TheUSinbrief|美國要聞速遞20250210

In brief | United States

Trump hones his tariffs

Our daily political update, featuring the stories that matter

Donald Trump said new tariffs of 25% on all imported steel and aluminium would come into force on Monday. Similar taxes were put in place during Mr Trump’s first term, though several countries negotiated exceptions. The president also suggested that later in the week he would announce reciprocal measures on any country that places tariffs on American goods, saying: “If they charge us, we charge them.” Chinese tariffs on American goods, announced on February 4th after Mr Trump imposed new taxes on imports from China, are due to come into effect today.

Elon Musk called for the impeachment of a federal judge who temporarily prevented members of the billionaire’s Department of Government Efficiency and other political appointees from gaining access to the Treasury’s payment systems. The order, which is in response to an emergency request by 19 Democratic attorneys-general, will remain in place until at least Friday, when a hearing is due. On Sunday Mr Trump called the judge’s decision “a disgrace”. J.D. Vance, the vice-president, added that judges have no right to “control the executive’s legitimate power”.

Kristi Noem, the secretary of homeland security, said that she would recommend “getting rid” of the Federal Emergency Management Agency “the way it exists today”. She suggested that local authorities should have more power over how emergency relief funds are spent. In January Mr Trump signed an executive order calling for a review of FEMA.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau will reportedly be shut down until at least Friday. Russell Vought, the head of the Office of Management and Budget, tweeted on Sunday that the “woke & weaponised” financial regulator would not receive its next tranche of funding because it had enough money on hand. Mick Mulvaney, a director of the OMB during Mr Trump’s first term, similarly requested no funding for the CFPB in 2018.

Mr Trump said that he had directed the Treasury to stop making new pennies. He said that the one-cent coin cost more than two cents to make and stressed his desire to “rip the waste” out of the budget, even if it is “a penny at a time”. The idea makes some sense: producing and distributing a penny costs 3.69 cents, according to the US Mint.

KAL flashback

Every Monday we republish a cartoon by KAL from our archive. This week Linda McMahon, a wrestling impresaria and Mr Trump’s nominee for secretary of education, will face a congressional hearing. The president and the McMahon clan go back a long way—read Lexington’s column from 2019 about what Mr Trump, himself no stranger to the ring, learned from them about blurring the line between performance and reality.

A view from elsewhere

North Korea’s foreign ministry condemned Marco Rubio’s “nonsensical remarks” about the country being a “rogue state” in a statement released by the Korean Central News Agency, a mouthpiece of the dictatorship. The secretary of state’s words were “a grave political provocation” that “thoughtlessly tarnish” the reputation of a sovereign state. It is “absurd and illogical”, the ministry said, “that the most depraved state in the world brands another country a rogue state”.

Figure of the day

3%, the amount by which the S&P 500 index of American stocks fell as tariffs on Mexico and Canada goods loomed, before Mr Trump postponed the levies for a month. Read our leader about how Mr Trump could still blow up global trade.

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