The EU retaliates as Donald Trump's 25% tariffs on all steel and aluminium imports come into effect. Also: deforestation in the Amazon ahead of COP summit, and the wait for astronauts stranded in space is almost over.
Chapter 1: What are the EU's retaliatory measures against Trump's tariffs?
This is the Global News Podcast from the BBC World Service. I'm Andrew Peach and at 14 hours GMT on Wednesday the 12th of March, these are our main stories. The EU retaliates against the Trump administration's tariffs on steel and aluminium imports. We'll look at the impact on US businesses.
Pakistan's military says it's freed nearly 200 train passengers taken hostage by separatists, but the standoff continues. Also in this podcast, the US is to put proposals for a ceasefire in Ukraine to Russia after President Zelensky agreed to an interim break in the fighting.
And... They are excited to be able to contribute more to the mission. They have enough supplies to be there. And I believe that anyone who wants to be an astronaut is always thrilled at the possibility to stay longer.
For two astronauts, being stranded for months on the International Space Station is almost over as NASA prepares to launch a mission to bring them back. Tariffs have come into effect today on steel and aluminium imported into the US. President Donald Trump is hoping the 25% levies will boost US production, but critics say they will increase prices and slow economic growth.
Lots of reaction from around the world. Australia's Prime Minister Anthony Albanese criticised the move but didn't respond with countermeasures. Britain's Prime Minister says London is working on a trade deal with Washington. But the EU has promised its own retaliatory tariffs. Here's the European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen.
The countermeasures we take today are strong but proportionate. As the United States are applying tariffs worth 28 billion dollars, we are responding with countermeasures worth 26 billion euros. This matches the economic scope of the tariffs of the United States.
Mr Trump says the trade imbalance across the Atlantic is proof that the US is being ripped off. But that's nonsense, according to Pascal Lamy, the EU's former trade commissioner and ex-director general of the World Trade Organization.
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Chapter 2: How are businesses reacting to the new US tariffs?
Trump's numbers are dead wrong. What he brandishes as a trade deficit between the US and EU, which is his number, which is $300 billion... is wrong. The real trade deficit between the EU and US is 50 billion. That's six times less because Mr. Trump probably does not see services as a trade.
Most economists agree the tariffs are a bad idea, but Mr Trump says tariff is the most beautiful word in the English language. So what exactly is his plan? Our business editor Simon Jack told me more.
Chapter 3: What is the impact of tariffs on local manufacturing in the US?
His stated goal is basically to reduce the trade deficit. He's saying that Americans are fed up of buying more from the rest of the world than the rest of the world buys from the U.S., And in, for example, in the EU, that example you just hit there, he says they don't take our cars, whereas the EU export in Volkswagen, Mercedes and BMWs there.
So that's the overall picture to try and reduce that imbalance. However… The U.S. is not an isolated economy. And, you know, we have comparative trade. Some people are better at producing some things and some people are better than others. And so most economists fear that this has two effects. It can push up prices for U.S. consumers and it can reduce growth or a bit of both.
And if you talk to business leaders in the U.S., what they tell me is that it's getting very hard to plan what we're going to do because I don't know what my supply chain is going to cost. Even Donald Trump has conceded that there will be what he called disturbances.
And you've seen some of that in business sentiment and also in the financial markets, which have seen a 10% pullback, which is a very significant move in US markets since the height we saw earlier this year. So markets are kind of freaked out. I think what they're also nervous about is
is the fact that there used to be something known in financial circles as the Trump put, which is, if you like, a bit of insurance policy. And it was the idea that if markets freak out a bit, then that would modify behavior and Donald Trump would back off a bit. But that doesn't seem to have happened.
This kind of one foot in, one foot out, this hokey-cokey on tariffs is sapping business confidence and, you know, with people not knowing how they can plan on an hour-to-hour basis, given how volatile this is.
And Trump's response to the market turmoil is interesting because in his first term, he used to really care about the performance of the market. He took that as a sort of one barometer that he recognised as a benchmark of success. And now he doesn't seem so bothered about it.
That's exactly right, because we've been down this road before, Andrew. We've had, for example, steel tariffs, and then we had the EU and the UK putting tariffs on things like bourbon, whiskey, Harley-Davidson motorcycles.
What's very interesting about the EU response, the EU's retaliated, the UK and Australia have not, but the EU, interestingly, have given them a 1st of April deadline for when these reciprocal tariffs come in, giving him enough time to change his mind, which, as we've seen, he has wanted to do from time to time.
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Chapter 4: What is the situation with the train hostage crisis in Pakistan?
Right now we are pulling a sample off of the Bright Tank. Bright Tank because it's bright beer in it, ready to be packaged.
Jason Goldstein runs Icarus Brewing in New Jersey, making craft beer for the past eight years. He says he'll feel the effects of the tariffs because he depends on aluminium and steel to make, package and sell beer.
A few cents a can, it might seem like nothing, but it's a lot. Our market works on very thin margins, so... Seeing any of our costs go up, especially so suddenly, impacts us.
He fears it will go beyond metal tariffs, causing even more damage to his business.
Right now it's cans, it's kegs. But at the same time, you know, you hear about what will the tariffs on the EU be? Will grain be affected? We're bringing in barley from Canada. We're bringing barley from the UK. We're bringing hops from around the world. And if, you know, our trade partners suddenly start increasing prices because of these tariffs, it's going to hit us in every angle.
The metal tariffs cut deep into the heart of America's manufacturing base. At Linda Toole, they make parts for the aerospace industry. They use mostly domestic milled steel.
This is 15-5 stainless steel.
Like Mr Trump, company president Mike DiMarino wants to see more goods made in America. But he's not sure if tariffs are the best way to achieve this.
A lot of the manufacturing that we're involved with, you can't turn it on like a light switch. It's not, okay, we were buying this from China, but next week we're going to move everything here and do it here. Very few products can happen like that.
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Chapter 5: What happened in the UK maritime collision incident?
Business is very challenging.
The new tariffs come as the US clashed with Canada over new 50% tariffs on Canadian metals, triggered by a surcharge Ontario placed on electricity exports to the United States. After several hours, both sides backed down. Ontario Premier Doug Ford said he reversed his decision after speaking to US Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick.
Rather than going back and forth and having threats to each other, we have both agreed, let cooler heads prevail. We need to sit down and move this forward.
Still, Mr Trump's new confrontation with Canada sent jittery markets tumbling again. The new tariffs come just as investors have shown, but their enthusiasm for Donald Trump's favourite foreign policy tool is very limited.
Michelle Flurry reporting. Greenland is not for sale. That's the message from the winner of the election there, which took place in the shadow of President Trump's threats to take over the territory. Jens-Frederick Nielsen, the leader of the Democratic Party, has been an outspoken critic of foreign interference and also supports a slow path to independence from Denmark.
From Copenhagen, here's Adrianne Murray.
The Democrats, they've won the most votes. Until now, they've been a very small player in Parliament. They've taken 30% of the vote and there's no other party that can catch them. The Democrats, they do favour a slower, more gradual approach. But it's also been a good night for NALARAC, the party that wanted to a quick divorce from Copenhagen.
But it's also been a really bruising night for the past government, the coalition. They were seen as a steady hand and having dealt well with the pressure from Donald Trump. But the two parties that were in government both had big losses.
Next to Pakistan, where security sources say 190 passengers have been freed after armed militants bombed a section of railway track and stormed a train in the southwest on Tuesday. One passenger who escaped has spoken of doomsday scenes and described an explosion followed by gunfire. I've been talking to our Pakistan correspondent Azadeh Mashiri in Islamabad.
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Chapter 6: What is the status of the proposed ceasefire between Ukraine and Russia?
that has claimed this attack, claims that it is still in control of the train. And as far as what we've been able to gather, the BBC has seen a carriage that was loaded with empty wooden coffins at Quetta railway station. And official sources have told us that it was headed towards the nearest railway station to the hijacking.
And so as all of this is happening, the information is still being tightly controlled, but we are getting a sense of of the situation and clearly it's still very much an ongoing one with a lot at stake.
Very serious. And all the info we've got about numbers of passengers and how many were on board in the first place, how many have now left the train, that's all from the military in Pakistan because journalists have no other way of finding out.
Well, it's not from official statements. It's from security sources who have been releasing some of this information unofficially to local journalists. You're right to point out how complicated it is to get independently verified information when it comes to this story.
But a lot of this, with a context that's really important to keep in mind, is that this is a militant group that has been calling for an independent Balochistan and has been behind many deadly incidents in this province in the last few years.
Azadeh Mashiri in Islamabad. Two days ago, a US-registered tanker carrying aviation fuel collided with a cargo ship, the Salong, off the coast of the UK. Now British police say the arrested captain of that vessel is a Russian national. He's in custody, arrested on suspicion of gross negligence manslaughter after a member of his crew went missing and is now presumed dead.
Rowan Bridge is the BBC's North of England correspondent.
The 59-year-old captain of the Salon, this Russian national, is in police custody. He remains in police custody for questioning at the moment. Humberside police say they're working to establish the full circumstances of what happened in this crash. They are leading the criminal investigation into this.
There is also an investigation being carried out by the Marine Accident Investigation Branch, also looking into the circumstances of what happened. I think the other thing that we've seen this morning is we've seen new aerial footage of the Salong, which is still on fire.
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