President Donald Trump’s 25% tariff on imports from Mexico, temporarily put on hold this week, could disrupt the strategy of Chinese companies that have relocated to northern Mexico in recent years. By moving production closer to the U.S. market, these firms have been able to bypass U.S. tariffs toward China through the USMCA trade deal. Experts warn that these companies now face two significant challenges.
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U.S. President Donald Trump’s idea for the United States to take over the Gaza Strip has shocked Israelis and Palestinians. While some Israelis welcome the idea, Palestinians categorically reject it. Linda Gradstein reports for VOA from Jerusalem.
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GREENBELT, MARYLAND — A U.S. federal judge on Wednesday ordered a second temporary pause on President Donald Trump’s executive order seeking to end birthright citizenship for anyone born in the United States to someone in the country illegally.
U.S. District Judge Deborah Boardman said no court in the country has endorsed the Trump administration’s interpretation of the 14th Amendment.
“This court will not be the first,” she said.
Trump’s inauguration week order had already been on temporary hold nationally because of a separate lawsuit brought by four states in Washington state, where a judge called the order “blatantly unconstitutional.” In total, 22 states, as well as other organizations, have sued to try to stop the executive action.
Boardman, nominated by former President Joe Biden, agreed to the preliminary injunction after a hearing in federal court in Greenbelt, Maryland. Bringing the suit before Boardman are immigrant-rights advocacy groups CASA and Asylum Seeker Advocacy Project, and a handful of expectant mothers.
At the heart of the lawsuits is the 14th Amendment to the Constitution, ratified in 1868 after the Civil War and the Dred Scott Supreme Court decision that determined Scott, a slave, wasn’t a citizen.
“The principle of birthright citizenship is a foundation of our national democracy, is woven throughout the laws of our nation, and has shaped a shared sense of national belonging for generation after generation of citizens,” the plaintiffs argued in the suit.
The Trump administration asserts that children of noncitizens are not “subject to the jurisdiction” of the United States and therefore not entitled to citizenship.
“The Constitution does not harbor a windfall clause granting American citizenship to, inter alia: the children of those who have circumvented (or outright defied) federal immigration laws,” the government argued in reply to the Maryland plaintiffs’ suit.
The 14th Amendment was added in the aftermath of the Civil War to ensure citizenship for former slaves and free African Americans. It states: “All persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.”
In addition to the 22 states with Democratic attorneys general seeking to stop the order, 18 Republican attorneys general announced this week that they’re seeking to defend the president’s order by joining one of the federal suits brought in New Hampshire.
The U.S. is among about 30 countries where birthright citizenship — the principle of jus soli or “right of the soil” — is applied. Most are in the Americas, and Canada and Mexico are among them.
During his first week in office, Trump signed 10 executive orders on immigration and issued edicts to carry out promises of mass deportations and border security.
Some actions were felt immediately. Others face legal challenges. If they happen at all, other orders may take years to happen but have led to fear in immigrant communities.
Whether Trump can enact his agenda could come down to money. Congress is expected to consider funding support soon. Trump may use emergency powers to tap the Defense Department, as he did for a border wall during his first term.
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New Delhi — A U.S. deportation flight carrying Indian nationals accused of entering the U.S. illegally landed in the northern state of Punjab Wednesday – the first such flight to India since the Trump administration launched a crackdown on illegal immigrants.
The military aircraft, which landed amid tight security, brought 104 deportees, according to media reports. Authorities did not confirm the number, but said the deportees will be received in a friendly manner.
New Delhi, which does not want to make illegal immigration a contentious issue with Washington, has said that it is open to the return of undocumented Indians in the United States if their nationality is verified.
President Donald Trump said last week that Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi had assured him that the country would “do what’s right” in taking back illegal immigrants. His comment came following a phone conversation with Modi.
In New Delhi, foreign ministry spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal told a media briefing on Friday that India and the United States are engaged in a process to deter illegal migration and “cooperation between India and the U.S. is strong and effective in this domain. This will be evident in times to come.”
Trade and migration are expected to be key issues during a meeting that could take place next week between Trump and Modi.
“India does not want to focus on the issue of illegal migrants being deported. We know it is big business in India, sending migrants illegally. Instead, the government’s interest is in ensuring that legal migration channels to the U.S. for Indian nationals are not restricted by the Trump administration,” according to Manoj Joshi, Distinguished Fellow at the Observer Research Foundation in New Delhi.
Those legal routes are H-1B visas for skilled workers and visas for students.
“Both sides are engaged in a process to deter illegal migration, while also creating more avenues for legal migration from India to the U.S.,” Jaiswal has said.
The number of Indian migrants attempting to enter the U.S. unlawfully has grown in recent years, with India now accounting for the largest number of illegal immigrants to the United States from Asian countries, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection data.
Their overall numbers, however, are still small; Indians account for only about 3 percent of illegal crossings.
The United States has identified some 18,000 undocumented Indian migrants to be sent back home, according to a Bloomberg report last week.
Deportation flights to India are not new — between October 2023 and September 2024, more than 1,000 Indian nationals were repatriated, but Wednesday’s flight was the first time that they were sent back via military aircraft.
The deportation flight was routed to Amritsar city in Punjab, which is among the three states where much of the illegal migration from India to the U.S. originates. The others are Haryana in the north and the western state of Gujarat.
Hours before the flight landed, Punjab’s minister for NRI (Non-Resident Indians) Affairs, Kuldeep Singh Dhaliwal, urged people in the state to avoid illegal migration and instead focus on acquiring skills and education to access global opportunities through legal channels.
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After the recent discovery of a clandestine tunnel connecting the US and Mexican cities of El Paso and Juarez, Mexican authorities have launched an operation to uncover other illegal underground passages. Veronica Villafañe narrates this report by Cesar Contreras.
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U.S. President Donald Trump said he wants the U.S. to take ownership of Gaza, moving beyond his earlier statements of forcing Gazans to relocate to neighboring Jordan and Egypt. Trump made the stunning announcement Tuesday evening, as he hosted Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the White House. White House Bureau Chief Patsy Widakuswara has this report.
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Retired Lt. Col. Harry Stewart Jr, a decorated World War II pilot who broke racial barriers as a Tuskegee Airmen and earned honors for his combat heroism, has died. He was 100.
Stewart was one of the last surviving combat pilots of the famed 332nd Fighter Group also known as the Tuskegee Airmen. They were the nation’s first Black military pilots.
The Tuskegee Airmen National Historical Museum confirmed his death. The organization said he died peacefully at his home in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, on Sunday.
Stewart earned the Distinguished Flying Cross for downing three German aircraft during a dogfight on April 1, 1945. He was also part of a team of four Tuskegee Airmen who won the U.S. Air Force Top Gun flying competition in 1949, although their accomplishment would not be recognized until decades later.
“Harry Stewart was a kind man of profound character and accomplishment with a distinguished career of service he continued long after fighting for our country in World War II,” Brian Smith, president and CEO of the Tuskegee Airmen National Historical Museum, said.
Born on July 4, 1924, in Virginia, his family moved to New York when he was young. Stewart had dreamed of flying since he was a child when he would watch planes at LaGuardia airport, according to a book about his life titled “Soaring to Glory: A Tuskegee Airmen’s Firsthand Account of World War II.” In the wake of Pearl Harbor, an 18-year-old Stewart joined what was then considered an experiment to train Black military pilots. The unit sometimes was also known as the Tuskegee Airmen for where they trained in Alabama or the Red Tails because of the red tips of their P-51 Mustangs.
“I did not recognize at the time the gravity of what we are facing. I just felt as though it was a duty of mine at the time. I just stood up to my duty,” Stewart said of World War II in a 2024 interview with CNN about the war.
Having grown up in a multicultural neighborhood, the segregation and prejudice of the Jim Crow-era South came as a shock to Stewart, but he was determined to finish and earn his wings according to the book about his life. After finishing training, the pilots were assigned to escort U.S. bombers in Europe. The Tuskegee Airmen are credited with losing significantly fewer escorted bombers than other fighter groups.
“I got to really enjoy the idea of the panorama, I would say, of the scene I would see before me with the hundreds of bombers and the hundreds of fighter planes up there and all of them pulling the condensation trails, and it was just the ballet in the sky and a feeling of belonging to something that was really big,” Stewart said in a 2020 interview with WAMC.
Stewart would sometimes say in a self-effacing way that he was too busy enjoying flying to realize he was making history, according to his book.
Stewart had hoped to become a commercial airline pilot after he left the military, but was rejected because of his race. He went on to earn a mechanical engineering degree at New York University. He relocated to Detroit and retired as vice president of a natural gas pipeline company.
Stewart told Michigan Public Radio in 2019 that he was moved to tears on a recent commercial flight when he saw who was piloting the aircraft.
“When I entered the plane, I looked into the cockpit there and there were two African American pilots. One was the co-pilot, and one was the pilot. But not only that, the thing that started bringing the tears to my eyes is that they were both female,” Stewart said.
The Air Force last month briefly removed training courses with videos of its storied Tuskegee Airmen and the Women Airforce Service Pilots, or WASPs in an effort to comply with the Trump administration’s crackdown on diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives. The materials were quickly restored following a bipartisan backlash.
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WASHINGTON — The Senate confirmed Pam Bondi as U.S. attorney general on Tuesday evening.
The vote fell almost entirely along party lines, with only Sen. John Fetterman, a Pennsylvania Democrat, joining with all Republicans to pass her confirmation 54-46.
Bondi, a former Florida attorney general and corporate lobbyist, is expected to oversee a radical reshaping of the department that has been the target of Trump’s ire over the criminal cases it brought against him. She enters with the FBI, which she will oversee, in turmoil over the scrutiny of agents involved in investigations related to the president, who has made clear his desire to seek revenge on his perceived adversaries.
Republicans have praised Bondi as a highly qualified leader they contend will bring much-needed change to a department they believe unfairly pursued Trump through investigations resulting in two indictments.
“Pam Bondi has promised to get the department back to its core mission: prosecuting crime and protecting Americans from threats to their safety and their freedoms,” said Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D.
But Bondi has faced intense scrutiny over her close relationship with the president, who during his term fired an FBI director who refused to pledge loyalty to him and forced out an attorney general who recused himself from the Justice Department’s investigation into potential ties between Russia and his 2016 presidential campaign.
While Bondi has sought to reassure Democrats that politics would play no part in her decision-making, she also refused at her confirmation hearing last month to rule out potential investigations into Trump’s adversaries. And she has repeated Trump’s claims that the prosecutions against him amounted to political persecution, saying the Justice Department “had been weaponized for years and years and years, and it’s got to stop.”
Bondi’s confirmation vote came just hours after FBI agents sued the Justice Department over efforts to develop a list of employees involved in the January 6 prosecutions, which agents fear could be a precursor to mass firings.
Acting Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove last week ordered the acting FBI director to provide the names, titles and offices of all FBI employees who worked on the January 6 cases — which Trump has described as a “grave national injustice.” Bove, who defended Trump in his criminal cases before joining the administration, said Justice Department officials would carry out a “review process to determine whether any additional personnel actions are necessary.”
Justice Department officials have also recently forced out senior FBI executives, fired prosecutors on special counsel Jack Smith’s team who investigated Trump and terminated a group of prosecutors in the District of Columbia’s U.S. attorney’s office who were hired to help with the massive Jan. 6 investigation.
Bondi repeatedly stressed at her confirmation hearing that she would not pursue anyone for political reasons, and vowed that the public, not the president, would be her client. But her answers at times echoed Trump’s campaign rhetoric about a politicized justice system.
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PENTAGON — A small number of migrants were transferred from Texas to a detention facility in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, on Tuesday via U.S. military aircraft, U.S. defense officials told VOA.
Fewer than 20 migrants, which the administration has deemed to be “high threat,” are being transported on the first C-17 flight from Fort Bliss, one defense official said, speaking to VOA on background, a method often used by U.S. officials to remain anonymous, before the flight landed in Cuba.
U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem on Tuesday posted photos on X of some of the migrants as they prepared to board the military cargo plane, calling them “the worst of the worst,” and warning the effort to deport them is just getting started.
The Department of Homeland Security later said all of the migrants on the military flight from Texas to Guantanamo Bay were members of Tren de Aragua, a Venezuelan street gang with transnational reach. Officials did not say when or how they were first taken into custody.
The White House has announced plans to designate Tren de Aragua as a Foreign Terrorist Organization.
Since President Donald Trump’s executive order last month, the Pentagon has deployed 300 Marines to Guantanamo to expand the facilities to support holding operations for undocumented immigrants. According to media reports, they have set up tents to house the migrants inside a fenced area at a separate part of the naval base. Those facilities are not yet ready for migrants, according to Fox News.
“The number of service members will continue to fluctuate as additional forces are tasked to deploy and will be scaled, based on the requirements of the Department of Homeland Security, which is the lead federal agency,” U.S. Southern Command, which overseas operations in South America, Central America and the Caribbean, announced in a statement on Monday.
The migrants who arrived Tuesday will be held at the U.S. detention facility, according to a U.S. official who spoke on background. The facility is known mostly for housing military prisoners and terror suspects, including those involved in the September 11, 2001, attacks and members of the Taliban.
“If you’re a violent gang banger, and you’ve been taken out of our country, and we’re waiting to bring you to your country, we’re going to put you in a cell box built for al-Qaida,” Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth told Fox News this week.
In his executive order last month, Trump instructed the departments of Defense and Homeland Security to prepare the U.S. naval base to hold up to 30,000 migrants.
“Some of them are so bad we don’t even trust the countries to hold them because we don’t want them coming back. So, we’re going to send them out to Guantanamo,” Trump said.
Closing Guantanamo
Democratic administrations under Barack Obama and Joe Biden had sought to close the detention camp, which was built by the George W. Bush administration in 2002 following the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan that began shortly after the 9/11 attacks of 2001.
Sue Hendrickson, president and CEO of Human Rights First, said in a statement that sending migrants to Guantanamo would create a human rights catastrophe.
“The Trump administration may find the symbolism of sending migrants to Guantanamo darkly appealing; its practical result would be more injustice, waste and self-inflicted loss of credibility,” Hendrickson said.
At its height during the Global War on Terror, the detention facility held about 680 prisoners. As of January 6, there were just 15 detainees at the facility, according to the Pentagon.
Before being used to detain terror suspects, the U.S. naval facility was also used to house migrants from Cuba and Haiti in the early 1990s.
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WASHINGTON — U.S. President Donald Trump’s executive order to establish a nationwide “Iron Dome” missile defense system has sparked debate over its feasibility, funding, and strategic implications. Unlike Israel’s Iron Dome, which intercepts short-range rockets, Trump’s plan aims to defend against intercontinental ballistic missiles, cruise missiles, and hypersonic weapons.
Click here for the full story in Mandarin.
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STATE DEPARTMENT — Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Tuesday pledged U.S. support to bolster Costa Rica’s cybersecurity defenses, 5G telecommunications infrastructure, and its battle against narcotics.
Rubio made the statement at a joint press conference with Costa Rican President Rodrigo Chaves, whose Central American nation faces more than 100 million cyberattacks annually.
“It’s very serious — 110 million cyberattacks a year for a country of this size — it’s extraordinary, and they have faced it very bravely,” Rubio told reporters in San Jose, Costa Rica’s capital.
In late 2024, local media reported that Costa Rican officials, in collaboration with the U.S. Embassy, identified cyber intrusions by criminal groups in China targeting the country’s telecommunications and technology system, an allegation the Chinese Embassy in Costa Rica denied.
In August 2023, Chaves issued a decree regulating 5G mobile network development, limiting involvement to companies based in signatory-states to the Budapest Convention on Cybercrime — an international treaty addressing cybercrime.
San Jose should be lauded for being “very firm,” Rubio said, against companies “backed by governments like the government of China that likes to threaten, that likes to sabotage, that likes to use economic coercion to punish you.”
VOA has reached out to the Chinese Embassy in Washington for comment but has not yet received a response.
US aid waiver
Rubio also vowed that Washington wouldn’t “eliminate foreign aid” but prioritize assistance for trusted partners and allies. He pledged continued cooperation with Costa Rica, offering FBI and Drug Enforcement Administration support to investigate drug trafficking to the U.S.
“We issued a waiver today because Costa Rica” has used U.S. aid effectively to fix problems that also benefit the United States, Rubio said. “They’re stopping drugs, they’re stopping criminals, they’re identifying terrorists.”
The State Department’s Office of Foreign Assistance has not responded to VOA’s inquiry for further details on the waiver.
Rubio’s five-nation tour across Central America and the Caribbean marks his first major diplomatic mission as secretary of state, with key priorities including curbing illegal immigration into the U.S. and combating drug trafficking.
On Tuesday afternoon, the secretary arrived in Guatemala following discussions with leaders from Panama, El Salvador and Costa Rica. He is scheduled to travel to the Dominican Republic on Wednesday.
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Washington — Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the controversial environmental lawyer turned public health critic, cleared his first hurdle on Tuesday to become the nation’s top health official when the senate finance committee voted to advance his nomination for a floor vote.
Republicans voted together to advance his nomination, while Democrats all opposed.
His nomination now will face a full senate vote, despite concerns about the work he’s done to sow doubts around vaccine safety and his potential to profit off lawsuits over drugmakers.
To gain control of the $1.7 trillion Health and Human Services agency, Kennedy will need support from all but three Republicans if Democrats uniformly oppose him.
Republican Sen. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, who is also a physician and sits on the finance committee, voted to advance Kennedy’s confirmation. Last week, during Kennedy’s hearings, Cassidy repeatedly implored Kennedy to reject a disproven theory that vaccines cause autism, to no avail. He ended the hearing by saying he was “struggling” with the vote.
“Your past, undermining confidence in vaccines with unfounded or misleading arguments, concerns me,” Cassidy told Kennedy.
Republican Sens. Susan Collins of Maine, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Mitch McConnell of Kentucky are all seen as potential no votes, too, because they voted against President Donald Trump’s defense secretary nominee and have expressed concerns about Kennedy’s anti-vaccine work.
In a CBS “60 Minutes” interview that aired Sunday, McConnell declined to say how he would vote on Kennedy’s nomination but reiterated “vaccines are critically important.”
Democrats, meanwhile, continue to raise alarms about Kennedy’s potential to financially benefit from changing vaccine guidelines or weakening federal lawsuit protections against vaccine makers if confirmed as health secretary.
“It seems possible that many different types of vaccine-related decisions and communications — which you would be empowered to make and influence as Secretary — could result in significant financial compensation for your family,” Democratic Sens. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Ron Wyden of Oregon wrote in a letter sent over the weekend to Kennedy.
Kennedy said he’ll give his son all of the referral fees in legal cases against vaccine makers, including the fees he gets from referring clients in a case against Merck. Kennedy told the committee he’s referred hundreds of clients to a law firm that’s suing Merck’s Gardasil, the human papillomavirus vaccine that prevents cervical cancer. He’s earned $2.5 million from the deal over the past three years.
As secretary, Kennedy will oversee vaccine recommendations and public health campaigns for the $1.7 trillion agency, which is also responsible for food and hospital inspections, providing health insurance for millions of Americans and researching deadly diseases.
Kennedy, a longtime Democrat, ran for president but withdrew last year to throw his support to Trump in exchange for an influential job in his Republican administration. Together, they have forged a new and unusual coalition made up of conservatives who oppose vaccines and liberals who want to see the government promote healthier foods. Trump and Kennedy have branded the movement as “Make America Healthy Again.”
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WASHINGTON — The U.S. Senate on Tuesday confirmed Doug Collins as secretary of veterans affairs, putting the former congressman and Iraq War veteran at the helm of a department that provides crucial care to America’s veterans.
Collins, a former Air Force chaplain, was confirmed on a 77-23 vote, becoming the latest addition to President Donald Trump’s Cabinet.
“We must take care of our brave men and women in uniform, and Doug will be a great advocate for our active duty service members, veterans, and military families to ensure they have the support they need,” Trump said in a November statement announcing Collins’ nomination.
The Department of Veterans Affairs manages a more than $350 billion budget and oversees nearly 200 medical centers and hospitals nationwide. It also manages national cemeteries and works closely with the Defense Department on personnel matters.
Collins has promised to cut regulations across the department and elevate the quality of care for veterans.
The challenges facing the department have evolved in recent years, with a younger generation of veterans bringing new health challenges from their service in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.
“I’m an Iraq War veteran. I understand burn pits because I slept next to one for many months,” Collins said in his opening remarks during his January confirmation hearing. Collins said that he understands the challenges facing veterans today who “went time and time again, deployment after deployment” to conflict zones.
Collins served in the House of Representatives from 2013 to 2021. He has been an outspoken conservative since his time in the Georgia state legislature and was a close Trump ally during the president’s first term. He ran unsuccessfully for Senate in 2020 but lost the Republican primary to Kelly Loeffler, a major GOP donor who Trump has tapped to lead the U.S. Small Business Association.
Senator Kevin Cramer, a Republican from North Dakota, called Collins a “friend” who has “an engaging personality that attracts people to what he’s working on.”
“It’s not that they’re better doctors or better psychiatrists or better nurses or technicians. It’s that they’re empathetic,” Cramer said. “While they appreciate access to community care, they appreciate the empathy of a fellow veteran, and Doug brings that. But, guys, he’s a chaplain. I mean, come on, how perfect is that?”
Collins’ nomination sailed through the Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committee in a 18-1 vote. The lone dissenter, Senator Mazie Hirono, a Democrat from Hawaii, said she was concerned that Collins would limit access to reproductive care like IVF or abortion for veterans.
Senator Tammy Duckworth, an Illinois Democrat, said she had a productive conversation with Collins during his confirmation hearing but pressed him on whether he’d commit to working with Congress to “strengthen and refine” the department “rather than resorting to privatization.”
Collins said he would be focused on addressing wait times and increasing preventative care.
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ISLAMABAD — The Taliban have warned that the military weapons left behind by the United States in Afghanistan now belong to them as “spoils of war” and will be utilized to defend against any attempts to reclaim them.
The statement marks the first official response from the internationally unrecognized government in Kabul to President Donald Trump’s pledge on the eve of his Jan. 20 inauguration to retrieve U.S. arms from the de facto Islamist Afghan leaders.
“The weapons that America abandoned in Afghanistan, as well as those provided to the former Afghan regime, are now in the possession of the Mujahideen [or Taliban forces] as spoils of war,” claimed Zabihullah Mujahid, the chief Taliban spokesperson, while participating in an X space session late on Monday.
“The Afghan people now own these weapons and are utilizing them to defend their independence, sovereignty, and Islamic system. No external force can compel us to surrender these weapons, nor will we accept any demands for their surrender,” Mujahid stated. “We will use these weapons to repel invaders who dare to seize them.”
U.S.-led Western troops were stationed in Afghanistan for nearly two decades to counter terrorist groups and protect the internationally backed government in Kabul at the time. They hastily and chaotically withdrew in August 2021, just days after the then-insurgent Taliban stormed back to power.
A U.S. Department of Defense report in 2022 found that about $7 billion worth of military hardware was left behind in Afghanistan after the military withdrawal was completed. The equipment, including aircraft, air-to-ground munitions, military vehicles, weapons, communications equipment, and other materials, was subsequently seized by the Taliban.
Trump stated in his pre-inauguration remarks at a rally in Washington last month that his predecessor, Joe Biden, “gave our military equipment, a big chunk of it, to the enemy.” He went on to warn that future financial assistance to Taliban-ruled Afghanistan would be contingent upon the return of U.S. military arms.
“If we’re going to pay billions of dollars a year, tell them we’re not going to give them the money unless they give back our military equipment,” Trump said then, without elaborating.
Mujahid, while speaking on Monday, rejected Trump’s assertions, saying the Taliban have not received “a single penny” from the U.S. in financial aid since regaining control of the country. He stated that Kabul has neither anticipated nor sought any assistance from Washington.
The Taliban have displayed U.S. military gear in their so-called victory day celebrations since returning to power in Afghanistan.
The U.S. troop exit from Afghanistan stemmed from the February 2020 Doha Agreement that the first Trump administration negotiated with the then-insurgent Taliban. Biden completed and defended the military withdrawal, saying the choice he had was either to follow through on that agreement or be prepared to go back to fighting the Taliban.
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New U.S. tariffs on Chinese goods went into effect Tuesday, with China quickly announcing tariffs on U.S. imports in response.
China said it would impose 15% tariffs on U.S. coal and liquified natural gas, as well as 10% tariffs on crude oil, agricultural machinery and some automobiles.
The U.S. measures involve a 10% tariff on all Chinese goods, which Trump announced in an effort to pressure China to take action to prevent fentanyl smuggling into the United States.
The U.S. government has identified China as a major source of the precursor chemicals used by Mexican drug cartels to manufacture fentanyl.
China has said it has taken steps to crack down on the industry and illicit drug trade.
“China hopefully is going to stop sending us fentanyl, and if they’re not, the tariffs are going to go substantially higher,” Trump said.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Monday that Trump would speak with Chinese President Xi Jinping in the coming days.
Trump on Monday announced a one-month pause for the 25% tariffs on Mexican and Canadian goods after he spoke with Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.
Sheinbaum said she would dispatch 10,000 National Guard troops to try to curb the flow of fentanyl into the United States.
“Mexico will reinforce the northern border … to stop drug trafficking from Mexico to the United States, in particular fentanyl,” Sheinbaum posted on X after talking with Trump. “The United States commits to work to stop the trafficking of high-powered weapons to Mexico.”
The Mexican leader added that the two countries would continue talks on security and trade and that “the tariffs are put on pause for a month from now.”
Trudeau said Canada would deploy new technology and personnel along its border with the United States to stop the flow of fentanyl.
“I just had a good call with President Trump,” Trudeau said on X. “Proposed tariffs will be paused for at least 30 days while we work together.”
Both Sheinbaum and Trudeau, representing two of the three biggest U.S. trading partners along with China, protested Trump’s tariff plans and vowed to retaliate.
Kevin Hassett, director of the White House National Economic Council, said Monday that it was misleading to characterize the showdown over tariffs as a trade war, despite the planned retaliations from Mexico, Canada and China and the risk of escalation.
“Read the executive order where President Trump was absolutely, 100% clear that this is not a trade war,” Hassett said. “This is a drug war.”
Trump acknowledged Sunday that the new tariffs on the three biggest U.S. trading partners could hit inflation-weary Americans with higher prices for groceries, gasoline, cars and other consumer goods, but said the higher tariffs would be “worth the price” to bolster U.S. interests.
U.S. consumers could face higher prices because companies that pay the tariffs to the federal government to import goods from other countries then often pass on at least part, if not all, of their higher costs to consumers, rather than absorb their extra expenses themselves.
Tensions ramped up Monday with the leader of Canada’s most populous province of Ontario announcing that he is ending a contract with Elon Musk’s Starlink internet services in response to Trump’s new tariff on Canada. Musk, possibly the world’s richest man, is a key Trump adviser seeking to sharply cut U.S. government spending and trim the ranks of 2.3 million federal civilian workforce through buyouts.
Ontario Premier Doug Ford, who said he is also banning American companies from provincial contracts, signed a $68 million deal with Musk’s company in November to deliver high-speed internet to remote residents in rural and northern Ontario.
“We’ll be ripping up the province’s contract with Starlink. Ontario won’t do business with people hellbent on destroying our economy,” Ford said in a post on X.
Some material in this report came from The Associated Press, Agence France-Presse and Reuters.
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U.S. President Donald Trump is set to host Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for talks Tuesday at the White House with Israel’s ceasefire with Hamas militants in the Gaza Strip at the top of the agenda.
The talks come at a key phase in the ceasefire. Israel and Hamas have less than four weeks to agree on the terms of the second phase, which would include the release of all remaining hostages held in Gaza, a permanent halt in fighting and Israel’s withdrawal from the territory.
“I have no guarantees that the peace is going to hold,” Trump told reporters Monday.
Ahead of the White House visit, Netanyahu met Monday with U.S. Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff, who was part of the push to secure the ceasefire deal.
Netanyahu’s office said in a statement that the meeting was “positive and friendly,” and that he would meet with his Security Cabinet upon returning from the U.S. in order to “discus Israel’s overall positions regarding the second stage of the deal.”
Witkoff is expected to hold talks with Qatari and Egyptian officials as the three countries continue in their role of mediating the halt in fighting.
In addition to the ceasefire, Netanyahu said he and Trump would discuss countering Iranian aggression and expanding diplomatic relations with Arab countries.
Trump brokered normalization agreements between Israel and four Arab countries in his first term. He now is seeking a wider agreement in which Israel would forge ties with Saudi Arabia.
But Saudi Arabia has said it would only agree to such a deal if the war in Gaza ends and there is a credible pathway to a Palestinian state in Gaza, the West Bank and east Jerusalem, territories Israel captured in the 1967 Middle East war.
The U.S. supports Palestinian statehood, but Netanyahu’s government is opposed.
Hamas, a U.S.-designated terror group, has released 18 hostages so far, while Israel has freed hundreds of Palestinian prisoners.
The war in Gaza began with the Oct. 7, 2023, attack in which Hamas militants killed 1,200 people and took about 250 people hostage.
Israel’s counteroffensive during 15 months of warfare has killed more than 47,500 Palestinians, more than half of them women and children. Israel’s military says the death toll includes 17,000 militants it has killed.
Some material in this report came from The Associated Press, Agence France-Presse and Reuters.
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STATE DEPARTMENT — The United States and El Salvador have reached what U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio called “the most unprecedented and extraordinary” deal to further curb illegal immigration.
After about three hours of meetings with Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele at his residence in Lake Coatepeque, San Salvador, Rubio said that Bukele has offered to house dangerous American criminals in Salvadoran jails, including U.S. citizens and legal residents.
Bukele has also “agreed to accept for deportation any illegal aliens in the United States” who are criminals, regardless of nationality, in addition to fully cooperating on the repatriation of Salvadorans who are in the United States illegally, Rubio told reporters.
Rubio visited El Salvador on Monday to address illegal migration and other strategic issues.
The State Department said Rubio also raised strategies to counter the influence of the Chinese Communist Party in the Western Hemisphere to safeguard the sovereignty and interests of both nations and the region.
His visit comes amid the restructuring of a U.S. agency overseeing foreign aid, which has sparked a showdown between congressional Democrats and President Donald Trump’s administration.
Rubio announced that he is now the acting administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development but has delegated his authority to another official. He stressed that the agency must align U.S. foreign aid with national interests and comply with State Department policy directives.
Late Monday, the United States and El Salvador also signed a memorandum of understanding, or MOU, on civil nuclear cooperation, expanding strategic relations between the two nations.
The State Department said the MOU marks an initial step toward building a robust civil nuclear partnership, aiming to enhance energy security and foster economic cooperation.
Curtailing illegal immigration
Bukele is regarded as a key ally of the United States in its regional efforts to address the migration crisis.
On Oct. 7, 2024, the United States and El Salvador signed a Customs Mutual Assistance Agreement, further strengthening border security and facilitating trade between the two countries.
El Salvador was once the third-largest source of nationals captured at the U.S. southwest border. Today, it no longer ranks among the top 10.
Chinese influence
U.S. President Trump has maintained warm relations with Salvadoran President Bukele, who also strengthened ties with Chinese President Xi Jinping following his state visit to Beijing in December 2019.
During Bukele’s visit, China promised millions in development projects for the Central American country through a series of agreements. Among them were a soccer stadium, a national library, a tourist pier, and funding for water treatment improvements.
In April 2024, China and El Salvador began negotiations on a free trade agreement, though the United States remains El Salvador’s primary trading partner.
El Salvador formally recognized the People’s Republic of China on Aug. 21, 2018, severing diplomatic ties with Taiwan.
Panama
Earlier Monday, Rubio observed a U.S.-funded deportation flight departing from Albrook International Airport in Panama, returning dozens of undocumented Colombians to their home country. A total of 32 men and 11 women were repatriated, including seven individuals with criminal records.
The top U.S. diplomat said it sent “a clear message” that people who sought to enter the U.S. border irregularly would be stopped and sent back to their countries of origin.
On July 1, 2024, the first day of Panamanian President José Raúl Mulino’s term, the U.S. and Panama signed a memorandum of understanding aimed at jointly reducing the number of migrants illegally crossing through Panama’s Darién region en route to the United States.
The program is funded by the U.S. State Department and implemented by the Department of Homeland Security. Monday’s deportation was carried out under the MOU and following a State Department waiver that lifted a previous pause on U.S. foreign aid.
“This is an effective way to stem the flow of illegal migration, of mass migration, which is destructive and destabilizing,” Rubio told reporters at the Albrook International Airport.
“This flight today was possible due to a waiver that we’ve issued,” he added. “We’re going to issue a broader one to continue this cooperation.”
Under the 2024 MOU, the United States has provided nearly $2.7 million to fund flights and tickets to repatriate migrants to their countries of origin.
Since the first repatriation flight on August 20, 2024, over 40 charter flights have been conducted from Panama to more than 14 countries, returning more than 1,700 undocumented migrants. Destinations have included Colombia, Ecuador, India, and Vietnam.
Panama recently reported a 90% decrease in migrants crossing the Darién region compared to the same period last year.
Canal controversy
On Sunday, Rubio warned Panama that Washington will “take necessary measures” if Panama does not take immediate steps to end what U.S. President Donald Trump described as China’s “influence and control” over the Panama Canal.
“Secretary Rubio made clear that this status quo is unacceptable,” State Department spokesperson Tammy Bruce said in a statement after Rubio’s talks with Mulino.
Mulino also announced that Panama has decided not to renew a 2017 memorandum with China on Beijing’s Belt and Road Initiative and will seek to void agreements with the Chinese government before their official expiration dates.
“We’ll study the possibility of terminating it early,” Mulino added on Sunday.
The Belt and Road Initiative, or BRI, is a massive infrastructure project launched by China in 2013 under President Xi Jinping, aiming to connect multiple continents through land and maritime routes. The United States has cautioned that the BRI “is fueled by China’s mission to manipulate and undermine the global rules-based trading system for its own benefit.”
At the United Nations, Chinese Ambassador Fu Cong dismissed the accusations against China as “totally false” and “pointless.” He said that China has never participated in the management or operation of the Panama Canal nor interfered in its affairs. He also reaffirmed respect for Panama’s sovereignty and the canal’s status as a neutral international gateway.
The Chinese ambassador further called Panama’s decision not to renew the BRI agreement “regrettable.”
After visiting Panama and El Salvador, Rubio will travel to Costa Rica on Tuesday, followed by stops in Guatemala and the Dominican Republic.
Margaret Besheer contributed to this report.
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