Iran’s Bloodiest Crackdown in Decades

SPEAKER_1 (0:00)

Deal replaces fragmented payroll vendors with one global system.

Reba (0:04)

No third parties.

SPEAKER_1 (0:05)

Hire and pay teams in 130-plus countries.

Kim Mackrael (0:08)

Operate like a local everywhere.

Margherita Stancati (0:11)

Visit deel.com/wsj.

Luke Vargas (0:19)

The EU and India seal a free trade deal decades in the making. Plus, rights groups in Iran break through a communications blackout to shed light on the true death toll in recent protests.

Margherita Stancati (0:31)

Even at lower estimates of the crackdowns, this would rank as one of the biggest political killings in recent history, exceeding even the toll of China's 1989 move to clear Tiananmen Square.

Luke Vargas (0:44)

And the latest from Minnesota, as President Trump shakes up his immigration strategy. It's Tuesday, January 27th. I'm Luke Vargas for The Wall Street Journal. And here is the AM Edition of What's News. The top headlines and business stories moving your world today.

After two decades of on-again, off-again talks, the European Union and India say they've reached a free trade deal. The deal will be the largest for both economies, linking together almost 2 billion consumers. And as trade reporter Kim Mackrael is here to discuss, it comes as a number of US trading partners are actively taking steps to curb their reliance on America. Kim, thanks for being with us this morning. What should we know about this agreement, the broad strokes?

Kim Mackrael (1:29)

Kim Mackrael It's quite a big deal actually for both economies. They both say it's the largest one they have done with a bilateral trading partner. And it includes some pretty big concessions in terms of lowering tariffs on the Indian side. They're looking at quite a significant drop from the current level of 110% tariffs on European cars. That's supposed to gradually go down to eventually hit 10%. We don't yet know exactly the timeline for that, but that could be quite a significant new market for European automakers. It is capped at 250,000, so it's not a notable one. We're looking at lower tariffs from India on European machinery, chemicals, pharmaceuticals, and some agricultural goods. So quite a bit there. It's also for the Indian side, it's quite a big deal to be lowering some of those tariffs because it's a country that has long had quite a bit of protection on its market and some of the lower tariffs according to the EU are the biggest India has offered to trading partners so far.

Luke Vargas (2:29)

And Kim, this is coming at a very helpful time for India as well when trade barriers between it and the US notably have been going up.

Kim Mackrael (2:36)

That's right. Yeah. So India has been hit by 50% tariffs last year by the Trump administration. Those are some of the highest tariff levels that the US has applied to its trading partners. So this deal is expected to carry some benefits for India's textiles, jewelry, leather industries. And it also follows on a free trade agreement that India agreed to last year with the UK. So they're really hoping that it will help with shoring up their global supply chains.

Luke Vargas (3:02)

And Kim, this is a good segue to discussing how other big US trading partners are positioning themselves lately. We reported earlier this month on Canada opening up its auto and its energy sectors to Chinese products. Also, it was inviting investment by Beijing into Canada. But there's more than Canada to talk about here.

Kim Mackrael (3:19)

Yeah, that's right. So I think what we're seeing right now is a lot of different trading partners of the US looking around the globe and looking for what are some alternative markets or some other markets where we can boost our trade ties. And it's a little bit for many of them a hedging exercise as they deal with a US that is less predictable than it was before. And try to find some alternative market options. So we saw some of that center around China recently. We saw South Korea's leader recently talk about wanting a full scale restoration of ties with China. We were seeing some European leaders head to Beijing. Finland's Prime Minister has a meeting with Xi Jinping today in Beijing. British Prime Minister Keir Starmer is expected to be there. And Germany's leader is also expected to travel there next month. Maybe one of the notable ones here is the UK actually restarted trade talks with China last year after holding off for quite a long time. So China is of interest because it's a really large economy, but it does also carry some big risks. A lot of trading partners of the US are quite aware of those. So the EU has also talked about starting negotiations with other countries. They've talked about Qatar, about the United Arab Emirates. The UK has also done a number of deals, including previously last year with India, updating an agreement with South Korea.