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Trump threatens to impose drug and chip tariffs as soon as 1 August
Joanna Partridge
Donald Trump has threatened to impose tariffs on pharmaceutical products and semiconductors as soon as 1 August, the latest deadline for the introduction of his “reciprocal” levies on individual countries.
The US president told reporters late on Tuesday the taxes on drug imports could be announced “probably at the end of the month, and we’re going to start off with a low tariff and give the pharmaceutical companies a year or so to build, and then we’re going to make it a very high tariff”.
He added he had a similar timeline for imposing levies on semiconductors, as he believed it was “less complicated” to implement tariffs on the chips required by all electronic devices, but did not provide further details.
Earlier in the month, Trump told a meeting of his cabinet that he expected to raise tariffs on pharmaceuticals as high as 200%, once he had given drug companies a year to a year and a half to bring their manufacturing to the US. He also threatened a 50% tariff on imported copper in an effort to increase US production of the metal.
The Trump administration began investigations in April into imports of pharmaceuticals and semiconductors into the US under section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act of 1962, as part of an attempt to impose tariffs on both sectors on national security grounds.
US sends migrants to Eswatini after ban lifted on third-country deportations
A flight carrying immigrants deported from the US has landed in Eswatini, the homeland security department announced, in a move that follows the supreme court lifting limits on deporting migrants to third countries.
In a post online, Department of Homeland Security spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin named five deportees from Vietnam, Jamaica, Laos, Cuba and Yemen and said they were convicted of crimes ranging from child rape to murder.
“A safe third country deportation flight to Eswatini in Southern Africa has landed. This flight took individuals so uniquely barbaric that their home countries refused to take them back,” McLaughlin said late on Tuesday.
In late June, the US supreme court cleared the way for president Donald Trump’s administration to resume deporting migrants to countries other than their own without offering them a chance to show the harms they could face. The decision handed the government a win in its aggressive pursuit of mass deportations.
On 4 July, the US completed deportation of eight other migrants to conflict-plagued South Sudan. The men had been put on a flight in May bound for South Sudan, which was diverted to a base in Djibouti, where they had been held in a converted shipping container.
US House speaker Mike Johnson calls for release of Epstein files amid backlash
Good morning and welcome to our live coverage of US politics as the furore over the Epstein files continues to grip the country with the unusual public spectacle of normally-loyal House speaker Mike Johnson breaking with Donald Trump with his calls to make the files public.
It was a rare moment of friction between Trump and the speaker, a top ally on Capitol Hill, and came as the president faces growing backlash from conservatives who had expected him to make public everything known about Epstein, who killed himself in 2019 while in federal custody as he faced sex-trafficking charges.
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The president has continued with his efforts to move from the issue, last night attempting to both downplay it and deflect it on to his opponents.
“I don’t understand why the Jeffrey Epstein case would be of interest to anybody,” Trump told reporters Tuesday.
He also said there were credibility issues with the documents, suggesting without citing evidence they were “made up” by former FBI director James Comey and former presidents Barack Obama and Joe Biden.
Stay with us for all today’s developments. In other news:
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Vice-president JD Vance on Wednesday will head to the swing political turf of northeastern Pennsylvania to begin selling president Donald Trump’s sweeping budget-and-policy package in a working-class district that could see a ferocious congressional campaign next year.
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Adelita Grijalva won the Democratic House primary in Arizona to succeed her father, beating a young social media activist in a closely watched election seen as a test of the party’s generational divide.
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Asked by a reporter if that would be grounds for getting rid of Fed chairman Jerome Powell, Trump answered affirmatively. “I think it sort of is, because if you look at his testimony ... he’s not talking about the problem,” Trump said. “It’s a big problem.” Trump has repeatedly demanded that Powell cut the short-term interest rate that the central bank controls, in part because the president believes it will lower the government’s borrowing costs.
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The Trump administration decided to withdraw half of the 4,000 national guard troops it dispatched to Los Angeles chief Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell confirmed to the Guardian.
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A flight carrying immigrants deported from the US has landed in Eswatini, the homeland security department announced, in a move that follows the supreme court lifting limits on deporting migrants to third countries.
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In a rambling set of remarks at an AI and energy investment summit, Trump veered wildly off-topic to praise two partisan, conservative reporters in attendance and made false claims about China having just one wind farm and about his uncle having once taught Ted Kaczynski, the Unabomber.
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Mike Waltz, who was ousted as national security adviser after mistakenly adding a journalist to a group chat on Signal about strikes on Yemen, had his confirmation hearing to become UN ambassador.
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The US ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee, asked Israel to “aggressively” investigate the murder of a Palestinian American citizen who was beaten to death by Israeli settlers in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.
