Iran’s Bloodiest Crackdown in Decades
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What details are emerging about Iran's deadly crackdown on protests?
The EU and India seal a free trade deal decades in the making. Plus, rights groups in Iran break through a communications blackout to shed light on the true death toll in recent protests.
Even at lower estimates of the crackdowns, this would rank as one of the biggest political killings in recent history, exceeding even the toll of China's 1989 move to clear Tiananmen Square.
and the latest from Minnesota as President Trump shakes up his immigration strategy. It's Tuesday, January 27th. I'm Luke Vargas for The Wall Street Journal, and here is the AM edition of What's News, the top headlines and business stories moving your world today. After two decades of on-again, off-again talks, the European Union and India say they've reached a free trade deal. The deal will be the largest for both economies, linking together almost two billion consumers. And as trade reporter Kim McRaehl is here to discuss, it comes as a number of U.S. trading partners are actively taking steps to curb their reliance on America. Kim, thanks for being with us this morning. What should we know about this agreement, the broad strokes?
It's quite a big deal, actually, for both economies. They both say it's the largest one they have done with a bilateral trading partner. And it includes some pretty big concessions in terms of lowering tariffs on the Indian side. They're looking at quite a significant drop from the current level of 110% tariffs on European cars. That's supposed to gradually go down to eventually hit 10%. We don't yet know exactly the timeline for that, but that could be quite a significant new market for European automakers. It is capped at 250,000, so it's not a notable one. We're looking at lower tariffs from India on European machinery, chemicals, pharmaceuticals, and some agricultural goods. So quite a bit there.
It's also, for the Indian side, it's quite a big deal to be lowering some of those tariffs because it's a country that has long had quite a bit of protection on its market. And some of the lower tariffs, according to the EU, are the biggest India has offered to a trading partner so far.
And Kim, this is coming at a very helpful time for India as well when trade barriers between it and the US notably have been going up.
That's right. Yeah. So India has been hit by 50% tariffs last year by the Trump administration. Those are some of the highest tariff levels that the US has applied to its trading partners. So this deal is expected to carry some benefits for India's textiles, jewelry, leather industries. And it also follows on a free trade agreement that India has agreed to last year with the UK. So they're really hoping that it will help with shoring up their global supply chains.
And Kim, this is a good segue to discussing how other big U.S. trading partners are positioning themselves lately. We reported earlier this month on Canada opening up its auto and its energy sectors to Chinese products, also inviting investment by Beijing into Canada. But there's more than Canada to talk about here.
Yeah, that's right. So I think what we're seeing right now is a lot of different trading partners of the US looking around the globe and looking for what are some alternative markets or some other markets where we can boost our trade ties. And it's a little bit for many of them a hedging exercise as they deal with a U.S. that is less predictable than it was before and try to find some alternative market options. So we saw some of that center around China recently. We saw South Korea's leader recently talk about wanting a full scale restoration of ties with China. We were seeing some European leaders head to Beijing recently. Finland's prime minister has a meeting with Xi Jinping today in Beijing.
British Prime Minister Keir Starmer is expected to be there. And Germany's leader is also expected to travel there next month.
How has the EU and India reached a significant free trade deal?
Maybe one of the notable ones here is the UK actually restarted trade talks with China last year after holding off for quite a long time. So China is of interest because it's a really large economy, but it does also carry some big risks.
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