US President Donald Trump reportedly signed an order delaying the reimposition of higher tariffs on Chinese goods on Monday, hours before a trade truce between Washington and Beijing was due to expire.

The halt on steeper tariffs will be in place for another 90 days, the Wall Street Journal and CNBC reported, citing Trump administration officials. The White House did not respond to queries on the matter.

While the United States and China slapped escalating tariffs on each other’s products this year, reaching prohibitive triple-digit levels and snarling trade, both countries in May agreed to temporarily lower them.

But their 90-day halt of steeper levies was due to expire Tuesday.

Asked about the deadline earlier Monday, Trump said: “We’ll see what happens. They’ve been dealing quite nicely. The relationship is very good with President Xi (Jinping) and myself.”

Trump also touted the tariff revenue his country has collected since his return to the White House, saying “we’ve been dealing very nicely with China.”

“We hope that the US will work with China to follow the important consensus reached during the phone call between the two heads of state,” Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Lin Jian said in a statement.

He added that Beijing also hopes Washington will “strive for positive outcomes on the basis of equality, respect and mutual benefit.”

The full text of Trump’s latest order has yet to be released. The 90-day extension means the truce is set to expire in early November, according to the Wall Street Journal.

Shaky truce

Even as both countries reached a pact to cool tensions after high level talks in Geneva in May, the de-escalation has been shaky.

In June, key economic officials convened in London as disagreements emerged and US officials accused their counterparts of violating the pact. Policymakers met again in Stockholm last month.

US trade envoy Jamieson Greer said last month that Trump will have the “final call” on any such extension.

Trump said in a social media post late Sunday that he hoped China will “quickly quadruple its soybean orders,” adding that this would be a way to balance trade with the United States.

For now, the extension of a truce means that US tariffs on Chinese goods this year stand at 30 percent.

Under their de-escalation, Beijing’s corresponding levy on US products stood at 10 percent.

Since returning to the presidency in January, Trump has slapped a 10-percent “reciprocal” tariff on almost all trading partners, aimed at addressing trade practices Washington deemed unfair.

This surged to varying steeper levels last Thursday for dozens of economies.

Major partners like the European Union, Japan and South Korea now see a 15-percent US duty on many products, while the level went as high as 41 percent for Syria.

The “reciprocal” tariffs exclude sectors that have been separately targeted, such as steel and aluminum, and those that are being investigated like pharmaceuticals and semiconductors.

They are also expected to exclude gold, although a clarification by US customs authorities made public last week caused concern that certain gold bars might still be targeted.

Trump on Monday said that gold imports will not face additional tariffs, without providing further details.

The US president has taken separate aim at individual countries such as Brazil over the trial of former president Jair Bolsonaro, who is accused of planning a coup, and India over its purchase of Russian oil.

Canada and Mexico come under a different tariff regime.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

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US President Donald Trump said Monday that gold imports will not face additional tariffs, days after confusion flared on whether recent hikes applied to certain gold bars — threatening to upend global trade of the precious metal.

Trump’s comments came after US customs authorities made public a letter saying that gold bars at two standard weights — one kilogram and 100 ounces (2.8 kilos) — should be classified as subject to duties.

“Gold will not be Tariffed!” Trump said on his Truth Social platform, without providing further details.

The letter, which was made public last week and dated July 31, was first reported on by the Financial Times, sending the price of gold on the US futures market to a record high.

But a White House official told AFP on Friday that the Trump administration plans to “issue an executive order in the near future clarifying misinformation about the tariffing of gold bars and other specialty products.”

On Friday, gold for December delivery hit a record high on the Comex, the world’s biggest futures market.

The concern is whether gold products would be exempt from Trump’s “reciprocal” tariffs impacting goods from dozens of economies including Switzerland, which sees a 39-percent levy.

One-kilo bars are the most common form traded on Comex and comprise the bulk of Switzerland’s bullion exports to the US, the FT said.

The US customs ruling letter, typically used to clarify trade policy, came as a shock amid expectations that gold bars would be classified under a different customs code that spared them from Trump’s countrywide levies.

Gold, seen as a safe haven investment, already reached record highs this year on tariff worries and geopolitical unrest.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

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President Donald Trump said Sunday that homeless people must be moved “far” from Washington, after days of musing about taking federal control of the US capital where he has falsely suggested crime is rising.

The Republican billionaire has announced a press conference for Monday in which he is expected to reveal his plans for Washington — which is run by the locally elected government of the District of Columbia under congressional oversight.

It is an arrangement Trump has long publicly chafed at. He has threatened to federalize the city and give the White House the final say in how it is run.

“I’m going to make our Capital safer and more beautiful than it ever was before,” the president posted on his Truth Social platform Sunday.

“The Homeless have to move out, IMMEDIATELY. We will give you places to stay, but FAR from the Capital,” he continued, adding that criminals in the city would be swiftly imprisoned.

“It’s all going to happen very fast,” he said.

Washington is ranked 15th on a list of major US cities by homeless population, according to government statistics from last year.

While thousands of people spend each night in shelters or on the streets, the figure are down from pre-pandemic levels.

Earlier this week Trump also threatened to deploy the National Guard as part of a crackdown on what he falsely says is rising crime in Washington.

Violent crime in the capital fell in the first half of 2025 by 26 percent compared with a year earlier, police statistics show.

The city’s crime rates in 2024 were already their lowest in three decades, according to figures produced by the Justice Department before Trump took office.

“We are not experiencing a crime spike,” Washington Mayor Muriel Bowser said Sunday on MSNBC.

While the mayor, a Democrat, was not critical of Trump in her remarks, she said “any comparison to a war torn country is hyperbolic and false.”

Trump’s threat to send in the National Guard comes weeks after he deployed California’s military reserve force into Los Angeles to quell protests over immigration raids, despite objections from local leaders and law enforcement.

The president has frequently mused about using the military to control America’s cities, many of which are under Democratic control and hostile to his nationalist impulses.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

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Indonesia is cracking down on a viral pirate flag that is spreading as a symbol of political protest ahead of independence day.

The Jolly Roger skull and bones with a straw hat—from Japanese anime series “One Piece”—has been fluttering from a rising number of trucks, cars and homes.

Officials warn the “provocation”—seen by many as a protest against President Prabowo Subianto’s policies—should not fly alongside the country’s red-and-white flag.

The pirate banner was taken up by disgruntled truck drivers earlier this summer, but has recently snowballed into an online and real-life movement.

“I personally raised the One Piece flag because the red and white flag is too sacred to be raised in this corrupt country,” Khariq Anhar, a 24-year-old university student in Sumatra’s Riau province, told AFP.

“I believe freedom of speech in Indonesia exists, but it is very limited. Voicing your opinion is getting more dangerous.”

Government officials say the flag’s use is an attempt to divide the nation.

They warn it may be banned from flying next to Indonesia’s colors, or being raised on Aug. 17—the 80th independence anniversary after Japan’s surrender at the end of World War II.

“It is imperative we refrain from creating provocation with symbols that are not relevant to this country’s struggle,” chief security minister Budi Gunawan said in a statement last week.

Ministers have cited a law that prohibits flying a symbol higher than the national flag as the basis for any punishment.

Under that law, intent to desecrate, insult or degrade the flag carries a maximum prison sentence of five years or a fine of nearly $31,000.

State Secretary Minister Prasetyo Hadi on Tuesday said Prabowo had no issue with the “expression of creativity”, but the two flags “should not be placed side by side in a way that invites comparison”, local media reported.

‘Just a cartoon’

A presidency spokesman did not respond to an AFP question about its position on the pirate flag, which was put two days earlier.

Experts say unhappy Indonesians are using the flag as a way to express anti-government feeling indirectly, with some of Prabowo’s economic and defense policies causing concern about democratic backsliding.

“Symbols like the pirate flag let people channel frustration without spelling it out,” said Dedi Dinarto, lead Indonesia analyst at advisory firm Global Counsel.

“It reflects a public sentiment that parts of the country have been ‘hijacked’.”

Others, like food seller Andri Saputra, who has flown the pirate ensign below an Indonesian flag at his home for a week, say they want to be able to decide what symbols they display.

“I want to be free to express my opinion and express myself,” the 38-year-old said in Boyolali regency in Central Java.

“This is just a cartoon flag from Japan.”

Online culture has been a popular channel for Indonesian dissatisfaction against perceived government corruption and nepotism.

Japanese anime is popular in Indonesia, and in the best-selling ‘One Piece’ manga series created in 1997, the flag represents opposition to an authoritarian world government.

In February, protests known as ‘Dark Indonesia’ began against Prabowo’s widespread budget cuts, sparked by a logo posted on social media showing a black Indonesian mythical Garuda bird alongside the words ‘Emergency Warning’.

Other rallies in 2016 and 2019 were also sparked online, and Dedi says the government may be worried that “this follows the same digital playbook”.

There is also a generational divide, with older locals viewing the Indonesian flag as hard-won after centuries of colonial rule, while younger Indonesians see the new movement as an expression of disappointment.

Police raid

“They just want Indonesia to get better, but… they can only express it through the ‘One Piece’ flag,” said Ismail Fahmi, founder of Indonesian social media monitor Drone Emprit.

Police in Banten Province neighboring capital Jakarta and West Java Province, Indonesia’s most populous, have threatened action if the flag is flown next to the nation’s colors.

One printing business owner in Central Java told AFP on condition of anonymity that his facility was raided by plain-clothes police on Wednesday evening to halt its production of the pirate emblem.

Rights groups have called the response excessive and say Indonesians are allowed to wave the flag by law.

“Raising the ‘One Piece’ flag as a critic is a part of the freedom of speech and it is guaranteed by the constitution,” said Amnesty International Indonesia executive director Usman Hamid.

Despite the government’s threats, some young Indonesians are still willing to risk walking the plank of protest.

“Last night my friend and I went around the town while raising a One Piece flag,” said Khariq on Wednesday.

“If the government has no fear of repressing its own people, we shouldn’t be scared to fight bad policies.”

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

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Taiwanese chipmaking giant TSMC “is exempt” from U.S. President Donald Trump’s 100% tariff on semiconductor chips, Taipei said Thursday.

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company is the world’s largest contract maker of chips and counts Nvidia and Apple among its clients.

“Because Taiwan’s main exporter is TSMC, which has factories in the United States, TSMC is exempt,” National Development Council chief Liu Chin-ching told a briefing in parliament.

Some Taiwanese chipmakers “will be affected” by the 100% tariff, but their competitors will also face the same levy, Liu said.

“Taiwan currently holds a leading position in the world and I believe that if the leader and competitors are on the same starting line, the leader will continue to lead,” Liu said.

“This is our current preliminary assessment, but we will continue to observe and propose short-term and medium-term assistance.”

Liu was speaking hours after Trump said at the White House that “we’re going to be putting a very large tariff on chips and semiconductors”.

The level would be “100%”, Trump told reporters, although he did not offer a timetable for when the new levy would be enacted.

Trump said companies that were “building in the United States, or have committed to build” would not be charged.

Taiwan is a global powerhouse in semiconductor manufacturing, with more than half of the world’s chips and nearly all of the high-end ones made there.

TSMC has been in the crosshairs of Trump, who has accused Taiwan of stealing the U.S. chip industry.

There had been hopes TSMC’s plan to invest an additional $100 billion in the United States would shield Taiwan from new tariffs.

Taiwan has also pledged to increase investment in the United States, purchase more U.S. energy and boost defense spending to more than three percent of GDP in a bid to head off Trump’s levies.

Trump has imposed a temporary 20% tariff on Taiwan, excluding semiconductors, as U.S. and Taiwanese negotiators try to thrash out a deal.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

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