Trump, Donald J

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      Trump’s Tariffs Could Deal a Blow to Boeing and the Aerospace Industry

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      Aerospace companies are big exporters but also very reliant on a global supply chain, making them vulnerable.Boeing is the kind of manufacturer — one that exports billions of dollars of goods — that President Trump says he wants to protect and nurture.But his tariffs could have the opposite effect on the company’s suppliers.Mr. Trump has imposed a few tariffs so far, but he says more are coming in just a few weeks. That threat has unnerved the aerospace industry, of which Boeing is one of the largest companies. Duties on aluminum and steel, two of the most important raw materials used in aircraft, are expected to raise manufacturing costs. But the industry is far more concerned by tariffs that take effect on goods from Canada and Mexico next month, which could disrupt the highly integrated North American supply chain.“These tariffs are particularly fraught for an industry like aerospace that has been duty-free for decades,” said Bruce Hirsch, a trade policy expert at Capitol Counsel, a lobbying firm in Washington, which has aerospace clients. “Parts are coming from everywhere.”Aerospace experts say the industry is an example of U.S. manufacturing prowess. It offers well-paying jobs and has produced one of the largest trade surpluses of any industry for years. Aerospace is expected to export about $125 billion this year, according to IBISWorld, second only to oil and gas.But the industry is operating under a cloud of uncertainty. Many companies have been able to avoid costly cross-border tariffs under a short-term reprieve for products covered by a North American trade agreement that Mr. Trump negotiated in his first term. But that deal expires in April.In a letter to administration officials last week, groups representing airlines, plane repair stations, suppliers and manufacturers asked for an exception to the tariffs, arguing that it was needed to keep the industry competitive on the global market.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Food Safety Jeopardized by Onslaught of Funding and Staff Cuts

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      The Trump administration halted some food testing and shut down a committee studying bacteria in infant formula. Earlier funding cutbacks under the Biden administration now threaten state labs and inspectors.In the last few years, foodborne pathogens have had devastating consequences that alarmed the public. Bacteria in infant formula sickened babies. Deli meat ridden with listeria killed 10 people and led to 60 hospitalizations in 19 states. Lead-laden applesauce pouches poisoned young children.In each outbreak, state and federal officials connected the dots from each sick person to a tainted product and ensured the recalled food was pulled off the shelves.Some of those employees and their specific roles in ending outbreaks are now threatened by Trump administration measures to increase government efficiency, which come on top of cuts already being made by the Food and Drug Administration’s chronically underfunded food division.Like the food safety system itself, the cutbacks and new administrative hurdles are spread across an array of federal and state agencies.At the Food and Drug Administration, freezes on government credit card spending ordered by the Trump administration have impeded staff members from buying food to perform routine tests for deadly bacteria. In states, a $34 million cut by the F.D.A. could reduce the number of employees who ensure that tainted products — like tin pouches of lead-laden applesauce sold in 2023 — are tested in labs and taken off store shelves. F.D.A. staff members are also bracing for further Trump administration personnel reductions.And at the Agriculture Department, a committee studying deadly bacteria was recently disbanded, even as it was developing advice on how to better target pathogens that can shut down the kidneys. Committee members were also devising an education plan for new parents on bacteria that can live in powdered infant formula. “Further work on your report and recommendations will be prohibited,” read a Trump administration email to the committee members.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Inside the 24-Hour Scramble Among Top National Security Officials Over the J.F.K. Documents

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      President Trump’s national security team was stunned and forced to scramble after he announced on Monday that he would release 80,000 pages of documents related to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy with only 24 hours’ notice.Administration officials had been working on releasing the records since January, when Mr. Trump signed an executive order mandating it. But that process was still underway on Monday afternoon when Mr. Trump, during a visit to the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, said the files would be made available the next day.By the time the files were made public on Tuesday evening, some of the country’s top national security officials had spent hours trying to assess any possible security hazards under extreme deadline pressure.John Ratcliffe, the director of the Central Intelligence Agency, had been emphasizing to senior administration officials that some documents had nothing to do with Mr. Kennedy and were developed decades after the assassination, according to four people with knowledge of the discussions. He wanted to make sure that other officials were fully aware of what the files contained and would not be caught off guard, but he was clear that he would not seek to impede any files from being released, the people said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive internal deliberations.Soon after Mr. Trump spoke on Monday afternoon, officials at the National Security Council quickly convened a call to map out a plan to take stock of which documents still needed to be unredacted. The release had to be coordinated with the National Archives and Records Administration. Some officials raised concerns about unintended consequences of rushing the release of the files, including the disclosure of sensitive personal information like the Social Security numbers of people who were still alive, the people said.Officials involved in the process of declassification said the number of files had expanded greatly over many decades because, with each investigation into Kennedy-related material, information that had nothing to do with the assassinated president has come under that umbrella. In some cases, that includes documents created decades after his death, according to one person with knowledge of the process.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Trump Officials Say Deportees Were Gang Members. So Far, Few Details.

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      Families and immigration lawyers argue not all of the deportees sent to a prison in El Salvador over the weekend had ties to gangs.In the days since the federal government sent hundreds of Venezuelan immigrants to a prison in El Salvador, Washington has been debating whether the White House did indeed defy a federal judge who ordered the deportation flights to turn around and head back to the United States.But beyond the Trump administration’s evident animus for the judge and the court, more basic questions remain unsettled and largely unanswered: Were the men who were expelled to El Salvador in fact all gang members, as the United States asserts, and how did the authorities make that determination about each of the roughly 200 people who were spirited out of the country even as a federal judge was weighing their fate?The Trump White House has said that most of the immigrants deported were members of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua, which, like many transnational criminal organizations, has a presence in the United States. Amid the record numbers of migrants arriving at the southern border in recent years, the gang’s presence in some American cities became a rallying cry for Donald J. Trump as he campaigned to return to the White House, claiming immigrants were invading the country.After Mr. Trump returned to power in January, Tren de Aragua remained a regular talking point for him and his immigration advisers, and the deportation flights last week were the administration’s most significant move yet to make good on its promise to go after the gang. But officials have disclosed little about how the men were identified as gang members and what due process, if any, they were accorded before being placed on flights to El Salvador, where the authoritarian government, allied with Mr. Trump, has agreed to hold the prisoners in exchange for a multimillion-dollar payment.The Justice Department refused to answer basic inquiries on Monday about the deportations from the federal judge in Washington, D.C., who had ordered the deportation flight to return to the United States. On Tuesday afternoon, he ordered the Justice Department to submit a sealed filing by noon on Wednesday detailing the times at which the planes had taken off, left American airspace and ultimately landed in El Salvador.More than half of the immigrants deported over the weekend were removed using an obscure authority known as the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, which the Trump administration says it has invoked to deport suspected Venezuelan gang members age 14 or older with little to no due process. The rarely invoked law grants the president broad authority to remove from the United States citizens of foreign countries whom he defines as “alien enemies,” in cases of war or invasion.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Oracle’s Role in TikTok’s Future Gets Capitol Hill Scrutiny

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      Top congressional aides met with Oracle on Tuesday to talk about TikTok, which faces a ban in the United States unless it is sold to a non-Chinese owner by early April.As questions continue to swirl around Washington about the future of TikTok, the name of one potential suitor for the popular video app keeps coming up: Oracle.On Tuesday, Oracle met with top aides on Capitol Hill to talk about how the U.S. tech giant, which processes and serves TikTok user data, plans to work with the Chinese-owned video app in the United States in the coming weeks, according to two people with knowledge of the meeting who weren’t authorized to speak publicly.The questions came as TikTok stares down an April 5 deadline from a federal law that prohibits its distribution in the country if it is not sold to a non-Chinese owner. TikTok’s owner is the Chinese internet company ByteDance, and its Chinese ties have raised questions about whether the app poses a national security threat in the United States.At Tuesday’s meeting, the aides also raised the topic of whether Oracle would be involved in running TikTok, after a recent Politico report that the company was in talks with the White House over a deal, one of the people said. The aides sought assurances from Oracle that any deal would comply with the law. The meeting, which was requested by aides, included staff members from the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party, Speaker Mike Johnson’s office, and the House Energy and Commerce Committee, two people with knowledge of the meeting said.TikTok is facing yet another political scramble over its future. In January, President Trump delayed enforcement of the law that would ban TikTok from the United States, which passed Congress with bipartisan support and was upheld unanimously by the Supreme Court. Mr. Trump has promised to make a deal for the app to protect national security, and tapped Vice President JD Vance in February to find an arrangement to save it.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Trump’s Focus on Ukrainian Nuclear Plant Is Partly Linked to Minerals Deal, Officials Say

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      The U.S. is seeking access to Ukrainian minerals, which require extensive energy to process. The Zaporizhzhia power plant in southern Ukraine, which Russia controls, could help with that, Kyiv says.After months of worry over the possibility of nuclear accidents at the Zaporizhzhia power plant in Ukraine, the reactors were stopped in 2022 and the plant mainly dropped off as a topic of discussion. Until last weekend.That was when President Trump suddenly said he intended to bring up Ukrainian power plants in his planned call on Tuesday with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia to discuss cease-fire proposals. While he did not specifically identify the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant, which has been under Russian control since early in the war, his administration has strongly hinted at it.Why did the plant re-emerge as a topic of discussion?According to a current Ukrainian official and a former one, both of whom have knowledge of talks between the United States and Ukraine, the plant may now be on the table because it is partly tied to negotiations over U.S. access to Ukrainian mineral resources.The possible carrot for the United States: the critical minerals deal with Ukraine that Mr. Trump wants is contingent on extracting and processing those minerals. And that takes a lot of energy, which the six-reactor Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant, Europe’s largest, could provide.Kyiv and Washington have been negotiating for weeks over U.S. access to Ukraine’s untapped deposits of critical minerals, including lithium and titanium, which are crucial for manufacturing modern technologies.Ukraine has told the United States that processing the minerals would be viable only if the Zaporizhzhia plant was back under its control, according to the two Ukrainians, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the talks. The currently serving Ukrainian official said the issue came up again last week during a top-level U.S.-Ukraine meeting in Saudi Arabia to discuss a potential cease-fire.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Trump Administration Pushes Back Against Judge’s Orders on Deportations

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      The Trump administration has asked a federal judge to dissolve the orders he put in place this weekend barring it from deporting suspected members of a Venezuelan street gang from the country under a rarely invoked wartime statute called the Alien Enemies Act.The Justice Department also doubled down on its efforts to avoid giving the judge, James E. Boasberg, the detailed information he had requested about the deportations, asking the federal appeals court that sits over him to intervene and put the case on hold.Taken together, the twin moves — made in separate sets of court papers filed late on Monday — marked a continuation of the Trump’s administration’s aggressive attempts to push back against Judge Boasberg, the chief judge of the Federal District Court in Washington, who temporarily halted one of President Trump’s signature deportation policies.The Justice Department has now effectively opened up two fronts in the battle: one challenging the underlying orders that paused, for now, the deportation flights and another seeking to avoid disclosing any information about the flights that could indicate they took place after the judge’s orders stopping them were imposed.Mr. Trump attacked Judge Boasberg in a social media post on Tuesday morning, albeit without naming him, as “a troublemaker and agitator,” and called for his impeachment. Mr. Trump’s remarks came days after he declared during a speech at the Justice Department that criticizing judges should be illegal.The late night filings and Mr. Trump’s verbal assault followed a day of extraordinary tension between the Trump administration and Judge Boasberg, both inside and outside the courtroom.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Trump Appoints Michael Flynn, Walt Nauta and Other Allies to Oversee U.S. Military Academies

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      President Trump moved on Monday to stack the boards overseeing U.S. military service academies with conservative activists and political allies, including Michael T. Flynn and Walt Nauta, who were charged in connection to earlier investigations of Mr. Trump and his presidential campaign.Mr. Nauta, a military aide working as a White House valet while Mr. Trump was president, was appointed to the board overseeing the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Md. Mr. Nauta was charged with aiding Mr. Trump in obstructing the government’s efforts to retrieve a trove of highly sensitive documents that Mr. Trump kept after he left office — one of four criminal cases against Mr. Trump that shadowed him during his presidential campaign last year.Mr. Flynn, a retired lieutenant general and a national security adviser to Mr. Trump during his first term, was named to the oversight board of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, in New York. Mr. Flynn twice pleaded guilty to lying to the F.B.I. about his conversations with a Russian diplomat during a wider investigation into contacts between the first Trump presidential campaign and Russian officials. Mr. Trump later pardoned Mr. Flynn.Other allies of the president appointed to the oversight boards included Charlie Kirk, a conservative activist whose organization aided Mr. Trump in the 2024 election; Dina Powell, a deputy national security adviser to Mr. Trump; Sean Spicer, Mr. Trump’s first White House press secretary; and Maureen Bannon, the daughter of Steve Bannon who helps run his podcast. Mr. Trump also appointed Republican members of Congress and other military veterans to oversee the academies.Mr. Kirk, who was appointed to the board overseeing the U.S. Air Force Academy in Colorado, had joined other conservatives in assailing the U.S. military leadership before Mr. Trump took office in January, arguing that the armed forces had gone soft under the Biden administration. Soon after the election, he gleefully predicted that Pete Hegseth, now the defense secretary, would “end the wokeification of the U.S. military.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More