Trump says he will impose trade tariffs on Canada and Mexico on Saturday
Good morning and welcome to our live coverage of the latest from US politics and Donald Trump’s second week in office.
First up, the US president has repeated his threat to impose tariffs on imports from Canada and Mexico, saying they will be introduced on Saturday.
Speaking to reporters in the Oval Office, he said the tariffs would begin at 25% and “may or may not rise with time”.
He also repeated threats to impose new tariffs on goods from China, citing its role in the fentanyl trade, and on the Brics countries.
Stay with us for more on that and all the day’s developments.
Key events
Michael Sainato
Donald Trump has been accused of launching an “attack on the rule of law” as three former heads of the top US labor watchdog criticized the unprecedented firing of a top official.
The abrupt removal of Gwynne Wilcox from the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) leaves the agency “out of business” unless a replacement is nominated, they warned – and highlights a “real danger” to the independence of regulators and adjudicators now Trump is back in the White House.
In interviews with The Guardian, previous chairs of the NLRB described the dismissal of Wilcox as a “usurpation” of power that “reeks of discriminatory motive”.
The White House blamed decisions taken by Wilcox and Jennifer Abruzzo, the NLRB’s general counsel, as it fired the pair earlier this week.
The move leaves the agency’s board with only two members, short of the quorum of three required to issue significant decisions on US labor disputes. Wilcox, the first Black woman to serve on the board, has pledged to pursue “all legal avenues” to challenge her firing.
Secretary of state Marco Rubio will travel to Panama, El Salvador, Costa Rica, Guatemala and the Dominican Republic beginning on Saturday, the state department said.
Rubio will travel to Central America to “advance President Trump’s America First foreign policy,” the department said.
Secretary Rubio’s engagements with senior officials and business leaders will promote regional cooperation on our core, shared interests: stopping illegal and large-scale migration, fighting the scourge of transnational criminal organizations and drug traffickers, countering China, and deepening economic partnerships to enhance prosperity in our hemisphere.
Senior treasury official to leave after clash with Musk allies – report
David Lebryk, the top-ranking career official in the treasury department, is departing after a clash with allies of Elon Musk over access to sensitive payment systems, the Washington Post reports.
The report, citing sources, said Lebryk and Musk’s surrogates clashed over access to a sensitive system used to pay out more than $6tn a year in social security and Medicare benefits as well as federal salaries, government contract payments and tax refunds.
It was unclear why the team tied to Musk sought access to the payment system.
Why Trump tariffs will be ‘very bad for America and for the world’
Steven Greenhouse
As Donald Trump threatens to slap steep tariffs on many countries, he is boasting that his taxes on imports will be a boon to the US economy, but most economists strongly disagree.
Many say Trump’s tariffs will increase inflation, slow economic growth, hurt US workers and result in American consumers footing the bill for his tariffs.
“Virtually all economists think that the impact of the tariffs will be very bad for America and for the world,” said Joseph Stiglitz, an economics professor at Columbia University and a winner of the Nobel memorial prize in economic sciences. “They will almost surely be inflationary.”
“It’s inconceivable that other countries won’t retaliate,” said Stiglitz, who was chair of Bill Clinton’s council of economic advisers.
Even if some of the governments might not want to retaliate, their citizens will demand that you can’t allow yourself to be beaten up. When you make like a gorilla thumping on his chest, are countries just going to say, ‘Are we chopped liver?’ Their politics will demand that they do something.
The tariffs, tensions and fears of retaliation and a trade war will likely cause many businesses to reduce their planned investments, and that, economists say, will hurt economies worldwide.
Federal government workers have been left “shell-shocked” by the upheaval wrought by Donald Trump’s return to the presidency.
Since being restored to the White House on 20 January, Trump has gone on a revenge spree against high-profile figures who previously served him but earned his enmity by slighting or criticising him in public.
He has cancelled Secret Service protection for three senior national security officials in his first presidency, fired high-profile figures from government roles on his social media site, and stripped 51 former intelligence officials of their security clearances for doubting reports about Hunter Biden’s laptop as possible Russian disinformation.
Some senior officials saw the writing on the wall and resigned before his return, but others adopted a hope-for-the-best attitude – only to be shocked by what awaited them, according to insiders.
“The most commons refrain I’m hearing from people who have left but are still talking to people on the inside is: ‘I knew it was going to be bad but I didn’t think it was going to be this bad,’” said Mark Bergman, a veteran Democratic lawyer.
“There’s certainly shell shock. My view is that Trump is animated by his revenge and retribution agenda.”
Read the full story here:
As well as threatening to introduce tariffs on Canada, Mexico, and China, as we reported earlier, Donald Trump has said he will impose 100% tariffs on the Brics countries if they attempt to replace the US dollar as the dominant reserve currency.
The Brics is made up of Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa as well as recent entrants Egypt, Ethiopia, Indonesia, Iran, and the UAE.
While the dollar remains by far the world’s primary reserve currency, the past few years have seen discussions among Brics members about increasing the amount of trade done using their national currencies, or even the possibility of establishing a common currency.
“We are going to require a commitment from these seemingly hostile Countries that they will neither create a new BRICS Currency, nor back any other Currency to replace the mighty U.S. Dollar or, they will face 100% Tariffs,” Trump said in a post on social media.
“There is no chance that BRICS will replace the U.S. Dollar in International Trade, or anywhere else, and any Country that tries should say hello to Tariffs, and goodbye to America!”
Yesterday saw Donald Trump’s controversial nominee to head the Department of Health and Human Services, Robert F Kennedy Jr, grilled about his views at a Senate confirmation hearing.
Watch independent senator Bernie Sanders ask Kennedy whether he believes discredited claims about a link between vaccines and autism.
US national to be released by Hamas
A US national is among three hostages set to be released by Hamas under the terms of the ceasefire deal with Israel.
In a post to Telegram on Friday, Abu Obeida, a spokesperson for Hamas’s armed wing, said Israeli-American Keith Siegel would be freed on Saturday alongside Yarden Bibas and Ofer Kalderon.
Siegal, 65, was taken hostage with his wife, Aviva, and was seen in a video released by Hamas last year.
His wife was released in the first hostage-for-prisoner exchange in November 2023.
You can follow all the latest on the latest exchanges on our Middle East live blog.
Trump’s comments on tariffs also covered China, who he accused of helping to fuel the opioid crisis in the US via imports of fentanyl.
“With China I’m also thinking about something because they’re sending fentanyl into our country and because of that they’re causing us hundreds of thousands of deaths,” he said.
“China is going to end up paying a tariff also for that and we’re in the process of doing that. We’ll make a determination on what it’s going to be, but China has to stop sending fentanyl into our country and killing our people.”
Trump has threatened to introduce a 10% tariff on all Chinese goods, having imposed tariffs on around $370bn (£298bn) worth of Chinese imports during his first term as president.
Fentanyl is a synthetic opioid that is significantly more powerful then heroin. It has legitimate medical uses for pain management, but is also used recreationally.
In 2020, the US Drug Enforcement Administration said China was the “primary source of fentanyl and fentanyl-related substances trafficked through international mail”.
Here’s more on those comments from Donald Trump threatening to impose 25% tariffs on imports from Mexico and Canada, two of the US’s largest trading partners.
He said he was making the threat “for a number of reasons” but that he wants both countries to do more to secure their borders to reduce illegal migration and the flow of fentanyl into the US.
Asked whether oil imports would be excluded from the tariffs, he said “we may or may not”, adding that it would depend on prices and whether the two countries “treat us properly”.
Canada and Mexico are the top two sources of US oil imports, accounting for 52% and 11% respectively in 2023, according to data from the US Department of Energy.
Trump says he will impose trade tariffs on Canada and Mexico on Saturday
Good morning and welcome to our live coverage of the latest from US politics and Donald Trump’s second week in office.
First up, the US president has repeated his threat to impose tariffs on imports from Canada and Mexico, saying they will be introduced on Saturday.
Speaking to reporters in the Oval Office, he said the tariffs would begin at 25% and “may or may not rise with time”.
He also repeated threats to impose new tariffs on goods from China, citing its role in the fentanyl trade, and on the Brics countries.
Stay with us for more on that and all the day’s developments.
