Trump tariffs live updates: President holds crunch talks with political enemy Justin Trudeau

President Donald Trump defended his decision to raise tariffs on Canada and Mexico on Monday.

‘Canada doesn’t even allow U.S. Banks to open or do business there. What’s that all about?’ he asked, pointing out just one aspect of the Canada’s limitations on American businesses that he was challenging.

He also pointed out the ongoing flood of illegal drugs into the United States from Mexico and Canada.

‘Many such things, but it’s also a DRUG WAR, and hundreds of thousands of people have died in the U.S. from drugs pouring through the Borders of Mexico and Canada,’ he wrote on social media.

Trump confirmed that he ‘just spoke to Justin Trudeau’ on Monday and would be speaking to him again later Monday afternoon.

The president announced Saturday his decision to level a 25 percent additional tariff on imports from Canada and Mexico, and a 10 percent tariff on imports from China.

The tariffs go into effect in just a few more hours on Tuesday at midnight.

By Katelyn Caralle, Senior U.S. Political Reporter

Migrants wait in line to board a charter plane in Panama to be deported to Colombia as droves continue to make their way through Central America to illegally cross into the U.S.

Panama’s Public Security Minister Frank Abrego met with U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio on the tarmac on Monday as migrants were removed from the country.

‘We continue developing a memorandum of understanding (inaudible) the union we have the United States, and we continue under our strategic alliance of maintaining control of our border,’ Abrego said in remarks alongside Rubio.

Seven migrants deported back to Colombia on Monday have a criminal record, according to Abrego.

Rubio said the Panama charter flight shows that cooperation with other countries can help the overall continent in dealing with illegal immigration.

‘Mass migration is one of the great tragedies of the modern era,’ Rubio said during remarks from the airport in Panama on Monday. ‘It impacts countries throughout the route… It’s not good for anyone.’

‘The only people who benefit from mass migration are traffickers,’ Donald Trump’s Secretary of State added.

And so this is a program that shows how cooperating with our strong allies here in Panama can help to stem the flow by creating a disincentive, by sending a clear message that if you come and you come irregularly, you may be stopped and you may be returned to your country of origin.

And it can be done in a regular and dignified but effective way. And we’ve seen it in the number; the numbers have dramatically declined.

With Donald Trump’s 25 percent tariff on Canada and Mexico set to take effect Tuesday, the top official in Ontario, Canada says he will ‘rip up’ a government contract with Elon Musk’s Starlink technology.

‘Ontario won’t do business with people hellbent on destroying our economy,’ the province’s Premier Doug Ford said in a statement Monday morning disavowing the $100 million contract.

He said he was banning contracts between the province and U.S. companies until ‘U.S. tariffs are removed.’

The move comes as Trump came out with more tough talk Sunday blasting Canada and blaming the country for drugs and migrants coming into the U.S. Musk, meanwhile, is helming Trump’s effort to eliminate the U.S. Agency for International Development, an agency authorized and appropriated by Congress that Trump says is being ‘run by radical left lunatics.’

Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum says she had a good conversation with President Trump about their relationship, and they are pausing tariffs for one month.

It comes after Trump planned to impose 25 percent tariffs on imports from Mexico this week.

Sheinbaum said Mexico would reinforce the border with 10,000 members of the national guard to prevent drug trafficking from Mexico.

She said the U.S. has committed to working to prevent the trafficking of weapons to Mexico.

Sarah Ewall-Wice, Senior U.S. Political Reporter:

The Senate Finance Committee is set to vote on the nomination of Robert Kennedy Jr. for Secretary of Health and Human Services on Tuesday.

If he is successfully voted out of committee, it will head ot the Senate floor, but it is unclear whether he has the votes.

Some Republicans including Senator Bill Cassidy (R-LA) were ‘strugging’ with his nomination and raised concerns about this past work against vaccinations and basic understanding of Medicare and Medicaid at what were brutal confirmation hearings last week.

The Senate Intelligence Committee is also expected to hold a vote on Tuesday on the nomination of Tulsi Gabbard to serve as Director of National Intelligence.

Some GOP senators expressed reservations after Gabbard refused to call Edward Snowden a ‘traitor’ at her confirmation hearing last week.

Sarah Ewall-Wice, Senior U.S. Political Reporter:

Republican Senator Chuck Grassley is begging President Trump to exempt potash from sweeping tariffs as the president imposes 25 percent tariffs on Canada.

Potash is a key component used in fertilizer and slapping tariffs on it would raise its price and hurt the U.S. farmers who need to import it for their use.

Grassley posted that U.S. family farmers get most of their potash from Canada, so he ‘plead’ with Trump to exempt it.

An increased cost in fertilizer would mean higher costs for farmers which could thus result in increased costs for people consumer their goods.

During Trump’s first term, his administration had to bail out farmers to the tune of billions of dollars after they were hurt by his trade policies which caused agricultural exports to fall.

By Emily Goodin, senior White House correspondent

Kevin Hassett, the president’s top economic adviser, took to the airwaves to try and reassure global markets after stocks tumbled in the wake of Donald Trump’s decision to impose 25% tariffs on Canada and Mexico.

Hassett told CNBC that Trump’s order was being misinterpreted – that it’s a war on drugs, not a war on trade.

‘President Trump was absolutely 100% clear that this is not a trade war. This is a drug war. There are perhaps 100,000 people last year that died of fentanyl, and the fentanyl is coming in across the Mexican and Canadian borders,’ Hassett, the director of the National Economic Council, said.

He also blamed Canada, saying officials there took it as a trade war instead of getting serious about the drug trade. Canada has already announced retaliatory tariffs, and Mexico has pledged to do the same.

‘We’ve noticed is that the Mexicans are very, very serious about doing what President Trump said in the executive order, and that is getting more aggressive, much, much more aggressive about the drug war, but the Canadians appear to have misunderstood the plain language of the executive order, and they’re interpreting it as a trade war,’ Hassett said.

The tariffs go into effect after midnight tonight.

The US president fuelled fears of a global trade war as he confirmed he will be imposing levies on the ‘atrocious’ EU.

Stocks around the world have been diving on the intensifying action, with the FTSE 100 down over 100 points in early trading. Shares in Germany, France and Asia have been hit even harder.

By Katelyn Caralle, Senior U.S. Political Reporter in Washington, D.C.

Elon Musk and President Donald Trump shut down the embattled government agency tasked with humanitarian relief overseas after they agreed the organization was ‘beyond repair’.

The billionaire ‘first buddy’ led a civilian review of the federal government with Trump’s go-ahead and decided this week to shut down the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and it’s Washington, D.C. offices.

Staff were shocked when they woke up Monday morning to emails instructing them to stay out of the agency’s D.C. headquarters.

‘It became apparent that it’s not an apple with a worm it in,’ Musk said in an audio-only appearance on X. ‘What we have is just a ball of worms. You’ve got to basically get rid of the whole thing. It’s beyond repair.’

The Tesla and SpaceX boss noted in the announcement on his social media site that he spoke with Trump about the agency and they ‘agreed we should shut it down.’

As of 2016, USAID reported that it had 10,235 employees on its payroll.

It managed more than $40 billion in appropriations in Fiscal Year 2023, which is less than 1 percent of the federal budget. USAID provides development and assistance in about 130 countries with these funds.

USAID staffers said they tracked 600 employees who reported being locked out of the agency’s computer systems overnight.

Those still in the system received messages to their work emails saying ‘at the direction of Agency leadership’ the headquarters building ‘will be closed to Agency personnel on Monday, Feb. 3.’

Elon Musk attacked the embattled government agency tasked with humanitarian relief overseas on Sunday, calling it a ‘criminal organization’ after Donald Trump claimed it was ‘run by radical lunatics.’

The assault on the US Agency for International Development (USAID) marks a significant new front Musk’s unprecedented power grab to upend federal departments and eliminate what the he considers wasteful spending.

‘USAID is a criminal organization,’ Musk, the billionaire owner of Tesla and SpaceX who has become the president’s most powerful backer, wrote on his X platform without providing any evidence adding ‘Time for it to die’.

President Donald Trump threatened to cut all future funding to South Africa in an effort to punish the government for allowing what he called ‘human rights violations.’

In the first month of his second presidential term, Trump has set to work imposing tariffs on foreign nations, sparking retaliatory measures in return from both Mexico and Canada.

Undeterred, Trump shared to Truth Social on Sunday that he’s now set his sights on South Africa – in an apparent reaction to a new law over land expropriation.