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    Trump officials step up defiance over man wrongly deported to El Salvador

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    The Trump administration escalated its stubborn defiance against securing the release of a man wrongly deported to El Salvador on Monday, advancing new misrepresentations of a US supreme court order.The supreme court last week unanimously ordered the administration to “facilitate” the release of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, who was supposed to have been protected from deportation to El Salvador regardless of whether he was a member of the MS-13 gang.But at an Oval Office meeting between Trump and El Salvador’s president Nayib Bukele, Trump deferred to officials who gave extraordinary readings of the supreme court order and claimed the US was powerless to return Abrego Garcia to US soil.“The ruling solely stated that if this individual at El Salvador’s sole discretion was sent back to our country, we could deport him a second time,” said Trump’s policy chief Stephen Miller, about an order that, in fact, upheld a lower court’s directive to return Abrego Garcia.Miller’s remarks went beyond the tortured reading offered by the US attorney general, Pam Bondi, who also characterized the supreme court order as only requiring the administration to provide transportation to Abrego Garcia if released by El Salvador.“That’s up to El Salvador if they want to return him. That’s up to them,” Bondi said. “The supreme court ruled that if El Salvador wants to return him, we would ‘facilitate’ it, meaning provide a plane.”The remarks at the Oval Office meeting marked an escalation by Trump officials to resist complying with a supreme court order by manufacturing uncertainty in the ruling that reiterated deportations were subject to judicial review.And the fact that the US is paying El Salvador to detain deportees it sends to the notorious Cecot prison undercut the notion that the administration lacked the power to return Abrego Garcia into US custody.The case started when Abrego Garcia was detained by police in 2019 in Maryland, outside a Home Depot, with several other men, and asked about a murder. He denied knowledge of a crime and repeatedly denied that he was part of a gang.Abrego Garcia was subsequently put in immigration proceedings, where officials argued they believed he was part of the MS-13 gang in New York based on his Chicago Bulls gear and on the word of a confidential informant.The case went before a US immigration judge, who suggested that Abrego Garcia could be a member of MS-13 and agreed to a deportation order but shielded him from being sent to El Salvador because he was likely to face persecution there by a local gang.The Trump administration did not appeal against that decision, and Immigration and Customs Enforcement has since said in a court filing that Abrego Garcia’s deportation to El Salvador was an “administrative error”. The supreme court also called his removal illegal.In earlier remarks to reporters on Monday morning, Miller expressly demonstrated he knew the administration had made a mistake because the immigration judge had issued a so-called withholding order, which meant he could not be deported to El Salvador.“When you have a withholding order, to be clear, that is not ‘pause your deportation’. In other words, in the worst-case scenario, it means you get deported to another country,” Miller said.That concession evaporated hours later when he joined Trump, Bukele and a dozen senior officials in the Oval Office and suggested that bringing back Abrego Garcia to the US would be tantamount to kidnapping a citizen of El Salvador.Miller appeared to be suggesting that the US could not force the actions of El Salvador, a sovereign nation. But he then said the supreme court said neither the president nor the secretary of state could forcibly retrieve a citizen of El Salvador from El Salvador – which the order did not say. More

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      The Trump administration trapped a wrongly deported man in a catch-22

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      It is difficult to find a term more fitting for the fate of the Maryland father Kilmar Abrego García than Kafkaesque.Abrego García is one of hundreds of foreign-born men deported under the Trump administration to the Cecot mega-prison in El Salvador as part of a macabre partnership with the self-declared “world’s coolest dictator”, Nayib Bukele.The US government has admitted it deported Abrego García by mistake. But instead of “facilitating” his return as ordered by the supreme court, the administration has trapped Abrego García in a catch-22 by offshoring his fate to a jurisdiction beyond the reach of legality – or, it would seem, basic logic or common decency.The paradox is this: the Trump administration says it cannot facilitate the return of Abrego García because he is in a prison in El Salvador. El Salvador says it cannot return him because that would be tantamount to “smuggling” him into the US.The absurdity of the position played out on Monday during an Oval Office meeting between Donald Trump and Bukele where the two men appeared to enjoy mocking the powerlessness of the US courts to intervene in the fate of anyone caught in the maws of the Trump administration’s deportation machine.“How can I smuggle a terrorist into the United States? I’m not going to do it,” Bukele said when asked about whether he would help to return Abrego García.There is no evidence that Abrego García is a terrorist or a member of the gang MS-13 as the Trump administration has claimed. But that is not really important here.“I don’t have the power to return him to the United States,” Bukele said during a meeting with the US president on Monday. “They’d love to have a criminal released into our country,” Trump added.Trump’s lieutenants also jumped in on Monday, arguing that they could not intervene in the case because Bukele is a foreign citizen and outside of their control.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“He is a citizen of El Salvador,” said Stephen Miller, a top Trump aide who regularly advises the president on immigration issues. “It’s very arrogant even for American media to suggest that we would even tell El Salvador how to handle their own citizens.”A district court injunction to halt the deportation was in effect, he added, an order to “kidnap a citizen of El Salvador and fly him back here”.Marco Rubio, the secretary of state, repeated one of the Trump administration’s mantras: that US courts cannot determine Trump’s foreign policy. Increasingly, the administration is including questions of immigration in that foreign policy in order to defy the courts.Monday’s presentation was in effect a pantomime. Both sides could quickly intervene if they wanted to. But this was a means to an end. Miller said this case would not end with Abrego García living in the US.More broadly, it indicates the Trump administration’s modus operandi: to move quickly before the courts can react to its transgressions and, when they do, to deflect and defy until the damage done cannot be reversed. More

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      Trump memo outlines plan to slash US state department budget in half

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      The Trump administration is reportedly proposing to slash the state department budget by nearly half in a move that could drastically reduce US international spending and end its funding for Nato and the United Nations, according to an internal memorandum.The memo based on spending cuts devised by the White House office of management and budget envisions the total budget of the state department and USAID, the main foreign assistance body which has been largely dismantled by Elon Musk’s “department of government efficiency”, or Doge, being reduced to $28.4bn, a reduction of $27bn or 48% from what Congress approved for 2025.The cuts would mean drastic decreases in funding for humanitarian assistance, global health and international organizations. Humanitarian assistance programs and global health funding would be slashed by 54% and 55% respectively, according to the memo, which was first reported by the Washington Post.The memo assumes that USAID, previously an independent agency before it was targeted by Doge, would be encompassed fully under the state department umbrella.There would also be drastic reductions to the state department workforce, which currently stands at 80,000.The memo proposes the elimination of 90% of support for international organizations, with financing for some 20 bodies – including the Nato alliance and the UN – eliminated.Targeted funding for the International Atomic Energy Agency and the International Civil Aviation Authority would continue but backing for international peacekeeping missions would end, according to the memo, citing unspecified “recent mission failures”.The cuts would also see the foreign service travel budget and benefits for staff severely curtailed, while the Fulbright scholarship, established by Congress in 1946 and which has facilitated educational exchanges involving more than 40 future heads of state or government, would be eliminated.So too would Bureau of Conflict and Stabilization Operations, which aims to anticipate and prevent wars around the globe.The cuts are yet to be agreed within the administration and would need to be approved by Congress, where they would be likely to encounter stiff resistance, even among many Republicans.The memo, dated 10 April, is signed by Douglas Pitkin, director of budget and planning at the state department, and Peter Marocco, who was until recently the department’s director of foreign assistance and acting deputy director of USAID.Marco Rubio, the secretary of state – who has hitherto favored an activist US role in international affairs – has until Tuesday to respond, the memo says.Chris Van Hollen, the ranking Democrat on the state department and USAID subcommittee of the Senate foreign relations committee, criticized the proposals as “an unserious budget”.“I predict it will hit a wall of bipartisan opposition,” he told the Post.The American Foreign Service Association called on Congress to reject any budget proposing cuts outlined in the memo, which it called “reckless and dangerous”. The cuts suggested “would empower adversaries like China and Russia who are eager to fill the void left by a retreating United States”, the association said. More

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      The Guardian view on Friedrich Merz’s grand coalition: gambling on a new centre ground | Editorial

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      Some years ago, hundreds of German finance ministry staff dressed in black and formed a giant zero to salute their boss, Wolfgang Schäuble, as he left office. It was a tribute to Mr Schäuble’s extreme fiscal conservatism, which had delivered Germany’s first balanced budget in the postwar period. Amid resurgent prosperity in the Angela Merkel years, the so-called black zero – symbolising a constitutional prohibition on public debt – had gradually acquired cult status.As a new administration prepares to take power in Berlin, it seems unlikely that human euro signs will welcome the latest politician to take on Mr Schäuble’s former role. But in dramatic fashion, the spending taps are set to be turned on. Via a swiftly staged March vote in the outgoing Bundestag, “debt brake” dogma was consigned to history by the chancellor‑elect, Friedrich Merz. The way was thus paved for groundbreaking expenditure on defence, and the overhaul of an economy being left behind in a changed, suddenly menacing world.So much for the theory – now for the practice. Mr Merz, the centre-right leader of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), last week concluded the fastest set of coalition talks since 2009. Pending approval of the deal by Social Democratic party (SPD) members, he is expected to be sworn in as chancellor in by early May. In office, the “grand coalition” agreed between the CDU and the SPD – handed seven ministries including finance and defence – will immediately be confronted by challenges that dwarf those faced by almost all its predecessors.The US under Donald Trump, whether as economic partner or military ally, can no longer be relied upon – an era-defining shift whatever the outcome of the current tariff wars and Mr Trump’s negotiations with Moscow over Ukraine. China, once a vast outlet for the exports which fuelled growth, has morphed into a fearsome competitor, including on German soil. A stagnant economy, combined with a post-Merkel backlash against migration, has accelerated the rise of Alternative für Deutschland (AfD), one of the most extreme far‑right parties in Europe. Last week, a poll fatefully placed the AfD in the lead for the first time.The pressure from the right – both from within his own party and from the AfD – is having an impact. Mr Merz’s Trumpian promise to turn asylum seekers away at German borders from his “first day”, along with other draconian measures, will only allow the far right to up the ante still further. Meanwhile, he also appears to be looking for wriggle room on agreed coalition commitments to the less well off and to climate targets.Nevertheless, the broad economic thrust of the deal remains right for troubling times. The European Central Bank must play its part – by keeping yields on a leash. As Germany’s neighbours deal with similar geopolitical threats and uncertainties, the ability of the EU’s most powerful member state to show leadership and forge a path through the crisis will be crucial. With short-term growth acutely vulnerable to mood swings in the White House, the effects of spending will take time to be felt in people’s everyday lives. But the prospect of a transformative increase in public investment offers the hope of industrial renaissance and a restoration of voters’ trust in the political centre.Alongside his SPD counterparts last week, Mr Merz confidently announced that Germany was “back on track”. Europe badly needs him to be right.

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      Tariff turmoil to continue as Trump warns nobody ‘off the hook’ amid smartphone exemption – US politics live

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      Good morning and welcome to our US politics blog.In an announcement made late on Friday evening, Donald Trump’s presidential administration exempted smartphones and computers from the 125% levies imposed on imports from China as well as other “reciprocal” tariffs.The devices would be excluded from the 10% global tariff that Trump recently imposed on most countries, along with the much heftier import tax on China, in what seemed like a softening of the president’s trade positioning towards Beijing.US stock markets were expected to stage a recovery after the announcement. Shares in Apple and chip maker Nvidia were on course to surge after tariffs on their products imported into the US were lifted for three months.China’s commerce ministry said the exemption demonstrated the US taking “a small step toward correcting its erroneous unilateral practice of ‘reciprocal tariffs’,” and suggested the American administration cancel the whole punitive tariff regime.However, Trump’s commerce secretary, Howard Lutnick, said on Sunday that critical technology products from China would face separate new duties along with semiconductors within the next two months.“He’s saying they’re exempt from the reciprocal tariffs, but they’re included in the semiconductor tariffs, which are coming in probably a month or two,” Lutnick said in an interview on ABC. “These are things that are national security, that we need to be made in America.”Amid the confusion over the White House’s tariff policy, Trump said he would provide more details on his administration’s approach on semiconductor tariffs later today.But he suggested any tariff exemption for China-made smartphones would be short-lived, writing on his social media: “Nobody is getting off the hook for unfair trade balances”. Stay with us throughout the day as we bring you the latest tariff developments and other US political stories.Spain’s economy minister, Carlos Cuerpo, is expected to meet the US treasury secretary, on Tuesday as he aims to bolster bilateral ties between the two countries.The Trump administration has slapped a 10% tariff on imports of most European goods, including olive oil, although it announced a 90-day pause last week on higher, 25% “reciprocal” duties.Spain is the world’s top exporter of olive oil and also sells important quantities of auto parts, steel and chemicals to the US. The country’s prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, has announced a €14.1bn (£12.2bn; $16bn) government aid package to industry to lessen the domestic impact of Trump’s levies.Maya Yang, a breaking news reporter and live blogger for Guardian US, has filed this story about a warning over the potential consequences of Trump’s erratic economic policies:Billionaire investor Ray Dalio said that he is worried the US will experience “something worse than a recession” as a result of Donald Trump’s trade policies.Speaking to NBC’s Meet the Press on Sunday, the 75-year-old hedge fund manager said: “I think that right now we are at a decision-making point and very close to a recession. And I’m worried about something worse than a recession if this isn’t handled well.”He went on to add: “A recession is two negative quarters of GDP and whether it goes slightly there. We always have those things. We have something that’s much more profound. We have a breaking down of the monetary order. We are going to change the monetary order because we cannot spend the amounts of money.”Dalio’s comments come in response to a tumultuous week across the global stock markets following the US president’s tariffs policies that include a 145% tariff raise on China. The billionaire also said there are “profound changes in our domestic order … and world order”, comparing current times with the 1930s.“I’ve studied history and this repeats over and over again. So if you take tariffs, if you take debt, if you take the rising power challenging existing power, if you take those factors and look at the factors, those changes in the orders, the systems, are very, very disruptive. How that’s handled could produce something that is much worse than a recession. Or it could be handled well,” he said.Dalio, who correctly predicted the 2008 recession, also said the current economic state of the US is “at a juncture”.“Let’s take the budget. If the budget deficit can be reduced to 3% of GDP, it will be about 7% if things are not changed. If it could be reduced to about 3% of GDP, and these trade deficits and so on are managed in the right way, this could all be managed very well,” he said.He went on to urge congressional members to take what he calls the “3% pledge”, adding that if they don’t, there will be a supply and demand problem for debt with results that will be “worse than a normal recession.”You can read the full story here:Chinese President Xi Jinping will be welcomed by Vietnam’s President Luong Cuong today as he seeks to strengthen economic ties in south-east Asia amid a trade war with Washington that has caused turmoil in global markets.In an article for the Nhan Dan newspaper, Xi called for more regional cooperation, saying China and Vietnam were “friendly socialist neighbours sharing the same ideals and extensive strategic interests”.He added that a “trade war and tariff war will produce no winner, and protectionism will lead nowhere”, without explicitly mentioning the US.The visit, planned for weeks, comes as Beijing faces 145% US duties, while Vietnam is negotiating a reduction of threatened US tariffs of 46%. China is Vietnam’s biggest trading partner; Hanoi has a good relationship with both Washington and Beijing.As my colleague Rebecca Ratcliffe notes in this story, officials in Hanoi were shocked when Vietnam was hit with the 46% tariff, even after various efforts to appease the Trump administration. The tariff, which has been paused, threatens to devastate the country’s ambitious economic growth plan.Xi will visit Vietnam, a manufacturing powerhouse, from 14 to 15 April, and Malaysia and Cambodia from 15 to 18 April. He last visited Cambodia and Malaysia nine and 12 years ago, respectively.Xi’s trip to Hanoi, his second in less than 18 months, aims to consolidate relations with a strategic neighbour that has received billions of dollars of Chinese investments in recent years as China-based manufacturers moved south to avoid tariffs imposed by the first Trump administration.Good morning and welcome to our US politics blog.In an announcement made late on Friday evening, Donald Trump’s presidential administration exempted smartphones and computers from the 125% levies imposed on imports from China as well as other “reciprocal” tariffs.The devices would be excluded from the 10% global tariff that Trump recently imposed on most countries, along with the much heftier import tax on China, in what seemed like a softening of the president’s trade positioning towards Beijing.US stock markets were expected to stage a recovery after the announcement. Shares in Apple and chip maker Nvidia were on course to surge after tariffs on their products imported into the US were lifted for three months.China’s commerce ministry said the exemption demonstrated the US taking “a small step toward correcting its erroneous unilateral practice of ‘reciprocal tariffs’,” and suggested the American administration cancel the whole punitive tariff regime.However, Trump’s commerce secretary, Howard Lutnick, said on Sunday that critical technology products from China would face separate new duties along with semiconductors within the next two months.“He’s saying they’re exempt from the reciprocal tariffs, but they’re included in the semiconductor tariffs, which are coming in probably a month or two,” Lutnick said in an interview on ABC. “These are things that are national security, that we need to be made in America.”Amid the confusion over the White House’s tariff policy, Trump said he would provide more details on his administration’s approach on semiconductor tariffs later today.But he suggested any tariff exemption for China-made smartphones would be short-lived, writing on his social media: “Nobody is getting off the hook for unfair trade balances”. Stay with us throughout the day as we bring you the latest tariff developments and other US political stories. More

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      ‘The sky won’t fall’: China plays down Trump tariff risks as stock markets rally

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      China has played down the risk of damage to its exports from Donald Trump’s tariffs, with an official saying the “the sky won’t fall”, as stock markets rose on Monday amid signs of a retreat on electronics restrictions.The world’s second-largest economy has diversified its trade away from the US in recent years, according to Lyu Daliang, a customs administration spokesperson, in comments reported by state-owned agency Xinhua.China has retaliated forcefully to Washington’s tariffs, with 125% levies on US imports against the US’s total of 145% border taxes on goods moving the other way. The trade war has prompted turmoil on financial markets since Trump first revealed tariffs on every country in the world on 2 April. Since then he has partly retreated on the highest levies on most trading partners for at least 90 days, but has doubled down in his spat with China.The White House offered further relief over the weekend with an exemption from the steepest tariffs for electronics including smartphones, laptops and semiconductors. Trump officials later appeared to walk that back with the commerce secretary, Howard Lutnick, saying such devices would be “included in the semiconductor tariffs which are coming in probably a month or two”.Trump said on Sunday night on his social network, Truth Social, that “NOBODY is getting ‘off the hook’”, highlighting that smartphones are still subject to 20% levies and suggesting they could still rise higher.However, investors on Monday appeared unconvinced by Trump’s attempts to play down the retreat. Japan’s Nikkei gained 1.2% while Hong Kong’s Hang Seng rose by 2.2% and the Shanghai and Shenzhen exchanges climbed by 0.8% and 1.2%, respectively. European stock market indices also jumped in opening trades, with London’s FTSE 100 up by 1.6%, Germany’s Dax up 2.2%, and France’s Cac 40 up 2%.“The sky won’t fall” for Chinese exports,” China’s Lyu said. “These efforts have not only supported our partners’ development but also enhanced our own resilience”.The customs report also played up China’s “vast domestic market”, and said “the country will turn domestic certainty into a buffer against global volatility”. China has increasingly tried to stimulate private consumption.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionChina’s president, Xi Jinping, on Monday criticised the US tariffs, during a visit to Vietnam. Vietnam has in recent decades grown to become the eighth largest source of goods for US consumers, but it is facing the threat of 46% tariffs when Trump’s 90-day pause expires.In an article in a Vietnamese newspaper, Xi said that a “trade war and tariff war will produce no winner, and protectionism will lead nowhere”. More

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      It is difficult to imagine a post-American world. But imagine it we must | Nesrine Malik

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      “People speak with forked tongues about America,” a veteran foreign correspondent once said to me. It was a long time ago – during a debate about whether the US should intervene in a foreign conflict – and I have never forgotten it. What they meant was that just as the US is condemned for foreign intervention in some instances, it is also called upon to do so in others and then judged for not upholding its moral standards. That dissonance persists, and is even more jarring as we approach the 100th day of Donald Trump’s second term. There is a duality to how the US is seen: as both a country that wantonly violates international law and as the only one capable of upholding that system of law and order. This duality, always tense, is no longer sustainable.I have felt this ambivalence myself – the contradictory demand that the US stay out of it but also anger that it is not doing more. In Sudan, Washington frustratingly refuses to pressure its ally, the UAE, into stopping pumping arms and funding into the conflict. But what proof or history is there to support the delusional notion that the US cares about a conflict in which it has no direct interest? It is an expectation of moral policing from an amoral player that I remember even in childhood, after Iraq invaded Kuwait and the Arab world was rocked with fear of regional war. A fierce debate in our classroom in Sudan on the merits of US intervention was silenced by one indignant evacuee from Kuwait, who said that the most important thing was to defeat Saddam Hussein. Her words occasionally echo in my mind: “We must deal with the greater evil first.”Even in Gaza, as Congress passed package after package of billions in military aid to Israel, there remained some residual hope – long extinguished now – that the phone call to Benjamin Netanyahu would finally come. And even as Trump emboldens Vladimir Putin, abandons Ukraine and slaps tariffs on allies, you can detect that belief in the fundamental viability of the US as an actor that can still default to rationality, and even morality.But, for the first time that I can remember, the conversation is going in a new direction. The appeals to the difference between the presidency and other more solid US institutions are quieter now, as universities, law firms and even parts of the press kowtow to their erratic new king. The questions now being asked are about how Europe and the rest of the world can pivot away from the US, from its USAID programmes nestled within the health budgets of developing countries, and its global system of military assistance and deterrence. But they sound less like practical suggestions and more like attempts to get heads around a reality that is impossible to countenance.The challenge is technical and psychological. It is difficult to imagine a post-American world because America crafted that world. When the US becomes a volatile actor, the very architecture of the global financial order starts to wobble. We saw this in the crisis of confidence in the dollar in the aftermath of Trump’s “liberation-day” tariffs. The robustness of the rule of law and separation of powers – cornerstones of confidence in an economy – are also now in doubt, as the administration goes to war with its own judiciary and the president himself boasts about how many people in the room with him made a killing out of his stock market crash. Is it insider trading if your source is the president?Just as formidable is the mental task of divestment from the US. A friend who holds a green card but lives under an illiberal regime in Asia told me that, deep down, he always felt protected from the dangers of his country’s domestic politics by the knowledge that there was a safe haven to which he could retreat in case of persecution. No longer, as legal residents and visitors are hounded by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) or turned away at the border. I know others who have cancelled work trips to the US for fear of deportation or blacklisting. With that insecurity comes an awareness that, for some in the global south who always knew that the US was not a benign presence, there was still the belief that there was something within its own borders that curbed its excesses. This was partly true, but also a reflection of US cultural power. The pursuit of liberty and the pursuit of happiness, “give me … your huddled masses”, the Obama hope iconography; all resonant and powerful touchstones. They are now reduced to dust. It is one thing to know that the US was never the sum of these parts, but another to accept it.And there is a fear in accepting it. Because, for all its violations, the advent of a post-US world induces a feeling of vertigo. A world in which there is no final authority at all might be scarier than a world where there is a deeply flawed one. What is daunting is the prospect of anarchy, a new world where there is no organising principle in a post-ideological, everyone-for-themselves system. Not a cold war order divided into capitalist, communist and non-aligned. And not a post-cold war one divided into western liberal overlords, competing non-democracies and, below them, smaller clients of both.But what the US’s breakdown should really trigger is not overwhelm and bewilderment, but a project to build a new global order in which we all have a stake. What the US chooses to do in terms of foreign and economic policy can affect your shopping basket and the very borders of the nation state in which you live. It remains the world’s largest economy, has the world’s largest military, and is the home of the world’s most powerful entertainment complex. This centrality combined with its collapse reveals the fact that the problem goes deeper than Trump. The world was always dangerously overexposed to whatever direction the US took.Ironically, this all might be the beginning of a process that leads to genuine “liberation days” for other countries, but not the US itself. There is pain ahead, but also a sort of independence. Above all, there might finally be a recognition that the US’s definition of peace and prosperity was always its own, enforced by sheer force of power and propaganda.

      Nesrine Malik is a Guardian columnist

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      US deports 10 more alleged gang members to El Salvador, says Rubio

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      The US has deported another 10 people that it alleges are gang members to El Salvador, secretary of state Marco Rubio said on Sunday, a day before that country’s president is due to visit the White House.“Last night, another 10 criminals from the MS-13 and Tren de Aragua Foreign Terrorist Organizations arrived in El Salvador,” Rubio said in an Twitter/X post.The alliance between Donald Trump and El Salvador president Nayib Bukele “has become an example for security and prosperity in our hemisphere”, Rubio added.The US president is due to meet Bukele at the White House on Monday.Trump said on Saturday he was looking forward to meeting Bukele and praised him for taking “enemy aliens” from the United States. He said the two countries were working closely to “eradicate terrorist organizations”.Administration officials have repeatedly made public statements alleging that detained immigrants are gang members that they have not backed up in court.The Trump administration has deported hundreds of Venezuelans to a prison in El Salvador under the 1798 Alien Enemies Act.Lawyers and relatives of the migrants held in El Salvador say they are not gang members and had no opportunity to contest the US government assertion that they were. The Trump administration says it vetted migrants to ensure they belonged to Tren de Aragua, which it labels a terrorist organization.The deportations have been challenged in federal court. The US supreme court said the US government must give sufficient notice to immigrant detainees to allow them to contest their deportations. It did not say how those already in El Salvador could seek judicial review of their removals.The White House has come under fire recently after a Maryland man was wrongly deported to El Salvador last month. He was deported on one of three high-profile deportation flights to El Salvador made up chiefly of Venezuelans whom the government had accused of being gang members and assumed special powers to expel without a hearing.Trump administration lawyers were able to confirm on Saturday that Kilmar Abrego García, 29, remains confined in a notorious prison in El Salvador. However, the White House did not detail the steps it was taking to return Abrego García to the United States. More

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      US stock markets expected to recover after Trump drops tariffs on mobiles

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      US stock markets were expected to stage a recovery on Monday after Donald Trump excluded imports of smartphones and laptops from his tariff regime late on Friday night.Shares in Apple and chip maker Nvidia were on course to soar after tariffs on their products imported into the US were lifted for 90 days.The temporary reprieve was widely seen as a climbdown after pressure from Republican leaders concerned that the soaring cost of smartphones would spark a voter backlash. US retailers import about 80% of all smartphones, many of them from China, which Trump has slapped with tariffs totalling 145%.US Customs and Border Protection said items like laptops, hard drives, smartphones, flat-panel monitors and some chips would qualify for the exemption. Vital machines made outside the US that are used to make semiconductors were also excluded.It means these products will avoid the China tariff and the 10% baseline tariffs applied on other countries caught by the new regime.Speaking on Air Force One on Saturday evening, Trump said he would be more specific about the latest exemption rules on Monday. “We’ve been making a lot of money,” he said. “It’s been the other way around. Other countries, in particular China was making a lot of money.”It is not clear how long the exemption will last or whether separate tariffs will be negotiated on the specific products.China has responded with a tariff on all US exports of 125%. Beijing said at the weekend that the reprieve for smartphones was a “small step” toward easing the trade fight between the world’s two biggest economies.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionHowever, the US commerce secretary, Howard Lutnick, said the reprieve was likely to be lifted in 90 days and reiterated Trump’s longstanding plan to apply a different, specific levy to the sector.Speaking on NBC, he said: “All those products are going to come under semiconductors, and they’re going to have a special focus-type of tariff to make sure that those products get reshored. We can’t be relying on China for fundamental things that we need.”Lutnick dismissed interpretations of Trump’s reprieve that argued it reflected the president’s realisation that his China tariffs were unlikely to shift more manufacturing of smartphones, computers and other gadgets to the US in the near future.On Sunday Trump warned that no country would be getting “off the hook” on his punishing tariffs, again singling out China for criticism. “NOBODY is getting ‘off the hook’ for the unfair Trade Balances,” Trump wrote in a post on his Truth Social platform. “Especially not China which, by far, treats us the worst!”Apple has spent decades building up a finely tuned supply chain in east Asia, including inside China. The firm has pledged to move some facilities back to the US over the next four years, which will cost it $500bn, including constructing a giant factory in Texas for artificial intelligence servers but was expecting to retain much of its international network as it expands its sales.Trump’s move at the start of April to impose tariffs on imports to the US battered the stocks of tech’s magnificent seven – Apple, Microsoft, Nvidia, Amazon, Tesla, Google parent Alphabet and Facebook parent Meta Platforms.At one point, they lost $2.1tn, or 14% of their value, from 2 April. Shares have recovered since last Wednesday after Trump paused the tariffs except on China, allowing tech firms to use India and other conduits to import smartphones. More