Trump to defend trade war in Congress speech as commerce chief says he will meet Canada and China halfway – live | Trump administration

Protesters chanting, “we’re not going back!” packed the Wisconsin State Capitol on Tuesday, to voice their opposition to the conservative candidate for Wisconsin’s supreme court, Brad Schimel, whose campaign is backed by Elon Musk.

Vanessa Kjeldsen, who covers the state capitol for Madison’s WMTV, shared video of the protest on Musk’s own social media platform, X/Twitter.

Musk has already poured millions in to the supposedly non-partisan election for the Wisconsin state supreme court that takes place on 1 April.

The vote will decide whether liberals maintain a 4-3 majority on the court, with major cases dealing with abortion, union rights, election law and congressional redistricting already under consideration or expected to be argued before it soon.

As our colleague David Smith reported, Musk’s intervention is not small:

Musk’s America political action committee is spending $1m to back Schimel, a former state attorney general who attended Trump’s inauguration last month. Another group Musk has funded, Building America’s Future, is spending $1.6m on TV ads attacking Crawford, a Dane county circuit judge. It reportedly had to withdraw one social media ad after it featured a photo of a different woman named Susan Crawford.

Crawford told a recent meeting of the Wisconsin Counties Association: “Elon Musk is trying to buy a seat on our supreme court so Brad Schimel can rubber-stamp his extreme agenda.”

On Bluesky, Ben Wikler, the Wisconsin Democrats chair, writes: “Voters are FURIOUS about Elon Musk. What Musk is doing (which Trump and just about every Republican elected official is publicly supporting!)—to Social Security, the Veterans Administration, health care, and so much more—is absolutely toxic”.

“In our internal polling, among Democrats likely to vote in the spring Supreme Court election, 1% approve of Elon Musk. How many disapprove? 94%”, Wikler adds. “I’ve never seen *anyone* so loathed.”

As part of the fightback, WisDems have launched the website The People v Musk, with an illustration depicting the supreme court candidate as a puppet dangling from the end of Musk’s upraised arm, and this campaign commercial:

Hours after the United Auto Workers released a statement calling Trump’s tariffs, “a powerful tool in the toolbox for undoing the injustice of anti-worker trade deals”, comes news that the union’s president, Shawn Fain, is joining Senator Bernie Sanders on his “Fighting Oligarchy: Where We Go From Here” tour.

Fein will appear with Sanders in Warren, Michigan on Saturday.

According to Sanders, the tour “is focused on the takeover of the national government by billionaires and large corporations, and the country’s move toward authoritarianism.”

The tour’s stops, Sanders says, are an intentional effort to target districts narrowly won by Republicans in 2024 “to pressure them to vote against any cuts to Medicaid, housing, nutrition, education and other basic needs to pay for more tax breaks for the richest people in this country”.

Fain memorably spoke at the Democratic National Convention last year, wearing a T-shirt with the slogan “Trump is a scab!”.

Speaking to the former Trump advisor Larry Kudlow on Fox Business this hour, the US commerce secretary, Howard Lutnick, said that talks with Canada and Mexico are ongoing, and an announcement on a middle ground solution on tariffs could be announced on Wednesday.

“Both the Mexicans and the Canadians were on the phone with me all day today, trying to show that they’ll do better”, Lutnick said, “and the president is listening because you know he’s very, very fair and very reasonable. So I think he’s gonna work something out with them. It’s not gonna be a pause, none of that pause stuff. But I think he’s gonna figure out, ‘You do more, and I’ll meet you in the middle some way’. And we’re going to probably be announcing that tomorrow. So, somewhere in the middle will likely be the outcome. The president moving with the Canadians and Mexicans, but not all the way.”

The Fox Business host Kudlow was the director of the National Economic Council during the first Trump administration.

In addition to the mass firings of federal workers, the Trump administration’s plan to slash the federal government apparently includes a real estate fire sale.

On its website, the General Services Administration, which manages federal properties, said it has identified 443 properties, totaling more than 80 million square feet that “are not core to government operations” now “designated for disposal.”

The list of buildings to be put up for sale includes some of the most iconic properties in Washington, including the headquarters of the Department of Justice, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Labor Department.

Reuters reports that the agency said sales could potentially save more than $430 million in annual operating costs. The move could, however, put federal agencies at risk of exploitation by private landlords.

The list also includes the Washington headquarters for the Department of Energy, the Department of Agriculture, the American Red Cross building and the Office of Personnel Management. GSA’s own headquarters were also on the list.
It also includes major office buildings in Atlanta, Cleveland, Los Angeles and Chicago, including the landmark Chicago Loop Post Office designed by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe.

The largest union of federal workers says that fired probationary employees must be reinstated, after the office of personnel management (OPM) amended a memo that had ordered their termination.

“OPM’s revision of its Jan. 20 memo is a clear admission that it unlawfully directed federal agencies to carry out mass terminations of probationary employees – which aligns with Judge Alsup’s recent decision in our lawsuit challenging these illegal firings,” the American Federation of Government Employees president, Everett Kelley, said in a statement.

“Every agency should immediately rescind these unlawful terminations and reinstate everyone who was illegally fired.”

Here’s more about the Trump administration’s about-face:

Democrats have seized on reports that congressman Richard Hudson, who leads the House GOP’s campaign operation, has asked lawmakers to stop holding in-person town halls after several incidences where constituents aired grievances over Donald Trump’s haphazard cuts to the federal government.

Politico reports that Hudson made the request in a private meeting today, though lawmakers don’t have to follow it. In response, top Democrats have accused Republicans of trying to hide while supporting unpopular policies. Here’s minority leader Hakeem Jeffries:

House Republicans have just been ordered to stop holding town hall meetings. They can run from their extreme agenda. We will never let them hide.

And Katarina Flicker, press secretary for the House Majority Pac, which supports Democratic candidates:

If you’re going to have the audacity to raise prices and rip away health care from millions of Americans, you should at least have the courage to face your constituents. House Republicans are cowards.

The nation’s largest union of auto workers said it supported Donald Trump’s tariffs on major US trading partners and was working with its administration “to end the free trade disaster”.

The statement from the United Auto Workers comes after it endorsed Joe Biden’s re-election bid and its president, Shawn Fain, campaigned for Democrats last year. The political winds have since shifted, and the UAW says it is in favor of Trump’s tariffs on Mexico and Canada as a way to undo the damage of free trade agreements that it claims undermined American manufacturing. From its statement:

Tariffs are a powerful tool in the toolbox for undoing the injustice of anti-worker trade deals. We are glad to see an American president take aggressive action on ending the free trade disaster that has dropped like a bomb on the working class.

There’s been a lot of talk of these tariffs “disrupting” the economy. But if corporate America chooses to price-gouge the American consumer or attack the American worker because they don’t want to pay their fair share, corporate America bears the blame for that decision. The working class suffered all the pain of NAFTA, and we won’t suffer all the pain of undoing NAFTA. We want to see corporate America, from the auto industry and beyond, recommit to the working class that makes the products and generates the profits that keep this country running.

The UAW is in active negotiations with the Trump Administration about their plans to end the free trade disaster. We look forward to working with the White House to shape the auto tariffs in April to benefit the working class. We want to see serious action that will incentivize companies to change their behavior, reinvest in America, and stop cheating the American worker, the American consumer, and the American taxpayer.

Earlier in the day, the Detroit automakers’ trade association pleaded for exemptions from the tariffs and warned they would undermine US car manufacturers.

Add Republican former senator Pat Toomey to those who don’t think much of Donald Trump’s levying of tariffs on Mexico and Canada.

On X, Toomey, who represented Pennsylvania until 2023, said:

With his multiple rounds of tariffs, and the inevitable retaliations, President Trump has wiped out all of the S & P 500 and Nasdaq 100 gains since his election. Next come higher prices and job losses.

Democratic lawmakers are split over whether to attend Donald Trump’s speech to a joint session of Congress this evening, and the degree to which they should express their dislike of what he will say.

Many lawmakers plan to be there, but bring along guests with personal stories that can speak to the risks and failures of Trump’s ideology. Former House speaker Nancy Pelosi said she invited Elena Hung, an advocate for Medicaid, the insurance program for poor and disabled Americans that Trump wants to cut:

Elena Hung’s courageous daughter, Xiomara, was born with a number of serious medical conditions and is thriving today as a result of access to quality health care – including Medicaid …

At a time when Medicaid is under assault by those who seek to give tax breaks to billionaires and big corporations, I am honored that Xiomara’s story will be told through Elena’s attendance as my guest to this year’s address to a joint session of Congress.

Some Democrats want to stage protests during the speech, not unlike the heckling Joe Biden got last year when he gave what turned out to be his final State of the Union address. Axios has more about their plans, which are not popular with minority leader Hakeem Jeffries:

Some members have told colleagues they may walk out of the chamber when Trump says specific lines they find objectionable, lawmakers told Axios. Criticism of transgender kids was brought up as a line in the sand that could trigger members to storm out, according to a House Democrat.

A wide array of props – including noisemakers – has also been floated: Signs with anti-Trump or anti-DOGE messages – just as Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) held up a sign during Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech last year that said “war criminal.” Eggs or empty egg cartons to highlight how inflation is driving up the price of eggs.

Finally, some lawmakers are boycotting the address. Among them is progressive Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who said on Bluesky she’d be “live posting and chatting with you all here instead. Then going on [Instagram] Live after.”

Jason Rodrigues

The magnitude and scale of President Trump’s decision to go ahead with 25% tariffs on Canada and Mexico has had economists recalling the Tariff Act (1930) signed by President Herbert Hoover.

It saw average tariffs jump by 20% for thousands of different imported goods, as the US tried to protect its depressed agricultural sector from foreign competition.

Proposed by senator Reed Smoot and representative Willis C Hawley, the bill, reported in the Manchester Guardian (below) was opposed by more than one
thousand economists, who warned Hoover of a dramatic downturn in US trade with other countries, especially from those that retaliated.

Nonetheless Hoover signed it into law, with some Congress members, realising the vote was quite close, engaging in logrolling to get something for their constituency in return for their support.

The impact of the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act was, as predicted, highly damaging to the United States, with estimates of imported goods, many of which were needed by US industry and commerce, plummeting by nearly half.

The tariffs also caused shock waves to global trade as other nations deployed protectionist policies, resulting in an estimated half of the 25% decline in world trade.