Donald Trump has threatened the EU with “serious tariffs” after the European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, invited Canada to become the EU’s first “associate member”. The US president called the idea of Canada joining the EU “laughable” and said that, should the EU move forward with the plan, Washington could impose “very serious tariffs or stop trading with Europe”. If it’s a bad intention, we’ll put very heavy tariffs on Europe,” he said.
Why does the EU want closer ties with Canada? Von der Leyen told the European parliament that, as democracies faced a “fracture in the international rules-based system”, Brussels and Ottawa needed to pull closer together. How has the EU responded to Trump’s comments?
France’s Europe minister, Benjamin Haddad, said on Thursday that Washington had no power to veto EU decisions. Canada’s prime minister, Mark Carney, has been addressing the European parliament on Thursday. Follow our live coverage here.
The US Federal Reserve voted on Wednesday to raise interest rates for the first time since 2023, from 3.75% to 4%, as the central bank continues to fight to tamp down inflation. Did Warsh identify what is driving inflation? Warsh acknowledged changing geopolitics, but avoided calling out the US-Israel war with Iran by name.
Shortly after the announcement, Trump said in a Truth Social post that interest rates should be 1% or less and criticized the US trade deficit. The Republican speaker of the House, Mike Johnson, announced Wednesday that he would be sending lawmakers home one day early ahead of the midterm election recess – a decision that lets House members avoid voting on Republican Thomas Massie’s resolution to impeach the defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, and a frenzied attempt to propose legislation on artificial intelligence. What has the response been to Johnson’s decision?
They are canceling votes to do business for the American people because they are afraid that that impeachment resolution of Pete Hegseth would pass on a bipartisan basis,” the Democratic representative Pramila Jayapal told MediasTouch. More than 100 House Democrats had urged Johnson to cancel the upcoming recess to allow them to craft legislation on AI safeguards. But Johnson told reporters on Tuesday that “we cannot have a moratorium on the development of AI”.
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