China vows action over ‘arbitrary’ tariffs as Trump pauses measures against Canada and Mexico – US politics live
Hello and welcome to the US politics live blog. I’m Tom Ambrose and I will be bringing you all the latest news lines over the coming hours.
We start with news that the Chinese foreign minister Wang Yi said China will continue to retaliate against the United States’ “arbitrary tariffs” despite pausing similar action against Canada and Mexico.
In a press conference on Friday, Wang said China’s efforts to help the US contain its fentanyl crisis have been met with punitive tariffs, which are straining the ties between the countries.
“No country should fantasise that it can suppress China and maintain a good relationship with China at the same time,” Wang said. “Such two-faced acts are not good for the stability of bilateral relations or for building mutual trust.”
The two countries have been engaging in tit-for-tat retaliatory tariffs since US president Donald Trump’s return to office in January.
The US has imposed flat tariffs of 20% on all Chinese imports, while Beijing has countered with additional 15% duties on US imports including chicken, pork, soy and beef, as well as expanded controls on doing business with key US companies.
It comes as Trump once again put a central part of his trade war on pause, temporarily exempting from tariffs Mexican and Canadian goods covered by the continental free trade agreement he negotiated in his first term.
However, the president said he was still ready to impose “reciprocal” tariffs on both Canada and Mexico next month.
In other news:
Trump told his cabinet secretaries that they are in charge of hiring and firings at their agencies, not Elon Musk.
The House has voted to censure Democratic congressman Al Green for disrupting Trump’s address to this week’s joint session of Congress. The motion was approved with 224 votes in favor and 198 opposed, with 10 Democrats in support.
In an escalation of his pressure campaign, Trump said the US will not fight for Nato allies who don’t spend enough on their own defense.
US district judge Beryl Howell ruled on Thursday that Donald Trump’s firing of a Democratic member of the National Labor Relations Board was illegal and ordered that she be reinstated to her post.
Axios reports that the state department is hunting for evidence that foreign students who express support for Palestinians under Israeli occupation while studying in the US are “pro-Hamas”, and can have their visas revoked, based on an AI review of their social media accounts.
Trump thanked a reporter for the partisan outlet Breitbart for asking him a friendly question in the Oval Office, which teed him up to attack Democrats. The White House excluded non-partisan reporters from Reuters and the Associated Press to make room for Breitbart and One America News, two pro-Trump outlets.
Trump signed an executive order on Thursday evening to establish a “strategic bitcoin reserve”, a day before meeting with executives from the cryptocurrency industry at the White House.
The Canadian prime minister, Justin Trudeau, who reportedly endured a profanity-laced tirade from Trump, was asked about his foreign minister’s comment that dealing with the US was now “a psychodrama”. “How would you characterize it?” a reporter asked. “Thursday”, Trudeau replied.