Trump issues order to block state climate change policies
Donald Trump issued an executive order on Tuesday that aims to block the enforcement of state laws passed to reduce the use of fossil fuels and combat the climate crisis.
The move is the latest in a string of efforts by Trump’s administration to pump up domestic energy output and push back against largely Democratic-led policies to curb carbon emissions. It came just hours after Trump, a Republican, issued orders to increase coal production.
The order directed the US attorney general to identify state laws that address climate change, ESG initiatives, environmental justice and carbon emissions, and to take action to block them.
“Many States have enacted, or are in the process of enacting, burdensome and ideologically motivated ‘climate change’ or energy policies that threaten American energy dominance and our economic and national security,” the order said.
Trump specifically cited laws in New York and Vermont that fine fossil fuel companies for their contribution to climate change, California’s cap-and-trade policy, and lawsuits by states that have sought to hold energy companies accountable for their role in global heating.
Key events
Tom Perkins
Eleven top US consumer goods corporations spent more than three times more on share buybacks than they did on taxes, using their savings from the 2017 Donald Trump tax cuts to supercharge purchases that enriched investors instead of lowering prices on goods essential to daily life, according to a new report.
The findings are part of a new analysis of company filings by the Groundwork Collaborative economic thinktank. They come as the US president proposes $5tn in new tax cuts that would again lower the corporate tax rate, and likely lead to more buybacks.
PepsiCo, Comcast, United Healthcare, personal care giant Kimberly Clark and the other companies have collectively recorded nearly $500bn in profits since the last cuts. They enacted $463bn in buybacks and paid just $140bn in federal taxes.
The figures are “startling”, said Liz Pancotti, a study co-author and director of policy with the Groundwork Collaborative, and highlight how the cuts incentivize buybacks.
“The companies are now throwing massive amounts of money at investors who are largely already wealthy people,” Pancotti added. “This is how you get the staggering wealth inequality in this country.”
Kalyeena Makortoff
Donald Trump’s sweeping tariffs have put global growth at risk, the Bank of England has warned, heaping pressure on government finances and increasing the likelihood of “severe shocks” to the financial system.
The Bank’s financial policy committee (FPC) said its global risk environment had deteriorated and “uncertainty had intensified” since its last update in November, with US tariff announcements contributing to a “material increase in risks to global growth” and inflation levels.
Those concerns have knocked investor confidence, and increased the risk of a “further sharp correction” in financial markets that could cause stress for indebted companies and make it harder for governments to borrow money and refinance their debts.
The Bank warned that higher government bond yields – effectively the interest rate countries pay on their debt – would “reduce their capacity to respond to future shocks”. Government bonds, including the traditionally safe haven US treasuries, have been undergoing a dramatic sell-off since Trump announced a fresh wave of tariffs on dozens of countries overnight.
Michael Sainato
In Gainesville, Florida, a small city in the north-central part of the state, small businesses and shoppers are bracing for the impacts of Trump’s sweeping tariffs.
The Trump administration announced a baseline of 10% tariffs on nearly every country in the world last week, with much higher rates on countries such as China, Taiwan and Vietnam, and 20% tariffs on European Union countries.
The tariffs are expected to increase prices on household goods, clothing, electronics and groceries; the Budget Lab at Yale University reported the tariffs could cost the average US household $3,800.
As criticism of the tariffs has mounted, the White House has touted support for the tariffs from “everyday Americans”. And in Gainesville, that message seems to have worked – for now.
“Make America great again,” said Justin Godwin, an electrical contractor in Ocala, Florida, just south of Gainesville. “We are not the world police, nor are we the global providers of welfare.”
Kim Roberts Rogel, a retiree in Lakeland, Florida, added: “Go, Trump. He’s a businessman and knows exactly what he is doing.”
Samantha Gore, a stay-at-home mom in Interlachen, Florida, just west of Gainesville, repeated a claim from Trump that Canada has 250% tariffs on some products, though the truth is more complicated: there are also zero tariffs on thousands of metric tons of US dairy that Canada imports, thanks to a deal brokered by Trump in his first administration, and the US dairy industry isn’t reaching the levels of import quotas on any dairy products to receive the maximum tariffs from Canada.
China to impose additional tariffs of 84% on US goods
China will impose 84% tariffs on US goods from Thursday, up from the 34% previously announced, the finance ministry said on Wednesday.
White House freezes funds for Cornell and Northwestern in latest crackdown
In early March, the Trump administration sent warning letters to 60 US universities it said were facing “potential enforcement actions” for what it described as “failure to protect Jewish students on campus” in the wake of widespread pro-Palestinian protests on campuses last year.
The president of Cornell University, which was on the list, responded with a defiant op-ed in the New York Times, arguing that universities, and their students, could weather debates and protests over the war in Gaza.
“Universities, despite rapidly escalating political, legal and financial risks, cannot afford to cede the space of public discourse and the free exchange of ideas,” the Cornell University president Michael Kotlikoff wrote on 31 March.
On Tuesday, the Trump administration froze over $1bn in funding for Cornell University, a US official said. The administration also froze $790m for Northwestern University, which hosts a prominent journalism school.
The funding pause includes mostly grants and contracts with the federal departments of health, education, agriculture and defense, the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
The newly announced funding freezes at Cornell and Northwestern come as Brown, Columbia, Harvard, Princeton and the University of Pennsylvania face similar investigations. The New York Times estimated that at least $3.3bn in elite university federal funding has already been frozen by the Trump administration in the past month, with billions more under review.
Trump issues order to block state climate change policies
Donald Trump issued an executive order on Tuesday that aims to block the enforcement of state laws passed to reduce the use of fossil fuels and combat the climate crisis.
The move is the latest in a string of efforts by Trump’s administration to pump up domestic energy output and push back against largely Democratic-led policies to curb carbon emissions. It came just hours after Trump, a Republican, issued orders to increase coal production.
The order directed the US attorney general to identify state laws that address climate change, ESG initiatives, environmental justice and carbon emissions, and to take action to block them.
“Many States have enacted, or are in the process of enacting, burdensome and ideologically motivated ‘climate change’ or energy policies that threaten American energy dominance and our economic and national security,” the order said.
Trump specifically cited laws in New York and Vermont that fine fossil fuel companies for their contribution to climate change, California’s cap-and-trade policy, and lawsuits by states that have sought to hold energy companies accountable for their role in global heating.
European Union countries are expected to approve on Wednesday the bloc’s first countermeasures against Donald Trump’s tariffs, joining China and Canada in retaliating and escalating a conflict that could become a global trade war, Reuters reported.
The 27-nation bloc faces 25% import tariffs on steel and aluminium and cars as well as the new broader tariffs of 20% for almost all other goods under Trump’s policy to hit countries he says impose high barriers to US imports.
The European Commission, which coordinates EU trade policy, proposed on Monday extra duties mostly of 25% on a range of US imports in response specifically to the US metals tariffs. It is still assessing how to respond to the car and broader levies.
The imports include motorcycles, poultry, fruit, wood, clothing and dental floss, according to a document seen by Reuters. They totalled about €21bn ($23bn) last year, meaning the EU’s retaliation will be against goods worth less than the €26bn of EU metals exports hit by US tariffs.
They are to enter force in stages – on 15 April, 16 May and 1 December.
Trump’s punishing tariffs have shaken a global trading order that has persisted for decades, raised fears of recession and wiped trillions of dollars off the market value of major firms.
Since Trump unveiled his tariffs last Wednesday, the S&P 500 has suffered its deepest loss since the benchmark’s creation in the 1950s. It is now nearing a bear market, defined as 20% below its most recent high, Reuters reported.
Global benchmark bonds, assets perceived as relatively safe, were also caught up in the market turmoil on Wednesday, an unnerving turn towards forced selling that is sounding alarm bells for investors.
European shares fell on Wednesday as the US tariffs kicked in and US stock futures pointed to more pain ahead, after a grim session for most of Asia. Chinese stocks bucked the trend, however, as state support propped up the ailing market.
Trump tariffs kick in, spurring more market carnage
Good morning and welcome to the US politics live blog. My name is Tom Ambrose and I’ll be bringing you all the latest news over the next few hours.
We start with news that Donald Trump’s new tariffs have gone into full effect today.
When Trump announced the latest round of tariffs on 2 April, he declared that the US would now tax nearly all of America’s trading partners at a minimum of 10% – and impose steeper rates for countries that he says run trade surpluses with the US.
The 10% baseline had already gone into effect on Saturday. Trump’s higher import tax rates on dozens of countries and territories took hold at midnight, Washington DC time, AP reported.
The steeper levies run as high as 50% – with that biggest rate landing on small economies that trade little with the US, including the African kingdom of Lesotho.
Some other rates include a tax of 47% on imports from Madagascar, 46% on Vietnam, 32% on Taiwan, 25% on South Korea, 24% on Japan and 20% on the European Union. Some of these new tariffs build on previous trade measures.
Trump last week announced a tariff of 34% on China, for example, which would come on top of 20% levies he imposed on the country earlier this year. He has since threatened to add an another 50% levy on Chinese goods in response to Beijing’s recently promised retaliation. That would bring the combined total to 104% against China.
China said it will take “resolute measures” to defend its trading rights, but gave no details on how it will respond.
In other news:
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Donald Trump signed four executive orders boosting coal production yesterday. The orders direct government agencies to “end all discriminatory policies against the coal industry”, including by ending the leasing moratorium on coal on federal land, accelerating all permitted funding for coal projects, protecting coal power plants scheduled to be shuttered, and investigating state or local governments that “discriminate against coal”.
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During his executive order ceremony, Trump tried to assuage fears of a recession, saying that tariffs are bringing in $2bn a day. The White House has also said that nearly 70 countries have reached out looking to begin negotiations to lower or postpone their tariffs.
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A federal judge ruled that the White House’s decision to block the Associated Press from its press pool is unconstitutional. The ruling comes nearly two months after the White House first barred an AP reporter from the Oval Office over the outlet’s decision to continue using the term “Gulf of Mexico” after Donald Trump issued an executive order renaming the body of water the “Gulf of America.”
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The US will take back the Panama canal from Chinese influence, US defense secretary Pete Hegseth said during a rare visit to the nation still unsettled by Trump’s threats to take back the canal. Just hours after his visit, the Chinese embassy in Panama issued a statement calling Hegseth’s comments part of “a sensationalistic campaign” to “sabotage Chinese-Panamanian cooperation”.
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A New York judge will hear arguments tomorrow about the legality of Donald Trump’s deportations of Venezuelan immigrants, one day after the supreme court issued a ruling saying immigrant rights advocates had filed their case in the wrong state. After the supreme court issued its ruling yesterday, the American Civil Liberties Union re-filed its case in Manhattan.
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Hours after the Internal Revenue Service formalized an agreement to share tax information of undocumented immigrants with Homeland Security, the acting head of the IRS has decided to step down. The acting IRS commissioner, Melanie Krause, is the third person to lead the tax agency since Donald Trump took office in January.
