Trump’s extension of Mexico tariff deadline fuels speculation that other countries could also secure pauses
Lisa O’Carroll
Donald Trump’s extension of the deadline for a tariff deal with Mexico by another 90 days is fuelling speculation that he could announce pauses for dozens of other countries that face punitive higher import duties from tomorrow.
As the countdown continues to his deadline for a trade deal – already extended by four weeks from the original 90 days – the US president said he had made the decision to offer more time to Mexico because of the complexities of the trading relationship.
“We will be talking to Mexico over the next 90 Days with the goal of signing a Trade Deal somewhere within the 90 Day period of time, or longer,” he wrote on social media.
A little more than two weeks ago Trump threatened both the EU and Mexico with tariffs of 30% on most exports to the US, but last Sunday he concluded a deal with Brussels with a 15% baseline rate from 1 August.
Writing on his Truth Social platform, Trump said: “I have just concluded a telephone conversation with the President of Mexico, Claudia Sheinbaum, which was very successful in that, more and more, we are getting to know and understand each other.
“The complexities of a Deal with Mexico are somewhat different than other Nations because of both the problems, and assets, of the Border.
“We have agreed to extend, for a 90 Day period, the exact same Deal as we had for the last short period of time, namely, that Mexico will continue to pay a 25% Fentanyl Tariff, 25% Tariff on Cars, and 50% Tariff on Steel, Aluminum, and Copper.”
Key events
We’re also expecting press secretary Karoline Leavitt to hold a briefing shortly. We can expect questions about Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff’s trip to Israel, and the looming tariff deadline.
Trump to sign executive order reviving presidential fitness test
Later today, President Trump will sign an executive order that will reestablish the President’s council of sports, nutrition and fitness. The executive order will also reinstitute the presidential fitness test in public schools, a White House official confirms to the Guardian. The test was phased out of the school curriculum over a decade ago.
CNN first reported the details of the order.
‘Chaos, dishonesty and inflation’: Chuck Schumer slams Trump’s tariffs
In remarks on the Senate floor this morning, reported by NBC News, minority leader Chuck Schumer slammed the president over his latest trade deals with other countries, calling “his trade war … an experiment in chaos, dishonesty and inflation”.
He said of the new deal with South Korea:
Instead of levering a 25% tariff as he threatened, Donald Trump says South Korea will face 15% tariffs. And then he pretends like that’s some kind of victory. 15% is far from a victory, because it is American families who are ones who are going to have to pay for it in the end.
Schumer said raising prices by 15% on imported goods is “a lot of money to a lot of people”.
“Inflation continues to accelerate as Trump tariffs continue to hammer American pocketbooks,” Schumer continued.
That means Americans are paying more. Inflation goes up, the American family pays more. That’s because, in part, of Donald Trump’s tariffs.
He added:
Four months since Donald Trump’s so-called Liberation Day, his trade war has been an experiment in chaos, dishonesty and inflation.
Pete Hegseth’s aides used polygraphs against their own Pentagon colleagues
Hugo Lowell
Senior aides to the defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, conducted polygraphs on their own colleagues this spring, in some cases as part of an effort to flush out anyone who leaked to the media and apparently to undercut rivals in others, according to four people familiar with the matter.
The polygraphs came at a time of profound upheaval in his office, as Hegseth opened a leak investigation and sought to identify the culprits by any means necessary after a series of sensitive disclosures and unflattering stories.
But the polygraphs became contentious after the aides who were targeted questioned whether they were even official, given at least one polygraph was ordered without Hegseth’s direct knowledge and sparked an intervention by a Trump adviser who does not work at the Pentagon.
The fraught episode involved Hegseth’s lawyer and part-time navy commander Tim Parlatore seeking to polygraph Patrick Weaver, a senior adviser to the secretary who was at the White House in Donald Trump’s first term and has ties to Trump’s deputy chief of staff, Stephen Miller, the people said.
When Weaver learned of his impending polygraph, he complained to associates that he had been suspected without evidence, the people said. That led the external Trump adviser to take his complaint to Hegseth – only for Hegseth to say he did not even know about the test.
The external Trump adviser called Parlatore on his cellphone to shut down the impending polygraph, shouting down the line that in Trump’s second term, career employees did not get to question political appointees, according to two people familiar with the conversation.
Weaver does not appear to have escalated his complaint to the White House, telling associates that he preferred not to bother Miller with problems. Earlier reports suggested the White House intervened on Weaver’s behalf but the people said the White House learned of the test after it was cancelled.
A White House spokesperson declined to comment. A Pentagon spokesperson, Sean Parnell, said in a statement: “The Department will not comment on an ongoing investigation.”
The extraordinary episode underscored ongoing concerns around Hegseth’s ability to manage the Pentagon – he is still facing an inspector general report into his disclosures in a Signal chat about US strikes against the Houthis – and why a Trump adviser ended up staging an intervention.
Trump posted about the hearing in my last post on his Truth Social platform earlier today, calling it “America’s big case”. He claimed:
If our Country was not able to protect itself by using TARIFFS AGAINST TARIFFS, WE WOULD BE ‘DEAD,’ WITH NO CHANCE OF SURVIVAL OR SUCCESS.
Now the tide has completely turned, and America has successfully countered this onslaught of Tariffs used against it.
ONE YEAR AGO, AMERICA WAS A DEAD COUNTRY, NOW IT IS THE “HOTTEST”COUNTRY ANYWHERE IN THE WORLD.
Trump’s tariffs face skepticism from judges in federal appeals court
Ed Pilkington and Callum Jones in New York
Donald Trump’s global tariffs faced significant skepticism in a federal appeals court on Thursday, as judges investigated whether the president had overstretched his powers just hours before the latest sweeping round of duties is set to kick in.
The full 11-strong bench of the US court of appeals for the federal circuit in Washington DC is considering whether Trump exceeded his authority in imposing “reciprocal” tariffs on a large number of US trading partners.
Judges repeatedly asked if Trump was justified in relying on emergency powers to effectively tear up the US tariff schedule without consulting Congress.
Businesses challenging his strategy accused the White House of engineering a “breathtaking” attempt to force it through, unlike any trade move attempted by a US administration in two centuries.
The 1977 International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA), which Trump has used to invoke emergency powers and enforce many of his tariffs, “doesn’t even say ‘tariffs’”, one of the judges noted. “Doesn’t even mention them.”
In May a three-judge panel of the court of international trade blocked the import duties on grounds that Trump’s use of IEEPA was unjustified. The appeals court has stayed that ruling pending the outcome of Thursday’s hearing.
“The government uses IEEPA all the time,” Brett Shumate, assistant attorney general in the justice department’s civil division, representing the administration, told the court. He conceded, however, that it was the first IEEPA had been used to implement tariffs.
The US trade deficit has “reached a tipping point”, claimed Shumate, enabling Trump to take emergency action. “It’s affecting our military readiness,” he said. “It’s affecting our domestic manufacturing capability.”
But Neal Katyal, a lawyer representing businesses challenging the tariffs, argued that Trump was laying a “breathtaking claim to power that no president has asserted in 200 years”.
The administration is effectively saying “that our federal courts are powerless; that the president can do whatever he wants, whenever he wants, for as long he wants – so long as he declares an emergency”, Katyal argued.
The challenge to Trump’s use of emergency powers has been brought by five small businesses acting alongside 12 Democratic-controlled states. They argue that the IEEPA was designed to address “unusual and extraordinary” threats arising in national emergencies, and that the reason for the tariffs do not meet that standard.
The small businesses are being represented by a libertarian public interest law firm, the Liberty Justice Center. The non-profit is supported by billionaire rightwing donors including Robert Mercer and Richard Uihlein, who, paradoxically, have also been major backers of Trump’s presidential campaigns.
Trump’s extension of Mexico tariff deadline fuels speculation that other countries could also secure pauses
Lisa O’Carroll
Donald Trump’s extension of the deadline for a tariff deal with Mexico by another 90 days is fuelling speculation that he could announce pauses for dozens of other countries that face punitive higher import duties from tomorrow.
As the countdown continues to his deadline for a trade deal – already extended by four weeks from the original 90 days – the US president said he had made the decision to offer more time to Mexico because of the complexities of the trading relationship.
“We will be talking to Mexico over the next 90 Days with the goal of signing a Trade Deal somewhere within the 90 Day period of time, or longer,” he wrote on social media.
A little more than two weeks ago Trump threatened both the EU and Mexico with tariffs of 30% on most exports to the US, but last Sunday he concluded a deal with Brussels with a 15% baseline rate from 1 August.
Writing on his Truth Social platform, Trump said: “I have just concluded a telephone conversation with the President of Mexico, Claudia Sheinbaum, which was very successful in that, more and more, we are getting to know and understand each other.
“The complexities of a Deal with Mexico are somewhat different than other Nations because of both the problems, and assets, of the Border.
“We have agreed to extend, for a 90 Day period, the exact same Deal as we had for the last short period of time, namely, that Mexico will continue to pay a 25% Fentanyl Tariff, 25% Tariff on Cars, and 50% Tariff on Steel, Aluminum, and Copper.”
Former vice-president Kamala Harris has given her first interview since last year’s election to The Late Show with Stephen Colbert on CBS tonight at 11.35pm ET.
It comes a day after she announced that she won’t run for governor of California next year. As my colleague Lauren Gambino wrote: “Harris’s decision throws open the race for California’s governorship, a post seen as a critical bulwark against Trump’s agenda.
“It also leaves open the possibility that Harris could run again for political office. She did not rule out another run for the White House, saying only that “for now, my leadership – and public service – will not be in elected office”.
Harris also announced today that she’s set to release a memoir about her brief 2024 presidential run on 23 September.
Earlier this month, CBS owner Paramount announced it was canceling Colbert’s show amid a political firestorm, with Trump revelling in the the country’s top-rated late-night talk show host’s firing.
Mexico’s president Claudia Sheinbaum said in a post on X:
We had a very good call with the President of the United States, Donald Trump. We avoided the tariff increase announced for tomorrow and secured 90 days to build a long-term agreement through dialogue.
Trump says Mexico trade deal deadline extended for 90 days
Donald Trump and Mexican president Claudia Sheinbaum have spoken on the phone this morning as Mexico seeks an agreement with its biggest trading partner ahead of Trump’s 1 August deadline.
“Mexico will continue to pay a 25% Fentanyl Tariff, 25% Tariff on Cars, and 50% Tariff on Steel, Aluminum, and Copper. Additionally, Mexico has agreed to immediately terminate its Non Tariff Trade Barriers, of which there were many,” Trump said in a Truth Social post.
Trump said his administration would continue talking to Mexico over the next 90 days (“or longer”) with the goal of signing a trade deal.
He had previously threatened Mexico with a 30% tariff rate.
Here are some of the ways that Democratic senators say Doge managed to waste $21.7bn:
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Paying about 200,000 federal employees not to work for as much as eight months, under the Deferred Resignation Program. This had the largest price tag, at $14.8bn. Also expensive was firing or putting on long-term administrative leave another 100,000-plus workers, which cost $6.1bn.
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The emails that some federal workers were required to send detailing what they had done each week cost $155m and amounted to “millions of hours of wasted time”, according to the report.
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Donald Trump’s decision to freeze grants cost the energy department $263m in lost income from grants and fees for utility projects “supporting energy affordability and grid resilience,” the report said.
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The food aid and medical supplies Trump refuses to distribute and now intends to destroy will cost $110m.
Senate Democrats accuse Doge of wasting $21.7bn, paying hundreds of thousands not to work
Democrats on a Senate investigative committee have blasted Donald Trump’s department of government efficiency (Doge) initiative for wasting money, paying hundreds of thousands of federal employees not to work and doing little to accomplish its stated goals.
The report from Democrats on the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations is titled “The $21.7b Blunder”, and accuses Trump, Doge and its former head Elon Musk of wasting that amount of money by rapidly dismantling government functions without bothering to understand how they work.
“With Elon Musk at its head for its first four months, it is unsurprising that DOGE modeled itself on a defunct corporate motto, seeking to ‘move fast and break things,’” the report reads.
“Yet DOGE seems to have stopped there, never taking the time to fix — let alone understand— the things it had broken. By prioritizing disruption over governance and failing to identify solutions for any of the problems it purported to solve, DOGE has created its own forms of waste.”
You can read the report here.
Here’s more from the Guardian’s Sam Levine and George Chidi about the plans by Texas’s Republican-dominated legislature to redraw their congressional maps ahead of next year’s midterm elections, which have sparked outrage among Democrats and threats of retaliation:
Republicans have unveiled a new congressional map in Texas that would allow the party to pick up as many as five additional congressional seats, an aggressive maneuver that has already met decisive outcry from Democrats and comes as the GOP tries to stave off losses in next year’s midterm elections.
Republicans already hold 25 of Texas’s 38 congressional seats. But at the urging of Donald Trump, Texas’s governor, Greg Abbott, called a special session this month to redraw the state’s congressional districts. After contentious hearings across the state, Republicans unveiled their proposed map on Wednesday.
“We expected them to be greedy,” said Sam Gostomski, executive director of the Texas Democratic party. “The bottom line is, they are going to turn Texas into almost certainly the most gerrymandered state in the country.”
Had the map been in place for the 2024 election, Trump would have carried 30 of the districts, while Kamala Harris would have carried just eight, according to data from Dave’s Redistricting App, an online tool that allows for analysis of voting districts.
Top House Democrat Jeffries in Texas as GOP moves to redraw congressional maps
Today we’ll also be keeping an eye on House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries who has been in Texas, meeting with Democrats in the state, as a redistricting showdown ensues.
Yesterday, state Republicans released their proposed congressional map which would allow the GOP to pick up five seats in the state. They already hold 25 of Texas’ 38 congressional districts.
Jeffries is expected to hold a press conference later today.
US envoy visits Israel amid Gaza hunger crisis
Steve Witkoff, the Trump administration’s Middle East envoy, is in Israel today meeting with prime minister Netanyahu.
This will be Witkoff’s first public visit to Israel since May, and comes as the starvation crisis in Gaza escalates. It also comes as a number of allies – including Canada, France and the UK say they will reconginise Palestinian statehood if Israel fails to address the worsening humanitarian crisis and agree to a ceasefire with Hamas.
Follow along with the latest updates in the region here.
In response to the failed Senate vote yesterday to block arms sales to Israel, a number of lawmakers have reacted. Particularly senators who have grown increasingly concerned with Israel’s actions and the worsening humanitarian crisis in Gaza.
Democratic senator Lisa Blunt Rochester of Maryland joined senator Duckworth as a new supporter of suspending military sales to Israel. She said that “until Israel significantly shifts its military posture to end the dire humanitarian crisis in Gaza and the West Bank, I cannot in good conscience support further military aid and arms sales to Israel.”
Senate Democratic whip Dick Durbin also explained his vote with similar reasoning. “Prime minister Netanyahu has gone too far. The humanitarian conditions in Gaza are appalling, unconscionable, and cruel,” Durbin said in a statement.
However, Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer voted “no” to block arms sales, adding that “I have also long held that security assistance to Israel is not about any one government but about our support for the Israeli people.”
Meanwhile Trump posted on Truth Social today that the “The fastest way to end the Humanitarian Crises in Gaza is for Hamas to SURRENDER AND RELEASE THE HOSTAGES!!!”
This comes after his remarks earlier this week acknowledging that there is “real starvation in Gaza.” An apparent break from Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s who claims there is no starvation.
Earlier this month the World Health Organization said there have been 63 malnutrition-related deaths in Gaza in July. 24 of them are children under the age of five.
Senate attempt to block Israel arms sales fails, despite increased Democratic support
A vote to block arms sales to Israel failed in the Senate late yesterday. But the effort, spearheaded by Senator Bernie Sanders, did see 12 new Democrats vote to stop the sale of American weapons to Israel. One of them is Senator Tammy Duckworth of Illinois –who served as a US army helicopter pilot in the Iraq war. She explained her decision in a statement:
My votes tonight reflect my deep frustration with the Netanyahu government’s abject failure to address humanitarian needs in Gaza and send a message to the Trump Administration that it must change course if it wants to help end this devastating war.
One the eve of Trump’s tariff deadline, a federal appeals court will hear arguments from businesses who claim taxes on foreign imports are proving destructive.
The plaintiffs claim the president sidestepped congressional approval when he implemented his “liberation day” tairffs back in April.
Earlier, the President took to Truth Social to wish his legal team luck:
To all of my great lawyers who have fought so hard to save our Country, good luck in America’s big case today. If our Country was not able to protect itself by using TARIFFS AGAINST TARIFFS, WE WOULD BE “DEAD,” WITH NO CHANCE OF SURVIVAL OR SUCCESS. Thank you for your attention to this matter!
My colleague Ed Pilkington has more on the background of the case here
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