Canberra says restrictions will be lifted following a ‘rigorous science and risk-based assessment’.

Australia has announced that it will lift tough restrictions on beef imports from the United States, removing measures singled out for criticism by US President Donald Trump.

Agriculture Minister Julie Collins said the government would remove the biosecurity restrictions after a “rigorous science and risk-based assessment” found risks of disease were being managed on the US side.

“Australia stands for open and fair trade – our cattle industry has significantly benefitted from this,” Collins said in a statement.

Australia, which has some of the world’s toughest biosecurity measures, has until now not accepted beef from cattle raised in Canada and Mexico but slaughtered in the US.

Canberra lifted a ban on beef from cows raised and slaughtered in the US, introduced in response to an outbreak of mad cow disease, in 2019.

The move comes after Trump called out Australia’s restrictions on US beef in his April 2 “Liberation Day” announcement of sweeping tariffs on dozens of countries.

“Australia bans – and they’re wonderful people and wonderful everything – but they ban American beef,” Trump said.

“They won’t take any of our beef,” Trump added.

“They don’t want it because they don’t want it to affect their farmers and you know, I don’t blame them but we’re doing the same thing right now starting at midnight tonight, I would say.”

Australia, which exports about 70 percent of its beef, is among the main suppliers of red meat to the US, but consumes little US beef.

Australia, which has been subject to Trump’s baseline 10 percent tariff since April, exported about 26,000 tonnes of beef and veal to the US in the first three weeks of July, according to government statistics.

Meat & Livestock Australia, a producer-owned company that supports the local beef industry, said the changes would have a minimal effect on the market.

“The potential for US beef to be imported into Australia in large volumes is minimal, given the high demand for beef in the US, the low US cattle herd, the strength of the Australian dollar, our competitive domestic supply, and most importantly Australians’ strong preference for high-quality, tasty and nutritious Australian beef,” the company said.

“In fact, demand for Australian beef in the US continues to grow. In June 2025, exports to the US rose 24 percent year-on-year, despite a 10 percent tariff introduced in April.”

Booking tumbled in the summer months as consumers pulled back on travel expenses

American Airlines has restored its full-year outlook as broader economic uncertainty continues to weigh on domestic consumer demand across the travel industry.

The Fort Worth, Texas-based carrier on Thursday offered a wide range for its full-year forecast on the heels of its earnings report, saying the broader economic uncertainty is hobbling consumer spending. The airline had suspended financial guidance in April.

The airline says it expects an adjusted loss per share of 20 cents a share to a profit of 80 cents a share in 2025. The midpoint of the forecast is 30 cents per share, compared with analysts’ average estimate of 61 cents a share, according to LSEG data.

American, which generates more than two-thirds of its passenger revenue from the US domestic market, said that if domestic travel demand continues to strengthen, it expects to hit the top end of its outlook. But if the economy weakens, it only expects to be at the bottom end of the forecast.

“The domestic network has been under stress because of the uncertainty in the economy and the reluctance of domestic passengers to get in the game,” CEO Robert Isom told analysts on an earnings call.

American said tepid domestic travel demand affected its bookings in July. Isom, however, said the performance is expected to improve sequentially in August and September.

“We expect that July will be the low point,” he said.

The company expects its domestic unit revenue, or revenue generated from each seat, to remain lower year-over-year in the third quarter. Its non-fuel operating costs are estimated to be up as much as 4.5 percent in the September quarter.

American expects an adjusted loss per share in the range of 10 cents to 60 cents in the third quarter, compared with analysts’ estimates of a loss of 7 cents, according to data compiled by LSEG.

The company’s outlook contrasts with upbeat forecasts of rival Delta and United Airlines. Alaska Air Group has also reported improvements in passenger traffic and pricing power.

Most US airlines withdrew their financial forecasts in April as President Donald Trump’s trade war created the biggest uncertainty for the industry since the COVID-19 pandemic. While some have reinstated their expectations, there is lingering uncertainty as to how the economy will fare in an ever-evolving tariff landscape.

Demand in the domestic travel market has remained subdued, with budget travellers approaching their plans with caution, hurting carriers that primarily service the US domestic market and price-sensitive customers.

Even summer, typically the peak money-making season for airlines, is falling short this year, with unsold standard economy seats forcing carriers to cut fares.

It dented the second-quarter earnings of Southwest Airlines, the largest US domestic airline.

At American, the domestic market was the weakest in the second quarter, with its unit revenue declining 6.4 percent from a year ago. The company’s unit revenue in international markets was up, led by a 5 percent annual jump in the transatlantic market.

On Wall Street, the stock is taking a hit and was down 7.2 percent from the market open as of 11:30am in New York (15:30 GMT).

The two countries hope the accord will boost trade between them by 25.5 billion pounds.

The United Kingdom and India have signed a trade agreement that will reduce tariffs on goods from textiles to whisky, cars and spices and allow more market access for businesses.

British Prime Minister Keir Starmer hailed the agreement on Thursday as a “landmark moment” for both countries. Starmer hosted Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi at his Chequers country estate, northwest of London, where the UK and Indian trade ministers, Jonathan Reynolds and Piyush Goyal, formally signed the agreement.

Starmer and Modi announced in May that they had struck a free trade agreement after three years of stop-start negotiations, with both sides hastening efforts to clinch a deal in the shadow of tariff turmoil unleashed by United States President Donald Trump. The deal must still be ratified by the UK Parliament.

“This is not the extent or the limit of our collaboration with India,” said Starmer. “We have unique bonds of history, of family and of culture, and we want to strengthen our relationship further, so that it is even more ambitious, modern and focused on the long term.”

Starmer also said the deal was “the biggest and most economically significant trade deal” the UK has made since leaving the European Union in 2020, though the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) has forecast that UK exports and imports will be about 15 percent lower in the long run compared with if Brexit had not occurred.

Modi, standing alongside Starmer during a media appearance, described the deal as a “blueprint for our shared prosperity”.

For India, the deal represents its biggest strategic partnership with an advanced economy, and one which could provide a template for a long-mooted deal with the EU as well as talks with other regions.

The two countries also announced almost 6 billion pounds ($8nm) in trade and investment deals in areas including AI, aerospace and dairy products, and pledged to work more closely together in areas such as defence, migration, climate and health.

The UK and India hope the accord will boost trade between the two countries by 25.5 billion pounds ($34.4bn) and eventually add 4.8 billion pounds ($6.5bn) a year to the UK economy.

The UK government said the deal will reduce India’s average tariff on British goods from 15 percent to 3 percent. Import taxes on whisky and gin will be halved from 150 percent to 75 percent before falling to 40 percent by year 10 of the deal. Automotive tariffs will fall from more than 100 percent to 10 percent under a quota.

India’s Ministry of Commerce and Industry said in May that 99 percent of Indian exports will face no import duty under the deal, which applies to products including clothes, shoes and food.

Britain and India are the sixth and fifth largest global economies respectively, with a trade relationship worth about 41 billion pounds ($55.3bn) and investment supporting more than 600,000 jobs across both countries.

During Modi’s two-day visit, Starmer and the Indian prime minister were also likely to discuss last month’s Air India disaster in which 241 people died when a London-bound flight crashed after taking off from Ahmedabad in western India.

Some 169 Indian passengers and 52 British nationals were killed in the June 12 crash, one of the deadliest plane disasters in terms of the number of British fatalities.

Starmer and Modi have met twice recently, at the G7 summit in Canada last month and at the G20 meeting in Brazil last year.

Modi was also due to meet with King Charles III during his brief stay in the UK, his fourth visit since becoming India’s leader in 2014.

United States President Donald Trump arrived at the Federal Reserve’s headquarters in Washington to tour the site of a $2.5bn renovation of two historical buildings, which the White House criticises as overly costly and ostentatious, as tensions escalate between the administration and the independent overseer of the nation’s monetary policy.

Thursday’s rare presidential visit to the Fed is happening less than a week before the central bank’s 19 policymakers gather for a two-day rate-setting meeting, where they are widely expected to leave the US central bank’s benchmark interest rate in the 4.25-4.50 percent range.

Trump has repeatedly demanded that the Fed lower rates by 3 percentage points and has frequently raised the possibility of firing Fed Chairman Jerome Powell, though the president has said he does not intend to do so.

On Tuesday, Trump called the Fed chief a “numbskull”.

On Thursday, Trump publicly scorned Powell for the cost of an extensive building renovation as the two officials began a tour of the unfinished project.

Trump said the project cost $3.1bn, much higher than the Fed’s $2.5bn figure, while Powell, standing next to him, silently shook his head.

“This came from us?” Powell said, before he figured out that Trump was including the renovation of the Martin Building, which was finished five years ago.

“Do you expect any more additional cost overruns?” Trump asked.

“Don’t expect them,” Powell said.

Trump said in his career as a real estate developer, he would fire someone for cost overruns. The president joked that he would back off Powell if he lowered interest rates.

“I’d love him to lower interest rates,” Trump said, as Powell stood by, his face expressionless.

Powell typically spends the Thursday afternoon before a rate-setting meeting doing back-to-back calls with Fed bank presidents as part of his preparations for the session.

Elevated by Trump to the top Fed job in 2018, and then reappointed by former President Joe Biden four years later, Powell last met with Trump in March when the Republican president summoned him to the White House to press him to lower rates.

The visit takes place as Trump battles to deflect attention from a political crisis over his administration’s refusal to release files related to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, reversing a campaign promise. Epstein died in 2019.

White House officials have ramped up Trump’s pressure campaign on Powell in recent weeks, accusing the Fed of mismanaging the renovation and suggesting poor oversight and potential fraud.

White House budget director Russell Vought has pegged the cost overrun at “$700m and counting”, and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent called for an extensive review of the Fed’s non-monetary policy operations, citing operating losses at the central bank as a reason to question its spending on the renovation.

Those losses stem from the mechanics of managing the Fed’s policy rate to fight inflation, which include paying banks to park cash at the central bank. The Fed reported a comprehensive net loss of $114.6bn in 2023 and $77.5bn in 2024, a reversal from years of big profits it turned over to the Treasury when interest rates – and inflation – were low.

Renovations in the spotlight

The Fed, in letters to Vought and lawmakers, backed up by documents posted on its website, says the project – the first full rehab of its two buildings in Washington since they were built nearly a century ago – ran into unexpected challenges, including toxic materials abatement and higher-than-estimated materials and labour costs.

Ahead of Trump’s visit, Fed staff escorted a small group of reporters around the construction sites. They wove around cement mixers and construction machines, and spoke over the sound of drills, banging and saws. Fed staff pointed out security features, including blast-resistant windows, that they said were a significant driver of costs, in addition to tariffs and escalations in material and labour costs.

The renovation project started in mid-2022 and is on track to be completed by 2027, with the move-in planned for March 2028. A visit to the roof of the Eccles Building – a point of particular scrutiny by White House critics that the renovations were ostentatious – revealed an impressive view of the Lincoln Memorial and the National Mall, the pool report said.

Staff explained that rooftop seating, although inexpensive, had been removed because of the appearance of it being an amenity and was one of only two deviations from the original plan. The other was the scrapping of a couple of planned fountains.

Senate Banking Committee Chair Tim Scott, a Republican who sent Powell a letter on Wednesday asking a series of questions about the cost and other details of the renovation, as well as Powell’s own statements about it, is part of the visit as well.

Market reaction to Trump’s visit was subdued. The yield on benchmark 10-year Treasury bonds ticked higher after data showed new jobless claims dropped in the most recent week, signalling a stable labour market not in need of support from a Fed rate cut. Stocks on Wall Street were mixed.

Trump’s criticism of Powell and flirtation with firing him have previously upset financial markets and threatened a key underpinning of the global financial system: that central banks are independent and free from political meddling.

His visit contrasts with a handful of other documented presidential visits to the Fed. Then-President Franklin Delano Roosevelt visited the central bank in 1937 to dedicate the newly-built headquarters, which is one of the two Fed buildings now being renovated. Most recently, former President George W Bush went to the Fed in 2006 to attend the swearing-in of Ben Bernanke as Fed chief.

Central bank independence critical

“I think it’s important that he send a signal that he really isn’t happy with how things are going at the Fed,” said Senator Cynthia Lummis, a Republican member of the Senate Banking Committee. She said the visit was a “good decision” by Trump.

Senator Mike Rounds, another Republican who sits on the Senate Banking Committee, said on Thursday he also saw no problem with Trump’s visit, though he added that Powell’s independence as Fed chief is “critical for the markets. I think he’s done a good job of that”.

“I think the more information the president can glean from this, probably the better off we are in terms of resolving any issues that are outstanding,” Rounds said, noting that Powell had indicated “that they have had a significant amount of money, just in terms of foundation work and so forth, that was not anticipated to begin with”.

Former Fed chiefs Janet Yellen and Bernanke this week wrote an opinion piece in The New York Times warning that the public’s belief that the US central bank is willing to make hard decisions based on data and independent of politics “is an important national asset. It is hard to acquire and easy to lose”.

Economic experts widely agree.

“As we’ve seen through the disinflation process that has been taking place over the last few years, the credibility of central banks around the world has been instrumental in anchoring inflation expectations and in bringing down inflation across many countries in the world,” International Monetary Fund spokesperson Julie Kozack said on Thursday.

“And it is also important that independence, of course, must coexist with clear accountability to the public.

President Donald Trump’s administration dished out a cold burn to Trump’s ice-cream-loving predecessor, Joe Biden, saying he led the US ice cream industry down an economic rocky road.

“America had a trade surplus in ice cream in 2020 under President Trump’s leadership, but that surplus turned into a trade deficit of $40.6 million under President Biden’s watch,” the Office of the US Trade Representative wrote July 20 on X. The post included a chart that shows the US ice cream trade deficit with Japan, South Africa, the European Union, Brazil, Canada and Turkiye.

The US ice cream trade balance did change dramatically in 2021, the year Biden took office. The trade balance officially flipped negative – which means imports outnumber exports – in 2022 and has remained so since then.

But industry experts caution that US ice cream imports account for a minuscule fraction of all the US ice cream consumed in the US, and exports account for a tiny fraction of all US ice cream produced.

The trade change was driven mostly by a jump in imports. Exports have remained largely unchanged since 2020.

And the cherry on top? Disagreement over which products to classify as “ice cream” also affects data, experts say. For example, the data referenced by the office of the US Trade Representative also includes “edible ice”, which some experts (and dairy defenders) say doesn’t qualify as ice cream.

Removing edible ice shows that “the US is a net exporter by a significant margin of ($193 million) or +85% larger by value,” International Dairy Foods Association Executive Vice President Matt Herrick told PolitiFact via email.

Ice cream imports increase causes US trade deficit

From 1995 to 2020, the US had an ice cream trade surplus, ranging from about $20m to about $160m, according to the Observatory of Economic Complexity, an online economic data platform. Longtime customers include Mexico, followed by Saudi Arabia and Canada.

In 2021, that surplus nearly vanished, and in 2022 and 2023, the US notched up an ice cream trade deficit of $92m and $33m, respectively.

At first glance, importing frozen foods doesn’t seem practical.

“Shipping refrigerated and frozen products overseas is expensive,” dairy economist Betty Berningat of HighGround Dairy said. “Mexico is the top destination for US dairy exports.”

But many US and European companies have tapped into global markets.

“Consumers may also want a specific treat that is styled after or known to be from another country,” Herrick said.

Italy, the birthplace of gelato, is now the United States’ largest single source of imported ice cream. Italian ice cream imports more than quintupled from about $12m to almost $65m between 2020 and 2021 alone, before decreasing somewhat in 2023, the last year for which data is available.

Some of this stems from increased consumer demand for specialty pints. A report by Mordor Intelligence, a global market research firm, said “product innovation and premiumisation” have become key in the US ice cream industry.

“This trend is particularly evident in the growth of premium pint offerings and individually wrapped novelties that cater to both indulgence and portion control preferences,” the report said.

The US produces far more ice cream than it imports or exports

To get to the pint: The vast majority of ice cream consumed in the United States is made there, not overseas.

The Trump administration is cherry-picking stats from a fraction of a sliver of the US ice cream industry.

According to US Agriculture Department data, US ice cream makers churned out 1.31 billion gallons of ice cream in 2024. This includes regular ice cream, low-fat and nonfat ice cream, sherbet and frozen yoghurt.

By comparison, the US imported 2.35 million gallons of traditional ice cream in 2024 – that’s 0.18 percent of the amount produced domestically, Herrick said.

The US exported 16.4 million gallons of that domestic production, which is also a tiny fraction of 1.31 billion gallons of ice cream – a little more than 1 percent.

Factoring in ice cream mixes, excluding ‘edible ice’ products

Another caveat about the international trade data: It does not include “mixes”, which skews the totals, said Herrick of the International Dairy Foods Association.

Mixes are used to make ice cream shakes and soft-serve products, and they account for a significant portion of US ice cream exports. “Inclusion of such data points would change the picture quite significantly,” said Herrick. “While it is true that traditional ice cream and edible ice exports have seen decreased exports, the same cannot be said for exports of mixes.”

US milk-based drink exports increased 621 percent over the past five years, he said. In 2024, the US exported nearly $35m in mixes to the European Union.

Americans and dairy-based ice cream: A centuries-old love affair melting away?

The White House has churned out plenty of ice cream devotees.

George Washington stocked the capital with ice cream-making equipment. Thomas Jefferson is credited as being the first American to record an ice cream recipe. Ronald Reagan declared July National Ice Cream Month in 1984. Barack Obama even slung scoops back in the day.

Biden, who was often sighted with a cone in hand, proclaimed while visiting Jeni’s Splendid Ice Cream headquarters in 2016: “My name is Joe Biden, and I love ice cream.”

But consumption of regular dairy ice cream – a category that does not include frozen yoghurt, sherbet or nonfat and low-fat ice creams – has been trending down for years.

In 1975, Americans ate an average of 18.2 pounds each of ice cream per year. That figure fell to 11.7 pounds by 2023.

Our ruling

The office of the US Trade Representative purported a summertime scoop: “America had a trade surplus in ice cream in 2020 under President Trump’s leadership, but that surplus turned into a trade deficit of $40.6 million under President Biden’s watch.”

It’s accurate that the US ice cream trade balance had a surplus for a quarter of a century before turning negative while Biden was president.

But the US Trade Representative’s statement makes the US ice cream deficit appear out of cone-trol.

There are three scoops of context on this trade sundae:

The change was driven mostly by a jump in imports. Exports have remained largely unchanged since 2020.

US ice cream imports and exports are a negligible amount compared to domestic production.

There’s also disagreement over which products should or shouldn’t be included in the data set, which can skew trend interpretations. Excluding edible ice products and factoring in ice cream mixes leaves the US with a surplus.

The statement is accurate but needs a sprinkling of clarification and additional details, so we rate it Mostly True.

Louis Jacobson contributed to this report.

Trump shifts tone on Fed Chair Powell, calling him ‘a very good man’ after their meeting on interest rates.

US President Donald Trump says he had a positive meeting with Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell and gained the impression that the central bank’s head might be ready to lower interest rates.

The two men met on Thursday when Trump made a rare visit to the US central bank to tour its ongoing renovation of two buildings at its headquarters in Washington, which the White House has criticised as costing too much.

Trump clashed with Powell during his visit and criticised the cost of renovating two historic buildings at its headquarters, and they sparred over the project’s actual price tag.

“We had a very good meeting … I think we had a very good meeting on interest rates,” Trump told reporters on Friday.

The central bank said on Friday it was “grateful” for Trump’s encouragement to complete the renovation of its buildings in Washington and that it “looked forward” to seeing the project through to completion.

Trump, who called Powell a “numbskull” earlier this week for failing to heed the White House’s demand for a large reduction in borrowing costs, said he did not intend to fire Powell, as he has frequently suggested he would.

On Friday, Trump called Powell a “very good man” when speaking to reporters.

Rather than lowering interest rates, economists widely expect the central bank to leave its benchmark interest rate in the 4.25 percent – 4.50 percent range at the conclusion of a two-day policy meeting next week.

Tariffs stall rate cuts

The central bank has held rates steady since December, and earlier this year, Powell said that if it were not for Trump’s imposed tariffs and the economic uncertainty it has caused, the central bank might have been ready to lower rates by now.

The visit comes as President Trump is expected to meet UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer, where the two sides could potentially approve an already announced trade deal, as trade negotiations with Canada stall. Trump said his administration could set a tariff rate unilaterally on Canada.

“We haven’t really had a lot of luck with Canada. I think Canada could be one where there’s just a tariff, not really a negotiation.”

Trump also said there is a 50-percent chance of Washington being able to strike a deal with the European Union to reduce import tariffs.

“I would say that we have a 50/50 chance, maybe less than that, but a 50/50 chance of making a deal with the EU,” Trump told reporters at the White House.

The president has been pressing his case for reduced interest rates, including falsely claiming, “We’ve wiped out inflation.” Inflation actually rose last month to 2.7 percent.

Despite continued pressure from the Trump administration, Powell has long maintained that the central bank must preserve its independence from the White House.

In late May, the Fed reiterated that point, saying in a statement that it makes “decisions based solely on careful, objective, and non-political analysis.”

The carmaker joins Stellantis and GM in reporting hits to their profits as tariffs drive up costs for the industry.

Volkswagen has reported $1.5bn in losses in the first half of the year because of tariffs imposed by United States President Donald Trump.

The German carmaker reported a hit as the company revised its full year sales and profit margin forecasts.

Volkswagen, Europe’s biggest carmaker, now expects this year’s operating profit margin to be 4 percent to 5 percent, compared with a previous forecast of 5.5 percent to 6.5 percent. Full-year sales, earlier seen up to 5 percent higher, are expected to be level with the previous year.

Investors had largely anticipated a guidance cut after the company held off on assessing the damage from tariffs in the previous quarter and appeared calmed by assurances that the group’s luxury brands Audi and Porsche would recover next year after heavy losses in the second quarter.

CEO Oliver Blume told investors the company must accelerate its cost-cutting efforts in response to the tariffs.

“We need to shift our cost efforts into high gear and accelerate implementation. After all, we cannot assume that the tariff situation is only temporary,” Blume said.

Global carmakers have booked billions of dollars in losses and some have issued profit warnings due to US tariffs. The European industry is also facing stiffening competition from China and domestic regulations aimed at speeding up the electric vehicle transition.

Tariff hit

Volkswagen is the third automaker this week to report a hit to their profits because of tariffs. Michigan-based General Motors reported that tariffs cost it $1.1bn in the second quarter. Stellantis, the maker of brands including Jeep and Fiat, reported a $2.7bn loss for the first six months of 2025.

VW and its competitors are pressing European trade negotiators to strike a deal to reduce a 25 percent US tariff they have faced since April.

EU diplomats have indicated that the bloc could be moving towards a broad 15 percent tariff as it seeks to avoid a threatened 30 percent levy from August 1. A deal struck between the US and Japan this week raised hopes for a similar agreement for Europe, boosting carmakers’ shares.

VW finance chief Arno Antlitz said Volkswagen’s profit margin would land roughly in the middle of its guidance with a Japan-style deal, which had a 15 percent tariff rate.

He warned, however, that the clock was ticking on finding a deal. “We are already in July, so the longer we go into the second half of the year, the more we tend to the lower end of the guidance,” he said.

Antlitz declined to comment on price increases when pressed by investors on how the company planned to protect its margins against tariffs.

Volkswagen reported an operating profit of $4.4bn (3.8 billion euros) in the quarter ended June 30, down 29 percent on the previous year. It cited tariffs and restructuring costs for the decline as well as higher sales of lower-margin all-electric models.

While Volkswagen was able to boost deliveries globally by 1.5 percent in the first six months of 2025, the group saw a decline of almost 10 percent in deliveries to the US.

North American sales revenue accounted for 18.5 percent of the carmaker’s global sales in the first half.

Car sales data for June highlighted a broader slowdown in Europe’s struggling auto sector – and showed Volkswagen among the laggards as the company undergoes a major overhaul to cut more than 35,000 jobs by the end of the decade.

Porsche and Audi are particularly exposed to US tariffs given they have no production there and rely heavily on exports.

In the second quarter, Porsche’s operating result plunged by more than 90 percent to 154 million euros ($181m) and Audi’s by 64 percent to 550 million euros ($647m).

“For both companies, Audi and Porsche, we are expecting that we will touch the bottom this year with positive momentum from 2026 onwards,” Blume said.

Despite the losses, VW’s stock is on the upswing. As of noon in New York (16:00 GMT), it was up more than 3 percent since the market opened and up more than 12 percent over the last five days in trading.

The stocks of other carmakers that also reported tariff hits are trending upwards. Stellantis is up 3.9 percent for the day. GM is about even – up by only about 0.2 percent.

The social media giant follows Alphabet, Google’s parent company, which made a similar decision in November.

Meta will suspend political and social issue advertising on its platforms in the European Union starting in October.

Facebook and Instagram’s parent company announced the new policy change on Friday, citing legal uncertainty about the bloc’s new rules on political advertising.

The Silicon Valley-based social media giant is following in the footsteps of Alphabet, Google’s parent company, which made the same decision in November.

The EU legislation, called the Transparency and Targeting of Political Advertising (TTPA) regulation, which will apply from October 10, was prompted by concerns about disinformation and foreign interference in elections across the 27-country bloc.

The law requires Big Tech companies to clearly label political advertising on their platforms, who paid for it and how much, as well as which elections are being targeted, or risk fines up to 6 percent of their annual turnover.

“From early October 2025, we will no longer allow political, electoral and social issue ads on our platforms in the EU,” Meta said in a blog post.

“This is a difficult decision – one we’ve taken in response to the EU’s incoming Transparency and Targeting of Political Advertising (TTPA) regulation, which introduces significant operational challenges and legal uncertainties,” it said.

Meta said the EU rules would ultimately hurt Europeans.

“We believe that personalised ads are critical to a wide range of advertisers, including those engaged on campaigns to inform voters about important social issues that shape public discourse,” it said.

“Regulations, like the TTPA, significantly undermine our ability to offer these services, not only impacting effectiveness of advertisers’ outreach but also the ability of voters to access comprehensive information.”

Meta’s Facebook and Instagram are currently being investigated by the European Commission over their suspected failure to tackle disinformation and deceptive advertising in the run-up to the 2024 European Parliament elections.

The EU probe is under the Digital Services Act, which requires Big Tech to do more to counter illegal and harmful content on their platforms or risk fines of as much as 6 percent of their global annual turnover.

ByteDance’s TikTok is also in the EU crosshairs over its suspected failure to tackle election interference, notably in the Romanian presidential vote last November.

Meta’s political advertising has long been a concern in the United States, as well. Last week, CEO Mark Zuckerberg settled a lawsuit brought on by shareholders over alleged privacy violations.

The suit alleged that the company failed to comply with a Federal Trade Commission settlement in 2012 in efforts to protect consumer privacy. The lawsuit came amid the 2018 Cambridge Analytica scandal in which the social media giant gave user data to the firm – without their consent – for political advertising purposes.

Cesar Martinez, 45, works full-time at a butcher shop in Buenos Aires, but in the last year, he has had to pick up other jobs to make it to the end of the month. So, when the government of President Javier Milei publicly celebrated a new drop in the inflation rate in June as a sign of a recovering economy, something didn’t quite add up.

“The money one makes is never enough to afford everything, even the most basic things,” Martinez says.

The sentiment is a shared one on the streets of Argentina’s capital, Buenos Aires.

Little over a year and a half since taking office, Milei managed to fulfil one of his campaign promises: radically cut inflation, which had reached a record monthly rate of 25 percent in December 2023. Now at 1.6 percent, the monthly rate is among the lowest since April 2020.

Back in 2023, high inflation put a great strain on Argentina’s population, with prices of basic goods – such as food, services and rent — escalating month on month while salaries stayed stagnant.

Argentina has a history of high inflation going back to the 1940s, including several cycles of hyperinflation, the most recent in the late 1980s, pointed out Mariana Heredia, a researcher at the National Scientific and Technical Research Council (Conicet).

“Inflation is a global phenomenon, but in Argentina, it has been such a constant that people tend to think that all their problems are related to inflation. For people here, stability is very important,” Heredia told Al Jazeera.

This is one of the reasons why the promise to tackle inflation helped Milei garner significant support on his way to the presidency. He now says achieving the lower rate is evidence of the success of his economic programme, which made radical cuts to public spending, including in healthcare, education, social services and public infrastructure works, to achieve a fiscal surplus.

But his programme has also involved an early nominal devaluation, which then saw the Argentian peso appreciate, making the country more expensive in dollars. This, combined with a sharp fall in real wages, has delivered a significant blow to the purchasing power of large sections of the population.

Argentina is now among the most expensive countries in Latin America, but it also has some of the lowest salaries.

While tackling inflation was essential to start fixing Argentina’s ailing economy, it’s proving not to be enough, experts say.

“Inflation isn’t everything,” Guido Zack, economy director at Fundar, a national think tank, told Al Jazeera. “Having a low inflation rate is important, but [in Argentina] the economic recovery has been very mixed among sectors of the economy and of the population. The majority of the population still has a low purchasing power, the rate of informal work has risen, and the poverty rate is still very high. There’s still a long way to go.”

Other analysts have criticised aspects of the methodology used to calculate inflation in Argentina. They say the basket of goods and services used to measure it, developed in 2004 and updated in 2016, does not accurately reflect current consumption patterns. This includes the share of income that goes into paying for housing, which rose in the renter-dense greater Buenos Aires area by 4.5 percent in June alone. According to a September poll from Inquilinos Agrupados (Organised Renters), which surveys tenants twice a year, renters spend an average of 44.5 percent of their income on rent.

‘Economic Stress’

The mismatch between some economic indicators and what people are experiencing in their daily lives is what the Observatory of Social Debt of the Catholic University of Argentina has called “economic stress” — the increased perception, or reality, that most salaries are not enough to cover basic living expenses.

This is particularly evident in the country’s increasing rate of personal borrowing. According to a recent report by the Social and Economic Statistics and Tendencies Institute (Instituto de Estadísticas y Tendencias Sociales y Economicas – IETSE), 91 percent of homes in Argentina have some form of debt, and 58 percent of those loans were taken to buy food in 2024.

“Sales have slowed right down in recent months,” Martinez, the butcher, said. “People are always looking for discounts, buy smaller quantities, maybe for the day, and tend to pay with credit card; it’s hard to find anyone paying in cash.”

People’s frustration at the economy is also evident on the streets of Buenos Aires, where protests against inflation and cuts to public funding – mostly led by pensioners – have increased.

Every Wednesday, pensioners gather in front of Congress in Buenos Aires to demand a rise in their state pensions. The current pension for five million people stands at $300 a month, below the minimum living wage. Milei has promised to veto a bill approved by Congress for a rise in pensions.

Raul Maldonado, 68, retired in 2020 after working as a lathe operator in a factory for 35 years. He now makes just more than the minimum pension.

“The money I earn lasts 15 days. If it wasn’t for the help of my family, I would not be able to survive,” he says.

The long game

As Milei promises to continue pushing through with his current economic plan, the question is whether he can keep inflation down and adopt measures to improve other indicators.

Heredia says that the type of anti-inflationary programme, focused on cuts to public spending and an appreciated currency, is similar to others implemented in Argentina in the past, but which failed to work in the long run.

“At first, these kinds of programmes can bring people some initial relief – they generate some economic bounce back and, to a certain extent, an increased income to some high-earning sectors. But in the midterm, the costs start to show when it comes to the public spending cuts, the opening of the economy to imports that affect local production and its impact on the job market.”

For Zack, the key to the long-term economic recovery is the adoption of measures aimed at improving some of the structural challenges Argentina faces, which have a negative impact on the economy.

Among them, he lists the country’s complex tax system, high levels of bureaucracy, the current lack of investment in public infrastructure, such as roads to connect the country, as well as the low exchange rate and openness to imports.

“Even if Argentina manages to sustain low inflation, that’s a complicated cocktail” to tackle, Zack said.

The creators of South Park – Trey Parker and Matt Stone – have struck a deal for the long-running satirical cartoon to stream on Paramount+.

Under the five-year deal, Paramount+ will show all 26 previous seasons of the cartoon and debut 50 new episodes starting this week.

The move comes after a months-long bidding war a between major streaming platforms.

In recent days, Paramount and its CBS network have faced criticism over the cancellation of The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, which the firm says “is purely a financial decision”.

The deal is worth $1.5bn (£1.1bn), according to the Los Angeles Times.

New episodes will first be shown on Paramount’s cable channel Comedy Central before streaming on Paramount+.

The programme was previously shown on rival streaming platform HBO Max.

The latest season, which was originally slated to start airing from 9 July, was delayed due to contract negotiations.

The animated comedy debuted in 1997 and has become known for its foul-mouthed characters and its unfiltered humour that has often landed the show in controversy.

Trey Parker and Matt Stone, also created the controversial hit musical The Book of Mormon.

Some commentators have questioned whether CBS’ cancellation of the Late Show after more than three decades was tied to a settlement it agreed with US President Donald Trump.

He filed a lawsuit last October, alleging CBS had deceptively edited an interview that aired on its 60 Minutes news programme with his presidential election rival Kamala Harris, to “tip the scales in favour of the Democratic party”.

Paramount said it would pay $16m to settle the suit, but with the money allocated to Trump’s future presidential library, not paid to him “directly or indirectly”.

The company noted the settlement does not include a statement of apology or regret.