Friday Briefing: U.S. and Europe flesh out trade deal
Good morning. We're covering new details of Europe's trade deal with the U.S. and the return of Ukraine's fallen soldiers. Plus, a war photographer's journey back to Afghanistan.
Europe and the U.S. firmed up their trade dealThe E.U. and the U.S. stepped away from a trade war when they announced a tariff deal last month. But that was just a handshake arrangement. For weeks, negotiators have been hammering out the details, and yesterday they released the specifics. The backbone of the deal remains unchanged, with the U.S. imposing a 15 percent tariff on most goods from the bloc. That covers pharmaceuticals — Europe's No. 1 export to the U.S. — which will remain taxed at 15 percent even after the U.S. finalizes an expected set of tariffs for foreign-made medicines that could be as high as 200 percent. Cars are more complicated. Under the newly fleshed-out details, high U.S. tariffs on European vehicles will stay in place until the E.U. introduces legislation to lower its levies on many U.S. products. European automakers have struggled under the current U.S. tariff rate of 27.5 percent. Takeaway: Jeanna Smialek, our Brussels bureau chief, told me that officials in Europe reacted to the terms, outlined in a joint statement, with "a sense of muted relief, because the deal looks essentially as expected, and having it written down grants businesses across the bloc some degree of certainty that things will not be totally upended again." Ripple effects: President Trump's tariffs will affect trans-Atlantic trade in many ways. Take cheese, for example. My colleague Eshe Nelson went to a farm in England that produces the award-winning Stilton cheese. "This Stilton is really, really special," Eshe said. "They can't make it anywhere else in the world." The owners of the farm are trying to expand their business in the U.S. despite the higher costs from tariffs. Under the separate trade deal reached between Britain and the U.S., exports of Stilton will be hit with 10 percent tariffs, on top of the current ones, for total levies of between 23 and 27 percent. "This is just one example of the way in which trade policy is going to rewrite what we can buy, where," Eshe said. Watch her explain in the video below.
More tariff news:
Ukraine works to identify thousands of fallen soldiersSince June, a railway station in the Odesa region in southern Ukraine has received the bodies of 6,000 soldiers as part of a swap with Russia. There, forensic teams hope to identify each of the soldiers, and return their remains to their loved ones. This vast shipment of the dead is one of the few results of three rounds of cease-fire talks between Russia and Ukraine. The bodies are just a fraction of the more than 70,000 people in Ukraine who have been listed as missing during more than three years of war. Not long after Trump hosted talks at the White House on ending the war, Russia launched nearly 600 drones and 40 missiles at Ukrainian cities, according to the Ukrainian Air Force. Despite bold claims from the White House, a breakthrough toward peace does not appear within sight. Here's why.
From the U.S.
Elsewhere
Joao Silva, a war photographer for The Times, lost his legs to a land mine while on assignment in Deh-e Kuchay, a village in Afghanistan's fertile Arghandab Valley. Nearly 15 years later, he returned to see the country as he had never seen it before: at peace. "I was here in search of closure, but not the emotional kind. I had unfinished journalistic business," Joao writes. "My time in Afghanistan had ended abruptly. I had missed the U.S. withdrawal and the Taliban takeover, and I was sad that I had not seen the story through. But now I would pick it back up in a new chapter." Here's what he found. Lives lived: Sonallah Ibrahim, an Egyptian novelist who wrote with irony about his country's submission to dictatorship, died at 88.
Are 'coolcations' overwhelming Northern Europe?In Europe, where heat waves are closing the Acropolis in Athens and sparking wildfires in Spain and Portugal, more tourists are opting for "coolcations" and avoiding the heat of traditional summer spots by traveling to chillier, Nordic countries. Nordic governments are eager to boost tourism. But in a region that takes pride in its environmental and social sustainability, the development is prompting as much concern as celebration. Read more.
Cook: Roasted chicken Provençal with shallots, lemon and garlic is the perfect dinner party meal. Watch: The thriller "Lurker" explores obsession in the age of social media. Read: These books will help you get organized and banish clutter. Pack: These seven things can make your vacation rental kitchen feel like home.
That's it for today's briefing. See you tomorrow. — Justin A correction: Yesterday's newsletter misstated the nationality of the cartographer who created the Mercator map. He was Flemish, not German. Thank you to all the readers who wrote to us about the inaccuracy. We welcome your feedback. Send us your suggestions at briefing@nytimes.com.
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