Trump team looks to roll back student debt relief in latest move targeting American pocketbooks: Live

While Donald Trump claims his tariffs plan will hurt U.S. trade partners, what does it actually mean for American consumers?

Rhian Lubin investigates.

Eric Trump appeared to mix up tariffs and sanctions during an appearance on Fox News on Monday night, aggressively going after Mexico, Canada, and China as his top targets.

“You want to allow drugs to come through our southern border? We’re going to tariff you,” he said. “You want to allow them to come through Canada? We’re going to tariff you.”

Donald Trump’s second son proceeded to rant about costing the economies of the three countries “billions”, while failing to acknowledge the impact tariffs have on American consumers as prices on imported goods are inevitably hiked in response.

Gustaf Kilander has the story.

Chris Blackhurst writes:

According to Donald Trump, “the most beautiful word in the dictionary” is tariffs.

It says much about the US president-elect’s values – doubtless we can all think of plenty of other words – but that’s his choice and we have to live with the consequences.

Today, true to his selection, we received an inkling of what is to come as he fired the first salvo, promising to impose levies of 25 per cent on all imports from Canada and Mexico and an extra 10 per cent on Chinese goods. They will come into effect on his first day in office. The tariffs would remain “until such time as Drugs, in particular Fentanyl and all Illegal Aliens stop this Invasion of our Country.”

The use of capitals is indicative. This is going to be a commander-in-chief, who for now anyway, brooks no opposition, who sees trade as a way of imposing social, domestic policies on other nations.

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Economists are generally skeptical, considering tariffs to be a mostly inefficient way for governments to raise money. They are especially alarmed by Trump’s latest proposed tariffs.

Carl B. Weinberg and Rubeela Farooqi, economists with High Frequency Economics said Tuesday that energy, automobiles and food supplies will be particularly hit hard.

“Imposing tariffs on trade flows into the United States without first preparing alternative sources for the goods and services affected will raise the price of imported items at once,” Weinberg and Farooqi wrote. “Since many of these goods are consumer goods, households will be made poorer.”

High Frequency Economics believes the threats are not meant to support new trade policy and are instead a tool to elicit some changes along the borders and for imports from Canada, Mexico and China.

AP

MSNBC host Jen Psaki took the opportunity this week to offer several compliments about President-elect Donald Trump’s controversial pick for secretary of defense, noting that Pete Hegseth should be credited with his military service and television hosting talent.

At the same time, the former White Press secretary launched into a withering critique of the ex-Fox News star’s ability to lead the Pentagon.

Justin Barangoa has the story.

Alex Woodward reports from the federal courthouse in Lower Manhattan where Rudy Giuliani appeared in court this morning for a status conference on his property turnover case stemming from his defamation verdict.

Judge Lewis Liman ruled that the former Trump attorney’s “social calendar” for the president-elect’s inauguration is not an excuse for him to skip an upcoming trial surrounding the case.

Liman also warned Giuliani that he could face sanctions if he continues to dodge court orders to turn over applicable property to the two women he defamed, who are trying to collect on the nearly $150 million he owes them.

Judge Liman offered a “word of advice or caution” to stick with the orders after attorneys for the plaintiffs said they had not yet received the title for a Mercedes Benz convertible.

Giuliani then spoke out from the defense table, raising his voice to say “every implication” from the judge about him “is wrong,” and that he was struggling to keep up with orders while strapped for cash.

“I don’t have a penny, and it’s been tied up with them!”

Liman concluded by warning Giuliani’s new attorney — his attorneys formally quit as today’s hearing started, without a handshake or a nod from their now-former client — that “there should be no higher priority for your client than complying by the court’s orders, period.”

Visitors who bought fridge magnets at Times Square or other tourist hotspots around New York in recent years most likely were purchasing the work of Du Jing or one of her fellow exporters in a small Chinese city that supplies the U.S. and the world with tons of small commodities.

Du and her husband run Yiwu Xianchuang Handicraft Manufacturing in the eastern city of Yiwu, home to the world’s largest wholesale market. Products from here -– ranging from plushies to glass vases and portable toolboxes -– are sold in stores and on online platforms around the world, including to U.S. consumers on Amazon.

For years, the United States has been a major destination for Chinese goods, but exporters like those in Yiwu have been reducing their reliance on the world’s largest consumer market as Beijing and Washington feud over trade. Some have moved production to Southeast Asia and other parts of the world to evade U.S. tariffs on Chinese goods.

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Fox News host Laura Ingraham took a few seconds from her Monday night show to apologize to viewers for showing a photo of New York Attorney General Letitia James instead of Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis.

During a portion of The Ingraham Angle, the host lambasted the prosecutors, district attorneys and judges who brought criminal indictments or held proceedings against Donald Trump, calling them “modern-day Keystone cops.”

Ariana Baio has the story.

As she anticipates her estranged uncle’s return to the White House, Mary Trump isn’t expecting any future book to catch on like such first-term tell-alls as Michael Wolff‘s million-selling “Fire and Fury” or her own blockbuster, “Too Much and Never Enough.”

“What else is there to learn?” she says. “And for people who don’t know, the books have been written. It’s all really out in the open now.”

For publishers, Donald Trump‘s presidential years were a time of extraordinary sales in political books, helped in part by Trump’s legal threats and angered tweets. According to Circana, which tracks around 85% of the hardcover and paperback market, the genre’s sales nearly doubled from 2015 to 2020, from around 5 million copies to around 10 million.

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President-elect Donald Trump’s pick for border czar has threatened to throw the Denver mayor in jail if he doesn’t comply with mass deportations.

Denver Mayor Mike Johnston has voiced resistance to Trump’s campaign promise to conduct mass deportations and last week said he would even go to jail to stand up for the cause. Tom Homan, Trump’s border czar nominee, said both he and Johnston think he should be behind bars if he doesn’t abide by what could be a federal policy.

Kelly Rissman reports.