Key events
President Donald Trump on Tuesday ordered a probe into potential new tariffs on all US critical minerals imports, a major escalation in his dispute with global trade partners and an attempt to push back on industry leader China.
The order lays bare what manufacturers, industry consultants, academics and others have long warned Washington about: that the US is overly reliant on Beijing and others for processed versions of the minerals that power its entire economy, Reuters reported.
China is a top global producer of 30 of the 50 minerals considered critical by the US Geological Survey, for example, and has been curtailing exports in recent months.
Trump signed an order directing Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick to begin a national security review under section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act of 1962. That is the same law Trump used in his first term to impose 25% global tariffs on steel and aluminium and one he used in February to launch a probe into potential copper tariffs.
US dependency on minerals imports “raises the potential for risks to national security, defense readiness, price stability, and economic prosperity and resilience,” Trump said in the order.
Opening summary
Hello and welcome to the US politics live blog. I’m Tom Ambrose and I will be bringing you the latest news lines over the next few hours.
We begin with Donald Trump having claimed that the cost of all products including gasoline and groceries have been coming down as the US takes in “record numbers” in tariffs.
The president also claimed inflation in the US is down, without disclosing any specific data, according to a post on social media platform Truth Social.
US government data released on 10 April showed consumer prices unexpectedly fell in March, before Trump’s so-called Liberation Day.
Meanwhile, the Wall Street Journal has reported that the US wants to use trade negotiations with countries to limit their trade with China.
This strategy includes asking over 70 nations to block Chinese goods from passing through their territories, discourage Chinese companies from setting up operations there and resist importing low-cost Chinese industrial products.
The broader goal is to weaken China’s economic position and reduce its leverage ahead of possible high-level negotiations between president Trump and president Xi Jinping.
It comes as Chinese state media said the US needs to “stop whining” about being a victim after “taking a free ride on the globalisation train”, as the trade war between the two countries continued to spiral.
In figures earlier today, China revealed better than expected growth of 5.4% for the first quarter, before the effect of Trump’s tariffs.
In other news:
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Trump signed a series of new executive orders and memorandums, taking action on a range of issues including social security fraud, federal contracts and the import of critical minerals.
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The Trump administration is “looking into” the legality of deporting American citizens to El Salvador if they commit violent crimes, a view the president reiterated in an interview on Fox News today.
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The White House also said Harvard “should apologize for antisemitism on its campus” as Trump threatened to remove the university’s tax-exempt status. Trump said the school “should be taxed as a political entity” after it refused to cave in to pressure from his administration to adhere to a list of demands including banning face masks, closing its diversity, equity and inclusion programs, and cooperating with federal immigration authorities. Trump responded by cutting $2.3bn in federal grants to the university.
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A federal judge ruled that Trump could not bar the federal government from working with Susman Godfrey, the law firm that won a $787bn settlement from Fox News for a voting machine maker over lies aired about the 2020 election.
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The Associated Press has still not been allowed in the White House press pool even after a judge overturned a ban from Trump blocking the news agency.
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The justice department will have to prove it tried to comply with a federal judge’s order to facilitate the release of Kilmar Ábrego García from a Salvadorian prison, after the Trump administration claimed it was powerless to force the return of the accidentally deported refugee who had legally lived in the US for nearly 25 years.
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In a memorandum, Trump increased pressure on fraud prosecutor programs to ensure undocumented immigrants aren’t receiving Social Security funds.
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Former president Joe Biden dedicated his first major speech since leaving the White House to the importance of social security.
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Following Biden’s speech on the importance of Social Security, a person running the Social Security Administration social media accounts posted a thread accusing the former president of lying.
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