One Month Delay for Car Tariffs and Other Headlines of the Day

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Top of the Agenda

Trump will delay tariffs on auto imports from Canada and Mexico for one month. The White House made the announcement after Trump spoke with the three largest U.S. carmakers yesterday. The delay temporarily removes 25 percent duties on cars and car parts that were applied early Tuesday as part of sweeping new tariffs on both U.S. neighbors. Auto goods traded under the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) are eligible for the exemption. Separately, U.S. Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins said Trump was also considering exempting some agricultural products, adding that “everything is on the table.” Reflecting the volatility of Trump’s trade policy, U.S. stocks rose after yesterday’s announcement, following a slump earlier in the week. 

The details. Components for North American-made cars often cross borders multiple times before final sale, making the sector especially vulnerable to Trump’s tariffs. 

• The auto executives reportedly told Trump not only that carmaking activity in Canada and Mexico supports U.S. jobs, but also that they had invested across North America because of the assurances in the USMCA. Trump negotiated that agreement during his first term.
• The White House press secretary said firms should “shift production here to the United States of America, where they will pay no tariff.” A group representing the three carmakers—Ford, General Motors, and Stellantis—said they will work with the administration on “our shared goals of increasing U.S. automotive production and expanding exports.” 
• The press secretary said Trump was “open to hearing about additional exemptions” but that separate reciprocal tariffs would take effect on April 2 with “no exemption.”

The international response. The leaders of Canada and Mexico continue to dialogue with Trump—and plan countermeasures.

• Canada already imposed its first tranche of retaliatory tariffs, affecting more than $20 billion worth of U.S. goods, on Tuesday. Yesterday, an unnamed senior Canadian official told news outlets that Ottawa would not lift its countertariffs until all new U.S. tariffs had been lifted.
• Trump and Trudeau spoke on the phone yesterday, after which Trump wrote on social media that Canada’s work to crack down on fentanyl flows was “not good enough.” Trudeau had said earlier this week that there was “no justification” for the tariffs given the tiny fraction of fentanyl that comes from Canada.
• Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum has said she expects to speak to Trump this week and will announce countermeasures on Sunday. If tariffs continue, she said yesterday, Mexico will look to diversify its trade partners.

“[The reprieve for autos is a] prime example of why we have a consultative process that should be used before any action is taken. Otherwise, it’s just the most powerful firms that lobby the president for relief after he’s already fired the shot. Meanwhile, every other business will still be hurt,” CFR expert Inu Manak posts.

Across the Globe

EU defense summit. European Union (EU) leaders and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy are meeting in Brussels today to discuss expanding the bloc’s defense capabilities and reinforcing its support for Ukraine. The EU is weighing allowing countries to alter their debt limits to enable more military spending and issuing more than $160 billion in loans for military procurement. Yesterday, French President Emmanuel Macron said he was open to a discussion about using France’s nuclear deterrent to protect European allies from Russia.

Global computing prize. This year’s Turing Award, often called the Nobel Prize in Computing, went to two scientists who developed the reinforcement learning method that is crucial to modern artificial intelligence (AI) and chatbots. American Andrew Barto and Canadian Richard Sutton pioneered a reward-based, trial-and-error approach for machine learning. It was used to build an AI model that defeated the world’s best Go players, and more recently by the Chinese start-up DeepSeek.

Supreme Court on foreign aid freeze. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled 5–4 yesterday that the Trump administration must unfreeze some $2 billion for already performed work. The plaintiffs pointed to the fact that Congress had already approved the funding before Trump’s foreign aid review. Separately, hundreds of diplomats at the State Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) signed a letter to Secretary of State Marco Rubio protesting the dismantling of USAID, saying the decision undermines U.S. leadership and leaves a vacuum for adversaries to fill.

White House, Hamas hold talks. The Trump administration has held direct talks with Hamas over potential hostage releases, the White House press secretary said. It is unusual for U.S. officials to talk directly with groups that it lists as terrorists; the nominee for U.S. special presidential envoy for hostage affairs conducted the talks. The White House said it had consulted with Israel. Trump said on social media last night that there would be “hell to pay” if hostages were not released “now.”

Charges in Chinese hacking case. The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) indictedtwelve Chinese nationals for involvement in what it called a hacking-for-hire scheme that served Chinese government objectives. Some of the hackers targeted Chinese dissidents, religious organizations, and media groups based in the United States, the DOJ said. The Chinese Embassy in Washington called the indictment a “smear.” The defendants are unlikely to stand trial in the United States, the New York Times reported.

Mozambique protests. Police opened fire yesterday on opposition protesters in the capital, Maputo, injuring at least ten, activists and a rights researcher said. Activists had objected after opposition leader Venancio Mondlane was excluded from talks about a government deal to de-escalate tensions following disputed elections last year. A police spokesperson said officers had dispersed demonstrators but did not comment further.

Court victory for Hong Kong activists. Hong Kong’s top court overturned charges of refusing to comply with police inquiries for three activists that organized vigils to remember the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown. The defendants had already servedfour-and-a-half month sentences after their 2023 conviction. The judges wrote that prosecutors provided insufficient proof the activists were foreign agents. It was a rare victory for the pro-democracy movement; in a separate ruling at the court today, judges upheld a sedition conviction for another activist. 

Reported pause on military deportation flights. The Trump administration suspended the use of military planes to transport migrants to Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, or to other countries, unnamed U.S. defense officials told the Wall Street Journal. While the administration carried out more than forty such military flights since taking office, they are expensive; some flights carried people to Guantánamo Bay at the cost of at least $20,000 per migrant, according to the newspaper. The Department of Defense said Tuesday that no military deportation flights were scheduled for the next forty-eight hours.

The Day Ahead

• The Japanese and British foreign and trade ministers hold talks in Tokyo.

• Europe’s first commercial space mission aboard the Ariane 6 rocket is due to launch from French Guiana.

• The South by Southwest innovation and culture conference begins in Austin.

• Zimbabwean Foreign Minister Amon Murwira concludes a visit to Moscow.