Trump says US gets rare earth minerals from China in trade deal, tariffs on Chinese goods go to 55%
Washington, Jun 11 (AP): President Donald Trump announced Wednesday that the United States will get magnets and rare earth minerals from China under a new trade deal and that tariffs on Chinese goods will go to 55%.
In return, Trump said the US will provide China “what was agreed to,” including allowing Chinese students to attend American colleges and universities.
Several global brands are among dozens of companies at risk of using forced labour through their Chinese supply chains because they use critical minerals or buy minerals-based products sourced from the far-western Xinjiang region of China, an international rights group said Wednesday.
The report by the Netherlands-based Global Rights Compliance says companies including Avon, Walmart, Nescafe, Coca-Cola and paint supplier Sherwin-Williams may be linked to titanium sourced from Xinjiang, where rights groups allege the Chinese government runs coercive labour practices targeting predominantly Muslim Uyghurs and other Turkic minorities.
The report found 77 Chinese suppliers in the titanium, lithium, beryllium and magnesium industries operating in Xinjiang. It said the suppliers are at risk of participating in the Chinese government's “labour transfer programmes," in which Uyghurs are forced to work in factories as part of a long-standing campaign of assimilation and mass detention.
Commercial paints, thermos cups and components for the aerospace, auto and defence industries are among products sold internationally that can trace their supply chains to minerals from Xinjiang, the report said. It said that companies must review their supply chains.
“Mineral mining and processing in (Xinjiang) rely in part on the state's forced labour programmes for Uyghurs and other Turkic people in the region,” the report said.
The report came as China and the United States, the world's two largest economies, said that they have agreed on a framework to get their trade negotiations back on track after a series of disputes that threatened to derail them.
The two sides on Tuesday wrapped up two days of talks in London that appeared to focus on finding a way to resolve disputes over mineral and technology exports that had shaken a fragile truce on trade reached in Geneva last month.
Asked about the report, the Chinese Foreign Ministry said that “no one has ever been forcibly transferred in China's Xinjiang under work programmes”.
“The so-called allegation of forced labour in China's Xinjiang region is nothing but a lie concocted by certain anti-China forces. We urge the relevant organisation to stop interfering in China's internal affairs and undermining Xinjiang's prosperity and stability under the guise of human rights,” ministry spokesperson Lin Jian said Wednesday.
The named companies didn't immediately comment on the report.
A UN report from 2022 found China may have committed crimes against humanity in Xinjiang, where more than 1 million Uyghurs are estimated to have been arbitrarily detained as part of measures that the Chinese government said were intended to target terrorism and separatism.
The Chinese government has rejected the UN claims and defended its actions in Xinjiang as fighting terror and ensuring stability.
In 2021, then US President Joe Biden signed a law to block imports from the Xinjiang region unless businesses can prove the items were made without forced labour. The law initially targeted solar products, tomatoes, cotton and apparel, but the US government recently added new sectors for enforcement, including aluminum and seafood.
Many of China's major minerals corporations have invested in the exploration and mining of lithium, a key component for electric vehicle batteries, in Xinjiang, Global Rights Compliance said.
Xinjiang is also China's top source of beryllium, a mineral used for aerospace, defence and telecommunications, its report said.
A recent report by the International Energy Agency said the world's sources of critical minerals are increasingly concentrated in a few countries, notably China, which is also a leading refining and processing base for lithium, cobalt, graphite and other minerals.
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Ex-bureaucrat Raj Kumar Goyal sworn in as CIC; eight new information commissioners take oath
New Delhi (PTI): After a gap of nine years, transparency watchdog Central Information Commission attained its full strength with the appointment of former IAS officer Raj Kumar Goyal and eight other information commissioners, who took the oath of office on Monday.
A three-member panel headed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi last week recommended their names for the appointment.
President Droupadi Murmu administered the oath of office to Goyal as the chief information commissioner (CIC) at a ceremony held at the Rashtrapati Bhavan, her office said in a communique.
The event was attended by Vice President C P Radhakrishnan and Union Minister of State for Personnel Jitendra Singh, among others.
Goyal is a 1990-batch (retired) IAS officer of the Arunachal Pradesh-Goa-Mizoram-Union Territories (AGMUT) cadre. He superannuated as secretary, Department of Justice under the Ministry of Law and Justice, on August 31.
He has also served as secretary (border management) in the Home Ministry and held key posts both at the Centre and in the erstwhile state of Jammu and Kashmir.
The post of CIC fell vacant after Heeralal Samariya completed his term on September 13.
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The Commission is headed by a CIC and can have a maximum of 10 information commissioners. With the new appointments, the Commission attained its full strength after a gap of over nine years, according to transparency activists.
In the presence of two incumbent Information Commissioners, Anandi Ramalingam and Vinod Kumar Tiwari, Goyal administered the oath of office to eight new appointees at the swearing-in ceremony.
They included former Railway Board chief Jaya Verma Sinha, former IPS officer Swagat Das -- who held key posts in the Intelligence Bureau, Home Ministry and Cabinet Secretariat, among others -- Central Secretariat Service (CSS) officer Sanjeev Kumar Jindal, former IAS officer Surendra Singh Meena and ex-Indian Forest Service officer Khushwant Singh Sethi.
Senior journalists P R Ramesh and Ashutosh Chaturvedi, and former Indian Legal Service officer Sudha Rani Relangi, have also been sworn in as information commissioners.
Relangi has also worked as the director of prosecution, Central Bureau of Investigation and joint secretary and legislative counsel in the Ministry of Law and Justice.
The names of the CIC and eight information commissioners were cleared during the meeting of the Modi-led committee comprising Union Home Minister Amit Shah and Leader of Opposition in Lok Sabha Rahul Gandhi.
