Trump threatens 200% retaliatory tariffs on European wines, alcohols
Donald Trump is starting off his morning by doing something he’s done quite often, which is threaten tariffs on major US trading partners.
The latest salvo is aimed at the European Union and their alcoholic beverage industry, particularly France and its world-renowned vineyards. Trump says he’ll put tariffs on what the bloc exports to the United States, after the EU yesterday imposed their own levies on American whiskey in retaliation for Trump’s tariffs on imports of aluminum and steel.
The escalatory tit-for-tat is why these things are referred to as trade wars. Here’s what Trump wrote, on Truth Social:
The European Union, one of the most hostile and abusive taxing and tariffing authorities in the World, which was formed for the sole purpose of taking advantage of the United States, has just put a nasty 50% Tariff on Whisky. If this Tariff is not removed immediately, the U.S. will shortly place a 200% Tariff on all WINES, CHAMPAGNES, & ALCOHOLIC PRODUCTS COMING OUT OF FRANCE AND OTHER E.U. REPRESENTED COUNTRIES. This will be great for the Wine and Champagne businesses in the U.S.
Key events
We are expecting to find out more today about Donald Trump’s plans for large-scale cuts to the federal government, as departments have a Thursday deadline to outline their plans for a second wave of layoffs and downsizing.
From Reuters, here’s more about what they have been asked to do, and what we know about the potential options already:
With Musk at his side, Trump signed an executive order on February 11 directing all agencies to “promptly undertake preparations to initiate large-scale reductions in force,” using a legal term commonly referred to as RIF to denote mass layoffs.
An OPM memo said plans should include “a significant reduction” of full-time staff, cuts to real estate, a smaller budget, and the elimination of functions not mandated by law.
A handful of agencies have telegraphed how many employees they plan to cut in the second phase of layoffs. These include the Department of Veterans Affairs, which is aiming to cut more than 80,000 workers, and the U.S. Department of Education, which said on Tuesday it would lay off nearly half its 4,000-strong staff.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, U.S. government agency that provides weather forecasts, is planning to layoff more than 1,000 workers.
Several agencies have also offered employees lump-sum payments to voluntarily retire early, a move that could help the agencies avoid the legal complications inherent in the RIF process, which unions have vowed to fight in court.
Pete Buttigieg not expected to run for Michigan Senate seat, clearing the way for potential presidential bid – report
Pete Buttigieg, a former transportation secretary and Democratic presidential contender, will not run for Michigan’s Senate seat next year, a decision that would allow him to instead seek the White House in 2028, Politico reports.
A former mayor of South Bend, Indiana, Buttigieg’s fortunes rose in the 2020 Democratic presidential primary, then his selection by Joe Biden to handle transportation policy during his administration.
Buttigieg recently moved to Michigan, whose Democratic senator Gary Peters announced he will not seek re-election next year, setting the stage for what is expected to be a hot contest to replace him in a state Trump carried in November.
Here’s more from Politico on why Buttigieg has opted out of that race:
His decision was framed by several allies and people in his inner circle as putting him in the strongest possible position to seek the presidency, and based on a belief it would be exceedingly difficult to run successive campaigns in 2026 and 2028.
The former Transportation secretary acknowledged recently he had been “looking” at a Senate campaign, including meeting with Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer to discuss the possibility.
Democrats are scrambling to hold onto the seat being vacated by retiring Sen. Gary Peters in a crucial swing state. Republicans see it as a top pickup opportunity after coming close to flipping the state’s other Senate seat last cycle.
Buttigieg, who ran for president in 2020, moved to Traverse City, Michigan, with his young family, after four years of working in former President Joe Biden’s Cabinet. The workload of Cabinet-related travel — and the prospect of starting a campaign soon after — weighed in his calculus, people close to him said.
Before opting out of a Senate run, Buttigieg also ruled out a run for Michigan governor. Polling indicated that had he run, he would’ve started in a dominant position in a primary.
“The hardest decision in politics is to pass on a race you have a very good chance to win,” said David Axelrod, the longtime Democratic operative who helped lead Barack Obama’s presidential campaigns, and a mentor to Buttigieg who spoke with him Wednesday. “Pete was an A-list recruit and would have been a formidable candidate for the Senate had he chosen to run. But had he won in ’26, it would almost certainly have taken him out of the conversation for ’28. This certainly keeps that option open. Beyond that, I have a sense that he wanted to spend more time with his family, and with people in communities like his, where the conversations and concerns are so different than the ones you hear in the echo chamber of Washington.”
For all his bluster, Donald Trump’s tariff-heavy approach to economic policy is not impressing Americans.
A CNN survey conducted by SSRS finds voters are more negative on his handling of the economy than they have ever been, which is striking, considering he presided over the worst economic collapse in decades in his first term (though also an extraordinary government intervention).
Here’s more, from CNN:
As markets slide and investors worry in response to Trump’s trade policies, a 56% majority of the public disapproves of his handling of the economy, worse than at any point during his first term in office. By contrast, the 51% who now say they approve of his work on immigration – headlined by stricter enforcement efforts – is 7 points higher than at any point during his first term.
Americans are closely divided over Trump’s performance so far in handling the federal budget and managing the federal government – 48% approve on each, with about half disapproving – while giving him lower ratings for his work on health care policy (43%), foreign affairs (42%) and tariffs (39%).
Trump’s overall job approval rating currently stands at 45%, with 54% disapproving, in line with the numbers he saw in March 2017 and matching his highest ratings for his first term in office. Overall, 35% of Americans say things in the country are going well, a rise from 29% in January, reflecting a surge in positive sentiment within the GOP. His ratings remain highly polarized, with Republicans roughly 10 times as likely as Democrats to approve of his job performance.
Trump threatens 200% retaliatory tariffs on European wines, alcohols
Donald Trump is starting off his morning by doing something he’s done quite often, which is threaten tariffs on major US trading partners.
The latest salvo is aimed at the European Union and their alcoholic beverage industry, particularly France and its world-renowned vineyards. Trump says he’ll put tariffs on what the bloc exports to the United States, after the EU yesterday imposed their own levies on American whiskey in retaliation for Trump’s tariffs on imports of aluminum and steel.
The escalatory tit-for-tat is why these things are referred to as trade wars. Here’s what Trump wrote, on Truth Social:
The European Union, one of the most hostile and abusive taxing and tariffing authorities in the World, which was formed for the sole purpose of taking advantage of the United States, has just put a nasty 50% Tariff on Whisky. If this Tariff is not removed immediately, the U.S. will shortly place a 200% Tariff on all WINES, CHAMPAGNES, & ALCOHOLIC PRODUCTS COMING OUT OF FRANCE AND OTHER E.U. REPRESENTED COUNTRIES. This will be great for the Wine and Champagne businesses in the U.S.
Lorenzo Tondo
Luxury Italian sports car manufacturer Ferrari says it is ready for countermeasures if US President Donald Trump imposes hefty tariffs on European auto imports.
“We are ready with some countermeasures,” Ferrari CEO Benedetto Vigna told Cnbc’s Converge Live in Singapore. “We are waiting for the official number to be published,” he added, referring to Trump’s threat of duties “of around 25%” on EU carmakers.
He added:
We will watch what happens over the next month, in the next few weeks. We are in the same boat in terms of tariffs.
The customer is at the centre of our attention.”
Nato chief to meet Trump on Thursday
Nato secretary general, Mark Rutte, will visit Washington DC on 12-14 March, according to a media briefing.
On 13 March, Rutte will meet US president Donald Trump at the White House. During Rutte’s visit he will also meet senior administration officials and with Congress.
US arrests more immigrants in February 2025 than any month in last seven years
Will Craft
US immigration enforcement officials arrested more people in the first 22 days of February 2025 than in any month over the last seven years, according to a Guardian review of Department of Homeland Security (DHS) data.
The Guardian review, which analysed DHS data from the first month of Donald Trump’s presidency, in addition to interviews with immigration lawyers, advocates and former Ice officials, show how the administration has transformed immigration enforcement in the US within just a few weeks.
In a rush to meet Trump’s goal of “mass deportations”, the administration has moved to quickly close the US southern border – suspending the asylum programme and other Biden-era programs that offered humanitarian relief. Simultaneously, it has amped up immigration enforcement in the interior of the country.
Immigration officials are not only arresting more people, but also placing increasing numbers in detention. DHS announced Tuesday that immigration detention had been filled to capacity, with 47,600 detainees.
The Guardian analysis also reveals that while the administration says it has been targeting “criminals”, Ice enforcement instead has become more indiscriminate. And it shows that as the administration tries to ramp up arrests, it is reshaping the relationship between federal immigration authorities and local law enforcement.
“What we’re seeing is a real scattershot of different tactics,” said Gracie Willis, a rapid response attorney at the National Immigration Project, a membership organisation for attorneys and immigration advocates.
Donald Trump’s new tariffs are “double-trouble” for the UK’s steel and aluminium industry, a British minister has said.
According to the PA news agency, the business and trade select committee chair, Liam Byrne, said:
President Trump’s new tariffs are double-trouble for Britain’s steel and aluminium supplies, they’ll dent £350m worth of sales, but they also risk swamping the UK with over-subsidised Chinese steel diverted from America.
What is the secretary of state’s gameplan now to redouble defences for our UK metal-makers?”
The UK’s business secretary, Jonathan Reynolds, replied:
He is right to say the challenge here is not just the direct trade we have with the US, but the impact of trade diversion.
He knows we already have 16 anti-dumping, anti-subsidy measures in place against 14 separate product categories, once the annual tariff three-quarter is hit, a 25% tariff applies to those.
I can tell him and the House today though that I will support UK Steel’s application to the Trade Remedies Authority for review of the steel safeguards, we do have to think about what comes after that, and a new one for the aluminium sector too.”
Hugo Lowell
A federal judge on Wednesday temporarily blocked a vast portion of Donald Trump’s executive order that threatened to hurt a major law firm from taking effect, ruling the president used national security concerns as a pretext to punish the firm Perkins Coie for once working with Hillary Clinton.
The executive order Trump issued last week stripped security clearances from Perkins Coie lawyers, mandated the termination of any contracts and barred federal government employees from engaging with its attorneys or allowing them access to government buildings.
Trump said in the executive order he had deemed Perkins Coie a national security risk principally because it hired Fusion GPS on behalf of the Clinton presidential campaign in 2016, which produced the “dossier” that pushed discredited claims about Trump’s connections to Russia.
The US district judge Beryl Howell rejected Trump’s contentions and entered a temporary restraining order on Wednesday that halted most of the executive order. The restraining order did not apply to the revocation of clearances, since Perkins Coie had not sought that in their request.
“It sends little chills down my spine,” Howell said of Trump using national security grounds to punish Perkins Coie, comparing the executive order to a “bill of attainder” – a legislative act that inflicts punishment without a trial, and is expressly barred by the US constitution.
The justice department had argued that Perkins Coie’s lawsuit was deficient because the executive order had not caused any harm to them – for instance, none of its lawyers had been stopped from entering a federal government building – and that the concerns were speculative.
Reuters has some more details on comments by Olli Rehn, a European Central Bank (ECB) policymaker, who said that the US administration must be encouraged to avoid leveraging “unnecessary and very harmful” tariffs on Europe through a negotiations solution.
“The simple conclusion is that we should aim at a negotiated solution,” said the Finnish central bank governor at a policy panel in Berlin on Thursday.
The EU plans to impose counter tariffs on €26bn ($28bn) worth of US goods from next month, ramping up a global trade war in response to blanket US tariffs on steel and aluminium, but said it remains open to negotiations.
Rehn said the ECB is carefully monitoring how the Trump administration
treats the independence of the US Federal Reserve and added that he hoped the US Congress could be counted on to maintain checks and balances on the issue.
President Donald Trump’s approach to cryptocurrencies is also on the ECB’s radar, said Rehn, adding that it was monitoring whether there would be some involvement of taxpayers’ money, and maybe links to stablecoins and thus links to the dollar-based system. If that were to be the case, “then this has quite serious potential to create systemic risks,” he said.
Judge orders Elon Musk and Doge to produce records about cost-cutting operations
Hugo Lowell
Elon Musk and his so-called “department of government efficiency”, or Doge, have been ordered by a federal judge to turn over a wide array of records that would reveal the identities of staffers and internal records related to efforts to aggressively cut federal government spending and programmes.
US district judge Tanya Chutkan’s order forces Musk to produce documents related to Doge’s activities as part of a lawsuit brought by 14 Democratic state attorneys general that alleges Musk violated the constitution by wielding powers that only Senate-confirmed officials should possess.
Chutkan said in her 14-page decision that she was allowing the state attorneys general to obtain documents from Musk to clarify the scope of his authority, which would inform whether he has been operating unconstitutionally to the extent that Doge’s activities should be halted.
The judge also suggested that the so-called discovery requests, which she limited to only documents and not any depositions, could include the identities of Doge staffers in order to establish the scope of the Doge operation. Chutkan’s order does not apply to Donald Trump.
For weeks, Musk has taken great pains to conceal how Doge operates, starting with his own involvement in the project. Musk himself is a “special government employee”, which the White House has said means his financial disclosure filing will not be made public.
The White House then subsequently said in court filings that Musk was a senior adviser to the president, a designation that it claimed meant Musk had no actual or formal authority to make government decisions, even though it contradicted how Trump had spoken publicly about Musk.
Olli Rehn, a European Central Bank (ECB) policymaker, said that the US administration must be encouraged to avoid leveraging “unnecessary and very harmful” tariffs on Europe through a negotiations solution, reports Reuters.
“The simple conclusion is that we should aim at a negotiated solution,” said the Finnish central bank governor at a policy panel in Berlin on Thursday.
Hugo Lowell
The US defence secretary, Pete Hegseth, is expected in the coming weeks to start a sweeping overhaul of the judge advocate general’s corps as part of an effort to make the US military less restricted by the laws of armed conflict, according to two people familiar with the matter.
The changes are poised to have implications across the military, as Hegseth’s office considers changes to the interpretation of the US rules of engagement on the battlefield to the way that charges are brought under the military justice system.
The defence department is currently in the process of nominating new judge advocate generals (Jags) for the army, navy and air force after Hegseth fired their predecessors in a late-night purge last month, and the overhaul is not expected to start until they are in place.
But remaking the Jag corps is a priority for Hegseth, who on Friday commissioned his personal lawyer and former naval officer Tim Parlatore as a navy commander to oversee the effort carrying the weight and authority of the defence secretary’s office.
The commission is as a reservist in the Jag corps and he will continue to run his private practice outside his military obligations. Parlatore previously defended Donald Trump for mishandling classified documents and former Navy Seal Eddie Gallagher on war crimes charges.
The overhaul of the Jag corps will be aimed at retraining military lawyers, the people said, so that they provide more expansive legal advice to commanders to pursue more aggressive tactics and take a more lenient approach in charging soldiers with battlefield crimes.
Part of that approach reflects Parlatore’s views on Jag officers, whom he has described to associates as effectively becoming involved in decision making and failing to exercise discretion when deciding what charges to include in military prosecutions.
One of the complaints has been that Jags have been too restrictive in interpreting rules of engagement and took the requirement that soldiers positively identify a target as an enemy combatant before opening fire to mean soldiers needed to identify the target having a weapon.
The Pentagon did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Trump threatens further tariffs as EU, Canada retaliate for those already in place
Donald Trump threatened on Wednesday to escalate a global trade war with further tariffs on European Union goods, as major US trading partners said they would retaliate for trade barriers already erected by the US president.
Just hours after Trump’s 25% duties on all US steel and aluminum imports took effect, Trump said he would impose additional penalties if the EU follows through with its plan to enact counter tariffs on some US goods next month. “Whatever they charge us, we’re charging them,” Trump told reporters at the White House, reports Reuters.
Trump’s hyper-focus on tariffs has rattled investor, consumer and business confidence and raised recession fears. He also has frayed relations with Canada, a close ally and major trading partner, by repeatedly threatening to annex the neighbouring country.
Canada, the biggest foreign supplier of steel and aluminum to the US, announced 25% retaliatory tariffs on those metals along with computers, sports equipment and other products worth $20bn in total. Canada has already imposed tariffs worth a similar amount on US goods in response to broader tariffs by Trump.
The European Union will raise tariffs on US beef, poultry, bourbon and motorcycles, bourbon, peanut butter and jeans, reports the Associated Press (AP).
At a press conference, foreign minister Mélanie Joly called the US trade war “unjustified and unjustifiable”, and said she would protest to secretary of state Marco Rubio at a summit of top G7 diplomats.
More on that in a moment, but first, here are some other developments:
-
China on Thursday called for “dialogue” with Washington to resolve spiralling trade tensions that have seen the world’s two largest economies impose a slew of tariffs on each other’s imports. “China has always advocated that China and the United States should adopt a positive and cooperative attitude towards differences and controversies in economic and trade fields,” commerce ministry spokesperson He Yongqian told a weekly news conference.
-
US secretary of state Marco Rubio has arrived in Canada for two days of talks with the top diplomats of the G7. Rubio will probably be hearing a litany of complaints about Trump’s decisions from countries in the G7 – notably host Canada, to which Trump has been most antagonistic with persistent talk of it becoming the 51st US state, additional tariffs and repeated insults against its leadership.
-
Donald Trump has accused Ireland of stealing the US pharmaceutical industry and the tax revenue that should have been paid to the US treasury, in a blow to the Irish premier, Micheál Martin, who had hoped to emerge unscathed from a visit to the White House marking St Patrick’s Day. The US president showed grudging respect for Martin, alternately ribbing and complimenting him, while also launching several broadsides against the EU.
-
Chuck Schumer, leader of the Senate’s Democratic minority, said that Democrats will not provide the necessary votes to adopt a partisan funding bill passed by House Republicans, which includes cuts to vital services and programmes. To avoid a shutdown on Friday, Schumer said, the Senate should pass a temporary measure and then negotiate a longer-term measure that can garner bipartisan support. Rather than take Schumer up on his offer to negotiate, Republicans quickly rolled out a social-media strategy to blame him for shutting down the government by not accepting the Republican effort to ram through the partisan funding bill.
-
US district judge Tanya Chutkan granted a request by 14 state attorneys general for discovery in a suit against Elon Musk and his so-called “department of government efficiency” (Doge) service to uncover the “parameters of Doge’s and Musk’s authority”, and the identities of Doge personnel.
-
The federal judge Beryl Howell has blocked an executive order that Donald Trump signed last week directing agencies to terminate contracts and no longer interact with Perkins Coie, a law firm that worked with Democrats during the 2016 and 2020 presidential campaigns.
-
The Trump administration quietly cleared all remaining migrants from the American military base at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba this week.
-
The secretary of state, Marco Rubio, defended the detention of Mahmoud Khalil, a legal permanent resident of the United States who took part in student protests against Israel’s assault on Gaza, by claiming, without evidence, that the Columbia graduate student was “a big supporter of Hamas”.
-
As his administration moves to gut the Department of Education, Trump levied an attack on employees at federal agency, accusing them of being lazy.
