trump, who has fiercely guarded his tax filings and is the only president in modern times not to make them public, paid no federal income taxes in 10 of the past 15 years. He campaigned for office as a billionaire real estate mogul and successful businessman.

Speaking at a news conference at the White House, Trump dismissed the report as fake news and said he has paid taxes, though he gave no specifics.

The disclosure, which the Times said comes from tax return data it obtained extending over two decades, comes at a pivotal moment ahead of the first presidential debate Tuesday and weeks before a divisive election against Democrat Joe Biden.

The president vowed that information about his taxes will all be revealed. But he offered no timeline for the disclosure and made similar promises during the 2016 campaign on which he never followed through.

In fact, the president has fielded court challenges against those seeking access to his returns, including the U.S. House, which is suing for access to Trump's tax returns as part of congressional oversight.

A lawyer for the Trump Organization, Alan Garten, and a spokesperson for the Trump Organization did not immediately respond to a request for comment from The Associated Press on the report.

Garten told the Times that most, if not all, of the facts appear to be inaccurate. He said in a statement to the news organization that the president "has paid tens of millions of dollars in personal taxes to the federal government, including paying millions in personal taxes since announcing his candidacy in 2015.

During his first general election debate against Democrat Hillary Clinton in 2016, Clinton said that perhaps Trump wasn't releasing his tax returns because he had paid nothing in federal taxes.

Trump interrupted her to say, "That makes me smart.

Donald Trump picks conservative Amy Coney Barrett for Supreme Court Justice

 President Donald Trump nominated Judge Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court on Saturday, capping a dramatic reshaping of the federal judiciary that will resonate for a generation and that he hopes will provide a needed boost to his reelection effort.

Republican senators are already lining up for a swift confirmation of Barrett ahead of the November 3 election, as they aim to lock in conservative gains in the federal judiciary before a potential transition of power. Trump, meanwhile, is hoping the nomination will serve to galvanize his supporters as he looks to fend off Democrat Joe Biden.

Trump hailed Barrett as a woman of remarkable intellect and character, saying he had studied her record closely before making the pick.

I looked and I studied, and you are very eminently qualified, he said as Barrett stood next to him in the Rose Garden.

An ideological heir to the late conservative Justice Antonin Scalia, Barrett would fill the seat vacated after the Sept. 18 death of liberal icon Ruth Bader Ginsberg, in what would be the sharpest ideological swing since Clarence Thomas replaced Justice Thurgood Marshall nearly three decades ago. She would be the sixth justice on the nine-member court to be appointed by a

Republican president, and the third of Trump's first term in office. For Trump, whose 2016 victory hinged in large part on reluctant support from conservative and white evangelicals on the promise of filling Scalia's seat with a conservative, the latest nomination in some ways brings his first term full circle. Even before Ginsburg's death, Trump was running on having confirmed in excess of 200 federal judges, fulfilling a generational aim of conservative legal activists.

This is my third such nomination after Justice Gorsuch and Justice Kavanaugh, and it is a very proud moment indeed," Trump said in the Rose Garden. He encouraged Democrats to take up her nomination swiftly and to refrain from personal and partisan attacks.

The set design, with large American flags hung between the Rose Garden colonnades, appeared to be modeled on the way the White House was decorated when President Bill Clinton named Ginsburg as his nominee in 1993.

The announcement came before Ginsburg was buried beside her husband next week at Arlington National Cemetery. On Friday, she was the first woman to lie in state at the Capitol, and mourners flocked to the Supreme Court for two days before that to pay respects.

Barrett said she was truly humbled by the nomination, adding that she would be mindful of who came before me." She praised Ginsburg upon accepting the nomination, saying, She has won the admiration of women across the country and indeed all across the world."

Within hours of Ginsburg's death, Trump made clear he would nominate a woman for the seat, and later volunteered he was considering five candidates. But Barrett was the early favorite, and the only one to meet with Trump.

Barrett has been a judge since 2017, when Trump nominated her to the Chicago-based 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. But as a longtime University of Notre Dame law professor, she had already established herself as a reliable conservative in the mold of Scalia, for whom she clerked in the late 1990s.

She would be the only justice on the current court not to have received her law degree from an Ivy League school. The eight current justices all attended either Harvard or Yale.

The staunch conservative had become known to Trump in large part after her bitter 2017 appeals court confirmation included allegations that Democrats were attacking her Catholic faith. The president also interviewed her in 2018 for the vacancy created by the retirement of Justice Anthony Kennedy, but Trump ultimately chose Brett Kavanaugh.

Trump and his political allies are itching for another fight over Barrett's faith, seeing it as a political windfall that would backfire on Democrats. Catholic voters in Pennsylvania, in particular, are viewed as a pivotal demographic in the swing state that Biden, also Catholic, is trying to recapture.

While Democrats appear powerless to stop Barrett's confirmation in the GOP-controlled Senate, they are seeking to use the process to weaken Trump's reelection chances.

Barrett's nomination could become a reckoning over abortion, an issue that has divided many Americans so bitterly for almost half a century. The idea of overturning or gutting Roe v. Wade, the landmark 1973 decision that legalized abortion, has animated activists in both parties for decades. Now, with the seemingly decisive shift in the court's ideological makeup, Democrats hope their voters will turn out in droves because of their frustration with the Barrett pick.

Trump has also increasingly embraced the high court which he will have had an outsized hand in reshaping - as an insurance policy in a close election.

Increases in mail, absentee and early voting brought about by the coronavirus pandemic have already led to a flurry of election litigation, and both Trump and Biden have assembled armies of lawyers to continue the fight once vote-counting begins. Trump has been open about tying his push to name a third justice to the court to a potentially drawn-out court fight to determine who will be sworn in on Jan. 20, 2021.

I think this will end up in the Supreme Court, Trump said Wednesday of the election, adding, And I think it's very important that we have nine justices.

Have given my blessing, says Trump on TikTok deal involving Oracle, Walmart

 US President Donald Trump has announced a possible deal between Oracle and Walmart to share the US operations of Chinese video sharing application TikTok, which was placed on a ban list due to security concerns.

The deal mandates the creation of a new American company -- incorporated in Texas -- and the prospect of 25,000 new jobs. Further, TikTok will give USD 5 billion to fund the education of American youths.

Trump said he has given his blessings to the new deal. "TikTok is moving along. We're dealing with Oracle, which you know of, in combination with Walmart, another great American company. The security will be 100 per cent. They'll be using separate clouds (data) and a lot of very, very powerful security," Trump told reporters at the White House on Saturday.

Last month, Trump had signed an executive order to ban Chinese applications TikTok and WeChat by September 15 unless the ownership of the two Chinese companies changed to American hands.

"They'll (TikTok) be making about a USD 5 billion contribution towards education. We're going to be setting up a very large fund for the education of American youths, and that will be great. I've been asking for this (education fund)," Trump said on Saturday.

ALSO READ: TikTok files complaint against Trump administration to try to block US ban

"We'll see whether or not it (the deal) happens, but conceptually, I think it's a great deal for America. They'll be hiring at least 25,000 people. It will most likely be incorporated in Texas. It'll be a brand new company. It will have nothing to do with any outside land, any outside country. It will have nothing to do with China. It will be totally secure," Trump said.

"I think it's going to be a fantastic deal. The technology is superior to anything in the world, and we like that. Again, a lot of jobs, a lot of money for our country. Billions of dollars of taxes will be paid every year. Hundreds of millions of users, and they'll be happy. Everybody will be happy," he said.

Trump said TikTok will keep its name. "I have given the deal my blessing. If they get it done, that's great, if they don't, that's okay too. It's a great deal for America," he said.

"They'll report the full scope of the deal very soon, but it will be totally controlled by Oracle and Walmart," he added.

(Only the headline and picture of this report may have been reworked by the Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)

Expect to have enough Covid vaccines for every American by Apr 2021: Trump

 US President Donald Trump on Friday (local time) said that his administration expects to have enough doses of coronavirus vaccines for every American citizen by April 2021.

"As soon as the vaccine is approved, the administration will deliver it to the American people immediately...Hundreds of millions of doses will be available every month and we expect to have enough vaccines for every American by April (2021)," Trump said at a press briefing.

He said "brilliant" doctors and scientists of the US have been working around the clock to produce a COVID-19 vaccine and informed that three vaccines are in the final stage of clinical trials.

"Lot of work has been going on with respect to vaccines...The vaccine should be developed as soon as possible to end the pandemic and get life back to normal. A successful vaccine will not only save millions of lives, it will put an end to restrictions," the President said.

"All vaccine candidates are going through the gold standard of clinical trials with a heavy emphasis on safety," he stressed.

As part of Operation Warp Speed, initiated by the Trump administration to facilitate and accelerate the development of COVID-19 vaccines, Trump said all of the most promising vaccine candidates are being manufactured in advance.

"Vaccine development is our top priority and we are moving forward swiftly with great success. When a vaccine is approved, it will be distributed within 24 hours," he further said.

According to the latest data by Johns Hopkins University, the US remains the worst-affected country by the COVID-19 pandemic and has 6,705,114 cases and 198,197 deaths.

(Only the headline and picture of this report may have been reworked by the Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)

Trump wants a vaccine by end of this year but the barriers are too high

 Every effort to develop a new medicine is like launching a ship across the ocean to hunt for riches. Over the years, we’ve improved the hulls and masts, the maps are better, the sailors more experienced. But even so, vessels get turned back or new lands are barren. And, sometimes, a squall takes down the boat and all her crew.

The Trump administration has set sail on one of the most ambitious vaccine development efforts in history. Operation Warp Speed is likely to deliver a Covid-19 inoculation in a fraction of the years it would usually take. If it does so, it could save the lives of hundreds of thousands of people and economies around the world.

But the administration has also offered timelines for a vaccine that fly in the face of almost every experience in pharmaceutical history. On Tuesday night, President Donald Trump said a shot could be ready in three or four weeks. Then, on Wednesday, Paul Mango, deputy chief of staff for policy at the Department of Health and Human Services and one of the senior leaders of the Warp Speed program, said every American could be vaccinated by the end of March.

Mango said that there are enough doses in production and that trials are moving at a speed so that “the combination of those two will permit us to vaccinate every American before the end of first quarter 2021.” A few hours later, White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany said that “we do believe that it will be widely available by the end of” this year, though also referred to doses of the vaccine being production by then, as opposed to actually distributed.

Mango’s and McEnany ’s remarks were contradicted by the head of the Centers for Disease Control Prevention, Director Robert Redfield, who told Congress Wednesday that it would likely take until late spring or the summer of next year for most Americans to have access to a vaccine. Other top U.S. health officials have said it’s not likely a vaccine will be ready until the end of the year, and that expanding access to the more than 300 million people living in the U.S. will take longer.

“It would be aspirational to do that,” said Anthony Fauci, the head of the National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases. “But I think it’s more toward the middle to the end of the year that you can get people vaccinated. It depends on what the vaccine is.”

The U.S. has launched many ships. Pfizer Inc., Moderna Inc. and AstraZeneca Plc have headed out at a rapid clip. The early data look promising, and late-stage trials in tens of thousands of volunteers could produce a rapid answer.

But to deploy a vaccine widely by early next year, it’s worth keeping in mind what has to go right:

One of the vaccines has to work.

The vaccine that works has to be one of the handful that are already in late-stage trials.

There can’t be a major safety concern or delay.

The clinical trials have to generate strong evidence.

The FDA has to accept that evidence and review it rapidly.

The manufacturing has to go near perfectly.

Hundreds of millions of doses must be delivered around the country, likely with some degree of low-temperature storage requirements.

Even in vaccination efforts that the U.S. runs every year, it’s hard to meet the goal of wide uptake. For the 2017-2018 flu season, only 37% of Americans actually got a vaccine, according to the CDC. Many people get it at work, at school, at a drugstores or in hospitals --places that are largely closed or that many Americans are avoiding because of the pandemic.

There are a few loosely understood rules of running a pharmaceutical company, outside the necessity of making a reasonable return for shareholders.

A first rule is don’t kill anyone. A second one is to help people live longer, better lives. The third is not to get sued by securities regulators.

It’s a simple set of goals that often runs into the brutal reality of drug development, often summed up by insiders with the oft-repeated pearl, “science is hard.” Every year, the pharmaceutical industry spends billions on failure. Drugs seem like miracles, then turn out to be a mirage. Much of the money companies invest in research goes toward projects that are stopped because they either don’t help people or might hurt them.

The result is that most companies -- there are, of course, exceptions -- are conservative in their pronouncements. And some have been preparing for a vaccine. Merck & Co. has been quietly betting that the first shot across the line won’t necessarily be the best, and that its experimental vaccine could top the early winners. Some form of vaccine is likely to be needed for years, as well, leaving plenty of room for incremental improvements like better protection, more durable immunity, and more certain safety.

To that end, earlier this month, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine published a report summarizing expert recommendations for distributing a Covid-19 vaccine.

On page 11, it cites a key lesson from past mass vaccination efforts: “Under-promise and over-deliver.”

Having violated the first half of that advice, the best hope now is that the U.S. delivers on the second.

US govt scraps order asking some foreign students to leave country

The Trump administration has agreed to rescind its July 6 rule, which temporarily bared international students from staying in the United States unless they attend at least one in-person course, a federal district court judge said on Tuesday.
The U-turn by the Trump administration comes following a nationwide outrage against its July 6 order and a series of lawsuits seeking a permanent injunctive relief to bar the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) from enforcing the federal guidelines barring international students attending colleges and universities offering only online courses from staying in the country.
As many as 17 US states and the District of Columbia, along with top American IT companies such as Google, Facebook and Microsoft, joined MIT and Harvard in the US District Court in Massachusetts against the DHS and the ICE in seeking an injunction to stop the entire rule from going into effect.
"I have been informed by the parties that they have come to a resolution. They will return to the status quo," Judge Allison Burroughs, the federal district judge in Boston, said in a surprise statement at the top of the hearing on the lawsuit.
ALSO READ: 17 US states, DC file lawsuit against Trump's new visa policy for students
The announcement comes as a big relief to international students, including those from India. In the 2018-2019 academic year, there were over 10 lakh international students in the US. According to a recent report of the Student and Exchange Visitor Program (SEVP), 1,94,556 Indian students were enrolled in various academic institutions in the US in January.
Judge Burroughs said the policy would apply nationwide.
"Both the policy directive and the frequently asked questions would not be enforced anyplace," she said, referring to the agreement between the US government and MIT and Harvard.

"We are going to be signing an immigration act very soon. It is going to be based on merit, it is going to be very strong," Trump told reporters at a Rose Garden press conference at the White House.
"We are going to work on DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals) because we want to make people happy and I will tell you even conservative Republicans want to see something happen with DACA," he said.
Trump said the Democrats had their chance for three years to do something with DACA and they always turned it down.
"They always turned it down. They used it as politics. I am using it to get something done, but we will be signing a very powerful immigration act. It will be great, it will be merit-based. The country has tried to get it for 25 or 30 years," he said in response to a question.
"It will be strong on the border, but you will come in legally and you will be able to come in legally and very importantly, we will be taking care of people from DACA in a very Republican way," the president said.
ALSO READ: After Harvard & MIT, Johns Hopkins sues US govt for new students' visa rule
Congressman Brad Scneider said this is a great win for international students, colleges and common sense.
"The Administration needs to give us a plan to tackle our public health crisis - it can't be recklessly creating rules one day and rescinding them the next," he said in a tweet.
Last week, more than 136 Congressmen and 30 senators wrote to the Trump administration to rescind its order on international students.
"This is a major victory for the students, organisers and institutions of higher education in the #MA7 and all across the country that stood up and fought back against this racist and xenophobic rule," said Congresswoman Ayanna Pressley.
"Taking online classes shouldn't force international students out of our country," Congressman Mikie Sherrill said in a tweet.
In its July 6 notice, the ICE had said all student visa holders, whose university curricula were only offered online, "must depart the country or take other measures, such as transferring to a school with in-person instruction to remain in lawful status".
"If not, they may face immigration consequences, including but not limited to the initiation of removal proceedings," it had said.
In their lawsuit, the 17 states and the District of Columbia said for many international students, remote learning in the countries and communities they come from would impede their studies or be simply impossible.
The lawsuit alleged that the new rule imposes a significant economic harm by precluding thousands of international students from coming to and residing in the US and finding employment in fields such as science, technology, biotechnology, healthcare, business and finance, and education, and contributing to the overall economy.
In a separate filing, companies like Google, Facebook and Microsoft, along with the US Chamber of Commerce and other IT advocacy groups, asserted that the July 6 ICE directive will disrupt their recruiting plans, making it impossible to bring on board international students that businesses, including the amici, had planned to hire, and disturb the recruiting process on which the firms have relied on to identify and train their future employees.
Tech companies, including Google, Microsoft and Facebook said in their brief that "America's future competitiveness depends on attracting and retaining talented international students".
According to the International Institute of Education, there are over one million foreign students in the US and of them about 200,00 are from India.
several US institutions are dependent on tuition from foreign students, many of whom pay full fees.
But another factor of importance to both the universities and the economy is the pre-ponderance of graduate students in engineering and science.
Foreigners make up over 75 per cent of graduate students in electrical, computer, petroleum and industrial engineering fields, according to Inside Higher Ed.
They not only back up the faculty as teaching assistants and researchers, but go on to work for or found tech companies.
The July 6 directive will make it impossible for a large number of international students to participate in the CPT and OPT programmes. The US will "nonsensically be sending...these graduates away to work for our global competitors and compete against us...instead of capitalising on the investment in their education here in the US", they said.

Donald Trump paid someone to take his SATs: Niece in scathing tell-all book

President Donald Trump's niece offers a scathing portrayal of her uncle in a new book, blaming a toxic family for raising a narcissistic, damaged man who poses an immediate danger to the public, according to a copy obtained by The Associated Press.
Mary L. Trump, a psychologist, writes that Trump's reelection would be catastrophic and that lying, playing to the lowest common denominator, cheating, and sowing division are all he knows.
By the time this book is published, hundreds of thousands of American lives will have been sacrificed on the altar of Donald's hubris and willful ignorance. If he is afforded a second term, it would be the end of American Democracy," she writes in Too Much and Never Enough, How My Family Created The World's Most Dangerous Man.
Mary Trump is the daughter of Trump's elder brother, Fred Jr., who died after a struggle with alcoholism in 1981 at 42. The book is the second insider account in two months to paint a deeply unflattering portrait of the president, following the release of former national security adviser John Bolton's bestseller.
In her book, Mary Trump, who is estranged from her uncle, makes several revelations, including alleging that the president paid a friend to take the SATs a standardized test widely used for college admissions in his place.
ALSO READ: US judge allows former NSA John Bolton to publish tell-all book
She writes that his sister Maryanne Trump did his homework for him but couldn't take his tests and he worried his grade point average, which put him far from the top of the class, would scuttle his efforts to get accepted into the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, where he transferred after two years at Fordham University in the Bronx.
To hedge his bets he enlisted Joe Shapiro, a smart kid with a reputation for being a good test taker, to take his SATs for him, she writes, adding, Donald, who never lacked for funds, paid his buddy well.
White House spokesperson Sarah Matthews called the allegation completely false.
Mary Trump also writes, in awe, of Trump's ability to gain the support of prominent Christian leaders and white evangelicals, saying: The only time Donald went to church was when the cameras were there. It's mind boggling. He has no principles. None!

White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany slammed the book Tuesday, saying, It's ridiculous, absurd accusations that have absolutely no bearing in truth.
Mary Trump traces much of her pain to the death of her father when she was 16. The president, who rarely admits mistakes, told The Washington Post last year that he regretted the pressure he and his father had put on Fred Jr. to join the family business when his brother wanted to be a pilot instead.
It was just not his thing. ... I think the mistake that we made was we assumed that everybody would like it. That would be the biggest mistake. ... There was sort of a double pressure put on him, Trump told the paper.
Yet as her father lay dying alone, Mary Trump claims, Donald went to the movies. She says that, as a child, Donald Trump hid favorite toys from his younger brother and took juvenile stunts like Fred Jr. dumping a bowl of mashed potatoes on his then-7-year-old head so seriously that he harbored resentments even when his eldest sister, Maryanne, brought it up in her toast at his White House birthday dinner in 2017.
She paints Trump, who often called her Honeybunch, as a self-centered narcissist who demanded constant adulation even from his family and had little regard for family members' feelings.
Trump's crude rhetoric on the campaign trail, she said, was nothing new, reminding her of every family meal I'd ever attended during which Donald had talked about all of the women he considered ugly fat slobs or the men, usually more accomplished or powerful, he called losers.
ALSO READ: Trump's job approval rating erodes to 38% among key groups: Gallup survey
The book is, at its heart, a lengthy psychoanalysis of the Trump family by a woman trained in the field, who sees the traits of her uncle that critics despise as a natural progression of behaviours developed at the knees of a demanding father. For Donald Trump, she writes, lying was defensive not simply a way to circumvent his father's disapproval or to avoid punishment ... but a way to survive.
Publisher Simon & Schuster announced Monday that it would be publishing the book two weeks early, on July 14, after a New York appellate court cleared the way for the book's publication following a legal challenge.
Robert Trump, the president's younger brother, had sued Mary Trump, arguing in legal papers that she was subject to a 20-year-old agreement between family members that no one would publish accounts involving core family members without their approval.
A judge last week left in place a restraint that blocked Mary Trump and any agent of hers from distributing the book, but the court made clear it was not considering Simon & Schuster to be covered by the ruling.

Trump blocks H1B visa; businesses say decision will hurt US recovery

US President Donald Trump suspended the entry into the United States of certain foreign workers on Monday, a move the White House said would help the coronavirus-battered economy, but which business groups strongly oppose.
Trump issued a presidential proclamation that temporarily blocks foreign workers entering on H-1B visas, which are for skilled employees, and L visas, for managers and specialized workers being transferred within a company. Trump also blocked those entering on H-2B seasonal worker visas, which are used by landscapers and other industries.
The visa suspension, which runs to the end of the year, will open up 525,000 jobs for U.S. workers, a senior administration official said on a call with reporters. The official, who did not explain how the administration arrived at that figure, said the move was geared at "getting Americans back to work as quickly as possible."
But businesses including major tech companies and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce said the visa suspension would stifle the economic recovery after the damage done by the pandemic.
Critics of the measure say Trump is using the pandemic to enact his longstanding goal to limit immigration into the United States. The immediate effects of the proclamation will likely be limited, as U.S. consulates around the world remain closed for most routine visa processing.
President Donald TrumpPresident Donald Trump speaks during a meeting with people that have recovered from COVID-19, in the Cabinet Room of the White House, Tuesday, April 14, 2020, in Washington. Photo: AP/PTI
The proclamation exempts those already in the United States, as well as valid visa holders overseas, but they must have an official travel document that permits entry into the United States. Immigration attorneys were working on Monday to determine what the order might mean for some clients currently overseas.
The measure also exempts food supply chain workers and people whose entry is deemed in the national interest. The suspension will include work-authorized J visas for cultural exchange opportunities, including camp counselors and au pairs, as well as visas for the spouses of H-1B workers.
Republican Trump is running for re-election on Nov. 3 and has made his tough immigration stance a central pitch to voters, although the coronavirus, faltering economy and nationwide protests over police brutality have overshadowed that issue. The president has faced pressure to restrict work visas from groups that seek lower levels of immigration, as well as some Republican lawmakers.
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BSA, The Software Alliance, whose members include Microsoft and Slack , urged the administration in a statement to "refrain from restricting employment of highly-skilled foreign professionals," adding that "these restrictions will negatively impact the U.S. economy" and decrease job opportunities for Americans.
Doug Rand, co-founder of Boundless, a pro-migrant group that helps families navigate the U.S. immigration system, said the fact that H-2A visas used to bring in foreign farmworkers were exempt signals that "big agriculture interests are the only stakeholder with any sway over immigration policy in this administration."
H-2B visas, which were included in the suspension, have been used by Trump owned- or Trump-branded businesses, including his Mar-a-Lago club in Florida.
Many business groups were lobbying against a temporary visa ban before it was announced.
Sarah Pierce, a policy analyst with the Washington-based Migration Policy Institute, estimated that the new ruling would block 219,000 foreign workers through the rest of the year.
India offers visa-on-arrival facility to citizens of United Arab EmiratesMany business groups were lobbying against a temporary visa ban before it was announced.
"This is introducing more chaos into an already chaotic situation for a lot of U.S. companies," she said. "The administration is making the assumption that these companies did not already look at the U.S. labor market, which most of them do before they get involved in a complicated process of trying to bring in foreign workers."
Mitch Wexler, a managing partner at law firm Fragomen, said the order would hurt his social media and wireless communications clients and other tech companies.
Employers "wouldn't pay a lot of money to file these applications and hire lawyers like me if they could hire an American for these positions," he said.
Trump also renewed an April proclamation that blocks some foreigners from permanent residence in the United States, extending that measure until the end of the year. The senior administration official said that proclamation freed up roughly 50,000 jobs for Americans, but did not provide details.
The visa suspension issued on Monday narrows an exemption for medical workers in Trump's April ruling to include only people working on coronavirus research and care.
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services said there were 15,269 petitions for H-1B visas in healthcare-related jobs across the United States in fiscal year 2019.
The Trump administration will make several other moves to tighten rules around temporary work visas.
The administration plans to rework the H-1B visa program so that the 85,000 visas available in the program each year go to the highest-paid applicants, instead of the current lottery system, the senior administration official said.
In addition, it plans to issue rules that make it harder for companies to use the H-1B visa program to train foreign workers to perform the same job in another country, the official said.
Both moves would likely require regulatory changes.
The Trump administration is also taking steps to limit work permits for people seeking asylum in the United States, finalizing a regulation on Monday that removes a requirement to process such permits within 30 days.
A separate asylum measure set to be finalized on Friday would greatly limit asylum seekers' access to work permits.

Trump sought China's help to win 2020 US election, claims Bolton's memoir

In a stunning accusation against his ex-boss, former US National Security Adviser John Bolton has claimed in his new book that President Donald Trump personally asked his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping to help him win the 2020 presidential election, CNN reported.
According to an excerpt from his upcoming memoir published by the Wall Street Journal on Wednesday, during one notable interaction between Trump and Xi at the G-20 Summit in Osaka last June, the US President "stunningly" turned the conversation to the upcoming 2020 election.Bolton went on narrating in the book that Trump had "stressed the importance of farmers and increased Chinese purchases of soybeans and wheat in the electoral outcome," adding that he "would print Trump's exact words, but the government's prepublication review process has decided otherwise."

ALSO READ: Trump signs order on police reforms after meeting victims' families
The former NSA also said the conversation turned back to the trade deal, and Trump "proposed that for the remaining $350 billion of trade imbalances (by Trump's arithmetic), the US would not impose tariffs, but he again returned to importuning Xi to buy as many American farm products as China could."
The book, 'The Room Where it Happened: A White House Memoir', is due to be published on June 23, but the Trump administration has sued to block its distribution, claiming that it contains classified information and would compromise national security.
Publication of the book "would cause irreparable harm, because the disclosure of instances of classified information in the manuscript reasonably could be expected to cause serious damage, or exceptionally grave damage, to the national security of the United States," according to the lawsuit.
The claims come as the Trump campaign has tried to make China a central issue of the 2020 election, framing the President as tougher on Beijing than Biden.
According to the excerpt published in the Journal, in the same meeting with Xi, the Chinese leader defended the building of camps holding up to a million Uighur Muslims. "According to our interpreter," Bolton wrote, "Trump said that Xi should go ahead with building the camps, which Trump thought was exactly the right thing to do," the media reported.
Bolton resigned in September 2019 after roughly 17 months as national security adviser. Trump, however, claims he fired him after the two clashed over policy towards North Korea, Iran, Ukraine and the Taliban in Afghanistan.

US says it will probe India, other countries for digital services taxes

The Trump Administration has decided to investigate digital services taxes considered by several trading partners, including India, to "unfairly target American tech companies", an US official has announced.
"President Trump is concerned that many of our trading partners are adopting tax schemes designed to unfairly target our companies," US Trade Representatives (USTR) Robert Lighthizer said on Tuesday, according to news agency PTI.
Other countries against whom the investigations might be initiated include Austria, Brazil, the Czech Republic, the European Union, Indonesia, Italy, Spain, Turkey and the United Kingdom.
ALSO READ: Google faces $5 bn lawsuit in US for illegally tracking internet usage
We are prepared to take all appropriate action to defend our businesses and workers against any such discrimination, he said.
"Over the past two years, various countries have taken under consideration or adopted taxes on revenues that certain companies generate from providing certain digital services to, or aimed at, users in those jurisdictions," the USTR said.
"They are referred to as Digital Services Taxes or DSTs. Available evidence suggests the DSTs are expected to target large US-based tech companies," he said.
USTR said that India adopted a two per cent DST in March 2020.

ALSO READ: India needs to knock down import tariffs imposed in last 3 yrs: Panagariya
The tax applies only to non-resident companies, and covers online sales of goods and services to, or aimed at, persons in India.
The tax applies only to companies with annual revenues in excess of approximately Rs 20 million (approximately $267,000). The tax went into effect on April 1.
Section 301 of the 1974 Trade Act, under which the US announced to initiate the investigation, gives the USTR a broad authority to probe and respond to a foreign country's action which may be unfair or discriminatory and negatively affect the US Commerce.
A Federal Register notice was also issued in this regard.
US Chamber of Commerce Executive Vice President and the head of International Affairs Myron Brilliant in a statement called for a multilateral negotiation on this issue.
Digital commerce has emerged as a powerful engine of economic growth and job creation. However, a number of countries are now weighing new digital taxes that are unilateral, discriminatory, and burdensome to the economy at a time when we need growth more than ever, he said.
Rather than unilateral DSTs, the world needs a multilateral solution to these challenges, which is why the Chamber supports efforts to address these challenges through multilateral negotiations under the aegis of the OECD. We urge all parties to double down on those negotiations and avoid unilateral, discriminatory taxes, Brilliant said.

Make in India push has made trade talks more difficult: US officials

Trumpadministration officials on Friday acknowledged that U.S. President Donald Trump's visit to India next week will not result in even a limited trade deal, saying they still have major concerns over India's trade barriers.
Hopes that the world's two largest democracies could negotiate a "confidence building" deal in time for Trump's arrival Monday on a two-day visit have faded in recent days as differences over agriculture, medical devices, digital trade and proposed new tariffs fester, according to business groups.

U.S. concerns that led last year to the suspension of India's tariff free access for some $5.6 billion in exports under the 1970s-era Generalized System of Preferences still remain, a senior Trump administration official told reporters on a conference call.
"We do want to make sure that we get this balance right. We want to address a lot of concerns and we're not quite there yet," the official said, adding that Trump will likely discuss these concerns with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
Trade talks will continue, but new Indian tariff proposals aimed at strengthening the country's "Make in India" domestic manufacturing push have made them more difficult, the official said.
Apart from growing protectionism, the Trump visit comes against the backdrop of India's multibillion-dollar purchase of a Russian missile shield system, which added friction to its ties with Washington.
India in its Feb. 1 budget proposal announced new import tariffs on medical devices, walnuts, toys, electronics and other products in a move aimed at reducing imports from China but affecting many U.S. firms.
The new tariffs surprised U.S. negotiators, especially as they were working with Indian counterparts to reduce the impact of India's price controls on U.S. medical devices such as cardiac stents and knee implants.
"We will be discussing those concerns and what we see an increase in barriers not a decrease. This will certainly come up among the leaders," the U.S. official said.
The official did not completely rule out any trade related announcements during the trip, but said this was "really wholly dependent on what the Indians are prepared to do."
U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer, who has been leading the trade discussions, will not be among the U.S. delegation accompanying Trump, the official said. Earlier this month, Lighthizer cancelled a trip to India to work out a package, even as India made some new proposals to improve U.S. dairy and poultry access.
U.S. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross is joining the trip, which will include announcements of commercial transactions in the energy and defence sectors, the officials said.
The United States is India's second-largest trade partner after China, and bilateral goods and services trade climbed to a record $142.6 billion in 2018. The United States had a $23.2 billion goods trade deficit in 2019 with India, its 9th largest trading partner in goods.

Putting America first, will make tremendous trade deal with India: Trump

Days ahead of his India visit, US President Donald Trumpon Thursday said the two countries could make a "tremendous" trade deal.
"We're going to India, and we may make a tremendous deal there," Trump said in his commencement address at the Hope for Prisoners Graduation Ceremony in Las Vegas.

Trump, accompanied by First Lady Melania Trump, is scheduled to travel to Ahmedabad, Agra and New Delhi on February 24 and 25.
Ahead of the visit, there have been talks about India and the United States agreeing on a trade package as a precursor to a major trade deal.
During his commencement address, Trump indicated that the talks on this might slowdown if he did not get a good deal.
"Maybe we'll slow down. We'll do it after the election. I think that could happen too. So, we'll see what happens," he said.
"But we're only making deals if they're good deals because we're putting America first. Whether people like it or not, we're putting America first," Trump said.
Bilateral India-US trade in goods and services is about three per cent of the US' world trade.
In a recent report, the Congressional Research Service (CRS) said the trading relationship is more consequential for India -- in 2018 the United States was its second largest goods export market (16.0 per cent share) after the European Union (EU, 17.8 per cent), and third largest goods import supplier (6.3 per cent) after China (14.6 per cent) and the EU 28 (10.2 per cent).
"The Trump Administration takes issue with the US trade deficit with India, and has criticised India for a range of 'unfair' trading practices," the CRS said.
"Indian Prime Minister Modi's first term fell short of many observers' expectations, as India did not move forward with anticipated market opening reforms, and instead increased tariffs and trade restrictions," it said.
"Modi's strong electoral mandate may embolden the Indian government to press ahead with its reform agenda with greater vigour. Slowing economic growth in India raises concerns about its business environment," CRS said.
As per a fact sheet issued by the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), trade in goods and services between the two countries from 1999 to 2018 surged from $16 billion to USD 142 billion.
India is now the United States' eighth-largest trading partner in goods and services and is among the world's largest economies.
India's trade with the United States now resembles, in terms of volume, the US' trade with South Korea ($167 billion in 2018) or France ($129 billion), said Alyssa Ayres from CFR.
"The United States for two years now has set out in stone pretty clearly the things that they wanted to see to try to get an agreement, and it's basically then on India's doorstep on whether they want to take those steps," Rick Rossow, Wadhwani Chair in US-India Policy Studies at the Center for Strategic and International Studies think-tank told reporters during a conference call.
"The list of US asks has been pretty static all throughout. Not to say that any of these things are easy for India to do, but the United States to my knowledge didn't change the goalposts just because we now consider India to be a middle-income country. The things that we wanted to see happen to get this trade agreement have been pretty static all throughout, no matter how difficult they are," he said in response to a question.

Saving 'big trade deal with India' for later, says Trump ahead of visit

US President Donald Trumphas said he is "saving the big deal" with India for later and he "does not know" if it will be done before the presidential election in November, clearly indicating that a major bilateral trade deal during his visit to Delhi next week might not be on the cards.
"We can have a trade deal with India. But I'm really saving the big deal for later," he told reporters at Joint Base Andrews Tuesday afternoon (local time).
Trump is scheduled to visit India on February 24 and 25.
The US and India could sign a "trade package" during the visit, according to media reports.
Asked whether he expects a trade deal with India before the visit, Trump said, "We're doing a very big trade deal with India. We'll have it. I don't know if it'll be done before the election, but we'll have a very big deal with India."
US Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer, the point-person for trade negotiations with India, is likely to not accompany Trump to India, sources said. However, officials have not ruled it out altogether.
In an apparent dissatisfaction over US-India trade ties, Trump said, "We're not treated very well by India." But he praised Prime Minister Narendra Modi and said he is looking forward to his visit to India.
"I happen to like Prime Minister Modi a lot," Trump said.
"He told me we'll have seven million people between the airport and the event. And the stadium, I understand, is sort of semi under construction, but it's going to be the largest stadium in the world. So it's going to be very exciting... I hope you all enjoy it," he told reporters.
Meanwhile, the US-India Strategic and Partnership Forum (USISPF) in a report said the latest quarterly data depict continuation of overall positive bilateral trade trends. The third quarter data reflects some downslide in growth rates.
"It may be due to several reasons, including the unexpected economic slowdown in India's economic growth, impact of US-China trade war, GSP withdrawal from the US side and retaliatory tariffs on specific US goods from the Indian side," USISPF said.



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#WATCH US President Donald Trump in Washington on his visit to India: I happen to like PM Modi a lot. He told me we will have 7 million people between the airport and the event. It's going to be the largest stadium in the world. It's going to be very exciting.
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According to the report, the data available for the first three quarters of 2019 (January-September) pulled the overall growth rate in cumulative bilateral trade down to 4.5 percent from 8.4 percent registered for the first two quarters.
Goods and services trade performance in third quarter was dismal at -2.3 percent, in contrast with the impressive 9.6 percent growth witnessed for the first two quarters of the year; while trade in services was up two percent goods trade dropped five percent, the report said.
The cumulative US-India trade in goods and services (USD 110.9 billion) for the first three quarters of 2019 increased 4.5 percent with US exports and imports growing at four percent and five percent respectively.
The US exported USD 45.3 billion worth of goods and services to India in the first three quarters 2019, up 4 percent from the corresponding period in the previous year; and the US imported USD 65.6 billion worth of goods and services from India, up five percent from the previous year's USD 62.5 billion level for the same period, it said.
The USISPF has projected that the total bilateral trade can touch USD 238 billion by 2025 if the current 7.5 percent average annual rate of growth sustains; however, higher growth rates can result in bilateral trade in the range of USD 283 billion and USD 327 billion.
The US remains the top trading partner for India in terms of trade in goods and services, followed by China. While the bilateral trade between US and India is approximately 62 percent in goods and 38 percent in services, the bilateral trade between India and China is dominated by goods.
India's trade with China grew 13 percent in 2018, while India's goods trade with the US increased 18 percent.
China had a huge trade surplus of USD 58 billion with India, indicating Beijing's strength in the Indian market, especially in sectors, such as electronics, machinery, organic chemicals, plastics and medical devices.
The US goods exports to India, in comparison, were mainly concentrated in mineral fuels, precious stones, and aircraft. The US faces tough competition with China in the Indian market in areas such as electronics, machinery, organic chemicals and medical devices.

'No more birth tourism': US to impose visa restrictions for pregnant women

The Trumpadministration is coming out Thursday with new visa restrictions aimed at restricting "birth tourism," in which women travel to the US to give birth so their children can have a coveted US passport.
Visa applicants deemed by consular officers to be coming to the US primarily to give birth will now be treated like other foreigners coming to the US for medical treatment, according to State Department guidance sent Wednesday and viewed by The Associated Press.

The applicants will have to prove they are coming for medical treatment and they have the money to pay for it.
The State Department planned to publicise the rules Thursday, according to two officials with knowledge of the plans who spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity. The rules will take effect Friday.
The practice of coming to the US to give birth is fundamentally legal, although there are scattered cases of authorities arresting operators of birth tourism agencies for visa fraud or tax evasion.
And women are often honest about their intentions when applying for visas and even show signed contracts with doctors and hospitals.
The Trump administration has been restricting all forms of immigration, but the president has been particularly plagued by the issue of birthright citizenship — anyone born in the US is considered a citizen, under the Constitution.
He has railed against the practice and threatened to end it, but scholars and members of his administration have said it's not so easy to do.
Regulating tourist visas for pregnant women is one way to get at the issue, but it raises questions about how officers would determine whether a woman is pregnant to begin with, and whether a woman could get turned away by border officers who suspect she may be just by looking at her.
Consular officers don't have the right to ask during visa interviews whether a woman is pregnant or intends to become so. But they would have to determine whether a visa applicant would be coming to the US primarily to give birth.
Birth tourism is a lucrative business in both the U.S. and abroad. American companies take out advertisements and charge up to USD 80,000 to facilitate the practice, offering hotel rooms and medical care. Many of the women travel from Russia and China to give birth in the US.
The US has been c racking down on the practice since before Trump took office.
There are no figures on how many foreign women travel to the US specifically to give birth.
The Center for Immigration Studies, a group that advocates for stricter immigration laws, estimated that in 2012, about 36,000 foreign-born women gave birth in the US, then left the country.
The draft rule is "intended to address the national security and law enforcement risks associated with birth tourism, including criminal activity associated with the birth tourism industry," a State Department spokesperson said.

North Korea promises 'Christmas gift', Trump hopes it's not a missile test

US President Donald Trumpon Tuesday said he hoped that North Korea would not deliver a missile test as its threatened "Christmas gift" that could reignite global tensions over its nuclear programme.
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has promised the unidentified "gift" -- which could be a missile test -- if the US does not make concessions in nuclear talks by the end of the year.

"We'll find out what the surprise is and we'll deal with it very successfully," Trump told reporters at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida.
"Everybody's got surprises for me, but let's see what happens. I handle them as they come along." "Maybe it's a nice present, maybe it's a present where he sends me a beautiful vase as opposed to a missile test," the president joked.
Talks on denuclearization as been largely deadlocked since a second summit between Trump and Kim in Hanoi collapsed at the start of this year. Pyongyang has issued a series of increasingly assertive comments as its time limit approaches.
It has carried out a series of static tests at its Sohae rocket facility this month, after a number of weapons launches in recent weeks.

Donald Trump impeached by US House of Representatives for abuse of power

The US House of Representatives impeached President Donald Trump on charges of abuse of power and obstructing Congress, the culmination of an effort by Democrats that further inflamed partisan tensions in Washington and deepened the nation’s ideological divide.
The historic votes on Wednesday evening, which won the support of almost all Democrats in the House chamber but not a single Republican, leave Trump as only the third president in US history to be impeached -- and the only impeached president likely to win his party’s nomination for re-election.

The Senate will hold a trial early next year to decide whether the president should be convicted on the charges and removed from office, though the Republicans who have the majority in that chamber will almost certainly acquit him.
House Democrats took depositions from more than a dozen witnesses, held weeks of hearings, and wrote hundreds of pages documenting Trump’s efforts to pressure the president of Ukraine to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden and his son.
Yet public support for Trump’s impeachment and removal rarely went much above 50% in polling, and there is little evidence that the proceedings left him in a worse position politically on the eve of the 2020 election.
After more than six hours of debate, the House voted 230 to 197 to adopt the first of two impeachment articles, one alleging he misused the power of his office to pressure Ukraine to investigate the Bidens. The House voted 229 to 198 on a second article accusing him of obstructing Congress.
The final vote left all sides dissatisfied. Republicans fumed at what they called a rushed process, accusing Democrats of ignoring their demands for witnesses and trying to tarnish Trump heading into his campaign.
Democrats received a momentary boost in September when the details of Trump’s controversial call with Ukraine’s president first emerged. But they failed to inflict lasting damage to the president, even as the evidence mounted that Trump had indeed done exactly what Democrats charged: Tried to strong-arm an ally to investigate a prominent political rival by holding back military aid and an Oval Office visit.
Minutes before the House began voting, Trump took the stage for a campaign rally in Battle Creek, Michigan, a state that was crucial to his victory in 2016 and his chances for re-election next year, to provide a real-time rebuttal to the impeachment debate.
“After three years of sinister witch hunts, hoaxes, scams, tonight, House Democrats are trying to nullify the ballots of tens of millions of patriotic Americans,” Trump told the crowd.
Shift to Senate
The drama will now shift to the Senate for a trial next month that will be presided over by Chief Justice John Roberts. With a two-thirds vote required to convict the president, Trump’s acquittal in the Republican-controlled chamber is all but assured. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has already declared that he is “not an impartial juror” and is setting a course to bring the proceedings to a swift conclusion.
The historic debate and vote took place in the same chamber where presidents Andrew Johnson and Bill Clinton were impeached. The arguments on the House floor mostly replayed those made in Judiciary and Intelligence committee impeachment hearings since last month, and on Tuesday as lawmakers set the ground rules for Wednesday’s floor action.
‘Duty’
Opening the debate, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi called Trump an “ongoing threat to our national security,” and declared that, “If we do not act now, we would be derelict in our duty.”
Republican Representative Doug Collins of Georgia, a leading defender of the president during Judiciary Committee hearings, said in rebuttal that the president did nothing wrong.
“The people of America see through this,” Collins said. “The people of America understand due process and they understand when it is being trampled in the people’s house.”
The House vote culminates a nearly three-month investigation into Trump’s Ukraine dealings by Democrats led by Pelosi, Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler and Intelligence Chairman Adam Schiff.
The inquiry was set off in September by a still-unnamed whistle-blower’s complaint and the White House’s release of a July 25 transcript of phone call between the US President and Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelenskiy.
Impeachment Momentum
Trump and his Republican backers accuse Democrats of hurtling toward impeachment of the 45th president since the day he won election. In fact, at least a few the most liberal Democrats had been calling for his impeachment since the first reports by US intelligence agencies that Russia interfered with the 2016 election to Trump’s benefit.
But Pelosi had staved off those demands, until the Ukraine revelations dramatically shifted the sentiment among Democrats, drawing support from more centrist members of the party who were wary of paying a political price with angry Trump voters in their districts.
Even if Trump evades conviction and removal, the House vote will leave a stain on Trump’s time in the White House and his place in history.
Political Impact
With polling heading into the vote showing the country as sharply divided along party lines on impeachment as were the House members in their votes, Trump and his allies are vowing to make it an issue in coming elections. On Tuesday, the president sent an angry and rambling six-page letter to Pelosi saying the impeachment vote would backfire on Democrats.
“Any member of Congress who votes in support of impeachment -- against every shred of truth, fact, evidence and legal principle -- is showing how deeply they revile the voters and how truly they detest America’s constitutional order,” he wrote.
Although anger surrounding impeachment has animated voters in both parties, it’s not yet clear that it will be the central issue when they cast ballots next November in an election to decide control of the White House and Congress. The cost an availability of health care and the state of the economy remain the top issues mentioned by voters in most polls. There also may be events over the next 10 months that reshape the campaigns.
“Things move so fast we can’t just assume that things that seem very important now are going to matter later,” Kyle Kondik, managing editor of Sabato’s Chrystal Ball website at the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics, said last week.

What's the RCEP and what does India's exit mean for the trade deal?

When it comes to sweeping global free-trade agreements, President Donald Trump isn’t the only party-pooper. Two years after Trump withdrew the U.S. from a 12-nation deal known as the TPP, Prime Minister Narendra Modi has pulled India out of a 16-nation grouping led by China known as the RCEP. In both cases, protectionism played a part; in both cases, the show goes on.
1. What is the RCEP?

What began in 2012 as a routine harmonizing of agreements between members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, or Asean, turned into a deal creating potentially the world’s biggest free trade bloc. The Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership, to give its full name, is aimed at strengthening trading ties among China and others with Asean members. Broadly speaking, it would lower tariffs and other barriers to the trade of goods among the 16 countries that were in, or had existing trade deals with, Asean.
2. But that’s now down to 15 nations?
Correct. India pulled out in November saying it wanted to protect service workers and farmers. There were also worries the country would be flooded by cheap goods from China. Modi had pushed the other nations to address concerns over deficits and to open their markets to Indian services and investments.
3. Is India’s loss a big deal?
It would have been the third-biggest economy in the RCEP, so yes. On the other hand, China has been seeking to tie up the deal expeditiously as the country faces slowing growth from a trade war with the U.S. It is also looking to further integrate with regional economies just as the Trump administration urges Asian nations to shun Chinese infrastructure loans and 5G technology. China says India is welcome to come back aboard whenever it’s ready.
4. What’s different about the RCEP?
Unlike the TPP and other U.S.-led trade deals, the RCEP wouldn’t require its members to take steps to liberalize their economies, protect labor rights and environmental standards and protect intellectual property. According to U.S. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, it’s a “very low-grade treaty” that lacks the scope of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, or TPP.
ALSO READ: India opts out of RCEP: Industry and farmer groups hail govt's move
5. What happened to the TPP?
It became the the CPTPP, or Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership. Signed in March 2018, it’s already in force for seven of the 11 signatories. They decided to press on after Trump signed an executive order in 2017, shortly after coming to office, withdrawing the U.S., saying he wanted to get fairer deals.
6. How close is the RCEP to being finalized?
More than a dozen rounds of talks have been held since 2012. The 15 remaining countries have signaled they now plan to sign the deal in 2020.
ALSO READ: India opts out of RCEP: Axe on Chinese imports, trade deal with US likely
7. Which countries are on which side?
Seven nations -- Australia, Brunei, Japan, Malaysia, New Zealand, Singapore and Vietnam -- participated in negotiations for both deals. The U.S., Canada, Chile, Mexico and Peru are TPP-only negotiators, while RCEP-only countries, other than China, are Cambodia, India, Indonesia, Laos, Myanmar, Philippines, South Korea and Thailand. The U.S. hasn’t been deliberately excluded from the RCEP. To join, it would first need to reach a free-trade arrangement with Asean, then apply to join.

ISIS leader targeted by US, says official as Trump plans 'major statement'

The US military conducted an operation against elusive Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi on Saturday, a US official said, as US President Donald Trump prepared to make a "major statement" at the White House on Sunday morning.
The official, speaking on condition of anonymity, was unable to say whether the operation against Baghdadi was successful.

Newsweek said the operation took place in Syria's northwestern Idlib province and was carried out by special operations forces after receiving actionable intelligence.
The official did not disclose details of the operation and other US officials contacted by Reuters declined to comment.
The Pentagon did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
White House spokesman Hogan Gidley announced late on Saturday that Trump would make a "major statement" at 9 a.m. EST (13:00 GMT) on Sunday.
Gidley gave no further details.
The president gave an indication that something was afoot earlier on Saturday night when he tweeted without explanation, "Something very big has just happened!"
Trump has been frustrated by the US news media's heavy focus on the Democratic-led impeachment inquiry, which he calls an illegitimate witch hunt.
He has also faced withering criticism from both Republicans and Democrats alike for his US troop withdrawal from northeastern Syria, which permitted Turkey to attack America's Kurdish allies.
Trump was expected to make the statement in the White House Diplomatic Reception Room, which he has used to make a number of major announcements.
Just last week he used the same room to announce that a ceasefire between Turkey and the Kurds had taken hold.

'Don't be a fool': Trump in a letter to Erdogan against Syria offensive

US President Donald Trump has written a letter to his Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan threatening him against Syria offensive and asking him 'not to be a fool'.
In the letter, dated October 9, the President had also urged Erdogan 'not to be a tough guy.'

"History will look upon you favourably if you get this done the right and humane way. It will look upon you forever as the devil if good things don't happen. Don't be a tough guy. Don't be a fool. I will call you later", the US President had said in his letter.
Threatening to destroy the Turkish economy, the US President added, "Let's work out a good deal! You don't want to be responsible for slaughtering thousands of people, and I don't want to be responsible for destroying the Turkish economy -and I will. I have already given you a little sample with respect to Pastor Brunson."
Switching from his aggressive tone, Trump also offered him prospects of a favourable deal.
"I have worked hard to solve some of your problems. Don't let the world down. You can make a great deal. General Mazloum is willing to negotiate with you, and he is willing to make concessions that they would never have made in the past.
I am confidentially enclosing a copy of his letter to me, just received," the letter further reads.
Earlier on Tuesday, the White House announced that US Vice President Mike Pence will meet with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Ankara on October 17.
The Turkish offensive in the region has invited the ire of the international community with several expressing apprehensions that the move may lead to the resurgence of ISIS.
Full text below
His Excellency Recep Tayyip Erdogan President of the Republic of Turkey Ankara Dear Mr. President:
Let's work out a good deal! You don't want to be responsible for slaughtering thousands of people, and I don't want to be responsible for destroying the Turkish economy — and I will. I've already given you a little sample with respect to Pastor Brunson.
I have worked hard to solve some of your problems. Don't let the world down. You can make a great deal. General Mazloum is willing to negotiate with you, and he is willing to make concessions that they would never have made in the past. I am confidentially enclosing a copy of his letter to me, just received.
History will look upon you favorably if you get this done the right and humane way. It will look upon you forever as the devil if good things don't happen. Don't be a tough guy. Don't be a fool!
I will call you later.
Sincerely,
Donald Trump