HYDERABAD: Indian authorities have cleared beggars off the streets and brought in 10,000 extra security forces for Ivanka Trump’s biggest foreign mission since her father became president.
President Donald Trump’s eldest daughter is to be the key speaker Tuesday at the opening of a three-day Global Entrepreneurship Summit in Hyderabad alongside India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
The southern city is home to the India operations of Google, Facebook and Amazon.
The 36-year-old, who is an official White House adviser, will seek to press women’s empowerment in business.
She will also underline the growing friendship between the United States and India — so the host country is taking no chances.
Trump will be greeted in Hyderabad by Modi who will host a gala dinner at the Falaknuma Palace, a luxury hotel once owned by one of the nizams who ruled the city before India’s independence.
Authorities have spruced up an open-air market around Charminar, a 16th century mosque that is one of the city’s icons. Media reports have suggested that Trump could visit the market.
Police have cleared hundreds of beggars off the streets, saying they cause nuisance and obstruct traffic.
More than 10,000 security personnel including anti-terrorist forces and dog squads will be deployed, and Trump will travel around Hyderabad in her own special bullet proof vehicle with US Secret Service taking care of close security.
The visit has been clouded by US media reports questioning Trump’s clothing line and its supply chain as well as a snub by Rex Tillerson, the US secretary of state, who has reportedly refused to send senior staff with Trump to India.
“They won’t send someone senior because they don’t want to bolster Ivanka,” CNN quoted a senior State Department official as saying.
But US business leaders will be in the Trump delegation joining more than 1,200 entrepreneurs from 150 countries at the meeting.
“Entrepreneurship... is a key priority for this administration. The US recognizes innovation and entrepreneurship as essential tools for job creation, economic growth, and stability...” Trump said ahead of the visit.
“Globally, between 2014 and 2016, entrepreneurship activity among women increased by 10 percent. One study estimates that closing the gender entrepreneurship gap worldwide could grow our global GDP by as much as two percent.”
Trump’s Women Entrepreneurs Finance Initiative, or We-Fi, aims to boost access to business capital for women in the developing world.
According to Trump, women-owned businesses in the developing world suffer an annual credit deficit of $300 billion, either by being unable to borrow or receiving only high-cost, short-term credit.
The We-Fi was first proposed at the G20 summit in Hamburg this year and is supported by Germany, Russia, China, Japan, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates and other countries.
India takes no chances for Ivanka Trump visit
India takes no chances for Ivanka Trump visit
Carney says Canada has no plans to pursue free trade agreement with China as Trump threatens tariffs
Carney says Canada has no plans to pursue free trade agreement with China as Trump threatens tariffs
TORONTO: Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney said Sunday his country has no intention of pursuing a free trade deal with China. He was responding to US President Donald Trump’s threat to impose a 100 percent tariff on goods imported from Canada if America’s northern neighbor went ahead with a trade deal with Beijing.
Carney said his recent agreement with China merely cuts tariffs on a few sectors that were recently hit with tariffs.
Trump claims otherwise, posting that “China is successfully and completely taking over the once Great Country of Canada. So sad to see it happen. I only hope they leave Ice Hockey alone! President DJT”
The prime minister said under the free trade agreement with the US and Mexico there are commitments not to pursue free trade agreements with nonmarket economies without prior notification.
“We have no intention of doing that with China or any other nonmarket economy,” Carney said. “What we have done with China is to rectify some issues that developed in the last couple of years.”
In 2024, Canada mirrored the United States by putting a 100 percent tariff on electric vehicles from Beijing and a 25 percent tariff on steel and aluminum. China had responded by imposing 100 percent import taxes on Canadian canola oil and meal and 25 percent on pork and seafood.
Breaking with the United States this month during a visit to China, Carney cut its 100 percent tariff on Chinese electric cars in return for lower tariffs on those Canadian products.
Carney has said there would be an initial annual cap of 49,000 vehicles on Chinese EV exports coming into Canada at a tariff rate of 6.1 percent, growing to about 70,000 over five years. He noted there was no cap before 2024. He also has said the initial cap on Chinese EV imports was about 3 percent of the 1.8 million vehicles sold in Canada annually and that, in exchange, China is expected to begin investing in the Canadian auto industry within three years.
Trump posted a video Sunday in which the chief executive of the Canadian Vehicle Manufacturers’ Association warns there will be no Canadian auto industry without US access, while noting the Canadian market alone is too small to justify large scale manufacturing from China.
“A MUST WATCH. Canada is systematically destroying itself. The China deal is a disaster for them. Will go down as one of the worst deals, of any kind, in history. All their businesses are moving to the USA. I want to see Canada SURVIVE AND THRIVE! President DJT,” Trump posted on social media.
Trump’s post on Saturday said that if Carney “thinks he is going to make Canada a ‘Drop Off Port’ for China to send goods and products into the United States, he is sorely mistaken.”
“We can’t let Canada become an opening that the Chinese pour their cheap goods into the U.S,” US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said on ABC’s “This Week.”
“We have a , but based off — based on that, which is going to be renegotiated this summer, and I’m not sure what Prime Minister Carney is doing here, other than trying to virtue-signal to his globalist friends at Davos.”
Trump’s threat came amid an escalating war of words with Carney as the Republican president’s push to acquire Greenland strained the NATO alliance.
Carney has emerged as a leader of a movement for countries to find ways to link up and counter the US under Trump. Speaking in Davos before Trump, Carney said, “Middle powers must act together because if you are not at the table, you are on the menu” and he warned about coercion by great powers — without mentioning Trump’s name. The prime minister received widespread praise and attention for his remarks, upstaging Trump at the World Economic Forum.
Trump’s push to acquire Greenland has come after he has repeatedly needled Canada over its sovereignty and suggested it also be absorbed into the United States as a 51st state. He posted an altered image on social media this week showing a map of the United States that included Canada, Venezuela, Greenland and Cuba as part of its territory.
