Tag Archives: President Trump

Iran says it will not be the first to violate nuclear deal

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani addresses the 72nd United Nations General Assembly at U.N. headquarters in New York, U.S., September 20, 2017. REUTERS/Eduardo Munoz

By Parisa Hafezi and Yara Bayoumy

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) – Iran vowed on Wednesday not to be the first nation to violate the 2015 Iran nuclear deal.

U.S. President Donald Trump said he had made up his mind whether to abandon the accord but declined to disclose his decision.

Speaking at the U.N. General Assembly of world leaders, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani responded forcefully to Trump’s pugnacious speech on Tuesday by saying Iran would not be pushed around by a relative newcomer to the world stage.

But he also said Iran desired to preserve its accord with six world powers under which Tehran agreed to restrict its nuclear program for at least a decade in return for the loosening of economic sanctions that crippled its economy.

“I declare before you that the Islamic Republic of Iran will not be the first country to violate the agreement,” Rouhani said, adding that Iran would respond “decisively and resolutely” to a violation by any party.

“It will be a great pity if this agreement were to be destroyed by ‘rogue’ newcomers to the world of politics: the world will have lost a great opportunity,” he said in a dig at Trump, who on Tuesday called Iran a “rogue” state.

Trump, a businessman and former reality TV star whose first elected office is the presidency, told reporters, “I have decided,” when asked if he had made up his mind after having criticized the accord in his own U.N. speech on Tuesday.

But he declined to say what he decided.

In Tuesday’s speech Trump assailed the accord as “an embarrassment” and accused Iran of exporting “violence, bloodshed and chaos.”

U.S. officials have sent mixed signals about the nuclear agreement Iran hammered out with six major powers – Britain, China, France, Germany, Russia and the United States.

On Wednesday, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley said Trump’s speech signaled his unhappiness but not a decision to abandon the accord.

“It’s not a clear signal that he plans to withdraw. What it is, is a clear signal that he’s not happy with the deal,” Haley told CBS News in an interview.

The Republican president hinted on Tuesday that he may not recertify the pact, negotiated by his Democratic predecessor, Barack Obama. “I don’t think you’ve heard the last of it,” he said.

Trump must decide by Oct. 15 whether to certify that Iran is complying with the pact, a decision that could sink the deal. If he does not, the U.S. Congress has 60 days to decide whether to reimpose sanctions waived under the accord.

‘MORE PAINFUL RESPONSES’

Clues to the U.S. stance might emerge on Wednesday when the seven parties to the agreement are to meet, marking the first time U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif are to meet in the same room.

The head of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards earlier said the United States should experience “painful responses” following Trump’s harsh criticism.

The prospect of Washington reneging on the agreement has worried some U.S. partners that helped negotiate it, especially as the world grapples with another nuclear crisis, North Korea’s nuclear and ballistic missile development.

French President Emmanuel Macron said it would be a mistake to pull out of the pact. “According to me we have to keep the 2015 agreement because it was a good one,” he told reporters.

Russia is also concerned by Trump questioning the deal, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told reporters in comments published by his ministry on Wednesday.

Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir appeared to signal that his country, Iran’s major rival for regional influence, sought to see the pact strengthened, not jettisoned, and wanted Iran to scrupulously adhere to it.

“We believe that it must be strictly reinforced. Iran has not lived up to the terms of the agreement,” Jubeir told reporters. “We expect the international community to do whatever it takes to make sure Iran is in compliance with it.”

(Reporting by Yara Bayoumy, Parisa Hafezi, John Irish, Jeff Mason and Arshad Mohammed at the United Nations, Susan Heavey in Washington, Andrew Osborn in Moscow and Babak Dehghanpisheh in Beirut; Writing by Arshad Mohammed; Editing by Grant McCool)

U.S. must suffer ‘painful responses’ from Iran after Trump speech: Guards chief

U.S. must suffer 'painful responses' from Iran after Trump speech: Guards chief

BEIRUT (Reuters) – The head of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards said on Wednesday that the United States should experience “painful responses” following President Donald Trump’s harsh criticism of Tehran at the United Nations.

In his first speech to the U.N. General Assembly on Tuesday Trump called Iran “a corrupt dictatorship” and accused it of supporting terrorism and destabilizing the Middle East. He also hinted he might not recertify a 2015 nuclear deal with Tehran when it comes up for a mid-Oct. deadline.

“Taking a definitive stand against Trump is only the beginning of the path,” said General Mohammad Ali Jafari, according to Sepah News, the news site of the Revolutionary Guards.

“What is strategically important is that America witnesses more painful responses in the actions, behavior and decisions that Iran takes in the coming months.”

In recent months, tensions have ramped up between Iran and the United States in the Gulf, with both sides accusing each other of provocative maneuvers with military vessels.

Jafari urged Iranian President Hassan Rouhani to deliver a definitive response to Trump in his speech at the United Nations on Wednesday.

“With the successive and exhausting defeats that the Americans have faced in the region from Iran, it’s natural that their nervous system and coherence of thought have fallen apart,” Sepah News quoted Jafari as saying.

In Tuesday’s speech, Trump called the 2015 nuclear deal, negotiated between Iran and six world powers, and backed by his predecessor Barack Obama, “an embarrassment”. Under the deal, Iran agreed to curb its atomic program in return for easing economic sanctions.

(Reporting By Babak Dehghanpisheh; Editing by Gareth Jones)

Trump vows if threatened to ‘totally destroy’ North Korea

Trump vows if threatened to 'totally destroy' North Korea

By Steve Holland and Jeff Mason

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) – U.S. President Donald Trump escalated his standoff with North Korea over its nuclear challenge on Tuesday, threatening to “totally destroy” the country of 26 million people and mocking its leader, Kim Jong Un, as a “rocket man.”

In a hard-edged speech to the United Nations General Assembly, Trump offered a grim portrait of a world in peril, adopted a more confrontational approach to solving global challenges from Iran to Venezuela, and gave an unabashed defense of U.S. sovereignty. (http://live.reuters.com/Event/Live_US_Politics/1092226107)

“The United States has great strength and patience, but if it is forced to defend itself or its allies, we will have no choice but to totally destroy North Korea,” Trump told the 193-member world body, sticking closely to a script.

As loud, startled murmurs filled the hall, Trump described Kim in an acid tone, saying, “Rocket man is on a suicide mission for himself and his regime.”

His remarks rattled world leaders gathered in the green-marbled U.N. General Assembly hall, where minutes earlier U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres appealed for statesmanship, saying: “We must not sleepwalk our way into war.”

Trump’s most direct military threat to attack North Korea, in his debut appearance at the General Assembly, was his latest expression of concern about Pyongyang’s repeated launching of ballistic missiles over Japan and underground nuclear tests.

His advisers say he is concerned about North Korea’s advances in missile technology and the few means available for a peaceful response without China’s help.

Inside the hall, one man in the audience covered his face with his hands shortly after Trump made his “totally destroy” comment. Swedish Foreign Minister Margot Wallstrom crossed her arms.

“It was the wrong speech, at the wrong time, to the wrong audience,” Wallstrom later told the BBC.

Trump did not back down, instead tweeting out the line in his speech vowing to destroy North Korea if needed.

A junior North Korean diplomat sat in the delegation’s front-row seat for Trump’s speech, the North Korean U.N. mission said. North Korea’s mission to the United Nations did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

In Germany, Chancellor Chancellor Angela Merkel said she would do everything in her power to ensure a diplomatic solution. “Anything else would lead to disaster,” she told a campaign event ahead of Sunday’s election.

CABINET CONTRAST

Trump’s saber-rattling rhetoric, with the bare-knuckled style he used to win election last November, was in contrast to the comments of some of his own Cabinet members who have stated a preference for a diplomatic solution.

Reaction around the United States was mixed. Mitt Romney, the 2012 Republican presidential nominee, tweeted that Trump, a fellow Republican, “gave a strong and needed challenge” to U.N. members to confront global challenges.

But Democrat Ed Markey of the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee denounced Trump’s remarks in a CNN interview, saying the president had yet to exhaust his other options in encouraging Pyongyang to negotiate.

“The least we should be able to say is that we tried, we really tried, to avoid a nuclear showdown between our two countries,” Markey said.

In a thunderous 41-minute speech, Trump also took aim at Iran’s nuclear ambitions and regional influence, Venezuela’s collapsing democracy and the threat of Islamist extremists and criticized the Cuban government.

⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ “Major portions of the world are in conflict and some in fact are going to hell,” he said.

His speech recalled the fiery nationalist language of his Jan. 20 inaugural address when he pledged to end what he called an “American carnage” of rusted factories and crime.

‘HOSTILE’ BEHAVIOR

His strongest words were directed at North Korea. He urged U.N. member states to work together to isolate the Kim government until it ceases its “hostile” behavior.

In what may have been a veiled prod at China, the North’s major trading partner, Trump said: “It is an outrage that some nations would not only trade with such a regime but would arm, supply and financially support a country that imperils the world with nuclear conflict.”

The U.N. Security Council has unanimously imposed nine rounds of sanctions on North Korea since 2006 and Guterres appealed for that 15-member body to maintain its unity.

Turning to Iran, Trump called the 2015 nuclear deal negotiated by his predecessor, Barack Obama, an embarrassment and hinted that he may not recertify the agreement when it comes up for a mid-October deadline.

“I don’t think you’ve heard the last of it,” he said.

He called Iran an “economically depleted rogue state” that exports violence.

There was no immediate comment from either Iran’s U.N. delegation or its foreign ministry in Tehran.

But French President Emmanuel Macron, in his U.N. speech, said his country would not close the door to negotiations over North Korea and staunchly defended the 2015 Iran nuclear deal. “Renouncing it would be a grave error,” Macron said.

Trump called the collapsing situation in Venezuela “completely unacceptable” and warned the United States was considering what further actions it can take. “We cannot stand by and watch,” he said.

Venezuela rejected Trump’s threats and said it was prepared to resist any U.S. actions, even a military invasion. Foreign Minister Jorge Arreaza called Trump a white supremacist who was returning the world to the Cold War of the 1980s.

Financial markets showed little reaction to the speech, with most major assets hovering near the unchanged mark on the day.

“He stuck with his script,” said Lennon Sweeting, chief market strategist at XE.com in Toronto. “The dollar/yen jumped around a bit but it’s basically flat. I don’t think we will see any more volatility out of this.”

(Additional reporting by Michelle Nichols, Arshad Mohammed, John Irish, Parisa Hafezi, David Brunnstrom, Yara Bayoumy and Anthony Boadle at the UNITED NATIONS, Richard Leong in NEW YORK and Dan Williams in JERUSALEM; Writing by Steve Holland; Editing by Howard Goller)

U.S. Interior chief urges changes to national monuments: report

FILE PHOTO: U.S. Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke is interviewed by Reuters, while traveling for his National Monuments Review process, in Boston, Massachusetts, U.S., June 16, 2017. REUTERS/Brian Snyder

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The head of the U.S. Department of the Interior called for changes to the management of 10 national monuments that would lift restrictions on activities such as logging and mining and shrink at least four of the sites, the Washington Post reported.

U.S. Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke recommended that President Donald Trump reduce the boundaries of the monuments known as Utah’s Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante, Nevada’s Gold Butte and Oregon’s Cascade-Siskiyou.

Zinke also called for relaxing current restrictions within some of the monuments’ boundaries for activities such as grazing, logging, coal mining and commercial fishing, according to a copy of the memo that the Post obtained.

The Grand Staircase-Escalante monument has areas that “contain an estimated several billion tons of coal and large oil deposits,” Zinke’s report said, suggesting that it could be opened to energy production if Trump makes a reduction in the footprint of the monument.

The Trump administration has promoted “energy dominance,” or plans to produce more coal, oil, and gas for domestic use and selling to allies. With Grand Staircase-Escalante being remote, and oil and coal being plentiful elsewhere, it is uncertain if energy interests would actually drill and mine there, if the monument’s boundaries were changed.

Trump has said previous administrations abused their right to create monuments under the Antiquities Act of 1906 by imposing limits on drilling, mining, logging, ranching and other activities in huge areas, mainly in western states.

The monuments targeted in the memo were created by former presidents George W. Bush, a Republican, and Democrats Bill Clinton and Barack Obama. A designation as a national monument prohibits mining and sets stringent protections for ecosystems on the site.

Interior Department spokeswoman Heather Swift referred questions about the memo to the White House.

“The Trump Administration does not comment on leaked documents, especially internal drafts which are still under review by the President and relevant agencies,” White House spokeswoman Kelly Love said in a statement to Reuters.

NATURAL WONDERS

In June, Zinke told reporters he had recommended shrinking the Bears Ears monument, the country’s newest monument, and last month he sent his recommendations to the Republican president after reviewing more than two dozen national monuments. Trump ordered the review in April as part of his broader effort to increase development on federal lands.

Energy, mining, ranching and timber industries have cheered the review, while conservation groups and the outdoor recreation industry threatened lawsuits over what they see as an effort to undo protections of critical natural and cultural resources.

The Sierra Club, an environmental group, said Zinke had “sold out” public lands. “Leaving the protection of Native American sacred sites, outdoor recreation destinations, and natural wonders to the goodwill of polluting industries is a recipe for disaster,” Sierra’s head Michael Brune said.

Senator Maria Cantwell, the top Democrat on the Senate energy committee, tweeted that former President Teddy Roosevelt, a conservationist, would “roll over in his grave” if he saw Zinke’s “attacks” on public lands.

Besides reducing the four sites, Zinke called for changes at Maine’s Katahdin Woods and Waters, New Mexico’s Organ Mountains-Desert Peaks and Rio Grande del Norte, two Pacific Ocean marine monuments and another marine one off the New England coast.

Many fishing industry supporters cheered changes outlined in Zinke’s memo. Jon Mitchell, the mayor of New Bedford, Massachusetts, a large fishing port, said the marine monument designation process “may have been well intended, but it has simply lacked a comparable level of industry input, scientific rigor and deliberation.”

While the antiquities law enables a president to permanently declare certain places of historic or scientific interest a national monument, a few U.S. presidents have reduced the size of some such areas.

(Reporting by Susan Heavey, Valerie Volcovici and Timothy Gardner; Editing by Marguerita Choy and Marcy Nicholson)

Trump to visit hurricane-ravaged Florida

U.S. President Donald Trump and First Lady Melania Trump (R) board Air Force One for travel to view Hurricane Irma response efforts in Florida, from Joint Base Andrews, Maryland, U.S. September 14, 2017. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst

By Andrew Innerarity

HOLLYWOOD, Fla. (Reuters) – U.S. President Donald Trump visits hurricane-ravaged Florida on Thursday where police are probing the deaths of eight patients inside a nursing home as Hurricane Irma left millions in the state without power.

Police in Hollywood, north of Miami, opened a criminal investigation on Wednesday after finding three dead patients at the Rehabilitation Center at Hollywood Hill, a facility that had been operating with little or no air conditioning.

Four more patients died at or en route to hospital and a fifth was later identified as having died the night before, officials said.

The death toll from Irma stood at 81, with several hard-hit Caribbean islands accounting for more than half the fatalities, and officials continued to assess damage inflicted by the second major hurricane to strike the U.S. mainland this year.

A destroyed trailer park is pictured in an aerial photo in the Keys in Marathon, Florida, U.S., September 13, 2017. REUTERS/Carlo Allegri

A destroyed trailer park is pictured in an aerial photo in the Keys in Marathon, Florida, U.S., September 13, 2017. REUTERS/Carlo Allegri

Trump will visit Fort Myers in southwest Florida, an area hard hit by the storm, for a briefing on Hurricane Irma. He will then travel south to Naples, Florida to meet with residents tackling the aftermath of storm, the White House said in a statement.

“The devastation left by Hurricane Irma was far greater, at least in certain locations, than anyone thought – but amazing people working hard!” the president said in a Tweet on Tuesday.

One of the most powerful Atlantic storms on record, Irma bore down on the Caribbean with devastating force as it raked the northern shore of Cuba last week.

It barreled into the Florida Keys island chain on Sunday, packing sustained winds of up to 130 miles per hour (215 km per hour) before plowing up the Gulf Coast of the state and dissipating.

In addition to severe flooding across Florida and extensive property damage in the Keys, residents faced widespread power outages that initially plunged more than half the state into darkness.

Some 4.3 million homes and businesses were still without power on Wednesday in Florida and neighboring states.

About 150 of the Florida’s nearly 700 nursing facilities were without electricity as of Wednesday morning, according to the Florida Health Care Association, which represents most of them.

Florida Power & Light provided electricity to parts of the nursing home in Hollywood but the facility was not on a county priority list for emergency power restoration, the utility said.

Total insured losses from the storm are expected to run about $25 billion, including $18 billion in the United States and $7 billion in the Caribbean, catastrophe modeler Karen Clark & Company estimated on Wednesday.

The Florida Keys were particularly hard hit, with federal officials saying 90 percent of its homes were destroyed or heavily damaged. The remote island chain stretches nearly 100 miles (160 km) into the Gulf of Mexico from Florida’s southern tip, connected by a single highway and series of bridges.

On Key West, at the end of the archipelago, hundreds of residents who had refused evacuation orders lined up on Wednesday outside the island’s Salvation Army outpost for water and military-style rations after enduring days of intense heat with little water, power or contact with the outside world.

The stench of dead fish and decaying seaweed permeated the air.

Irma wreaked utter devastation on several of the northern Leeward Islands of the Caribbean, where at least 43 people died. Irma hit Florida about two weeks after Hurricane Harvey plowed into Houston, killing about 60 and causing some $180 billion in damage, mostly from flooding.

(Additional reporting by Zachary Fagenson in Key West, Daniel Trotta in Orlando, Florida; Dan Whitcomb in Los Angeles; Letitia Stein in Detroit, Keith Coffman in Denver,; Colleen Jenkins in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, Brendan O’Brien in Milwaukee and Gina Cherelus, Peter Szekeley, Scott DiSavino and Joseph Ax in New York; Editing by Jon Boyle)

Trump, siding with Democrats, agrees to three-month debt-limit rise: lawmakers

U.S. President Donald Trump meets with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (L), U.S. Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer (2nd R), House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (R) and other congressional leaders in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, U.S., September 6, 2017. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque

By Richard Cowan and Susan Cornwell

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President Donald Trump, siding with Democrats over his fellow Republicans, agreed on Wednesday that Congress should pass an extension of the U.S. debt limit until Dec. 15, a government funding bill covering the same period and disaster aid for Hurricane Harvey victims, Democratic leaders said.

Top Senate Democrat Chuck Schumer and top House of Representatives Democrat Nancy Pelosi made the announcement after a meeting with Trump at the White House, along with the Republican leaders of Congress.

“Both sides have every intention of avoiding default in December and look forward to working together on the many issues before us,” Schumer and Pelosi said in a statement.

A source briefed on the meeting with Trump said Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin and all Republicans at the White House meeting argued for a debt limit increase for a longer period. But by the end of the meeting, Trump sided with Democrats who wanted a three-month increase.

The U.S. dollar got a boost on news of agreement on the debt ceiling, which caps how much money the U.S. government can borrow. Many conservatives in Congress are loath to raise it without spending cuts.

The Treasury Department has said the ceiling must be raised in the next few weeks. If not, the government would be unable to borrow more money or pay its bills, including its debt payments. That could hurt the United States’ credit rating, cause financial turmoil, harm the U.S. economy and possibly trigger a recession.

Trump is heading into the toughest legislative stretch of his presidency, with lawmakers facing several pressing legislative priorities.

Those include Harvey disaster relief, raising the debt ceiling by early October to prevent an unprecedented default on U.S. government debt, and passing legislation for federal spending in the fiscal year that begins on Oct. 1 to avoid a government shutdown.

“We have many, many things that are on the plate,” Trump told reporters at the beginning of a White House meeting with the congressional leaders.

“Hopefully we can solve them in a rational way. And maybe we won’t be able to. We’ll probably know pretty much at the end of this meeting or the meetings that we’ll be having over a short period of time,” Trump added.

Trump on Tuesday also gave a Congress six months to pass legislation to decide the fate of the 800,000 so-called Dreamers after rescinding a five-year-old program that had protected them from deportation.

Earlier, House Speaker Paul Ryan said any legislation to address the Dreamers would also need to address border security, a position sure to antagonize Democrats. Ryan also said any immigration legislation the House would consider would have to have the support of Trump.

Schumer urged Republicans to put forward legislation protecting the Dreamers without other issues attached.

The House on Wednesday approved roughly $8 billion in initial emergency aid for relief and rebuilding after Hurricane Harvey, which tore into Texas on Aug. 25. The measure, which provides $7.4 billion for the Federal Emergency Management Agency and $450 million for the Small Business Administration, will now go to the Senate and, barring unexpected setbacks, could be on Trump’s desk to sign by the end of the week.

(Additional reporting by Jeff Mason, Amanda Becker, Doina Chiacu, Richard Cowan, James Oliphant and David Morgan; Writing by Will Dunham; Editing by Alistair Bell)

Trump to begin tax reform push next week, White House adviser tells FT

U.S. President Donald Trump speaks to the National Convention of the American Legion in Reno, Nevada, U.S., August 23, 2017. REUTERS/Joshua Roberts

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. President Donald Trump will begin a major push next week to convince the public of the need for tax reform, shifting his focus to fiscal policy in an effort to win a big legislative victory by the end of the year, The Financial Times reported on Friday.

Trump would begin the effort next Wednesday with a speech in Missouri, the first in a series of addresses to generate public support on the issue, Gary Cohn, director of the National Economic Council, told the newspaper.

“We are completely engaged in tax reform,” Cohn told the FT in an interview. “Starting next week the president’s agenda and calendar is going to revolve around tax reform. He will start being on the road making major addresses justifying the reasoning for tax reform.”

Although Cohn stressed that tax reform would be front and center of Trump’s agenda, the Republican-controlled Congress faces two other pressing issues when it returns from its August recess on Sept. 5.

Lawmakers need to approve an increase in the U.S. debt ceiling to allow the federal government to keep borrowing money and paying its bills, including its debt obliterations. Separately they need to pass at least stop-gap spending measures to keep the government operating. Deadlines on both issues will loom within weeks after lawmakers return from their break.

Asked by the FT whether the debate over the debt ceiling could derail the tax reform drive, Cohn said that “at the end of the day, Congress has to increase the debt ceiling – that is just the reality.” He added that this would be in September, before tax reform legislation.

“The key point is this: tax reform is the White House’s number one focus right now,” he added.

Cohn said White House officials had been working with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, House of Representatives Speaker Paul Ryan and other leading congressional Republicans on “an outline and skeleton” for the tax reform proposal, “and we have a good skeleton that we have agreed to.”

The details Cohn discussed were similar to those mentioned by Ryan at a meeting with Boeing employees on Thursday.

Asked whether the focus on tax reform had been complicated by Twitter attacks by the Republican president on McConnell and Ryan, Cohn said the White House officials worked well with the two “and we have made a massive amount of progress” on taxes.

Cohn said the House Ways and Means Committee would put more “flesh and bone” on the tax reform plan when lawmakers return from the recess. He said he believed a bill could pass tax committees in both chambers and be passed by both the House and Senate by the end of 2017.

TAX DETAILS

In the case of individual taxpayers, Cohn said the president’s reform plan would protect the three big deductions that people can claim on taxes: for home mortgages, charitable giving and retirement savings.

Beyond that, it would increase the caps for the standard deduction while eliminating most other personal deductions, Cohn said. The plan also aims to get rid of taxes on estates left when people die.

Cohn said for businesses, the administration is proposing to lower corporate tax rates, while eliminating many of the deductions that businesses use to reduce the amount of tax they must pay.

Asked whether the corporate tax rate could be cut to 15 percent as previously suggested by Trump, Cohn said, “I would like to get the tax rate as low as possible so that businesses want to create jobs here.”

He said the administration would propose going to a system where American companies would not have to pay additional tax when they bring profits earned overseas back to the United States.

“Today, they often have to pay extra taxes for bringing profits back to the U.S.,” Cohn said. “Our current system basically creates a penalty for headquartering in the U.S.”

He said the administration did envision a one-time low tax rate on all overseas profits.

(Reporting by David Alexander and Makini Brice; Editing by Jeffrey Benkoe and Frances Kerry)

Trump says U.S. debt ceiling ‘mess’ could have been avoided

U.S. President Donald Trump waves as he steps out from Air Force One in Reno, Nevada, U.S., August 23, 2017. REUTERS/Joshua Roberts

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President Donald Trump said on Thursday congressional leaders could have avoided a legislative “mess” if they had heeded his advice on raising the U.S. debt ceiling, renewing criticism of fellow Republicans whose support he needs to advance his policy agenda.

Trump said he had advised Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and House of Representatives Speaker Paul Ryan to link passage of legislation raising the debt ceiling to a measure on veterans affairs that he signed on Aug. 12.

“I requested that Mitch M & Paul R tie the Debt Ceiling legislation into the popular V.A. Bill (which just passed) for easy approval,” Trump said a in Twitter post.

“They … didn’t do it so now we have a big deal with Dems holding them up (as usual) on Debt Ceiling approval. Could have been so easy-now a mess!” he added, referring to Democrats.

The Treasury Department, already using “extraordinary measures” to remain current on its obligations, has said the limit on the amount the federal government may borrow must be raised by Sept. 29.

The issue is one of the must-pass measures Congress will take up when it returns on Sept. 5 from its August recess. Another is a spending bill: Congress will have about 12 working days from when it returns from the break to approve spending measures to keep the government open.

Trump threatened on Tuesday to shut down the government if Congress failed to secure funding for his long-promised wall along the U.S. border with Mexico. His threat, which added a new complication to Republicans’ months-long struggle to reach a budget deal, rattled markets and drew rebukes from some Republicans.

Democrats have slammed Trump over his comments.

On the debt ceiling issue, House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi said on Thursday that with Republicans controlling the White House and both chambers in Congress, “the American people expect and deserve a plan from Republicans to avert a catastrophic default and ensure the full faith and credit of the United States.”

On Thursday, investors were more broadly waiting for speeches on Friday by central bank governors at a conference in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, for any new indications on monetary policy. U.S. stocks opened higher but then turned negative, and U.S. Treasury yields edged higher.

Yields on Treasury bills due in early October rose on concerns that payments on the debt could be delayed if lawmakers fail to raise the debt ceiling before the government runs out of funds.

“There’s disjointedness because of the debt ceiling,” said Lou Brien, a market strategist at DRW Trading in Chicago.

RELATIONS WITH MCCONNELL

Trump’s renewed criticism of the Republican leaders came just a day after the White House and McConnell issued separate statements saying they were continuing to work together on shared priorities, seeking to counter news reports that their relationship is disintegrating.

Trump and McConnell “remain united on many shared priorities, including middle class tax relief, strengthening the military, constructing a southern border wall, and other important issues,” the White House said in its statement.

Trump also reiterated his criticism of McConnell on Thursday over the Senate’s failure in July to pass a bill to replace Democratic former President Barack Obama’s healthcare law, legislation opposed by Republicans since it was enacted in 2010.

“The only problem I have with Mitch McConnell is that, after hearing Repeal & Replace for 7 years, he failed!That should NEVER have happened!,” Trump said in a tweet.

McConnell offered muted criticism of Trump on Thursday, saying he was “a little concerned about some of the trade rhetoric” by the president and others.

Trump has repeatedly condemned trade deals he believes are bad for American workers and for the U.S. economy. On Tuesday he cast doubt on any deal emerging to improve the North America Free Trade Agreement with Mexico and Canada. “We’ll end up probably terminating NAFTA at some point,” he said.

“Trade is a winner for America,” McConnell told a gathering of Kentucky farmers and lawmakers. “You may or may not know this, but of all the current free trade agreements that we have with the various countries all around the world, if you add them all up, we actually have a trade surplus.”

“The assumption that every free trade agreement is a loser for America is largely untrue,” McConnell said.

The New York Times reported on Tuesday that McConnell and Trump were locked in a political “cold war,” especially after an Aug. 9 phone call it said devolved into a shouting match. On that day and the next, Trump assailed McConnell via Twitter, angered by a speech McConnell had given saying Trump had “excessive expectations” of Congress.

(Story refiles to delete duplicated phrase ‘which added’ in seventh paragraph.)

(Reporting by David Alexander, Makini Brice and Ayesha Rascoe in Washington; Karen Brettell and Megan Davies in New York; Writing by David Alexander; Editing by Frances Kerry)

More disruptions feared from cyber attack; Microsoft slams government secrecy

Indonesia's Minister of Communications and Information, Rudiantara, speaks to journalists during a press conference about the recent cyber attack, at a cafe in Jakarta, Indonesia

By Dustin Volz and Eric Auchard

WASHINGTON/FRANKFURT (Reuters) – Officials across the globe scrambled over the weekend to catch the culprits behind a massive ransomware worm that disrupted operations at car factories, hospitals, shops and schools, while Microsoft on Sunday pinned blame on the U.S. government for not disclosing more software vulnerabilities.

Cyber security experts said the spread of the worm dubbed WannaCry – “ransomware” that locked up more than 200,000 computers in more than 150 countries – had slowed but that the respite might only be brief amid fears new versions of the worm will strike.

In a blog post on Sunday, Microsoft President Brad Smith appeared to tacitly acknowledge what researchers had already widely concluded: The ransomware attack leveraged a hacking tool, built by the U.S. National Security Agency, that leaked online in April.

“This is an emerging pattern in 2017,” Smith wrote. “We have seen vulnerabilities stored by the CIA show up on WikiLeaks, and now this vulnerability stolen from the NSA has affected customers around the world.”

He also poured fuel on a long-running debate over how government intelligence services should balance their desire to keep software flaws secret – in order to conduct espionage and cyber warfare – against sharing those flaws with technology companies to better secure the internet.

“This attack provides yet another example of why the stockpiling of vulnerabilities by governments is such a problem,” Smith wrote. He added that governments around the world should “treat this attack as a wake-up call” and “consider the damage to civilians that comes from hoarding these vulnerabilities and the use of these exploits.”

The NSA and White House did not immediately respond to requests for comment about the Microsoft statement.

Economic experts offered differing views on how much the attack, and associated computer outages, would cost businesses and governments.

The non-profit U.S. Cyber Consequences Unit research institute estimated that total losses would range in the hundreds of millions of dollars, but not exceed $1 billion.

Most victims were quickly able to recover infected systems with backups, said the group’s chief economist, Scott Borg.

California-based cyber risk modeling firm Cyence put the total economic damage at $4 billion, citing costs associated with businesses interruption.

U.S. President Donald Trump on Friday night ordered his homeland security adviser, Tom Bossert, to convene an “emergency meeting” to assess the threat posed by the global attack, a senior administration official told Reuters.

Senior U.S. security officials held another meeting in the White House Situation Room on Saturday, and the FBI and the NSA were working to help mitigate damage and identify the perpetrators of the massive cyber attack, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations.

The investigations into the attack were in the early stages, however, and attribution for cyber attacks is notoriously difficult.

The original attack lost momentum late on Friday after a security researcher took control of a server connected to the outbreak, which crippled a feature that caused the malware to rapidly spread across infected networks.

Infected computers appear to largely be out-of-date devices that organizations deemed not worth the price of upgrading or, in some cases, machines involved in manufacturing or hospital functions that proved too difficult to patch without possibly disrupting crucial operations, security experts said.

Microsoft released patches last month and on Friday to fix a vulnerability that allowed the worm to spread across networks, a rare and powerful feature that caused infections to surge on Friday.

Code for exploiting that bug, which is known as “Eternal Blue,” was released on the internet last month by a hacking group known as the Shadow Brokers.

The head of the European Union police agency said on Sunday the cyber assault hit 200,000 victims in at least 150 countries and that number would grow when people return to work on Monday.

MONDAY MORNING RUSH?

Monday was expected to be a busy day, especially in Asia, which may not have seen the worst of the impact yet, as companies and organizations turned on their computers.

“Expect to hear a lot more about this tomorrow morning when users are back in their offices and might fall for phishing emails” or other as yet unconfirmed ways the worm may propagate, said Christian Karam, a Singapore-based security researcher.

The attack hit organizations of all sizes.

Renault said it halted manufacturing at plants in France and Romania to prevent the spread of ransomware.

Other victims include is a Nissan manufacturing plant in Sunderland, northeast England, hundreds of hospitals and clinics in the British National Health Service, German rail operator Deutsche Bahn and international shipper FedEx Corp

A Jakarta hospital said on Sunday that the cyber attack had infected 400 computers, disrupting the registration of patients and finding records.

Account addresses hard-coded into the malicious WannaCry virus appear to show the attackers had received just under $32,500 in anonymous bitcoin currency as of (1100 GMT) 7 a.m. EDT on Sunday, but that amount could rise as more victims rush to pay ransoms of $300 or more.

The threat receded over the weekend after a British-based researcher, who declined to give his name but tweets under the profile @MalwareTechBlog, said he stumbled on a way to at least temporarily limit the worm’s spread by registering a web address to which he noticed the malware was trying to connect.

Security experts said his move bought precious time for organizations seeking to block the attacks.

(Additional reporting by Jim Finkle, Neil Jerome Morales, Masayuki Kitano, Kiyoshi Takenaka, Jose Rodriguez, Elizabeth Piper, Emmanuel Jarry, Orathai Sriring, Jemima Kelly, Alistair Smout, Andrea Shalal, Jack Stubbs, Antonella Cinelli, Kate Holton, Andy Bruce, Michael Holden, David Milliken, Tim Hepher, Luiza Ilie, Patricia Rua, Axel Bugge, Sabine Siebold, Eric Walsh, Engen Tham, Fransiska Nangoy, Soyoung Kim, Mai Nguyen and Nick Zieminski; Editing by Mark Heinrich and Peter Cooney)

Trump vows to broker Israeli-Palestinian peace

U.S. President Donald Trump (L) stands in the Oval Office with Chief of Staff Reince Priebus following an interview with Reuters at the White House in Washington, U.S., April 27, 2017. REUTERS/Carlos Barria

By Jeff Mason and Matt Spetalnick

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President Donald Trump vowed on Wednesday to work to broker peace between Israel and the Palestinians as he hosted Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas at the White House but offered no clues about how he could break the deadlock and revive long-stalled negotiations.

In their first face-to-face meeting, Trump pressed Palestinian leaders to “speak in a unified voice against incitement” to violence against Israelis but he stopped short of explicitly recommitting his administration to a two-state solution to the decades-old conflict, a longstanding bedrock of U.S. policy.

“We will get this done,” Trump told Abbas during a joint appearance at the White House, saying he was prepared to act a mediator, facilitator or arbitrator between the two sides.

Abbas quickly reasserted the goal of a Palestinian state as vital to any rejuvenated peace process, reiterating that it must have its capital in Jerusalem with borders based on pre-1967 lines. Israel rejects a full return to 1967 borders as a threat to its security.

Trump faced deep skepticism at home and abroad over his chances for a breakthrough with Abbas, not least because the new U.S. administration has yet to articulate a cohesive strategy for restarting the moribund peace process.

Abbas’ White House talks follow a mid-February visit by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who moved quickly to reset ties after a frequently combative relationship with the Republican president’s predecessor, Democratic President Barack Obama.

Trump sparked international criticism at the time when he appeared to back away from support for a two-state solution, saying he would leave it up to the parties themselves to decide. The goal of an Palestinian state living peacefully beside Israel has been the position of successive U.S. administrations and the international community

The meeting with Abbas, the Western-backed head of the Palestinian Authority, was another test of whether Trump, in office a little more than 100 days, is serious about pursuing what he has called the “ultimate deal” of Israeli-Palestinian peace that eluded his predecessors.

“I’ve always heard that perhaps the toughest deal to make is between the Israelis and the Palestinian,” Trump said on Wednesday. “Let’s see if we can prove them wrong.”

But he offered no new policy prescriptions.

LOW EXPECTATIONS

Abbas, speaking through a translator, told Trump that under “your courageous stewardship and your wisdom, as well as your great negotiations ability,” the Palestinians would be partners seeking a “historic peace treaty.”

The last round of U.S.-brokered peace talks collapsed in 2014.

Abbas said “it’s about time for Israel to end its occupation of our people and our land” – a reference to Jewish settlement building in the West Bank. Reaffirming his commitment to a two-state solution, he called on Israel to recognize Palestinian statehood just as Palestinians recognize the state of Israel.

Though expectations are low for significant progress, plans are being firmed up for Trump to visit the right-wing Israeli leader in Jerusalem and possibly Abbas in the West Bank, targeted for May 22-23, according to people familiar with the matter. U.S. and Israeli officials have declined to confirm the visit.

Questions have been raised about Trump’s choice of his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, who entered the White House with no government experience, to oversee Middle East peace efforts, along with Trump’s longtime business lawyer, Jason Greenblatt, as on-the-ground envoy.

The administration seeks to enlist Israel’s Sunni Arab neighbors, who share Israeli concerns about Shi’ite Iran, to help rejuvenate Middle East peacemaking.

Abbas, who governs in the West Bank while Hamas militants rule Gaza, was under pressure at home to avoid making major concessions to Trump, especially with an ongoing hunger strike by hundreds of Palestinian prisoners held by Israel.

Palestinian officials say it will be hard for Abbas to return to the negotiating table without a long-standing pre-condition of a freeze on Jewish settlement expansion on land Israel occupied in 1967 which Palestinians want for a state.

Trump’s pro-Israel rhetoric during the 2016 election campaign raised concern among Palestinians about whether their leaders will get a fair hearing.

Trump’s promise to move the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem from Tel Aviv, strongly opposed by Palestinians, has been shifted to the back burner, and he has asked Netanyahu to put unspecified limits on settlement activity.

(Additional reporting by David Alexander, Nidal al-Mughrabi in Gaza and Ali Sawafta in Ramallah; Editing by Howard Goller and Jonathan Oatis)