Trump issues executive order to block state climate crisis policies – US politics live | US politics
Trump issues order to block state climate change policies
Donald Trump issued an executive order on Tuesday that aims to block the enforcement of state laws passed to reduce the use of fossil fuels and combat the climate crisis.
The move is the latest in a string of efforts by Trump’s administration to pump up domestic energy output and push back against largely Democratic-led policies to curb carbon emissions. It came just hours after Trump, a Republican, issued orders to increase coal production.
The order directed the US attorney general to identify state laws that address climate change, ESG initiatives, environmental justice and carbon emissions, and to take action to block them.
“Many States have enacted, or are in the process of enacting, burdensome and ideologically motivated ‘climate change’ or energy policies that threaten American energy dominance and our economic and national security,” the order said.
Trump specifically cited laws in New York and Vermont that fine fossil fuel companies for their contribution to climate change, California’s cap-and-trade policy, and lawsuits by states that have sought to hold energy companies accountable for their role in global heating.
Key events
Per Politico’s report, Trump’s executive order directs the attorney general to target state laws on carbon taxes and fees, as well as state laws that mention terms including “environmental justice” and “greenhouse gas emissions.”
The order directs Pam Bondi to “expeditiously take all appropriate action to stop the enforcement of State laws and continuation of civil actions … that the Attorney General determines to be illegal.”
Within 60 days, the order says, the attorney general will report on the actions taken against state climate laws and recommend other actions from the president or Congress.
Trump’s order argues that states have exceeded their constitutional authority by imposing energy policies that can be felt beyond their borders.
In a joint statement, the Democratic governors of New York and New Mexico, Kathy Hochul and Michelle Lujan Grisham, who co-chair the US Climate Alliance, a bipartisan coalition of 24 state governors committed to reaching net-zero greenhouse gas emissions, responded to the order targeting state authority.
The federal government cannot unilaterally strip states’ independent constitutional authority.
We are a nation of states – and laws – and we will not be deterred. We will keep advancing solutions to the climate crisis that safeguard Americans’ fundamental right to clean air and water, create good-paying jobs, grow the clean energy economy, and make our future healthier and safer.
Politico reports that the executive order also targets the array of lawsuits that mostly Democratic-led states, cities and counties have brought against oil majors, seeking compensation for the ravages of climate change, such as rising tides and more frequent wildfires.
“These State laws and policies are fundamentally irreconcilable with my Administration’s objective to unleash American energy,” Trump said in the order. “They should not stand.”
As we’ve been reporting, last night Donald Trump threw the weight of the justice department behind his war on climate action, issuing an executive order that aims to block the enforcement of state laws passed to reduce the use of fossil fuels and combat the climate crisis. It came just hours after Trump issued orders to increase coal production.
In the sweeping order (“Protecting American energy from state overreach”), Trump instructed Pam Bondi, his attorney general, “to stop the enforcement of state laws” on climate change that his administration claims are unconstitutional, unenforceable or preempted by federal laws. The order said:
Many States have enacted, or are in the process of enacting, burdensome and ideologically motivated ‘climate change’ or energy policies that threaten American energy dominance and our economic and national security.
The order names California, New York and Vermont as specific targets, while also listing a broad range of state policies that the administration would seek to nullify, from cap-and-trade systems to permitting rules.
Trump brags world leaders are ‘kissing my ass’ to make trade deals amid tariff chaos
During a speech at the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC) president’s dinner last night, Donald Trump bragged that other countries were calling and “kissing my ass” to negotiate tariff rates just before they went into effect.
“They are,” he emphasized. “They are dying to make a deal.”
Trump made the remarks at the dinner, a key fundraising event for House Republicans, hours before his 104% tariffs came into effect for China, along with new tariffs imposed on 57 target countries, territories and blocs including rates of 20% on the EU, 26% on India and 49% on Cambodia.
As I reported here yesterday, the Trump administration has scheduled talks with South Korea and Japan, two close allies and major trading partners, and the Italian prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, is due to visit next week.
In his speech, Trump went on to mock the world leaders initiating tariff talks with his administration, pretending to be them as he pitifully pleaded in a simpering voice:
Please, please, sir, make a deal. I’ll do anything. I’ll do anything, sir.
He of course did not mention countries like China and Canada that are imposing counter-tariffs on US goods.
With markets in a flux and amid fears of a global recession, Trump maintained that he was correct and everyone else was wrong about the danger of tariffs:
I know what the hell I’m doing.
He also took aim at rebel Republicans who are attempting to give Congress the ability to block his tariffs.
Then he went on to bring up Hannibal Lecter again and claim that he’s real, but we won’t get into that.
Anyway, CNN has the clip.
Jakub Krupa
EU countries set to approve first retaliation against US tariffs
The EU is set to finalise the first part of its response to Trump’s tariffs later today, with retaliatory levies against Trump’s original measures on steel and aluminium.
EU member states will vote on the final list on Wednesday, which targets €21bn of goods, down from €26bn originally foreseen, after talks with the EU’s 27 member states and many industry bodies. The list of potential targets facing mostly 25% retaliatory tariffs now ranges from almonds to yachts, diamonds and dental floss, soya beans and steel parts. But bourbon and wine have been dropped.
‘This is a great time to move companies to the US,’ says Trump as tariff war escalates
Donald Trump has said now is a “great” time for business owners to move their companies to the US as his escalating global tariff war rattles all sectors of the financial markets and investors dramatically sell off US government bonds.
In a post on his Truth Social platform, the president said companies coming into the US would face less red tape, “no environmental delays” and “zero tariffs”.
His post came just minutes after China announced it was retaliating by raising tariffs on American goods from 34% to 84%. Trump’s staggering 104% tariff on goods from China came into effect at midnight ET (noon China Standard Time) on Wednesday.
Here the full post:
This is a GREAT time to move your COMPANY into the United States of America, like Apple, and so many others, in record numbers, are doing. ZERO TARIFFS, and almost immediate Electrical/Energy hook ups and approvals. No Environmental Delays. DON’T WAIT, DO IT NOW!
US treasury secretary says he expects bond market to calm down
More from Scott Bessent, the US treasury secretary, who said this morning that he expected the bond market to come down after a savage selloff in US bonds sparked fears that foreign funds were fleeing US assets.
Speaking to Fox Business Network, Bessent said:
I think that it is an uncomfortable but normal deleveraging that’s going on in the bond market, and I expect that as we see the leverage come down, the risk managers tapping people on the shoulders, telling them to bring their books down, which is what happens every couple of years, as leverage builds up, then the market will come down.
US government bonds, traditionally seen as one of the world’s safest financial assets, are undergoing a dramatic sell-off as Donald Trump’s escalation of his tariff war with China sends panic through all sectors of the financial markets.
The falls suggest that as Trump’s fresh wave of tariffs on dozens of economies came into force, including 104% levies against Chinese goods, investors are beginning to lose confidence in the US as a cornerstone of the global economy.
China’s 84% retaliatory tariffs are ‘unfortunate’, say US treasury secretary Scott Bessent, as he urges China to ‘come to the table’
China’s move to impose 84% retaliatory tariffs against the United States is unfortunate and a losing proposition for Beijing, the US treasury secretary, Scott Bessent, said on Wednesday, as he urged China to “come to the table” with the Trump administration.
“I think it’s unfortunate that the Chinese actually don’t want to come and negotiate, because they are the worst offenders in the international trading system,” Bessent said in an interview with Fox Business Network.
I can tell you that this escalation is a loser for them, that they have some very smart the economist and the academicians, technocrats within their bureaucracy, and they would be telling the leadership that we do not have the edge here. They are the surplus country that their exports to the US are five times our exports to China. So they can raise their tariffs. But so what?
No one wins in a war. But it’s proportionality. And the proportionality for the Chinese is going to be much worse.
Bessent said allies wanted to discuss how to rebalance China’s trade policies in talks with US officials.
That is the big win here. The US is trying to rebalance toward more manufacturing. China needs to rebalance towards more consumption.
Bessent also warned Beijing against trying to devalue its currency as a way to respond to the new tariffs.
If China starts devaluing, then that is a tax on the rest of the world and everyone will have to keep raising their tariffs to offset the devaluation. So I would urge them not to do that and to come to the table.
He did not rule out removing Chinese stocks from US exchanges, saying that all options were on the table.
Tom Perkins
Eleven top US consumer goods corporations spent more than three times more on share buybacks than they did on taxes, using their savings from the 2017 Donald Trump tax cuts to supercharge purchases that enriched investors instead of lowering prices on goods essential to daily life, according to a new report.
The findings are part of a new analysis of company filings by the Groundwork Collaborative economic thinktank. They come as the US president proposes $5tn in new tax cuts that would again lower the corporate tax rate, and likely lead to more buybacks.
PepsiCo, Comcast, United Healthcare, personal care giant Kimberly Clark and the other companies have collectively recorded nearly $500bn in profits since the last cuts. They enacted $463bn in buybacks and paid just $140bn in federal taxes.
The figures are “startling”, said Liz Pancotti, a study co-author and director of policy with the Groundwork Collaborative, and highlight how the cuts incentivize buybacks.
“The companies are now throwing massive amounts of money at investors who are largely already wealthy people,” Pancotti added. “This is how you get the staggering wealth inequality in this country.”
Kalyeena Makortoff
Donald Trump’s sweeping tariffs have put global growth at risk, the Bank of England has warned, heaping pressure on government finances and increasing the likelihood of “severe shocks” to the financial system.
The Bank’s financial policy committee (FPC) said its global risk environment had deteriorated and “uncertainty had intensified” since its last update in November, with US tariff announcements contributing to a “material increase in risks to global growth” and inflation levels.
Those concerns have knocked investor confidence, and increased the risk of a “further sharp correction” in financial markets that could cause stress for indebted companies and make it harder for governments to borrow money and refinance their debts.
The Bank warned that higher government bond yields – effectively the interest rate countries pay on their debt – would “reduce their capacity to respond to future shocks”. Government bonds, including the traditionally safe haven US treasuries, have been undergoing a dramatic sell-off since Trump announced a fresh wave of tariffs on dozens of countries overnight.
Michael Sainato
In Gainesville, Florida, a small city in the north-central part of the state, small businesses and shoppers are bracing for the impacts of Trump’s sweeping tariffs.
The Trump administration announced a baseline of 10% tariffs on nearly every country in the world last week, with much higher rates on countries such as China, Taiwan and Vietnam, and 20% tariffs on European Union countries.
The tariffs are expected to increase prices on household goods, clothing, electronics and groceries; the Budget Lab at Yale University reported the tariffs could cost the average US household $3,800.
As criticism of the tariffs has mounted, the White House has touted support for the tariffs from “everyday Americans”. And in Gainesville, that message seems to have worked – for now.
“Make America great again,” said Justin Godwin, an electrical contractor in Ocala, Florida, just south of Gainesville. “We are not the world police, nor are we the global providers of welfare.”
Kim Roberts Rogel, a retiree in Lakeland, Florida, added: “Go, Trump. He’s a businessman and knows exactly what he is doing.”
Samantha Gore, a stay-at-home mom in Interlachen, Florida, just west of Gainesville, repeated a claim from Trump that Canada has 250% tariffs on some products, though the truth is more complicated: there are also zero tariffs on thousands of metric tons of US dairy that Canada imports, thanks to a deal brokered by Trump in his first administration, and the US dairy industry isn’t reaching the levels of import quotas on any dairy products to receive the maximum tariffs from Canada.
China to impose additional tariffs of 84% on US goods
China will impose 84% tariffs on US goods from Thursday, up from the 34% previously announced, the finance ministry said on Wednesday.
White House freezes funds for Cornell and Northwestern in latest crackdown
In early March, the Trump administration sent warning letters to 60 US universities it said were facing “potential enforcement actions” for what it described as “failure to protect Jewish students on campus” in the wake of widespread pro-Palestinian protests on campuses last year.
The president of Cornell University, which was on the list, responded with a defiant op-ed in the New York Times, arguing that universities, and their students, could weather debates and protests over the war in Gaza.
“Universities, despite rapidly escalating political, legal and financial risks, cannot afford to cede the space of public discourse and the free exchange of ideas,” the Cornell University president Michael Kotlikoff wrote on 31 March.
On Tuesday, the Trump administration froze over $1bn in funding for Cornell University, a US official said. The administration also froze $790m for Northwestern University, which hosts a prominent journalism school.
The funding pause includes mostly grants and contracts with the federal departments of health, education, agriculture and defense, the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
The newly announced funding freezes at Cornell and Northwestern come as Brown, Columbia, Harvard, Princeton and the University of Pennsylvania face similar investigations. The New York Times estimated that at least $3.3bn in elite university federal funding has already been frozen by the Trump administration in the past month, with billions more under review.
Trump issues order to block state climate change policies
Donald Trump issued an executive order on Tuesday that aims to block the enforcement of state laws passed to reduce the use of fossil fuels and combat the climate crisis.
The move is the latest in a string of efforts by Trump’s administration to pump up domestic energy output and push back against largely Democratic-led policies to curb carbon emissions. It came just hours after Trump, a Republican, issued orders to increase coal production.
The order directed the US attorney general to identify state laws that address climate change, ESG initiatives, environmental justice and carbon emissions, and to take action to block them.
“Many States have enacted, or are in the process of enacting, burdensome and ideologically motivated ‘climate change’ or energy policies that threaten American energy dominance and our economic and national security,” the order said.
Trump specifically cited laws in New York and Vermont that fine fossil fuel companies for their contribution to climate change, California’s cap-and-trade policy, and lawsuits by states that have sought to hold energy companies accountable for their role in global heating.
European Union countries are expected to approve on Wednesday the bloc’s first countermeasures against Donald Trump’s tariffs, joining China and Canada in retaliating and escalating a conflict that could become a global trade war, Reuters reported.
The 27-nation bloc faces 25% import tariffs on steel and aluminium and cars as well as the new broader tariffs of 20% for almost all other goods under Trump’s policy to hit countries he says impose high barriers to US imports.
The European Commission, which coordinates EU trade policy, proposed on Monday extra duties mostly of 25% on a range of US imports in response specifically to the US metals tariffs. It is still assessing how to respond to the car and broader levies.
The imports include motorcycles, poultry, fruit, wood, clothing and dental floss, according to a document seen by Reuters. They totalled about €21bn ($23bn) last year, meaning the EU’s retaliation will be against goods worth less than the €26bn of EU metals exports hit by US tariffs.
They are to enter force in stages – on 15 April, 16 May and 1 December.
Trump’s punishing tariffs have shaken a global trading order that has persisted for decades, raised fears of recession and wiped trillions of dollars off the market value of major firms.
Since Trump unveiled his tariffs last Wednesday, the S&P 500 has suffered its deepest loss since the benchmark’s creation in the 1950s. It is now nearing a bear market, defined as 20% below its most recent high, Reuters reported.
Global benchmark bonds, assets perceived as relatively safe, were also caught up in the market turmoil on Wednesday, an unnerving turn towards forced selling that is sounding alarm bells for investors.
European shares fell on Wednesday as the US tariffs kicked in and US stock futures pointed to more pain ahead, after a grim session for most of Asia. Chinese stocks bucked the trend, however, as state support propped up the ailing market.
Trump tariffs kick in, spurring more market carnage
Good morning and welcome to the US politics live blog. My name is Tom Ambrose and I’ll be bringing you all the latest news over the next few hours.
We start with news that Donald Trump’s new tariffs have gone into full effect today.
When Trump announced the latest round of tariffs on 2 April, he declared that the US would now tax nearly all of America’s trading partners at a minimum of 10% – and impose steeper rates for countries that he says run trade surpluses with the US.
The 10% baseline had already gone into effect on Saturday. Trump’s higher import tax rates on dozens of countries and territories took hold at midnight, Washington DC time, AP reported.
The steeper levies run as high as 50% – with that biggest rate landing on small economies that trade little with the US, including the African kingdom of Lesotho.
Some other rates include a tax of 47% on imports from Madagascar, 46% on Vietnam, 32% on Taiwan, 25% on South Korea, 24% on Japan and 20% on the European Union. Some of these new tariffs build on previous trade measures.
Trump last week announced a tariff of 34% on China, for example, which would come on top of 20% levies he imposed on the country earlier this year. He has since threatened to add an another 50% levy on Chinese goods in response to Beijing’s recently promised retaliation. That would bring the combined total to 104% against China.
China said it will take “resolute measures” to defend its trading rights, but gave no details on how it will respond.
In other news:
-
Donald Trump signed four executive orders boosting coal production yesterday. The orders direct government agencies to “end all discriminatory policies against the coal industry”, including by ending the leasing moratorium on coal on federal land, accelerating all permitted funding for coal projects, protecting coal power plants scheduled to be shuttered, and investigating state or local governments that “discriminate against coal”.
-
During his executive order ceremony, Trump tried to assuage fears of a recession, saying that tariffs are bringing in $2bn a day. The White House has also said that nearly 70 countries have reached out looking to begin negotiations to lower or postpone their tariffs.
-
A federal judge ruled that the White House’s decision to block the Associated Press from its press pool is unconstitutional. The ruling comes nearly two months after the White House first barred an AP reporter from the Oval Office over the outlet’s decision to continue using the term “Gulf of Mexico” after Donald Trump issued an executive order renaming the body of water the “Gulf of America.”
-
The US will take back the Panama canal from Chinese influence, US defense secretary Pete Hegseth said during a rare visit to the nation still unsettled by Trump’s threats to take back the canal. Just hours after his visit, the Chinese embassy in Panama issued a statement calling Hegseth’s comments part of “a sensationalistic campaign” to “sabotage Chinese-Panamanian cooperation”.
-
A New York judge will hear arguments tomorrow about the legality of Donald Trump’s deportations of Venezuelan immigrants, one day after the supreme court issued a ruling saying immigrant rights advocates had filed their case in the wrong state. After the supreme court issued its ruling yesterday, the American Civil Liberties Union re-filed its case in Manhattan.
-
Hours after the Internal Revenue Service formalized an agreement to share tax information of undocumented immigrants with Homeland Security, the acting head of the IRS has decided to step down. The acting IRS commissioner, Melanie Krause, is the third person to lead the tax agency since Donald Trump took office in January.
