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      Trump prepares to unveil reciprocal tariffs as markets brace amid trade war fears

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      As Donald Trump prepared to unveil a swathe of reciprocal tariffs, global markets braced and some Republican senators voiced their opposition to a strategy that critics warn risks a global trade war, provoking retaliation by major trading partners such as China, Canada and the European Union.The US president said on Monday he would be “very kind” to trading partners when he unveils further tariffs this week, potentially as early as Tuesday night.The Republican billionaire insists that reciprocal action is needed because the world’s biggest economy has been “ripped off by every country in the world”, promising “Liberation Day” for the US.He could also unveil more sector-specific levies.Asked for details, he told reporters on Monday: “You’re going to see in two days, which is maybe tomorrow night or probably Wednesday.”But he added: “We’re going to be very nice, relatively speaking, we’re going to be very kind.”Some Republican senators spoke out against Trump’s tariffs on Canada and are considering signing on their support for a resolution blocking them, CNN reported. Senator Susan Collins warned that tariffs on Canada would be particularly harmful to Maine and that she intended to vote for a resolution aimed at blocking tariffs against Canadian goods.Republican Senator Thom Tillis also said he was considering backing the resolution, adding: “We need to fight battles with our foes first and then try to figure out any inequalities with our friends second.”Already, China, South Korea and Japan agreed on Sunday to strengthen free trade between themselves, ahead of Trump’s expected tariff announcement.But Trump said on Monday he was not worried that his action would push allies toward Beijing, adding that a deal on TikTok could also be tied to China tariffs.White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters that the goal on Wednesday would be to announce “country-based tariffs”, although Trump remained committed to imposing separate sector-specific charges.The uncertainty has jolted markets, with key European and Asian indexes closing lower, although the Dow and broad-based S&P 500 eked out gains.Market nervousness intensified after Trump said on Sunday his tariffs would include “all countries”.The Wall Street Journal reported on Sunday that advisers have considered imposing global tariffs of up to 20%, to hit almost all US trading partners. Trump has remained vague, saying his tariffs would be “far more generous” than ones already levied against US products.Trump’s fixation on tariffs is fanning US recession fears. Goldman Sachs analysts raised their 12-month recession probability from 20% to 35%.This reflects a “lower growth forecast, falling confidence and statements from White House officials indicating willingness to tolerate economic pain”. Goldman Sachs also lifted its forecast for underlying inflation at the end of 2025.China and Canada have imposed counter-tariffs on US goods, while the EU unveiled its own measures to start mid-April. Other countermeasures could come after Wednesday.For now, the IMF chief, Kristalina Georgieva, said at a Reuters event on Monday that US tariffs were causing anxiety, although their global economic impact should not be dramatic.Ryan Sweet of Oxford Economics said to “expect the unexpected”, anticipating that Trump would “take aim at some of the largest offenders”.Besides reciprocal country tariffs, Trump could unveil additional sector-specific levies on the likes of pharmaceuticals and semiconductors. He earlier announced car tariffs to take effect on Thursday.Economists have expected the upcoming salvo could target the 15% of partners that have persistent trade imbalances with the US, a group that the US treasury secretary, Scott Bessent, has dubbed a “Dirty 15”.The US has some of its biggest goods deficits with China, the EU, Mexico, Vietnam, Taiwan, Japan, South Korea, Canada and India.US trade partners are rushing to minimise their exposure, with reports suggesting India may lower some duties.The European Central Bank president, Christine Lagarde, said on Monday that Europe should move towards economic independence, telling France Inter radio that Europe faces an “existential moment”.Separately, the British prime minister, Keir Starmer, spoke with Trump on “productive negotiations” towards a UK-US trade deal, while the German chancellor, Olaf Scholz, said the EU would respond firmly to Trump but was open to compromise.It was “entirely possible” for fresh tariffs to be swiftly reduced or put on hold, said Greta Peisch, a partner at law firm Wiley Rein.In February, Washington paused steep levies on Mexican and Canadian imports for a month as the North American neighbours pursued negotiations.With Agence France-Presse More

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      Trump officials to cut Planned Parenthood family planning funds

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      The reproductive health provider Planned Parenthood said the Trump administration would cut federal family planning funding as of Tuesday, affecting birth control, cancer screenings and other services for low-income people.Planned Parenthood said that nine of its affiliates received notice that funding would be withheld under a program known as Title X, which has supported healthcare services for the poor since 1970.The Wall Street Journal reported last week the US Department of Health and Human Services planned an immediate freeze of $27.5m in family planning grants for groups including Planned Parenthood.Planned Parenthood says more than 300 health centers are in the Title X network and Title X-funded centers received more than 1.5m visits in 2023. It not say how much funding would be halted by the Trump administration.The White House and HHS did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment. An HHS spokesperson said last week the department was reviewing grant recipients to ensure compliance with Donald Trump’s executive orders.Alexis McGill Johnson, president and CEO of Planned Parenthood, predicted that cancers would go undetected, access to birth control would be severely reduced, and sexually transmitted infections would increase as a result.“President Trump and Elon Musk are pushing their dangerous political agenda, stripping health care access from people nationwide, and not giving a second thought to the devastation they will cause,” McGill Johnson said in a statement.Trump has named billionaire Musk, who helped the president get elected, to head up an initiative to target government agencies for spending cuts.Conservatives have long sought to defund Planned Parenthood because it also provides abortions. However, US government funding for nearly all abortions has been banned since 1977. More

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      Trump administration deports more alleged gang members to El Salvador

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      The 17 additional people the US shipped off to a prison in El Salvador on Sunday and accused of being tied to transnational gangs were sent there from immigration detention at Guantánamo Bay, a White House official confirmed to the Guardian on Monday afternoon.The secretary of state, Marco Rubio, announced the overnight military transfer, asserting that the group included “murderers and rapists” from the Tren de Aragua and MS-13 gangs, which the Trump administration has recently labeled foreign terrorists.The 17 now-deported individuals were Salvadoran and Venezuelan nationals. Fox News was first to report the names and crimes allegedly committed that the White House has since confirmed.El Salvador’s president, Nayib Bukele, posted on social media that the deportees were “confirmed murderers and high-profile offenders, including six child rapists”.Immigration officials announced in mid-March they had removed all migrants being held at Guantánamo Bay and returned them to the US, just weeks after sending the first batch to the US military base in Cuba. Donald Trump had pledged to carry out the largest deportation operation in US history, and controversially, Guantánamo was considered to be a staging ground for the actions, with options to expand the facilities used for immigration-related detention.Approximately 300 migrants, mostly Venezuelans, were recently deported to El Salvador’s notorious Terrorism Confinement Center (Cecot), a mega-prison notorious for brutal conditions.Family members have repeatedly denied gang affiliations, while the administration has refused to provide evidence, invoking “state secrets” privilege.Questions about the accuracy of these gang allegations have intensified as more information has emerged about some of them, such a 23-year-old gay makeup artist with no apparent gang affiliations who was deported to the Cecot prison without a hearing. His attorney, Lindsay Toczylowski, said officials had previously misinterpreted his tattoos as gang symbols, and that his client was scheduled to appear at an immigration court appearance in the US before he was suddenly sent to El Salvador.The deportations come amid legal challenges to Trump’s use of the 18th-century Alien Enemies Act, which a federal appeals court has blocked. A federal judge has ordered “individualized hearings“ for those targeted for removal.Intelligence agencies reportedly contradict Trump’s claims linking the Tren de Aragua gang to the Venezuelan government, undermining a key justification for the deportations, according to the New York Times.Still, the Trump administration has vowed to continue the deportation strategy through other means, and is currently petitioning the supreme court to lift the block on its use of the wartime deportation powers. More

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      Trump officials to review $9bn in Harvard funds over antisemitism claims

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      The Trump administration announced a review on Monday of $9bn in federal contracts and grants at Harvard University over allegations that it failed to address issues of antisemitism on campus.The multi-agency Joint Task Force to Combat Anti-Semitism said it will review the more than $255.6m in contracts between Harvard University, its affiliates and the federal government, according to a joint statement from the education department, the health department and the General Services Administration. The statement also says the review will include the more than $8.7bn in multi-year grant commitments to Harvard University and its affiliates.“Harvard’s failure to protect students on campus from antisemitic discrimination – all while promoting divisive ideologies over free inquiry – has put its reputation in serious jeopardy. Harvard can right these wrongs and restore itself to a campus dedicated to academic excellence and truth-seeking, where all students feel safe on its campus,” education secretary Linda McMahon said.Any institution that is found to be in “violation of federal compliance standards” could face “administrative actions, including contract termination”, the statement says.The General Services Administration has been asked to facilitate the review of federal funding received by Harvard, including grant and contract reviews across the federal government, according to the statement.The news comes as the Trump administration is in negotiations with Columbia University over $400m in federal funding over alleged similar failures to protect students from antisemitic harassment. The administration initially froze funding to the school before offering preconditions for the institution to be granted the money back.The announcement also comes just two days after at least 94 professors at Harvard Law School signed a letter addressed to students that condemned the Trump administration’s “challenge” to the rule of law and the legal profession.Harvard University did not immediately respond to a request for comment. More

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      ‘We weren’t stuck’: Nasa astronauts tell of space odyssey and reject claims of neglect

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      In the end, whatever Elon Musk and Donald Trump liked to insist, astronauts Barry “Butch” Wilmore and Sunita Williams were never stuck, nor stranded in space, and definitely not abandoned or marooned.The world heard on Monday, for the first time since their return to Earth two weeks ago, from the two Nasa astronauts whose 10-day flight to the international space station (ISS) last summer turned into a nine-month odyssey. And their story was markedly at odds with the narrative painted from the White House.Wilmore and Williams were speaking to reporters at a press conference in Houston, hours after a joint appearance on Fox News, and reaffirmed that they never felt neglected or in need of the rescue the president insisted was necessary.Instead, they said, they calmly assumed duties as members of the space station crew – “planning for one thing, preparing for another”, Wilmore said – while a political firestorm over their status raged back on the ground.If anything, the pair of veteran space flyers appeared slightly bemused by, or largely ignorant of the furore that followed their enforced and protracted stay on the orbiting outpost 250 miles above Earth, caused by technical failures on board their pioneering Boeing Starliner spacecraft that returned in September without them.At the press conference Nasa had called to discuss the science activities the astronauts performed during their time in space, Williams and Wilmore gave diplomatic answers to questions designed to elicit their thoughts.“The stuck and marooned narrative … yes, we heard about that,” Wilmore said, before reverting to a carefully worded explanation of how their training and preparations allowed them to pivot seamlessly from the roles of new spacecraft test pilots to routine ISS crew members who splashed down in the Gulf of Mexico on 18 March on a routine crew rotation flight.“The plan went way off for what we had planned. But because we’re in human spaceflight, we prepare for any number of contingencies. This is a curvy road. You never know where it’s going to go,” he continued.Earlier, in the Fox interview, he pushed back on Musk’s false claim, amplified by Trump, that the astronauts were “abandoned in space by the Biden administration”. Had they felt stuck, stranded or marooned, the interviewer, Bill Hemmer, wondered.“Any of those adjectives, they’re very broad in their definition,” Wilmore said.“So in certain respects we were stuck, in certain respects, maybe we were stranded, but based on how they were couching this, that we were left and forgotten in orbit, we were nowhere near any of that at all.“Stuck? OK, we didn’t get to come home the way we planned. But in the big scheme of things, we weren’t stuck. We planned and trained. Let me comment back on this other [claim], you know, ‘They failed you’. Who? Who’s they?”Williams, too, was reluctant to kick the political football. In orbit, she said, her focus was solely on the work she needed to do.“You sort of get maybe a little bit tunnel-visioned … you do your job type of thing, right, and so you’re not really aware of what else is going on down there,” she said.“I hate to say that maybe the world doesn’t revolve around us, but we revolve around the world, something like that. But I think we were just really focused on what we were doing and trying to be part of the team. Of course, we heard some things … ”The third US astronaut at the press conference, Crew 9 commander Nick Hague, who returned to Earth with Williams and Wilmore, backed up his crewmate.“The politics, kind of, they don’t make it up there when we’re trying to make operational decisions,” he said. “As the commander [I’m] responsible for the safety of this crew and getting them back safely.”Musk, the founder of SpaceX, a key Nasa contractor, has continued to push the story, with no evidence, that the astronauts were effectively held hostage in space by Biden for political advantage. It was a SpaceX Dragon capsule that eventually brought them back to Earth, but it was a spacecraft that had been attached to the ISS for months, not one Trump said he directed Musk to “go get the two brave astronauts”.The billionaire became embroiled in a heated online dispute with Danish astronaut Andreas Mogensen over the claims, and later attacked Mark and Scott Kelly, both retired astronauts and the former now Democratic senator for Arizona, for calling him out.As for the troubled Starliner, whose future is questionable as Boeing and Nasa engineers continue to evaluate the helium leaks and thruster control issues that brought its maiden crewed mission to a premature end, both Williams and Wilmore said they would be happy to fly on it again.Wilmore, as the Starliner mission commander, said there were questions he wished he’d asked during the flight that he believed might have brought a different outcome, and “some shortcomings in tests, shortcomings in preparation, that we did not foresee”. The astronauts will meet Boeing leadership on Wednesday to give first-hand testimony.The whole experience, he said, was a learning curve familiar to those in “the difficult job we all take part in”.“Could you point fingers? I don’t want to point fingers. I hope nobody wants to point fingers. We don’t want to look back and say, ‘shame, shame, shame’. We want to look forward and say, ‘Let’s make the future even more productive and better’.“That’s the way that I look at it. And what I think the way the nation should look at.” More

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      Trump pardons January 6 loyalist and commutes jail time of Hunter Biden associate

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      Donald Trump has issued a full pardon to another person involved with the January 6 insurrection at the US Capitol and commuted the sentence of a former business associate of Hunter Biden, Joe Biden’s scandal-plagued son.Thomas Caldwell, 69, of Berryville, Virginia, has been granted a pardon for his alleged role in the Capitol attack following a series of pardons Trump has given out to those involved with or present during the events on 6 January 2021.Caldwell, a navy veteran, stood trial earlier this year alongside leaders of the Oath Keepers militia. He was acquitted by a jury in Washington’s federal court of seditious conspiracy and two other conspiracy offenses, but was sentenced in January to time served with no probation.At the time, the sentencing was thought to be the ending of a years-long saga for one of the first defendants charged in the government’s largest January 6 case.The Oath Keepers, founded in 2009, is a far-right anti-government extremist militia group. Eleven members of the organization, including its founder and leader, Stewart Rhodes, were indicted for seditious conspiracy for their role in the insurrection.The US Department of Justice previously described the actions of the Oath Keepers militia as “terrorism”.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionDuring the trial, prosecutors said that Caldwell helped coordinate “quick reaction force” teams that prosecutors allege the Oath Keepers stationed outside the capital city, with the purpose of getting weapons into the hands of extremists if they were needed. The weapons were never deployed, and lawyers for the Oath Keepers said they were only there for defensive purposes in case of attacks from leftwing activists.On the day of his inauguration, Trump issued “full, complete and unconditional” presidential pardons for about 1,500 people who were involved in the January 6 attack on Congress, including some convicted of violent acts.Trump has also issued a commuted sentence for Jason Galanis, who had been serving a 14-year federal prison sentence after pleading guilty to a multimillion-dollar scheme involving fraudulent tribal bonds. He is the second former business partner of Hunter Biden to be granted clemency. More

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      Musk’s Doge gains access to federal payroll system despite staff warnings

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      Members of Elon Musk’s so-called “department of government efficiency” (Doge) reportedly gained access to a payroll system over the weekend that processes salaries for about 276,000 federal employees across various government agencies, despite warnings from senior staff about the potential risks.According to two people familiar with the situation who spoke with the New York Times, Doge employees had spent about two weeks trying to obtain administrative access to the program, known as the Federal Personnel and Payroll System.Then, toward the end of last week, senior career officials at the interior department reportedly issued a memo highlighting the unusual nature of the request and the associated risks with granting it.The memo, reviewed by the Times, stated that “such elevated access to critical high-value asset systems is rare with respect to individual systems and no single [Department of Interior] official presently has access to all HR, payroll and credentialing systems.”The senior employees reportedly warned that granting Doge employees this level of access would allow them to be able to view highly sensitive personal information that is subject to controls under the Privacy Act and cautioned that individuals given this elevated access could become targets for cybersecurity attacks by terrorists, nations or other malicious actors.The memo emphasized that gaining administrative access to the system “typically requires training and certification”.“Without formal qualifications, the Department may experience significant failure because of operator error,” the memo said.On Friday, the federal employees reportedly asked the Doge workers to deliver the memo to Doug Burgum, the interior secretary, for his signature, thereby assuming the legal responsibility for the associated risks.However, Burgum reportedly never signed the memo.But on Saturday, interior department officials reportedly granted at least two Doge employees the access they had requested, the two people told the Times.With this access, the Doge employees now have visibility into sensitive employee information, like social security numbers, and are able to more easily hire and fire federal workers, according to the Times, citing the two people with knowledge who spoke with the newspaper on condition of anonymity due to fear of retribution.Meanwhile, Tyler Hassan, the recently named interior department’s acting assistant secretary of policy, management and budget and a former Doge employee, reportedly placed two of the IT officials who had resisted the Doge employees on administrative leave and under investigation for their “workplace behavior”, according to the two sources.In a statement, a spokesperson for the interior department said: “We are working to execute the President’s directive to cut costs and make the government more efficient for the American people and have taken actions to implement President Trump’s Executive Orders.” More

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      Trump makes sweeping HIV research and grant cuts: ‘setting us back decades’

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      The federal government has cancelled dozens of grants to study how to prevent new HIV infections and expand access to care, decimating progress toward eliminating the epidemic in the United States, scientists say.The National Institutes of Health (NIH) terminated at least 145 grants related to researching advancements in HIV care that had been awarded nearly $450m in federal funds. The cuts have been made in phases over the last month.NIH, a division of the Department of Health and Human Services, is the largest funding source of medical research in the world, leaving many scientists scrambling to figure out how to continue their work.“The loss of this research could very well result in a resurgence of HIV that becomes more generalized in this country,” said Julia Marcus, a professor at Harvard Medical School who recently had two of her grants cancelled. “These drastic cuts are rapidly destroying the infrastructure of scientific research in this country and we are going to lose a generation of scientists.”In 2012, the FDA approved pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP), an antiviral drug taken once a day that is highly successful at preventing new HIV infections. While the drug has been a powerful tool to contain the virus, inequities remain in accessing those drugs and sustaining a daily treatment. Despite major progress, there are still 30,000 new infections each year in the US.Many of the terminated HIV-related studies focused on improving access to drugs like PrEP in communities that have higher rates of infections – including trans women and Black men. One of Marcus’s projects was examining whether making PrEP available over the counter would increase the use of the drug in vulnerable communities.“The research has to focus on the populations that are most affected in order to have an impact and be relevant,” said Marcus.Yet, this may be the justification for defunding so many HIV-related studies. A termination letter reviewed by the Guardian dated 20 March cited that “so-called diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) studies are often used to support unlawful discrimination on the basis of race and other protected characteristics, which harms the health of Americans.”The National Institutes of Health did not expand on why the grants were terminated in response to questions from the Guardian. In a statement it said it is “taking action to terminate research funding that is not aligned with NIH and HHS priorities. We remain dedicated to restoring our agency to its tradition of upholding gold-standard, evidence-based science.”Many researchers were left stunned by the scale of the cancellations since in 2019, Donald Trump announced in his State of the Union address a commitment to eliminate the HIV epidemic in the country over the next 10 years. As part of this initiative, his administration negotiated a deal with drug companies to provide free PrEP for 200,000 low-income patients.“Scientific breakthroughs have brought a once-distant dream within reach,” said Trump in his address. “Together we will defeat Aids in America.”Amy Nunn, a professor at the Brown University School of Public Health, said she had even tailored grant proposals to fit the policy goals of the initiative, which included geographically targeting HIV prevention efforts. One of her studies that was terminated focused on closing disparities of PrEP use among African American men in Jackson, Mississippi.“They finally adopted those policies at the federal level,” Nunn said, noting that Trump was the first president to make ending the epidemic a priority. “Now they’re undercutting their own successes. It’s so strange.”Though hundreds of millions of dollars in federal funds had been awarded for the grants, the terminations will not recoup all of that money for the administration, since many are years into their work. Some are even already finished.Nathaniel Albright learned earlier this month that an NIH grant supporting his doctoral research was cancelled even though his project had already been completed. A PhD candidate at Ohio State University, Albright is defending his dissertation at the end of the month. Still, Albright is concerned how the cuts impact the future of the field.“It’s created an environment in academia where my research trajectory is now considered high risk to institutions,” said Albright, who is currently struggling to find postdoctorate positions at universities.Pamina Gorbach, an epidemiologist who teaches at University of California, Los Angeles, had been following hundreds of men living with HIV in Los Angeles for 10 years to learn their needs. She had been awarded an NIH grant to better facilitate their treatment through a local clinic. Her funding was cancelled earlier this month as well.“It’s really devastating,” said Gorbach. “If you’re living with HIV and you’re not on meds, you know what happens? You get sick and you die.”Clinic staff in Los Angeles will likely be laid off as a result of the cuts, said Gorbach. Others agreed one immediate concern was how to pay their research staff, since the funds from a grant are immediately frozen once it is terminated. The NIH funds also often make up at least a portion of university professor’s salaries, all said they were most alarmed by the impact on services for their patients and the loss of progress toward ending the epidemic.“This is erasing an entire population of people who have been impacted by an infectious disease,” said Erin Kahle, the director of the Center for Sexuality and Health Disparities at the University of Michigan who lost an NIH grant.Scrapping an entire category of disease from research will have innumerable downstream effects on the rest of healthcare, she added.“This is setting us back decades,” said Kahle. More