The European Parliament’s vote to advance the EU-US trade deal marks a significant step toward stabilizing a transatlantic commercial relationship that has been repeatedly shaken by tariff threats, legal uncertainty in the United States, and deep unease in Europe about the political reliability of the Trump administration.

Lawmakers backed legislation tied to the July 2025 “Turnberry” accord, under which the European Union would lower barriers on a range of US goods while securing a 15% tariff ceiling for most EU exports to the American market. But the vote was not a clean endorsement.

China’s exports to Africa are surging at a pace unmatched in any other region, underscoring how Donald Trump’s tariff war has accelerated Beijing’s pivot toward the continent as a critical growth market. Shipments to Africa jumped 25% year-on-year in the first seven months of 2025 to reach $122 billion, more than the total for all of 2020, and are on course to exceed $200 billion for the first time.

That growth stands in sharp contrast to slumping sales to the United States, where tariffs as high as 50% have sharply reduced Chinese exports. The relationship remains heavily imbalanced, with China enjoying an even wider trade surplus with Africa than last year. Yet Beijing is working to offset this imbalance by selectively opening its own domestic market to African goods and by embedding itself deeper in the continent’s infrastructure and energy development.

Chile’s state-run mining giant Codelco, the largest copper producer globally, announced on Wednesday that it would supply copper concentrates to a $1.2 billion copper smelting facility owned by India’s Adani Group, a plant noted for being the largest single-location copper smelter in the world.

This arrangement is scheduled to commence within this year. The agreement was finalized during a meeting between Maximo Pacheco, Codelco’s chairman, and Gautam Adani, chairman of the Adani Group, at the conglomerate’s headquarters in Ahmedabad, Gujarat, in western India.