Bitter succession row between India royals spills over into public eye
A 400-year-old palace in northern India became the site of a massive feud between members of an erstwhile royal family that escalated to stone pelting and police intervention.
Earlier this month, Vishvaraj Singh Mewar, a member of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), was anointed as the 77th Maharana of Mewar – a titular head of a region in the northwestern state of Rajasthan in India.
On 25 November, Mr Singh Mewar decided to visit a temple within the Udaipur City Palace grounds to seek blessings on becoming the ceremonial head of the Mewar royal family. But he was issued a notice by the palace trust denying him permission to enter the grounds.
Enraged supporters of Mr Singh Mewar allegedly tried to break down the barricades that had been placed by the palace administration. According to media reports, stones were pelted both by Mr Singh Mewar’s supporters as well as from within the palace leading to the police being forced to intervene to calm the situation.
“The administration and police tried to calm them but they started throwing away the barricades and pelting stones, glass bottles, and bricks,” Udaipur Police superintendent Yogesh Goyal said, according to Hindustan Times. “Several people were injured and rushed to the hospital.”
“The situation that we see today is unfortunate,” Mr Singh Mewar told the media. “I am grateful for your support. On one side are properties, but there are also traditions where we seek blessings. This is wrong as far as traditions and society norms are concerned,” he said.
“It is a years-old ritual of the [erstwhile] royal family that we have to follow, be it legally or socially or ritually. I waited for over five hours at night but yet was denied entry,” he added.
The source of the clash between the palace trust and Mr Singh Mewar lies in a family succession dispute and a will that dates back 40 years to 1984.
Created in 1955 by Maharana Bhupal Singhji of Mewar, the Shri Eklingji Trust takes care of all upkeep and expenses of palaces, temples, and forts that are held by the Mewar family.
In 1984, then head of the royal family, Maharana Bhagwat Singh, left the control of the trust to his younger son Arvind Singh, bypassing his older son Mahendra Singh and cutting him out of the succession entirely after a dispute.
Mahendra Singh’s son is Mr Singh Mewar.
Despite being left out of the will, Mahendra Singh was anointed as the Maharana of Mewar on 19 November 1984 after the death of Bhagwat Singh, a ceremony that was even marked by a grand spectacle.
Arvind Singh, however, contested Mahendra Singh’s claim to the title, asserting that he, according to their father’s will, was the legitimate custodian of the Mewar legacy.
After Mahendra Singh’s death on 10 November this year at 83, Mr Singh Mewar was anointed, following which the palace trust issued a notice that pointed out that Mr Singh Mewar is not a trustee and doesn’t hold any legal title in the trust either, in which case his attempt at entering the palace grounds is “criminal trespass”.
“What happened was unfortunate. We hope that the administration and the government will stand with truth and serve justice,” Lakshyaraj Singh, the son of Arvind Singh told reporters.
“People in political positions should not misuse their position and power within the government to enter our home. People cannot force themselves into our home,” he said.
“We can always approach the court. It is not right to take the law into your hands and consider yourself above the law. We have faced a similar situation 40 years ago, and will reply in terms of law to their illegal approach.
“People, including women and children, could have died had the chaos escalated. I urge everyone to step up according to the law. We all need to be united to find a resolution to this, at least not through hooliganism,” he said.
Mr Singh Mewar has said that in accordance with royal traditions, he only wanted to visit two temples, the Ekling Shiv temple about 50km from Udaipur and the Dhuni Mata temple within the palace grounds – both of which are under the care of the trust, and therefore his uncle, Arvind Singh.
The matter of the succession and who controls the properties belonging to the royal Mewar family has been stuck in courts for decades; a 2020 judgement declared that the disputed property would be divided into four parts: three would be divided between Bhagwat Singh’s three children, Mahendra Singh, Arvind Singh, and Yogeshwari Kumari, and the fourth part would stay under the late Bhagwat Singh’s name. Until the exact division is finalised, the court declared that the three children would be permitted to use the royal properties on a rotational basis for four years each.
While the situation in Udaipur is under control now, according to the police, it is still uncertain as to whether Mr Singh Mewar will be allowed to enter the palace.
India abolished privy purses and the recognition granted to the rulers of Indian states in July 1971. Cut off from the income they made from their estates and the privy purses, many royal families sold jewellery and other assets to maintain their lives, while many have converted their palaces into heritage hotels.
Recently, Albert Hall Museum in Rajasthan’s Jaipur, which houses one of India’s finest collections of royal artefacts, was forced to close for two days after a significant rat infestation.
Robot cat that sticks landing may revolutionise asteroid mining
Chinese scientists have built a cat-inspired robot designed to adjust its posture and stick its landing even in low-gravity environments, an advance that could revolutionise the exploration of asteroids.
Researchers from the Harbin Institute of Technology in northeast China developed a special control system for the quadruped robot inspired by the ability of cats to twist and successfully land on their paws whenever they fall.
The robot is capable of moving its four legs in a coordinated manner and can adjust its posture mid-air to stick landings, according to the study, published last month in the Journal of Astronautics.
Scientists checked whether the robot and its newly developed control system could potentially manoeuvre in low-gravity celestial environments like asteroids.
In such space environments, researchers say even small imbalances and slight miscoordination between the legs of such a robot can cause it to tumble and crash.
“In the low-gravity environment of these [small celestial] bodies, robots undergo extended periods of free fall during each jump,” scientists wrote.
“It is essential to utilise this time to correct any altitude deviations induced by the jump, ensuring a safe landing or adjusting the yaw angle to modify their future trajectory,” they said.
In 2018, Japan made history by landing two cookie jar-sized jumping rovers onto the rocky asteroid Ryugu about 280 million km (170 million miles) away from Earth.
The short-lived robots used the low gravity conditions on Ryugu to hop across the asteroid’s surface for a day to beam back pictures to Earth.
Since the mission’s success, scientists and space agencies have been building new types of robots to explore asteroids and moons.
The extremely weak gravity and rocky terrains of such small celestial bodies are not conducive for wheeled rovers.
So researchers are building hopping robots to explore and prospect asteroids for valuable minerals like platinum and other rare metals.
For instance, earlier this year researchers at ETH Zurich unveiled a three-legged jumping robot called SpaceHopper to navigate low-gravity environments like asteroids and moons.
“These are thought to contain valuable mineral resources that could be of use to humankind in the future. The exploration of these bodies could also give us insights into our universe’s formation,” researchers wrote.
In the latest study, researchers trained the cat-inspired robot for several hours in a virtual simulation.
It learned to adjust its movements for a stable landing in about seven hours, scientists say, according to SCMP.
Further experiments in a microgravity simulation platform confirmed the effectiveness of the new AI learning system, they say.
“A microgravity simulation test platform for quadrupedal robots employing air suspension technology has been designed and constructed, validating the effectiveness of this control strategy through prototype experiments,” researchers wrote.
Luxury yacht builder fined for using blood teak imported from Myanmar
A court has fined a British luxury yacht builder for importing wood from Myanmar linked to the illegal timber trade, often referred to as blood teak.
Sunseeker International, based in Poole, Dorset, was fined £358,760 following a hearing at the Bournemouth Crown Court on Friday.
The case marks the first prosecution under the UK Timber Regulation (UKTR), a post-Brexit legislation that replaced the EU Timber Regulation. Sunseeker pleaded guilty to three charges, including failure to exercise due diligence in timber sourcing. The charges relate to 11 specific imports for which the company paid around £60,000.
International demand for Myanmar teak, prized for its water-resistant properties, has been a key revenue source for the country’s military junta, which seized power in February 2021.
Sanctions from the EU, UK and US on the ruling regime, which oversees the timber exports, have effectively made all teak imports from Myanmar illegal.
Judge Jonathan Fuller KC, while imposing fine, noted that Sunseeker was aware of the changes in timber import regulations after Brexit, which redefined the firm’s status from “trader” to “operator”. He labelled its actions a “systemic failure”.
The judge ordered the company to pay a total of £358,759.64 covering a fine and prosecution costs.
Sunseeker International, in a statement to The Independent, attributed the “unintended failure” to “a change in legislation on 1 January 2021, following the United Kingdom’s exit from the European Union”, adding that Brexit imposed “additional due diligence obligations” when sourcing timber from the EU.
The company said it had “fully cooperated with the (Office for Product Safety and Standards) throughout its investigation, accepted responsibility at an early stage, and has taken decisive steps to rectify the issue, by implementing a robust timber procurement policy and a UKTR-compliant due diligence process”.
Sunseeker’s board expressed regret over the lapse, regretting the “company’s failure in meeting its responsibilities under the UKTR and underlines its ongoing commitment to compliance with laws and regulations”.
The Environmental Investigation Agency, a UK-based international NGO, hailed the court’s decision as a milestone in tackling illegal timber trade.
The group’s forests campaign leader, Faith Doherty, described the ruling as sending “a clear and unequivocal message” to other luxury yacht manufacturers worldwide.
“Using blood teak from conflict-torn Myanmar is totally unacceptable and will cost them dearly in the end,” she said.
Ms Doherty said the case should serve as a catalyst for further action, noting that timber traders have continued to flout the law without consequence. “This case changes that,” she said. “It should be used as the landmark it is for actually using these laws with the appropriate penalties this crime deserves.”
The strange Test cricket revolution and what’s caused this change
“The tour is only a matter of hours old, but the wry thought occurs to me that reputations will almost certainly be destroyed in the next few months.” The pessimistic, pithy aside of Geoffrey Boycott in his chronicles of England’s 1981 tour of the West Indies, Life in the Fast Lane, serves as a useful guide to the challenges of an overseas Test series. Virtually since Test cricket began, it has been easy for touring players to take a defeatist view – making their way by sea or, latterly, air to far-flung lands, many a cynical travelling international cricketer has known they are on little more than a hiding to nothing.
For historically, the odds were stacked vastly in favour of the hosting teams. Be it friendly umpires, knowledge of conditions or merely the comforts of home, only twice in Test history have visiting sides won more than 40 percent of their matches across a calendar year.
If the first of these, 2021, can partly be explained by the peculiarities of a pandemic, the fact that 2024 is the other requires deeper examination. For something strange is happening. In this World Test Championship cycle, Australia have swept a series in New Zealand. New Zealand have done likewise in India. India won in South Africa. South Africa won in Bangladesh. Bangladesh won in Pakistan. Pakistan won in Sri Lanka. Sri Lanka upset England at The Oval; the West Indies stunned Australia in Brisbane.
These would not seem to be bugs in the system but a sizeable shift in the patterns of an age-old game. While great teams of the past (Lloyd’s West Indies, Waugh and Ponting’s Australia) have been exceptions that prove the rule. These are teams in varying states and varied conditions nonetheless disproving the adages of sustained success away from home being close to impossible.
Data via Wisden.com
So what is going on? Well, perhaps it is worth first considering the other statistical quirk that makes 2024 an outlier. An excellent interrogation of the data by the Wisden Cricket Weekly podcast found that this year is the annum with the lowest average bowling strike rate since 1907. Basically, batters have never found it harder to occupy the crease.
It reflects a statistical decline in batting standards. Since 2018 — of those with a significant sample size, with apologies to Yashasvi Jaiswal, Harry Brook and Kamindu Mendis — only Kane Williamson averages more than 50 with the bat in Test cricket, with Joe Root and Steve Smith just below the mark. In the comparative period between 2011 and 2017, 12 batters held averages in the 50s or higher.
While some ex-professionals would suggest that the predominance of white-ball cricket has led to less secure defensive techniques, more telling, perhaps, is the devaluing of the draw. Brought about in part by the launch of a World Test Championship that gives little reward to teams sharing the spoils, captains have also realised that result cricket is generally more entertaining. Matches rarely extend into the final session on day five, if they make it that far at all. Faster scoring rates mean big totals can still be made while allowing 40 wickets to fall; more bowler-friendly pitches have also played a part.
Bold calls or approaches can bring both sides into the game – take Ben Stokes declaring in Mount Maunganui last year, or India’s frankly absurd 285/9 off 35 overs against Bangladesh in Kanpur in September. Some work, some don’t, but the fact there has just been a single drawn Test in 2024 shows that virtually every game now ends with a winner and a loser.
So-called result pitches also aid the overall competitiveness of a format in which some nations are struggling for consistent cricket. Even the best batters generally require time in the middle to refine and hone their game, but spicier surfaces can level the playing field. Countries like the West Indies and South Africa are battling to find consistent run-makers but continue to produce exceptional fast bowlers who can engineer wins when circumstances and conditions allow.
The proliferation of T20 leagues has also made an impact. While tales like that of Shamar Joseph show there is still a place for a bolt from the blue, even a number of nascent Test players now have familiarity with both conditions and opposition from their experiences on the franchise circuit. While unorthodoxy can still be beneficial, vast scouting networks and granular data analysis mean that players, if they wish to be, can be better prepared than ever for the challenges they will face overseas.
The crowding of the calendar has had a knock-on effect, too, in reducing the number of long series played. Only India, England and Australia regularly contest five-match encounters; financial realities of a sometimes spectator-less sport mean the rest have to be content playing just two or three Tests at a time. While this is a shame, the drawn-out tours of the past would be onerous – one only has to look how England’s have frayed towards the end of winless series Down Under since 2010/11 to see the toll it can take.
A shorter series perhaps makes teams feel more up for the fight. With fewer warm-up fixtures and top Test players involved in less and less first-class cricket, hosts can also be caught cold – England’s first Test win in Hyderabad in January and India’s triumph in Perth last week are two fine victories that challenge the thought that it takes time to adjust to vastly different conditions.
Is this year an aberration or indicative of a future where home advantage is less pivotal? There may be hope that it is latter. Test cricket is in need of spectator growth if it is to persist and prosper, and there is no doubt that the red-ball game is more fun if both sides genuinely have a chance more often. That five teams remain in the mix to make next summer’s World Test Championship final is proof of a format perhaps more unpredictable than ever.
Bangladesh court denies bail to Hindu monk facing sedition charge
A court in Bangladesh has denied bail to a prominent monk who had been leading rallies demanding security for the minority Hindu community in the South Asian country.
Chinmoy Krishna Das, the leader of the International Society for Krishna Consciousness (Iskcon) in Bangladesh, also popularly known as the Hare Krishna movement, was detained on sedition charge on Tuesday after the magistrate court of Kazi Shariful Islam denied him bail.
Protests broke out in capital Dhaka with hundreds of his supporters surrounding the van carrying him, forcing it to stop for over an hour before security officials fired teargas to disperse the crowd.
The protest turned religious after dozens of Muslims joined the security officials in chasing Hindu protesters and threw stones at them, TV live footage showed.
Chittagong Metropolitan Police commissioner, Hasib Aziz, said the protesters “went on a rampage, throwing bricks” at the police.
“To disperse the crowd, we had to fire tear gas. No one was seriously injured, but one of our constables was hurt,” Mr Aziz told Reuters.
Mr Das, who is also a leader of the Bangladesh Sammilito Sanatan Jagaran Jote group, was accused of sedition along with 18 others for allegedly disrespecting Bangladesh’s national flag by hoisting a saffron flag above it at a rally in Chattogram city in October. He was arrested in Dhaka’s main airport on Monday while traveling to Chattogram.
Kushal Baran Chakrabarty, who was accompanying Mr Das at the time of his arrest, said that several detectives took the Hindu leader to a police car at the airport.
“Chinmoy Prabhu gave his phone to me as he was forcefully taken to the police car. The police detectives jostled with us to forcefully take his phone and they took it away. We then followed the police car that headed for the headquarters of the Detective Branch at Minto Road in Dhaka,” he said. “We stayed outside the Detective Branch’s office.”
The Hindu monk had been advocating for the rights of the Hindus, who make up roughly 8 per cent of Bangladesh’s population, in the wake of the targeted violence that ensued in the wake of the revolution in August.
A student-led protest turned into a mass uprising, forcing prime minister Sheikh Hasina to resign and flee to India on 5 August, which led to a complete collapse of law and order in the country. The nation is now run by an interim government headed by Nobel laureate Mohammad Yunus, who downplayed the attacks on Hindus as “exaggerated propaganda”.
Fear of prosecution prompted scores of Hindus to flee the country while others have been staging protests for safety of their homes, businesses and places of worship. According to the Associated Press, more than 2,000 instances of attack on the minority community since Ms Hasina’s ouster.
Many in the interim government see the rallies by Hindus as a threat to stability and a ploy to rehabilitate Ms Hasina and her Awami League party.
Iskcon issued a statement on Tuesday calling the allegations of its association with terrorism “outrageous” and “baseless”. The group called on the Indian government to “take immediate steps and speak to the Government of Bangladesh and convey that we are a peace-loving Bhakti movement”.
“We want the government of Bangladesh to release Chinmoy Krishna Das immediately,” it said.
The Indian foreign ministry said it “noted with deep concern the arrest and denial of bail” to Mr Das, following what it alleged were “multiple attacks on Hindus and other minorities by extremist elements in Bangladesh”.
“There are several documented cases of arson and looting of minorities’ homes and business establishments, as well as theft and vandalism and desecration of deities and temples.”
The ministry said it was “unfortunate” that while the “perpetrators of these incidents remain at large, charges should be pressed against a religious leader presenting legitimate demands through peaceful gatherings”.
“We also note with concern the attacks on minorities protesting peacefully against the arrest of Shri Das,” the ministry said.
Satellite images show North Korea expanding key missile factory
North Korea is expanding a weapons manufacturing complex that assembles a variety of short-range missiles allegedly used by Russia against Ukraine, satellite images showed.
Researchers at a think tank in the US identified the facility, known as the “February 11” plant, which is part of the Ryongsong Machine Complex in Hamhung in North Korea’s second-most populous city.
The assessment comes just days after South Korea‘s spy agency accused Pyongyang of supplying additional artillery systems to Russia and amid claims that some of the North Korean troops deployed in Russia have begun engaging in combat.
Both Moscow and Pyongyang have denied allegations of North Korea sending weapons and munitions to aid Russia‘s war effort.
The North has ratified a mutual defence treaty with Russia signed in June which calls to “immediately provide military and other assistance using all available means” if either side is in a state of war.
The satellite images taken in October by Planet Labs show what seems to be an additional assembly building under construction along with a new housing facility, likely intended for workers, according to an analysis by researchers at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies (CNS).
Pyongyang appears to have improved the entrances of some of the underground facilities at the complex while constructing the new assembly building which is 60-70 per cent the size of the old one.
Sam Lair, a research associate at the CNS, told Reuters the facility is the only one known to produce the Hwasong-11 solid-fuel ballistic missile.
Ukrainian officials say these missiles, known as KN-23 in the West, have been used by Russian forces in their assault on Ukraine.
North Korean authorities have removed a disused bridge crane from in front of a tunnel entrance which was blocking easy access, suggesting they might be placing an emphasis on that part of the facility, according to the researcher. “We see this as a suggestion that they’re massively increasing, or they’re trying to significantly increase, the throughput of this factory,” Mr Lair told Reuters.
North Korean state news agency KCNA has reported that construction is underway at the Ryongsong Machine Complex. The facility “is pushing ahead with the projects for attaining the goal for modernisation planned for this year,” KCNA reported this month.
The work includes rebuilding production facilities as well as assembling and installing equipment in machine workshops and a steel casting workshop, it said.
In November, Russian Telegram channels posted photos purportedly showing North Korean “Koksan” 170mm self-propelled guns being moved by rail inside Russia. The Financial Times, citing Ukrainian intelligence assessments, reported that the North has sent 50 170mm self-propelled howitzers and 20 240mm multiple launch rocket systems to Russia in recent weeks.
South Korea’s spy agency said last month the North had sent more than 13,000 containers carrying artillery, missiles and other conventional arms to Russia since August 2023 to replenish its dwindling weapons stockpiles.
North Korea is also claimed to have sent some 11,000 soldiers to the Kursk border region where the Russian forces have been fighting off a Ukrainian incursion since August.
Eight arrested over Laos methanol poisonings which killed six tourists
Police in Laos have arrested eight people over the suspected mass methanol poisoning which killed six foreign tourists in backpacking hotspot Vang Vieng.
The Laos government promised justice after two Danish, two Australians, a Briton and an American citizen died after becoming ill following a night out at Nana Backpackers Hostel in the small riverside town on 12 November.
Police said those detained were all employees of Nana Backpacker Hostel, of Vietnamese nationality and aged between 23 and 44 years old.
Authorities say they suspect that the deaths were caused by poisoning, possibly due to tainted drinks laced with methanol.
The Vang Vieng district authorities launched investigation which is working alongside various ministries and organisations, said it is continuing to investigate the deaths and collect relevant data to determine the exact cause of deaths.
The government said it had been conducting “investigations to find causes of the incident and to bring the perpetrators to justice in accordance with the law”.
However, little further information has been made available about the circumstances surrounding the deaths in the one-party communist state, where the media is tightly controlled.
Among those who died were Australian teenagers, Holly Bowles, 19, and Bianca Jones, 19.
Bowles, who had been in critical condition on life support after drinking the tainted alcohol in Laos, died in a hospital in Bangkok, her family confirmed last week.
Jones and Bowles were evacuated for an emergency treatment to Thailand after the poisoning. Thai authorities confirmed that Jones had died by “brain swelling due to high levels of methanol found in her system”.
Simone White, a 28-year-old British woman, also died from suspected methanol poisoning during her stay in the district with her friend Bethany Clarke. Ms Clarke said they “drank free shots offered by one of the bars” and added that “six of us who drank from the same place are in hospital currently with methanol poisoning”.
Two young Danish women Anne-Sofie Orkild Coyman and Freja Vennervald Sorensen, as well as the only male, a 57-year-old American, James Louis Hutson, also died.
At least 12 other foreign tourists were hospitalised after consuming the tainted drinks from the same guesthouse.
The deaths prompted governments in the US and UK to issue travel warnings to its citizens visiting the country in recent days. The UK urged its nationals travelling to Laos to only consume alcohol from licensed liquor stores and “take care if [drinks are] offered, particularly for free, or when buying spirit-based drinks”.
The idyllic town of Vang Vieng in central Laos which is surrounded by limestone mountains, at the centre of an international scandal after becoming a famous destination for young western backpackers for what is called “tubing”, where tourists ride a large, inflated rubber tyre tubes down the Nam Song River, taking halts at bars along the way.
It has earned the reputation as a destination on the Southeast Asian “Banana Pancake Trail” for its cheap bars and wild parties.
Methanol, a tasteless and odourless liquid, is sometimes added to liquor as a cheaper alternative to ethanol and has been blamed for mass deaths in Asia.
In 2012, around 50 people were killed in Cambodia after party-goers drank rice wine contaminated by methanol.
Between 2018 to 2019, at least 40 people have died in Philippines after drinking palm liquor- laced with methanol.
China warns ‘no one will win’ if Trump starts trade war
China shot back at Donald Trump after the incoming US president pledged to impose heavy import tariffs on the Asian nation, along with Canada and Mexico, saying it could trigger a trade war that “no one will win”.
Mr Trump claimed he would immediately after his inauguration on 20 January sign an executive order imposing a 25 per cent tariff on all goods coming from Mexico and Canada if the two countries did not take steps to curb the alleged flow of drugs and migrants into the US.
He outlined an “additional 10 per cent tariff, above any additional tariffs” on China, to curb the alleged smuggling of the synthetic opioid fentanyl into the US.
“Representatives of China told me that they would institute their maximum penalty, that of death, for any drug dealers caught doing this but, unfortunately, they never followed through,” the Republican wrote on his social media app Truth Social.
A Chinese embassy spokesperson in Washington responded that Beijing believed trade and economic cooperation between the two nations was mutually beneficial.
“No one will win a trade war or a tariff war,” Liu Pengy was quoted as saying by Reuters.
China had taken several steps since 2023 when it agreed to curtail the export of items related to the production of fentanyl, a leading cause of drug overdoses in the US, he added.
“All these prove that the idea of China knowingly allowing fentanyl precursors to flow into the United States runs completely counter to facts and reality,” the spokesperson said.
The National Center for Health Statistics estimates that at least 74,700 people in the US died due to fentanyl overdose in 2023. President Joe Biden had repeatedly called on Beijing to do more to stop the production of ingredients used in fentanyl and over the years dramatically increased tariffs on Chinese products.
Mr Trump previously pledged to end China’s most-favored-nation trading status and slap tariffs on imports from the country in excess of 60 per cent, much higher than those imposed during his first term.
China is the main supplier of imports to the US, accounting for over 16 per cent of the goods brought from abroad. The Chinese imports to the US range from finished products to components and raw materials that are used across virtually every American industry.
The US received imports worth $427bn (£340bn) from China last year and exported goods worth $148bn (£118bn ) to the Asian giant.
Mr Trump’s threatened new tariff would appear to violate the terms of the US-Mexico-Canada Agreement on trade (USMCA). The deal, which Mr Trump signed into law, took effect in 2020, and continued the largely duty-free trade between the three countries. Canada and the US at one point imposed sanctions on each others’ products during the rancorous talks that eventually led to USMCA.
Mr Trump will have the opportunity to renegotiate the agreement in 2026, when a “sunset” provision will force either a withdrawal or talks on changes to the pact.