Trump announces sweeping new levies for scores of countries – as it happened

Donald Trump signed an executive order on Thursday modifying the tariff rates he first announced in April ahead of a Friday deadline for the new rates on imported goods to go into effect.

The order states that goods imported from every nation on Earth will be subject to a 10% tariff except for goods from the 92 countries listed in an annex that are subject to higher tariff rates. The highest tariff is on goods from Syria, which will be taxed at 41%.

Tariffs on two countries, the United Kingdom and Brazil, are listed at 10%, but a previous order signed by Trump added a further 40% tariff on some Brazilian goods, to punish the country for prosecuting its former president, Jair Bolsonaro, for trying to overturn an election he lost and inspiring his supporters to storm the seat of government. Trump’s order excluded many of the most common imports from Brazil from the additional tariff, including wood pulp, metals and airplanes, but left the duty in place for coffee.

Goods from the remote Falkland Islands, which remain a British overseas territory, are also set at 10%.

Following an agreement with the European Union, Americans importing goods from that 27-nation bloc will be hit with a 15% tariff.

The new country-specific tariffs are a sweeping change to the rates unveiled by Trump with a flourish in the Rose Garden on 2 April.

Among major US trading partners, imports from Taiwan will now be subject to a tariff of 20% instead of 32%; imports from Japan will be subject to a 15% tariff, instead of 24%; imports from South Korea will be subject to a 15% tariff, instead of 25%.

The revised rates include a drop in tariffs on goods from: Vietnam, which were set at 46% in April, to 20% now; Indonesia, which was 32% and is now 19%; Bangladesh, which was 37% and is now 20%; Cambodia which was 49% and is now 19%; Laos, which was 48% and is now 40%; Sri Lanka, which was 44% and is now 20%; Thailand, which was 36% and is now 19%; and Lesotho, which was 50% and is now 15%.

Oddly, the rate for the Philippines has increased from 17% to 19%, even though its president, Bongbong Marcos, recently completed a friendly visit to the White House.

The rate for South Africa, a nation whose president dismissed Trump’s claims that its white population was being persecuted, remains unchanged at 30%.

The rate on goods from Serbia dropped only slightly, from 37% in April to 35% now, despite its president’s strong support for Trump. Israel was given a similarly small reduction from 17% in April to 15% now.

Another close ally of Trump, India’s prime minister Narendra Modi, saw the tariff rate on goods from his country drop from 26% to 25%.

The rate for imports from Switzerland, which has close ties to the European Union, also increased, from 31% in April to 39% now.

Donald Trump signed an executive order on Thursday to increase tariffs on Canadian goods imported to the United States from 25% to 35%.

The new import tax rates goes into effect on Friday, according to a White House factsheet.

The White House cited what it called Trump’s power to impose tariffs in response to a national emergency under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, a 1977 law, on the same day that the government asked a federal appeals court to overturn a trade court ruling that the law gave Trump no such power.

The White House claimed that Trump had increased tariffs on Canada because it had failed to act on “the public health crisis caused by fentanyl and illicit drugs flowing across the northern border into the United States”.

However, in the early hours of Thursday morning, Trump had posted on social media that he might not strike a deal with Canada on tariffs as punishment for its decision to recognize the state of Palestine. “Wow! Canada has just announced that it is backing statehood for Palestine,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform. “That will make it very hard for us to make a Trade Deal with them. Oh’ Canada!!!”

Several commentators suggested that Trump’s statement that he might use tariffs to influence another nation’s foreign policy could become part of the legal case before the appeals court that he was not, in fact, responding to any real emergency.

As the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation reported this month: “The latest data from US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) shows an uptick in the amount of fentanyl seized near the American northern border with Canada – but the quantities intercepted remain a tiny fraction of what’s coming from Mexico.”

A legal review board in Washington recommended on Thursday that Jeffrey Clark, a lawyer who currently works in the White House Office of Management and Budget, should lose his licence to practise law over his role in Donald Trump’s effort to stay in office after losing the 2020 election.

The recommendation from the District of Columbia Bar’s board on professional responsibility has to be approved by DC court of appeals, but it also imposes an automatic suspension unless Clark can convince the court to block his punishment within 30 days.

Clarke was charged with “attempted dishonesty and attempted serious interference with the administration of justice” for offering, as a justice department official in late 2020, to send a letter to the state of Georgia saying that the department had “identified significant concerns that may have impacted the outcome of the election in multiple States, including the State of Georgia.”

As Jeffrey Rosen, the acting attorney general at the time, and Richard Donoghue, his deputy, told the January 6 committee, after they told Clark that there was no such evidence, they learned that Trump was considering a plan to make Clark the acting attorney general and have him send the letter.

Around the same time, according to handwritten notes taken by Donoghue , Trump pressed Rosen to “just say the election was corrupt and leave the rest to me and the [Republican] Congressmen.”

As the review board’s ruling explains, at an Oval office meeting on 3 January 2021, Clark argued to Trump that he should be appointed acting attorney general, and promised to “conduct nationwide investigations that would uncover outcome-determinative election issues in just a few days.”

When his superiors Rosen and Donoghue objected to what the called that “completely unrealistic” proposal, Trump suggested that he might as well “give it a shot”.

Rosen and Donoghue later testified that they then told Trump that if he made Clark attorney general, there would be mass resignations of justice department leadership, the White House counsel and other attorneys in that office.

In his testimony to the January 6 committee, Donoghue recalled that Trump’s White House counsel, Pat Cipollone, told the president “that letter that this guy wants to send, that letter is a murder-suicide pact. It’s going to damage everyone who touches it, and we should have nothing to do with that letter.”

Trump then abandoned the scheme to appoint Clark, saying it would not be worth “the breakage”.

Clark spent much of Thursday thanking supporters like Steve Bannon for denouncing the move to strip him of his ability to practise law.

At the end of a brief exchange with reporters following his announcement on the new sports and fitness council, Donald Trump was asked about Gaza by a reporter, specifically if he agrees with Marjorie Taylor Greene that “what is occurring there is a genocide”.

Trump dodged the question. “Oh its terrible what’s occurring there, yeah”, the president said.

He then repeated his complaint that “nobody said thank you” when the United States donated money to feed the people of Gaza, and his false claim that the recent donation of $30 million was $60 million.

The president also reiterated the Israeli talking point that the blame for hunger in Gaza lies with Hamas and not Israel, which has blocked humanitarian deliveries for months, and imposed a chaotic new system of distribution which has led to more then 1,000 Palestinians being killed by live fire from Israeli soldiers.

“We gave it to people that are in theory watching over it”, Trump said of the financial donation. “We wanted Israel to watch over it. Part of the problem is Hamas is taking the money and they’re taking the food.”

Aid groups have identified Israel’s blockade as the cause of the starvation in Gaza, and its decision to replace a functioning UN-run distribution system with a dysfunctional system run by Israel and private military contractors working for the newly created, US-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation.

Donald Trump introduced new members of the president’s council on sports, fitness and nutrition on Thursday and announced that he was “officially restoring the presidential fitness test” at the White House on Thursday.

Trump was joined by several of the new council members, including the golfers Bryson DeChambeau and Annika Sörenstam, WWE wrestler Triple H, and current and former NFL players Harrison Butker, Nick Bosa and Lawrence Taylor.

When he introduced the WWE star Triple H as someone who has “been my friend for a long time”, Trump looked at the wrestler, who was standing next to him, and appeared not to recognize him, continuing to look around the room for him.

When Trump invited Taylor to speak, the former New York Giant linebacker said that he was glad to serve, although he was not sure why he was chosen or “what we’re supposed to be doing.”

During his first term in office, in 2017, the New Yorker reported that Trump was largely against exercise. “Other than golf, he considers exercise misguided, arguing that a person, like a battery, is born with a finite amount of energy”, the Washington correspondent Evan Osnos wrote at the time.

Reuters reports the administration has sent a letter to Harvard University informing the university it has referred been referred to the Department of Justice, to address the allegations of antisemitic discrimination.

In the letter from the HHS’ director of the Office of Civil Rights – Paula Stannard –writes that the office “has no choice but to refer the matter to DOJ” after Harvard “has chosen scorched-earth litigation against the Federal government.”

Stannard was referring to the university’s lawsuit after the administration attempted to freeze more than $2bn in research funding.

Immediately after the Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff and Ambassador Mike Huckabee travel to Gaza on Friday they will brief the president and approve a plan for aid and food distribution in the region, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters today.

This comes after an extensive meeting that Witkoff and Huckabee had with Israeli prime minister Netanyahu today.

Taking a step back, starvation in Gaza is the worst it’s been since the beginning of the conflict. And at least 91 people have been killed, and 600 wounded, while waiting for aid in the last 24 hours, according to the Gaza Health ministry.

A funeral for Didarul Islam – the NYPD police officer shot and killed three days ago at an office building in Midtown Manhattan – saw thousands of mourners line the streets as his coffin arrived at Parkchester Jame Masjid, a mosque in the Bronx.

Below are some pictures of the procession and the tributes:

Press secretary Karoline Leavitt notes, emphatically, that the president disagrees with the leaders of the UK, France, and Canada and their decision to recognise Palestinian statehood if Israel fails to agree to a ceasefire in the coming months.

“He feels as though that’s rewarding Hamas at a time where Hamas is the true impediment to a cease fire into the release of all of the hostages,” she said.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt has begun her briefing. She opens offering the administration’s condolences to the family of New York police officer Didarul Islam – who was killed this week in a Midtown Manhattan shooting.

Today, Mr Islam’s funeral is taking place in New York, with NYPD officers and city officials in attendance. Mayor Eric Adams delivered an address at the service.

The presidential fitness test was once a high school staple in the US. It was first implemented by President Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1956, and required middle and high school students at American public schools to perform a number of exercises. It included a one-mile run, push-ups, and sit-ups. It was eventually replaced under President Barack Obama in 2013 for the Presidential Youth Fitness Program. This was focused more on overall health than physical performance.

Later today, Donald Trump will sign an executive order that will reestablish the President’s council of sports, nutrition and fitness. The executive order will also reinstitute the presidential fitness test in public schools, a White House official confirms to the Guardian. The test was phased out of the school curriculum over a decade ago.

CNN first reported the details of the order.

In remarks on the Senate floor this morning, reported by NBC News, minority leader Chuck Schumer slammed the president over his latest trade deals with other countries, calling “his trade war … an experiment in chaos, dishonesty and inflation”.

He said of the new deal with South Korea:

Instead of levering a 25% tariff as he threatened, Donald Trump says South Korea will face 15% tariffs. And then he pretends like that’s some kind of victory. 15% is far from a victory, because it is American families who are ones who are going to have to pay for it in the end.

Schumer said raising prices by 15% on imported goods is “a lot of money to a lot of people”.

“Inflation continues to accelerate as Trump tariffs continue to hammer American pocketbooks,” Schumer continued.

That means Americans are paying more. Inflation goes up, the American family pays more. That’s because, in part, of Donald Trump’s tariffs.

He added:

Four months since Donald Trump’s so-called Liberation Day, his trade war has been an experiment in chaos, dishonesty and inflation.

Senior aides to the defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, conducted polygraphs on their own colleagues this spring, in some cases as part of an effort to flush out anyone who leaked to the media and apparently to undercut rivals in others, according to four people familiar with the matter.

The polygraphs came at a time of profound upheaval in his office, as Hegseth opened a leak investigation and sought to identify the culprits by any means necessary after a series of sensitive disclosures and unflattering stories.

But the polygraphs became contentious after the aides who were targeted questioned whether they were even official, given at least one polygraph was ordered without Hegseth’s direct knowledge and sparked an intervention by a Trump adviser who does not work at the Pentagon.

The fraught episode involved Hegseth’s lawyer and part-time navy commander Tim Parlatore seeking to polygraph Patrick Weaver, a senior adviser to the secretary who was at the White House in Donald Trump’s first term and has ties to Trump’s deputy chief of staff, Stephen Miller, the people said.

When Weaver learned of his impending polygraph, he complained to associates that he had been suspected without evidence, the people said. That led the external Trump adviser to take his complaint to Hegseth – only for Hegseth to say he did not even know about the test.

The external Trump adviser called Parlatore on his cellphone to shut down the impending polygraph, shouting down the line that in Trump’s second term, career employees did not get to question political appointees, according to two people familiar with the conversation.

Weaver does not appear to have escalated his complaint to the White House, telling associates that he preferred not to bother Miller with problems. Earlier reports suggested the White House intervened on Weaver’s behalf but the people said the White House learned of the test after it was cancelled.

A White House spokesperson declined to comment. A Pentagon spokesperson, Sean Parnell, said in a statement: “The Department will not comment on an ongoing investigation.”

The extraordinary episode underscored ongoing concerns around Hegseth’s ability to manage the Pentagon – he is still facing an inspector general report into his disclosures in a Signal chat about US strikes against the Houthis – and why a Trump adviser ended up staging an intervention.

Ed Pilkington and Callum Jones in New York

Donald Trump’s global tariffs faced significant skepticism in a federal appeals court on Thursday, as judges investigated whether the president had overstretched his powers just hours before the latest sweeping round of duties is set to kick in.

The full 11-strong bench of the US court of appeals for the federal circuit in Washington DC is considering whether Trump exceeded his authority in imposing “reciprocal” tariffs on a large number of US trading partners.

Judges repeatedly asked if Trump was justified in relying on emergency powers to effectively tear up the US tariff schedule without consulting Congress.

Businesses challenging his strategy accused the White House of engineering a “breathtaking” attempt to force it through, unlike any trade move attempted by a US administration in two centuries.

The 1977 International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA), which Trump has used to invoke emergency powers and enforce many of his tariffs, “doesn’t even say ‘tariffs’”, one of the judges noted. “Doesn’t even mention them.”

In May a three-judge panel of the court of international trade blocked the import duties on grounds that Trump’s use of IEEPA was unjustified. The appeals court has stayed that ruling pending the outcome of Thursday’s hearing.

“The government uses IEEPA all the time,” Brett Shumate, assistant attorney general in the justice department’s civil division, representing the administration, told the court. He conceded, however, that it was the first IEEPA had been used to implement tariffs.

The US trade deficit has “reached a tipping point”, claimed Shumate, enabling Trump to take emergency action. “It’s affecting our military readiness,” he said. “It’s affecting our domestic manufacturing capability.”

But Neal Katyal, a lawyer representing businesses challenging the tariffs, argued that Trump was laying a “breathtaking claim to power that no president has asserted in 200 years”.

The administration is effectively saying “that our federal courts are powerless; that the president can do whatever he wants, whenever he wants, for as long he wants – so long as he declares an emergency”, Katyal argued.

The challenge to Trump’s use of emergency powers has been brought by five small businesses acting alongside 12 Democratic-controlled states. They argue that the IEEPA was designed to address “unusual and extraordinary” threats arising in national emergencies, and that the reason for the tariffs do not meet that standard.

The small businesses are being represented by a libertarian public interest law firm, the Liberty Justice Center. The non-profit is supported by billionaire rightwing donors including Robert Mercer and Richard Uihlein, who, paradoxically, have also been major backers of Trump’s presidential campaigns.

Donald Trump’s extension of the deadline for a tariff deal with Mexico by another 90 days is fuelling speculation that he could announce pauses for dozens of other countries that face punitive higher import duties from tomorrow.

As the countdown continues to his deadline for a trade deal – already extended by four weeks from the original 90 days – the US president said he had made the decision to offer more time to Mexico because of the complexities of the trading relationship.

“We will be talking to Mexico over the next 90 Days with the goal of signing a Trade Deal somewhere within the 90 Day period of time, or longer,” he wrote on social media.

A little more than two weeks ago Trump threatened both the EU and Mexico with tariffs of 30% on most exports to the US, but last Sunday he concluded a deal with Brussels with a 15% baseline rate from 1 August.

Writing on his Truth Social platform, Trump said: “I have just concluded a telephone conversation with the President of Mexico, Claudia Sheinbaum, which was very successful in that, more and more, we are getting to know and understand each other.

“The complexities of a Deal with Mexico are somewhat different than other Nations because of both the problems, and assets, of the Border.

“We have agreed to extend, for a 90 Day period, the exact same Deal as we had for the last short period of time, namely, that Mexico will continue to pay a 25% Fentanyl Tariff, 25% Tariff on Cars, and 50% Tariff on Steel, Aluminum, and Copper.”

Donald Trump and Mexican president Claudia Sheinbaum have spoken on the phone this morning as Mexico seeks an agreement with its biggest trading partner ahead of Trump’s 1 August deadline.

“Mexico will continue to pay a 25% Fentanyl Tariff, 25% Tariff on Cars, and 50% Tariff on Steel, Aluminum, and Copper. Additionally, Mexico has agreed to immediately terminate its Non Tariff Trade Barriers, of which there were many,” Trump said in a Truth Social post.

Trump said his administration would continue talking to Mexico over the next 90 days (“or longer”) with the goal of signing a trade deal.

He had previously threatened Mexico with a 30% tariff rate.

Democrats on a Senate investigative committee have blasted Donald Trump’s department of government efficiency (Doge) initiative for wasting money, paying hundreds of thousands of federal employees not to work and doing little to accomplish its stated goals.

The report from Democrats on the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations is titled “The $21.7b Blunder”, and accuses Trump, Doge and its former head Elon Musk of wasting that amount of money by rapidly dismantling government functions without bothering to understand how they work.

“With Elon Musk at its head for its first four months, it is unsurprising that DOGE modeled itself on a defunct corporate motto, seeking to ‘move fast and break things,’” the report reads.

“Yet DOGE seems to have stopped there, never taking the time to fix — let alone understand— the things it had broken. By prioritizing disruption over governance and failing to identify solutions for any of the problems it purported to solve, DOGE has created its own forms of waste.”

You can read the report here.

Today we’ll also be keeping an eye on House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries who has been in Texas, meeting with Democrats in the state, as a redistricting showdown ensues.

Yesterday, state Republicans released their proposed congressional map which would allow the GOP to pick up five seats in the state. They already hold 25 of Texas’ 38 congressional districts.

Jeffries is expected to hold a press conference later today.

Steve Witkoff, the Trump administration’s Middle East envoy, is in Israel today meeting with prime minister Netanyahu.

This will be Witkoff’s first public visit to Israel since May, and comes as the starvation crisis in Gaza escalates. It also comes as a number of allies – including Canada, France and the UK say they will reconginise Palestinian statehood if Israel fails to address the worsening humanitarian crisis and agree to a ceasefire with Hamas.

Follow along with the latest updates in the region here.

A vote to block arms sales to Israel failed in the Senate late yesterday. But the effort, spearheaded by Senator Bernie Sanders, did see 12 new Democrats vote to stop the sale of American weapons to Israel. One of them is Senator Tammy Duckworth of Illinois –who served as a US army helicopter pilot in the Iraq war. She explained her decision in a statement:

My votes tonight reflect my deep frustration with the Netanyahu government’s abject failure to address humanitarian needs in Gaza and send a message to the Trump Administration that it must change course if it wants to help end this devastating war.

The United States believes it has the makings of a trade deal with China, but it is “not 100% done,” Scott Bessent told CNBC in an interview, adding that he would talk to Donald Trump later on Thursday.

The US treasury secretary also said he did not know what would happen with trade with India, saying it had “not been a great global actor”.

Good morning and welcome to our rolling coverage of US politics as Donald Trump intensified his trade war with Canada a day ahead of his 1 August deadline for a tariff agreement.

The president posted on his Truth Social platform:

Wow! Canada has just announced that it is backing statehood for Palestine. That will make it very hard for us to make a Trade Deal with them. Oh’ Canada!!!

Trump is set to impose a 35% tariff on all Canadian goods not covered by the US-Mexico-Canada trade agreement if the two countries do not reach an agreement by the deadline.

Canadian prime minister Mark Carney previously said tariff negotiations with Washington had been constructive, but the talks may not conclude by the deadline. Canada is the second-largest US trading partner after Mexico, and the largest buyer of US exports.

Carney followed France and Britain as he said on Wednesday that his country was planning to recognize Palestine at a meeting of the United Nations in September.

We’ll be bringing you all the developments on this story today. In other news:

• Trump has said the US will charge a 15% tariff on imports from South Korea as part of an agreement with the key Asian trading partner and ally that avoids even higher levies. In contrast on Wednesday, Trump placed 25% tariffs on imports from India and 50% on those from Brazil.

• Brown University has reached an agreement with the Trump administration that will reinstate nearly $50m in research funding by agreeing a commitment to nondiscrimination in both admissions and campus programs, and will grant federal officials access to its admissions data. Meanwhile $108m in federal research funding to Duke University has been frozen.

• The US Federal Reserve left its benchmark interest rate unchanged on Wednesday, even amid intense pressure from Trump to lower rates. Earlier in the day, figures showed US gross domestic product (GDP) grew at a better-than-expected annual rate of 3% in the second quarter of 2025.

• Kamala Harris announced on Wednesday that she will not run for governor of California – a highly anticipated decision that leaves the contest to lead the country’s largest blue state wide open.