President Trump is introducing tariffs on Canada, Mexico and China from today. Also: a freed Israeli hostage says she was held in a UN facility in Gaza, and the benefit of scratching an itch.
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This is the Global News Podcast from the BBC World Service. I'm Valerie Sanderson and in the early hours of Saturday, the 1st of February, these are our main stories. The White House says the Trump administration will impose steep new tariffs on Canada, Mexico and China from today.
The United Nations says fighting between Congolese forces and Rwanda-backed rebels for the city of Goma has killed at least 700 people in less than a week. German MPs have rejected tough immigration measures proposed by the Conservative opposition and backed by the far-right AFD. Also in this podcast, why does scratching an itch feel so good? A new study highlights the benefit of scratching.
For decades, trade wars looked to be a thing of the past. The future instead seemed to belong to globalisation, to China and to the big regional trading blocs. No more. From today, Saturday, the United States says it's imposing tariffs on its three biggest trading partners.
Speaking at the White House on Friday, President Trump said he would deliver on his campaign pledge to impose tough tariffs on imports from China, Canada and Mexico.
We have about a $200 billion deficit with Canada, getting close to $200 billion. They've treated us very unfairly. And I say, why should we be subsidizing Canada? It's wonderful. I have so many friends in Canada. It's a great place. We'll see what happens. And with Mexico, it's the same thing. We have a $250 billion deficit.
As we record this podcast, it's still not clear if there'll be any exemptions. But the threat of high tariffs brought this response from the former Bank of England Governor Mark Carney, who's currently on the campaign trail to take over as leader of the Liberal Party and as Canadian Prime Minister from Justin Trudeau.
I think President Trump probably thinks that we in Canada will cave in, but we are going to stand up to a bully. We're not going to back down. We're united. And we will retaliate. Ultimately, the the steps that the president is taking against Canada, contemplating, I guess, as well against Mexico, China, others and threatening the world are going to rebound negatively on the United States.
They're going to hit growth. They're going to move up inflation. They're going to raise interest rates. They're going to damage the US's reputation around the world.
I spoke to our North America business correspondent Ritika Gupta who's in New York just before the tariffs were due to come into effect.
Trump has said that they'll be levelling 25% tariffs on Canada and Mexico along a 10% duty on China but I think it's worth noting that there's a lot of uncertainty about how that they will be implemented because many say Trump is using these tariffs as a negotiating tool so there is a chance that he could
put the 25 all on those imports from canada and mexico or actually phase in in higher duties on a monthly basis so that's something that we still don't have clarity on and it does take some time to implement so that does give partners a chance to respond president donald trump has said that he would impose tariffs on a wide range of imports in the coming months including steel
aluminum, oil and gas, pharmaceuticals, the semiconductors. So he's ramped up a lot of these threats on their trading partners. So it could really hit a lot of specific industries and make prices higher for the consumer here in the U.S. And how much would business be affected? Oh, I think that, you know, there could be some big ramifications.
It's a risky gamble, again, because countries could retaliate and it could lead to some sort of a trade war. The U.S. imports a lot of goods from China and Canada and Mexico. Think about the auto industry. Wolf Research says that it could lift the price of a typical car by some $3,000. That could devastate the car industry and disrupt supply chains. Then there's the issue of gasoline prices.
Canada is the biggest source of foreign oil in the U.S. They import some 4 million barrels a day. And there's food prices. The U.S. imports beer to avocados, tomatoes from Mexico. So there's a wide range of industries. Trump has said that he's indicated that he would look to lower the rate on oil in the tariffs. So there is a chance as well that he makes certain concessions to companies
different industries. He's promised to bring down the cost of living for Americans. How does this do this? Well, interestingly, Trump has said that tariffs don't cause inflation. So he is kind of brushing off a lot of warnings that economists have said that tariffs would fuel price growth and be a concern for voters, which actually helped propel him back to the White House.
Because as you quite rightly mentioned, that was one thing that he said he would be keen to tackle if he became president.
Ritika Gupta. As the U.S. introduces further tariffs on Chinese-made goods, Beijing's foreign ministry has warned Donald Trump that a trade war has no winners. An additional 10% is still a long way from the 60% tariffs that Mr. Trump threatened on the campaign trail, and the U.S. president has boasted that he and China's President Xi have a good relationship.
It's prompted some to ask if Donald Trump has gone soft on China. But the country is still bracing itself. And in the last year, thousands of businesses have moved their production abroad to flee Trump's tariffs. As our China correspondent Laura Bicker reports.
This is the sound of an all-American cowboy boot taking shape. They were once crafted to conquer the Wild West, but these carefully stitched designs are now made in China.
When things get busy, the whole factory gets packed with people, shoulder to shoulder. But these days, there are fewer staff at each process.
Mr Peng has worked at the factory since he was 15. But more than 20 years on, he's worried about dwindling orders. U.S. buyers don't want to risk more of Donald Trump's tariffs on Chinese-made goods.
In the end, it is the workers at the bottom who suffer. With higher tariffs, we have higher costs. With higher costs, we have fewer orders. The workers' income will decrease.
This leather boots factory can make, when it's busy, 70,000 pairs of handcrafted leather boots in a month. But right now I'm looking at lots and lots of empty tables. We're actually having to make French military boots to try to keep the factory going. Each shoe is hand-polished at the end of a hundred different processes.
The owners have thought about moving production to Southeast Asia, but they would lose their skilled workforce.
As you can see, the workers here are like family to each other. If we were to move, they'd lose their jobs and end up unemployed. Therefore, our boss chooses not to give up on them.
Other Chinese companies, however, are on the move. Parts of Cambodia have given itself to Beijing. Half the country's investment now flows from China. You can tell me a bit about your factory. So what are we seeing here?
The factory has only been running for a few months, so I only have these workers here for now. Once we are fully staffed, there will be 1,500 workers. All of our products are for export, 100%.
Huang Zhaodong makes clothes for US firms like Walmart and Costco, and he's getting ready for more orders. His factory and his workers are in Cambodia, but most of the materials still come from China.
A lot of our customers, especially American clients, have asked us to make their products overseas. They suggested that if I produce their orders overseas, it will be less risky.
Successes like this one increase China's influence across Southeast Asia. Here on the streets of Phnom Penh, the flashing neon signs are not just in Khmer. They are mostly in Chinese, offering everything from duck noodles to milk tea. Trump's tariffs have not stopped China's rise. Beijing has simply gone elsewhere to do business.
China may lose some money in this battle, but it's still gaining power and influence.
Laura Bicker. In his first interview as America's top diplomat, the US Secretary of State Marco Rubio has outlined what President Trump's America first foreign policy actually means, especially for Ukraine.
Speaking to the news presenter, Megan Kelly, Mr. Rubio said the war must end through negotiation, stating that it would be dishonest to suggest that Ukraine could defeat and take back territory from Russia. President Trump's decision to freeze nearly all US foreign aid is causing major disruption in Ukraine. From Kiev, James Waterhouse.
The pausing of this American money for Ukraine is bad news, for the reason that it needs to be propped up to both exist as a country and combat Russia's full-scale invasion. The level of American military support isn't affected for now, but it's thought to be impacting a $5 billion pool of cash, which goes on programmes supporting the country's agricultural industry, with the exports of...
It's energy sector where engineers continually try to bring power back after Russia strikes power stations and thermal power plants across the country. It affects veteran support hubs, helplines for soldiers who have fought in this invasion used by thousands. We spoke to one organisation that had to briefly pause until an alternative revenue stream was found.
But this is a worrying symptom for Kyiv. where we're not long into this Trump administration and we're already seeing an unpredictability, an unreliability, if you like, when it comes to how it helps Ukraine in the face of Russia's full-scale invasion.
James Waterhouse. For more on President Trump and Marco Rubio's plans for Ukraine, I spoke to our Europe regional editor, Danny Eberhard.
It was very similar in many ways to what Marco Rubio was saying in his Senate confirmation hearings. He was, of course, the first member of Donald Trump's cabinet to be confirmed by a Senate vote. He's a very different figure to Donald Trump in terms of the way he speaks. He's got a long background on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
So he's able to speak very much as you'd expect an American diplomat. But the message very much is America first. It was also very clear that any negotiations that that would happen, for example, with President Putin will be conducted by Donald Trump. So he knows his place.
One interesting word he used, he said there needed to be an enduring settlement, because there are a lot of fears, certainly in Kiev, that actually what's happening is an appeasement of President Trump, rather than giving Ukraine confidence that won't be re-invaded a few years down the line.
And where does this leave the Ukrainian president, Vladimir Zelenskyy?
In a difficult situation, he can't publicly criticise Donald Trump, but there will be many people in Kiev who see some of what Marco Rubio is saying as not as realistic, but as defeatist in many ways. Many people in Ukraine see that as actually giving President Putin encouragement. There's nothing to stop President Putin, for example...
entering into a peace process, but still retaining what Ukraine believes is absolutely a capitulation in terms of the demands, not for Ukraine to abandon all ideas of entering NATO, no Western peacekeepers, for Ukraine to give up entirely the territories of Kherson, Zaporizhia, Donetsk, Luhansk, and not to mention Crimea, which Russia took control of in 2014.
So a very difficult situation for President Zelensky. He's hoping to swing it with talks with President Trump himself. And then, of course, at some point that we expect talks to take place between President Trump and President Putin.
Danny Eberhard. President Trump has again commented on what caused the collision between an airliner and a helicopter in the skies above Washington on Wednesday. In a post on his Truth Social account, Mr Trump said the military helicopter was flying too high by a lot. He didn't provide any evidence to back up his claim.
The federal authorities have recovered the black boxes from both aircraft, as Ned Atofik reports.
Under the gray and rainy skies of the nation's capital, the difficult recovery resumes. Crews and divers are back in the water attempting to salvage the wreckage, which lies in pieces. Bodies continue to be recovered from the site of the U.S. 's deadliest air disaster in two decades as families search for closure and answers.
Vital to that could be the so-called black boxes that were pulled from the commercial jet that crashed after colliding with an Army Black Hawk helicopter. The National Transportation Safety Board will take days to study the cockpit voice and flight data recordings to help determine the cause of the crash. Already, though, gaps and potential mistakes are being raised.
The Army has said the three-member crew of soldiers on the Black Hawk were experienced, but the investigation is looking into whether the helicopter followed the approved route. President Donald Trump on social media said the helicopter was flying too high. far above the 200-foot limit that they are capped at for safety reasons.
But his Secretary of Defense has said that is just speculation for now. Also, reportedly the air traffic controller on duty that night was doing the job of two people because of understaffing. The National Transportation Safety Board member here on the scene, Todd Inham, said all of that is a concern if confirmed by the investigation.
Aviation safety is built upon a complex series of systems. We call it a Swiss cheese effect, where there's multiple different layers where one thing fails, the next should pick up. What we need to do is reduce any failure.
The NTSB says it could take a year to know the potential cause of the crash, but that preliminary findings will be out in 30 days. Along with the investigation, they are trying to support the bereaved families. Nearly 100 who are in the vicinity awaiting updates.
Still to come, a hostage released by Hamas says she was held in UN aid agency ANWA facilities in Gaza.
They respond... We've repeatedly called for independent investigations into these claims, including the misuse and disregard of UN premises by Palestinian armed groups.
The full interview coming up shortly.
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To the Democratic Republic of Congo, which is currently convulsed in an offensive by the M23 rebel group. Thousands have been displaced as the Rwandan-backed rebels advance. They've already captured the eastern city of Goma. The United Nations says at least 700 people have been killed in the fighting for the city in the east of the DRC. Staffan Djaric is a UN spokesman.
The World Health Organization and its partners conducted an assessment with the government that's between the 26th and yesterday and report that 700 people have been killed and 2,800 people injured that are receiving treatment in health facilities. These numbers are expected to rise as more information becomes available.
The rebels are now moving south, heading for Bukavu, the capital of South Kivu. But a Congolese official says their progress has been slowed. BBC reporter Paul Njai is in Gisenyi, on the Rwandan side of the border crossing with the DRC. He told Julian Marshall about the people who are fleeing from the DRC.
they've been coming basically with whatever they could find whatever they could come up with some people came in with their clothes in loincloths speaking about how dire the security situation is in goma right now we spoke to one woman this morning who told us that Her husband was shot and he was killed as a result of the M23's offensive in Goma.
She said she's not sure if she's ever going to return if the M23 are not out of that area. So I guess it shows just how dire the security situation in the area has been. And of course, some say that relative calm has returned. And we saw other people trying to move into the DRC earlier today. So it's a bit a mixture of both.
People coming in, those trying to go back, but those who have come in have come in with harrowing stories.
And those civilians fleeing eastern Congo, fleeing Goma, are they doing so to escape the fighting or because they're being targeted?
Well, some people say they just decided to flee because they were uncertain about what the security situation would be like going forward. And the Congolese government, the President Felix Tshisekedi said a couple of days ago that they were going to do everything possible to reconquer any territory they've lost.
And of course the M23 as well say that they are trying to advance and capture more territory. So the growing rhetoric in both camps are making people to be afraid.
But then there are those who say that they've lost family members as a result of the fighting and so would not want to stay back to be victims of the war, which they already are, but they do not want to be victims in the sense like lose their lives. They've already lost families, property, and now their lives are the only thing they've got left.
In our earlier podcast, we reported on the debate in Germany's parliament on tougher new immigration rules, proposed by the man tipped to be Germany's next leader, Friedrich Merz of the Conservative Opposition Party, the CDU. On Friday, the German parliament went on to reject the draft legislation. Well, that was the scene in the Bundestag as the law was narrowly defeated by just 12 votes.
It was controversial in part because the measures included unprecedented powers for the police to arrest migrants. but also because the CDU would have relied on the far-right AFD to get the law through Parliament, breaking a firewall, a previous pledge by all main parties not to work with the AFD. K. Gottschalk, an MP and deputy co-leader of the AFD, gave his reaction to the vote.
For us and for Germany, it means we can say clearly, if you would like and want change in migration policy, you need to vote for my party because the CDU can't deliver. Always promising things, but finally they can't deliver. And I think that's a good message for the people voting in three weeks here in Germany.
I heard more from our Berlin correspondent, Damien McGuinness.
The reason why Friedrich Merz took this risky decision to put forward such a controversial bill... ...and the risk of possibly the far-right AfD supporting it, which has never happened in modern Germany before... ...is because the AfD are polling at around 20% at the moment. And he argues that in order to take the wind out of their sails... He needs to offer something to AFD voters.
So he has gone, as he puts it, all in on migration. And he's proposed some pretty drastic measures. But he feels that if he's this hard line, he can lure back. right-wing voters who are considering voting for the AFD. The difficulty with that is, is that the more you talk about migration, the more this potentially plays into the AFD's hands because that is really their main topic.
That's the danger that Friedrich Merz has undergone, that he has decided since a number of attacks over the past month involving suspects who are asylum seekers, that migration is the top concern of voters. And he has put it at the top of the agenda for his election campaign. And since then, it's all people have been talking about. It's a risky strategy.
And I think it seems to have backfired today in Parliament, at least for the Conservative leader, possibly not for the AFD, though.
And of course, Friedrich Merz, he wants to be the next Chancellor of Germany, doesn't he? And we're just weeks from elections.
That's right. Right now, his party, the Conservative CDU, is leading in the polls at around 30 percent. But they have been slipping. And that's another reason why it appears that he's getting more hardline and migration. He feels that's how he can boost his numbers in the polls.
The key thing, though, Valerie, I think what this week also shows is this is a fight for the soul of the Conservative Party, because this is traditionally a broad church party. with a more moderate wing and a more right wing, conservative wing. And Friedrich Merz personifies the more right wing of the party. And the former chancellor, Angela Merkel, is the figurehead for the more centrist wing.
And that's potentially also why he lost the vote today. Because yesterday, Angela Merkel very unusually intervened in German politics and came out and said that what Friedrich Merz is doing, the leader of her own party, is wrong.
And of course, Germany is such an important country in Europe. So other parts of Europe will be looking, I should think, very worried about what's going on there in the country.
Yeah. And I think Germany has been a cause of concern for a while now because for the past couple of years, it's been led by a very argumentative government, a three-way coalition. Three very different parties pulling in different directions. And that's been one of the reasons why it's been hard to get agreement within Germany on certain issues.
But it's also made it hard to do certain things on an EU level. So I think most EU leaders are looking at Germany and thinking, OK, whoever is going to be the next chancellor, we're really hoping for a more assertive, more unified government where at least we know what the results are going to be.
Damien McGuinness. One of the first hostages released since the start of this month's ceasefire in Gaza was Emily Damari, who is a dual British and Israeli national. She was kept captive by Hamas for 15 months and has told Britain's Prime Minister Keir Starmer that gunmen held her in buildings that belonged to UNRWA, the United Nations agency that has been aiding Palestinians since 1949.
Gillette Toomer speaks for UNRWA.
These claims that hostages have been held in UNRWA premises, even if they were vacated, are absolutely serious. We've repeatedly called for independent investigations into these claims, including the misuse and disregard of UN premises by Palestinian armed groups. That also includes Hamas.
I heard more about Emily Damari from our correspondent in Jerusalem, Maria Davis.
She was abducted from her home on October the 7th. Now, during the abduction, she was shot in the hand and the leg. She eventually lost two fingers. So she arrived in Gaza as a captive, but also as quite a badly injured captive. Now, she's said in a statement and she's told the prime minister.
that during her captivity in Gaza, she was held for some time at United Nations facilities belonging to UNRWA, which is the UN body much criticized by Israel that is responsible for the welfare of Palestinians. But Israel has long accused UNRWA members, staff, some of them of being involved, not only in the October 7th attacks,
but allowing their facilities in Gaza to be used by Hamas and other militant groups. Many UNRWA buildings, schools and other facilities were abandoned because of the fighting and were used by hundreds of thousands of civilians when their homes were destroyed or a shelter from the fighting.
So the fact that UNRWA facilities were used by people is not a surprise, but of course it is surprising to learn that they may have been used by Hamas to hide or to keep hostages in Gaza. It will back up, if you like, the Israeli narrative that UNRWA staff did become involved on one side of this conflict.
But remember, the number of UNRWA staff that were accused and sacked is just a handful, about 12 people. And UNRWA has 13,000 employees in Gaza now. So UNRWA is saying it's dealt with the problem and it's been backed by the UN.
But as a footnote to this, UNRWA, of course, has now been banned legally by Israel from operating in East Jerusalem and getting into Gaza to give much needed aid to Palestinian refugees.
There is going to be another wave of hostage releases, isn't there, due on Saturday. What do we know about this, the fourth wave?
Yeah, three men, Ofer Calderon, who's 50, and an Israeli-American called Keith Siegel, who's 65. But perhaps the most well-known of the hostages is a man called Yarden Bibas. He's 34. Now, he's also the father to two young children, the youngest of them just 10 months old. They and his wife are widely believed to have been killed. during their captivity in Gaza.
So whereas many of the previous hostages releases have been pretty joyous occasions with people, you know, going to Tel Aviv, I think this one is going to be a very different one for the Israeli public on Saturday because Mr. Bibas, although he has surviving family members in Israel, his immediate family won't be there to meet him because they are thought to have been killed while in Gaza.
We're at Davis. And finally... Why does scratching an itch feel just so very good? Well, we're always told that scratching a bite or a rash can be bad. But a study published in the journal Science has found that the reason it feels good is that it has a benefit. Why? Julian Marshall asked skin immunologist Dan Kaplan, who led the study.
If you think about what itch is, it's our body's response to some kind of insult on the skin, either a bug bite or some kind of chemical on the skin. And then the response is scratching. And usually we scratch until it starts to hurt.
The interesting thing that we found is that it is actually the act of scratching and the activation of neurons that sense pain that leads to an increased inflammation in the skin. And the detriment of that is it makes your rash worse. Your mosquito bite that you scratch is significantly worse and lasts much longer than if you are able to resist this temptation to scratch that bite.
However, it also causes increased resistance to bacteria on the skin. So the scratching can actually help reduce bacteria on the skin and presumably reduce the risk of infection.
Itching feels good, it would appear, because it's an evolutionary response.
Absolutely. I think it's a behavior that is reinforced. So usually if there's a behavior that's reinforced, there should be some good reason why it's reinforced and why it has persisted through evolution.
So if a child is scratching an itch, we shouldn't tell that child not to do it or indeed an adult?
Oh, I don't think that's really good advice because there's a big distinction between acute itch and chronic itch. So if you do scratch, there may be some benefit to reduced bacteria. But ultimately what you do is you make the rash for the mosquito bites significantly worse.
And if you continue to scratch a lesion, you will actually cause destruction to the skin, and that may ultimately cause an even higher risk of infection. So I think there is a benefit to scratching in the short term, but long-term scratching is certainly quite detrimental.
I mean, we've been speaking about mosquito bites, but what about, say, dermatitis?
Of course. So dermatitis, also known as eczema, one of the major symptoms is itch, and it's actually quite a problem. Most people who have dermatitis find that when they scratch it, it'll feel good, but it will ultimately make the itch and the rash itself significantly worse. And so in those cases, scratching is one of the worst things you can do to your dermatitis.
It actually significantly can make it worse.
So in brief, if you're bitten by a mosquito, have a little bit of a scratch, but don't overdo it.
That sounds like prudent advice.
Professor Dan Kaplan from the University of Pittsburgh. And that's it from us for now, but there'll be a new edition of the Global News Podcast later. If you want to comment on this podcast or the topics covered in it, send us an email. The address is globalpodcast at bbc.co.uk. You can also find us on X at Global News Pod. This edition was mixed by Martin Baker. The producer was Alison Davis.
The editor is Karen Martin. I'm Valerie Sanderson. Until next time, bye-bye.
Delve into a world of secrets. The BBC's Global Investigations podcast, breaking major news stories around the world.
A BBC investigation finds that Mohamed Al-Fayed, former owner of Harrods, was accused of raping five members of staff.
Mohamed Al-Fayed was like an apex predator.
From the top of British society to the heart of global fashion brands. The former boss of clothing brand Abercrombie & Fitch is accused of exploiting young men for sex. Search for World of Secrets wherever you get your BBC podcasts.