Bedugul Coffee: Monday Morning Briefing: Tracking the toolbox trade wars in the U.S.

Highlights

The battle over steel and aluminum tariffs underscores the complexity of trade disputes, which often pit America’s love of cheap imports against its desire to protect blue-collar jobs. Metal Box International should be reaping the benefits of a little-known trade war over toolboxes - but, as the latest story in the Trump Effect series reveals, the winners and losers aren’t always clear.

A temporary exemption from U.S. tariffs is little comfort to the Canadian steel city of Hamilton, coping with months of uncertainty as Trump has threatened a potentially devastating 25 percent duty unless the North American Free Trade Agreement is renegotiated.

Trump will support a modest set of fixes to gun laws, stepping back from some of the more sweeping changes he had considered after the country’s latest mass school shooting, senior officials told reporters yesterday.

Commentary: Critics of Trump's decision to meet with North Korea's Kim Jong Un are wrong, writes State Department veteran Peter Van Buren. Claims that the State Department has no Korea experts, that Pyongyang isn't serious and that Trump is giving away "the big prize" by starting with a summit "are easily dispelled." Diplomacy "means the messy business of meeting with your adversaries, not ignoring them."

world

A bag of rice on a hungry family’s kitchen table could be the key to Nicolas Maduro retaining the support of poor Venezuelans in May’s presidential election. For millions of Venezuelans suffering an unprecedented economic crisis, a monthly handout of a box of heavily-subsidized basic food supplies by Maduro’s unpopular government has offered a tenuous lifeline in their once-prosperous OPEC nation.

As the Syrian army pushes deeper into eastern Ghouta under cover of a hammering bombardment, the 400,000 civilians the United Nations says live in the enclave have crowded into dark basements to cower from the ceaseless bombs.

A Bangladeshi aircraft carrying 67 passengers and four crew crashed today while coming in to land at the airport in the Nepali capital, Kathmandu, an airport official said, adding that 17 people on board had been rescued.