The House speaker, Mike Johnson, said that a House vote on the Senate’s budget blueprint will proceed later in today, as planned, and that GOP leaders will ultimately secure enough Republican votes needed to pass it, the Hill reports.

Johnson told reporters in the Capitol:

I believe we will – eventually we will. I think it’s gonna pass today.

Senate Republicans have designed the budget resolution to enact Trump’s domestic agenda – including expanded tax cuts, more oil drilling and a crackdown on immigration – into law.

But, as the Hill writes, “the GOP critics have favored a House-passed version of the budget, which mandates much steeper spending cuts than the Senate’s plan, and want greater assurances that they won’t get jammed with the upper chamber’s lower numbers later in the debate. The pushback has created a huge challenge for Johnson and his leadership team, who are scrambling ahead of Wednesday’s vote to rally the holdouts behind the bill.”

It would take only four Republican defections for the resolution to fail. Johnson said of conservative House colleagues with reservations (whom he is trying to convince that Senate Republicans are committed to major spending cuts):

Their concerns are real. They really want to have true budget cuts and to change the debt trajectory that the country is on.

Sometimes there’s a lack of trust in these institutions between the two chambers. But I’m trying to assure my colleagues that we have it on good faith with the Senate that they’re committed to this as we are, and that we can protect essential programs – and cut unnecessary fraud, waste, abuse and other savings in the government – that will make it work better for everybody.

The vote is scheduled for 5.30pm ET.

The US treasury secretary, Scott Bessent, has been speaking to reporters outside the White House after Donald Trump announced he authorised a 90-day pause on tariffs on most countries and a China tariff raise to 125%.

Bessent said countries who did not retaliate against the US tariff announcement last week will be “rewarded”.

“Do not retaliate, and you will be rewarded,” he said. He noted that the tariff rate on Chinese goods has been raised “due to their insistence on escalation”.

Mexico and Canada are included in the 10% baseline tariffs, he said.

Donald Trump has backed down on tariffs on most countries for 90 days, applying instead a 10% tariff, effective immediately.

In a post on his Truth Social platform, Trump wrote:

I have authorized a 90 day PAUSE, and a substantially lowered Reciprocal Tariff during this period, of 10%, also effective immediately.

In a post making no mention of several days of market meltdown, rising US inflation fears and fears of a global recession resulting from his tariff policies, Trump said his decision was “based on the fact that more than 75 Countries have called … [his administration] … to negotiate a solution to the subjects being discussed relative to Trade, Trade Barriers, Tariffs, Currency Manipulation, and Non Monetary Tariffs, and that these Countries have not, at my strong suggestion, retaliated in any way, shape, or form”.

Trump also said he would be raising tariffs on China to 125%, also effective immediately, for the “lack of respect that China has shown to the world’s markets”.

Based on the lack of respect that China has shown to the World’s Markets, I am hereby raising the Tariff charged to China by the United States of America to 125%, effective immediately. At some point, hopefully in the near future, China will realize that the days of ripping off the U.S.A., and other Countries, is no longer sustainable or acceptable.

It is not immediately clear whether any other nations besides China will face tariffs above the 10%.

The Trump administration intends to appeal a judge’s ruling lifting access restrictions on the Associated Press, a court filing seen by Reuters on Wednesday showed.

The US district judge Trevor McFadden ordered the White House to restore full access to the Associated Press to presidential events, after the news agency was punished for its decision to continue to refer to the Gulf of Mexico in its coverage.

The order from McFadden, an appointee of Donald Trump, requires the White House to allow the AP’s journalists to access the Oval Office, Air Force One and events held at the White House.

“Under the First Amendment, if the government opens its doors to some journalists – be it to the Oval Office, the East Room, or elsewhere – it cannot then shut those doors to other journalists because of their viewpoints,” McFadden wrote in his decision. “The Constitution requires no less.”

A Democratic senator has introduced a bill that would prohibit awarding government contracts and grants to companies owned by special government employees, taking aim at Elon Musk, the SpaceX and Tesla CEO.

The bill, authored by Jeanne Shaheen, the longtime Democratic New Hampshire senator, is an attempt to prevent conflicts of interest and was crafted in response to Musk’s role in the White House, where Donald Trump has designated him a special government employee, according to a Senate aide. Special government employees, which also include many members of Musk’s so-called “department of government efficiency” (Doge), serve a limit of 130 days and are exempt from some financial disclosure rules.

Shaheen told the Guardian:

Those who step up to serve our country should do so because they want to contribute to the betterment of our nation – not because they stand to benefit from their public service at the expense of taxpayers.

Democrats and ethics watchdog groups have frequently objected to Musk’s numerous conflicts as he serves as the de facto head of Doge and a senior adviser to the president. Musk’s companies, most notably SpaceX and the satellite communications service Starlink, have extensive and expanding ties with government agencies as well as contracts worth billions of dollars.

As Musk and his team have rapidly moved to dismantle entire federal agencies and cut government services in recent months, former government employees have also warned that the world’s richest person is laying groundwork for his own private companies to further entrench themselves.

And beyond his contracts with the government, the billionaire’s companies, such as Tesla and Neuralink, are involved in a wide range of regulatory battles and investigations with agencies that Doge and the Trump administration have targeted for cuts.

Federal judges in New York and Texas have taken legal action to block the government from deporting five Venezuelans under a rarely invoked law that gives the president the power to imprison and deport non-citizens in times of war.

The five men were identified by the government as belonging to the Tren de Aragua gang, a claim their lawyers dispute. Three are being detained in a facility in Texas while another two are being held in a facility in Orange county, New York, the Associated Press reports.

One man in Texas is HIV positive and fears lacking access to medical care if deported.

The men were identified as gang members by physical attributes using the “Alien Enemy Validation Guide”, in which an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) agent tallies points by relying on tattoos, hand gestures, symbols, logos, graffiti and manner of dress, according to the ACLU. Experts who study the gang have told the ACLU the method is not reliable.

The ACLU had requested a temporary restraining order to keep their petitioners in the US and for the judge to declare the 18th-century Alien Enemies Act, which the Trump administration is invoking, unlawful.

Donald Trump sought to project calm this morning as his sweeping tariffs took effect.

“BE COOL!” the president posted on his Truth Social platform on Wednesday.

Everything is going to work out well. The USA will be bigger and better than ever before!

In a follow-up post, he argued that it was a “GREAT TIME TO BUY!!”

Donald Trump is expected to sign an executive order potentially on Wednesday aimed at reinvigorating US shipbuilding and reducing China’s grip on the global shipping industry, three sources familiar with the matter have told Reuters.

Republican and Democratic US lawmakers for years have warned about China’s growing dominance on the seas and diminishing US naval readiness.

Among the proposals, the US is planning to charge fees for docking at US ports on any ship that is part of a fleet that includes Chinese-built or Chinese-flagged vessels and will push allies to act similarly or face retaliation, according to the draft text of the executive order seen by Reuters.

Trump could sign the executive order on Wednesday and the final text had been revised, said the sources, who declined to be identified due to the sensitivity of the matter.

The White House declined to comment.

Chinese shipbuilders account for more than 50% of all merchant vessel cargo capacity produced globally each year, up from just 5% in 1999, according to the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

That gain came at the expense of shipbuilders in Japan and South Korea. US shipbuilding peaked in the 1970s and now accounts for a sliver of the industry output.

The US shipbuilding industry has struggled due to high costs and a complex regulatory structure, which has enabled rivals like China to grow rapidly.

Switzerland’s president, Karin Keller-Sutter, said on Wednesday she had spoken to Donald Trump by telephone about trade and that she was looking forward to working out solutions in the very near future.

“In today’s phone call with President Donald Trump I conveyed both Switzerland’s stance on bilateral trade, and ways to address US ambitions,” she said on X. “We agreed to continue talks in the interest of both our countries. Looking forward to working out solutions in the very near future.”

The government has expressed concern about the potential impact of Trump’s tariffs on key Swiss industries, including chocolate, watches, cheese and coffee capsules after Trump hit Switzerland with a hefty – and disproportionate – 31% tariff rate, compared with 20% slapped on the EU and 10% on the UK.

Reuters notes that Switzerland, which abolished industrial tariffs last year, has an economy heavily oriented to trading with the rest of the world, and the US is its single biggest export market.

In a joint statement, the Democratic governors of New York and New Mexico, Kathy Hochul and Michelle Lujan Grisham, who co-chair the US Climate Alliance, a bipartisan coalition of 24 state governors committed to reaching net-zero greenhouse gas emissions, responded to the order targeting state authority.

The federal government cannot unilaterally strip states’ independent constitutional authority.

We are a nation of states – and laws – and we will not be deterred. We will keep advancing solutions to the climate crisis that safeguard Americans’ fundamental right to clean air and water, create good-paying jobs, grow the clean energy economy, and make our future healthier and safer.

During a speech at the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC) president’s dinner last night, Donald Trump bragged that other countries were calling and “kissing my ass” to negotiate tariff rates just before they went into effect.

“They are,” he emphasized. “They are dying to make a deal.”

Trump made the remarks at the dinner, a key fundraising event for House Republicans, hours before his 104% tariffs came into effect for China, along with new tariffs imposed on 57 target countries, territories and blocs including rates of 20% on the EU, 26% on India and 49% on Cambodia.

As I reported here yesterday, the Trump administration has scheduled talks with South Korea and Japan, two close allies and major trading partners, and the Italian prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, is due to visit next week.

In his speech, Trump went on to mock the world leaders initiating tariff talks with his administration, pretending to be them as he pitifully pleaded in a simpering voice:

Please, please, sir, make a deal. I’ll do anything. I’ll do anything, sir.

He of course did not mention countries like China and Canada that are imposing counter-tariffs on US goods.

With markets in a flux and amid fears of a global recession, Trump maintained that he was correct and everyone else was wrong about the danger of tariffs:

I know what the hell I’m doing.

He also took aim at rebel Republicans who are attempting to give Congress the ability to block his tariffs.

Then he went on to bring up Hannibal Lecter again and claim that he’s real, but we won’t get into that.

Anyway, CNN has the clip.

Donald Trump has said now is a “great” time for business owners to move their companies to the US as his escalating global tariff war rattles all sectors of the financial markets and investors dramatically sell off US government bonds.

In a post on his Truth Social platform, the president said companies coming into the US would face less red tape, “no environmental delays” and “zero tariffs”.

His post came just minutes after China announced it was retaliating by raising tariffs on American goods from 34% to 84%. Trump’s staggering 104% tariff on goods from China came into effect at midnight ET (noon China Standard Time) on Wednesday.

Here the full post:

This is a GREAT time to move your COMPANY into the United States of America, like Apple, and so many others, in record numbers, are doing. ZERO TARIFFS, and almost immediate Electrical/Energy hook ups and approvals. No Environmental Delays. DON’T WAIT, DO IT NOW!

More from Scott Bessent, the US treasury secretary, who said this morning that he expected the bond market to come down after a savage selloff in US bonds sparked fears that foreign funds were fleeing US assets.

Speaking to Fox Business Network, Bessent said:

I think that it is an uncomfortable but normal deleveraging that’s going on in the bond market, and I expect that as we see the leverage come down, the risk managers tapping people on the shoulders, telling them to bring their books down, which is what happens every couple of years, as leverage builds up, then the market will come down.

US government bonds, traditionally seen as one of the world’s safest financial assets, are undergoing a dramatic sell-off as Donald Trump’s escalation of his tariff war with China sends panic through all sectors of the financial markets.

The falls suggest that as Trump’s fresh wave of tariffs on dozens of economies came into force, including 104% levies against Chinese goods, investors are beginning to lose confidence in the US as a cornerstone of the global economy.

China’s move to impose 84% retaliatory tariffs against the United States is unfortunate and a losing proposition for Beijing, the US treasury secretary, Scott Bessent, said on Wednesday, as he urged China to “come to the table” with the Trump administration.

“I think it’s unfortunate that the Chinese actually don’t want to come and negotiate, because they are the worst offenders in the international trading system,” Bessent said in an interview with Fox Business Network.

I can tell you that this escalation is a loser for them, that they have some very smart the economist and the academicians, technocrats within their bureaucracy, and they would be telling the leadership that we do not have the edge here. They are the surplus country that their exports to the US are five times our exports to China. So they can raise their tariffs. But so what?

No one wins in a war. But it’s proportionality. And the proportionality for the Chinese is going to be much worse.

Bessent said allies wanted to discuss how to rebalance China’s trade policies in talks with US officials.

That is the big win here. The US is trying to rebalance toward more manufacturing. China needs to rebalance towards more consumption.

Bessent also warned Beijing against trying to devalue its currency as a way to respond to the new tariffs.

If China starts devaluing, then that is a tax on the rest of the world and everyone will have to keep raising their tariffs to offset the devaluation. So I would urge them not to do that and to come to the table.

He did not rule out removing Chinese stocks from US exchanges, saying that all options were on the table.

China will impose 84% tariffs on US goods from Thursday, up from the 34% previously announced, the finance ministry said on Wednesday.

In early March, the Trump administration sent warning letters to 60 US universities it said were facing “potential enforcement actions” for what it described as “failure to protect Jewish students on campus” in the wake of widespread pro-Palestinian protests on campuses last year.

The president of Cornell University, which was on the list, responded with a defiant op-ed in the New York Times, arguing that universities, and their students, could weather debates and protests over the war in Gaza.

“Universities, despite rapidly escalating political, legal and financial risks, cannot afford to cede the space of public discourse and the free exchange of ideas,” the Cornell University president Michael Kotlikoff wrote on 31 March.

On Tuesday, the Trump administration froze over $1bn in funding for Cornell University, a US official said. The administration also froze $790m for Northwestern University, which hosts a prominent journalism school.

The funding pause includes mostly grants and contracts with the federal departments of health, education, agriculture and defense, the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

The newly announced funding freezes at Cornell and Northwestern come as Brown, Columbia, Harvard, Princeton and the University of Pennsylvania face similar investigations. The New York Times estimated that at least $3.3bn in elite university federal funding has already been frozen by the Trump administration in the past month, with billions more under review.

Donald Trump issued an executive order on Tuesday that aims to block the enforcement of state laws passed to reduce the use of fossil fuels and combat the climate crisis.

The move is the latest in a string of efforts by Trump’s administration to pump up domestic energy output and push back against largely Democratic-led policies to curb carbon emissions. It came just hours after Trump, a Republican, issued orders to increase coal production.

The order directed the US attorney general to identify state laws that address climate change, ESG initiatives, environmental justice and carbon emissions, and to take action to block them.

“Many States have enacted, or are in the process of enacting, burdensome and ideologically motivated ‘climate change’ or energy policies that threaten American energy dominance and our economic and national security,” the order said.

Trump specifically cited laws in New York and Vermont that fine fossil fuel companies for their contribution to climate change, California’s cap-and-trade policy, and lawsuits by states that have sought to hold energy companies accountable for their role in global heating.

Good morning and welcome to the US politics live blog. My name is Tom Ambrose and I’ll be bringing you all the latest news over the next few hours.

We start with news that Donald Trump’s new tariffs have gone into full effect today.

When Trump announced the latest round of tariffs on 2 April, he declared that the US would now tax nearly all of America’s trading partners at a minimum of 10% – and impose steeper rates for countries that he says run trade surpluses with the US.

The 10% baseline had already gone into effect on Saturday. Trump’s higher import tax rates on dozens of countries and territories took hold at midnight, Washington DC time, AP reported.

The steeper levies run as high as 50% – with that biggest rate landing on small economies that trade little with the US, including the African kingdom of Lesotho.

Some other rates include a tax of 47% on imports from Madagascar, 46% on Vietnam, 32% on Taiwan, 25% on South Korea, 24% on Japan and 20% on the European Union. Some of these new tariffs build on previous trade measures.

Trump last week announced a tariff of 34% on China, for example, which would come on top of 20% levies he imposed on the country earlier this year. He has since threatened to add an another 50% levy on Chinese goods in response to Beijing’s recently promised retaliation. That would bring the combined total to 104% against China.

China said it will take “resolute measures” to defend its trading rights, but gave no details on how it will respond.

In other news:

• Donald Trump signed four executive orders boosting coal production yesterday. The orders direct government agencies to “end all discriminatory policies against the coal industry”, including by ending the leasing moratorium on coal on federal land, accelerating all permitted funding for coal projects, protecting coal power plants scheduled to be shuttered, and investigating state or local governments that “discriminate against coal”.

• During his executive order ceremony, Trump tried to assuage fears of a recession, saying that tariffs are bringing in $2bn a day. The White House has also said that nearly 70 countries have reached out looking to begin negotiations to lower or postpone their tariffs.

• A federal judge ruled that the White House’s decision to block the Associated Press from its press pool is unconstitutional. The ruling comes nearly two months after the White House first barred an AP reporter from the Oval Office over the outlet’s decision to continue using the term “Gulf of Mexico” after Donald Trump issued an executive order renaming the body of water the “Gulf of America.”

• The US will take back the Panama canal from Chinese influence, US defense secretary Pete Hegseth said during a rare visit to the nation still unsettled by Trump’s threats to take back the canal. Just hours after his visit, the Chinese embassy in Panama issued a statement calling Hegseth’s comments part of “a sensationalistic campaign” to “sabotage Chinese-Panamanian cooperation”.

• A New York judge will hear arguments tomorrow about the legality of Donald Trump’s deportations of Venezuelan immigrants, one day after the supreme court issued a ruling saying immigrant rights advocates had filed their case in the wrong state. After the supreme court issued its ruling yesterday, the American Civil Liberties Union re-filed its case in Manhattan.

• Hours after the Internal Revenue Service formalized an agreement to share tax information of undocumented immigrants with Homeland Security, the acting head of the IRS has decided to step down. The acting IRS commissioner, Melanie Krause, is the third person to lead the tax agency since Donald Trump took office in January.