Mexico’s president says Trump has agreed to one-month pause on tariffs
Mexican president Claudia Sheinbaum said Donald Trump has agreed to hold off imposing tariffs for one month, Reuters reports.
Trump and the White House did not immediately confirm the pause. Sheinbaum said the deal was reached after she spoke on the phone to the US president, but it was unclear what Mexico offered in return.
Key events
In response to Elon Musk’s Trump-sanctioned meddling in USAid, the Wall Street Journal reports that Democratic senator Brian Schatz has vowed to prevent quick confirmation of the president’s picks for state department roles.
By blocking unanimous consent in the chamber, Schatz will forced Republicans to use floor time to confirm state department nominees, which will delay the passage of legislation.
“I will oppose unanimous consent,” Schatz told the Journal. “I will vote no. I will do maximal delays until this is resolved.”
Trump administration puts Musk in charge of potential merger of USAID, state department
The Trump administration has put Elon Musk in charge of a potential merger of USAid into the state department, Reuters reports.
Citing a senior White House official, the combination would “significantly reduce the size of the workforce [of USAid] for efficiency purposes”, and the administration plans to soon send formal notification to Congress of the move.
The plans comes as employees of the agency tasked with administering the United State’s foreign aid programs have been locked out of their offices, and the agency’s website has been taken down. Here’s more:
Official who wrote ‘competent white men must be in charge’ set for state department role – report
Darren Beattie, a former Trump White House official who was fired for attending a conference with white nationalists, is set to be appointed to a senior state department role, Semafor reports.
The appointment has not yet been made public, but Semafor says secretary Marco Rubio plans to name Beattie as acting undersecretary of state for public diplomacy. Beattie has made a number of controversial statements in public, including comparing “the coordinated efforts of government bureaucrats, NGOs, and the media to oust President Trump” to Western-backed pro-democracy efforts in eastern Europe. Last October, he wrote this on X:
Competent white men must be in charge if you want things to work.
Unfortunately, our entire national ideology is predicated on coddling the feelings of women and minorities, and demoralizing competent white men.
This is far from the first time that Mexico has deployed troops to its borders to stop migrants, at the behest of the United States.
At the start of Joe Biden’s presidency in 2021, Mexico agreed to send soldiers to its southern border stop migrants heading north to the United States. Migrants arrivals in the United States nonetheless surged during Biden’s term, and the issue was successfully used by Donald Trump to win re-election.
This time, Mexico will deploy troops to its northern border with the United States in exchange for a one-month reprieve from Trump’s tariffs. The president has also sent active-duty US soldiers to its side of the border, with the task of stopping migrants. Here’s more on that:
US stock indices have clawed back much of their losses after Donald Trump announced a pause on his plan to impose tariffs on Mexico, while the peso has also rallied.
However, tariffs on Canada and Mexico are still scheduled to go into effect on Tuesday. Our business blog has more:
In a post on X, Mexico’s president Claudia Sheinbaum said that the United States had agreed to take action on preventing guns from flowing into her country.
She added that the countries’ dialogue will focus on “security and trade”. The 25% tariffs that were supposed to begin on Tuesday are now paused for a month from today.
Trump says he held off on tariffs after Mexico agreed to deploy troops to border
Donald Trump has confirmed his administration will hold off on imposing tariffs on Mexico for one month, after Claudia Sheinbaum’s government agreed to deploy troops to its border with the United States.
Here’s Trump’s full statement, from Truth Social:
I just spoke with President Claudia Sheinbaum of Mexico. It was a very friendly conversation wherein she agreed to immediately supply 10,000 Mexican Soldiers on the Border separating Mexico and the United States. These soldiers will be specifically designated to stop the flow of fentanyl, and illegal migrants into our Country. We further agreed to immediately pause the anticipated tariffs for a one month period during which we will have negotiations headed by Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Secretary of Treasury Scott Bessent, and Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick, and high-level Representatives of Mexico. I look forward to participating in those negotiations, with President Sheinbaum, as we attempt to achieve a “deal” between our two Countries.
Mexico’s president says Trump has agreed to one-month pause on tariffs
Mexican president Claudia Sheinbaum said Donald Trump has agreed to hold off imposing tariffs for one month, Reuters reports.
Trump and the White House did not immediately confirm the pause. Sheinbaum said the deal was reached after she spoke on the phone to the US president, but it was unclear what Mexico offered in return.
In response to the Trump administration’s tariffs on Canada, the premier of the most populous province Ontario says he’s banning government contracts with American firms, and canceling a deal with Elon Musk’s Starlink, the Associated Press reports.
Here’s more:
Ontario Premier Doug Ford, who said he is also banning American companies from provincial contracts, signed a $100-million Canadian (US$68 million) with Musk’s company in November to deliver high-speed internet to remote residents in rural and northern Ontario.
“We’ll be ripping up the province’s contract with Starlink. Ontario won’t do business with people hellbent on destroying our economy,” Ford said in a post on X.
Ford said U.S.-based businesses will lose out on “tens of billions of dollars” in new revenues as a result of Ontario’s response. “They only have President Trump to blame,” he said.
Ontario and other provinces already planned to remove American liquor brands from government store shelves. The Liquor Control Board of Ontario sells nearly $1 billion worth of American wine, beer, spirits and seltzers every year, Ford pointed.
“Canada didn’t start this fight with the U.S., but you better believe we’re ready to win it,” said Ford, who called an election for his province last week.
As predicted, Donald Trump’s salvo of tariffs on Canada, Mexico and China has caused US stock indices to fall – but not by a huge amount.
We have a separate live blog covering all the action on Wall Street, and you can read it here:
In a post on Truth Social, Donald Trump said he had spoken to Canada’s prime minister Justin Trudeau today, and that they’ll talk again at 3pm.
Ottawa, along with plenty of US businesses, is digesting the impact of the tariffs Trump levied on them over the weekend.
The invocation of the Alien Enemies Act was one of Donald Trump’s first moves upon being sworn in, though he delayed its implementation by two weeks, to today.
Trump has done plenty and said even more since his 20 January return to the White House, and we’ve built a tracker to organize it all. Have a look:
Trump expected to use Alien Enemies Act to speed up deportations
Donald Trump may as soon as today make good on his campaign promise to use an obscure 18th-century law to make it easier to deport undocumented immigrants, Reuters reports.
After being sworn in, the president gave federal agencies until 3 February to prepare to invoke the 1798 Alien Enemies Act, a law that will allow migrants suspected of illegal activity to be deported without the court hearing that typically must occur first. Use of the law, which has been used to justify the second world war internments of Americans of Japanese descent, is expected to face legal challenges.
Here’s more, from Reuters:
After taking office, Trump ordered military and immigration officials to be ready by Feb. 3 to implement the 1798 Alien Enemies Act, last used to justify internment camps for people of Japanese, German and Italian descent during World War Two. The move – which would almost certainly face legal challenges – could allow him to bypass due process rights and rapidly remove migrants.
Trump, a Republican, stormed back into the White House promising to deport millions of immigrants in the U.S. illegally – an action he said was necessary after high levels of illegal immigration under Democrat Joe Biden.
Trump issued a flurry of executive actions to redirect military resources to support the mass deportation effort and empowered U.S. immigration officers to make more arrests, including at schools, churches and hospitals – even though those specific measures are unpopular and highly contested by civil and immigrant rights groups.
But even with Trump’s sweeping early actions, his administration will have to contend with overwhelmed immigration courts where asylum cases can take years to resolve. Trump expanded a fast-track deportation process known as expedited removal, but it only applies to those in the U.S. for two years or less and still gives migrants the ability to claim asylum.
The Alien Enemies Act could allow Trump to rapidly deport migrants deemed part of an “invasion or predatory incursion” – a novel use of a law previously only invoked in wartime. Republicans frequently refer to illegal immigration as an invasion and portray migrants as dangerous criminals and “military-aged.”
Donald Trump views Elon Musk as doing his “dirty work” in launching an unprecedented takeover of federal government operations, the Washington Post reports.
Musk, who was Trump’s top donor in the presidential campaign, has reportedly gained access to a secure system the Treasury uses to process payments, and taken over access to USAID, which he has condemned as “a criminal organization”.
While Trump has been making his own norm-shattering moves since returning to the White House, he’s given Musk a fairly long leash to accomplish his goal of transforming the federal government, according to the Post:
Trump is not closely monitoring Musk’s moves, according to people close to the president, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to speak publicly. But the people said Trump views Musk as doing the task he assigned him, and the president benefits from letting someone else take the heat for drastic and controversial measures. One adviser described Musk as doing “the dirty work,” noting that his public approval ratings were dropping.
One place we will see immediate impact of Donald Trump’s tariffs on the United State’s top trading partners: Wall Street.
Stock trading has not yet begun for the day, but futures indicates markets are primed for a sell off, albeit not necessarily a huge one.
The benchmark Dow Jones industrial average is down 1.3% in pre-market trading and the broad-based S&P 500 is 1.5% lower. The tech-heavy Nasdaq is 1.7% lower.
That markets have not sold off more is perhaps an indication that traders do not quite believe these tariffs will stick. We’ll see if that optimism lasts throughout the day.
Political website The Hill is this morning carrying some quotes from Democratic strategist Christy Setzer, who has expressed frustration at the tactics being employed by Democratic party representatives and senators in assisting Donald Trump in assembling his administration. She says:
Democratic leadership acts like it’s permanently 2006, a year when, yes, we took back the Senate, but also before the Republican party found a cult leader and lost its collective minds.
We don’t live in that world any more. We have a lifelong conman and convicted felon in the Oval Office who tries every day to turn this country into a dictatorship; let’s start acting like it.
That means you can’t be mad about Trump trying to freeze government spending in the morning, and vote for his Treasury secretary – who will destroy the economy – in the afternoon. Stop helping Trump.
