Donald Trump has launched an extraordinary attack on the Federal Reserve and its chairman Jerome Powell while seemingly demanding US companies cease trading with China “immediately” as the rival superpower upped the ante in their ongoing trade war by hiking tariffs on $75bn (£61bn) of American goods.
After Mr Powell addressed a central bank symposium in Wyoming and declined to say he would cut interest rates in accordance with the president’s wishes, the commander-in-chief exploded on Twitter and asked who is the “the bigger enemy” of the US, Mr Powell or Chinese premier Xi Jinping.
“Our Country has lost, stupidly, Trillions of Dollars with China over many years,” he ranted, ordering American businesses to seek alternatives to working with China and telling US delivery companies like FedEx and UPS to “SEARCH FOR & REFUSE all deliveries of Fentanyl from China”, blaming Beijing for the US opioid crisis.
Stocks fell sharply on Wall Street after Mr Trump said he would respond to China’s latest tariff increase and called on US companies to consider alternatives to doing business in China.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average sank more than 300 points after the president made the announcements on Twitter.
The stocks of all three companies the president mentioned also dropped as traders tried to understand what the implications for them were.
Stocks had been wavering between gains and losses earlier after China said it would retaliate against the latest round of tariffs imposed by Washington.
China said Friday that it will also increase import duties on US-made autos and auto parts. The retaliation pulled global markets into negative territory.
Mr Trump’s current economic rating in a new Associated Press poll represents a 5 percentage point drop from the same time last year, but for a president who has struggled to win over a majority of American voters on any issue, the economy represents a relative strength.
Even some Democrats approve: Just 5 per cent of Democrats approve of his job performance overall, but 16 per cent approve of his handling of the economy.
Additional reporting by AP. Please allow a moment for our liveblog to load
Hello and welcome to The Independent's rolling coverage of the Donald Trump administration.
Donald Trump finds himself under siege once more as the Democratic case for his impeachment gathers momentum.
Illinois congressman Brad Schneider is the latest to urge the House Judiciary Committee on in its obstruction of justice inquiry, saying: “Regrettably, it is clear that the administration has little regard for the constitution, is unwilling to provide any information to Congress, and is seeking to play out the clock.”
Judiciary chairman Jerry Nadler has meanwhile asked four congressional panels investigatingthe president to share documents and other information they may have accumiulated to aid his committee’s probe into whether to file articles of impeachment, according to Politico.
In a letter to the chairmen of the House Intelligence, Financial Services, Oversight and Reform and Foreign Affairs committees, Nadler asked for “documents and testimony, depositions, and/or interview transcripts” that might be relevant to the Judiciary ’s ongoing probe.
The five panels have together interviewed witnesses and subpoenaed documents relating to the president’s conduct, foreign business ties, presidential campaign, hush-money payments and personal finances, battling White House stonewalling in the wake of the release of ex-FBI special counsel Robert Mueller's report into Russian election hacking to get at the truth.
Nadler’s request on Thursday came a day after Trump administration attorneys argued that two of the committees - Intelligence and Financial Services - could not invoke the possibility of the president's impeachment in order to gain access to his personal financial information held by Deutsche Bank and Capital One.
Also, Harvard constiutional law professor Lawrence Tribe has argued on The Truth Report podcast with Salon journalist Chauncey DeVega that Trump's "treachery and betrayal" are now clear and impeachment is the only remedy.
More grim news for the Trumpster as a new AP-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research finds that 62 per cent of respondents - or six Americans in 10 - are not happy with his current job performance, with only 36 per cent in favour.
The president was up late last night firing out partisan tweets and retweets, some 37 in total.
Among the deluge of offerings from veep Mike Pence, Fox Business host Maria Bartiromo, Tom Fitton of Judicial Watch, National Review contributing editor Andy McCarthy, Ohio Republican congressman Jim Jordan and ambassador to Israel David Friedman, Trump backed his old press secretary Sean Spicer to do well on ABC's Dancing with the Stars and gave more vague reassurances about introducing "meaningful" gun control measures after seeming to back away from the issue earlier this week.
The US Justice Department's Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR) is in hot water after sending out an email to all all immigration court employees featuring a link to VDare, a white nationalist blog, according to BuzzFeed.
According to the National Association of Immigration Judges, the EOIR included the link to the offending article in its morning news briefing earlier this week, intended to keep judges up to date with immigration reporting in the press.
Union chief Ashley Tabaddor wrote to EOIR director James McHenry to complain the piece in question: "The post features links and content that directly attacks sitting immigration judges with racial and ethnically tinged slurs and the label 'Kritarch'. The reference to Kritarch in a negative tone is deeply offensive and Anti-Semitic."
The term "kritarchy" refers to the rule of ancient Israel under a system of judges.
"VDare’s use of the term in a pejorative manner casts Jewish history in a negative light as an Anti-Semitic trope of Jews seeking power and control," she wrote, before continuing: "Publication and dissemination of a white supremacist, anti-semitic website throughout the EOIR is antithetical to the goals and ideals of the Department of Justice."
"Separately, EOIR should take all appropriate safety and security measures for all judges given the tone and tenor of this posting," she added.
EOIR assistant press secretary Kathryn Mattingly told BuzzFeed, “the daily EOIR morning news briefings are compiled by a contractor and the blog post should not have been included. The Department of Justice condemns Anti-Semitism in the strongest terms.”
The White House will not move forward with plans to cut billions of dollars in foreign aid, US officials said on Thursday, after an outcry from Congress about what was seen as an attempt to sidestep lawmakers' authority over government spending.
Trump said he was considering scaling back the effort to cut aid on Tuesday and would decide on the proposal within days.
Members of Congress, including several of the president's fellow Republicans as well as Democrats, had contacted administration officials to object to the latest Trump administration effort to cut foreign assistance and tie it more closely to support for US policies.
"I'm glad to see important foreign assistance programs - which Congress had already approved - going forward," Republican Jim Risch, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said in a statement.
"I share the president's concerns about waste, fraud, and abuse across some of these programs and I look forward to working with him on that issue in the future."
A senior administration official said Trump "has been clear that there is waste and abuse in our foreign assistance and we need to be wise about where US money is going, which is why he asked his administration to look into options to doing just that."
"It's clear that there are many on the Hill who aren't willing to join in curbing wasteful spending," the official added.
Administration officials this month briefly froze State Department and US Agency for International Development spending with an eye to using a budget process known as "rescission" to slash up to $4.3 billion (£3.5bn) in spending already approved by the Senate and House of Representatives.
The White House tried a similar strategy last year and dropped that plan too amid congressional resistance.
Secretary of state Mike Pompeo is understood argued in favor of the aid money, while Mick Mulvaney, Trump's acting chief of staff and director of the Office of Management and Budget, wanted the cuts.
At a news conference in Ottawa, the Canadian capital, Pompeo did not say there had been a decision, but acknowledged he had "been engaged in meetings" on the subject.
Total foreign aid accounts for less than 2 per cent of the federal budget, and the assistance being considered for cuts accounts for an even smaller percentage.
Opponents of the plan argued that funding programs that fight poverty, support education and promote global health are worthwhile investments that save on security costs in the long run.
Democratic House speaker Nancy Pelosi wrote to Treasury secretary Steven Mnuchin on Friday citing the Government Accountability Office's finding that such a use of rescissions was not legal.
Under the US constitution, Congress, not the White House, controls spending.
Many sources said they expected the issue would end up in court if Trump pressed ahead with it instead of working with Congress.
Lawmakers also said the plan - developed within weeks of Congress' passing, and Trump signing into law, a two-year budget deal - could imperil lawmakers' future willingness to negotiate spending deals with the White House.
Advocacy groups welcomed the news.
"Americans can be pleased that the Administration recognised the importance of these vital foreign assistance programs for keeping America safe and on the global playing field," Liz Schrayer, president of US Global Leadership Coalition, which promotes diplomacy and development, said in a statement.
Reuters
Tom Cotton, the Republican senator for Arkansas, says Trump's proposal that the US buy Greenland from Denmark was his idea.
Cotton says he discussed the notion with the Danish ambassador to the US last year.
"There's a reason why - so you're joking - but I can reveal to you that several months ago I met with the Danish ambassador, and I proposed they sell Greenland to us," he told Roby Brock of Talk Business and Politics. "It's obviously the right decision for the United States, and anyone who can't see that is blinded by Trump derangement."
He still believes it would represent a sound investment.
"In the last few years, China has repeatedly tried to gain a strategic foothold in Greenland, by offering to buy a former US military base there and through a financing scheme for airport construction. Purchasing it would keep it out of the hands of both the Chinese and the Russians. It is rich in national resources with untold economic potential and already extremely important to US national security," he told CNN.
Trump of course blew his top and cancelled a trip to Copenhagen earlier this week after Danish PM Mette Frederiksen laughed off the idea as "absurd".
Mike Pompeo was subsequently forced to smooth things over with his Danish counterpart Jeppe Kofod as Frederiksen reminded Trump: "The time where you buy and sell other countries and populations is over".
Speaking of Greenland, Trump reportedly once joked about trading Puerto Rico for the Scandiniavian island.
Jon Sharman has the full story.
A hospital in El Paso has denied Trump’s claim doctors “were coming out of operating rooms” to meet him when he travelled to Texas and Ohio to console victims of two mass shootings.
"At no time did, or would, physicians or staff leave active operating rooms during the presidential visit,” University Medical Center spokesperson Ryan Mielke told local TV station KVIA. “Our priority is always patient care."
Mielke’s statement came after the president, apparently angered by reports some victims refused to meet him earlier this month, lashed out on Wednesday at the media and claimed victims and their families actually “love our president”.
Tom Embury-Dennis reports.
With Trump insisting the US economy is "strong" in public, walking away from introducing the tax cuts he mooted on Tuesday and accusing the media of willing a recession into existence, he continues to bash the Federal Reserve and its chairman Jerome Powell on Twitter (despite appointing him) and has admitted that consumers could ultimately bear some of the brunt of his trade war with China.
Meanwhile, on Wednesday, the Congressional Budget Office said that the federal deficit will reach $960bn (£786bn) for the 2019 fiscal year and breach the $1trn (£819bn) mark in 2020. Those figures had been expected to come in at $896bn (£734bn) and $892bn (£730bn), respectively. Which has happened in spite of the US enjoying the longest economic expansion on record and its lowest jobless rate for 50 years.
As Vanity Fair points out, all of this is a long way from Trump's 2016 campaign pledge to balance the budget and wipe out the national debt.
How might he resolve the situation? While he is unlikely to push for budget cuts with the 2020 election looming on the horizon, Republicans have reportedly been encouraged to renege on his promise not to cut Social Security or Medicare should he win a second term.
"We’ve got to fix that,” senator John Thune, the number two Republican in the Senate, tells The New York Times. “It’s going to take presidential leadership to do that, and it’s going to take courage by the Congress to make some hard votes. We can’t keep kicking the can down the road. I hope in a second term, he is interested,” Thune said of Trump. “With his leadership, I think we could start dealing with that crisis. And it is a crisis.”
Another senator, John Barrasso, told The NYT he had "brought it up with President Trump, who has talked about it being a second-term project."
Uh oh.
Vladimir Putin has ordered Russia's military to prepare a "symmetrical response" after the US carried out a cruise missile test.
The Pentagon said on Monday it had tested a conventionally-configured cruise missile that hit its target after more than 310 miles of flight, the first such test since the United States pulled out of a major arms control treaty with Russia on 2 August.
Putin said Russia could not stand idly by, and that US talk of deploying new missiles in the Asia-Pacific region "affects our core interests as it is close to Russia's borders", according to a transcript of his remarks on the Kremlin website.
Sure Don. It's just the rest of the country you have to convince.
Trump may have been frustrated in his bid to buy Greenland but the youth arm of Belgian right-wing nationalist party New Flemish Alliance has offered to sell him the French-speaking region of Wallonia for €1.
The party, which wants an independent Flemish state, wrote to him on Twitter saying: "Dear President, one Euro and Wallonia is yours. Call us."
He has yet to respond to the young wags.
Their tweet is of course a nod to this, which Trump tweeted on Tuesday when he was in far more jovial mood regarding the subject.
The Trump administration is planning for a round of in-person talks between US and Chinese officials in September after a constructive exchange this week between deputy-level negotiators, White House economic adviser Larry Kudlow said on Thursday.
Kudlow also said trade talks underway between Japanese economy minister Toshimitsu Motegi and US trade representative Robert Lighthizer were yielding pretty good progress on agriculture and telecoms issues.
"The deputies' call [with Chinese officials] was quite constructive and this may lead to a meeting of the principals here in Washington, DC," Kudlow said, referring to a teleconference involving deputy-level officials on Wednesday.
He added that the deputies had agreed to another conference call and were working through some of the key issues to make recommendations to the principals.
"We are still planning for the Chinese team to come over here in September," Kudlow said, declining to name a date.
The United States and China have been locked in a heated months-long trade dispute with tit-for-tat tariffs that have roiled markets and weighed on growth.
Earlier this month, Trump backed off a 1 September deadline for imposing tariffs on thousands of Chinese imports and officials in Beijing and Washington announced renewed trade discussions.
But little progress has been seen after trade talks between the world's top economies broke down in May. Some economists now fear the trade war with China could spur a US recession, hurting Trump's reelection chances in 2020.
Kudlow dismissed fears of a downturn, noting "We don't anticipate anything but a solid strong economy." He also called talks with Japan a "very good story."
But Japan's Motegi on Wednesday noted there were still gaps that needed to be filled before Tokyo and Washington could agree on a bilateral trade deal and that negotiations with his US counterpart were "very tough."
Reuters
More denials on the economy from Trump, who again insists the prospect of a recession is a media fabrication and threatens: "I always find a way to win."
He has also retweeted that laughable Zogby poll again from Monday.
North Korea’s foreign minister has called Mike Pompeo a “poisonous plant of American diplomacy” and vowed to “shutter the absurd dream” that sanctions will force a change in Pyongyang.
The North’s blistering rhetoric may dim the prospect for an early resumption of nuclear negotiations between the countries. A senior American diplomat said earlier this week that Washington was ready to restart the talks, a day after the US and South Korean militaries ended their regular drills that Pyongyang called an invasion rehearsal.
North Korean foreign minister Ri Yong-ho made the comments to protest Pompeo’s remarks in an interview in which he said that Washington will maintain crippling sanctions on North Korea unless it denuclearises.
Ri said he couldn’t just let the “reckless remarks” by Pompeo pass by him because they came amid a possible restart of the nuclear talks.
Ri said Pompeo is a “brazen” man because he “had begged for” North Korean denuclearisation and improved bilateral ties when he visited Pyongyang and met leader Kim Jong-un several times.
Pompeo with Ri (Andrew Harnik/AP)
In April, North Korea demanded President Donald Trump remove Pompeo from the nuclear negotiations.
Ri said North Korea is ready for both dialogue and confrontation. But he warned that North Korea will try to remain “America’s biggest threat” if the United States continues to confront the North with sanctions.
Ri was likely referring to comments by Pompeo during an interview with The Washington Examiner earlier this week, in which he said that the US will “continue to keep on the sanctions that are the toughest in all of history and continue to work towards convincing Chairman Kim and the North Korean leaders that the right thing to do is for them to denuclearise.”
North Korea is notorious for crude and fiery diatribes against the United States and South Korea, although it lately focused its anger on South Korea rather than the US, particularly over the allies’ military drills.
During the drills, North Korea carried out a slew of short-range missile and other weapons tests capable of hitting much of South Korea, not the mainland US. Some experts said these suggest that North Korea was interested in resuming talks with Washington.
The top US envoy on North Korea, Stephen Biegun, said on Wednesday that the United States was “prepared to engage as soon as we hear from our counterparts in North Korea.”
US-led negotiations on North Korea’s nuclear weapons collapsed after Trump rejected Kim’s demand for widespread sanctions relief in return for partial disarmament steps during their second summit in Vietnam in February. Trump and Kim met again at the Korean border in late June and agreed to resume the talks.
AP
Trump's re-election campaign hosted events in 2020 battleground states on Thursday to mobilise and train suburban women, an important voting bloc that defected from Republicans during last year's congressional contests.
Campaign representatives - including conservative commentators, a former Apprentice contestant, a beauty pageant winner, and campaign and White House staff tried to persuade women at gatherings in 13 states including Pennsylvania, Florida and Ohio to talk openly about their support for Trump and encourage others to do the same.
Jessie Jane Duff, a member of the advisory board for the Trump campaign's women coalition, told about 100 mostly white women packed into the basement of the Fairfax County Republican Party headquarters in Virginia that "the greatest threat to Democrats are right here. Women."
But some women at the Fairfax event, which drew professors, retirees and a software engineer, said they often refrain from discussing their support for Trump because they fear being seen differently in the workplace.
A woman named Sydney, a law student at a university in Washington who did not want to give her full name, said she supported the president's policies even if he sometimes was too brash. Some of her classmates have been afraid to voice their opinions at school because of criticism from liberal students, she added.
The latest Reuters/Ipsos poll, conducted this week, shows 39 per cent of women approve of Trump's performance in office and 56 per cent disapprove. The numbers have hovered at these levels for a year.
Erin Perrine, a deputy press secretary for Trump, said the numbers did not reflect the true level of support for the president among women. She noted, for example, that 51 per cent of his donors in the latest quarter were women.
"We all know about the silent Trump supporter," said Perrine said, who was scheduled to host an event in North Carolina. "We want to empower women to share their stories about why they support President Trump and help bring more supporters into the fold."
The events, which coincide with the 99th anniversary of women suffrage, were put together in part by the Trump Victory Leadership Initiative, a grassroots arm of the campaign that will target key demographic groups in the months leading up to the November 2020 election.
Speakers in Fairfax highlighted Trump's economic record and how he has kept his promises on issues like immigration and healthcare.
"This president keeps his word," said Penny Nance, another "Women for Trump" advisory board member.
While Trump's efforts to build a wall on the US-Mexican border have stalled, he has persisted in a controversial crack down on immigration, including separating families.
A promise to lower prescription drug plans has not been met, and his hope of riding a strong economy into 2020 is facing headwinds from signs a recession may be looming.
Trump has had a checkered history with women, from messy divorces and allegations of sexual harassment to a video that came out during his 2016 election campaign that showed him bragging about how his money and power allowed him to "grab" women anywhere he liked.
In 2016, women overall favored Democrat Hillary Clinton, the first woman nominated for president by a major party, by roughly a 12-point margin over Trump. White women in particular ended up voting for Trump by nearly the same margin, exit polls showed.
Tana Goertz, who competed on Trump's reality television show Apprentice more than a decade ago and was set to host an event in Iowa, said voter contact would be key to winning.
"Yes, I am going to motivate them and give them techniques, but I am also get them registration information, other data and help turn them out," said Goertz, who is now a Trump campaign staffer.
Reuters
Ivanka Trump, a convert to Judaism since marrying Jared Kushner, is facing criticism for not standing up to her old man over his recent antisemitic outbursts.
Alexandra Haddow has more.
A handy preview of the G7 and its simmering tensions, as the president jets out for France.
Trump says he is looking forward to meeting with Boris Johnson in France but might be disappointed as Britain is unlikely to alter its approach on Iran, as the PM insists the 2015 deal remains the best way to ensure Tehran does not get nuclear weapons.
"We are strong supporters of the JCPOA (Iran deal). We think that it is very important that Iran doesn't get the nuclear weapons," said a senior diplomat speaking ahead of the G7 summit in Biarritz.
"It is important that it continues and I don't think you will find any change in the British government position."
The source said it was critical that Iran fully complied with the accord, but that while Johnson would listen to the US's position, there would not be a radical change in approach.
