Canada ready with ‘forceful, immediate’ response if US imposes tariffs, says Trudeau
Canada will respond immediately with a series of forceful countermeasures if Donald Trump goes ahead with a threat to impose tariffs, Canada’s prime minister Justin Trudeau said.
On Thursday, Trump repeated his threat to impose tariffs on imports from Canada and Mexico that would begin at 25% and “may or may not rise with time”.
Trudeau, in remarks to a meeting of an advisory council on Canada-US relations, said:
If the president does choose to implement any tariffs against Canada, we’re ready with a response – a purposeful, forceful but reasonable, immediate response.
“It’s not what we want, but if he moved forward, we will also act,” Trudeau added.
Key events
Trump to impose tariffs on Canada and Mexico starting 1 March – report
Donald Trump is expected to announce new tariffs against Canada and Mexico that will begin on 1 March, Reuters reports.
Sources told the news agency that they did not have details on a final tariff rate, but noted Trump has consistently said that he plans to impose a 25% tariff on imports from the two countries.
Separately, an administration official said Trump was reviewing tariff plans, which may allow for some specific exemptions for certain imports, Reuters reports.
Any exemptions would be “few and far between”, the official said.
Lagipoiva Cherelle Jackson
Samoa’s prime minister, Fiame Naomi Mataʻafa, has criticised Robert F Kennedy Jr’s views and the spread of vaccine misinformation related to the deadly 2019 measles outbreak that claimed the lives of at least 83 people, mostly babies in her country.
It comes as Kennedy, who is Donald Trump’s pick to lead the top US health agency, faced attacks in Senate confirmation hearings this week with Democratic lawmakers accusing him of covering up his anti-vaccine views.
Kennedy, who denies being anti-vaccine, visited Samoa in 2019, four months before the measles outbreak was declared. Although it was not an official visit, he met with government representatives and anti-vaccine influencers, in what health advocates and experts claim was a disinformation campaign that stoked distrust in vaccines.
“If he is the messenger for anti-vaxxers, as a leader, I do not agree with him,” Fiame told the Guardian in her first public comments on Kennedy after the first day of his confirmation hearings in the US.
Joan E Greve
Members of the Democratic National Committee will elect their next chair on Saturday, as the party grapples with how to rebuild itself after devastating losses in the November elections.
The winner of the DNC chair race will help shape the message and priorities of the Democratic party, giving them a crucial role in the party’s efforts to win back the House of Representatives in 2026.
The race has attracted a large field of candidates, but two state party chairs – Ken Martin of Minnesota and Ben Wikler of Wisconsin – have emerged as the frontrunners.
Until its final days, the chair race had appeared rather sleepy, an accurate reflection of a party exhausted after a grueling and ultimately disastrous presidential election.
But the chair candidates have grown punchier as the race draws to a close, and the late entry of Faiz Shakir, who ran Bernie Sanders’s 2020 presidential campaign, has injected new energy into the race.
Senate confirms Doug Burgum as interior secretary
The Senate confirmed the former North Dakota governor Doug Burgum as interior secretary late on Thursday.
The vote was 79-18, with the majority of Senate Democrats joining every Republican in voting for Burgum.
Burgum, a billionaire former businessman, was governor of North Dakota, the third largest oil and natural gas producer in the country, between 2016 and 2024.
As interior secretary, he will manage US federal lands including national parks and wildlife refuges, as well as oversee relations with 574 federally recognized Native American tribes.
Anna Betts
Donald Trump has claimed that the military helicopter involved in the midair collision in Washington DC on Wednesday was flying too high at the time of the accident.
In a post on Truth Social, Trump wrote:
The Blackhawk helicopter was flying too high, by a lot. It was far above the 200 foot limit. That’s not really too complicated to understand, is it???
It is unusual for a president to weigh in like this, especially on social media, and suggest the cause of a collision, when officials have not yet revealed its cause and it remains under investigation by federal transportation authorities.
All 64 people on the passenger plane, along with the three people in the army helicopter, died on Wednesday night after the two aircraft crashed into each other in midair close to the Reagan National airport.
The bodies of more than 40 people had been recovered from the icy Potomac River by Friday morning, where the wreckage now lies.
Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro to meet with US envoy
Venezuela’s president Nicolás Maduro will meet with Richard Grenell, Donald Trump’s envoy for special missions, the country’s communications ministry has confirmed.
As we reported earlier, Grenell is expected to discuss deportation flights among other things during his trip to Venezuela.
Lauren Aratani
What is a tariff?
A tariff is a tax on imports, or foreign goods brought into the United States.
Who pays for tariffs?
This is a question that many Americans asked after the election. Trump has said foreign countries pay for tariffs, but tariffs are actually paid by American companies that import goods from abroad.
So if an American car manufacturer is importing a part from Mexico, it will have to pay a tariff on the part once it arrives in the country.
Why is Trump threatening to levy tariffs?
The US imports more goods than its exports – the trade deficit. Not all economists agree that trade deficits are bad but Trump has railed against them for years and tariffs are his preferred tool to deal with them.
Tariffs became a big deal in 2018 during Trump’s first term when he levied tariffs on some products from China and on metal imports. He also threatened to put tariffs on imports from Mexico, in retaliation for the large number of migrants who were crossing the border at the time. Trump eventually backed down from the tariffs in 2020.
In other words, this is all a bit deja vu.
The way that tariffs work, in Trump’s mind, is that high tariffs will incentivize American companies to move their manufacturing from abroad to American shores.
“All you have to do is build your plant in the United States, and you don’t have tariffs,” Trump said just a few weeks before the election.
But getting out of the complex global manufacturing ecosystems is nearly impossible for many companies. It takes years to get a factory up and running, so even if a company theoretically wanted to bolster its domestic manufacturing to avoid tariffs, Trump’s term would likely be over by the time it was ready.
Have a question about tariffs? We’re here to help. Email callum.jones@theguardian.com and we’ll answer in a future story.
Peter Navarro, Donald Trump’s senior trade and manufacturing adviser, said he did not know whether the president will impose tariffs on Canada and Mexico.
“I have no breaking news for you on that,” Navarro told CNBC on Friday. “I can’t tell you when; I can talk a little about why.”
He said “one of the big reasons we think about tariffs, and that’s the fentanyl,” adding: “The boss wants to do something about that.”
JB Pritzker, the Democratic governor of Illinois, has been blocking people who took part in the January 6 attack on the Capitol from working in state jobs, NBC reports.
In a written directive to the state’s primary hiring authority, the department of central management services, obtained by the outlet, Pritzker wrote:
These rioters attacked law enforcement officers protecting people in the Capitol, disrupted the peaceful transfer of power, and undermined bedrock principles of American democracy. Our State workforce must reflect the values of Illinois and demonstrate honesty, integrity, and loyalty to serving the taxpayers. No one who attempts to overthrow a government should serve in government.
The directive comes after Donald Trump issued sweeping pardons and commutations for about 1,500 people who were involved in the January 6 attack.
Ramon Antonio Vargas
One of the US Capitol attackers pardoned by Donald Trump at the start of his second presidency has been handed a 10-year prison sentence for killing a woman in a drunk-driving crash, according to authorities.
Emily Hernandez served 30 days in federal prison after she joined the mob of Trump supporters who stormed the US Capitol on 6 January 2021 and was photographed holding the broken nameplate of Nancy Pelosi, the House speaker at the time.
She was among 1,500 people with roles in the Capitol uprising who received unconditional pardons from – or had their sentences commuted by – Trump on 20 January, but that clemency did not solve all of her legal problems.
Hernandez, 24, on Wednesday was sentenced to a decade in prison for getting into a car wreck while driving drunk on an interstate in Franklin county, Missouri, in 2022 and killing Victoria Wilson, court records first reviewed by NBC News show. Hernandez also injured Wilson’s husband, Ryan Wilson, with whom she had two sons.
Justin Trudeau, Canada’s prime minister, said his government has responded to what Donald Trump is “focused on and what is motiviating him to consider applying tariffs as early as tomorrow”.
“Our border is safe and secure,” Trudeau said at a meeting on Canada-US relations on Friday.
Right now, we’re showing the new American administration that they have a strong partner in Canada when it comes to upholding border security, all while simultaneously underscoring that we won’t back down, that if tariffs are implemented against Canada, we will respond. We won’t relent until tariffs are removed and, of course, everything is on the table.
“I won’t sugar coat it,” he added, warning that Canadians “could be facing difficult times in the coming days and weeks”.
Canada ready with ‘forceful, immediate’ response if US imposes tariffs, says Trudeau
Canada will respond immediately with a series of forceful countermeasures if Donald Trump goes ahead with a threat to impose tariffs, Canada’s prime minister Justin Trudeau said.
On Thursday, Trump repeated his threat to impose tariffs on imports from Canada and Mexico that would begin at 25% and “may or may not rise with time”.
Trudeau, in remarks to a meeting of an advisory council on Canada-US relations, said:
If the president does choose to implement any tariffs against Canada, we’re ready with a response – a purposeful, forceful but reasonable, immediate response.
“It’s not what we want, but if he moved forward, we will also act,” Trudeau added.
Jaime Harrison, the outgoing chair of the Democratic National Committee (DNC), has said the party should have stuck with Joe Biden in the 2024 presidential election.
Harrison, in an interview with Associated Press as his leadership comes to a close, said that Kamala Harris’s shortened campaign timeline may have damaged her electoral chances.
“Had she had more runway, it would have been probably easier for her and for the campaign. We were building a race for Joe Biden,” he said.
Asked whether he believed that Democrats should have stuck with Biden, Harrison said:
That’s my normal default, is that you stick by your people … My nature is, ‘I’m on the team with you, you’re my quarterback. You got sacked a few times. But you know what? I’m going to block the hell out of the next person that’s coming at you.’ And that is not always the mentality of everybody in my party.
The DNC is expected to elect a new chair on Saturday.
Richard Grenell, Donald Trump’s envoy for special missions, is expected to meet with Venezuela’s president, Nicolás Maduro, on Friday, CNN reports.
Grenell is expected to discuss deportation flights among other things during his trip to Venezuela, the outlet reports.
Grenell held secret talks in 2020 with one of Maduro’s closest allies, Jorge Rodríguez, who swore Maduro in for his third term in office earlier this month.
Trump’s appointment of Grenell has left some wondering if an agreement may be reached with Maduro involving the deportation of Venezuelan migrants from the US and access to Venezuela’s massive oil reserves for US companies in exchange for Washington accepting Maduro’s power grab.
Colombian president urges undocumented Colombians in the US to return ‘as soon as possible’
Colombia’s president Gustavo Petro has urged undocumented Colombians in the US to quit their jobs “immediately” and return to Colombia as soon as possible.
“Wealth is only produced by the working people,” Petro said on X. “Let’s build social wealth in Colombia.”
He added that the department of social prosperity would offer credits to returnees who enroll in its programs.
Michael Sainato
Donald Trump has been accused of launching an “attack on the rule of law” as three former heads of the top US labor watchdog criticized the unprecedented firing of a top official.
The abrupt removal of Gwynne Wilcox from the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) leaves the agency “out of business” unless a replacement is nominated, they warned – and highlights a “real danger” to the independence of regulators and adjudicators now Trump is back in the White House.
In interviews with The Guardian, previous chairs of the NLRB described the dismissal of Wilcox as a “usurpation” of power that “reeks of discriminatory motive”.
The White House blamed decisions taken by Wilcox and Jennifer Abruzzo, the NLRB’s general counsel, as it fired the pair earlier this week.
The move leaves the agency’s board with only two members, short of the quorum of three required to issue significant decisions on US labor disputes. Wilcox, the first Black woman to serve on the board, has pledged to pursue “all legal avenues” to challenge her firing.
