Key events
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:
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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The Trump administration quietly cleared all remaining migrants from the American military base at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba this week.
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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”.
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As his administration moves to gut the Department of Education, Trump levied an attack on employees at federal agency, accusing them of being lazy.
