While You Were Sleeping: 5 stories you might have missed, July 9, 2025
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United States President Donald Trump answering reporters' questions during a July 8 Cabinet meeting at the White House.
PHOTO: EPA
Steep copper tariffs as Trump broadens trade war
US President Donald Trump broadened his global trade war on July 8 as he announced a 50 per cent tariff on imported copper and said long-threatened levies on semiconductors and pharmaceuticals were coming soon.
One day after he pressured 14 trading partners, including powerhouse US suppliers like South Korea and Japan, with sharply higher tariffs, Mr Trump reiterated his threat of 10 per cent tariffs on products from Brazil, India and other members of the Brics group of countries.
He also said trade talks have been going well with the European Union and China, though added he is only days away from sending a tariff letter to the EU.
Mr Trump’s remarks, made during a White House Cabinet meeting, could inject further instability into a global economy that has been rattled by the tariffs he has imposed or threatened on imports to the world’s largest consumer market.
Trump criticises Putin after approving Ukraine weapons
PHOTO: EPA
President Donald Trump said on July 8 he had approved sending US defensive weapons to Ukraine and was considering additional sanctions on Moscow, underscoring his frustration with Russian President Vladimir Putin over the growing death toll in Russia’s war with Ukraine.
Mr Trump, who pledged as a presidential candidate to end the war within a day, has not been able to follow through on that promise and efforts by his administration to broker peace have come up short.
“I’m not happy with Putin. I can tell you that much right now,” Mr Trump said at a Cabinet meeting, noting that Russian and Ukrainian soldiers were dying in the thousands. “We get a lot of bulls**t thrown at us by Putin... He’s very nice all the time, but it turns out to be meaningless.”
US banning Chinese investors from purchasing farmland
The Trump administration announced July 8 that the United States would start restricting purchases of farmland by Chinese nationals and other “foreign adversaries,” citing security concerns.
Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins said the move was needed to address what she called a “massive threat” to national security.
Foreign purchases of US farmland were being used as “weapons to be turned against us,” Ms Rollins said, unveiling the National Farm Security Action Plan along with other Cabinet officials.
Former British PM Rishi Sunak joins Goldman Sachs
PHOTO: REUTERS
Former UK Conservative Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has joined investment bank Goldman Sachs as a senior adviser, the company said in a statement on July 8.
Mr Sunak, who was prime minister between October 2022 and July 2024, has returned to the bank where he began his career.
“I am excited to welcome Rishi back to Goldman Sachs in his new capacity as a senior adviser,” said Goldman Sachs chairman and chief executive David Solomon. He will advise clients “on the macroeconomic and geopolitical landscape”.
Man dies after being sucked into plane engine
PHOTO: REUTERS
A man died after being sucked into the engine of a plane preparing to take off at Bergamo Airport in northern Italy on July 8, an airport spokesperson told AFP.
The victim, who was “neither a passenger nor an airport employee”, forced his way onto the runway, where he was “pursued” in vain by airport security, according to the spokesperson for airport management company SACBO.
According to Italy’s Corriere della Sera daily, the man was a 35-year-old Italian. It said he burst into the airport, then used an emergency exit to rush onto the runway toward an aircraft preparing for take-off.
