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Chapter 1: What recent tariff threats has Trump made?
This is a Squiz podcast, where your shortcut to being informed. Good morning, I'm Alice Dempster.
And I'm Larissa Huntington.
It's Friday the 5th of June. In your Squiz today, Trump threatens more tariffs, Israel and Lebanon renew their ceasefire, a big, big freeze is coming, and the Bayeux tapestry is on the move. This is your Squiz today. It's been a while since we've said the T word, Larissa, tariffs, but they're back in the headlines.
The US has listed Australia as one of 54 countries facing a possible new 12.5% trade tax on imports. They say it's because we haven't cracked down enough on imports of products that are made using cheap slave labour.
Yeah, which they say American workers and companies can't compete with because they're paying higher rates for wages and materials. The announcement came after a US investigation which named China, Southeast Asia, India, Africa and South America as sources of forced labour, supplying developed nations. But it came as a shock to Australian officials.
Reports say that our government wasn't warned and it's already hit back. It's called the tariffs unjustified and says that we have world-leading laws when it comes to forced labour and modern slavery.
As we know, tariffs have been a sticky point with the US for over a year now for Australia and many other countries.
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Chapter 2: What are the implications of the new tariffs for Australia?
And it goes back to US President Donald Trump's so-called Liberation Day tariffs in April last year. Under those, we were hit with a base rate tariff of 10% on exports to the US. But fast forward to February this year and the US Supreme Court found those tariffs to be unlawful.
They did. There's been a little bit happening in the world, so you'd be forgiven if this tariff news might have slipped under the radar. The Trump administration then put a global 10% temporary tariff in place. It expires on the 24th of July, so reports say that this is their latest attempt to try to legally justify charging tariffs on imports.
If it happens, the new rate would replace the old one. And as our free trade agreement still stands, some products, including our beef, would be exempt. But still, PM Anthony Albanese isn't very happy about it. He says that we have an ideological disagreement with our second biggest trading partner over tariffs now, adding that America's position undermines the global trading system.
Our anti-slavery commissioner, Chris Evans, has also been critical. He says that Trump is treating an important human rights issue as a bit of a plaything in this tariff war, but he says there is still room to strengthen our laws. As for what happens next, we have about a month to argue our case with the US for an exemption.
Another big story involving the US yesterday was to do with the Middle East.
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Chapter 3: How is the ceasefire between Israel and Lebanon evolving?
Israel and Lebanon have agreed to renew their ceasefire after another round, the fourth round of talks, was mediated by US officials this week.
The main thing to know about this ceasefire is that there's one major condition that Israel and Lebanon have agreed to, a complete cessation, so a stop of attacks from the Iranian-backed Hezbollah terror group. and that group's also banned from an area in southern Lebanon.
We've been talking for weeks now about the uptick in fighting in Lebanon, and this ceasefire is seen as part of US President Donald Trump's push to end the war in Iran. And that's because Iranian officials say that they will only sign a deal if Israel stops its offensive in Lebanon. Strikes there have killed at least 14 people this week.
And there's one big thing to note about this ceasefire. Hezbollah didn't take part in the negotiations and it says it won't abide by any agreements that were made. Analysts say that could prevent a full ceasefire being locked in when Israel and Lebanon meet again on the 22nd of June. So that's one to watch.
The tech giant Meta, Facebook and Instagram's parent company, had a crack at the Albanese government's news bargaining incentive yesterday. It called it a discriminatory tax built on a false premise.
As a reminder, the NBI would hit three big tech companies, so Meta, Google and TikTok, with a 2.25% tax of their revenue in Oz. That's unless they sign tax-deductible deals with news companies. And the idea is that it will send hundreds of millions of dollars a year the way of news companies here.
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Chapter 4: What conditions are attached to the Israel-Lebanon ceasefire?
And that's to help pay for things like journalism to be produced now that traditional forms of ad revenue, which used to pay for it, have gone over to a lot of those digital platforms. But Meta has a bunch of problems with it, mainly that the tax would capture revenue that it makes from non-news products.
yeah, things like VR, virtual reality headsets or other tech products. But media bosses say it's an attractive incentive for big tech and that paying for journalism is the fair thing to do. I'd completely forgotten that it's a public holiday in most of the country on Monday until it was brought up in a team meeting this week.
So we won't be publishing a podcast that day, but we wanted to flag ahead of time that this year's big freeze, which is happening on Monday, will be a special one.
It will. I don't know anybody else that forgets about public holidays like you do, Alice. Everybody else is like all across. I know, I'm shocking. So you've more than likely heard about the Big Freeze, but just to remind you, it's the brainchild of AFL legend and motor neuron disease campaigner Neil Danaher, who died last week. You'll have heard us talking about it. It was a big story.
And it takes place ahead of the King's birthday match between Collingwood and Melbourne at the MCG each year. It features famous faces heading down a water slide into a freezing cold pool of iced water.
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Chapter 5: What is the significance of the upcoming Big Freeze event?
And this year, some of those faces include the comedian Andy Lee, Netball star Joe Weston and even Governor General Sam Waston's going to go for a dip.
And Jai Arrow, the rugby league star who recently retired at 30 years old after his own MND diagnosis, will also be there. He's going to toss the coin ahead of the match. If you'd like to find out more, we'll link to the Fight MND website in the episode notes. One of the world's oldest textile artworks, the Bayeux Tapestry, is about to make a historic trip across the English Channel.
It's after France agreed to loan it to England.
And if you don't know what we're talking about, or you didn't have to draw it badly for Year 7 Art, it's an 11th century artefact. It's an embroidered cloth that depicts William the Conqueror's victory over England's King Harold at the Battle of Hastings in 1066. I remember this one, Alice, because poor old King Harold has an arrow through his eye. So it's quite memorable.
But this isn't just any old cloth. It's 70 meters long and highly delicate. So it's quite a feat to move it. And exactly when that's happening is under wraps for security reasons.
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Chapter 6: Who are the notable participants in this year's Big Freeze?
France isn't taking any chances with its famous artworks these days. But But what we do know is that it'll travel in a special cradle fitted with shock absorbers to shield it from vibrations. It's a really delicate operation because since the Middle Ages, it's only been moved a few times.
Yeah, one of those times was by Napoleon in the year 1803. Not sure about shock absorber technology back then. And then the other couple of times were a bit more recent. It was moved by Germans during World War II. They hid it in the Louvre basement. This time it'll be on full display. It'll be at the British Museum from the 10th of September until the 11th of July next year.
So keep that in mind if you're planning any UK trips soon. Friday lights, Larissa. I hear you have a good winter recipe for us today. I assume you had some last week when you were sick?
Chapter 7: What is the history and importance of the Bayeux Tapestry?
I did. So this is a fragrant chicken noodle soup from Claire, who usually doesn't rate soup as a food, but she says she'll allow it for medicinal purposes. So this one's great if you've got anyone in your life at the moment or yourself to nurse back to health. It's got warming aromatic ginger and a touch of turmeric, as well as a kick of chili to get your nose working again. Can highly recommend.
So we'll link to that in the episode notes.
Excellent. And as I said earlier, the Squiz team is taking a long weekend, so we won't be publishing on Monday. But in the meantime, Claire and Eliza are back with The Weekly Wrap tomorrow morning. They'll get you across some of the big stories this week, some that we've spoken about and some that we haven't. So you'll find that in the News Club channel. For now, thanks for listening.
Have a great Friday and long weekend if you're getting one. And we'll be back with The Squiz today on Tuesday.
G'day, Andrew Williams here with thanks to Mindaroo Foundation.
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Chapter 8: How will the Bayeux Tapestry be transported to England?
We're running a special squeeze series on the future of AI in Australia. Mindaroo recently brought together a group of experts at Parliament House for a safe AI roundtable. And we spoke to some of them, including Nicole Gillespie, who is a professor of management at the University of Melbourne. She is an expert on AI and trust. And I asked her this question.
It's an interesting chicken and the egg situation, isn't it, about whether you trust something more like AI because you're using it more or whether you need to trust it to use it in the first place. Which one tends to drive which?
Well, I think this is it, is that part of the learning with AI comes from its actual use with it. So I often think about, through our evolution, we've had millennia of experience that's embedded in our DNA on how to trust other people, for example, all the micro cues and the different things that we look for. And we're learning that from birth.
Here, this very powerful human-like tool that has some human-like capabilities comes along. And it is easy to anthropomorphize it and think of it as like a person. Yet we haven't really had much experience in thinking about how do we, again, sort of calibrate our trust in these tools. So I think that's just a natural sort of part of understanding this.
Similarly, I think, you know, we often talk about AI as being Having an analogy with something like the car, right?
When the car came along, you know, people were really upset about this and they were trying to slow down cars and, you know, and cars can be dangerous if we don't have driver's license, if we don't have road rules, if there's not that sort of appropriate governance and regulation over it.
So we're at an early stage, I think, in figuring out that kind of landscape of how to regulate and govern these technologies well. But I'm optimistic that there is a lot of cooperation going on internationally. There's international standards that are coming out.
And all of these things, I think, do filter through to the public consciousness when they start to see AI being used and delivering benefits and not, you know, resulting in harms.
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