MANILA, Philippines (AP) — Asian shares were mixed on Thursday after most U.S. stocks slipped, as doubts rose on Wall Street about whether the Federal Reserve will deliver economy-juicing cuts to interest rates by September.

Japan’s Nikkei 225 rose 0.9% to 41,020.91 after the Bank of Japan kept interest rates steady at 0.5% and raised inflation projections. The move follows Tokyo’s trade deal with Washington.

Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index fell 1% to 24,920.67, while the Shanghai Composite Index slid 0.7% to 3,588.73.

In Seoul, the Kospi edged down 0.3% to 3,244.40 after South Korea reached a 15% tariff deal with the U.S., with no levies on American goods like cars, trucks and farm products. The deal also includes South Korea’s purchase of $100 billion U.S. energy imports and $350 billion worth of investments in the U.S.

Australia’s S&P ASX 200 shed 0.1% to 8,743.80. India’s BSE Sensex added 0.2% to 81,481.86. Taiwan’s TAIEX rose 0.4% to 23,551.92.

Rabo Bank, citing the U.S. trade deals with other countries, including Bangladesh, said in a commentary that “it appears to be only a matter of time before India agrees to terms to ensure that it retains favorable access to the US market and all of those other markets that (U.S. President Donald) Trump has demonstrated he has the power to direct through economic coercion.”

Rabo added that the terms of a U.S.-India trade deal would almost certainly include Indian purchases of U.S. arms and energy products and preferential access to U.S. agricultural goods.

“A potential loser in all of this is Australia. With the US sending more wheat to Indonesia and Bangladesh and more LNG to Japan and South Korea, Australian exports stand to be displaced from their traditional markets,” it added.

Trump on Wednesday announced a 25% tariff on imports coming from India, along with an additional tax because of India’s purchases of Russian oil, beginning on Aug. 1. That’s when stiff tariffs Trump has proposed for many other countries are also scheduled to kick in, unless they reach trade deals that lower the rates. But the U.S. president said the two countries were still in negotiations.

On Wall Street on Wednesday the S&P 500 edged down by 0.1%, coming off its first loss after setting all-time highs for six successive days. The Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 171 points, or 0.4%, and the Nasdaq composite rose 0.1%.

Stocks felt pressure from rising Treasury yields in the bond market after the Federal Reserve voted to hold its main interest rate steady. The move may upset Trump, who has been lobbying for lower interest rates, but it was widely expected on Wall Street.

Fed Chair Jerome Powell may have surprised investors by pushing back on expectations that the Fed could cut rates at its next meeting in September. Besides Trump, two members of the Fed’s committee have also been calling for lower rates to ease the pressure on the economy, and they dissented in Wednesday’s vote.

But Powell would not commit to a September cut in rates, pointing to how inflation remains above the Fed’s 2% target, while the job market still looks to be “in balance.”

A cut in rates would give the job market and overall economy a boost, but it could also risk fueling inflation when Trump’s tariffs may be set to raise prices for U.S. consumers. The Fed’s job is to keep both the job market and inflation in a good place.

In other dealings on Thursday, U.S. benchmark crude oil lost 4 cents to $69.96 per barrel while Brent crude, the international standard, shed 13 cents to $72.34 per barrel.

The U.S. dollar fell to 148.87 Japanese yen from 149.44. The euro rose to $1.1422 from $1.1412.

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AP Business Writer Stan Choe contributed.

SANTIAGO, Chile (AP) — The United States will deploy biometric technologies in partnership with Chile to control migration and disrupt criminal networks, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said Wednesday during a visit to the South American nation.

“This arrangement is going to serve as a bridge to help Chile and the United States work towards bringing criminals to justice and knowing who is in our countries perpetuating crimes,” Noem said while signing the preliminary agreement with Chile’s Security Minister Luis Cordero and Justice Minister Jaime Gajardo.

“This increased cooperation between our countries is extremely important to track criminals, terrorists and dangerous individuals,” she added from the capital of Santiago, while nearby thousands of residents heeded tsunami warnings to evacuate along the the country’s Pacific coast.

The plan comes as the Trump administration seeks to bolster regional cooperation in its clampdown against transnational criminal groups, including Tren de Aragua, a notorious Venezuelan gang designated as a foreign terrorist organization by the White House.

The bilateral agreement allows Chilean officials to identify potentially dangerous migrants entering or exiting the country and share their biometric data, such as fingerprints and iris scans, with the Department of Homeland Security to prevent their travel to the U.S.

“That information will be incredibly important as we go after these criminal activities,” Noem said, praising past cooperation between the countries’ intelligence agencies.

Tren de Aragua has wreaked havoc across once-peaceful Chile in recent years — smuggling undocumented migrants across borders, running prostitution rings, trafficking drugs and terrorizing the population with grisly crimes.

But Chilean authorities have fought back, bringing a number of gang members to trial in recent months. After spreading across Latin America on the heels of illegal migration, Tren de Aragua infiltrated the U.S. and inflamed domestic politics.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation and Chile most recently teamed up to disrupt South American criminal networks allegedly responsible for a string of burglaries targeting the multimillion-dollar homes of high-profile celebrities and professional athletes in the U.S. and Europe. The suspects, among them Chilean nationals, are now facing charges in Florida.

RIO DE JANEIRO (AP) — The U.S. Treasury Department said Wednesday it was imposing sanctions on Brazil’s Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes over alleged suppression of freedom of expression and the ongoing trial of former President Jair Bolsonaro.

Bolsonaro is accused of masterminding a plot to stay in power despite his 2022 election defeat to current President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. Moraes oversees that case.

“De Moraes is responsible for an oppressive campaign of censorship, arbitrary detentions that violate human rights, and politicized prosecutions — including against former President Jair Bolsonaro,” U.S. Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent said in a statement.

The decision orders the freezing of any assets or property de Moraes may have in the U.S.

Brazil’s Supreme Court and the Presidential Palace did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Wednesday’s announcement follows the U.S. State Department’s announcement of visa restrictions on Brazilian judicial officials, including de Moraes, on July 18.

It also comes after U.S. President Donald Trump announced a 50% tariff on Brazilian imported goods that is set to come into effect on Friday. In a letter announcing the tariff on July 9, Trump explicitly linked the import tax to what he called the “witch hunt” trial of Bolsonaro currently underway in Brazil.

Bolsonaro, a Trump ally, was hosted by the then-U.S. President at his Mar-a-Lago resort when both were in power in 2020.

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Follow AP’s coverage of Latin America and the Caribbean at https://apnews.com/hub/latin-america

MOSCOW (AP) — A powerful earthquake struck Wednesday off Russia’s Far East coast, flooding a fishing port with waves from a tsunami, cutting power to a few areas and sending some panicked residents fleeing buildings but causing only a few injuries.

Regional authorities say they were prepared for the 8.8-magnitude quake and the subsequent waves, and moved quickly to keep residents safe. They introduced a state of emergency in some areas, but said there was no major damage.

Here is what to know about the Russian areas hit by the quake and tsunami:

Kamchatka peninsula

Dubbed the “land of fire and ice,” Kamchatka is one of the most active volcanic regions on Earth. It has about 300 volcanoes, with 29 of them still active, according to NASA’s Earth Observatory. Quakes and tsunamis regularly strike the peninsula that lies close to an ocean trench where two tectonic plates meet.

The 1,200-kilometer (750-mile)-long peninsula nine time zones east of Moscow faces the Pacific Ocean on its east and the Sea of Okhotsk along its west coast. Kamchatka and a few nearby islands have a population of about 290,000 with about 162,000 of them living in the regional capital of Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky in Avacha Bay on the peninsula’s southeast.

There are few roads on the peninsula, and helicopters are the only way to reach most areas. Fishing is the main economic activity. A major base for Russian nuclear submarines is located in Avacha Bay.

The tallest volcano is Klyuchevskaya Sopka (4,750 meters or 15,584 feet), the largest active volcano in the Northern Hemisphere. Observers heard explosions and saw streams of lava on its western slopes, according to the Kamchatka branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences’ geophysical service.

Scientists have anticipated the eruption for some time, with the volcano’s crater filling with lava for weeks and the mountain emitting plumes of ash. It last erupted in 2023.

The Kuril islands

The four volcanic islands, known in Russia as the Kurils, stretch between Kamchatka and the Japanese island of Hokkaido.

The islands were captured by the Soviet Union from Japan in the closing days of World War II. Japan asserts territorial rights to the islands it calls the Northern Territories, and the dispute has kept the countries from signing a peace treaty

The islands have a population of about 20,000, and the local economy is based on fishing. The Russian military has bolstered its presence in the area, refurbishing a Soviet-era air base and other outposts.

The impact of the quake and tsunami

The authorities on Kamchatka and the Kurils said they have been prepared for a major quake for a long time and acted quickly to protect the population.

The 8.8-magnitude quake, centered about 120 kilometers (75 miles from Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky, struck at 11:24 a.m. local time (2324 GMT Tuesday, 7:24 p.m. EDT Tuesday) at a depth of about 21 kilometers (13 miles), according to the U.S. Geological Survey. Multiple aftershocks as strong as 6.9 magnitude followed.

The earthquake appeared to be the strongest on record since the 9.0 magnitude earthquake off northeastern Japan in March 2011 that caused a massive tsunami. Only a few stronger earthquakes have ever been measured anywhere.

Regional authorities on Kamchatka said several people were injured, but they didn’t elaborate. Regional health department chief Oleg Melnikov a few injuries occurred during evacuations, including a hospital patient injured while jumping out of a window. All were in satisfactory condition, he said.

Video from Russian media showed doctors on Kamchatka holding a patient and medical equipment as an operating room shook during surgery. The quake damaged a kindergarten in Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky, but no children were in the building, which was closed for renovation. Municipal workers inspected about 600 apartment buildings and said no evacuations were needed.

Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky was protected from big tsunami waves by its location on Avacha Bay. Emergency workers evacuated about 60 tourists from a beach of black volcanic sand on the Pacific side.

Tsunami waves could have been as high as 10 to 15 meters (30 to 50 feet) in some sections of the Kamchatka coast, Russia’s Oceanology Institute said, noting the biggest were under 6 meters (about 19 1/2 feet) near populated areas of the peninsula and the nearby Kuril islands.

Authorities in Severo-Kurilsk, the Kurils’ main city, evacuated residents from danger areas to deeper inland.

Severo-Kurilsk Mayor Alexander Ovsyannikov said tsunami waves flooded the fishing port along with a fish factory and swept fishing boats out to sea. Power was cut by the flooding, with authorities inspecting the damage.

Tourists sailing in the Sea of Okhotsk off the Kurils watched as a group of sea lions jumped en masse from a rocky outcropping on Antsiferov Island and swam away as the quake hit, a tour guide said.

The sea lions seemed “very scared and a terrible rumble began,” said tour organizer Alexander Bogoslovskiy, adding that all the tourists were safe from the effects of the quake and tsunami.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov noted the quake warnings were issued in a timely fashion, people were evacuated quickly, and buildings withstood the shocks.

JAKARTA, Indonesia (AP) — A trial began Wednesday in Indonesia against an American man accused of misusing his tourist visa by producing and selling pornographic videos online.

The trial at the South Jakarta District Court was held behind closed doors. Indonesia’s Criminal Procedure Law says judges have the authority to limit public access to a trial if the case relates to pornography.

Taylor Kirby Whitemore, 39, was arrested on March 25 by Immigration Enforcement officers when he was about to fly from Bali to Malaysia.

A cyber patrol team found promotional posts of paid pornographic content featuring Whitemore and local women, said Yuldi Yusman, the acting director general of immigration.

“The defendant has violated Indonesia’s Pornography Law and Immigration Law,” said Andi Jefri Ardin, a prosecutor, after the hearing. He refused to give details.

Whitemore faces up to five years in prison and a fine of up to 500 million rupiah ($30,540) if found guilty.

His Indonesian lawyer, Erwin Siregar, said his client was only accused of violating a tourist visa, which generally does not lead to court proceedings but instead results in deportation.

“This is the first time an immigration violation has been brought to a criminal court,” Siregar said, “This should simply be an administrative sanction, requiring the person to be summoned and then repatriated to their country.”

Siregar acknowledged that Whitemore had improperly used a visa granted by the Indonesian government.

Indonesia, the world’s most populous Muslim-majority country, has strict laws against the production and distribution of pornography. The government regularly instructs internet service providers to block access to websites containing such material.

DAMASCUS, Syria (AP) — The United States repatriated an American child separated from their family from a sprawling camp in northeastern Syrian that houses tens of thousands of people with alleged ties to the militant Islamic State group, the State Department said Wednesday.

The department estimates that some 30,000 people from 70 countries remain in al-Hol Camp, most of them wives and children of IS fighters as well as supporters of the extremist group. They include Iraqis as well as nationals of Western countries who traveled to join IS.

Human rights groups for years have cited poor living conditions and pervasive violence in the camp, which the U.S.-backed Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces have administered for years. The SDF are Washington’s key ally in combating IS in Syria and its sleeper cells, and for years have run large swaths of northeastern Syria.

The State Department did not give any details about the repatriation, except to say in a statement that the child “has known nothing of life outside of the camps” and will be reunified with their family.

The U.S. military for years has been pushing for countries to repatriate their citizens from al-Hol and the smaller, separate Roj Camp. Iraq has taken back an increasing number in recent years, but many other countries have remained reluctant.

“The only durable solution to the humanitarian and security crisis in these displaced persons camps in northeast Syria is for countries of origin to repatriate, rehabilitate, reintegrate, and where appropriate, ensure accountability for their nationals,” the State Department statement read. “The same goes for former ISIS fighters held in detention centers in northeast Syria,” it said, using a different abbreviation for IS.

Despite difficult talks to formally merge with the country’s new rulers under interim President Ahmad al-Sharaa, Damascus and the SDF in May reached an agreement to repatriate Syrians in the camp. Since the ouster of Bashar Assad in December, Washington has been pushing for the two sides to implement their deal and unify Syrian territory, which would ultimately put the camp under the control of the government.

The SDF did not immediately comment on the repatriation.

BANGKOK (AP) — Shares in Asia were mostly higher on Wednesday after the U.S. and China ended their latest round of trade talks without a deal. U.S, futures edged higher while oil prices slipped.

Beijing’s top trade official said China and the United States agreed during two days of talks in Stockholm, Sweden, to work on extending an Aug. 12 deadline for imposing higher tariffs on each other. The U.S. side said an extension was discussed, but not decided on.

U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer says the American team would head back to Washington and “talk to the president about whether that’s something that he wants to do.”

A Friday deadline is looming for many of Trump’s proposed tariffs on other countries. Several highly anticipated economic reports are also on the way, including the latest monthly update on the job market.

“Markets had been floating on a cloud of trade optimism — first Japan, then the EU — but the sugar high is wearing off. Now, with U.S.-China talks dragging on in Stockholm, there’s a growing sense that the momentum is stalling,” Stephen Innes of SPI Asset Management said in a commentary.

Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index shed 0.3% to 25,441.64 while the Shanghai Composite index gained 0.5% to 3,628.53.

Tokyo’s Nikkei 225 index edged less than 0.1% higher to 40,687.17. Gains for electronics companies were offset by losses for major exporters like Toyota Motor Corp. and Honda Motor Co.

Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 climbed 0.6% to 8,759.20 and in South Korea, the Kospi gained 0.9% to 3,259.00.

Taiwan’s Taiex rose 0.9% while the Sensex in India edged 0.1% higher.

On Tuesday, U.S. stock indexes edged back from their record levels as a busy week for Wall Street picked up momentum. The S&P 500 fell 0.3% to 6,370.86, while the Dow Jones Industrial Average lost 0.5% to 44,632.99.

The Nasdaq composite was down 0.4% at 21,098.29.

SoFi Technologies jumped 7.4%, but Merck dropped 2.2% and UPS sank 9.2% following a torrent of profit reports from big U.S. companies. They’re among the hundreds of companies telling investors this week how much they made during the spring, including nearly a third of the stocks in the S&P 500 index.

UnitedHealth Group dropped 5.8% after reporting a profit for the spring that fell short of analysts’ expectations. It also gave a forecast for profit over all of 2025 that investors found disappointing. The health care giant said it expected to earn at least $16 per share, when analysts were looking for something close to $20, according to FactSet.

Shares of Novo Nordisk that trade in the United States tumbled 21.3% after the Danish company cut its forecast for sales growth this year, in part because of lower expectations for its Wegovy weight-loss drug amid high competition.

Treasury yields sank as the Federal Reserve began a two-day meeting on interest rates.

Despite pressure from President Donald Trump for lower rates, which would give the economy a boost, the widespread expectation is that the Fed will wait for more data about how Trump’s tariffs are affecting inflation and the economy before making its next move.

The U.S. economy appears to be slowing.

One report on Tuesday said that U.S. employers were advertising fewer job openings at the end of June than a month before, though still more than economists expected. A separate report said confidence rose among U.S. consumers, but a measure of their expectations about the near term remains below the level that typically signals a recession ahead.

In other dealings early Wednesday, U.S. benchmark crude oil picked up 7 cents to $69.28 per barrel, while Brent crude, the international standard, was up 13 cents at $71.82 per barrel.

The dollar fell to 148.13 Japanese yen from 148.48 yen. The euro rose to $1.1554 from $1.1546.

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AP Business Writers Matt Ott and Stan Choe contributed.

ROME (AP) — An independent U.N. investigator and outspoken critic of Israel’s policies in Gaza says that the sanctions recently imposed on her by the Trump administration will have serious impacts on her life and work.

Francesca Albanese, the U.N. special rapporteur for the West Bank and Gaza, is a member of a group of experts chosen by the 47-member U.N. Human Rights Council in Geneva. She is tasked with probing human rights abuses in the Palestinian territories and has been vocal about what she has described as the “genocide” by Israel against Palestinians in Gaza.

Both Israel and the United States, which provides military support to its close ally, have strongly denied that accusation. Washington has decried what it called a “campaign of political and economic warfare” against the U.S. and Israel, and earlier this month imposed sanctions on Albanese, following an unsuccessful U.S. pressure campaign to force the international body to remove her from her post.

“It’s very serious to be on the list of the people sanctioned by the U.S.,” Albanese told The Associated Press in Rome on Tuesday, adding that individuals sanctioned by the U.S. cannot have financial interactions or credit cards with any American bank.

When used in “a political way,” she said the sanctions “are harmful, dangerous.”

“My daughter is American. I’ve been living in the U.S. and I have some assets there. So of course, it’s going to harm me,” Albanese said. “What can I do? I did everything I did in good faith, and knowing that, my commitment to justice is more important than personal interests.”

The sanctions have not dissuaded Albanese from her work — or her viewpoints — and in July, she published a new report, focused on what she defines as “Israel’s genocidal economy” in Palestinian territories.

“There’s an entire ecosystem that has allowed Israel’s occupation to thrive. And then it has also morphed into an economy of genocide,” she said.

In the conclusion of the report, Albanese calls for sanctions against Israel and prosecution of “architects, executors and profiteers of this genocide.”

Albanese noted a recent shift in perceptions in Europe and around the world following an outcry over images of emaciated children in Gaza and reports of dozens of hunger-related deaths after nearly 22 months of war.

“It’s shocking,” she said. “I don’t think that there are words left to describe what’s happening to the Palestinian people.”

The war began on Oct. 7, 2023, when Hamas-led militants stormed into Israel and killed some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and took 251 people captive. Israel’s retaliatory campaign has killed over 60,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry, which does not differentiate between combatants and civilians but says more than half the dead are women and children.

Nearly 21 months into the conflict that displaced the vast majority of Gaza’s 2.3 million people, the United Nations says hunger is rampant after a lengthy Israeli blockade on food entering the territory and medical care is extremely limited.

MONTREAL (AP) — Throughout his new term, starting with his , President Donald Trump has said he was “saved by God” to make America great again. In Canada, Prime Minister Mark Carney rarely evokes religion in public; his victory speech in April never used the word God. “Canada forever. Vive le Canada,” he ended.

As Canada and the U.S. now skirmish over Trump’s tariff threats and occasional bullying, the leaders’ rhetoric reflects a striking difference between their nations. Religion plays a far more subdued role in the public sphere in Canada than in its southern neighbor.

Trump posed in front of a vandalized Episcopal parish house gripping a Bible. He invites pastors to the Oval Office to pray with him. His ally, House Speaker Mike Johnson, says the best way to understand his own world view is to read the Bible.

Such high-level religion-themed displays would be unlikely and almost certainly unpopular in Canada, where Carney — like his recent predecessors — generally avoids public discussion of his faith. (He is a Catholic who supports abortion rights.)

There are broader differences as well. The rate of regular church attendance in Canada is far lower than in the U.S. Evangelical Christians have nowhere near the political clout in Canada that they have south of the border. There is no major campaign in Canada to post the Ten Commandments in public schools or to enact sweeping abortion bans.

Kevin Kee, a professor and former dean at the University of Ottawa, has written about the contrasting religious landscapes of the U.S. and Canada, exploring the rise of American evangelist Billy Graham to become a confidant of numerous U.S. presidents.

Christianity, Kee said, has not permeated modern Canadian politics to that extent.

“We have a political leadership that keeps its religion quiet,” Kee said. “To make that kind of declaration in Canada is to create an us/them situation. There’s no easy way to keep everybody happy, so people keep it quiet.”

A dramatic loss of Catholic power in Quebec

The mostly French-speaking province of Quebec provides a distinctive example of Canada’s tilt toward secularism. The Catholic Church was Quebec’s dominant force through most of its history, with sweeping influence over schools, health care and politics.

That changed dramatically in the so-called Quiet Revolution of the 1960s, when the provincial government took control of education and health care as part of a broader campaign to reduce the church’s power. The rate of regular church attendance among Quebec’s Catholics plummeted from one of the highest in Canada to the one of the lowest.

Among religiously devout Canadians, in Quebec and other provinces, some are candid about feeling marginalized in a largely secular country.

“I feel isolated because our traditional Christian views are seen as old-fashioned or not moving with the times,” said Mégane Arès-Dubé, 22, after she and her husband attended a service at a conservative Reformed Baptist church in Saint Jerome, about 30 miles (nearly 50 kilometers) north of Montreal.

“Contrary to the U.S., where Christians are more represented in elected officials, Christians are really not represented in Canada,” she added. “I pray that Canada wakes up.”

The church’s senior pastor, Pascal Denault, has mixed feelings about the Quiet Revolution’s legacy.

“For many aspects of it, that was good,” he said. “Before that, it was mainly the Catholic clergy that controlled many things in the province, so we didn’t have religious freedom.”

Nonetheless, Denault wishes for a more positive public view of religion in Canada.

“Sometimes, secularism becomes a religion in itself, and it wants to shut up any religious speech in the public sphere,” he said. “What we hope for is that the government will recognize that religion is not an enemy to fight, but it’s more a positive force to encourage.”

Denault recently hosted a podcast episode focusing on Trump; he later shared some thoughts about the president.

“We tend to think that Trump is more using Christianity as a tool for his influence, rather than being a genuine Christian,” he said. “But Christians are, I think, appreciative of some of his stances on different things.”

Trump’s religion-related tactics — such as posing with the Bible in his hands — wouldn’t go over well with Canadians, Denault said.

“They’d see that as something wrongful. The public servant should not identify with a specific religion,” Denault said. “I don’t think most Canadians would vote for that type of politician.”

Repurposed church buildings abound in Montreal

In the Montreal neighborhood of Hochelaga-Maisonneuve, the skyline is dotted with crosses atop steeples, but many of those churches are unused or repurposed.

For decades, factory and port workers worshipped at Saint-Mathias-Apotre Church. Today it’s a restaurant that serves affordable meals daily for more than 600 residents.

The manager of , Marc-Andre Simard, grew up Catholic and now, like many of his staff, identifies as religiously unaffiliated. But he still tries to honor some core values of Catholicism at the nonprofit restaurant, which retains the church’s original wooden doors and even its confessional booths.

“There’s still space to be together, to have some sort of communion, but it’s around food, not around faith.” Simard said during a lunch break, sitting near what used to be the altar of the former church.

Simard says the extent to which the Catholic Church controlled so much of public life in Quebec should serve as a cautionary tale for the U.S.

“We went through what the United States are going through right now,” he said.

Elsewhere in Montreal, a building that once housed a Catholic convent now often accommodates meetings of the Quebec Humanist Association.

The group’s co-founder, Michel Virard, said French Canadians “know firsthand what it was to have a clergy nosing in their affairs.”

Now, Virard says, “There is no ‘excluding religious voice’ in Canada, merely attempts at excluding clergy from manipulating the state power levers and using taxpayers’ money to promote a particular religious viewpoint.”

History reveals why role of religion is so different in U.S. and Canada

Why are Canada and the U.S., two neighbors which share so many cultural traditions and priorities, so different regarding religion’s role in public life?

According to academics who have pondered that question, their history provides some answers. The United States, at independence from Britain, chose not to have a dominant, federally established church.

In Canada, meanwhile, the Catholic Church was dominant in Quebec, and the Church of England — eventually named the Anglican Church of Canada — was powerful elsewhere.

Professor Darren Dochuk, a Canadian who teaches history at University of Notre Dame in Indiana, says the “disestablishment” of religion in the U.S. “made religious life all the more dynamic.”

“This is a country in which free faith communities have been allowed to compete in the marketplace for their share,” he said.

“In the 20th century, you had a plethora of religious groups across the spectrum who all competed voraciously for access to power,” he said. “More recently, the evangelicals are really dominating that. … Religious conservatives are imposing their will on Washington.”

There’s been no equivalent faith-based surge in Canada, said Dochuk, suggesting that Canada’s secularization produced “precipitous decline in the power of religion as a major operator in politics.”

Carmen Celestini, professor of religious studies at the University of Waterloo in Ontario, said that even when Canadian politicians do opt for faith-based outreach, they often take a multicultural approach — for example, visiting Sikh, Hindu and Jewish houses of worship, as well as Christian churches.

Trump’s talk about Canada becoming the 51st state fueled a greater sense of national unity among most Canadians, and undermined the relatively small portion of them who identify as Christian nationalists, Celestini said.

“Canada came together more as a nation, not sort of seeing differences with each other, but seeing each other as Canadians and being proud of our sovereignty and who we are as a nation,” she said. “The concern that Canadians have, when we look at what’s happening in America, is that we don’t want that to happen here. “

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Crary, who reported from New York, was the AP’s Canada bureau chief from 1995-99.

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Associated Press religion coverage receives support through the AP’s with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content.

BRUSSELS (AP) — France’s prime minister described it as a “dark day” for the European Union, a “submission” to U.S. tariff demands. Commentators said EU Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen’s handshake with President Donald Trump amounted to capitulation.

The trouble is, Europe depends mightily on the United States, and not just for trade.

Mirroring Trump, Von der Leyen gushed that the arrangement she endorsed over the weekend to set U.S. tariff levels on most European exports to 15%, which is 10% higher than currently, was “huge.” Her staff texted reporters insisting that the pact, which starts to enter force on Friday, is the “biggest trade deal ever.”

A month after NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte ingratiated himself with Trump by referring to him as “daddy,” the Europeans had again conceded that swallowing the costs and praising an unpredictable president is more palatable than losing America.

“It’s not only about the trade. It’s about security. It’s about Ukraine. It’s about current geopolitical volatility. I cannot go into all the details,” EU Trade Commissioner Maroš Šefčovič told reporters Monday.

“I can assure you it was not only about the trade,” he insisted, a day after “the deal” was sealed in an hour-long meeting once Trump finished playing a round of golf with his son at the course he owns in Scotland.

The state of Europe’s security dependency

Indeed, Europe depends on the U.S. for its security and that security is anything but a game, especially since Russia invaded Ukraine. U.S. allies are convinced that, should he win, President Vladimir Putin is likely to take aim at one of them next.

So high are these fears that European countries are buying U.S. weapons to help Ukraine to defend itself. Some are prepared to send their own air defense systems and replace them with U.S. equipment, once it can be delivered.

“We’re going to be sending now military equipment and other equipment to NATO, and they’ll be doing what they want, but I guess it’s for the most part working with Ukraine,” Trump said Sunday, sounding ambivalent about America’s role in the alliance.

The Europeans also are wary about a U.S. troop drawdown, which the Pentagon is expected to announce by October. Around 84,000 U.S. personnel are based in Europe, and they guarantee NATO’s deterrent effect against an adversary like Russia.

At the same time, Trump is slapping duties on America’s own NATO partners, ostensibly due to concerns about U.S. security interests, using Section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act, a logic that seems absurd from across the Atlantic.

Weaning Europe off foreign suppliers

“The EU is in a difficult situation because we’re very dependent on the U.S. for security,” said Niclas Poitiers at the Bruegel research institution in Brussels. “Ukraine is a very big part of that, but also generally our defense is underwritten by NATO.”

“I think there was not a big willingness to pick a major fight, which is the one (the EU) might have needed with the U.S.” to better position itself on trade, Poitiers told The Associated Press about key reasons for von der Leyen to accept the tariff demands.

Part of the agreement involves a commitment to buy American oil and gas. Over the course of the Russia-Ukraine war, now in its fourth year, most of the EU has slashed its dependence on unreliable energy supplies from Russia, but Hungary and Slovakia still have not.

“Purchases of U.S. energy products will diversify our sources of supply and contribute to Europe’s energy security. We will replace Russian gas and oil with significant purchases of U.S. LNG, oil and nuclear fuels,” von der Leyen said in Scotland on Sunday.

In essence, as Europe slowly weans itself off Russian energy it is also struggling to end its reliance on the United States for its security. The Trump administration has warned its priorities now lie elsewhere, in Asia, the Middle East and on its own borders.

That was why European allies agreed at NATO’s summit last month to spend hundreds of billions of dollars more on defense over the next decade. Primarily for their own security, but also to keep America among their ranks.

The diplomacy involved was not always elegant.

“Europe is going to pay in a BIG way, as they should, and it will be your win,” Rutte wrote in a private text message to Trump, which the U.S. leader promptly posted on social media.

Rutte brushed off questions about potential embarrassment or concern that Trump had aired it, saying: “I have absolutely no trouble or problem with that because there’s nothing in it which had to stay secret.”

A price Europe feels it must pay

Von der Leyen did not appear obsequious in her meeting with Trump. She often stared at the floor or smiled politely. She did not rebut Trump when he said that only America is sending aid to Gaza. The EU is world’s biggest supplier of aid to the Palestinians.

With Trump’s threat of 30% tariffs hanging over European exports — whether real or brinksmanship is hard to say — and facing the prospect of a full-blown trade dispute while Europe’s biggest war in decades rages, 15% may have been a cheap price to pay.

“In terms of the economic impact on the EU economy itself, it will be negative,” Poitiers said. “But it’s not something that is on a comparable magnitude like the energy crisis after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, or even COVID.”

“This is a negative shock for our economy, but it is something that’s very manageable,” he said.

It remains an open question as to how long this entente will last.

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Mark Carlson in Brussels contributed to this report.

STOCKHOLM (AP) — Chinese and U.S. trade officials were heading into a second day of meetings in the Swedish capital Tuesday to try to break a logjam over tariffs that have skewed the pivotal commercial ties between the world’s two largest economies.

U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Chinese Vice Premier He Lifeng made no public comments to reporters after the first day of talks that lasted nearly five hours behind closed doors at the Swedish prime minister’s office Monday.

Before the talks resumed Tuesday, Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson met with Bessent and U.S. trade representative Jamieson Greer over breakfast.

The United States has struck deals over tariffs with some of its key trading partners — including Britain, Japan and the European Union — since President Donald Trump announced “Liberation Day” tariffs against dozens of countries in April. China remains perhaps the biggest unresolved case.

“The Chinese have been very pragmatic,” Greer said in comments posted on social media by his office late Monday. “Obviously we’ve had a lot of tensions over the years. We have tensions now, but the fact that we are regularly meeting with them to address these issues gives us a good footing for these negotiations.”

“Whether there will be a deal or not, I can’t say,” Greer added in the clip posted on X from MSNBC’s “Morning Joe”. “Whether there’s room for an extension, I can’t say at this point. But the conversations are constructive and they’re going in the right direction.”

Many analysts expect that the Stockholm talks, at a minimum, will result in an extension of current tariff levels that are far lower than the triple-digit percentage rates as the U.S.-China tariff tiff crescendoed in April, sending world markets into a temporary tailspin.

The two sides backed off the brink during bilateral talks in Geneva in May and agreed to a 90-day pause — which is set to end on Aug. 12 — of those sky-high levels. They currently stand at U.S. tariffs of 30% on Chinese goods, and China’s 10% tariff on U.S. products.

Other issues on the agenda include access of American businesses to the Chinese market; Chinese investment in the U.S.; components of fentanyl made in China that reach U.S. consumers; Chinese purchases of Russian and Iranian oil; and American steps to limit exports of Western technology, like chips that help power artificial intelligence systems.

Wendy Cutler, a former U.S. trade negotiator and now vice president at the Asia Society Policy Institute, said that Trump’s team would face challenges from “a large and confident partner that is more than willing to retaliate against U.S. interests.”

Rollover of tariff rates “should be the easy part,” she said, warning that Beijing has learned lessons since the first Trump administration and “will not buy into a one-sided deal this time around.”

On Monday, police have cordoned off a security zone along Stockholm’s vast waterfront as rubbernecking tourists and locals sought a glimpse of the top-tier officials through a phalanx of TV news cameras lined up behind metal barriers.

Flagpoles at the prime minister’s office were festooned with the American and Chinese flags.

TOKYO (AP) — Asian shares mostly declined Tuesday as some of the euphoria fizzled out over a tariff deal with Japan as proposed by President Donald Trump, which was followed by a similar deal with the European Union.

Japan’s benchmark Nikkei 225 slipped nearly 0.7% to 40,725.23. Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 lost 0.3% to 8,670.50. South Korea’s Kospi was little changed after reversing earlier losses, edging less than 0.1% higher to 3,212.59.

Hong Kong’s Hang Seng dropped 1.1% to 25,276.36, while the Shanghai Composite shed 0.3% to 3,586.93.

Analysts said markets were watching for the latest from Trump, which are now focused on the talks with China. U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Chinese Vice Premier He Lifeng were meeting in Sweden. Bessent has said the negotiations will likely lead to an extension of current tariff levels. There was no significant new information after the first day of talks.

“Aside from addressing economic imbalances, tariffs are also now well entrenched in the geo-political arena,” Tan Boon Heng of the Asia & Oceania Treasury Department at Mizuho Bank said in a commentary.

Last week, Trump announced a trade framework, placing a 15% tax on goods imported from Japan, a level far lower than the earlier 25% rate that the president had indicated. Trump also said Japan would invest $550 billion into the U.S. and open up to U.S. autos and rice. Details are still unclear, but the accord set off some momentary relief.

U.S. stock indexes drifted through a quiet Monday after the United States agreed to tax cars and other products coming from the European Union at a 15% rate, lower than Trump had threatened.

Many details of the trade deal are still to be worked out, and Wall Street is heading into a week full of potential flashpoints that could shake markets, including an interest rate decision Wednesday by the Federal Reserve.

The widespread expectation on Wall Street is that Fed officials will wait until September to resume cutting interest rates, though a couple of Trump’s appointees could dissent in the vote. The Fed has been on hold with interest rates this year since cutting them several times at the end of 2024.

On Wall Street, the S&P 500 was nearly flat, edging up by less than 0.1% to 6,389.77 and setting an all-time high for a sixth straight day. The Dow Jones Industrial Average dipped 0.1% to 44,837.56, while the Nasdaq composite added 0.3% to its own record, closing at 21,178.58.

Tesla rose 3% after its CEO, Elon Musk, said it had signed a deal with Samsung Electronics that could be worth more than $16.5 billion to provide computer chips for the electric-vehicle company. Samsung’s stock in South Korea jumped 6.8%.

Other companies in the chip and artificial-intelligence industries were strong, continuing their run from last week after Alphabet said it was increasing its spending on AI chips and other investments to $85 billion this year. Chip company Advanced Micro Devices rose 4.3%, and server-maker Super Micro Computer climbed 10.2%.

But an 8.3% drop for Revvity helped to keep the market in check. The company in the life sciences and diagnostics businesses reported a stronger profit for the latest quarter than Wall Street expected, but its forecast for full year profit disappointed analysts.

Companies are broadly under pressure to deliver solid growth in profits following big jumps in their stock prices the last few months. Much of the gain was due to hopes that Trump would walk back some of his stiff proposed tariffs, and critics say the U.S. stock market looks expensive unless companies will produce bigger profits.

Hundreds of U.S. companies are lined up to report how much profit they made during the spring, with nearly a third of the businesses in the S&P 500 index scheduled to deliver updates.

In energy trading, benchmark U.S. crude inched up 1 cent to $66.72 a barrel. Brent crude, the international standard, added 6 cents to $70.10 a barrel.

In currency trading, the U.S. dollar rose to 148.56 Japanse yen from 148.54 yen. The euro cost $1.1600, up from $1.1593.

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AP Business Writer Stan Choe contributed.

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — The powerful sister of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un dismissed U.S. intent to resume diplomacy on North Korea’s denuclearization, saying Tuesday the North flatly opposes any attempt to deny its position as a nuclear weapons state.

Since beginning his second term in January, U.S. President Donald Trump has repeatedly bragged of his personal ties with Kim Jong Un and expressed hopes of restarting nuclear diplomacy between them. Their high-stakes nuclear diplomacy in 2018-19 unraveled due to disputes over U.S.-led sanctions. Kim has since performed a provocative run of weapons tests to modernize and expand his nuclear arsenal.

In a statement carried by state media, Kim Yo Jong said that “It is worth taking into account the fact that the year 2025 is neither 2018 nor 2019.”

“Any attempt to deny the position of the DPRK as a nuclear weapons state which was established along with the existence of a powerful nuclear deterrent and fixed by the supreme law reflecting the unanimous will of all the DPRK people will be thoroughly rejected,” she said, referring to her country by its official name, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.

She said she was responding to reported comments by a U.S. official that Trump is still open to talks with Kim Jong Un on the North’s complete denuclearization. She likely was referring to a Saturday article by Yonhap news agency that cited an unidentified White House official as saying that Trump “remains open to engaging with Leader Kim to achieve a fully denuclearized North Korea.”

Kim Yo Jong said she doesn’t deny the personal relationship between her brother and Trump “is not bad.” But she said if their personal relations are to serve the purpose of North Korea’s denuclearization, North Korea would view it as “nothing but a mockery.”

“If the U.S. fails to accept the changed reality and persists in the failed past, the DPRK- U.S. meeting will remain as a ‘hope’ of the U.S. side,” Kim Yo Jong said.

Her comments suggested complete denuclearization won’t be up for negotiation. Experts earlier said North Korea would only be interested in talks on a partial surrender of its nuclear capability in return for sanctions relief and other benefits, a tactic that could allow North Korea to retain some of its key nuclear weapons after winning what it wants from the U.S.

The earlier Trump-Kim diplomacy collapsed after Trump rejected Kim’s calls for extensive sanctions relief in return for dismantling his main nuclear complex, a limited denuclearization step.

On Monday, Kim Yo Jong rebuffed overtures by South Korea’s new liberal government, saying its “blind trust” in the country’s alliance with the U.S. and hostility toward North Korea make it no different from its conservative predecessor.

Her comments imply that North Korea — now preoccupied with its expanding cooperation with Russia — sees no need to resume diplomacy with South Korea anytime soon. Experts say Kim Yo Jong also likely seeks to drive a wedge between Seoul and Washington.

BUENOS AIRES, Argentina (AP) — The United States and Argentina on Monday announced that they are working on a plan to allow Argentine tourists to again travel to the U.S. without a visa.

It will likely take two to three years before visa-free travel becomes a reality for Argentine passport holders, but the Trump administration’s move to kickstart the process marked a show of support for President Javier Milei, its staunchest ally in South America and a darling of conservatives around the world.

The gesture coincided with a visit by Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem to Buenos Aires for closed-door meetings with Milei and his officials. Noem signed the statement of intent alongside Security Minister Patricia Bullrich in Milei’s office.

The Department of Homeland Security praised Milei for reshaping Argentina’s foreign policy in line with the U.S.

“Under President Javier Milei’s leadership, Argentina is becoming an even stronger friend to the United States — more committed than ever to border security for both of our nations,” the statement quoted Noem as saying.

This first step toward Argentina’s entry into the Visa Waiver Program, it added, “highlights our strong partnership with Argentina and our mutual desire to promote lawful travel while deterring threats.”

The department cited Argentina as having the lowest visa overstay rate in the U.S. of any Latin American country.

Trump’s loyal ally in South America

The removal of rigorous U.S. visa requirements — particularly at a time when U.S. President Donald Trump is tightening restrictions for foreign nationals — would offer a symbolic victory to Milei, a self-described “anarcho-capitalist” who rose to power as a far-right outsider mimicking Trump’s war-on-woke rhetoric and skillful use of social media.

When he became the first world leader to visit Trump after the U.S. election, Milei pranced around Mar-a-Lago like an excited school boy.

At the Conservative Political Action Committee convention in Washington last February, he gifted billionaire Elon Musk a bureaucracy-slashing chainsaw to support his DOGE campaign to eliminate government waste.

When not riding the far-right, pro-Trump speaking circuit, Milei is focused on straightening out South America’s second-largest economy after years of turmoil under left-wing populist rule. Through tough budget cuts and mass layoffs, Milei has succeeded in driving down Argentina’s notorious double-digit inflation.

The last time Argentines didn’t require a visa to enter the U.S. was in the 1990s under another free-market devotee, the late former President Carlos Menem.

Menem’s neo-liberal reforms and pegging of the peso 1-to-1 to the U.S. dollar destroyed Argentina’s industry, exacerbating poverty in what a century ago was one of the world’s wealthiest countries.

In the crisis that followed, the U.S. reimposed visa restrictions in 2002 as young Argentines seeking to flee misery lined up at European embassies and began to migrate illegally to the U.S.

The Argentine presidency described Monday’s preliminary agreement as “a clear demonstration of the excellent relationship” between Milei and Trump.

“This bilateral link is not limited to the commercial or economic sphere, but constitutes a strategic and comprehensive relationship based on a shared vision,” the presidency added.

Noem, who grew up on a farm in rural South Dakota, later Monday toured a military base on horseback and enjoyed asado — Argentina’s traditional meat-centric barbecue and national passion.

She is the third member of Trump’s Cabinet to meet Milei in Buenos Aires so far this year, after U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and U.S. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

Tough limits on travel to Trump’s America

Over 40 mostly European and wealthy Asian countries belong to the exclusive club that allows their citizens to travel to the U.S. without a visa for up to three months. However, border officers have the power to turn anyone away.

About 20 million tourists use the program each year. Currently, Chile is the only Latin American country in the program.

Overseas travel to the U.S. plunged in the early days of Trump’s return to the White House as tourists, especially from Latin America, feared being caught in the administration’s border crackdown. Some canceled travel plans to protest his foreign policy and anti-immigrant rhetoric.

But those numbers began to rebound in April, with more than 3 million international arrivals — 8% more than a year ago — from countries other than Mexico or Canada, according to the International Trade Administration, an agency under the U.S. Department of Commerce.

In addition to clamping down on the southern border, Trump has put up additional obstacles for students, tourists and others looking to travel to the U.S.

His recently passed “big, beautiful” bill of domestic priorities calls for the enactment of a new “visa integrity fee” of $250 to be charged in addition to the cost of the visa itself.

Travel industry executives have expressed concern that the charge could drive away tourists who contribute more than $2 trillion annually and 9 million jobs to the U.S. economy, according to the International Trade Administration.

About a quarter of all travelers to the U.S. come from Latin America and the Caribbean, the agency says.

Arrivals from Argentina have jumped 25% this year — a bigger increase than from any other country.

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Goodman reported from Medellin, Colombia.

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Follow AP’s coverage of Latin America and the Caribbean at https://apnews.com/hub/latin-america

STOCKHOLM, Sweden (AP) — Top trade officials from China and the United States arrived for a new round of talks in Stockholm on Monday in a bid to ease tensions over trade between the world’s two biggest national economies.

U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Chinese Vice Premier He Lifeng were meeting at the offices of Sweden’s prime minister for talks that Bessent has said will likely to lead to an extension of current tariff levels.

Analysts say the two envoys could set the stage for a possible meeting between U.S. President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping later this year to cement a recent thaw in trade tensions.

The talks are the third this year between He and Bessent — nearly four months after Trump upended global trade with his sweeping tariff proposals, including an import tax that shot up to 145% on Chinese goods. China quickly retaliated, sending global financial markets into a temporary tailspin.

The Stockholm meeting — following similar talks in Geneva and London in recent months — is set to extend a 90-day pause on those tariffs. During the pause, U.S. tariffs were lowered to 30% on Chinese goods, and China set a 10% tariff on U.S. products.

The Trump administration, fresh off a deal on tariffs with the European Union, wants to reduce a trade deficit that came in at $904 billion overall last year — including a nearly $300 billion trade deficit with China alone.

China’s Commerce Ministry, for its part, said last week that Beijing wants “more consensus and cooperation and less misperception” from the Stockholm talks.

—�Ĕ

Didi Tang and Josh Boak in Washington contributed to this report.

BANGKOK (AP) — Stock markets in Asia were mixed on Monday after U.S. stocks rose to more records as they closed out another winning week.

U.S. futures and oil prices were higher ahead of trade talks in Stockholm between U.S. and Chinese officials.

European futures rose after the European Union forged a deal with the Trump administration calling for 15% tariffs on most exports to the U.S.

The agreement announced after President Donald Trump and European Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen met briefly at Trump’s Turnberry golf course in Scotland staves off far higher import duties on both sides that might have sent shock waves through economies around the globe.

Tokyo’s Nikkei 225 index lost 1% to 41,056.81 after doubts surfaced over what exactly the trade truce between Japan and U.S. President Donald Trump, especially the $550 billion pledge of investment in the U.S. by Japan, will entail.

Terms of the deal are still being negotiated and nothing has been formalized in writing, said an official, who insisted on anonymity to detail the terms of the talks. The official suggested the goal was for a $550 billion fund to make investments at Trump’s direction.

Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index gained 0.4% to 25,490.45 while the Shanghai Composite index lost 0.2% to 3,587.25. Taiwan’s Taiex rose 0.3%.

CK Hutchison, a Hong Kong conglomerate that’s selling ports at the Panama Canal, said it may seek a Chinese investor to join a consortium of buyers in a move that might please Beijing but could also bring more U.S. scrutiny to a geopolitically fraught deal. CK Hutchison’s shares fell 0.6% on Monday in Hong Kong.

Elsewhere in Asia, South Korea’s Kospi was little changed at 3,195.49, while Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 rose 0.3% to 8,688.40. India’s Sensex slipped 0.1%.

Markets in Thailand were closed for a holiday.

On Friday, the S&P 500 rose 0.4% to 6,388.64, setting an all-time for the fifth time in a week. The Dow Jones Industrial Average climbed 0.5% to 44,901.92, while the Nasdaq composite added 0.2%, closing at 21,108.32 to top its own record.

Deckers, the company behind Ugg boots and Hoka shoes, jumped 11.3% after reporting stronger profit and revenue for the spring than analysts expected. Its growth was particularly strong outside the United States, where revenue soared nearly 50%.

But Intell fell 8.5% after reporting a loss for the latest quarter, when analysts were looking for a profit. The struggling chipmaker also said it would cut thousands of jobs and eliminate other expenses as it tries to turn around its fortunes. Intel, which helped launch Silicon Valley as the U.S. technology hub, has fallen behind rivals like Nvidia and Advanced Micro Devices while demand for artificial intelligence chips soars.

Companies are under pressure to deliver solid growth in profits to justify big gains for their stock prices, which have rallied to record after record in recent weeks.

Wall Street has zoomed higher on hopes that President Donald Trump will reach trade deals with other countries that will lower his stiff proposed tariffs, along with the risk that they could cause a recession and drive up inflation. Trump has recently announced deals with Japan and the Philippines, and the next big deadline is looming on Friday, Aug. 1.

Apart from trade talks, this week will also feature a meeting by the Federal Reserve on interest rates. Trump again on Thursday lobbied the Fed to cut rates, which he has implied could save the U.S. government money on its debt repayments.

Fed Chair Jerome Powell has said he is waiting for more data about how Trump’s tariffs affect the economy and inflation before making a move. The widespread expectation on Wall Street is that the Fed will wait until September to resume cutting interest rates.

In other dealings early Monday, U.S. benchmark crude oil gained 24 cents to $65.40 per barrel. Brent crude, the international standard, also added 24 cents to $67.90 per barrel.

The dollar rose to 147.72 Japanese yen from 147.71 yen. The euro slipped to $1.1755 from $1.1758.

FRANKFURT, Germany (AP) — President Donald Trump and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen have announced a sweeping trade deal that imposes 15% tariffs on most European goods, warding off Trump’s threat of a 30% rate if no deal had been reached by Aug. 1.

The tariffs, or import taxes, paid when Americans buy European products could raise prices for U.S. consumers and dent profits for European companies and their partners who bring goods into the country.

Here are some things to know about the trade deal between the United States and the European Union:

What’s in the agreement?

Trump and von der Leyen’s announcement, made during Trump’s visit to one of his golf courses in Scotland, leaves many details to be filled in.

The headline figure is a 15% tariff rate on “the vast majority” of European goods brought into the U.S., including cars, computer chips and pharmaceuticals. It’s lower than the 20% Trump initially proposed, and lower than his threats of 50% and then 30%.

Von der Leyen said the two sides agreed on zero tariffs on both sides for a range of “strategic” goods: Aircraft and aircraft parts, certain chemicals, semiconductor equipment, certain agricultural products, and some natural resources and critical raw materials. Specifics were lacking.

She said the two sides “would keep working” to add more products to the list.

Additionally, the EU side would purchase what Trump said was $750 billion (638 billion euros) worth of natural gas, oil and nuclear fuel to replace Russian energy supplies, and Europeans would invest an additional $600 billion (511 billion euros) in the U.S.

What’s not in the deal?

Trump said the 50% U.S. tariff on imported steel would remain; von der Leyen said the two sides agreed to further negotiations to fight a global steel glut, reduce tariffs and establish import quotas — that is, set amounts that can be imported, often at a lower rate.

Trump said pharmaceuticals were not included in the deal. Von der Leyen said the pharmaceuticals issue was “on a separate sheet of paper” from Sunday’s deal.

Where the $600 billion for additional investment would come from was not specified. And von der Leyen said that when it came to farm products, the EU side made clear that “there were tariffs that could not be lowered,” without specifying which products.

What’s the impact?

The 15% rate removes Trump’s threat of a 30% tariff. It’s still much higher than the average tariff before Trump came into office of around 1%, and higher than Trump’s minimum 10% baseline tariff.

Higher tariffs, or import taxes, on European goods mean sellers in the U.S. would have to either increase prices for consumers — risking loss of market share — or swallow the added cost in terms of lower profits. The higher tariffs are expected to hurt export earnings for European firms and slow the economy.

The 10% baseline applied while the deal was negotiated was already sufficiently high to make the European Union’s executive commission cut its growth forecast for this year from 1.3% to 0.9%.

Von der Leyen said the 15% rate was “the best we could do” and credited the deal with maintaining access to the U.S. market and providing “stability and predictability for companies on both sides.”

What is some of the reaction to the deal?

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz welcomed the deal which avoided “an unnecessary escalation in transatlantic trade relations” and said that “we were able to preserve our core interests,” while adding that “I would have very much wished for further relief in transatlantic trade.”

The Federation of German Industries was blunter. “Even a 15% tariff rate will have immense negative effects on export-oriented German industry,” said Wolfgang Niedermark, a member of the federation’s leadership.

While the rate is lower than threatened, “the big caveat to today’s deal is that there is nothing on paper, yet,” said Carsten Brzeski, global chief of macro at ING bank.

“With this disclaimer in mind and at face value, today’s agreement would clearly bring an end to the uncertainty of recent months. An escalation of the US-EU trade tensions would have been a severe risk for the global economy,” Brzeski said.

“This risk seems to have been avoided.”

What about car companies?

Asked if European carmakers could still sell cars at 15%, von der Leyen said the rate was much lower than the current 27.5%. That has been the rate under Trump’s 25% tariff on cars from all countries, plus the preexisting U.S. car tariff of 2.5%.

The impact is likely to be substantial on some companies, given that automaker Volkswagen said it suffered a 1.3 billion euro ($1.5 billion) hit to profit in the first half of the year from the higher tariffs.

Mercedes-Benz dealers in the U.S. have said they are holding the line on 2025 model year prices “until further notice.” The German automaker has a partial tariff shield because it makes 35% of the Mercedes-Benz vehicles sold in the U.S. in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, but the company said it expects prices to undergo “significant increases” in coming years.

What were the issues dividing the two sides?

Before Trump returned to office, the U.S. and the EU maintained generally low tariff levels in what is the largest bilateral trading relationship in the world, with some 1.7 trillion euros ($2 trillion) in annual trade. Together the U.S. and the EU have 44% of the global economy. The U.S. rate averaged 1.47% for European goods, while the EU’s averaged 1.35% for American products, according to the Bruegel think tank in Brussels.

Trump has complained about the EU’s 198 billion-euro trade surplus in goods, which shows Americans buy more from European businesses than the other way around, and has said the European market is not open enough for U.S.-made cars.

However, American companies fill some of the trade gap by outselling the EU when it comes to services such as cloud computing, travel bookings, and legal and financial services. And some 30% of European imports are from American-owned companies, according to the European Central Bank.

ISTANBUL (AP) — Wildfires that have engulfed Turkey for weeks threatened the country’s fourth-largest city early Sunday, causing more than 1,700 people to flee their homes and leaving a firefighter dead.

Meanwhile, firefighters elsewhere in the region, including Greece, Bulgaria and Montenegro, were also battling blazes fed by unusually high temperatures, dry conditions and strong winds.

Overnight fires in the forested mountains surrounding Bursa in northwest Turkey spread rapidly, tinting the night sky over the city’s eastern suburbs with a red glow. Dozens of severe wildfires have hit the country daily since late June, with the government declaring two western provinces, Izmir and Bilecik, disaster areas on Friday.

Bursa governor’s office said in a statement Sunday that 1,765 people had been safely evacuated from villages to the northeast as more than 1,900 firefighters battled the flames. The highway linking Bursa to the capital, Ankara, was closed as surrounding forests burned.

A firefighter died from a heart attack while on the job, the city’s mayor, Mustafa Bozbey, said in a statement, adding that the flames had scorched 3,000 hectares (7,413 acres) around the city.

Orhan Saribal, an opposition parliamentarian for the province, described the scene as “an apocalypse.”

By morning, lessening winds brought some respite to firefighters, who continued efforts to battle the flames. However, TV footage revealed an ashen landscape where farms and pine forests had earlier stood.

Forestry Minister Ibrahim Yumakli said fire crews across the country confronted 84 separate blazes Saturday. The country’s northwest was under the greatest threat, including Karabuk, where wildfires have burned since Tuesday, he said.

Unseasonably high temperatures, dry conditions and strong winds have been fueling the wildfires.

The General Directorate of Meteorology said Turkey recorded its highest ever temperature of 50.5 degrees Celsius (122.9 degrees Fahrenheit) in the southeastern Sirnak province on Friday. The highest temperatures for July were seen in 132 other locations, it said.

Fourteen people have died in recent weeks, including 10 rescue volunteers and forestry workers killed Wednesday in a fire in Eskisehir in western Turkey.

Justice Minister Yilmaz Tunc said late Saturday that prosecutors had investigated fires in 33 provinces since June 26, and that legal action had been taken against 97 suspects.

In Greece, firefighters battled active wildfires in the country’s southwest and on the island of Kythera on Sunday, following a blaze that scorched the northern Athens suburb of Kryoneri on Saturday. High temperatures, reaching 38°C (100°F) or more, persist across much of the country, though winds have eased slightly.

In Kryoneri, 27 residents were evacuated overnight with police assistance after some initially ignored warnings. Authorities urged the public to comply with evacuation orders, warning that resistance puts both civilians and rescuers in danger.

The fire service reported three people hospitalized with breathing issues and one firefighter treated for burns at a military hospital. On the island of Evia, where another fire is now under control, media reports indicate large numbers of animals perished in barns.

On Bulgaria’s southern borders with Greece and Turkey, as well as the western Serbian frontier, firefighters battled wildfires as the government declared the worst-hit provinces disaster zones. Residents across nearly half the country were issued with a code red warning, the highest level.

National Fire Service chief Alexander Djartov told reporters that 236 wildfires were burning, many fanned by strong winds. The government had asked EU partners for help, he added, and aircraft were expected from the Czech Republic, Slovakia, France, Hungary and Sweden later Sunday.

In the southwestern Strumyani region, overnight blazes forced firefighters to retreat. They were reinforced Sunday by soldiers. Dozens of people fled their homes in the western Tran region as flames threatened villages near the Serbian border.

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Associated Press writers Veselin Toshkov in Sofia, Bulgaria, and Demetris Nellas in Athens contributed to this report.

AJUCHITLAN, Mexico (AP) — The Trump administration’s decision to impose a 17% duty on fresh tomatoes imported from Mexico has created a dilemma for the country providing more tomatoes to U.S. consumers than any other.

The import tax that began July 14 is just the latest protectionist move by an administration that has threatened dozens of countries with tariffs, including its critical trading partner Mexico. It comes as the Mexican government tries to also negotiate its way out of a 30% general tariff scheduled to take effect Aug. 1.

While the impacts of the tomato tariff are still in their infancy, a major grower and exporter in central Mexico shows how a tariff targeting a single product can destabilize the sector.

Surviving in times of uncertainty

Green tomato plants stretch upward row after row in sprawling high-tech greenhouses covering nearly six acres in the central state of Queretaro, among the top 10 tomato producing states in Mexico.

Climate controlled and pest free, Veggie Prime’s greenhouses in Ajuchitlan send some 100 tons of fresh tomatoes every week to Mastronardi Produce. The Canadian company is the leading distributor of fresh tomatoes in the U.S. with clients that include Costco and Walmart.

Moisés Atri, Veggie Prime’s export director, says they’ve been exporting tomatoes to the U.S. for 13 years and their substantial investment and the cost to produce their tomatoes won’t allow them to make any immediate changes. They’re also contractually obligated to sell everything they produce to Mastronardi until 2026.

“None of us (producers) can afford it,” Atri said. “We have to approach our client to adjust the prices because we’re nowhere near making that kind of profit.”

In the tariff’s first week, Veggie Prime ate the entire charge. In the second, its share of the new cost lowered when its client agreed to increase the price of their tomatoes by 10%. The 56-year-old Atri hopes that Mastronardi will eventually pass all of the tariff’s cost onto its retail clients.

Mexican tomato exports brought in $3 billion last year

Experts say the tariff could cause a 5% to 10% drop in tomato exports, which last year amounted to more than $3 billion for Mexico.

The Mexican Association of Tomato Producers says the industry generates some 500,000 jobs.

Juan Carlos Anaya, director general of the consulting firm Grupo Consultor de Mercados Agrícolas, said a drop in tomato exports, which last year amounted to more than 2 billion tons, could lead to the loss of some 200,000 jobs

Experts: U.S. will have difficulty replacing fresh Mexican tomatoes

When the Trump administration announced the tariff, the Commerce Department justified it as a measure to protect U.S. producers from artificially cheap Mexican imports.

California and Florida growers that produce about 11 million tons would stand to benefit most, though most of that production is for processed tomatoes. Experts believe the U.S. would find it difficult to replace Mexico’s fresh tomato imports.

Atri and other producers are waiting for a scheduled review of the measure in two months, when the U.S. heads into fall and fresh tomato production there begins to decline.

In reaction to the tariff, the Mexican government has floated the idea of looking for other, more stable, international markets.

Mexican Agriculture Secretary Julio Berdegué said Thursday that the government is looking at possibilities like Japan, but producers quickly cast doubt on that idea, noting the tomatoes would have to be sent by plane, raising the cost even more.

Atri said the company is starting to experiment with peppers, to see if they would provide an option at scale.

President Claudia Sheinbaum said recently her administration would survey tomato growers to figure out what support they need, especially small producers who are already feeling the effects of a drop of more than 10% in the price of tomatoes domestically over fears there will be a glut in Mexico.

BEIJING (AP) — China’s high dependence on exports will likely be a key focus of a new round of U.S.-China trade talks this coming week in Stockholm, but a trade deal would not necessarily help Beijing to rebalance its economy.

U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has said he hopes the negotiations can take up this issue, along with China’s purchases of oil from Russia and Iran, which undercut American sanctions on those two countries.

Hopes rose for a breakthrough in talks after U.S. President Donald Trump announced deals with Japan, Indonesia and the Philippines this week.

The U.S. wants China to do two things: Reduce what both the U.S. and the European Union see as excess production capacity in many industries, including steel and electric vehicles. And secondly, to take steps to increase spending by Chinese consumers so the economy relies more on domestic demand and less on exports.

“We could also discuss the elephant in the room, which is this great rebalancing that the Chinese need to do,” Bessent CNBC. He said China’s share of global manufacturing exports at nearly 30%, “can’t get any bigger, and it should probably shrink.”

China is tackling the same issues — for domestic reasons

The issues are not new, and China has been working to address them for years, more for domestic reasons than to reduce its trade surpluses with the U.S. and other countries.

Bessent’s predecessor as treasury secretary, Janet Yellen, made industrial policy a focus of a trip to China last year. She blamed government subsidies for flooding the global market with “artificially cheap Chinese products.” The European Union, whose top leaders met their Chinese counterparts in Beijing on Thursday, has cited subsidies to justify EU tariffs on electric vehicles made in China.

In the 1980s, the U.S. pressured Japan to boost consumer spending when American manufacturing was overwhelmed by exports from the likes of Toyota and Sony. Economists have long argued that China likewise needs to transform into a more consumer-driven economy. Consumer spending accounts for less than 40% of China’s economy, versus close to 70% in the United States and about 54% in Japan.

Chinese leaders have spoken about both factory overcapacity and weak consumer spending as long-term problems and have sought over the past 20 years to find ways to rebalance the economy away from export manufacturing and massive investments in dams, roads, railways and other infrastructure.

Fierce price wars have prompted critical reports in official media saying that companies are “racing to the bottom,” skimping on quality and even safety to reduce costs.

With strong government support, they’ve also expanded overseas, where they can charge higher prices but still undercut local competitors, creating a political backlash.

Economists say China needs a consumer-driven economy

All that competition and price cutting has left China battling deflation, or falling prices. When companies receive less for their products, they tend to invest less. That can lead to job cuts and lower wages, sapping business activity and spending power — contrary to the long-term goal of increasing the share of consumer spending in driving overall growth.

To counter that, the government is spending billions on rebates and subsidies for people who trade in their cars or appliances for new ones.

But acknowledging a problem and solving it are two different things. Economists say more fundamental changes are needed to boost consumption and rein in overcapacity. Such changes can only come incrementally over time.

Private Chinese companies and foreign-invested companies create the most jobs, but they’ve suffered from swings in policy and pressures from the trade war, especially since the pandemic.

Demographic changes are another challenge as China’s population shrinks and ages.

Many experts advocate expanding China’s social safety net, health insurance, pensions and other support systems, so that people would feel freer to spend rather than save for a medical emergency or retirement.

Yan Se, an economist at Peking University’s Guanghua School of Management, warned at a recent forum that deflation will become a long-term issue if China doesn’t step up its welfare benefits.

“Chinese people deserve a better life,” he said.

Facing external threats, China wants to be more self-reliant

One possibility, put forward at the same forum by Liu Qiao, the dean of the business school, would be to change incentives for local government officials, rewarding them for raising consumption or household incomes instead of meeting an economic growth target.

He doesn’t see that happening nationwide but said it could be tested in a province.

“That would send out a message that China needs a different approach,” he said.

Chinese leader Xi Jinping has made transforming the country into a technology superpower a top priority. It’s a goal that has gained urgency as the U.S. has tightened restrictions on China’s access to high-end semiconductors and other advanced knowhow.

Output in high-tech manufacturing is growing quickly, adding to potential overcapacity, just as what happened with the government’s encouragement of “green” technologies such as solar panels and wind turbines.

Various industries, including EV makers, have pledged to address the issue, but some local governments are striving to keep money-losing enterprises afloat, reluctant to lose tax revenues and jobs, or to fail to meet economic growth targets.

Going forward, the government is calling for more coordination of economic development polices in fields such as artificial intelligence so that not every province champions the same industry. But government moves to counter the impact of higher tariffs tend to support sectors already in overcapacity, and the share of consumption in the economy has fallen in recent years.

“A sustained improvement in household consumption will require greater reform ambition,” the World Bank said in its most recent .”

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AP Business Writer Elaine Kurtenbach in Bangkok contributed to this report.