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WASHINGTON: US President Donald Trump administration plans to use ongoing tariff negotiations to pressure US trading partners to limit their dealings with China, The Wall Street Journal reported on Tuesday citing people with knowledge of the conversations.
US officials plan to use negotiations with more than 70 nations to ask them to disallow China to ship goods through their countries and prevent Chinese firms from being located in their territories to avoid US tariffs, the report added.
UNITED NATIONS: UNICEF has projected that its 2026 budget will shrink by at least 20 percent compared to 2024, a spokesperson for the UN children’s agency said on Tuesday, after US President Donald Trump slashed global humanitarian aid.
In 2024, UNICEF had a budget of $8.9 billion and this year it has an estimated budget of $8.5 billion. The funding for 2025 is “evolving,” the UNICEF spokesperson said.
“The last few weeks have made clear that humanitarian and development organizations around the world, including many UN organizations, are in the midst of a global funding crisis. UNICEF has not been spared,” said the spokesperson.
UNICEF did not specifically name the US, but Washington has long been the agency’s largest donor, contributing more than $800 million in 2024. Since UNICEF was established in 1946, all its executive directors have been American.
“At the moment, we are working off preliminary projections that our financial resources will be, at a minimum, 20 percent less, organization wide, in 2026 compared to 2024,” said the UNICEF spokesperson.
Since returning to office in January for a second term, Trump’s administration has cut billions of dollars in foreign assistance in a review that aimed to ensure programs align with his “America First” foreign policy.
The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said last week that it will cut 20 percent of its staff as it faces a shortfall of $58 million, after its largest donor, the United States, cut funding.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres also last month said he is seeking ways to improve efficiency and cut costs as the world body turns 80 this year amid a cash crisis.
UNICEF has implemented some efficiency measures but “more cost-cutting steps will be required,” said the spokesperson.
“We are looking at every aspect of our operation, including staffing, with the goal of focusing on what truly matters for children: that children survive and thrive,” the spokesperson said. “But no final decisions have been taken.”
A federal judge has allowed the US Department of Justice to temporarily stop funding legal education programs for people facing deportation or immigration court while a lawsuit brought by the organizations that provide the service moves forward in court.
The decision from US District Judge Randolph D. Moss in Washington, D.C., means a coalition of nonprofit groups that offer the education programs will lose their federal funding on Wednesday – and possibly, some access to potential clients inside detention centers.
Unlike criminal cases, people in immigration courts and detention centers don’t have a right to an attorney if they can’t afford one themselves. Proponents of the legal education programs say they ease the burden on immigration judges and help immigrants navigate the complicated court system more efficiently.
Congress allocates $29 million a year for four programs — the Legal Orientation Program, the Immigration Court Helpdesk, the Family Group Legal Orientation and the Counsel for Children Initiative — and those groups spread the funding to subcontractors nationwide.
The Justice Department first instructed the nonprofit groups to “stop work immediately” on the programs on Jan. 22, citing an executive order from President Donald Trump targeting illegal immigration.
The nonprofit groups about a week later, and the Justice Department then rescinded the stop-work order. But on April 11, the agency said it was terminating its contracts with the groups nationwide, effective at 12:01 a.m. on April 16.
During a hearing Tuesday afternoon, Moss told attorneys on both sides that he wanted more information about exactly how the Department of Justice came to its decision to end the contracts, any plans for spending the earmarked money in the future, as well as any problems the nonprofit groups run into as they try to provide legal information to detained non-citizens in the coming weeks.
The judge also said he wanted to issue a final decision in the case quickly, and set a hearing for a preliminary injunction and possible final decision for May 14.
A few blocks away from the federal immigration courts in New York City, a leader of the one affected program testified at a city council hearing on immigration fraud.
“We’re often the first attorneys people are able to speak to about their immigration cases,” said Hannah Strauss, an immigration lawyer who supervises a team triaging cases Supervising Attorney of the Immigration Court Helpdesk run by Catholic Charities.
New York state is one of only six states in the US where more than half of immigrants are represented by an attorney in pending immigration cases, according to government data compiled by Syracuse University’s Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse. That’s thanks in part to state and city grants, as well as a large pool of lawyers who volunteer. But federal funding forms an important part of the system.
Strauss said the $1.2 million federal grant covering New York covered the helpdesk, a skeleton crew relied upon by other NGOs to screen immigration referrals and by immigration judges to explain the basics on laws regarding asylum and other forms of legal immigration.
“Unfortunately today marks the final day of both ICH and FGLOP, as the federal government has chosen to terminate our contracts as of midnight tonight,” Strauss, referring to her organization and the Family Group Legal Orientation Program, run by Acacia Center for Justice.
The main reason for falling prey to immigration scams is the lack of legitimate legal help, said immigrants at the hearing. The immigrants testified without using their names, citing fear they could become targets of Immigration and Customs Enforcement for speaking out, but details they shared were representative of cases that have been investigated by federal prosecutors, costing immigrants thousands of dollars and sometimes ruining their cases.In the hearing, the city council discussed ways to crack down on immigration service providers advertising exaggerated or outright fraudulent services.
For example, it’s considering increasing funding for civil enforcement of business laws through the city’s consumer protection department. The agency uses investigators, sometimes undercover, to investigate violations that can lead to civil penalties, or referrals to criminal prosecutors.
NEW YORK: The latest government waste touted by billionaire Elon Musk’s cost-cutting Department of Government Efficiency is hundreds of millions of dollars in fraudulent unemployment claims it purportedly uncovered.
One problem: Federal investigators already found what appears to be the same fraud, years earlier and on a far greater scale.
In a post last week on X, the social media site Musk owns, DOGE announced “an initial survey of unemployment insurance claims since 2020” found 24,500 people over the age of 115 had claimed $59 million in benefits; 28,000 people between the ages of 1 and 5 collected $254 million; and 9,700 people with birthdates more than 15 years in the future garnered $69 million from the government.
The tweet drew a predictable party-line reaction of either skepticism or cheers, including from Musk himself, who said what his team found was “so crazy” he re-read it several times before it sank in.
“Another incredible discovery,” marveled Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer, who repeated DOGE’s findings to President Donald Trump in a Cabinet meeting last week.
Chavez-DeRemer’s recounting of the alleged fraud, including claims of benefits filed by unborn children, drew laughter in the Cabinet room and a reaction from Trump himself.
“Those numbers are really bad,” he said.
But Chavez-DeRemer needn’t look further than her own department’s Office of the Inspector General to find such fraud had already been reported by the type of federal workers DOGE has demonized.
“They’re trying to spin this narrative of, ‘Oh, government is inefficient and government is stupid and they’re catching these things that the government didn’t catch,’” says Michele Evermore, who worked on unemployment issues at the US Department of Labor during the administration of former President Joe Biden. “They’re finding fraud that was marked as fraud and saying they found out it was fraud.”
The Social Security Act of 1935 enshrined unemployment benefits in federal law but left it to individual states to set up systems to collect unemployment taxes, process applications and mete out support.
Though states have almost complete control over their own unemployment systems, special relief programs — most notably widely expanded benefits enacted by the first Trump administration at the outset of the COVID pandemic — inject more direct federal involvement and a flood of new beneficiaries into the system.
In regular times, state unemployment systems perform “very well, not so well and terribly,” according to Stephen Wandner, an economist at the National Academy of Social Insurance who authored the book “Unemployment Insurance Reform: Fixing a Broken System.” With COVID slamming the economy and creating a flood of new claims that states couldn’t handle, Wandner says many more were “quite terrible.”
Trump signed the COVID unemployment relief into law on March 27, 2020, and from the very start it became a magnet for fraud. In a memo to state officials about two weeks later, the Department of Labor warned that the expanded benefits had made unemployment programs “a target for fraud with significant numbers of imposter claims being filed with stolen or synthetic identities.”
That same memo offered an option for states trying to protect a person whose identity was stolen to fraudulently collect unemployment benefits. To preserve a record of the fraud but keep innocent people from being linked to it, states could create a “pseudo claim,” the memo advises.
Those “pseudo claims” led to records of toddlers and centenarians getting checks. The Labor Department’s inspector general tallied some 4,895 unemployment claims from people over the age of 100 between March 2020 and April 2022, but another departmental memo explained that the filings stemmed from states changing dates of birth to protect people whose identities were used.
“Many of the claims identified ... were not payments to individuals over 100 years of age, but rather ‘pseudo records’ of previously identified fraudulent claims,” the 2023 memo says.
A Labor Department spokeswoman did not respond to questions about Musk’s findings and DOGE gave no details on how it came to find the supposed fraud or whether it duplicates what was already found.
Though DOGE ostensibly looked at longer timeframe than federal investigators previously had, it tallied just $382 million in fake unemployment claims, a tiny fraction of what investigators were already aware.
In 2022, the Labor Department said suspected COVID-era unemployment fraud totaled more than $45 billion. The Government Accountability Office later said it was far worse, likely $100 billion to $135 billion.
“I don’t think it’s news to anyone,” says Amy Traub, an expert on unemployment at the National Employment Law Project. “It’s been widely reported. There’ve been multiple congressional hearings.”
If DOGE’s newest allegations have an air of familiarity, it’s because they echo its prior findings of about Social Security payments to the dead and the unbelievably old. Those were false claims.
That makes DOGE an imperfect messenger even when fraud has occurred, as with unemployment claims.
Jessica Reidl, a senior fellow at the conservative think tank The Manhattan Institute, is a fiscal conservative who so champions rooting out federal waste she has written 600 articles on the subject. Though she believes unemployment insurance fraud is rife, she has trouble accepting any findings from DOGE, which she says has acted ineffectively and possibly illegally.
“When DOGE says impossibly old dead people are collecting unemployment in huge numbers, I become skeptical,” Reidl says. “DOGE does not have a good track record in that area.”
Traub said the burst of pandemic-era unemployment fraud led states to implement new security measures. She questioned why Musk’s team was trumpeting old fraud as if it’s new.
“Business leaders and economists are warning about a national recession, so it’s natural to think about unemployment,” says Traub. “It’s an attack on the image of a critically important program and perhaps an attempt to undermine public support on unemployment insurance when it couldn’t be more important.”
WASHINGTON: At first, the bar association for immigration attorneys began receiving inquiries from a couple students a day. These were foreigners studying in the US, and they’d discovered in early April their legal status had been terminated with little notice. To their knowledge, none of the students had committed a deportable offense.
In recent days, the calls have begun flooding in. Hundreds of students have been calling to say they have lost legal status, seeking advice on what to do next.
“We thought it was going to be something that was unusual,” said Matthew Maiona, a Boston-based immigration attorney who is getting about six calls a day from panicked international students. “But it seems now like it’s coming pretty fast and furious.”
The speed and scope of the federal government’s efforts to terminate the legal status of international students have stunned colleges across the country. Few corners of higher education have been untouched, as schools ranging from prestigious private universities, large public research institutions and tiny liberal arts colleges discover status terminations one after another among their students.
At least 790 students at more than 120 colleges and universities have had their visas revoked or their legal status terminated in recent weeks, according to an Associated Press review of university statements and correspondence with school officials. Advocacy groups collecting reports from colleges say hundreds more students could be caught up in the crackdown.
Students apparently targeted over minor infractions
Around 1.1 million international students were in the United States last year — a source of essential revenue for tuition-driven colleges. International students are not eligible for federal financial aid, and their ability to pay tuition often factors into whether they will be admitted to American schools. Often, they pay full price.
Many of the students losing their legal status are from India and China, which together account for more than half the international students at American colleges. But the terminations have not been limited to those from any one part of the world, lawyers said.
Four students from two Michigan universities are suing Trump administration officials after their F-1 student status was terminated last week. Their attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union, Ramis Wadood, said the students never received a clear reason why.
“We don’t know, and that’s the scary part,” he said.
The students were informed of the status terminations by their universities via email, which came as a shock, Wadood said. The reason given was that there was a “criminal records check and/or that their visa was revoked,” Wadood said, but none of them were charged or convicted of crimes. Some had either speeding or parking tickets, but one didn’t have any, he said. Only one of the students had known their entry visa was revoked, Wadood said.
Last month, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the State Department was revoking visas held by visitors who were acting counter to national interests, including some who protested Israel’s war in Gaza and those who face criminal charges.
But many students say they don’t fall under those categories. Students have filed lawsuits in several states, arguing they were denied due process.
In New Hampshire, a federal judge last week granted a temporary restraining order to restore the status of a Ph.D. student at Dartmouth College, Xiaotian Liu. On Tuesday, a federal judge in Wisconsin issued a similar order, ruling the government could not take steps to detain or revoke the visa of a University of Wisconsin-Madison gradate student.
In a break from past, feds cancel students’ status directly
At many colleges, officials learned the legal immigration status of some international students had been terminated when staff checked a database managed by the Department of Homeland Security. In the past, college officials say, legal statuses typically were updated after colleges told the government the students were no longer studying at the school.
The system to track enrollment and movements of international students came under the control of Immigration and Customs Enforcement after 9/11, said Fanta Aw, CEO of NAFSA, an association of international educators. She said recent developments have left students fearful of how quickly they can be on the wrong side of enforcement.
“You don’t need more than a small number to create fear,” Aw said. “There’s no clarity of what are the reasons and how far the reach of this is.”
Her group says as many as 1,300 students have lost visas or had their status terminated, based on reports from colleges.
The Department of Homeland Security and State Department did not respond to messages seeking comment.
Foreigners who are subject to removal proceedings are usually sent a notice to appear in immigration court on a certain date, but lawyers say affected students have not received any notices, leaving them unsure of next steps to take.
Some schools have told students to leave the country to avoid the risk of being detained or deported. But some students have appealed the terminations and stayed in the United States while those are processed.
Still others caught in legal limbo aren’t students at all. They had remained in the US post-graduation on “optional practical training,” a one-year period — or up to three for science and technology graduates — that allows employment in the US after completing an academic degree. During that time, a graduate works in their field and waits to receive their H-1B or other employment visas if they wish to keep working in the US
Around 242,000 foreigners in the US are employed through this “optional practical training.” About 500,000 are pursuing graduate degrees, and another 342,000 are undergraduate students.
Among the students who have filed lawsuits is a Georgia Tech Ph.D. student who is supposed to graduate on May 5, with a job offer to join the faculty. His attorney Charles Kuck said the student was likely targeted for termination because of an unpaid traffic fine from when the student lent his car to a friend. Ultimately, the violation was dismissed.
“We have case after case after case exactly like that, where there is no underlying crime,” said Kuck, who is representing 17 students in the federal lawsuit. He said his law firm has heard from hundreds of students.
“These are kids who now, under the Trump administration, realize their position is fragile,” he said. “They’ve preyed on a very vulnerable population. These kids aren’t hiding. They’re in school.”
Some international students have been adapting their daily routines.
A Ph.D. student from China at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill said she has begun carrying around her passport and immigration paperwork at the advice of the university’s international student office. The student, who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of being targeted by authorities, said she has been distressed to see the terminations even for students like her without criminal records.
“That is the most scary part because you don’t know whether you’re going to be the next person,” she said. ___
Seminera reported from Raleigh, N.C., and Keller reported from Albuquerque, N.M.
NEW YORK: Long-threatened tariffs from US President Donald Trump have plunged the country into trade wars abroad — all while on-again, off-again new levies continue to escalate uncertainty.
Trump is no stranger to tariffs. He launched a trade war during his first term, taking particular aim at China by putting taxes on most of its goods. Beijing responded with its own retaliatory tariffs on a range of US products. Meanwhile, Trump also used the threat of more tariffs to force Canada and Mexico to renegotiate a North American trade pact, called the US-Mexico-Canada Agreement, in 2020.
When President Joe Biden took office, he preserved most of the tariffs Trump previously enacted against China, in addition to imposing some new restrictions — but his administration claimed to take a more targeted approach.
Fast-forward to today, and economists stress there could be greater consequences on businesses and economies worldwide under Trump’s more sweeping tariffs this time around — and that higher prices will likely leave consumers footing the bill. There’s also been a sense of whiplash from Trump’s back-and-forth tariff threats and responding retaliation seen over the last few months.
Here’s a timeline of how we got here:
January 20
Trump is sworn into office. In his inaugural address, he again promises to “tariff and tax foreign countries to enrich our citizens.” And he reiterates plans to create an agency called the External Revenue Service, which has yet to be established.
On his first day in office, Trump also says he expects to put 25 percent tariffs on Canada and Mexico starting on Feb. 1, while declining to immediately flesh out plans for taxing Chinese imports.
January 26
Trump threatens 25 percent tariffs on all Colombia imports and other retaliatory measures after President Gustavo Petro’s rejects two US military aircraft carrying migrants to the country, accusing Trump of not treating immigrants with dignity during deportation.
In response, Petro also announces a retaliatory 25 percent increase in Colombian tariffs on US goods. But Colombia later reversed its decision and accepted the flights carrying migrants. The two countries soon signaled a halt in the trade dispute.
February 1
Trump signs an executive order to impose tariffs on imports from Mexico, Canada and China — 10 percent on all imports from China and 25 percent on imports from Mexico and Canada starting Feb. 4. Trump invoked this power by declaring a national emergency — ostensibly over undocumented immigration and drug trafficking.
The action prompts swift outrage from all three countries, with promises of retaliatory measures.
February 3
Trump agrees to a 30-day pause on his tariff threats against Mexico and Canada, as both trading partners take steps to appease Trump’s concerns about border security and drug trafficking.
February 4
Trump’s new 10 percent tariffs on all Chinese imports to the US still go into effect. China retaliates the same day by announcing a flurry of countermeasures, including sweeping new duties on a variety of American goods and an anti-monopoly investigation into Google.
China’s 15 percent tariffs on coal and liquefied natural gas products, and a 10 percent levy on crude oil, agricultural machinery and large-engine cars imported from the US, take effect Feb. 10.
February 10
Trump announces plans to hike steel and aluminum tariffs starting March 12. He removes the exemptions from his 2018 tariffs on steel, meaning that all steel imports will be taxed at a minimum of 25 percent, and also raises his 2018 aluminum tariffs from 10 percent to 25 percent.
February 13
Trump announces a plan for “reciprocal” tariffs — promising to increase US tariffs to match the tax rates that countries worldwide charge on imports “for purposes of fairness.” Economists warn that the reciprocal tariffs, set to overturn decades of trade policy, could create chaos for global businesses.
February 25
Trump signs an executive order instructing the Commerce Department to consider whether a tariff on imported copper is needed to protect national security. He cites the material’s use in US defense, infrastructure and emerging technologies.
March 1
Trump signs an additional executive order instructing the Commerce Department to consider whether tariffs on lumber and timber are also needed to protect national security, arguing that the construction industry and military depend on a strong supply of wooden products in the US
March 4
Trump’s 25 percent tariffs on imports from Canada and Mexico go into effect, though he limits the levy to 10 percent on Canadian energy. He also doubles the tariff on all Chinese imports to 20 percent.
All three countries promise retaliatory measures. Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announces tariffs on more than $100 billion of American goods over the course of 21 days. And Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum says her country would respond with its own retaliatory tariffs on US goods without specifying the targeted products immediately, signaling hopes to de-escalate.
China, meanwhile, imposes tariffs of up to 15 percent on a wide array of key US farm exports, set to take effect March 10. It also expands the number of US companies subject to export controls and other restrictions by about two dozen.
March 5
Trump grants a one-month exemption on his new tariffs impacting goods from Mexico and Canada for US automakers. The pause arrives after the president spoke with leaders of the “Big 3” automakers — Ford, General Motors and Stellantis.
March 6
In a wider extension, Trump postpones 25 percent tariffs on many imports from Mexico and some imports from Canada for a month.
Trump credited Sheinbaum with making progress on border security and drug smuggling as a reason for again pausing tariffs. His actions also thaw relations with Canada somewhat, although outrage and uncertainty remains. Still, after its initial retaliatory tariffs of $30 billion Canadian ($21 billion) on US goods, the government says it’s suspended a second wave of retaliatory tariffs worth $125 billion Canadian ($87 billion).
March 10
China’s retaliatory 15 percent tariffs on key American farm products — including chicken, pork, soybeans and beef — take effect. Goods already in transit are set to be exempt through April 12, per China’s Commerce Ministry previous announcement.
March 12
Trump’s new tariffs on all steel and aluminum imports go into effect. Both metals are now taxed at 25 percent across the board — with Trump’s order to remove steel exemptions and raise aluminum’s levy from his previously-imposed 2018 import taxes.
The European Union takes retaliatory trade action promising new duties on US industrial and farm products. The measures will cover goods from the United States worth some 26 billion euros ($28 billion), and not just steel and aluminum products, but also textiles, home appliances and agricultural goods. Motorcycles, bourbon, peanut butter and jeans will be hit, as they were during Trump’s first term. The 27-member bloc later says it will delay this retaliatory action until mid-April.
Canada, meanwhile, announces plans to impose more retaliatory tariffs worth Canadian $29.8 billion ($20.7 billion) on US imports, set to go into effect March 13.
March 13
Trump threatens a 200 percent tariff on European wine, Champagne and spirits if the European Union goes forward with its previously-announced plans for a 50 percent tariff on American whiskey.
March 24
Trump says he will place a 25 percent tariff on all imports from any country that buys oil or gas from Venezuela, in addition to imposing new tariffs on the South American country itself, starting April 2.
The tariffs would most likely add to the taxes facing China, which in 2023 bought 68 percent of the oil exported by Venezuela, per the US Energy Information Administration. But a number of countries also receive oil from Venezuela — including the United States itself.
March 26
Trump says he is placing 25 percent tariffs on auto imports. These auto imports will start being collected April 3 — beginning with taxes on fully-imported cars. The tariffs are set to then expand to applicable auto parts in the following weeks, through May 3.
April 2
Trump announces his long-promised “reciprocal” tariffs — declaring a 10 percent baseline tax on imports across the board starting April 5, as well as higher rates for dozens of nations that run trade surpluses with the US to take effect April 9.
Among those steeper levies, Trump says the US will now charge a 34 percent tax on imports from China, a 20 percent tax on imports from the European Union, 25 percent on South Korea, 24 percent on Japan and 32 percent on Taiwan. The new tariffs come on top of previously-imposed levies, including the 20 percent tax Trump announced on all Chinese imports earlier this year.
Meanwhile, for Canada and Mexico, the White House says USMCA-compliant imports can continue to enter the US duty-free. Once the two countries have satisfied Trump’s demands on immigration and drug trafficking, the White House adds, the tariff on the rest of their imports may drop from 25 percent to 12 percent.
April 3
Trump’s previously-announced auto tariffs begin. Prime Minister Mark Carney says that Canada will match the 25 percent levies with a tariff on vehicles imported from the US
April 4
China announces plans to impose a 34 percent tariff on imports of all US products beginning April 10, matching Trump’s new “reciprocal” tariff on Chinese goods, as part of a flurry of retaliatory measures.
The Commerce Ministry in Beijing says it will also impose more export controls on rare earths, which are materials used in high-tech products like computer chips and electric vehicle batteries. And the government adds 27 firms to lists of companies subject to trade sanctions or export controls.
April 5
Trump’s 10 percent minimum tariff on nearly all countries and territories takes effect.
April 9
Trump’s higher “reciprocal” rates go into effect, hiking taxes on imports from dozens of countries just after midnight. But hours later, his administration says it will suspend most of these higher rates for 90 days, while maintaining the recently-imposed 10 percent levy on nearly all global imports.
China is the exception. After following through on a threat to raise levies against China to a total of 104 percent, Trump says he will now raise those import taxes to 125 percent “effective immediately” — escalating tit-for-tat duties that have piled up between the two countries. The White House later clarifies that total tariffs against China are actually now 145 percent, once his previous 20 percent fentanyl tariffs are accounted for.
China upped its retaliation prior to this announcement — vowing to tax American goods at 84 percent starting April 10. Also earlier, EU member states vote to approve their own retaliatory levies on 20.9 billion euros ($23 billion) of US goods in response to Trump’s previously-imposed steel and aluminum tariffs. The EU’s executive commission doesn’t immediately specify which imports it will tax, but notes its counter tariffs will come in stages — with some set to arrive on April 15, and others May 15 and Dec. 1.
Separately, Canada’s counter tariffs on auto imports take effect. The country implements a 25 percent levy on auto imports from the US that do not comply with the 2020 USMCA pact.
April 10
The EU puts its steel and aluminum tariff retaliation on hold for 90 days, to match Trump’s pause on steeper “reciprocal” levies. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen says the commission wants to give negotiations with the US a chance — but warns countermeasures will kick in if talks “are not satisfactory.”
April 11
China says it will raise tariffs on US goods from 84 percent to 125 percent, in response to Trump’s heightened levies. The new rate is set to begin April 12.
Later, the Trump administration unveils that electronics, including smartphones and laptops, will be exempt from so-called “reciprocal” tariffs. But in the days following, US Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick signals that this is only a temporary reprieve, saying that sector-specific levies on semiconductors will arrive in “probably a month or two.” And other, non-“reciprocal” tariffs that tax some electronics, notably from China, remain.
April 14
Trump says he might temporarily exempt the auto industry from tariffs he previously imposed on the sector, to give carmakers time to adjust their supply chains.
The Trump administration also launches investigations into imports of computer chips, chipmaking equipment and pharmaceuticals — signaling next steps toward imposing tariffs on these sectors. The US Commerce Department posts notices about these probes, seeking public comment within the next three weeks.
Separately, the Commerce Department says it’s withdrawing from a 2019 agreement that had suspended an antidumping investigation into fresh tomato imports from Mexico. That termination, set to take effect July 14, means most tomatoes from Mexico will be subject to a 20.91 percent tariff.
