For days, Donald Trump and his White House team had insisted they were fully committed to their decision to impose sweeping “reciprocal” tariffs on dozens of countries. They even derided a report on Tuesday that said the president was considering a 90-day pause – news that triggered a brief stock market surge.

But now that pause on higher tariff rates, with a few notable exceptions, is a reality. The reordering of the global economic order is on hold, and Trump’s promise of a golden age of American manufacturing will have to wait.

The White House has said that going big on tariffs and then hitting the pause button, before entering negotiations with individual countries, was the plan all along.

“We’ve had more than 75 countries contact us, and I imagine, after today, there will be more,” Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told reporters shortly after the announcement.

That framing from the White House is not surprising, of course. And it is difficult to ignore the investor panic, tumbling bond market and growing chorus of Republican criticism and public disapproval that preceded the announcement.

So was it a strategic retreat in the face of unexpected resistance, or yet another example of Trump’s “art of the deal” negotiating strategy at work?

It didn’t take long for Trump’s aides – many of the same people who said he would never back down – to fan out and celebrate the president’s move.

Trade adviser Peter Navarro said Trump’s tariff situation “unfolded exactly the way it should”.

“You clearly failed to see what President Trump is doing here,” press secretary Karoline Leavitt told a crowd of gathered reporters. “The entire world is calling the United States of America.”

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They were less clear about the details of Trump’s tariff suspension, announced via a post on his Truth Social website. Did the reprieve in higher tariffs apply to the EU? Were Mexico and Canada, which had avoided the original 10% baseline tariffs, somehow now get included? Were tariffs targeting specific sectors affected?

Ultimately, the White House provided some clarity on these questions – but for hours US trading partners were left to scrutinise Trump’s Truth Social post and glean details from answers to questions shouted by reporters at press gaggles.

On Wednesday afternoon, Trump acknowledged that the markets had looked “pretty glum” and that “people were getting a little queasy” – a reflection that undercut some of the bravado he expressed over the past week and could hint at the real reason for his tariff change of course.

Earlier in the day, he was on Truth Social, urging people to “BE COOL!” and promising that “everything is going to work out”. And on Monday he lashed out at what he called “panicans” – a party based on “weak and stupid people” who weren’t patient with his efforts.

In the end, however, it was Trump who made an abrupt change of course.

He insisted, however, that his tariff announcement was one that had to be made, and that any economic disruptions reflected a sickness that had been allowed to fester in the American economy.

Democrats, meanwhile, painted a less rosy picture. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer accused Trump of “governing by chaos”.

“He is reeling, he is retreating, and that is a good thing,” he said.

In the end, the thought process behind Trump’s decision may not really matter.

The reality is that the US is now making nice – or at least nicer – with nations that had faced their retaliatory trade fire, even though Trump is still imposing a 10% across the board tariff that by itself would have been huge news just a few weeks ago.

It is enough of a step down for the stock market to bounce back, however, and Trump is now leaning into a trade war with China which he hit with 125% tariffs.

That will have global economic repercussions of its own, but it is more in line with recent American foreign policy – including that of Democratic President Joe Biden – as it seeks to constrain Chinese ambitions.

The big unknown, however, is whether Trump’s actions over the past week – setting allies scrambling and threatening the established global order – will have made such a strategy more difficult to pursue.

And in 90 days, when Trump’s pause expires, this week’s economic drama and uncertainty could begin all over again.

“The best salesman in history.” This was what Donald Trump once called Volodymyr Zelensky because of the amount of aid the US has given Ukraine.

Whether or not a fair comparison, Zelensky’s role in keeping his country in the spotlight and convincing allies to invest has certainly been crucial for Ukraine’s fight.

His transformation from prime-time comedian to wartime president has long been cast – it dates back to 2022 when he decided to remain in Kyiv as Russian troops closed in. That decision meant Ukraine would go on to defend itself to this day.

In the years since, I’ve stood across from him in person dozens of times, and Zelensky now casts a more authoritative, perhaps battle-hardened figure, moulded partly by his increased isolation on the international stage.

But with the unpredictability of Trump’s second term – not least following the pair’s Oval Office bust-up in February – Zelensky may now have to transform again.

Politically it is no longer a story of oppressor versus oppressed. Rather, it is muddied by the dual challenge of voicing an appetite for peace whilst protecting his country’s interests.

But is a man used to having so much authority at home and being so influential abroad really going to stage a second big transformation, shifting his focus to Trump-era diplomacy? Or will he decide the best way of standing up for Ukraine is to yield little?

Before Trump’s chapter two began, Ukraine’s leader had effectively lobbied for western support. He appealed for air defences, tanks, rockets and fighter jets, with nations such as Germany hesitating over fears of the war escalating, before yielding to his requests.

His message was rigid and he was successful in procuring support.

“Zelensky was very clever and calculated in the early days of the war,” says Ed Arnold from defence and security think tank, Royal United Services Institute (Rusi).

His decision go to the Munich security conference two weeks before the invasion, despite being advised that this would be a security risk, was pivotal, argues Mr Arnold.

“It personalised support to Ukraine within the minds of people who personally attended.”

Serhiy Leshchenko, an advisor to Zelensky’s office, explains: “We have to be visible to the world. If public opinion is on Ukraine’s side, there is a better chance to get help from the international community.”

Leshchenko points to Zelensky’s daily video addresses, which he has created since start of the invasion. “It’s unusual to be so open.”

Ukraine’s victory in the battle of Kyiv cemented Zelensky as a symbol of the country’s survival, and boosted his case for continued military aid from western allies.

Later in 2022, Zelensky was able to demonstrate the difference their supplies were making when swathes of Ukrainian territory, including the city of Kherson, were liberated. He had initial success with European allies.

“They are invested in Zelensky personally and Ukraine,” says Mr Arnold. “He’s gone through four UK prime ministers since the start of the war … and they’ve all signed new declarations with Ukraine, again through Zelensky.

“He’s been able to weather the changes in national politics within Europe throughout his tenure.”

But when further successes failed to materialise, Zelensky’s message did not change – and as time went on, this would be to his detriment.

After Ukraine’s failed counter-offensive in the summer of 2023, for example, the merits of supporting Kyiv were increasingly questioned by an influential minority of US Republicans and pleas were starting to be passed over in some quarters.

Maria Zolkina, head of regional security and conflict studies at the Democratic Initiatives Foundation, a Kyiv-based think tank, believes Zelensky is partly responsible.

“He and his close circle relied on the logic that they must always be demanding when speaking with their partners – pushing the argument that Ukraine simply needs something. That worked really well during 2022, but with the US and others this kind of messaging stopped working in 2023,” she argues.

“But his diplomacy really didn’t adjust quickly enough.”

On 27 September 2024, in a lobby in New York, things truly changed for Ukraine. Only the driving force was not approaching Russian armour but the political reincarnation of Ukraine’s biggest ally: the US.

On that day, just over a month before the US Presidential election, Zelensky had a last minute meeting with Trump in Trump Tower.

Tensions between the pair had heightened before this meeting: Zelensky had claimed a few days earlier that Trump didn’t “really know how to end the war”, after he asserted he could do it in “one day”.

After the Trump Tower meeting, the two men emerged looking awkward.

Despite announcing a “common view” of wanting to end the war, their body language suggested a lack of chemistry.

The pair would not meet again until five months later in the Oval Office, where their now famous encounter would be a diplomatic disaster for Kyiv.

“Trump should have liked him,” says Vadym Prystaiko, who was present when the pair first met after Zelensky’s election win in 2019. “Zelensky saw Trump as more or less as himself, as a media guy who moved into politics, who was anti-establishment,” he says.

Mr Prystaiko was Ukraine’s ambassador to the UK, before he was sacked in 2023. Kyiv gave no official reason for the dismissal, but it came after Mr Prystaiko criticised Zelensky’s response to a row over gratitude for British military aid. He said there had been a “little bit of sarcasm” in his president’s response, which he believed was “unhealthy”.

“Zelensky has never been a diplomat,” Mr Prystaiko adds. “He has never been a usual political leader who kisses babies and shakes hands.”

“The relationship with Trump is like a rollercoaster,” says Volodymyr Fesenko, director at the Pento Center for Political Studies. “Sometimes there is constructive cooperation, and then, all of a sudden, some kind of crisis appears.”

Then there is their war of words. Trump has blamed Zelensky for starting the war, calling him a “dictator”, while Ukraine’s leader accused his US counterpart of “living in a Russian disinformation space”.

While Mr Fesenko believes Zelensky is continually changing tactics to find a working relationship with Washington, Ms Zolkina believes the issues go deeper.

“There is a triangle between the US administration, the Kremlin and Kyiv,” she claims. “Ukraine is considered to be a weaker part of this triangle. For Trump, Zelensky is not in the same league, and that’s the problem.”

When it came to the now infamous Oval Office meeting with Trump and his Vice President JD Vance, this was the first time I’d seen Zelensky seemingly run out of political rope as he was accused of “not showing enough gratitude” and “playing with World War Three”.

His defensive body language, the folding of his arms for example, also seemed new.

Zelensky has always appeared comfortable hosting or visiting other leaders. He is at ease on a stage and often injects timely humour — but this was different.

A mineral agreement, in which Zelensky had originally suggested trading a portion of Ukraine’s mineral resource wealth for continued military aid, was never signed, and has since evolved into a less favourable proposal for Kyiv.

The US would also briefly pause its military aid and intelligence sharing to ensure Ukraine danced to its tune.

But the official view from some is that the Oval Office meeting was not a calamity.

“Nobody took it as the end of something,” claims Ihor Brusylo, the deputy head of the Presidential Office, who travelled to the White House with Zelensky. “We discussed how to move forward. It was not a disaster.”

When the US National Security Advisor Mike Waltz told them the meeting was over, “we just shrugged our shoulders and decided to go back to the hotel,” he recalls.

“My presumption is that on a personal level, they [Trump and Zelensky] get on well,” he adds. “They understand each other better, and are frank and honest.”

Whatever the truth about their relationship behind closed doors, there have been signs of a willingness to bend from Zelensky since that meeting – European allies are said to have convinced him to subsequently take a more compliant tone, because of the inescapable truth that they, and Ukraine, still need the US to combat an aggressive Russia.

Yet others argue more bend still is needed.

“The war changes everyone, it has changed us all in some sense. But I don’t think fundamentally Zelensky has changed – for good or bad in some instances,” says Olga Onuch, professor of Comparative and Ukrainian Politics at the University of Manchester.

“It is very clear that certain actors have decided it’s difficult to negotiate with Zelensky. Why? Because he has red lines that he is sticking to.”

Mr Brusylo agrees. “It is very difficult to bend Zelensky,” he says. “It’s like watching a spring, the more you press, the bigger the pushback.”

And yet whenever Ukraine is attacked, politically or diplomatically, increased political unity follows. The Oval Office clash was no exception, as Zelensky’s popularity rating soared to around 70%.

“Zelensky is very powerful, and his authority is made up of himself and a certain circle of people,” argues Ms Zolkina.

Orysia Lutsevych, head of the Ukraine Forum at Chatham House says it’s interesting how Ukrainians rallied around Zelensky after the Oval Office, almost like they took it as a personal insult of Ukrainian statehood.

“People rally around him, what he represents and how he behaves”.

Mr Prystaiko argues if the Americans wanted him to be replaced “they’ve shot themselves in the foot as he might easily be re-elected”.

Some political experts, like Ms Zolkina, do not think this is a certainty. “I don’t think he understands that this boost is a direct reaction to what Trump is doing, not his personal position,” she says.

“He has pretty strong political ambitions for a second term, and is pretty politically egocentric, as all leaders are at his level.”

Prof Onuch does not think that pursuit of political power alone motivates Zelensky. “[He is] much more of a careful and considered and tactical political operator than people give him credit for”.

Still, imagining a Zelensky second term can be difficult, simply because of the sheer demands of the job. Even post-war challenges would be considerable.

For now, Mr Arnold suspects that an exhausted Zelensky would not want to stand again and suggests that he may want a way out from at least the frontline politics.

As for the near-term, Zelensky cannot afford another Oval Office. So, given that Trump is a keen player, will Ukraine’s leader ever join him for a round of golf?

“He is a quick learner,” says his Mr Brusylo. “When there is a need to play golf, I’m sure he will tackle this task.”

Germany’s conservatives under Friedrich Merz have reached a deal with the Social Democrats to govern Europe’s biggest economy, five months after the previous government collapsed.

Merz, 69, said their agreement sent “a strong and clear signal” to Germans and the EU that they would get “a strong government capable of action”.

Germany was already in recession before it was buffeted by economic turbulence, caused by US President Donald Trump’s trade tariffs.

“The key message to Donald Trump is Germany is back on track,” said the chancellor-in-waiting, promising to fulfil defence commitments and revive economic competitiveness.

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Merz and his coalition partners have been under intense pressure to put an end to Germany’s political limbo since his Christian Democrats won federal elections in February.

He has also just seen his party overtaken in an opinion poll by the far-right, anti-immigration Alternative for Germany (AfD).

Announcing the government deal, Merz promised to reform and stabilise Germany, with a focus on migration, the economy and defence.

“Europe can rely on Germany,” he said, promising “a strong plan to bring our country to the forefront again”.

He will have to wait for the week starting 5 May for the new parliament to elect him as chancellor, but should have no problem with a 13-seat majority.

The coalition parties had already signalled their urgency last month, when they pushed through significant reform of Germany’s strict debt rules.

Such changes mean the new government will be able to plough significant investment into the military and the country’s crumbling infrastructure.

Included in Wednesday’s agreement were a series of measures to “control and largely end irregular migration”, and impose border controls aimed at addressing one of the big concerns of voters in the February election.

The AfD complained that the plans did not go far enough, accusing Merz of capitulating to the Social Democrats.

In a recent report to parliament, Germany’s armed forces commissioner highlighted dramatic shortages in the military across the board, from ammunition and soldier numbers to dilapidated barracks.

Another significant part of the coalition deal is for defence spending to be increased, and for boosting the strength of the military.

Although there will be no conscription, Merz said the coalition was aiming to follow a “Swedish model” of voluntary military service.

“We hope that with enough volunteers, we will also be able to achieve an expansion of the Bundeswehr [German armed forces],” he said.

Merz also promised “comprehensive support” to Ukraine.

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Although his government will feature almost entirely new names – Merz himself has never been a cabinet minister – there will be continuity at the defence ministry.

Boris Pistorius, the Social Democrat defence minister in the outgoing government, is expected to remain in post.

This will be the fifth so-called grand coalition (GroKo) – involving the big parties of the centre right and centre left since World War Two – but the parties were at pains to say it would not be like any previous government.

With Germany in economic recession, though, one leading politician on the populist left, Sahra Wagenknecht, said they offered no answer either to Germany’s economic crisis or the trade war.

She said Germany was threatened with a third and fourth year in recession, which she dubbed “Merzession”.

Merz said he was confident that the coalition deal would be approved by their respective parties and they would be able to get to work in early May.

Meanwhile, an Ipsos poll on Wednesday put Merz’s conservatives in second place on 24% support, a point behind Alternative for Germany (AfD), whose co-leader Alice Weidel hailed the survey as unprecedented, and promised that “political change will come”.

Suddenly, Donald Trump’s trade war is in much sharper focus.

Rather than a fight on all fronts against the world, this now looks far more like a fight on familiar Trumpian territory: America v China.

The 90-day pause on the higher “retaliatory” tariffs levied on dozens of countries still leaves a universal across-the-board tariff of 10% in place.

But China – which ships everything from iPhones to children’s toys and accounts for around 14% of all US imports – has been singled out for much harsher treatment with an eye-watering rate of 125%.

Trump said the increase was due to Beijing’s readiness to retaliate with its own 84% levy on US goods, a move the president described as showing a “lack of respect”.

But for a politician who first fought his way to the White House on the back of an anti-China message, there is much more to this than simple retaliation.

For Trump, this is about the unfinished business of that first term in office.

“We didn’t have the time to do the right thing, which we’re doing now,” he told reporters.

The aim is nothing less than the upending of an established system of global trade centred on China as the factory of the world, as well as the once widely held view that underpinned it – the idea that more of this trade was, in and of itself, a good thing.

To understand just how central this is to the US president’s thinking, you need to go back to the time before anyone ever thought of him as a possible candidate for office, let alone a likely winner.

In 2012, when I first reported from Shanghai – China’s business capital – increased trade with the country was seen by almost everyone – global business leaders, Chinese officials, visiting foreign governments and trade delegations, foreign correspondents and learned economists – as a no brainer.

It was boosting global growth, providing an endless supply of cheap goods, enriching China’s army of new factory workers increasingly embedded in global supply chains, and providing lucrative opportunities to multinational corporations selling their wares to its newly minted middle classes.

Within a few of years of my arrival, China had surpassed the US to become the world’s biggest market for Rolls Royce, General Motors and Volkswagen.

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There was a deeper justification, too.

As China got richer, so the theory went, Chinese people would begin to demand political reform.

Their spending habits would also help China transition to a consumer society.

But the first of those aspirations never happened, with China’s ruling Communist Party only tightening its grip on power.

And the second one didn’t happen fast enough, with China not only still dependent on exports, but openly planning to become ever more dominant.

Its infamous policy blueprint – published in 2015 and entitled Made in China 2025 – set out a huge state-backed vision of becoming a global leader in a number of key manufacturing sectors, from aerospace to ship building to electric vehicles.

And so it was that just one year later, a complete political unknown began an outsider-run for US president, making the case repeatedly on the campaign trail that China’s rise had hollowed out the American economy, driven rustbelt decline and cost blue-collar workers their livelihoods and dignity.

Trump’s first-term trade war broke the mould and shattered the consensus. His successor, President Joe Biden, kept much of his tariffs on China in place.

And yet, even though they have undoubtedly caused China some pain, they have not done much to change the economic model.

China now produces 60% of the world’s electric cars – a large proportion of them made by its own homegrown brands – and 80% of the batteries that power them.

So, now Trump is back, with this tit-for-tat escalation on levies.

It would, arguably, be the biggest shock ever delivered to the established global trading system, were it not for all the other on-again off-again tariff measures the US president has rolled out in recent days.

What happens next depends on two key questions.

Firstly, whether China takes up that offer to negotiate.

And secondly, assuming it eventually does, whether China is willing to make the kind of major concessions that America is looking for, including a complete overhaul of its export driven economic model.

In answering them, the first thing to say is that we are in completely unchartered territory, so we should be wary of anyone who says they know how Beijing is likely to react.

But there are certainly reasons to be cautious.

China’s vision of its economic strength – one based on strong exports and a tightly protected domestic market – is now closely bound up with its idea of national rejuvenation and the supremacy of its one-party system.

Its tight control over the information sphere means it will be unlikely to drop its barriers to American technology companies, for example.

But there is a third question, and it is one for America to answer.

Does the US still believe in free trade? Donald Trump often suggests that tariffs are a good thing, not merely as a means to an end, but as an end in themselves.

He talks about the benefit of a protectionist barrier for America, in order to stimulate domestic investment, encourage American companies to bring those foreign supply chains back home, and raise tax revenues.

And if Beijing believes that is indeed the primary purpose of the tariffs, it may decide there is nothing to negotiate anyway.

Rather than championing the idea of economic co-operation, the world’s two biggest superpowers may find themselves locked in a fight for winner-takes-all economic supremacy.

If so, that really would mark a shattering of the old consensus, and a very different, possibly very dangerous, future.

US shares have rocketed after US President Donald Trump said he would suspend steep tariffs on goods from most countries, and instead impose a 10% import tax rate.

The White House said it was backing off on higher levies for trade partners that had agreed to negotiate, although Trump said he would raise tariffs on goods from China even further, to at least 125% “effective immediately”.

The S&P 500 soared 9.5% in the biggest one-day rally since 2008, following days of turmoil sparked by the tariffs.

Trump’s decision came less than 24 hours after the latest round of tariffs had come into force, hitting key trade partners, such as Vietnam, which saw its imports facing a new levy of 46%.

The duties, which the president had announced last week, were higher and more far-reaching than many on Wall Street had anticipated.

In the aftermath of the announcement, the S&P plunged more than 10% and many analysts warned of the rising risk of economic recession in the US and globally.

By Wednesday, the fears had hit the bond market, where investors started dumping US government debt.

“Although President Donald Trump was able to resist the stock market sell-off, once the bond market began to weaken too, it was only a matter of time before he folded,” said Paul Ashworth, chief North America economist for Capital Economics.

He said he expected Trump to return to the plan for a 10% universal tariff that he called for in his presidential campaign last year, though warned that it would take time for for the US and China to work out a deal.

“It is difficult to see either side backing down in the next few days,” he said. “But we suspect that talks will eventually happen, although a full rollback of all the additional tariffs applied since Inauguration Day appear unlikely.”

The Dow ended the day up more than 7.8% and the Nasdaq skyrocketed more than 12%.

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Companies such as Nike, which makes roughly half its footwear in Vietnam, jumped 11%, while Apple soared roughly 15%.

Despite the gains on Wednesday, the leading indexes in the US remained lower than they were before Trump’s announcement, with the S&P 500 off about 3% and down more than 8% for the year.

The levies on goods from China, America’s third largest supplier of imports, remain an economic challenge.

The country sent more than $400bn in goods to the US last year and was the source of an estimated 60% of footwear imports and roughly 36% of clothing imports in January, according to the American Apparel and Footwear Association.

Before Trump’s announcement, the National Retail Federation had warned that shipments handled by US ports in May were likely to be 20% lower than a year earlier due to the tariffs.

In appearances after his decision on Wednesday, Trump said that he hoped to strike a deal with China, and was also considering granting exemptions to tariffs for individual companies, a shift from earlier comments.

“I saw last night where people were getting a little queasy,” he said, acknowledging the concerns, though he has signalled he remains committed to duties on key strategic sectors, such as cars, steel and aluminium, and is eyeing other industries such as pharmaceuticals and lumber.

His decision to offer a respite from the so-called reciprocal duties followed rising political pressure in Washington and from other influential figures that had backed him during last year’s presidential campaign, including Tesla boss Elon Musk, billionaire Bill Ackman and Barstool Sports founder Dave Portnoy.

But the abrupt climbdown still caught many off-guard.

Almost at the same time as Trump posted his move on social media, Goldman Sachs issued a report predicting a recession in the US economy triggered by the steep duties.

Two hours later, the bank said it was reverting to its earlier forecast, which, even assuming lower tariffs than the president had announced last week, expected minimal growth this year and put the odds of a recession at 45%.

Mr Ackman, who had earlier called for a 90-day tariff pause, praised the president on social media: “Thank you on behalf of all Americans,” he said.

The corner shop Ramji Dharod has manned for over six decades is now on the brink of closure.

The store sits in a bylane in the central Indian city of Mumbai’s busy shopping precinct, and has served the community for 75 years.

Dharod began coming to the shop with his father when he was just 10. These days, he mostly sits idle, waiting for an occasional customer to walk in.

Behind him, cardboard boxes of unsold biscuit packets and snacks show a “stock clearance sale” sign posted on them.

“I wouldn’t get a minute to breathe a few years ago, but now I rarely get anyone coming,” says the septuagenarian wryly. “They are all shopping online. I’ve decided to retire and down the shutters.”

As 10-minute online deliveries by “quick commerce” apps like Zomato, BlinkIt and Zepto pervade urban India, hundreds of thousands of neighbourhood stores across cities have closed down.

A lobby group of consumer product distributors estimated that number to be 200,000 last October, while the municipal body of the southern city of Chennai estimated 20% of small grocers and 30% of larger departmental stores had shut down in the city in the past 5 years.

Sunil Kenia who runs a provision store right beside Dharod’s shop says he’s still in business only because his family owns the shop. Those on rent are no longer able to stay afloat, he says.

“It started going downhill after the Covid lockdowns. Business is at 50% of what we did before the pandemic,” Kenia told the BBC.

Most of his revenue now comes from wholesale customers – hawkers or those selling street-side snacks. The retail customer has all but “vanished”, he says, because of the convenience of mobile deliveries.

Mumbai-based graphic designer Monisha Sathe is among the millions of urban Indians who’ve stopped their weekly run to the market because of the ease of quick commerce.

“Lugging groceries back home was a big pain,” says Sathe. And occasionally, when she took out her car, navigating narrow market lanes and finding a parking slot would be a challenge.

Sathe says she misses the human interaction she had with the grocers and vegetable vendors and even the variety of fresh produce on sale – but for her, the balance still tilts in favour of online deliveries because of how much easier it has made her life.

A recent survey by consultancy PwC shows some 42% of urban consumers in India’s big cities think like Sathe, especially preferring quick delivery for their urgent needs. And these shifts in buying behaviour have led to three out of 10 retailers reporting a negative impact on their business, with a 52% drop in essential goods sales.

But to what extent is quick commerce really hollowing out the Indian high street?

There’s no doubt general trade – which includes grocery stores, corner shops and even big retail outlets – has come under threat, says Ankur Bisen, a partner at Technopak retail advisory. But at least for now “quick commerce is still a three-four city story”, he says. Nearly all of their sales come from these cities.

Lightning fast deliveries bucked the global trend and became successful in India largely due to a large concentration of people staying in urban clusters.

They are serviced through low-rent “dark stores” – or small shops dedicated to delivery and not open to the public – in densely populated areas, enabling economies of scale.

But the precarious nature of demand and fragmented demographics of smaller towns could make it expensive for quick commerce players to expand and make money beyond the metros, says Mr Bisen.

There’s little doubt though that these online deliveries will disrupt trade in the longer run.

Bain and Company expects quick commerce to grow at over 40% annually through to 2030, driven by expansion across “geographies”.

And this has made traditional retail nervous.

Trade organisations – like the Confederation of All India Traders, or the All India Consumer Products Distributors Federation which calls itself the voice of India’s 13m retailers – have made urgent and repeated pleas to the government against this breakneck expansion.

They allege that these companies are using billions of dollars in venture capital funds to engage in anti-competitive practices like “predatory pricing” or “deep discounting” which has further distorted the playing field for mom-and-pop shops.

The BBC spoke to several small retailers who shared these concerns. Mr Bisen too agreed there’s evidence of such practices in the clusters that quick commerce companies operate.

Swiggy, Zepto and Blinkit, who primarily control this market, did not agree to comment on the BBC’s queries on these allegations.

But a source within one of the quick commerce companies told the BBC the discounting was done by traders on the platform and not by them.

The source also said that contrary to the binary narrative of the “big guy versus small guy”, online deliveries were solving real-world challenges for people for whom going to the market was a “traumatic” experience.

“Think of women or senior citizens – they don’t want to be harassed or navigate potholes and traffic,” the source said. “Also consider the small brands that sell on our platform – they never get shelf space in physical shops where only the big names are displayed. We’ve democratised the market.”

Analysts say, the sheer diversity of India in terms of its stages of development, levels of income and infrastructure will mean that in the end all retail models – small corner shops, organised big retailers and quick commerce platforms – will cohabit in the country.

This is not a “winner takes all market”, says Mr Bisen, giving the example of e-commerce which came into India in 2010 and was meant to sound the death knell of local retailers.

Even after all these years, only 4% of all shopping is done online in India.

But the ripples caused by quick commerce should be a warning for physical retailers, say analysts, to improve their marketing and integrate technology to use both online and offline channels to give their consumers a better shopping experience.

Competing with click-of-a-button delivery means it can no longer be business as usual for the millions of corner shops who’ve existed for decades, with little or no innovation.

“This week is Passover – the festival of freedom,” Liri Albag, an Israeli soldier held hostage in Gaza for 15 months by Hamas, told a crowd of thousands gathered in Tel Aviv last weekend. “But what kind of freedom is it when 59 people are still in Hamas hell?”

In recent weeks, powerful voices have joined the fight to bring home Israel’s remaining hostages – those of the captives released during the latest ceasefire deal that began in January and lasted two months.

Despite their ongoing trauma, frailty and grief, a number of ex-hostages have felt compelled to give their harrowing testimony on stage at demonstrations, in long TV interviews or in meetings overseas with world leaders.

They have detailed their own harsh treatment and expressed fears for the fate of others left behind, especially since Israel cut off all humanitarian aid to Gaza at the start of March and restarted its military offensive two weeks later, saying this was to put pressure on Hamas.

Twenty-four of those who have been held captive since the deadly Hamas-led attacks on Israel of 7 October 2023 are still believed to be alive.

Witnessing the collapse of the ceasefire has been unbearable, the former hostages say.

“We have no time. The earth is burning under our feet,” insisted Gadi Moses, an 80-year-old farmer abducted by Palestinian Islamic Jihad from Kibbutz Nir Oz and freed in January, who also spoke at Saturday’s rally in Hostages Square.

“I’m not really here. Only half of me is standing here,” said Omer Wenkert, another former hostage, in his emotive address. “Part of us, part of all of us, is still captive in Gaza.”

He called on Israeli leaders to take action on the hostages saying: “Prime Minister Mr Benjamin Netanyahu, it’s on you to get them back.”

Many of the released hostages want a return to the original ceasefire deal which brought them home in exchange for some 1,800 Palestinians being freed by Israel.

The agreement was meant to see a second phase in which remaining Israeli captives would be returned and the war would end.

However, Israel now rejects this and is pushing instead for more hostages to be freed through an extension of the first phase of the truce.

Hamas has agreed only to an extension involving the release of fewer hostages than Israel will accept, and ultimately wants to return to the original ceasefire framework.

Since appearing on stage, flanked by masked gunmen and looking pale and thin, at a Hamas handover ceremony in Gaza City in February, US-Israeli hostage Keith Siegel has turned into an active campaigner.

He was part of a group of eight ex-hostages that met President Donald Trump in the Oval Office last month – crediting him with securing the recent deal that brought back 25 hostages and the bodies of eight others and urging him to help get ceasefire negotiations back on track.

“It’s urgent and every day that goes on is just more and more suffering and more and more possible death and psychological devastation,” Mr Siegel told 60 Minutes on the US network CBS.

Mr Siegel described how he and others with whom he was initially held – including women and children – had been forced to adjust to life in the tunnels.

“We were gasping for our breath,” he recalled.

He said there was constant abuse: “I witnessed a young woman who was being tortured by the terrorist. I mean literal torture, not just in the figurative sense.”

A prominent former hostage, Yarden Bibas, gave his first interview to 60 Minutes, speaking in English, hoping his powerful story and ceasefire message would reach the US president.

“I’m here because of Trump. I’m here only because of him. I think he’s the only one who can stop this war again,” Mr Bibas said. “He has to convince Netanyahu, he has to convince Hamas, I think he can do it.”

Hamas filmed the anguish of Mr Bibas after telling him in late 2023 that his wife Shiri and two children had been blown up in an Israeli air strike, although Israeli officials later said forensic evidence showed his boys were killed by their captors.

“They were murdered in cold blood, bare hands,” Mr Bibas said, remembering how the men holding him used to taunt him over his family’s fate. “They used to tell me: ‘Ah, it doesn’t matter, you’ll get a new wife, you’ll get new kids, better wife, better kids’.”

The small, red-haired Bibas boys, Ariel and Kfir, have become a symbol of the horror of the events of 7 October.

On the day in February that Yarden Bibas buried them with their mother, after their bodies were returned, thousands of Israelis turned out along the route of the funeral procession to pay their last respects.

Given his ordeal, many were surprised to see Mr Bibas quickly turn to lobbying. But hours after Israel renewed its bombardment of Gaza on 18 March, he joined other former hostages standing in silent protest in Hostages Square.

Mr Bibas told CBS how terrifying it was to be held in a tunnel when Israel’s warplanes struck.

“You don’t know when it’s going to happen and when it happens, you’re afraid for your life,” he said. “The whole earth would move like an earthquake, but underground.”

He explained his constant fear for his best friend, David Cunio, who remains in Gaza with his brother, Ariel.

Mr Cunio’s wife Sharon and children were released in the first truce of the Gaza war in November 2023.

“I lost my wife and kids,” Mr Bibas concluded. “Sharon must not lose her husband.”

Eli Sharabi – like Mr Bibas, Mr Siegel and Mr Moses – was kidnapped from his home next to Gaza.

When he was released, looking gaunt and hollow-eyed after nearly 500 days in captivity, it was clear his captors had not told him what most Israelis already knew – that his British-born wife, Lianne and teenage daughters, Noiya and Yahel, were among some 1,200 people killed on 7 October.

Just three weeks after his release, Mr Sharabi gave a heart-wrenching TV interview to Israel’s Channel 12 TV. He described how he had learnt the fate of his family from a social worker he knew after the Red Cross handed him to the Israeli army.

“I said: ‘Bring me my wife and the girls’,” Mr Sharabi recalled, only for the social worker to respond: “Osnat [his sister] and your Mum will tell you.”

“Obviously there was nothing to tell, she had said it all,” he went on, his voice breaking. “The worst disaster had happened.”

Mr Sharabi – who has since met Trump and addressed the UN Security Council – said he decided he must talk about his experiences even as he was processing his loss because: “It’s very simple, no-one must be left behind.”

He described his painful goodbye to Alon Ohel, a young musician kidnapped from the Nova music festival with whom he was held in an underground cell in Gaza.

“I promised him that I wouldn’t leave him there, that I would fight for him… I told him it’s a matter of days, just days,” he said.

Upon his release, Mr Sharabi and another released hostage were able to give Ohel’s family the first proof that he was alive, even passing his sister a birthday message. However, they have also revealed he is unable to see in one eye due to untreated shrapnel injuries.

Mr Sharabi has laid out how, in order to deal with his long captivity, he went into “survival mode” – a term several former hostages have used – observing: “Survival is made of little steps, little victories.”

He lost 30kg (66lb) and said that, as well as being beaten and humiliated, he felt “impossible” hunger during his captivity. He described how he and the three other hostages with him were given one meal a day and they would divide a single flatbread, or pitta, into quarters to share.

Omer Wenkert, who was also seized from the Nova festival, told Channel 12 how he was kept in a 1m-by-1m cell. The lowest point in his life – he said – was being woken up to get hit with a metal rod to his head on his birthday.

He related one crushing experience when he was desperately hungry and one of his captors told him to turn his back while food was laid out for him.

Then, he said: “There were pittas on the filthy floor on a filthy nylon cover, which was full of sand and fungi, and on top of it a block of cheese with a giant mould growing on it.”

On Fox News Digital, Tal Shoham, narrated how he and two other men – Guy Gilboa-Dalal and Evyatar David, who remain in captivity – were moved in an ambulance that Hamas used for discreetly transporting hostages to a tunnel, to be held with Mr Wenkert. Their toilet was a hole in the ground.

He said they were monitored by cameras, often beaten and randomly deprived of food and sleep.

The guards, he said, continued to dig underground passages even as war raged on. “Hamas never stopped digging tunnels,” Mr Shoham remarked. “Not for a single day.”

The situation was so bad both he and Mr David developed serious infections but were not seen by a doctor.

“My leg turned blue, yellow, and purple with internal bleeding,” he explained. “They gave us blood thinners, fearing we might develop clots from prolonged immobility. Eventually, they realised the issue was malnutrition and provided us with vitamin supplements for seven days. It tasted like dog food, but it dramatically improved our condition.”

Other hostages said they were kept in solitary confinement. Gadi Moses has said he resorted to pacing his cell and solving mental maths problems to deal with this “psychological abuse”.

He told Channel 12: “The depth of the fear, the depth of disconnection from the world, the depth of the unknown – it’s impossible to convey.”

“You start having terrible thoughts,” admitted Omer Shem Tov, who was taken hostage at the Nova festival and also kept in isolation, speaking to Israeli public broadcaster, Kan. “Every day feels like an eternity.”

While Mr Shem Tov praised the Israeli military in his interview, saying it was doing “holy work” in Gaza, he insisted the government had to make a new ceasefire deal and prioritise the hostages. He commented: “I don’t know if you understand it… but you are breaking them.”

Fears for the lives of those still held captive have been heightened since Hamas recently stated it would not move living hostages out of the large areas where the Israeli military has ordered evacuations.

The armed group has previously threatened to execute hostages if Israeli troops approach the locations where they are held. In August, Hamas killed six hostages in Rafah after Israeli forces moved in nearby.

Liri Albag, who was 18 and had finished her army training only two days before she was snatched from her base on the Gaza border, gave her first in-depth TV interview in March.

“The truth is that 7 October feels like one long nightmare, and I’ve been waiting for someone to wake me up, for someone to tell me I was dreaming. But that didn’t happen. Unfortunately, this has all been real,” she told Channel 12.

Like other hostages, she has recounted her terror when she was first taken to Gaza. “[We saw] the Gazan masses surrounding us, standing on the sides, clapping, whistling, dancing… [Palestinians] ran after us, happy, firing in the air. Children, women, old people.”

She said her experience led her to conclude that there are no “innocent bystanders” in Gaza.

Scenes from the territory broadcast on 7 October, combined with the testimony from hostages that has now emerged, have hardened Israeli views when it comes to the suffering of Palestinians.

In the devastating Gaza war triggered by the Hamas attacks, more than 50,846 people have been killed – most of them women, children and the elderly – according to figures from the Hamas-run health ministry, used by the UN.

“As long as the hostage issue is still on the table, the emotional ability of Israelis to empathise with the Palestinians is close to zero,” says Professor Tamar Hermann, an expert on public opinion at the Israel Democracy Institute (IDI).

Nevertheless, the latest surveys do indicate widespread support for a new ceasefire and hostage release deal.

When the IDI recently asked Israelis which of the state’s declared war goals – toppling Hamas or bringing home all the hostages – was more important, 68% said it was the latter, more than in polls last year.

Meeting at the White House on Monday, President Trump and Prime Minister Netanyahu said there were ongoing efforts to restart truce talks and free the hostages.

“We’re trying very hard to get the hostages out. We’re looking at another ceasefire, we’ll see what happens,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office.

“We’re working now on another deal that we hope will succeed,” Netanyahu said. “The hostages are in agony, and we want to get them all out.”

Despite his strong words, many of the former hostages question Netanyahu’s commitment.

For his political survival, the prime minister relies on far-right allies who back continued fighting in Gaza and military occupation of the strip.

Some of the freed hostages have openly accused the Israeli government of betrayal and abandonment and, in some cases, they have drawn vicious online threats for their comments.

No wonder, then, that many continue to pin their hopes on Trump.

Along with Keith Siegel and his wife Aviva, another recently released hostage, Yair Horn, followed Netanyahu to Washington this week. The group had their own set of meetings with high-ranking officials and again met the president.

Mr Horn wore a red hoodie showing his younger brother, Eitan, who is still held in Gaza. The brothers were abducted together from Nir Oz and a haunting video released by Hamas showed them on the eve of Yair’s release – hugging, with Eitan weeping.

A day after Trump’s Netanyahu meeting, Mr Horn stood with the US leader at a Republican event and stressed his gratitude to him.

“It’s really surreal to be here, you know,” he said. “I’m a simple man. I’m running the bar in the kibbutz in Nir Oz, where I lived. And now, I’m here with President Trump, who is running the world.”

Mr Horn asked “humbly” for “the last push” to bring home the remaining hostages, including his brother.

Sounding in despair, he also reflected on how Passover was approaching with the traditional Seder meal. The major Jewish holiday celebrates the exodus of the Israelites from slavery in Egypt and so has special poignancy for the freed hostages and those still captive in Gaza, like Eitan.

“In a few days we mark Passover… it’s a family time,” Mr Horn told the audience, his voice cracking. “I hope my little brother can sit with us at the Seder.”

Hundreds of rescue workers in the Dominican Republic continue to search for survivors of a roof collapse at a nightclub in the capital, Santo Domingo.

At least 124 people died and more than 150 were injured in the incident, which happened just before 01:00 local time (05:00 GMT) on Tuesday at the Jet Set club, officials said.

Head of Emergency Operations Juan Manuel Méndez estimated that his team had “24 to 36 hours left” to try to find survivors under the rubble.

Hundreds of guests were inside the popular venue attending a concert by merengue singer Rubby Pérez.

Pérez, as well as former Major League Baseball players Octavio Dotel and Tony Blanco, and a provincial governor are among those who have been confirmed dead.

Mobile phone footage recorded inside the club, which has been verified by the BBC, shows Pérez on stage singing while the man recording can be heard talking.

“Something fell from the ceiling” the man recording says, while his finger can be seen pointing towards the roof.

In the footage, Pérez can be seen looking towards the area pointed out by the man.

Less than 30 seconds later, a noise can be heard and the recording goes black while a woman is heard shouting “Dad, what’s happened to you?”.

It is not clear how many people exactly were inside the popular venue but estimates range between 500 and 1,000 people.

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio confirmed on X that at least one US national, and multiple legal permanent residents, were killed in the roof collapse.

He said that he and his wife, Jeanette, were “united in prayer” and that the US stands “ready to support our Dominican allies amid this difficult time”.

Emergency workers have demolished one of the walls of the club to better reach those still buried under the rubble.

Relatives desperate for news of their missing loved ones have been holding vigils at the scene.

Among them was Pérez’s daughter Zulinka, who is a backing singer in his merengue band.

She described how she had been on stage, singing with her father when the tragedy unfolded.

Zulinka said she was saved by her husband, who shielded her with his body when the roof collapsed, telling her that she had to make it out “to be there for our son”.

She managed to crawl out from under the rubble and her husband also made it out alive.

Her 69-year-old father, however, remained trapped for hours.

According to Zulinka, he survived the collapse and managed to guide emergency workers to his location.

“They found him singing, he started to sing so they would hear him,” she told local media.

But around 17:00 local time, more than 16 hours after the tragedy had occurred, Zulinka was informed by rescue workers at the scene that her father had died before they could free him.

His manager later confirmed his death.

Nelsy Cruz also survived the initial impact from the falling debris and was among the first to raise the alarm – by directly calling the president of the Dominican Republic.

The first call the 41-year-old governor of Monte Cristi province placed as she lay injured in the debris was to President Luis Abinader, asking him to send the emergency services to save those around her who were also severely injured.

It was only after she had made the call to the president that Nelsy Cruz called her brother, seven-time Major League Baseball All-Star Nelson Cruz, their father said.

She later died in hospital from injuries she had sustained from falling glass.

Octavio Dotel, a former Major League Baseball pitcher, is also among those who died after being pulled from the debris.

The 51-year-old was rescued alive but died on the way to hospital.

It is not yet clear what caused Jet Set’s roof to collapse.

The club was previously a cinema and had been turned into a music venue hosting regular dance music concerts on Monday nights.

The concerts drew people of all ages and on the day of the collapse, a number of athletes, celebrities and politicians were in attendance.

President Abinader has declared three days of national mourning.

King Charles and Queen Camilla have had a private meeting with Pope Francis at the Vatican where he wished them a happy 20th wedding anniversary.

In a statement released by Buckingham Palace, the King and Queen said they were “delighted the Pope was well enough to host them – and to have had the opportunity to share their best wishes in person”.

The meeting took place on the third day of their state visit to Italy and ahead of a state banquet in Rome on Wednesday evening.

It is understood the meeting was only confirmed on Wednesday morning. It came after previous plans for the couple to meet the pontiff in a state visit to the Vatican were postponed because of the Pope’s ill health.

A still picture of the meeting, which lasted 20 minutes, is due to be released on Thursday morning.

The meeting took place on Wednesday afternoon at the Vatican’s Casa Santa Marta, where Pope Francis has been convalescing since being released from Gemelli Hospital.

According to the Vatican, the Pope is showing signs of gradual improvement and he “reciprocated” the King’s “best wishes for a speedy recovery of his health”.

This was a reference to the Pope offering his own best wishes, after the King recently suffered side effects from his cancer treatment.

There was also an exchange of private gifts between Pope Francis and the royal visitors.

The King and Queen have been enjoying a warm welcome on their state visit to Italy, but it was a trip that originally had a significant focus on visiting the Vatican and planned events such as a service at the Sistine Chapel.

That had been no longer been possible after the serious health problems of Pope Francis – but with his health improving the King and Queen had the opportunity for a brief meeting.

After visiting the Pope, King Charles and Queen Camilla spent their wedding anniversary evening at a state banquet in Rome hosted by the President of Italy Sergio Mattarella.

The King joked to his Italian hosts at the Quirinale Palace about laying on such a spectacle for their anniversary.

“I must say it really is very good of you, Mr President, to lay on this small romantic, candle-lit dinner for two..,” the King told the banquet.

There were 150 guests at the dinner, including the singer Andrea Bocelli, chef Giorgio Locatelli, hotelier Rocco Forte and UK Foreign Secretary David Lammy.

Earlier in the day, at the Italian Parliament, Queen Camilla had worn the same outfit she had worn at her civil wedding ceremony in 2005.

The ivory silk dress designed by Anna Valentine had been “repurposed” to wear again for this anniversary day.

The King’s speech at the state banquet, at the Italian presidential palace, touched on a mix of comic and serious themes about the long relationship between the UK and Italy, back to the ancient Romans.

“I for one, have never asked that question, made famous by Monty Python, ‘What have the Romans ever done for us?’,” the King joked.

“We see their imprint on what they knew as Britannia every day – from London to Carmarthen, from York to Hadrian’s Wall.”

But he also warned that “we are living in a very precarious and fragile world” and there was a need to stand up for “values and the liberty we hold so dear”.

“In difficult times, friends stand together,” he told his audience, in a speech that once again referenced the conflict in Ukraine.

The menu for the state banquet, in the splendour of the medieval palace, included bottoni pasta with aubergine caponata, salt encrusted sea bass, fried artichokes and roast potatoes.

That was followed by a fior di latte ice cream cake with raspberries.

This was the King’s second speech of the day, as earlier he had become the first UK monarch to address both houses of the Italian Parliament.

The King received a standing ovation from Italy’s lawmakers, in their ornately-decorated chamber in the Palazzo Montecitorio, with a rallying call to defend shared values and the need to reinforce the military partnership between the UK and Italy.

“We are both European countries,” he said, standing in front of the Italian and European Union flags.

He welcomed that the UK and Italy “stood by Ukraine in her hour of need”, but warned that images of wars were now reverberating across the continent.

“Our younger generations can see in the news every day on their smartphones and tablets that peace is never to be taken for granted,” said the King.

Such threats meant it was important that “Britain and Italy stand today united in defence of the democratic values we share”, he told Parliament.

Delivering some of the speech in Italian, he spoke of the long history between the UK and Italy, going back to the ancient Romans arriving on Britain’s “windswept shores”.

As head of the Commonwealth, he also spoke of the role of Canadian troops in helping to liberate Italy in the Second World War.

The speech went down well with the assembled Parliamentarians – with the applause so long at one point that an Italian official began to thank him, assuming that the King had finished.

The King began the day by meeting Italy’s Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, receiving a ceremonial red-carpet welcome at the Villa Doria Pamphili, on the outskirts of Rome.

The Italian public has given a warm reception to the royal couple on their trip to Italy, including outside the Colosseum, when the King and Queen posed for photos near the ancient site of the Temple of Venus.

There were calls of “Carlo” – Italian for Charles – from crowds waiting to see the royal visitors and local media also seemed interested by their car, the claret coloured State Bentley.

The Royal Family’s official X account marked the wedding anniversary by posting a video which showed guards playing a version of Madness’s 1981 hit It Must Be Love.

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An adventurer who claimed to be the first woman to solo traverse Canada’s largest island has been criticised for her “privilege and ignorance”.

Camilla Hempleman-Adams, from Wiltshire, covered 150 miles (241km) on foot and by ski across Baffin Island, Nunavut, completing the journey on 27 March.

However, members of the native Inuit population said her claim was incorrect and came from a “dangerous colonial attitude”, with people there having travelled the same route for generations.

The daughter of adventurer Sir David Hempleman-Adams has since apologised, adding: “It was never my intention to misrepresent any historical achievements or cause distress to local communities.”

The solo trek across Baffin Island took Ms Hempleman-Adams from Qikiqtarjuaq to Pangnirtung, crossing through Auyuittuq National Park.

Ahead of departure, she wrote on her expedition website: “Parks Canada has confirmed that there are no historical records of a female solo attempt from Qikiqtarjuaq to Pangnirtung.”

But Gayle Uyagaqi Kabloona, who is Inuit and based in Ottawa, said this was because crossing the terrain is considered “a normal way of life” for them.

“The article hit people really hard in a very sensitive spot, because of our history and the difficulties we face every day in combatting Western colonialism,” she said.

“This woman is coming here from such a place of privilege and ignorance that it seems dangerous.

“It was almost like she was bringing back news of a new continent to Europe and saying ‘there’s nobody here!’ We were and still are.

“It’s such a clear example of how colonialism benefits from dispossessing indigenous people of their land and writing us out of history.”

In a statement, Ms Hempleman-Adams apologised for the offence caused by her expedition coverage.

“I have deep respect for the land, its people, and their history,” she said.

“I have travelled in this region multiple times and hold immense admiration for its nature, culture and traditions.

“I am truly saddened that the coverage of my journey may have caused concern or upset, and I remain committed to learning from this experience and engaging with the community with the utmost respect.”

Ms Kabloona said the matter had affected the community because many people who lived traditional nomadic lifestyles had now passed away – raising concerns that cultural practices will gradually be lost to time.

She is now in the process of mapping out the route her family has taken for generations while migrating south in spring, towards the caribou hunting grounds.

On one of these annual 186-mile (300km) journeys, Ms Kabloona’s grandmother went into labour and gave birth to her father in a tent along the way.

“Two days later, she got up and carried on walking,” Ms Kabloona said.

“She did that in every single one of her pregnancies, traversed our land, because that is our way of life and always has been.”

Ms Kabloona said she welcomed visitors to the region but disapproved of the “outdated” term “explorer”, as it carried with it connotations of imperialist expansion.

“If you want to come and enjoy the outdoors, please do so,” she said.

“The danger is going back with this colonial attitude and disseminating information like the Inuit don’t have history there.

“Saying you’re the ‘first person’ to do anything in an indigenous country is insulting.

“Show respect to the land and the people who have kept it pristine for your adventures.”

“The Albanian mafia would call me and say: ‘We want to send 500kg of drugs.’ If you don’t accept, they kill you.”

César (not his real name) is a member of the Latin Kings, a criminal drug gang in Ecuador. He was recruited by a corrupt counternarcotics police officer to work for the Albanian mafia, one of Europe’s most prolific cocaine trafficking networks.

The Albanian mafia has expanded its presence in Ecuador in recent years, drawn by key trafficking routes through the country, and it now controls much of the cocaine flow from South America to Europe.

Despite Ecuador not producing the drug, 70% of the world’s cocaine now flows through its ports, Ecuadorean President Daniel Noboa says.

It is smuggled into the country from neighbouring Colombia and Peru – the world’s two largest producers of cocaine.

Police say they seized a record amount of illicit drugs last year, the majority of it cocaine, and that this indicates total exports are on the rise.

The consequences are deadly: January 2025 saw 781 murders, making it the deadliest month in recent years. Many of them were related to the illegal drug trade.

We spoke to people in the supply chain to understand why this crisis is worsening – and how rising European cocaine consumption is fuelling it.

César, 36, first started working with cartels when he was 14 years old, citing poor job opportunities as one factor.

“The Albanians needed someone to solve problems,” he explains. “I knew the port guards, the transport drivers, the CCTV camera supervisors.”

He bribes them to help smuggle drugs into Ecuador’s ports or to turn a blind eye – and the occasional camera.

After cocaine arrives in Ecuador from Colombia or Peru it is stashed in warehouses until his Albanian employers become aware of a shipping container that will be leaving one of the ports for Europe.

Gangs use three main methods to smuggle cocaine into shipments: hiding drugs in cargo before it reaches the port, breaking into containers at the port, or attaching drugs to ships at sea.

Sometimes César has made up to $3,000 (£2,235) for one job, but the incentive is not just money: “If you don’t do a job the Albanians ask for, they’ll kill you.”

César says he feels some regret over his role in the drugs trade, particularly what he calls the “collateral victims”.

But he believes that the fault lies with the consumer countries. “If consumption keeps growing, so will trafficking. It will be unstoppable,” he says, adding: “If they fight it there, it will end here.”

Ordinary workers, not just gang members, get caught in this supply chain.

Juan, not his real name, is a truck driver. One day he picked up a tuna shipment to take to the port. He says that something seemed off.

“The first alarm bell was when we went to the warehouse and it only had the cargo, nothing else. It was a rented warehouse, no company name,” he recalls.

“Two months later, I saw on the news that the containers had been seized in Amsterdam, full of drugs. We never knew.”

Some drivers unknowingly transport drugs; others are coerced – if they refuse, they are killed.

European gangs are drawn to Ecuador for its location but also its legal exports, which provide a convenient way to hide illicit cargo.

“Banana exports make up 66% of containers that leave Ecuador, 29.81% go to the European Union, where drug consumption is growing,” explains banana industry representative José Antonio Hidalgo.

Some gangs have even set up fake fruit import or export companies in Europe and Ecuador as a front for illicit activities.

“These European traffickers pose as businessmen,” says “José” (not his real name), a prosecutor who targets organised crime groups and who spoke anonymously due to threats he has received.

One notorious example is Dritan Gjika, accused of being one of the most powerful Albanian mafia leaders in Ecuador.

Prosecutors say he had stakes in fruit export companies in Ecuador, and import companies in Europe, which he used to traffic cocaine. He remains on the run, but many of his accomplices faced convictions after a multinational police operation.

Lawyer Monica Luzárraga defended one of his associates and now speaks candidly about her knowledge of how these networks operate.

“In those years, banana exports to Albania boomed,” she says.

She appears frustrated that authorities did not put two and two together sooner that criminal groups were using this as a front: “The entire economy here is stagnant. Yet one item that has increased in exports is bananas. So, two plus two equals four.”

At Ecuador’s ports, the police and armed forces try to control the situation.

Boats patrol the waters, police scan banana boxes for bricks of cocaine – even police scuba divers search for drugs hidden beneath ships.

Everyone is heavily armed, even those simply guarding banana boxes before they are loaded into shipping containers. This is because if drugs are found during a search, a corrupt port worker would likely be involved, and it could trigger a violent incident.

Despite these efforts, police say the amount of cocaine being successfully smuggled out of Ecuador has reached a record high. Rising demand and economic factors are blamed.

Nearly 300 tonnes of drugs were seized last year – a new annual record, according to Ecuador’s interior ministry.

Major Christian Cozar Cueva of the National Police says that “there has been about a 30% increase in seizures headed for Europe in recent years”.

This increase in cocaine shipments has made it more dangerous for those caught up in the supply chain.

Truck driver “Juan” says the rise of “container contamination” makes him more vulnerable.

He says officials seized a container the day before with two tonnes of drugs: “It used to be kilos, now we talk about tonnes.”

“If you don’t contaminate the containers, you have two options: leave the job or end up dead.”

An economy battered by the Covid pandemic left more Ecuadoreans vulnerable to gang recruitment.

A state that was financially stretched post-pandemic, a security force which had less experience dealing with organised crime, and previously lax visa rules facilitated European gangs’ presence there post-2020.

Monica Luzárraga says 2021 was the year when the “Albanian mafia infiltration took off”.

She says this period coincided with an “influx” of Albanian citizens and a spike in banana exports, including to Albania.

“This is a lucrative business that harms Ecuador and benefits criminal organisations. How can we accept an economy built on suffering?”

This ire toward foreign cartels is unsurprising, given their contribution to rising violence.

But one thing some traffickers and those fighting them agree on: the trade is fuelled by consumers, particularly in Europe, the US and Australia.

UN data shows global cocaine consumption has hit record levels. Its surveys suggest the UK has the world’s second highest rate of cocaine use.

The UK’s National Crime Agency (NCA) estimates the UK consumes about 117 tonnes of cocaine annually and has the biggest market in Europe.

Evidence suggests consumption in the UK is rising.

The UK Home Office’s analysis of wastewater suggests cocaine consumption increased by 7% from 2023 to 2024. NCA operations seized about 232 tonnes of cocaine in 2024, compared with 194 tonnes in 2023.

The NCA’s deputy director of threat leadership, Charles Yates, says this makes the UK the “country of choice” for organised crime groups who profit from the high demand.

He estimates the UK cocaine market is worth around £11bn ($14.2bn), and criminal gangs make about £4bn a year in the UK alone.

Those fighting these gangs in Ecuador, like prosecutor José, say it is down to “countries whose nationals are consumers to exercise greater control” on those financing the trade.

Its victims take many forms.

For Mr Hidalgo it is the banana exporters suffering reputational and economic damage. For Ms Luzárraga, it is “children, adolescents who are being co-opted by criminal gangs”.

“In Europe there are citizens willing to pay large amounts of money to have the drugs they consume. The drugs that are ultimately costing the lives of Ecuadorean citizens.”

The NCA stresses that as well as these “catastrophic” effects on communities along the supply chain, cocaine use is claiming additional casualties in users due to cardiovascular and psychological impacts. Cocaine-related deaths in the UK increased by 30% in 2023 compared to 2022, to 1,118.

The NCA also warns that the drug exacerbates domestic violence.

He is clear law enforcement’s efforts to tackle the supply aren’t enough: “Supply side action on its own is never going to be the answer. What’s really important is changing the demand.”

From drug gang members to the country’s president, this is Ecuador’s message to Europe, too.

President Daniel Noboa, who is standing for a second term in the presidential election run-off on 13 April, has made fighting criminal gangs one of his main priorities and deployed the military to tackle gang-related violence.

He told the BBC: “The chain that ends in ‘UK fun’ involves a lot of violence.”

“What’s fun for one person probably involves 20 homicides along the way.”

Twenty people have been killed in a fire at a nursing home in north-east China, state media report.

The blaze in Chengde city, Hebei province, broke out on Tuesday night local time and was extinguished in about two hours.

Nineteen people survived the fire and were taken to hospital for observation, reports say.

Authorities are investigating the cause of the blaze, and a person in charge of the home has been detained. No other details were immediately available.

On social media, some called for a thorough investigation while others expressed sympathy for the elderly victims.

“Old people already have mobility issues,” one Weibo user wrote. “I can’t imagine how desperate they must have felt during the fire.”

Nursing homes and elderly care facilities have doubled between 2019 and 2024, according to authorities, as China deals with a growing ageing population.

In 2023, 29 people died – many of them elderly – and dozens were injured after a private hospital in Beijing caught fire.

A full-scale trade war with China and the US is in prospect after President Donald Trump imposed tariffs of more than 100% on Chinese goods imports.

China has said it will “fight to the end” rather than capitulate to what it sees as US coercion, and will hike its own tariffs on American goods from 34% to 84% in response to the White House’s latest move.

What does this escalating trade conflict mean for the world economy?

The trade in goods between the two economic powers added up to around $585bn (£429bn) last year.

Though the US imported far more from China ($440bn) than China imported from America ($145bn).

That left the US running a trade deficit with China – the difference between what it imports and exports – of $295bn in 2024. That’s a considerable trade deficit, equivalent to around 1% of the US economy.

But it’s less than the $1tn figure that Trump has repeatedly claimed this week.

Trump already imposed significant tariffs on China in his first term as president. Those tariffs were kept in place and added to by his successor Joe Biden.

Together those trade barriers helped to bring the goods the US imported from China down from a 21% share of America’s total imports in 2016 to 13% last year.

So the US reliance on China for trade has diminished over the past decade.

Yet analysts point out that some Chinese goods exports to the US have been re-routed through south-east Asian countries.

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For example, the Trump administration imposed 30% tariffs on Chinese imported solar panels in 2018.

But the US Commerce Department presented evidence in 2023 that Chinese solar panel manufacturers had shifted their assembly operations to states such as Malaysia, Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam and then sent the finished products to the US from those countries, effectively evading the tariffs.

The new “reciprocal” Trump tariffs imposed on those countries will therefore push up the US price of a wide range of goods ultimately originating in China.

In 2024, the biggest category of goods exports from the US to China were soybeans – primarily used to feed China’s estimated 440 million pigs.

The US also sent pharmaceuticals and petroleum to China.

Going the other way, from China to the US, were large volumes of electronics, computers and toys. A large amount of batteries, which are vital for electric vehicles, were also exported.

The biggest category of US imports from China is smartphones, accounting for 9% of the total. A large proportion of these smartphones are made in China for Apple, a US-based multinational.

The US tariffs on China have been one of the main contributors to the decline in the market value of Apple in recent weeks, with its share price falling by 20% over the past month.

All these imported items to the US from China were already set to become considerably more expensive for Americans due to the 20% tariff the Trump administration has already imposed on Beijing.

Now the tariff has risen to 104%, the impact could be five times greater.

And US imports into China will also go up in price due to China’s retaliatory tariffs, ultimately hurting Chinese consumers in a similar way.

But beyond tariffs, there are other ways for these two nations to attempt to damage each other through trade.

China has a central role in refining many vital metals for industry, from copper and lithium to rare earths.

Beijing could place obstacles in the way of these metals reaching the US.

This is something it has already done in the case of two materials called germanium and gallium, which are used by the military in thermal imaging and radar.

As for the US, it could attempt to tighten the technological blockade on China started by Joe Biden by making it harder for China to import the kind of advanced microchips – which are vital for applications like artificial intelligence – it still can’t yet produce itself.

Donald Trump’s trade advisor, Peter Navarro, has suggested this week that the US could apply pressure on other countries, including Cambodia, Mexico and Vietnam, not to trade with China if they want to continue to exporting to the US.

The US and China together account for such a large share of the global economy, around 43% this year according to the International Monetary Fund.

If they were to engage in an all-out trade war that slowed their growth down, or even pushed them into recession, that would likely harm other countries’ economies in the form of slower global growth.

Global investment would also likely suffer.

There are other potential consequences.

China is the world’s biggest manufacturing nation and is producing far more than its population consumes domestically.

It is already running an almost $1tn goods surplus – meaning it is exporting more goods to the rest of the world than it imports.

And it is often producing those goods at below the true cost of production due to domestic subsidies and state financial support, like cheap loans, for favoured firms.

Steel is an example of this.

There is a risk that if such products were unable to enter the US, Chinese firms could seek to “dump” them abroad.

While that could be beneficial for some consumers, it could also undercut producers in countries threatening jobs and wages.

The lobby group UK Steel has warned of the danger of excess steel potentially being redirected to the UK market.

The spillover impacts of an all-out China-US trade war would be felt globally, and most economists judge that the impact would be highly negative.

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US President Donald Trump has paused his latest round of higher tariffs against some of America’s trading partners.

Taxes on goods imported from 60 countries he had described as the “worst offenders” took effect on 9 April.

But Trump later said those higher rates for some countries would be paused for 90 days, with a blanket 10% tariff to apply in the meantime.

At the same time he hiked tariffs on Chinese products to 125%.

Trump has said tariffs will boost US manufacturing and protect jobs, but economists warn that the move could harm the world economy and push up prices for consumers in the US and around the globe.

Tariffs are taxes charged on goods bought from other countries.

Typically, they are a percentage of a product’s value. For example, a 25% tariff on a $10 (£7.59) product would mean an additional $2.50 (£1.90) charge.

The 125% tariff on Chinese goods means that a $10 product would attract a $12.50 tax on top – driving the total cost up to $22.50.

The companies that bring the foreign goods into the country have to pay the tax to the government.

The money is collected when the imported goods clear US customs.

Firms can choose to pass on some or all of the increased cost to customers.

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For decades, Trump has argued the US should use tariffs to boost its economy.

He says they will encourage US consumers to buy more American-made goods, increase the amount of tax raised and lead to huge levels of investment in the country.

Trump wants to reduce the gap between the value of goods the US buys from other countries and the value of those it sells to them. He argues that America has been taken advantage of by “cheaters” and “pillaged” by foreigners.

The US president has also made other demands alongside tariffs. The first wave announced during his current term targeted China, Mexico and Canada, after he said he wanted them to do more to stop migrants and illegal drugs reaching the US.

Trump has strongly defended his tariff policy but a growing number of influential voices within his Republican Party have joined opposition Democrats and foreign leaders in attacking the measures.

The argument has even split the White House team, with tariff policy sparking a recent personal spat between Elon Musk and Trump’s trade adviser Peter Navarro.

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Trump introduced a minimum 10% tariff on all imports to the US on 5 April.

The UK, Argentina, Australia, Brazil and Saudi Arabia are among the countries whose goods face this “baseline” charge.

Much higher tariffs were initially introduced against 60 other countries on 9 April.

These included 49% on Cambodian products, 46% on Vietnamese imports and 20% on goods from the EU.

Chinese imports were initially due to face 54% tariffs (34% on top of the 20% rate already in place). Trump then increased the total to 104% after China vowed to “fight to the end” and refused to scrap its own retaliatory tariffs of 34% on the US.

Hours after the 104% tariff took effect, China announced it would introduce a significantly higher 84% tax on all US imports from 10 April.

Trump soon hit back, saying the US would increase tariffs on Chinese goods to 125% effective immediately.

For now, Chinese manufacturers – and American consumers – still benefit from a tariff exemption for goods in small parcels sent from China worth less than $800 (£624). However that exemption will also end on 2 May.

These items will be subject to a duty rate of 90% or $75 per item – increasing to $150 per item after 1 June.

• What would a US-China trade war do to the world economy?

White House officials have described the higher tariffs as “reciprocal”.

Reciprocal would mean they were based on the amount countries charge the US in the form of existing tariffs, plus the cost of meeting non-tariff barriers such as regulations.

However, the White House used a different calculation – setting each tariff rate at a level that would eliminate the US’s trade deficit in goods with each country.

And some countries, including the UK, have had tariffs applied even though they buy more from the US than they sell to it.

The White House confirmed that some specific goods are exempt – including copper, pharmaceuticals, semiconductors, energy and “other certain materials that are not available in the United States”.

Trump has said he plans to remove the exemption for pharmaceutical goods to help shift drug production to America, but it is not clear if or when this might happen.

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Trump had also previously announced 25% tariffs on goods from Mexico and Canada, and a 10% tariff on Canadian energy imports before introducing a number of exemptions and delays.

He has also brought in 25% tariffs on all steel and aluminium imports, and foreign-made cars. A 25% tariff on car parts is due to start no later than 3 May.

Trump’s escalation with China has now put a question mark over US trade with the European Union. The EU, too, has approved retaliatory tariffs against the US, which will come into effect on 15 April.

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Many economists expect tariffs to push up prices across a range of imported goods, as firms pass on some or all of their increased costs.

The products affected could include everything from clothing to coffee and alcohol to electronics.

Some firms may also decide to import fewer foreign goods, which could make those which are available more expensive.

The price of goods manufactured in the US using imported components may also rise.

For example, car parts typically cross the US, Mexican and Canadian borders multiple times before a vehicle is completely assembled.

Car prices had already been expected to increase as a result of earlier tariffs.

The cost of a car made using parts from Mexico and Canada alone could rise by $4,000-$10,000 (£3,035 – £7,588) depending on the vehicle, according to analysts at the Anderson Economic Group.

The measures could also damage the US economy.

The chance of a recession rose to 50% after Trump’s announcement on new tariffs, according to former International Monetary Fund (IMF) chief economist Ken Rogoff.

Trump’s top officials have repeatedly played down recession fears, and insisted that the tariffs would be implemented as planned.

• Americans could pay more for these everyday basics under Trump’s new tariffs

Trump’s tariffs announcement has caused significant volatility on global stock markets.

Stock markets are where firms sell shares in their business. They reflect the best guess of what every company in the world is worth and what their future profits will be.

Share prices have been hit because investors think the new tariffs will increase costs and reduce profits.

Many people are affected by stock market falls – even if they don’t invest in shares directly – because of the knock-on effect on pensions, jobs and interest rates.

But after Trump announced the 90-day pause, US markets rebounded sharply.

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The UK exported around £58bn of goods to the US in 2024, mainly cars, machinery and pharmaceuticals.

It was already due to be affected by the earlier tariffs targeting steel, aluminium and car imports.

Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer said “clearly there will be an economic impact” from the 10% tariff. However, he said US-UK trade talks are ongoing, and that he will “fight for the best deal for Britain”.

The UK government has so far not announced any taxes on US imports. However, it is drawing up a list of US products it could hit with retaliatory tariffs.

Following the announcement of tariffs, car maker Jaguar Land Rover said it would “pause” all shipments to the US as it worked to “address the new trading terms”.

Economists have warned US tariffs could knock the UK’s economy off course and make it harder for the government to hit its borrowing rules.

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EU chief Ursula von der Leyen warned that “the consequences will be dire for millions of people around the globe”.

27 EU members approved a list of US products to be taxed in three stages beginning on 15 April, hours before Trump announced his pause and 10% plans.

Italy‘s Giorgia Meloni – a Trump ally – said the reciprocal tariffs were “wrong” but that she would work towards a deal with the US to “prevent a trade war”.

In the Republic of Ireland, Micheál Martin said there was “no justification” for “deeply regrettable” tariffs which benefitted “no-one”.

Canada introduced a 25% tariff on some vehicles from the US on 9 April.

Australia‘s Anthony Albanese said “this is not the act of a friend”.

South Korea‘s acting president Han Duck-Soo said “the global trade war has become a reality”.

Japan said the 24% levy against its products was “extremely regrettable” and could violate World Trade Organization and US-Japan agreements.

China’s finance ministry has announced an 84% tariff on goods imported from the US, retaliating against recent levies imposed by the White House.

The hike in tariffs, from 34%, came after US President Donald Trump’s 104% tariff on Chinese goods came into force on Wednesday – they were later increased to 125%.

Trump said the 21% rise was “based on the lack of respect” China had shown, and that it would be “effective immediately”.

Beijing, which has said its charges would take effect from Thursday, urged other countries to unite against Trump’s tariffs as the country’s exporters reel from the crippling new levies.

“Global unity can triumph over trade tyranny,” declared an editorial in the state-run newspaper China Daily, noting Beijing’s collaborations with Japan, South Korea and other Asian economies.

A separate piece called for the European Union to work with it to “uphold free trade and multilateralism”.

The US’s trade war with China continued to escalate on Wednesday. Hours after Trump’s highest tariffs on a raft of countries came into force, China retaliated with its own 84% levy on US imports.

European markets dropped shortly after the announcement, with the FTSE 100 falling by 3.3% and Germany’s Dax 4%.

Trump later took to his Truth Social platform to say that, in return, he was upping the US’s levies on China to 125%.

“At some point, hopefully in the near future, China will realise that the days of ripping off the USA, and other Countries, is no longer sustainable or acceptable,” the US president wrote.

He also announced a 90-day pause on higher tariffs for dozens of countries -except China – saying this was because those nations had not “at my strong suggestion, retaliated in any way, shape, or form against the United States”.

Beijing “firmly opposes and will never accept such hegemonic and bullying practices”, foreign ministry spokesperson Lin Jian told reporters on Wednesday – before the latest hike from Washington.

The tariffs come at a difficult time for China’s sluggish economy: domestic consumption remains weak and exports are still a major driver of growth.

The sweeping nature of Trump’s tariffs has also left Chinese businesses scrambling to adjust their supply chains – with most countries affected, firms say it’s hard to find a way out of this uncertainty.

The tariffs will shrink “already razor-thin profit margins”, said the owner of a Chinese business that handles cross-border logistics for e-commerce, as well as air and sea freight. He did not wish to share his name.

“Higher tariffs raise costs for freight forwarders like us, as well as for factories, companies, and sellers. It just means everyone earns less.”

Any tariff upwards of 35% will wipe out all the profits that Chinese businesses make when exporting to the US or South East Asia, said Dan Wang from the Eurasia Group consultancy.

“Growth is going to be much lower since exports contributed to 20% to 50% of growth since the Covid pandemic,” she added.

Beijing is reportedly considering banning Hollywood films and suspending fentanyl cooperation with the US, according to Chinese blogger Liu Hong, who is a senior editor at state-run Xinhua news.

But that would offer little comfort to firms like Fuling, which sells disposable tableware to US fast food restaurants like McDonald’s and Wendy’s.

It said the additional tariffs would “significantly impact” its business. Fuling noted that nearly two-thirds of the company’s revenue in 2023 and the first half of last year came from the US.

To mitigate the impact of tariffs, Fuling, which is headquartered in China’s Zhejiang province, started a new factory in Indonesia late last year.

However, Trump’s new tariffs have introduced more uncertainty for Chinese exports from Indonesia, which are now subject to a 32% levy, the company said in a corporate filing.

Indonesia was hit along with much of the world in President Trump’s announcement of expansive tariffs last week, which he claimed would allow the US economy to flourish.

But economists have warned of a US and global recession. The tariffs have also shaken world markets and drawn criticism from billionaire CEOs, including Trump’s ally Elon Musk.

While China has left the door open for talks, Trump has not spoken to Chinese leader Xi Jinping since returning to the White House.

Such broad, sweeping tariffs will cause more harm than good, the American Chamber of Commerce in China said in a note to its member companies on Wednesday.

“This level of upheaval is unprecedented, and it remains unclear how the current measures will benefit consumers in either nation or the broader economy,” read the note signed by Chair Alvin Liu and President Michael Hart.

Some analysts believe the levies will force China to restructure its economy and rely heavily on domestic consumption, which it has been struggling to boost.

Otherwise, the tariffs will not be sustainable for China in the longer term, Tim Waterer from brokerage KCM Trade said.

“The tariffs are aimed at suppressing China,” said the manager of a Chinese freight company, who asked to remain anonymous.

He added that many of the South East Asian countries that have been hit with steep tariffs are “exactly where many Chinese businesses have relocated”, such as Vietnam and Cambodia.

The Tianjin-based company plans to negotiate with some of its American clients to share the burden of the tariffs. “Every case is different, but overall, the impact has been quite substantial,” he said.

Another freight company manager Wu Changchun, whose firm mainly operates on shipping routes between China and Cambodia, said he is already seeing a fall in freight volume.

Several construction projects in Cambodia have also come to a halt after Trump’s tariffs announcement, he said.

“If the tariffs were at 10% or 20%, businesses might still be able to absorb the cost by optimising supply chains, cutting margins and sharing the burden. Trade could still go on… [But at 104%] that’s no longer something trade-offs can fix,” said Mr Wu, a general manager at Maritima Maruba.

“That’s full-on decoupling. Trade would basically come to a standstill.”

The trade war between the world’s two biggest economies shows no signs of slowing down – Beijing has vowed to “fight to the end” hours after US President Donald Trump threatened to nearly double the tariffs on China.

That could leave most Chinese imports facing a staggering 104% tax – a sharp escalation between the two sides.

Smartphones, computers, lithium-ion batteries, toys and video game consoles make up the bulk of Chinese exports to the US. But there are so many other things, from screws to boilers.

With a deadline looming in Washington as Trump threatens to introduce the additional tariffs from Wednesday, who will blink first?

“It would be a mistake to think that China will back off and remove tariffs unilaterally,” says Alfredo Montufar-Helu, a senior advisor to the China Center at The Conference Board think tank.

“Not only would it make China look weak, but it would also give leverage to the US to ask for more. We’ve now reached an impasse that will likely lead to long-term economic pain.”

• Live updates on this story

Global markets have slumped since last week when Trump’s tariffs, which target almost every country, began coming into effect. Asian shares, which saw their worst drop in decades on Monday after the Trump administration didn’t waver, recovered slightly on Tuesday.

Meanwhile, China has hit back with tit-for-tat levies – 34% – and Trump warned that he would retaliate with an additional 50% tariff if Beijing doesn’t back down.

Uncertainty is high, with more tariffs, some more than 40%, set to kick in on Wednesday. Many of these would hit Asian economies: tariffs on China would rise to 54%, and those on Vietnam and Cambodia, would soar to 46% and 49% respectively.

Experts are worried about the speed at which this is happening, leaving governments, businesses and investors little time to adjust or prepare for a remarkably different global economy.

China had responded to the first round of Trump tariffs with tit-for-tat levies on certain US imports, export controls on rare metals and an anti-monopoly investigation into US firms, including Google.

This time too it has announced retaliatory tariffs, but it also appears to be bracing for pain with stronger measures. It has allowed its currency, the yuan, to weaken, which makes Chinese exports more attractive. And state-linked enterprises have been buying up shares in what appears to be a move to stabilise the market.

The prospect of negotiations between the US and Japan seemed to buoy investors who were fighting to claw back some of the losses of recent days.

But the face-off between China and the US – the world’s biggest exporter and its most important market – remains a major concern.

“What we are seeing is a game of who can bear more pain. We’ve stopped talking about any sense of gain,” Mary Lovely, a US-China trade expert at the Peterson Institute in Washington DC, told the BBC’s Newshour programme.

Despite its slowing economy, China may “very well be willing to endure the pain to avoid capitulating to what they believe is US aggression”, she added.

Shaken by a prolonged property market crisis and rising unemployment, Chinese people are just not spending enough. Indebted local governments have also been struggling to increase investments or expand the social safety net.

“The tariffs exacerbate this problem,” said Andrew Collier, Senior Fellow at the Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Business and Government at Harvard Kennedy School.

If China’s exports take a hit, that hurts a crucial revenue stream. Exports have long been a key factor in China’s explosive growth. And they remain a significant driver, although the country is trying to diversify its economy with high-end tech manufacturing and greater domestic consumption.

It’s hard to say exactly when the tariffs “will bite but likely soon,” Mr Collier says, adding that “[President Xi] faces an increasingly difficult choice due to a slowing economy and dwindling resources”.

But it’s not just China that will be feeling the impact.

According to the US Trade Representative office, the US imported $438bn (£342bn) worth of goods from China in 2024, with US exports to China valued at $143bn, leaving a trade deficit of $295bn.

And it’s not clear how the US is going to find alternative supply for Chinese goods on such short notice.

Taxes on physical goods aside, both countries are “economically intertwined in a lot of ways – there’s a massive amount of investment both ways, a lot of digital trade and data flows”, says Deborah Elms, Head of Trade Policy at the Hinrich Foundation in Singapore.

“You can only tariff so much for so long. But there are other ways both countries can hit each other. So you might say it can’t possibly get worse, but there are many ways in which it can.”

The rest of the world is watching too, to see where Chinese exports shut out of the US market will go.

They will end up in other markets such as those in South East Asia, Ms Elms adds, and “these places [are dealing] with their own tariffs and having to think about where else can we sell our products?”

“So we are in a very different universe, one that is really murky.”

Unlike the trade war with China during Trump’s first term, which was about negotiating with Beijing, “it’s unclear what is motivating these tariffs and it’s very hard to predict where things might go from here,” says Roland Rajah, lead economist at the Lowy Institute.

China has a “wide toolkit” for retaliation, he adds, such as depreciating their currency further or clamping down on US firms.

“I think the question is how restrained will they be? There’s retaliation to save face and there’s pulling out the whole arsenal. It’s not clear if China wants to go down that path. It just might.”

Some experts believe the US and China may engage in private talks. Trump is yet to speak to Xi since returning to the White House, although Beijing has repeatedly signalled its willingness to talk.

But others are less hopeful.

“I think the US is overplaying its hand,” Ms Elms says. She is sceptical of Trump’s belief that the US market is so lucrative that China, or any country, will eventually bend.

“How will this end? No-one knows,” she says. “I’m really concerned about the speed and escalation. The future is much more challenging and the risks are just so high.”

US President Donald Trump’s sweeping tariffs targeting most of the world are now in effect – and outside China, no other region has been hit as hard as South East Asia.

Near the top of the list are Vietnam and Cambodia which have been hit by some of the highest tariffs: 46% and 49%. Further down are Thailand (36%), Indonesia (32%) and Malaysia (24%). The Philippines gets a tariff of 17%, and Singapore of 10%.

This is a huge blow for a region highly dependent on exports. Its widely admired economic development over the past three decades has largely been driven by its success in selling its products to the rest of the world, in particular to the US.

Exports to the US contribute around 30% of Vietnam’s GDP, and 25% of Cambodia’s.

That growth story is now imperilled by the punitive measures being imposed in Washington.

The longer-term impact of these tariffs, assuming they stay in place, will vary, but will certainly pose big challenges to the governments of Vietnam, Thailand and Cambodia in particular.

Vietnam’s “bamboo diplomacy”, where it attempts to be friends with everyone and balance ties with both China and the US, will now be tested.

Under the leadership of the new Communist Party Secretary-General To Lam, Vietnam has embarked on an ambitious plan to build an upper-income, knowledge-and-tech-based economy by the year 2045. It has been aiming for annual growth rates in excess of 8%.

Exporting more to the US, already its biggest market, was central to that plan.

It was also the main reason why Vietnam agreed to elevate their relationship to that of a Comprehensive Strategic Partnership in 2023.

The Communist Party, which tolerates little dissent and has no formal political opposition, depends on its economic pledges for its legitimacy. Already viewed by many economists as too ambitious, these will now be even harder to meet.

Thailand depends on US exports less than Vietnam – under 10% of GDP – but the Thai economy is in much worse shape, having underperformed for the past decade. The Thai government is trying to find ways to lift economic growth, most recently attempting but failing to legalise gambling, and these tariffs are another economic blow it cannot afford.

For Cambodia, the tariffs pose perhaps the greatest political threat in the region.

The government of Hun Manet has proved just as authoritarian as that of his father Hun Sen, whom he succeeded two years ago, but it is vulnerable.

Keeping the Hun family’s hold on power has required offering rival clans in Cambodia economic privileges like monopolies or land concessions, but this has helped create a glut of property developments, which are no longer selling, and a mass of grievances over land expropriations.

The garment sector, which employs 750,000 people, has been a crucial social safety valve, giving steady incomes to Cambodia’s poorest. Thousands of those jobs are now likely to be lost as a result of President Trump’s tariffs.

Unlike China, which has hit back with its own levies, the official message from governments in South East Asia is don’t panic, don’t retaliate, but negotiate.

Vietnam has dispatched deputy prime minister Ho Duc Phoc to Washington to plead his country’s case, and has offered to eliminate all tariffs on US imports. Thailand plans to send its finance minister to make a similar appeal, and has offered to reduce its tariffs and buy more American products, like food and aircraft.

Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim is also heading to Washington, though with exports to the US making up only 11% of Malaysia’s total, his country is less affected than some of its neighbours.

However, the Trump administration appears to be in no mood to compromise.

Peter Navarro, President Trump’s senior counsellor on trade and manufacturing and one of the main thinkers behind the new policy, said in interviews on Monday that Vietnam’s offer of zero tariffs was meaningless, because it would not address the deficit in trade where Vietnam sells $15 worth of goods to the US for every $1 it buys.

He accused Vietnam of keeping multiple non-tariff barriers to US imports, and said that one-third of all Vietnamese exports to the US were actually Chinese products, trans-shipped through Vietnam.

The proportion of Vietnamese exports which are being made or trans-shipped there to avoid US tariffs on China is difficult to assess, but detailed trade studies put it at between 7% and 16%, not one-third.

Like Vietnam, the government of Cambodia has appealed to the US to postpone the tariffs while it attempts to negotiate.

The local American Chamber of Commerce has called for the 49% tariffs to be dropped, making the point that the Cambodian garment industry, the country’s biggest employer, will be badly affected, but that no tariff level, however high, will see clothing and footwear manufacturing return to the US.

Perhaps the most perverse tariff rate is the 44% applied to Myanmar, a country mired in a civil war, which has no capacity to buy more US goods.

US exports make up only a small proportion of Myanmar’s GDP, less than 1%.

But as in Cambodia, that sector, mainly garments, is one of the few that provides a steady income to poor families in Myanmar’s cities.

In a supreme irony, Trump has until now been a popular figure in this region.

He has been widely admired in Vietnam for his tough, transactional approach to foreign policy, and Cambodia’s former strongman Hun Sen, still the main power behind the scenes, has long sought a close personal relationship with the US president, proudly posting selfies with him at their first meeting in 2017.

Only last month Cambodia was praising Trump for shutting down the US media networks Voice of America and Radio Free Europe, which often carried the views of Cambodian dissidents.

Now Cambodia, like so many of its neighbours, finds itself in a long line of supplicants pleading with him to ease their tariff burden.

Little more than 19 months after the bloodless coup that brought an end to more than five decades of rule by the Bongo family, the people of Gabon are about to head to the polls to choose a new head of state – bucking a trend that has seen military leaders elsewhere in Africa cling on to power.

The overwhelming favourite in the race on Saturday is the man who led that peaceful putsch and has dominated the political scene ever since, Brice Clotaire Oligui Nguema.

Having abandoned his soldier’s fatigues and military status in favour of a politician’s suit, this highly articulate former commander of the elite Republican Guard faces seven other candidates.

Basking in popularity among a population relieved to be rid of dynastic rule – and assisted by electoral regulations that disqualified some key challengers – the 50-year-old appears almost certain to secure an outright majority in the first ballot.

His campaign slogan – using his initials “C’BON” – is a play on the French words “c’est bon”, meaning “it’s good”.

His chances of avoiding a second round run-off are bolstered by the fact that his main challenger – one of the rare senior political or civil society figures not to have rallied to his cause – is the old regime’s last prime minister, Alain-Claude Bilie-By-Nze, known by his initials ACBBN.

Victory will bring a seven-year mandate and the resources to implement development and modernising reform at a pace that the rulers of crisis-beset African countries could not even dream of.

With only 2.5 million people, Gabon is an established oil producer and the world’s second-largest exporter of manganese.

Its territory, which sits astride the equator, encompasses some of the most biodiverse tracts of the Congo Basin rainforest.

And other than a harsh post-election crackdown in the capital, Libreville, in 2016, the country has enjoyed a mostly calm recent history that contrasts with the conflicts and instability that have afflicted many regional neighbours.

Oligui Nguema and his Republican Guards met no resistance when they seized power on 30 August 2023, just hours after the electoral authorities had taken to the airwaves in the middle of the night to proclaim that the incumbent President, Ali Bongo Ondimba, had secured a third seven-year term with a crushing 64% of the vote.

It was hard to see this official result as credible. Ali Bongo, who succeeded his father Omar in 2009, had only squeaked a narrow and much disputed victory in the previous poll, in 2016.

When he suffered a stroke while visiting Saudi Arabia two years later and embarked on a painstaking gradual recovery there had been widespread popular sympathy.

But the mood shifted after he decided to stand for a third term, despite his visibly frail state of health – this fuelled widespread resentment at the supposed behind-the-throne influence and ambitions of his French-born wife Sylvia and his son Nourredin Bongo Valentin.

The military’s peaceful intervention to forestall a continuation of the regime, arresting Sylvia and Nourredin and confining Ali in enforced retirement in his private villa, triggered spontaneous celebrations among the many Gabonese who had grown weary of this apparently immovable dynasty.

And the coup was greeted with relief even by most of the administrative, political and civil society elite.

Oligui Nguema took shrewd advantage, reaching out to build a broad base of support for his transitional regime. He brought former government figures, opponents and prominent hitherto critical civil society voices into the power structure or institutions such as the appointed senate.

Political detainees were freed, though Ali Bongo’s wife and son remain in detention awaiting trial on corruption charges.

He did not resort to the sort of crackdowns on dissent or media freedom that have become a routine tool of Francophone Africa’s other military leaders, in Mali, Guinea, Burkina Faso and Niger.

On the diplomatic front, in marked contrast to the assertively anti-Western posture adopted by the regimes in West Africa, Oligui Nguema despatched senior figures to cultivate international goodwill and reassure Gabon’s traditional partners of his determination to restore civilian constitutional government within a tightly limited timeframe.

Relations with France, the former colonial power and previously a close ally of the Bongo regime, are warm.

The two governments recently agreed to transform Camp de Gaulle, the longstanding French base in Gabon, into a new training centre that they will operate jointly.

Displaying a deft popular and political touch, Oligui Nguema has responded to public hunger for change with an acceleration of public works and delayed projects.

And at a time of rising popular support across Francophone Africa for a more visibly assertive defence of national interests, his government has acquired the Gabonese assets of several foreign oil companies, including the UK’s Tullow.

To ease constraints on government finances, he has borrowed on the regional money market, but has also shrewdly sought to reassure international partners.

Much of the $520m (£461m) raised through a Eurobond in February has been used to pay off old debt, and the government has also set aside funds to clear some arrears owed to the World Bank.

But if, and almost certainly when, he is elected as Gabon’s head of state on Saturday, Oligui Nguema will face significant challenges.

Such was the public’s hunger for change that, in many ways, the transition has been the easy part. There has been little public pressure constraining his freedom of manoeuvre.

There was broad consensus over incorporating a ban on dynastic succession in the new constitution.

When Oligui Nguema brushed off some parliamentarians’ concern about the concentration of executive power in the presidency by abolishing the post of prime minister, there was little fuss.

But this does mean that, going forward, the full weight of responsibility for meeting public expectations will fall on his shoulders alone.

Prominent political and civil society figures, such as veteran opponent Alexandre Barro-Chambrier and rainforest campaigner Marc Ona Essangui, have joined his transitional administration or political machine, the Rassemblement des Bâtisseurs (RDB), and could well occupy important roles post-election.

Nonetheless the focus will be on Oligui Nguema himself. And he will face complex challenges.

Gabon has long positioned itself as a leader in conserving the rainforest and its enormously diverse flora and fauna, attracting international praise for its astute use of climate finance tools – in 2023 it became the first sub-Saharan country to complete a debt-for-nature swap.

But this strategic approach has to be reconciled with the economic pressure to make full use of other natural resources, particularly minerals and oil, and with the needs of rural communities seeking to protect their hunting and farming rights.

Urban populations, particularly in Libreville – home to almost half the country’s population – need more jobs and better services, in a country whose social development record has been disappointing, given its relative affluence.

Trade unionist Jean Rémy Yama, excluded from the presidential race because he could not produce his father’s birth certificate, a nomination requirement, is one figure with a considerable following who could give voice to popular frustrations.

For Oligui Nguema, the hardest work is about to begin.

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It sounds like something from a science fiction movie, but Stephen Eisele is confident that one day his company will open a data centre on the Moon.

“The way we see it is that by putting the data centre in space, you’re really offering unparalleled security,” says the president of Lonestar Data Holdings.

Last month, the Florida-based firm claimed to have successfully tested a tiny data centre the size of a hardback book that hitched a ride to the Moon on the Athena Lunar Lander from US space exploration firm Intuitive Machines. This, in turn, had been launched by a rocket from Elon Musk’s SpaceX.

Data centres are the vast warehouses that house stacks of computers that store and process data used by websites, companies and governments.

Lonestar says that putting them on the Moon will offer customers secure, reliable data processing, while taking advantage of unlimited solar energy to power them.

And while space-based data centres may sound far-fetched, it’s an idea that’s really starting to take off.

Part of the reason is rocketing demand and the difficulty of finding suitable sites on Earth.

The ever-expanding use of artificial intelligence (AI) computing has seen a massive increase in the amount of data that needs to be stored and processed around the world.

As a result, the need for data centres has shot up too, with annual demand set to rise between 19% and 22% by 2030, according to global management consultants McKinsey.

New facilities are springing up all the time – but it’s getting hard to find places to put them. Data centres are large and sprawling, and use enormous amounts of power and water for cooling.

And increasingly local people don’t want them built nearby.

Putting data centres in space – either in orbit around Earth, or on the Moon – the theory goes, means they can’t do quite so much harm. There’s more-or-less unlimited energy available from the sun, for example, and no neighbours to complain about the environmental impacts.

Not only that, space-based data centres could specialise in services for spacecraft and other space facilities, with space-to-space data transfers quicker than from the ground.

Last summer, a European Commission-funded feasibility study into orbiting data centres published its results.

The Ascend report by carried out by Thales Alenia Space – a joint venture between French and Italian aerospace groups Thales and Leonardo – published its results.

It determined that deploying data centres in space “could transform the European digital landscape”, and be “more eco-friendly”.

Thales Alenia Space envisages building a constellation of 13 satellites measuring a combined 200m-by-80m, and with a total data processing power of around 10 megawatts (MW). That’s equivalent to a current medium-sized, ground-based data centre, with some 5,000 servers.

Based on technologies that already exist or are under development, the satellites would be assembled in orbit.

Damien Dumestier, Ascend project architect at Thales Alenia Space, says that for space-based data centres to be more environmentally friendly than existing ground-based ones it will be necessary to make the rocket launchers 10 times less emissive over their lifecycles. He says this looks possible.

“But in order to cover the new technology’s developments and the production capacity ramp-up to benefit from scale, we have to consider larger system capacity, around 200MW, meaning 200 of our envisaged large space infrastructures and 200 launches,” he says.

“The main question is when an adapted launcher will be ready. Depending on the investment and decisions to be taken, this could be done for 2030 or 2035, meaning commercial viability before 2037.”

However, despite this optimism from firms aiming to develop the technology, Dr Domenico Vicinanza, associate professor of intelligent systems and data science at Anglia Ruskin University in the UK, says there are numerous big hurdles before space-based data centres can be a viable proposition.

“Even with the contribution and advancements of companies like SpaceX, launching hardware into orbit remains extremely expensive,” he says. “Each kilogram sent into space costs thousands of dollars.

“Space-based data centres would require not only the data equipment but also the infrastructure to protect, power, and cool them. All of which add up in weight and complexity.”

Cooling the equipment will be a particular problem, because even though space is cold, conventional cooling systems don’t work will without gravity.

Meanwhile, space weather can damage electronics, while the ever-increasing quantity of space debris puts the physical hardware at risk.

Dr Vicinanza adds: “And fixing problems in orbit is far from straightforward. Even with robotics and automation, there are limits to what can be repaired remotely.

“A big hardware failure might necessitate a costly human mission, potentially making downtime stretch for weeks or months.”

Yet firms like Lonestar are supremely confident, and say that they are responding to demand. “We wouldn’t be doing this if the customers weren’t asking us to,” says Mr Scott.

Its next target is to put a small data centre in orbit around the moon in 2027. Meanwhile, other companies are hoping to get there a bit faster, such as Washington state-based Starcloud, which is due to launch a satellite-based data centre next month, and start commercial operations in mid-2026.

Lonestar’s Mr Eidele says that space-based facilities offer more security for governments and businesses because their data does not need to be routed through terrestrial networks. Instead the information can be beamed directly from space to a dedicated ground station.

“It’s like having the vaults at the back of the bank,” he says. “You don’t have to open it every day, but it’s there to provide an extra measure of security, and the distance from the Earth to the moon offers that – it’s that much harder to hack, that much harder to access.”

The distance to the Moon means that data takes about a second and a half to reach the ground – this doesn’t matter for some applications, like longer-term data storage and backups.

And meanwhile, says Lonestar founder and chief executive Chris Stott, space-based data centres can help organisations meet regulations about data sovereignty – the need to hold peoples’ data in the country of origin.

“Under space law, that box of electronics is literally under the law of the licensing or launching state – it is an actual embassy in space,” he says.

Lonestar already has customers lined up, including the state of Florida and the Isle of Man government.

Donald Trump is a man in a hurry.

In the few short months he has been in office, the US president has sought and failed to bring peace to Gaza and Ukraine. He has bombed Yemen. He has launched a global trade war. Now he is turning his attention to Iran.

This has always been on the president’s jobs list. For Trump, Iran is unfinished business from his first term.

The issue remains the same as it was then: what can stop Iran seeking a nuclear weapon?

Iran denies it has any such ambition. But other countries believe the Islamic republic wants at the very least the capacity to build a nuclear warhead, a desire that some fear could spark an arms race or even all-out war in the Middle East.

In 2015, Iran agreed a deal with the US, UK, France, Germany, Russia and China. It was called the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA).

Under its provisions, Iran would limit its nuclear ambitions – and allow in international inspectors – in return for getting economic sanctions lifted.

But Trump pulled the US out of the deal in 2018, claiming it rewarded terrorism by funding Iran’s proxy militias such as Hamas and Hezbollah. The US reimposed sanctions.

Iran subsequently ignored some of the deal’s restrictions and enriched more and more uranium nuclear fuel.

Analysts fear Iran could soon have enough weapons-grade uranium to make a nuclear warhead.

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) watchdog estimates Iran’s stockpile of 60% enriched uranium could make about six bombs if it was enriched to the next and final level.

Within days of his inauguration, Trump restored his former policy of so-called “maximum pressure” on Iran.

On 4 February, with his trademark fat felt-tip pen, he signed a memorandum ordering the US Treasury to impose further sanctions on Iran and punish countries violating existing sanctions, especially those buying Iranian oil.

Now the White House is hoping to match that economic pressure with diplomacy.

Last month, Trump sent a letter to Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei.

The president offered to begin negotiations and sought a deal within a couple of months.

Now he has agreed to direct discussions between US and Iranian officials in Oman at the weekend.

The US threat to Iran is explicit: agree a deal or face military action.

“If the talks aren’t successful with Iran, I think Iran is going to be in great danger,” Trump said on Monday.

So how might Iran respond?

Some policymakers in Tehran appear keen to agree a deal that could get sanctions lifted.

Iran’s economy is in dire straits, with soaring inflation and a plunging currency.

But any such deal might involve compromises some hardliners could find hard to stomach.

Iran has suffered huge reverses in recent months, seeing its proxy militias severely weakened by war with Israel and its regional ally, President Bashar al-Assad of Syria, ousted. Some in Tehran argue now may be exactly the time to build a nuclear deterrent.

Both the US and Iran seem far apart. Their negotiating positions are not explicit.

But the US has made clear it wants the full dismantlement of Iran’s nuclear programme, including a complete end to any further uranium enrichment, plus no further support for Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Houthis in Yemen.

That might prove too much for Iran to accept.

A complete ban on any nuclear enrichment – even for civilian purposes – has long been seen as an absolute red line for Tehran.

There is also the problem of Iranian technological expertise: its scientists simply know more now about how to make a nuclear weapon than they did 10 years ago.

As for Israel, it has made clear it would accept only the complete end to any Iranian nuclear capability. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says he would agree to “the way it was done in Libya”.

This is a reference to the decision by late Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi to dismantle his entire nuclear programme in 2003 in return for getting sanctions lifted.

But Iran is unlikely to follow this precedent.

What if talks fail?

Israel has long considered military options to try to destroy Iran’s nuclear capabilities. But many are buried deep in underground bunkers.

Military analysts say Israel would need not just US help to bomb Iran, it might also need special forces on the ground to guarantee the destruction of its nuclear facilities.

This means military action would be risky and its success by no means guaranteed.

Trump also came to office promising not to start any more so-called “forever wars”, and an all-out regional conflict involving Iran could become one of those.

That has not stopped the US president from reportedly giving Israel more air defences and deploying more long-range B2 bombers to the region.

So, for now, Trump seems to be looking for a diplomatic solution – one Israel might have to accept as a fait accompli, regardless of its provisions.

But if there is no agreement, he is reserving the right to use force, the consequences of which could be devastating.

In the meantime, the president is allowing two months for both sides to agree a deal.

He may have forgotten it took negotiators two years to agree the JCPOA. Rushed diplomacy is not always successful diplomacy.

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On 12 March, Kilmar Abrego Garcia was driving home with his young son in Maryland when he was stopped by agents from US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

Agents took Mr Garcia into custody, then shuttled him to detention facilities in Louisiana and Texas.

According to a federal judge, after three days, “without any notice, legal process, or hearing”, Mr Garcia found himself back in his native El Salvador at an infamous prison known for housing gang members.

The government said he was deported due to an “administrative error”.

But despite that, Mr Garcia remains incarcerated in El Salvador as lawyers debate the unusual intricacies of the case.

A Maryland court ordered Mr Garcia be returned to the US, but Trump officials argued that they cannot compel El Salvador to return Mr Garcia. The administration also argued that the judge ordering his return lacked the authority to do so.

On Monday, the Supreme Court put a temporary hold on lower court orders while they consider the matter.

Immigration experts say that as US President Donald Trump takes a hardline approach on illegal immigration, this case has the potential to upend due process for immigrants.

“If the US Supreme Court were to accept [the Trump administration’s] position, it would completely eviscerate any rule of law in the immigration process,” Maureen Sweeney, director of the University of Maryland’s Chacón Center for Immigrant Justice, told the BBC.

“Because they could pick up anybody, at any time, and send them anywhere with no repercussions whatsoever.”

US District Judge Paula Xinis wrote in a filing Sunday that ICE officials did not follow procedures in the Immigration and Nationality Act when they deported Mr Garcia to El Salvador.

She ruled the US must bring him back before midnight on Monday. The Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals agreed, writing that the US “has no legal authority to snatch a person who is lawfully present in the United States off the street”.

Yet the Trump administration has argued that it cannot comply, saying Judge Xinis’ filing is outside her jurisdiction.

“Neither a federal district court nor the United States has authority to tell the Government of El Salvador what to do,” US Solicitor General D John Sauer wrote in an appeal to the Supreme Court.

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• US Supreme Court pauses order requiring return of Kilmar Abrego Garcia

Nicole Hallett, a professor at the University of Chicago Law School said that while it is true – US district judges cannot order El Salvador to take action – they can order the US government to have Mr Garcia returned.

She also said the US has previously facilitated the return of mistakenly deported individuals.

Prof Hallett also questioned the government’s claim that the US is powerless to compel El Salvador to release Mr Garcia, citing an agreement between the two countries.

The US, under the Trump administration, paid El Salvador’s government $6m to house prisoners it sends, according to CBS News, the BBC’s US partner. Top officials like Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Trump himself have publicly touted the arrangement.

“It’s almost as if the Salvadoran government is acting as an agent of the US government,” Ms Hallett said, arguing that this makes the release more plausible.

Mr Garcia’s lawyers argued that because El Salvador was detaining Mr Garcia “at the direct request and pursuant to financial compensation” from the US, the court could order the US government to request his return.

The Department of Justice, however, has resisted calls to take such action.

US Attorney General Pam Bondi said Tuesday that “it was an administrative error as to why he was deported,” but maintained the allegation that Mr Garcia belonged to a gang.

“We believe he should stay where he is,” she said.

Mr Garcia is among 238 Venezuelans and 23 Salvadorans deported under the Trump administration to El Salvador’s notorious mega-prison. Officials allege they are gang members and therefore are subject to deportation.

Mr Garcia, who is married to a US citizen, does not have any gang ties and has never been charged with a crime, his lawyer says.

He was also protected by a “withholding of removal” order, which means the US government cannot send him back to El Salvador because he could face harm. The order dates back to 2019, when ICE first took Mr Garcia into custody and alleged he belonged to the MS-13 criminal organisation, an allegation he denied at the time.

Such orders are common, immigration lawyers told the BBC, and are an alternative to asylum protections.

“It was an unlawful act, for the US to return him to the country where he could not be returned,” said Amelia Wilson, director of the Immigration Justice Clinic at Pace University.

A judge ultimately granted Mr Garcia the 2019 order after he “testified about how he was a victim of gang violence in El Salvador when he was a teenager and he came to the US to escape all of that,” his wife, Jennifer Vasquez Sura, wrote in a March 2025 affidavit.

Department of Justice attorney Erez Reuveni acknowledged that at the time the “government did not appeal that decision, so it is final”.

The Trump administration now reiterates allegations that Mr Garcia belonged to MS-13, but Judge Xinis said the government made this claim “without any evidence” and had not produced a removal order or warrant.

The Trump administration continues to press its case to the nation’s highest court, setting up a potential showdown over the White House’s deportation strategy.

Chief Justice John Roberts issued an administrative stay on Monday night, pausing lower court rulings while the US Supreme Court considers the government’s appeal.

President Trump touted the stay as a victory, writing on Truth Social that the ruling allowed the president “to secure our Borders, and protect our families and our Country, itself.”

Immigration lawyers, meanwhile, are watching Mr Garcia’s case closely, considering it a test for how much power the administration can exert over US immigration.

“If the Trump administration is trying to remove these individuals by bypassing the immigration courts,” said Ms Wilson, “there’s a direct and obvious line between what they’re doing, and an effort by the administration to completely usurp judicial and due process.”

The corner shop Ramji Dharod has manned for over six decades is now on the brink of closure.

The store sits in a bylane in the central Indian city of Mumbai’s busy shopping precinct, and has served the community for 75 years.

Dharod began coming to the shop with his father when he was just 10. These days, he mostly sits idle, waiting for an occasional customer to walk in.

Behind him, cardboard boxes of unsold biscuit packets and snacks show a “stock clearance sale” sign posted on them.

“I wouldn’t get a minute to breathe a few years ago, but now I rarely get anyone coming,” says the septuagenarian wryly. “They are all shopping online. I’ve decided to retire and down the shutters.”

As 10-minute online deliveries by “quick commerce” apps like Zomato, BlinkIt and Zepto pervade urban India, hundreds of thousands of neighbourhood stores across cities have closed down.

A lobby group of consumer product distributors estimated that number to be 200,000 last October, while the municipal body of the southern city of Chennai estimated 20% of small grocers and 30% of larger departmental stores had shut down in the city in the past 5 years.

Sunil Kenia who runs a provision store right beside Dharod’s shop says he’s still in business only because his family owns the shop. Those on rent are no longer able to stay afloat, he says.

“It started going downhill after the Covid lockdowns. Business is at 50% of what we did before the pandemic,” Kenia told the BBC.

Most of his revenue now comes from wholesale customers – hawkers or those selling street-side snacks. The retail customer has all but “vanished”, he says, because of the convenience of mobile deliveries.

Mumbai-based graphic designer Monisha Sathe is among the millions of urban Indians who’ve stopped their weekly run to the market because of the ease of quick commerce.

“Lugging groceries back home was a big pain,” says Sathe. And occasionally, when she took out her car, navigating narrow market lanes and finding a parking slot would be a challenge.

Sathe says she misses the human interaction she had with the grocers and vegetable vendors and even the variety of fresh produce on sale – but for her, the balance still tilts in favour of online deliveries because of how much easier it has made her life.

A recent survey by consultancy PwC shows some 42% of urban consumers in India’s big cities think like Sathe, especially preferring quick delivery for their urgent needs. And these shifts in buying behaviour have led to three out of 10 retailers reporting a negative impact on their business, with a 52% drop in essential goods sales.

But to what extent is quick commerce really hollowing out the Indian high street?

There’s no doubt general trade – which includes grocery stores, corner shops and even big retail outlets – has come under threat, says Ankur Bisen, a partner at Technopak retail advisory. But at least for now “quick commerce is still a three-four city story”, he says. Nearly all of their sales come from these cities.

Lightning fast deliveries bucked the global trend and became successful in India largely due to a large concentration of people staying in urban clusters.

They are serviced through low-rent “dark stores” – or small shops dedicated to delivery and not open to the public – in densely populated areas, enabling economies of scale.

But the precarious nature of demand and fragmented demographics of smaller towns could make it expensive for quick commerce players to expand and make money beyond the metros, says Mr Bisen.

There’s little doubt though that these online deliveries will disrupt trade in the longer run.

Bain and Company expects quick commerce to grow at over 40% annually through to 2030, driven by expansion across “geographies”.

And this has made traditional retail nervous.

Trade organisations – like the Confederation of All India Traders, or the All India Consumer Products Distributors Federation which calls itself the voice of India’s 13m retailers – have made urgent and repeated pleas to the government against this breakneck expansion.

They allege that these companies are using billions of dollars in venture capital funds to engage in anti-competitive practices like “predatory pricing” or “deep discounting” which has further distorted the playing field for mom-and-pop shops.

The BBC spoke to several small retailers who shared these concerns. Mr Bisen too agreed there’s evidence of such practices in the clusters that quick commerce companies operate.

Swiggy, Zepto and Blinkit, who primarily control this market, did not agree to comment on the BBC’s queries on these allegations.

But a source within one of the quick commerce companies told the BBC the discounting was done by traders on the platform and not by them.

The source also said that contrary to the binary narrative of the “big guy versus small guy”, online deliveries were solving real-world challenges for people for whom going to the market was a “traumatic” experience.

“Think of women or senior citizens – they don’t want to be harassed or navigate potholes and traffic,” the source said. “Also consider the small brands that sell on our platform – they never get shelf space in physical shops where only the big names are displayed. We’ve democratised the market.”

Analysts say, the sheer diversity of India in terms of its stages of development, levels of income and infrastructure will mean that in the end all retail models – small corner shops, organised big retailers and quick commerce platforms – will cohabit in the country.

This is not a “winner takes all market”, says Mr Bisen, giving the example of e-commerce which came into India in 2010 and was meant to sound the death knell of local retailers.

Even after all these years, only 4% of all shopping is done online in India.

But the ripples caused by quick commerce should be a warning for physical retailers, say analysts, to improve their marketing and integrate technology to use both online and offline channels to give their consumers a better shopping experience.

Competing with click-of-a-button delivery means it can no longer be business as usual for the millions of corner shops who’ve existed for decades, with little or no innovation.

For 20 years, Rj LaMendola found peace while paddling in the water on his surfboard.

But last month off the coast of Southern California, the ocean turned hostile after a sea lion lunged at him, bit him and dragged him off his board.

“It looked possessed,” Mr LaMendola wrote in a Facebook post, saying the animal involved in the encounter just north of Los Angeles was “feral, almost demonic”.

The surfer later learned the animal was suffering from domoic acid toxicosis- a neurological condition caused by a harmful algal bloom. It’s one of dozens of sickened animals that have been spotted across California beaches recently – many suffering from symptoms like seizures or intense lethargy. The toxin often leads to death.

This particular algae bloom has appeared four years in a row across California, raising concerns it might be turning into an annual event. The bloom of algae started earlier than normal this year and has spread roughly 370 miles of the iconic Southern California coastline.

When Mr LaMenolda made it to shore, his wetsuit ripped open, he was bleeding and went to the hospital. “It felt like I was being hunted,” he said.

South of where he was attacked, 15-year-old Phoebe Beltran was doing a swim test in Long Beach to become a lifeguard when a sea lion repeatedly bit her.

“I was just so scared, so shocked, but I still felt the immense pain on my arms, like, over and over again,” the teen told local US media.

The two back-to-back attacks have garnered global headlines and caused some anxiety among those who call California and its iconic beaches home. While attacks are rare, experts say the number of animals sickened by the toxic algae bloom appears to be increasing.

John Warner, CEO of the Marine Mammal Care Center in Los Angeles – which is treating sea life sickened by the bloom – told the BBC these animals aren’t “naturally aggressive or actually attack people” but the toxins impact their behaviour.

“These animals are reacting to the fact that they are sick,” he explained. “They’re disoriented, and most likely, most of them are having seizures, and so their senses are not all fully functional as they normally would and they’re acting out of fear.”

Domoic acid builds up in smaller fish like sardines and anchovies, which are eaten by marine predators such as dolphins, seals and sea lions in large quantities, causing them to get sick.

Exposure to the acid causes serious neurological issues in sea lions, including seizures, disorientation and a telltale head-tilting behaviour known as “stargazing.”

Some animals fall into a lethargic and comatose state, while others can turn aggressive.

“Their behaviour changes from what we’re used to, to something more unpredictable,” Mr Warner said. “But in this particular bloom, we’re seeing them really comatose and rather taken out by this toxin.”

The Marine Mammal Care Center is currently overwhelmed with the influx and severity of sick animals.

According to Mr Warner, the nonprofit has admitted at least 195 sea lions from Feb 20 to the end of March. During the same time frame last year, the centre saw only 50 of the animals.

If treated promptly, sea lions have a 50% to 65% chance of recovery, but Mr Warner says the centre is running out of space and money to treat the animals. Treatment includes anti-seizure medication and sedation, followed by twice-daily tube feeding and hydration.

On top of that, the recovery pace this year has been slower, he said.

While sick sea lions in 2023 typically began eating within a week, many this year are still lethargic five weeks into care.

Recovery comes in stages: from a comatose state to disorientation, then aggressive reawakening—when the animals are most dangerous due to lingering neurological effects.

Adult sea lions can weigh hundreds of pounds, and aggressive behaviors make housing them complicated. If their behaviour doesn’t normalize, it could signal permanent brain damage, and humane euthanasia becomes necessary.

“If they’re still aggressive or not foraging properly, it tells us their brains aren’t functioning the way they should,” Mr Warner said.

For now, beachgoers are urged to stay well away from stranded animals – at least 50 feet – and resist the temptation to intervene.

“These are still the same charismatic, really fun-to-watch expert cuddle puddlers that we see along the coast all the time,” Mr Warner said. “We need to remember they are wild animals. They can be unpredictable even in normal circumstances.”

LeBron James, one of the most iconic figures in modern sports, has made history once again – this time in the toy aisle.

Mattel has announced the release of a new Barbie in Mr James’ likeness, making him the first professional male athlete to be honoured as a Ken doll.

“We are excited to bring fans a new presentation of Ken,” said Krista Berger, Mattel’s senior vice president of Barbie. She said the doll celebrates “LeBron as a role model,” his ability as an icon to transcend culture and set a “positive example for the next generation.”

The doll features the Los Angeles Lakers basketball player in his pre-game fashion and reflects his height – it’s an inch taller than the standard Ken doll.

In reality, the athlete is 6ft 9in tall.

The new doll comes as the company is facing financial uncertainty amid President Donald Trump’s escalating trade war with China, where just under 40% of Mattel’s production is based.

Trump announced on Wednesday that tariffs on goods from China would increase to 125%. He accused Beijing of a “lack of respect” after it retaliated and said it would impose tariffs of 84% on US imports.

• Why Trump tariffs could mean Barbie dolls cost more
• US pauses higher tariffs for most countries but hits China harder
• Trump steps back from cliff edge of all-out global trade war

In the same announcement, Trump announced a 90-day pause for countries hit by higher US tariffs and authorised a universal “lowered reciprocal tariff of 10%” as negotiations continued with roughly 60 countries.

Mattel has said it may have to increase prices and possibly implement changes to its supply chain. Consumer and business groups in the US have warned that the tariffs may disrupt supply chains and lead to higher prices.

The new Ken doll doesn’t show the athlete in his basketball uniform. Instead, he’s dressed in a varsity jacket adorned with “LJ” on the front.

It includes an Ohio patch and a crown patch on one sleeve and the number 23 – his basketball jersey number – on the other. On the back, “LeBron” is boldly printed along with the phrase, “Just a kid from Akron” – the Ohio city where he was born.

Under the jacket, the doll wears a shirt that reads “We Are Family,” a nod to the star’s foundation. The doll includes accessories like a basketball, headphones and sneakers.

• LeBron James first player to surpass 50000 points
• ‘Pure joy’ – James revitalised by playing alongside son

In a promotional video released by Mattel, Mr James reacted to see the doll for the first time. “Oh, he dope!” he says as he’s given the figurine. “That’s so cool!”

As he toyed with the doll’s accessories, he joked the LeBron Ken doll “might have to do a little lifting, legs are looking skinny”.

The move is a significant moment for the 65-year-old Barbie brand, which has made a push in recent years to diversify its dolls and reflect a broader range of careers, body types and backgrounds.

Though Barbie has previously honoured athletes like Serena Williams, Naomi Osaka, and Megan Rapinoe, Mr James is the first male sports figure – and the first male figure not from the entertainment industry – to join the lineup.

Even with four NBA titles, two Olympic gold medals, and a scoring record to his name, Mr James says his new title of “Kenbassador” hits differently—because it’s about more than basketball.

“It’s an opportunity to recognize the powerful impact of role models who instill confidence, inspire dreams, and show kids that they, too, can achieve greatness.”

A faulty radio antenna contributed to a deadly mid-air helicopter collision at an Australian theme park and resort, transport safety officials say.

Four people died – including two British tourists – and several more were seriously injured when the two aircraft hit each other in January 2023, near Sea World on the Gold Coast.

An investigation by Australia’s Transport and Safety Bureau (ATSB) found one of the pilots did not hear a vital radio call shortly before the accident, and that a series of changes by Sea World meant risk controls were over time eroded.

The accident rocked the Gold Coast, one of the nation’s biggest tourist hotspots.

The two helicopters collided around 20 seconds after one had taken off and as the other was landing.

Those who died were all travelling in the helicopter which was taking off. The other aircraft managed to make an emergency landing, with passengers suffering a range of injuries.

The ATSB report found that in the months leading up to the accident, Sea World had tried to improve its offering of leisure flights by adding a second helipad location and introducing larger Eurocopter EC140 B4 helicopters.

“Over time, these changes undermined risk controls used to manage traffic separation and created a conflict point between… helicopters,” it said.

The aircraft preparing to take off also had a faulty antenna.

In the run-up to the collision, a call from the arriving helicopter was either not received or not heard by the pilot on the ground, who was loading passengers at the time.

However, once the passengers were on board, a ground crew member advised the departing helicopter pilot that the airspace was clear. By the time the chopper took off, though, that information was no longer correct.

Meanwhile the pilot who was wanting to land after a five-minute scenic flight had seen the other helicopter on the ground but didn’t deem it a threat, the report said.

He would have expected to have been alerted by a “taxiing” radio call if that situation changed. However the faulty antenna likely prevented the broadcast of the taxiing call, the report said.

“Without the taxiing call being received, the pilot of the inbound helicopter, who was likely focusing on their landing site, had no trigger to reassess the status of the departing helicopter as a collision risk.”

Among those who died were Diane Hughes, 57, and her 65-year-old husband Ron who were from Neston, Cheshire. They had married in 2022 and were on holiday visiting relatives after being separated by COVID.

The “fun-loving” couple from Neston, Cheshire, had “a zest for life”, their family said in a statement at the time.

Also killed was Sydney resident Vanessa Tadros, 36, and 40-year-old Sea World Helicopters pilot Ashley Jenkinson, who was originally from Birmingham.

A further six people were seriously injured while three others sustained minor injuries in the crash.

Shortly after the accident, the passengers on the flight that was returning hailed the pilot as a “hero” for landing the helicopter safely.

In all, the Australian Transport Safety Bureau made 28 findings that underline “key lessons” for operators and pilots.

“The most fundamental lesson from this investigation is that making changes to aviation operations, even those that appear to increase safety, can have unintended consequences,” ATSB Chief Commissioner Angus Mitchell said.

“It is therefore critical that changes to aviation operations are managed through the implementation of a defined process to ensure overall safety is not adversely affected.”

Prince Harry’s decision to step back from his life as a working royal resulted in a “unique set of circumstances”, a government barrister has told the Court of Appeal.

Sir James Eadie KC said it was right to take a flexible approach to the level of personal security he should be given after he stepped back in early 2020.

The Duke of Sussex has asked three judges to overturn a decision to downgrade the police protection he is given at public expense when he visits the UK.

His barrister said the duke’s life was “at stake” and he had been given a security process that he knows “is manifestly inferior in every respect”.

• What are Harry and Meghan’s UK security arrangements and where do they get their money?

Prince Harry was in court again for the second day of the hearing, with a crowd of photographers and onlookers waiting when he arrived and waved to reporters.

Sitting next to his solicitor, the duke occasionally made notes as he listened to Sir James set out the government’s position.

Sir James told the court the Royal and VIP Executive Committee (Ravec), which decides security levels, was governed by “royal prerogative” – not the requirements of any law.

Its chair, Sir Richard Mottram, had been in charge for more than a decade and was “front line responsible” if Ravec got it wrong, he said.

As a senior civil servant with experience overseeing national security, “it’s hard to imagine a decision maker better placed to form his own view”, he told the court.

• Prince Harry can appeal against UK security ruling

While Ravec had “terms of reference” for deciding security measures, there was “nothing to suggest they were designed to operate rigidly and not flexibly”.

Unlike most of the senior members of the Royal Family, Prince Harry decided to live abroad and not carry out official engagements.

He previously said the safety of his family, with whom he moved to California in 2020, was at the heart of the case.

This decision was in a “category of its own”, Sir James said, and the committee was right to consider the case on its merits.

The core objective of the committee’s members and advisers, he said, was “to make nuanced judgments about security protection bringing all of their expertise to bear including making decisions about unusual cases and what process should most appropriately be followed”.

He added later that the decision on Prince Harry’s security was “considered with care” and “nothing was excluded or shut down in the future”, including conducting a risk assessment.

In closing remarks, Shaheed Fatima KC said of the duke, sat two rows behind: “There is a person sitting behind me whose safety, whose security and whose life is at stake.

“There is a person sitting behind me who has been told that he is getting a special, bespoke process, when he knows and has experienced a process that is manifestly inferior in every respect.”

“His presence here, and throughout this appeal, is a potent illustration, were one needed, of how much this appeal means to him and his family,” she added.

Because the Home Office has legal responsibility for Ravec’s decisions, it is opposing the appeal on its behalf.

The duke’s security in the UK is currently decided on a case-by-case basis, the same way as the country’s other high-profile visitors.

The details of Prince Harry’s current security arrangements, and the levels he would like to receive, have not been discussed in court, for security reasons.

More sensitive information was discussed in a closed hearing, without the media present, on Wednesday afternoon.

After the public hearing, a woman who had been sitting in the court shouted at journalists: “If you’re members of the press, you’re the reason he’s not in England.”

Prince Harry’s bodyguards led him out of the court before she was allowed to leave.

He then returned for the private section of the hearing before Sir Geoffrey Vos, Lord Justice Bean, and Lord Justice Edis, which concluded on Wednesday afternoon.

A written decision is expected at a later date.

On Tuesday, Ms Fatima told the court Prince Harry had been subject to a “so-called bespoke process” with regards to his UK security, that saw him “singled out for different, unjustified and inferior treatment”.

She told the court Ravec had not followed its own standard procedures, because it chose to downgrade his security without having expert analysis of the risks he faced.

She argued the previous judge was wrong to have concluded that the committee could make decisions without such analysis, and said the duke does not accept that “bespoke” means “better”.

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Ukrainian forces have captured two Chinese nationals who were fighting for the Russian army in eastern Ukraine’s Donetsk region, President Volodymyr Zelensky has said.

He said on Tuesday that intelligence suggested the number of Chinese soldiers in Russia’s army was “much higher than two”.

Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha said Chinese troops fighting on Ukrainian territory “puts into question China’s declared stance for peace” and added that their envoy in Kyiv was summoned for an explanation.

It is the first official allegation from Ukraine that China is supplying Russia with manpower. Russia declined to comment on Zelensky’s revelation on Wednesday.

However, China’s foreign ministry said it was “verifying the relevant situation with the Ukrainian side”, but that it had consistently urged Chinese nationals to steer clear of any armed conflicts.

It added that Kyiv’s accusation that more Chinese citizens were involved in the fighting was “groundless”.

In a statement on social media platform X, Zelensky said the soldiers were captured in Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region with identification documents, including bank cards which had “personal data” on them.

Ukraine’s forces fought six Chinese soldiers and took two of them prisoner, he said.

The post was accompanied by a video showing one of the alleged Chinese captives in handcuffs, speaking Mandarin Chinese and apparently describing a recent battle.

“We have information suggesting that there are many more Chinese citizens in the occupier’s units than just these two,” he said.

“Russia’s involvement of China, along with other countries, whether directly or indirectly, in this war in Europe is a clear signal that Putin intends to do anything but end the war,” Zelensky added.

The Ukrainian president called for a response “from the United States, Europe, and all those around the world who want peace”.

An investigation is under way and the captives are currently in the custody of Ukraine’s security service, he added.

On Tuesday, US State Department spokesperson Tammy Bruce called the reports “disturbing”.

She added that China is a “major enabler” of Russia’s war in Ukraine, citing its supply of dual-use goods such as navigation equipment, semiconductor chips and jet parts.

Ukraine’s foreign minister said that he had summoned China’s chargé d’affaires in Kyiv to “demand an explanation”.

Writing on X, Andrii Sybiha said: “We strongly condemn Russia’s involvement of Chinese citizens in its war of aggression against Ukraine, as well as their participation in combat against Ukrainian forces.”

He added that the move “puts into question China’s declared stance for peace” and undermines Beijing’s credibility as a member of the UN Security Council.

French newspaper Le Monde has previously reported that it identified around 40 accounts on TikTok’s sister app, Douyin – which is only available in China – belonging to Chinese individuals who claim to have signed up with the Russian army.

North Korea has sent thousands of troops to aid Russia’s war effort against Ukraine, according to Kyiv and Western officials.

• What we know about North Korean troops fighting Russia’s war
• About 1,000 North Koreans killed fighting Ukraine in Kursk, officials say

In a press conference on Tuesday, Zelensky said: “But there is a difference: North Koreans fought against us on the front in Kursk, the Chinese are fighting on the territory of Ukraine.”

In January Ukraine said it captured two injured North Korean soldiers in Russia’s Kursk Oblast.

While Beijing and Moscow are close political and economic allies, China has attempted to present itself as a neutral party in the conflict and has repeatedly denied supplying Russia with military equipment.

In its response on Wednesday, the foreign ministry in Beijing appeared to indicate that if Chinese citizens had been captured by Ukrainian forces then they had been operating in a private capacity.

“It is important to emphasise that the Chinese government has consistently urged its citizens to stay away from conflict zones and to avoid involvement in armed conflicts in any form – particularly participation in military actions on any side,” said foreign ministry spokesman Lin Jian.

One of Russia’s chief advantages in the war is numbers. There have been reports of Moscow using “meat grinder” tactics to throw huge numbers of soldiers at the front lines and incrementally improve their position.

Russian President Vladimir Putin launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, and Moscow currently controls about 20% of Ukraine’s territory, mostly in the east.

Russian drone attacks into Ukraine continued on Tuesday night with strikes injuring 14 people in the central Ukrainian city of Dnipro, and another two in Kharkiv, in the north-east, local officials said. A number of fires were reported in the two cities.

The UK government is investigating a fast-growing “green fuel” called HVO diesel amid claims of significant fraud, the BBC has learned.

HVO is increasingly popular as a transport fuel and for powering music festivals and its backers say it can curb carbon emissions by up to 90% as it can be made from waste materials like used cooking oil.

But industry whistleblowers told the BBC they believe large amounts of these materials are not waste but instead are virgin palm oil, which is being fraudulently relabelled.

And data analysed by the BBC and shared with the UK’s Department for Transport casts further doubt on one of the key ingredients in HVO, a material called palm sludge waste.

Europe used more of this waste in HVO and other biofuels in 2023 than it is thought possible for the world to produce.

In response to the BBC’s findings, the Department for Transport said they “take the concerns raised seriously and are working with stakeholders and international partners to gather further information”.

HVO, or hydrotreated vegetable oil, has been called something of a wonder-fuel in recent years as it can be used as 100% substitute for diesel reducing planet warming emissions.

UK consumption rocketed from 8 million litres in 2019 to about 699 million litres in 2024, according to provisional government figures.

Its green credentials rely heavily on the assumption that it is made from waste sources, particularly used cooking oil or the waste sludge from palm oil production.

But industry whistle-blowers have told the BBC that they believe virgin palm oil and other non-waste materials are often being used instead.

That would be bad news for the planet, as virgin palm oil is linked to increased tropical deforestation, which adds to climate change and threatening endangered species like orang-utans.

This palm oil “floods the market like cancer,” one large European biofuel manufacturer told the BBC.

They said that to stay in business they have to go along with the pretence that they are using waste materials.

Another whistle-blower, a former trader of these biofuels, also speaking anonymously, gave the BBC his account of one recent case dealing with supposedly waste products.

“I believe that what I bought was multiple cargos of virgin palm oil that has been wrongly classified as palm oil sludge,” they said.

“I called one of the board members and told them about the situation, and then I was told that they didn’t want to do anything about it, because the evidence would be burned.”

As well as this testimony, data compiled by campaign group Transport & Environment and analysed by the BBC suggests that more palm sludge waste is being used for transport biofuels than the world is probably able to produce.

The figures show that the UK and EU used about two million tonnes of palm sludge waste for HVO and other biofuels in 2023, based on Eurostat and UK Department for Transport figures.

EU imports of this sludge appear to have risen further in 2024, according to preliminary UN trade data, although the UK appears to have bucked this trend.

But the data analysed by the BBC, which is based on well-established UN and industry statistics, suggests the world can only produce just over one million tonnes of palm sludge waste a year.

This mismatch further suggests non-waste fuels such as virgin palm oil are being used to meet Europe’s rapid growth in biofuels, according to researchers and industry figures.

“It’s a very easy game,” said Dr Christian Bickert, a German farmer and editor with experience in biofuels, who believes that much of the HVO made with these waste products is “fake”.

“Chemically, the sludge and the pure palm oil are absolutely the same because they come from the same plant, and also from the same production facilities in Indonesia,” he told BBC News.

“There’s no paper which proves [the fraud], no paper at all, but the figures tell a clear story.”

Underpinning the sustainability claims of biofuels is an independent system of certification where producers have to show exactly where they get their raw materials from.

It is mainly administered by a company called ISCC, and in Europe it has a long-standing reputation for ensuring that waste materials turned into fuel really do come from waste, by working with national authorities.

But in Indonesia, Malaysia and China, three of the main sources of the raw ingredients claimed to be waste for HVO, supervision is much more difficult.

“ISCC is simply not allowed to send anybody to China,” said Dr Christian Bickert.

“They have to rely on certification companies in China to check that everything is OK, but China doesn’t allow any inspectors in from outside.”

This concern is echoed by several other groups contacted by the BBC.

Construction giant Balfour Beatty, for example, has a policy of not using the fuel, citing sustainability concerns.

“We just are not able to get any level of visibility over the supply chain of HVO that would give us that level of assurance that this is truly a sustainable product,” Balfour Beatty’s Jo Gilroy told BBC News.

The European Waste-based and Advanced Biofuels Association represents the major biofuel manufacturers in the EU and UK.

In a statement they said “there is a major certification verification issue that needs to be addressed as a matter of priority”, adding that the “ISCC should do much more to ensure that non-EU Biodiesel is really what it claims to be”.

In the light of growing fraud allegations, the Irish authorities have recently restricted incentives for fuels made from palm waste.

The BBC also understands that the EU is about to propose a ban on ISCC certification of waste biofuels for two-and-a-half years, although it is expected to say it is not aware of direct breaches of renewable goals.

It would then be up to individual member countries to decide whether to accept certifications.

In response, the ISCC said it was “more than surprised” by the EU’s move, adding that it had been “a frontrunner in implementing the most strict and effective measures to ensure integrity and fraud prevention in the market for years”.

“The measure would be a severe blow to the entire market for waste-based biofuels,” it said.

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Tributes have been paid to a London-based scientist who formerly worked for the Royal Society of Biology (RSB) after he was found murdered in northern Colombia.

Alessandro Coatti’s remains were discovered on the outskirts of Santa Marta, a port city on the Caribbean coast, on Sunday, investigators say.

Santa Marta’s Mayor, Carlos Pinedo Cuello, said a reward of 50,000,000 Colombian pesos (£8,940) was being offered for information leading to the capture of those responsible for the death of the Italian citizen.

In a statement issued on Tuesday, the RSB said it was “devastated” by news of Mr Coatti’s killing.

“He was a passionate and dedicated scientist, leading RSB animal science work, writing numerous submissions, organising events and giving evidence in the House of Commons,” the RSB said.

“Ale was funny, warm, intelligent, loved by everyone he worked with and will be deeply missed by all who knew and worked with him.

“Our thoughts and best wishes go out to his friends and family at this truly awful time.”

Santa Marta is a gateway to some of Colombia’s most popular tourist destinations including Tayrona National Park, Minca and the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta mountains.

Mr Coatti, who took a master’s course at University College London (UCL), worked for the RSB for eight years as science policy officer before being promoted to senior science policy officer.

He left the RSB at the end of 2024 to volunteer in Ecuador and travel in South America.

Parts of the scientist’s dismembered body were found in a suitcase dumped in a stream.

Posting on X, Mr Pinedo Cuello said: “This crime will not go unpunished. The criminals must know that crime has no place in Santa Marta. We will pursue them until they are brought to justice.”

A hotel worker who spoke to Colombian newspaper El Tiempo said Mr Coatti had inquired about visiting the village of Minca and was conducting research on local animal species.

President Donald Trump has announced a 90-day pause for countries hit by higher US tariffs but a trade war with China has escalated.

In a dramatic change of policy, just hours after levies against roughly 60 of America’s trading partners kicked in, Trump said he was authorising a universal “lowered reciprocal tariff of 10%” as negotiations continued.

At the same time he increased tariffs on goods from China to 125%, accusing Beijing of a “lack of respect” after it retaliated by saying it would impose tariffs of 84% on US imports.

This comes a week after Trump announced import taxes on all goods entering the US, in the biggest upheaval of international trade in decades.

His plan set a baseline tariff of 10% on all imports – which remains in place – but also higher rates on partners the White House described as the “worst offenders” for what the president considers to be unfair trade practices.

This included the 27-member European Union, Vietnam, South Africa and many more – all of which were due to be on the receiving end of US tariffs ranging from 11% to more than 100%.

Major market turmoil followed Trump’s announcement last week, with sell-offs sparking trillions in losses across the world, many Americans fearing price rises and some analysts predicting increased odds of recession.

On Wednesday, before Trump said he would suspend the higher tariffs on goods from countries other than China, the US government saw interest rates on its debt spike to 4.5% – the highest level since February.

• Trump tariffs spark US government debt sell-off

Hours later, when the change was announced, US shares rocketed with the S&P 500 soaring 7% in afternoon trading. It later closed the day’s trading up 9.5%, while the Dow Jones surged by 7.8%.

Announcing the latest iteration of his plan on Truth Social, Trump said he was authorising a 90-day pause on tariffs for the countries that had not retaliated against his levies.

The additional tariff on Beijing, he said, would be effective immediately. “At some point, hopefully in the near future, China will realise that the days of ripping off the U.S.A., and other Countries, is no longer sustainable or acceptable,” he wrote.

US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent insisted the change of policy had not been influenced by the global falls, but senior Democrat Chuck Schumer said the decision showed Trump was “reeling and retreating”.

Speaking outside the White House, Trump later said the amendments to his tariffs policy had “had to be done” because people were “getting yippy”.

“I did a 90-day pause for the people that didn’t retaliate because I told them ‘if you retaliate, we’re going to double it’ – and that’s what I did with China,” he said, adding that he thought, “It’s all going to work out amazing.”

He also said he thought Chinese President Xi Jinping was “going to want to get to a deal”.

In the UK, which was not affected by the changes as it was already on the list of countries receiving the baseline 10% tariff, a No 10 spokeswoman said a “trade war is in nobody’s interests”.

A source also said the developments in Washington showed “cool and calm can pay off”.

The ongoing stand-off between China and the US – the world’s two biggest economies – began when Trump announced new tariffs last week.

China was hit with an additional 34% tariff, on top of a 20% levy the president had put in place earlier this year. However, Beijing was quick to retaliate with a 34% tariff on US imports to China.

In response, Trump threatened an additional 50%, bringing the total to 104% on Tuesday, if Beijing did not back down. China did not change course and said it would “fight to the end” if the US “insists on provoking a tariff war or trade war”.

Just hours after the 104% tariffs from the US kicked in earlier, Beijing announced it would raise its own tariffs on American goods from 34% to 84% from Thursday.

China’s foreign ministry spokesman Lin Jian said on Wednesday the US “continues to impose tariffs on China in an abusive manner”.

He said China opposes such “bullying practices” and the US must show “an attitude of equality, mutual respect, and reciprocity” if it hopes to resolve issues through negotiation.

The deteriorating relationship between the two nations could see their goods trade fall as much as 80% – a $466bn (£363bn) drop, according to World Trade Organization forecasts.

“Our assessments, informed by the latest developments, highlight the substantial risks associated with further escalation,” Dr Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, head of the WTO, said.

Away from China, Trump’s latest plans have not affected other recently-announced tariffs already in play.

These include the 25% import taxes on cars and car parts coming into the US, which came into effect on 2 April, and a further 25% tariff on all steel and aluminium imports.

Earlier on Wednesday, the European Union approved a first set of retaliatory tariffs against the US, due to take effect on 15 April. The bloc, on Trump’s “worst offender” trading partner list, had been due to receive customised tariffs of 20%.

But because the EU’s retaliatory tariffs had not yet gone into effect, the White House included it on the list of countries to be capped at 10%.

Meanwhile, the so-called baseline rate never applied to Canada and Mexico – key trading partners of the US – and a White House official has said neither is in line to receive the 10% baseline tariff now.

For days, Donald Trump and his White House team had insisted they were fully committed to their decision to impose sweeping “reciprocal” tariffs on dozens of countries. They even derided a report on Tuesday that said the president was considering a 90-day pause – news that triggered a brief stock market surge.

But now that pause on higher tariff rates, with a few notable exceptions, is a reality. The reordering of the global economic order is on hold, and Trump’s promise of a golden age of American manufacturing will have to wait.

The White House has said that going big on tariffs and then hitting the pause button, before entering negotiations with individual countries, was the plan all along.

“We’ve had more than 75 countries contact us, and I imagine, after today, there will be more,” Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told reporters shortly after the announcement.

That framing from the White House is not surprising, of course. And it is difficult to ignore the investor panic, tumbling bond market and growing chorus of Republican criticism and public disapproval that preceded the announcement.

So was it a strategic retreat in the face of unexpected resistance, or yet another example of Trump’s “art of the deal” negotiating strategy at work?

It didn’t take long for Trump’s aides – many of the same people who said he would never back down – to fan out and celebrate the president’s move.

Trade adviser Peter Navarro said Trump’s tariff situation “unfolded exactly the way it should”.

“You clearly failed to see what President Trump is doing here,” press secretary Karoline Leavitt told a crowd of gathered reporters. “The entire world is calling the United States of America.”

• Trump pauses higher tariffs for 90 days but escalates China trade war
• What are tariffs and why is Trump using them?
• China retaliates against Trump’s ‘trade tyranny’ with 84% tariffs

They were less clear about the details of Trump’s tariff suspension, announced via a post on his Truth Social website. Did the reprieve in higher tariffs apply to the EU? Were Mexico and Canada, which had avoided the original 10% baseline tariffs, somehow now get included? Were tariffs targeting specific sectors affected?

Ultimately, the White House provided some clarity on these questions – but for hours US trading partners were left to scrutinise Trump’s Truth Social post and glean details from answers to questions shouted by reporters at press gaggles.

On Wednesday afternoon, Trump acknowledged that the markets had looked “pretty glum” and that “people were getting a little queasy” – a reflection that undercut some of the bravado he expressed over the past week and could hint at the real reason for his tariff change of course.

Earlier in the day, he was on Truth Social, urging people to “BE COOL!” and promising that “everything is going to work out”. And on Monday he lashed out at what he called “panicans” – a party based on “weak and stupid people” who weren’t patient with his efforts.

In the end, however, it was Trump who made an abrupt change of course.

He insisted, however, that his tariff announcement was one that had to be made, and that any economic disruptions reflected a sickness that had been allowed to fester in the American economy.

Democrats, meanwhile, painted a less rosy picture. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer accused Trump of “governing by chaos”.

“He is reeling, he is retreating, and that is a good thing,” he said.

In the end, the thought process behind Trump’s decision may not really matter.

The reality is that the US is now making nice – or at least nicer – with nations that had faced their retaliatory trade fire, even though Trump is still imposing a 10% across the board tariff that by itself would have been huge news just a few weeks ago.

It is enough of a step down for the stock market to bounce back, however, and Trump is now leaning into a trade war with China which he hit with 125% tariffs.

That will have global economic repercussions of its own, but it is more in line with recent American foreign policy – including that of Democratic President Joe Biden – as it seeks to constrain Chinese ambitions.

The big unknown, however, is whether Trump’s actions over the past week – setting allies scrambling and threatening the established global order – will have made such a strategy more difficult to pursue.

And in 90 days, when Trump’s pause expires, this week’s economic drama and uncertainty could begin all over again.

Suddenly, Donald Trump’s trade war is in much sharper focus.

Rather than a fight on all fronts against the world, this now looks far more like a fight on familiar Trumpian territory: America v China.

The 90-day pause on the higher “retaliatory” tariffs levied on dozens of countries still leaves a universal across-the-board tariff of 10% in place.

But China – which ships everything from iPhones to children’s toys and accounts for around 14% of all US imports – has been singled out for much harsher treatment with an eye-watering rate of 125%.

Trump said the increase was due to Beijing’s readiness to retaliate with its own 84% levy on US goods, a move the president described as showing a “lack of respect”.

But for a politician who first fought his way to the White House on the back of an anti-China message, there is much more to this than simple retaliation.

For Trump, this is about the unfinished business of that first term in office.

“We didn’t have the time to do the right thing, which we’re doing now,” he told reporters.

The aim is nothing less than the upending of an established system of global trade centred on China as the factory of the world, as well as the once widely held view that underpinned it – the idea that more of this trade was, in and of itself, a good thing.

To understand just how central this is to the US president’s thinking, you need to go back to the time before anyone ever thought of him as a possible candidate for office, let alone a likely winner.

In 2012, when I first reported from Shanghai – China’s business capital – increased trade with the country was seen by almost everyone – global business leaders, Chinese officials, visiting foreign governments and trade delegations, foreign correspondents and learned economists – as a no brainer.

It was boosting global growth, providing an endless supply of cheap goods, enriching China’s army of new factory workers increasingly embedded in global supply chains, and providing lucrative opportunities to multinational corporations selling their wares to its newly minted middle classes.

Within a few of years of my arrival, China had surpassed the US to become the world’s biggest market for Rolls Royce, General Motors and Volkswagen.

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There was a deeper justification, too.

As China got richer, so the theory went, Chinese people would begin to demand political reform.

Their spending habits would also help China transition to a consumer society.

But the first of those aspirations never happened, with China’s ruling Communist Party only tightening its grip on power.

And the second one didn’t happen fast enough, with China not only still dependent on exports, but openly planning to become ever more dominant.

Its infamous policy blueprint – published in 2015 and entitled Made in China 2025 – set out a huge state-backed vision of becoming a global leader in a number of key manufacturing sectors, from aerospace to ship building to electric vehicles.

And so it was that just one year later, a complete political unknown began an outsider-run for US president, making the case repeatedly on the campaign trail that China’s rise had hollowed out the American economy, driven rustbelt decline and cost blue-collar workers their livelihoods and dignity.

Trump’s first-term trade war broke the mould and shattered the consensus. His successor, President Joe Biden, kept much of his tariffs on China in place.

And yet, even though they have undoubtedly caused China some pain, they have not done much to change the economic model.

China now produces 60% of the world’s electric cars – a large proportion of them made by its own homegrown brands – and 80% of the batteries that power them.

So, now Trump is back, with this tit-for-tat escalation on levies.

It would, arguably, be the biggest shock ever delivered to the established global trading system, were it not for all the other on-again off-again tariff measures the US president has rolled out in recent days.

What happens next depends on two key questions.

Firstly, whether China takes up that offer to negotiate.

And secondly, assuming it eventually does, whether China is willing to make the kind of major concessions that America is looking for, including a complete overhaul of its export driven economic model.

In answering them, the first thing to say is that we are in completely unchartered territory, so we should be wary of anyone who says they know how Beijing is likely to react.

But there are certainly reasons to be cautious.

China’s vision of its economic strength – one based on strong exports and a tightly protected domestic market – is now closely bound up with its idea of national rejuvenation and the supremacy of its one-party system.

Its tight control over the information sphere means it will be unlikely to drop its barriers to American technology companies, for example.

But there is a third question, and it is one for America to answer.

Does the US still believe in free trade? Donald Trump often suggests that tariffs are a good thing, not merely as a means to an end, but as an end in themselves.

He talks about the benefit of a protectionist barrier for America, in order to stimulate domestic investment, encourage American companies to bring those foreign supply chains back home, and raise tax revenues.

And if Beijing believes that is indeed the primary purpose of the tariffs, it may decide there is nothing to negotiate anyway.

Rather than championing the idea of economic co-operation, the world’s two biggest superpowers may find themselves locked in a fight for winner-takes-all economic supremacy.

If so, that really would mark a shattering of the old consensus, and a very different, possibly very dangerous, future.

“The best salesman in history.” This was what Donald Trump once called Volodymyr Zelensky because of the amount of aid the US has given Ukraine.

Whether or not a fair comparison, Zelensky’s role in keeping his country in the spotlight and convincing allies to invest has certainly been crucial for Ukraine’s fight.

His transformation from prime-time comedian to wartime president has long been cast – it dates back to 2022 when he decided to remain in Kyiv as Russian troops closed in. That decision meant Ukraine would go on to defend itself to this day.

In the years since, I’ve stood across from him in person dozens of times, and Zelensky now casts a more authoritative, perhaps battle-hardened figure, moulded partly by his increased isolation on the international stage.

But with the unpredictability of Trump’s second term – not least following the pair’s Oval Office bust-up in February – Zelensky may now have to transform again.

Politically it is no longer a story of oppressor versus oppressed. Rather, it is muddied by the dual challenge of voicing an appetite for peace whilst protecting his country’s interests.

But is a man used to having so much authority at home and being so influential abroad really going to stage a second big transformation, shifting his focus to Trump-era diplomacy? Or will he decide the best way of standing up for Ukraine is to yield little?

Before Trump’s chapter two began, Ukraine’s leader had effectively lobbied for western support. He appealed for air defences, tanks, rockets and fighter jets, with nations such as Germany hesitating over fears of the war escalating, before yielding to his requests.

His message was rigid and he was successful in procuring support.

“Zelensky was very clever and calculated in the early days of the war,” says Ed Arnold from defence and security think tank, Royal United Services Institute (Rusi).

His decision go to the Munich security conference two weeks before the invasion, despite being advised that this would be a security risk, was pivotal, argues Mr Arnold.

“It personalised support to Ukraine within the minds of people who personally attended.”

Serhiy Leshchenko, an advisor to Zelensky’s office, explains: “We have to be visible to the world. If public opinion is on Ukraine’s side, there is a better chance to get help from the international community.”

Leshchenko points to Zelensky’s daily video addresses, which he has created since start of the invasion. “It’s unusual to be so open.”

Ukraine’s victory in the battle of Kyiv cemented Zelensky as a symbol of the country’s survival, and boosted his case for continued military aid from western allies.

Later in 2022, Zelensky was able to demonstrate the difference their supplies were making when swathes of Ukrainian territory, including the city of Kherson, were liberated. He had initial success with European allies.

“They are invested in Zelensky personally and Ukraine,” says Mr Arnold. “He’s gone through four UK prime ministers since the start of the war … and they’ve all signed new declarations with Ukraine, again through Zelensky.

“He’s been able to weather the changes in national politics within Europe throughout his tenure.”

But when further successes failed to materialise, Zelensky’s message did not change – and as time went on, this would be to his detriment.

After Ukraine’s failed counter-offensive in the summer of 2023, for example, the merits of supporting Kyiv were increasingly questioned by an influential minority of US Republicans and pleas were starting to be passed over in some quarters.

Maria Zolkina, head of regional security and conflict studies at the Democratic Initiatives Foundation, a Kyiv-based think tank, believes Zelensky is partly responsible.

“He and his close circle relied on the logic that they must always be demanding when speaking with their partners – pushing the argument that Ukraine simply needs something. That worked really well during 2022, but with the US and others this kind of messaging stopped working in 2023,” she argues.

“But his diplomacy really didn’t adjust quickly enough.”

On 27 September 2024, in a lobby in New York, things truly changed for Ukraine. Only the driving force was not approaching Russian armour but the political reincarnation of Ukraine’s biggest ally: the US.

On that day, just over a month before the US Presidential election, Zelensky had a last minute meeting with Trump in Trump Tower.

Tensions between the pair had heightened before this meeting: Zelensky had claimed a few days earlier that Trump didn’t “really know how to end the war”, after he asserted he could do it in “one day”.

After the Trump Tower meeting, the two men emerged looking awkward.

Despite announcing a “common view” of wanting to end the war, their body language suggested a lack of chemistry.

The pair would not meet again until five months later in the Oval Office, where their now famous encounter would be a diplomatic disaster for Kyiv.

“Trump should have liked him,” says Vadym Prystaiko, who was present when the pair first met after Zelensky’s election win in 2019. “Zelensky saw Trump as more or less as himself, as a media guy who moved into politics, who was anti-establishment,” he says.

Mr Prystaiko was Ukraine’s ambassador to the UK, before he was sacked in 2023. Kyiv gave no official reason for the dismissal, but it came after Mr Prystaiko criticised Zelensky’s response to a row over gratitude for British military aid. He said there had been a “little bit of sarcasm” in his president’s response, which he believed was “unhealthy”.

“Zelensky has never been a diplomat,” Mr Prystaiko adds. “He has never been a usual political leader who kisses babies and shakes hands.”

“The relationship with Trump is like a rollercoaster,” says Volodymyr Fesenko, director at the Pento Center for Political Studies. “Sometimes there is constructive cooperation, and then, all of a sudden, some kind of crisis appears.”

Then there is their war of words. Trump has blamed Zelensky for starting the war, calling him a “dictator”, while Ukraine’s leader accused his US counterpart of “living in a Russian disinformation space”.

While Mr Fesenko believes Zelensky is continually changing tactics to find a working relationship with Washington, Ms Zolkina believes the issues go deeper.

“There is a triangle between the US administration, the Kremlin and Kyiv,” she claims. “Ukraine is considered to be a weaker part of this triangle. For Trump, Zelensky is not in the same league, and that’s the problem.”

When it came to the now infamous Oval Office meeting with Trump and his Vice President JD Vance, this was the first time I’d seen Zelensky seemingly run out of political rope as he was accused of “not showing enough gratitude” and “playing with World War Three”.

His defensive body language, the folding of his arms for example, also seemed new.

Zelensky has always appeared comfortable hosting or visiting other leaders. He is at ease on a stage and often injects timely humour — but this was different.

A mineral agreement, in which Zelensky had originally suggested trading a portion of Ukraine’s mineral resource wealth for continued military aid, was never signed, and has since evolved into a less favourable proposal for Kyiv.

The US would also briefly pause its military aid and intelligence sharing to ensure Ukraine danced to its tune.

But the official view from some is that the Oval Office meeting was not a calamity.

“Nobody took it as the end of something,” claims Ihor Brusylo, the deputy head of the Presidential Office, who travelled to the White House with Zelensky. “We discussed how to move forward. It was not a disaster.”

When the US National Security Advisor Mike Waltz told them the meeting was over, “we just shrugged our shoulders and decided to go back to the hotel,” he recalls.

“My presumption is that on a personal level, they [Trump and Zelensky] get on well,” he adds. “They understand each other better, and are frank and honest.”

Whatever the truth about their relationship behind closed doors, there have been signs of a willingness to bend from Zelensky since that meeting – European allies are said to have convinced him to subsequently take a more compliant tone, because of the inescapable truth that they, and Ukraine, still need the US to combat an aggressive Russia.

Yet others argue more bend still is needed.

“The war changes everyone, it has changed us all in some sense. But I don’t think fundamentally Zelensky has changed – for good or bad in some instances,” says Olga Onuch, professor of Comparative and Ukrainian Politics at the University of Manchester.

“It is very clear that certain actors have decided it’s difficult to negotiate with Zelensky. Why? Because he has red lines that he is sticking to.”

Mr Brusylo agrees. “It is very difficult to bend Zelensky,” he says. “It’s like watching a spring, the more you press, the bigger the pushback.”

And yet whenever Ukraine is attacked, politically or diplomatically, increased political unity follows. The Oval Office clash was no exception, as Zelensky’s popularity rating soared to around 70%.

“Zelensky is very powerful, and his authority is made up of himself and a certain circle of people,” argues Ms Zolkina.

Orysia Lutsevych, head of the Ukraine Forum at Chatham House says it’s interesting how Ukrainians rallied around Zelensky after the Oval Office, almost like they took it as a personal insult of Ukrainian statehood.

“People rally around him, what he represents and how he behaves”.

Mr Prystaiko argues if the Americans wanted him to be replaced “they’ve shot themselves in the foot as he might easily be re-elected”.

Some political experts, like Ms Zolkina, do not think this is a certainty. “I don’t think he understands that this boost is a direct reaction to what Trump is doing, not his personal position,” she says.

“He has pretty strong political ambitions for a second term, and is pretty politically egocentric, as all leaders are at his level.”

Prof Onuch does not think that pursuit of political power alone motivates Zelensky. “[He is] much more of a careful and considered and tactical political operator than people give him credit for”.

Still, imagining a Zelensky second term can be difficult, simply because of the sheer demands of the job. Even post-war challenges would be considerable.

For now, Mr Arnold suspects that an exhausted Zelensky would not want to stand again and suggests that he may want a way out from at least the frontline politics.

As for the near-term, Zelensky cannot afford another Oval Office. So, given that Trump is a keen player, will Ukraine’s leader ever join him for a round of golf?

“He is a quick learner,” says his Mr Brusylo. “When there is a need to play golf, I’m sure he will tackle this task.”

President Trump has been justifying his sweeping tariffs with a series of claims about how the US is the victim of “unfair trade”.

He has imposed tariffs – or import taxes – on countries around the world, including a 125% rate on goods imported from China. In response, China is hiking its tariffs on American imports.

Some of Trump’s claims on trade are unsubstantiated or even false. BBC Verify has been taking a closer look.

“We’re making a fortune with tariffs – $2bn a day”, Trump has said about his new tariff regime on Tuesday.

BBC Verify cannot find any published figures which show this.

The US Treasury Department publishes a daily statement on how much money from customs duties goes to the federal government.

Data from 7 April – which includes the impact of some of Trump’s earlier tariffs – amounted to $215m (£168m).

That figure is well short of Trump’s claim.

It is possible that he has based it on forecasts for the year ahead.

The US imported $9bn (£7bn) worth of goods per day last year.

Some analysts have calculated that the average rate of Trump’s tariffs (as of 2 April) is 22%.

Applying this to these import figures would get you to $2bn (£1.6bn) a day.

But this calculation assumes that the volume of US imports would stay at this level.

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Another way Trump could have reached his figure is by basing it on what his trade advisor said on 6 April.

Peter Navarro claimed the tariffs would raise $700bn (£546bn) a year and – from this – you can get to around $2bn a day.

It is not clear how Navarro came up with his figure and analysts have since argued that it could be much lower.

BBC Verify has asked the White House for Trump’s evidence.

A trade deficit happens when a country buys more from another country than it sells to it and Trump claims the US has a huge one with China.

“We have a trillion dollar trade deficit with China”, Trump told reporters on 7 April.

The US does have a large trade deficit in goods with China.

Official figures show it was just over $295bn (£230bn) in 2024 – which is far less than the $1tn (£780bn) claimed by Trump.

Globally, in 2024, China exported nearly $1tn (£780bn) more goods than it imported.

But, contrary to what Trump said, that figure applies to all countries, not just the US.

Trump has claimed that Canada charges US farmers a 270% tariff on their dairy products.

“Canada charges for our dairy products 270%. Nobody knows that. They charge you 2% for the first two cartons of milk and after that you go up to 270,” Trump said.

It is correct that Canada does impose high tariffs on US dairy products – including 241% for milk, 270% for dairy powder and 298% for butter – but they only apply under specific conditions.

Under the Canadian system, US dairy goods can enter the country duty-free or with very low tariffs – until certain quotas are exceeded. Once this happens, higher tariffs are applied.

According to the US Department of Agriculture (USDA), the US exported $1.14bn (£892m) worth of dairy products to Canada in 2024.

Despite the volume of trade between the two countries, the International Dairy Foods Association (IDFA) – which represents America’s dairy industry – said “the US has never gotten close” to exceeding the quotas.

The IDFA has, however, supported Trump challenging Canada’s approach, saying that tariff quotas as well as Canada’s milk pricing policy was distorting trade. But it also said a tariff war would “create uncertainly and additional costs for American dairy farmers”.

Trade expert David Henig, from the European Centre for International Political Economy, told BBC Verify that Canada is highly protective of its dairy market, but pointed out that “President Trump actually negotiated the most recent trade deal between Canada and the US”.

As well as China, Trump singled out the European Union (EU) which he said had been formed “to screw the United States”.

“You know, we take their millions of cars. They take no cars. They don’t take our farm products. They don’t take anything”, he said.

While the US imports more cars from the EU than it exports to it, Trump’s claim that they take no cars is false.

In 2024, the EU imported 164,857 US-made cars valued at €7.7bn (£6.6bn), according to the European Automobile Manufacturers’ Association (ACEA).

Many more did go the other way – 749,170 EU-made cars were exported to the US last year valued at €38.5bn (£33.3bn).

Trump’s claim about farm products is also false.

The EU bought $12.8bn (£10bn) of US agricultural exports in 2024, making the EU America’s fourth largest export market – according to the USDA.

What do you want BBC Verify to investigate?

Confidence in the US economy is plummeting as investors dumped government debt amid growing concerns over the impact of Donald Trump’s tariffs.

Governments sell bonds – essentially an IOU – to raise money from financial markets for public spending and in return they pay interest.

The US does not normally see high interest rates on its debt as its bonds are viewed as a safe investment, but on Wednesday rates spiked sharply to touch 4.5%.

The rise came after Trump pressed ahead with sweeping tariffs on goods being imported into the US, while Washington’s trade war with China escalated further – although Trump on Wednesday did put a 90-day pause on higher tariffs for some countries.

After the US implemented a 104% tariff on products from China at midnight on Wednesday, Beijing hit back with 84% levy on American products. Trump later raised the tariff on China to 125%.

Stock markets have been falling sharply over the past few days in reaction to the escalating global trade war and fears of tariffs leading to higher prices, although US stocks soared when Trump announced the 90-day pause and a lowered 10% reciprocal tariff for other countries.

However, the sale of bonds in the US poses a major problem for the world’s biggest economy.

The interest rate – or yield – for US government borrowing over 10 years has spiked sharply in the past couple of days from 3.9% to 4.5%, the highest level since February.

The rise has spooked economists because US bonds are traditionally seen as a so-called safe haven for investors to put their money in times of financial turmoil.

“Rising bond yields mean higher costs for companies to borrow, and of course governments too,” said Laith Khalaf, head of investment analysis at AJ Bell.

“Bonds should do well in times of turmoil as investors flee to safety, but Trump’s trade war is now undermining the US debt market,” he added.

While interest rates on US government debt rose, the price of the bonds themselves fell as demand weakened due to investors offloading them.

Mohammed El Erian, chief economic advisor at Allianz and former boss of the biggest bond manager Pimco, said one reason US borrowing costs had shot up was because there had been an “erosion” of bonds being seen as a safe haven.

He added concerns over the impact of tariffs on inflation and US government budgets were also reasons.

Some analysts suggested that America’s central bank – the US Federal Reserve – might be forced to step in if turbulence continues, in a move reminiscent of the Bank of England’s emergency action in 2022 following Liz Truss’s mini-Budget.

“We see no other option for the Fed but to step in with emergency purchases of US Treasuries to stabilise the bond market,” said George Saravelos, global head of FX research at Deutsche Bank.

“We are entering uncharted territory,” he said, adding that it was “very hard” to predict how markets would react in the coming days as the bond market suggested investors had “lost faith in US assets”.

Mr El Erian told the BBC’s World At One that the Fed would be “torn” over what action to take, given its main mandates are to manage inflation and maximise employment.

Economists have predicted US tariffs, which will be paid for by American companies importing goods from abroad, will raise consumer prices domestically.

Trump’s plan is aimed at protecting American businesses from foreign competition and also to boost domestic manufacturing.

However, tumbling stock markets resulting from fears extra taxes will hit the profits of companies, could lead ultimately to firms cutting jobs and an economic downturn.

JP Morgan, the investment banking giant, has raised the likelihood of a US recession from 40% to 60% and warned that American policy was “tilting away from growth”.

Simon French, chief economist at Panmure Liberum, told the BBC that the Fed could decide to cut interest rates in a bid to protect US jobs by making it easier for businesses to borrow cash as they face higher costs from tariffs.

He said it was a “coin toss” over whether the US would enter a recession.

This is defined as a prolonged and widespread decline in economic activity typically characterised by a jump in unemployment and fall in incomes.

Mr El Erian said the UK was likely to be impacted by the US bonds sell-off.

“When US treasuries sneeze, UK government bonds catch a cold – we have seen a significant move up in UK bond yields which means more pressure on the Budget,” he added.

Rising UK bond yields means “higher borrowing costs for companies and households,” he added.

The Bank of England warned on Wednesday that US tariffs “contributed to a material increase in the risk to global growth” and financial stability.

“Uncertainty has intensified,” it said.

Investors are now betting on the Bank to cut interest rates by as many as four times, to bolster the economy against a potential economic downturn.

US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent claimed that Trump’s goal was to bring “jobs and manufacturing back to the United States, raising wages, increasing revenues and reviving the American Dream”.

He said the Trump administration was looking to “right the wrongs of longstanding global trade imbalances”.

Questions remain over the scale and what type of investors are dumping US bonds.

There has been speculation some foreign countries, such as China which owns some $759bn of US bonds, might be selling them.

Mr Saravelos warned there could be “no winner” to this trade war. “The loser will be the global economy,” he added.

Follow the twists and turns of Trump’s second term with North America correspondent Anthony Zurcher’s weekly US Politics Unspun newsletter. Readers in the UK can sign up here. Those outside the UK can sign up here.

US shares have rocketed after US President Donald Trump said he would suspend steep tariffs on goods from most countries, and instead impose a 10% import tax rate.

The White House said it was backing off on higher levies for trade partners that had agreed to negotiate, although Trump said he would raise tariffs on goods from China even further, to at least 125% “effective immediately”.

The S&P 500 soared 9.5% in the biggest one-day rally since 2008, following days of turmoil sparked by the tariffs.

Trump’s decision came less than 24 hours after the latest round of tariffs had come into force, hitting key trade partners, such as Vietnam, which saw its imports facing a new levy of 46%.

The duties, which the president had announced last week, were higher and more far-reaching than many on Wall Street had anticipated.

In the aftermath of the announcement, the S&P plunged more than 10% and many analysts warned of the rising risk of economic recession in the US and globally.

By Wednesday, the fears had hit the bond market, where investors started dumping US government debt.

“Although President Donald Trump was able to resist the stock market sell-off, once the bond market began to weaken too, it was only a matter of time before he folded,” said Paul Ashworth, chief North America economist for Capital Economics.

He said he expected Trump to return to the plan for a 10% universal tariff that he called for in his presidential campaign last year, though warned that it would take time for for the US and China to work out a deal.

“It is difficult to see either side backing down in the next few days,” he said. “But we suspect that talks will eventually happen, although a full rollback of all the additional tariffs applied since Inauguration Day appear unlikely.”

The Dow ended the day up more than 7.8% and the Nasdaq skyrocketed more than 12%.

• Live updates

Companies such as Nike, which makes roughly half its footwear in Vietnam, jumped 11%, while Apple soared roughly 15%.

Despite the gains on Wednesday, the leading indexes in the US remained lower than they were before Trump’s announcement, with the S&P 500 off about 3% and down more than 8% for the year.

The levies on goods from China, America’s third largest supplier of imports, remain an economic challenge.

The country sent more than $400bn in goods to the US last year and was the source of an estimated 60% of footwear imports and roughly 36% of clothing imports in January, according to the American Apparel and Footwear Association.

Before Trump’s announcement, the National Retail Federation had warned that shipments handled by US ports in May were likely to be 20% lower than a year earlier due to the tariffs.

In appearances after his decision on Wednesday, Trump said that he hoped to strike a deal with China, and was also considering granting exemptions to tariffs for individual companies, a shift from earlier comments.

“I saw last night where people were getting a little queasy,” he said, acknowledging the concerns, though he has signalled he remains committed to duties on key strategic sectors, such as cars, steel and aluminium, and is eyeing other industries such as pharmaceuticals and lumber.

His decision to offer a respite from the so-called reciprocal duties followed rising political pressure in Washington and from other influential figures that had backed him during last year’s presidential campaign, including Tesla boss Elon Musk, billionaire Bill Ackman and Barstool Sports founder Dave Portnoy.

But the abrupt climbdown still caught many off-guard.

Almost at the same time as Trump posted his move on social media, Goldman Sachs issued a report predicting a recession in the US economy triggered by the steep duties.

Two hours later, the bank said it was reverting to its earlier forecast, which, even assuming lower tariffs than the president had announced last week, expected minimal growth this year and put the odds of a recession at 45%.

Mr Ackman, who had earlier called for a 90-day tariff pause, praised the president on social media: “Thank you on behalf of all Americans,” he said.

A Meta whistleblower told US senators on Wednesday that the company undermined national security in order to build a $18 billion business in China.

At a congressional hearing, Sarah Wynn-Williams, a former global public policy director at Facebook, said she watched as executives decided to provide the Chinese Communist Party‬ with access to the data of Meta users, including that of Americans.

Meta has disputed Ms Wynn-Williams’s statements.

“Sarah Wynn-Williams’ testimony is divorced from reality and riddled with false claims,” said Meta spokesman Ryan Daniels.

Mr Daniels said CEO Mark Zuckerberg has been public about the company’s interest in offering its services in China, but added. “[T]he fact is this: we do not operate our services in China today.”

Meta does, however, generate advertising revenue from advertisers based in China.

During her testimony before a Senate judiciary subcommittee, Ms Wynn-Williams also alleged the parent company of Facebook and Instagram worked “hand in glove” with Beijing to build censorship tools aimed at silencing critics of the Chinese Community Party.

Specifically, she said Meta capitulated to China’s demands that it delete the Facebook account of Guo Wengui, a Chinese dissident living in the US.

Meta maintains it unpublished Mr Guo’s page and suspended his profile because it violated the company’s Community Standards.

“One thing the Chinese Communist Party and Mark Zuckerberg share is that they want to silence their critics. I can say that from personal experience,” Ms Wynn-Williams said during her testimony.

In March, Ms Wynn-Williams released a memoir called “Careless People” about her experience at the company, which was then called Facebook.

Meta won an emergency ruling in the US that temporarily blocked her from promoting her book, which included several critical claims about her time at the company.

“[T]he false and defamatory book should never have been published,” Meta said at the time.

Wednesday’s hearing before members of the US Senate was led by Senator Josh Hawley, a Republican from Missouri.

Sen Hawley opened the hearing by saying Meta had “stopped at absolutely nothing to prevent” Wednesday’s testimony by Ms Wynn-Williams, who joins Frances Haugen and Arturo Béjar as former employees who have spoken out against the social media giant.

“Why is it that Facebook is so desperate to prevent this witness from telling what she knows?” Hawley said.

At a fiery January 2024 congressional hearing at which Mr Zuckerberg also testified, Sen Hawley demanded that the CEO apologise to families who said their children had been harmed by social media.

Behind Mr Zuckerberg at the 2024 hearing sat a row of families who said their children had self-harmed or killed themselves as a result of social media content.

Mr Zuckerberg turned and told families in the audience that “no one should go through” what they had.

During Wednesday’s hearing, Sen Hawley said Meta had suggested Ms Wynn-Williams could face financial penalties for speaking out.

“They have threatened her with $50,000 in punitive damages every time she mentions Facebook in public, even if the statements that she is making are true,” Sen Hawley alleged. “Even as we sit here today, Facebook is attempting her total and complete financial ruin.”

On Wednesday, the company told the BBC the $50,000 in damages is for each material violation of the separation agreement that she signed when she departed the company in 2017.

Ms Wynn-Williams says Meta told her that creating exceptions to the non-disparagement agreement would “eat the rule.”

The company added that she is not restricted from testifying before Congress.

But Meta declined to directly respond to a BBC inquiry about whether Ms Wynn-Williams may indeed face financial penalties initiated by the company or its lawyers for statements she made on Wednesday in front of Congress.

Ms Wynn-Williams told lawmakers that all of this had taken a personal toll on her.

“The last four weeks have been very difficult,” she told members of the Senate committee. “Even the choice to come and speak to Congress is incredibly difficult.”

The corner shop Ramji Dharod has manned for over six decades is now on the brink of closure.

The store sits in a bylane in the central Indian city of Mumbai’s busy shopping precinct, and has served the community for 75 years.

Dharod began coming to the shop with his father when he was just 10. These days, he mostly sits idle, waiting for an occasional customer to walk in.

Behind him, cardboard boxes of unsold biscuit packets and snacks show a “stock clearance sale” sign posted on them.

“I wouldn’t get a minute to breathe a few years ago, but now I rarely get anyone coming,” says the septuagenarian wryly. “They are all shopping online. I’ve decided to retire and down the shutters.”

As 10-minute online deliveries by “quick commerce” apps like Zomato, BlinkIt and Zepto pervade urban India, hundreds of thousands of neighbourhood stores across cities have closed down.

A lobby group of consumer product distributors estimated that number to be 200,000 last October, while the municipal body of the southern city of Chennai estimated 20% of small grocers and 30% of larger departmental stores had shut down in the city in the past 5 years.

Sunil Kenia who runs a provision store right beside Dharod’s shop says he’s still in business only because his family owns the shop. Those on rent are no longer able to stay afloat, he says.

“It started going downhill after the Covid lockdowns. Business is at 50% of what we did before the pandemic,” Kenia told the BBC.

Most of his revenue now comes from wholesale customers – hawkers or those selling street-side snacks. The retail customer has all but “vanished”, he says, because of the convenience of mobile deliveries.

Mumbai-based graphic designer Monisha Sathe is among the millions of urban Indians who’ve stopped their weekly run to the market because of the ease of quick commerce.

“Lugging groceries back home was a big pain,” says Sathe. And occasionally, when she took out her car, navigating narrow market lanes and finding a parking slot would be a challenge.

Sathe says she misses the human interaction she had with the grocers and vegetable vendors and even the variety of fresh produce on sale – but for her, the balance still tilts in favour of online deliveries because of how much easier it has made her life.

A recent survey by consultancy PwC shows some 42% of urban consumers in India’s big cities think like Sathe, especially preferring quick delivery for their urgent needs. And these shifts in buying behaviour have led to three out of 10 retailers reporting a negative impact on their business, with a 52% drop in essential goods sales.

But to what extent is quick commerce really hollowing out the Indian high street?

There’s no doubt general trade – which includes grocery stores, corner shops and even big retail outlets – has come under threat, says Ankur Bisen, a partner at Technopak retail advisory. But at least for now “quick commerce is still a three-four city story”, he says. Nearly all of their sales come from these cities.

Lightning fast deliveries bucked the global trend and became successful in India largely due to a large concentration of people staying in urban clusters.

They are serviced through low-rent “dark stores” – or small shops dedicated to delivery and not open to the public – in densely populated areas, enabling economies of scale.

But the precarious nature of demand and fragmented demographics of smaller towns could make it expensive for quick commerce players to expand and make money beyond the metros, says Mr Bisen.

There’s little doubt though that these online deliveries will disrupt trade in the longer run.

Bain and Company expects quick commerce to grow at over 40% annually through to 2030, driven by expansion across “geographies”.

And this has made traditional retail nervous.

Trade organisations – like the Confederation of All India Traders, or the All India Consumer Products Distributors Federation which calls itself the voice of India’s 13m retailers – have made urgent and repeated pleas to the government against this breakneck expansion.

They allege that these companies are using billions of dollars in venture capital funds to engage in anti-competitive practices like “predatory pricing” or “deep discounting” which has further distorted the playing field for mom-and-pop shops.

The BBC spoke to several small retailers who shared these concerns. Mr Bisen too agreed there’s evidence of such practices in the clusters that quick commerce companies operate.

Swiggy, Zepto and Blinkit, who primarily control this market, did not agree to comment on the BBC’s queries on these allegations.

But a source within one of the quick commerce companies told the BBC the discounting was done by traders on the platform and not by them.

The source also said that contrary to the binary narrative of the “big guy versus small guy”, online deliveries were solving real-world challenges for people for whom going to the market was a “traumatic” experience.

“Think of women or senior citizens – they don’t want to be harassed or navigate potholes and traffic,” the source said. “Also consider the small brands that sell on our platform – they never get shelf space in physical shops where only the big names are displayed. We’ve democratised the market.”

Analysts say, the sheer diversity of India in terms of its stages of development, levels of income and infrastructure will mean that in the end all retail models – small corner shops, organised big retailers and quick commerce platforms – will cohabit in the country.

This is not a “winner takes all market”, says Mr Bisen, giving the example of e-commerce which came into India in 2010 and was meant to sound the death knell of local retailers.

Even after all these years, only 4% of all shopping is done online in India.

But the ripples caused by quick commerce should be a warning for physical retailers, say analysts, to improve their marketing and integrate technology to use both online and offline channels to give their consumers a better shopping experience.

Competing with click-of-a-button delivery means it can no longer be business as usual for the millions of corner shops who’ve existed for decades, with little or no innovation.

US President Donald Trump has paused his latest round of higher tariffs against some of America’s trading partners.

Taxes on goods imported from 60 countries he had described as the “worst offenders” took effect on 9 April.

But Trump later said those higher rates for some countries would be paused for 90 days, with a blanket 10% tariff to apply in the meantime.

At the same time he hiked tariffs on Chinese products to 125%.

Trump has said tariffs will boost US manufacturing and protect jobs, but economists warn that the move could harm the world economy and push up prices for consumers in the US and around the globe.

Tariffs are taxes charged on goods bought from other countries.

Typically, they are a percentage of a product’s value. For example, a 25% tariff on a $10 (£7.59) product would mean an additional $2.50 (£1.90) charge.

The 125% tariff on Chinese goods means that a $10 product would attract a $12.50 tax on top – driving the total cost up to $22.50.

The companies that bring the foreign goods into the country have to pay the tax to the government.

The money is collected when the imported goods clear US customs.

Firms can choose to pass on some or all of the increased cost to customers.

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For decades, Trump has argued the US should use tariffs to boost its economy.

He says they will encourage US consumers to buy more American-made goods, increase the amount of tax raised and lead to huge levels of investment in the country.

Trump wants to reduce the gap between the value of goods the US buys from other countries and the value of those it sells to them. He argues that America has been taken advantage of by “cheaters” and “pillaged” by foreigners.

The US president has also made other demands alongside tariffs. The first wave announced during his current term targeted China, Mexico and Canada, after he said he wanted them to do more to stop migrants and illegal drugs reaching the US.

Trump has strongly defended his tariff policy but a growing number of influential voices within his Republican Party have joined opposition Democrats and foreign leaders in attacking the measures.

The argument has even split the White House team, with tariff policy sparking a recent personal spat between Elon Musk and Trump’s trade adviser Peter Navarro.

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Trump introduced a minimum 10% tariff on all imports to the US on 5 April.

The UK, Argentina, Australia, Brazil and Saudi Arabia are among the countries whose goods face this “baseline” charge.

Much higher tariffs were initially introduced against 60 other countries on 9 April.

These included 49% on Cambodian products, 46% on Vietnamese imports and 20% on goods from the EU.

Chinese imports were initially due to face 54% tariffs (34% on top of the 20% rate already in place). Trump then increased the total to 104% after China vowed to “fight to the end” and refused to scrap its own retaliatory tariffs of 34% on the US.

Hours after the 104% tariff took effect, China announced it would introduce a significantly higher 84% tax on all US imports from 10 April.

Trump soon hit back, saying the US would increase tariffs on Chinese goods to 125% effective immediately.

For now, Chinese manufacturers – and American consumers – still benefit from a tariff exemption for goods in small parcels sent from China worth less than $800 (£624). However that exemption will also end on 2 May.

These items will be subject to a duty rate of 90% or $75 per item – increasing to $150 per item after 1 June.

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White House officials have described the higher tariffs as “reciprocal”.

Reciprocal would mean they were based on the amount countries charge the US in the form of existing tariffs, plus the cost of meeting non-tariff barriers such as regulations.

However, the White House used a different calculation – setting each tariff rate at a level that would eliminate the US’s trade deficit in goods with each country.

And some countries, including the UK, have had tariffs applied even though they buy more from the US than they sell to it.

The White House confirmed that some specific goods are exempt – including copper, pharmaceuticals, semiconductors, energy and “other certain materials that are not available in the United States”.

Trump has said he plans to remove the exemption for pharmaceutical goods to help shift drug production to America, but it is not clear if or when this might happen.

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Trump had also previously announced 25% tariffs on goods from Mexico and Canada, and a 10% tariff on Canadian energy imports before introducing a number of exemptions and delays.

He has also brought in 25% tariffs on all steel and aluminium imports, and foreign-made cars. A 25% tariff on car parts is due to start no later than 3 May.

Trump’s escalation with China has now put a question mark over US trade with the European Union. The EU, too, has approved retaliatory tariffs against the US, which will come into effect on 15 April.

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Many economists expect tariffs to push up prices across a range of imported goods, as firms pass on some or all of their increased costs.

The products affected could include everything from clothing to coffee and alcohol to electronics.

Some firms may also decide to import fewer foreign goods, which could make those which are available more expensive.

The price of goods manufactured in the US using imported components may also rise.

For example, car parts typically cross the US, Mexican and Canadian borders multiple times before a vehicle is completely assembled.

Car prices had already been expected to increase as a result of earlier tariffs.

The cost of a car made using parts from Mexico and Canada alone could rise by $4,000-$10,000 (£3,035 – £7,588) depending on the vehicle, according to analysts at the Anderson Economic Group.

The measures could also damage the US economy.

The chance of a recession rose to 50% after Trump’s announcement on new tariffs, according to former International Monetary Fund (IMF) chief economist Ken Rogoff.

Trump’s top officials have repeatedly played down recession fears, and insisted that the tariffs would be implemented as planned.

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Trump’s tariffs announcement has caused significant volatility on global stock markets.

Stock markets are where firms sell shares in their business. They reflect the best guess of what every company in the world is worth and what their future profits will be.

Share prices have been hit because investors think the new tariffs will increase costs and reduce profits.

Many people are affected by stock market falls – even if they don’t invest in shares directly – because of the knock-on effect on pensions, jobs and interest rates.

But after Trump announced the 90-day pause, US markets rebounded sharply.

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The UK exported around £58bn of goods to the US in 2024, mainly cars, machinery and pharmaceuticals.

It was already due to be affected by the earlier tariffs targeting steel, aluminium and car imports.

Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer said “clearly there will be an economic impact” from the 10% tariff. However, he said US-UK trade talks are ongoing, and that he will “fight for the best deal for Britain”.

The UK government has so far not announced any taxes on US imports. However, it is drawing up a list of US products it could hit with retaliatory tariffs.

Following the announcement of tariffs, car maker Jaguar Land Rover said it would “pause” all shipments to the US as it worked to “address the new trading terms”.

Economists have warned US tariffs could knock the UK’s economy off course and make it harder for the government to hit its borrowing rules.

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EU chief Ursula von der Leyen warned that “the consequences will be dire for millions of people around the globe”.

27 EU members approved a list of US products to be taxed in three stages beginning on 15 April, hours before Trump announced his pause and 10% plans.

Italy‘s Giorgia Meloni – a Trump ally – said the reciprocal tariffs were “wrong” but that she would work towards a deal with the US to “prevent a trade war”.

In the Republic of Ireland, Micheál Martin said there was “no justification” for “deeply regrettable” tariffs which benefitted “no-one”.

Canada introduced a 25% tariff on some vehicles from the US on 9 April.

Australia‘s Anthony Albanese said “this is not the act of a friend”.

South Korea‘s acting president Han Duck-Soo said “the global trade war has become a reality”.

Japan said the 24% levy against its products was “extremely regrettable” and could violate World Trade Organization and US-Japan agreements.