White House plays down Musk spat with key Trump advisor

US President Donald Trump has signed executive orders designed to boost the country's struggling coal industry.

The executive orders will remove regulatory barriers to mining coal and halt the planned retirements of several coal-fired power plants. 

Flanked by White House officials and coal miners wearing hard hats, Trump said his administration was "bringing back an industry that was abandoned."

"We're going to put the miners back to work," the president said.

During his election campaign, Trump, a Republican, had promised to increase the country's energy output and to kickstart the coal industry, which has been on the decline for years as natural gas and renewable energy sources, such as solar and wind power, have been favored.

Since taking office in January as well as during his first term, his administration has looked to roll back environmental and energy regulations, many of which were passed by the Democrats, including Trump's predecessors Barack Obama and Joe Biden.

Trump's orders run counter to the global trend of moving away from coal, whose combustion releases more carbon dioxide than any other fossil fuel.

During his first term in the White House, Trump withdrew the US from the Paris Climate Agreement.
 

Wall Street suffered more losses on Tuesday as concerns over US President Donald Trump's trade policies continued to spook investors.

Wall Street's three major indices closed Tuesday in the red. 

The S&P 500 was down 1.6% to 4,982.77, the first time it fell below 5,000 points at the end of trading in almost a year.

The Nasdaq lost 335.35 points, or 2.15%, to 15,267.91, while the Dow Jones dropped to 37,657.76, a loss of 319.58 points, or 0.84%. 

Trump's tariffs have sent markets tumbling to their lowest rates since the pandemic in recent days following his announcement of "reciprocal" tariffs on April 2.

Tuesday's session had opened optimistically, as investors hoped for the Trump administration to reverse course and withdraw the threat of sweeping tariffs on most of the US' trading partners which is due to take effect at midnight tonight.

But those hopes faded rapidly as the White House confirmed there would be no concessions ahead of the April 9 deadline.
 

The White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt has said that "boys will be boys" after Elon Musk took to X to call Peter Navarro, a long-time aide to Donald Trump, a "moron" who is "dumber than a sack of bricks."

The public spat between Musk and White House trade advisor Navarro has shed light on a rift between key Trump aides over the US president's decision to slap tariffs on nearly all of the country's trading partners.

Navarro is widely seen as the architect behind Trump's trade policies, which are designed to boost manufacturing in the US. 

But the tariffs have spooked global markets and stoked fears of a global recession.

Musk, who has led Trump's efforts to slash government spending at the helm of the so-called Department of Government Efficiency (Doge), attacked Navarro on X a day after he had described the billionaire's company Tesla as a "car assembler" that relied on "cheap foreign" imports.

"Navarro is truly a moron. What he says here is demonstrably false," Musk said in response to a clip of Navarro's interview on CNBC on Monday. "Tesla has the most American-made cars. Navarro is dumber than a sack of bricks."

"Look, these are obviously two individuals who have very different views on trade and on tariffs," White House spokeswoman Leavitt said. "Boys will be boys, and we will let their public sparring continue."
 

Italy's Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni will visit Washington DC next week for tariff talks with US President Donald Trump.

European Union leaders are scrambling to avoid a trade war with the US, after Trump said he would impose a 20% tariff on almost all imports from the bloc. The 27 members of the EU are already facing 25% tariffs on steel and aluminum as well as cars.

Meloni told a meeting of Italian business leaders that she backs the European Commission's proposal of a "zero-for-zero" tariff deal to avert a trade war that she said "does not suit anyone."

"This is the negotiation that must see us all committed at all levels, which sees us committed and which commits me as I will be in Washington next April 17," Meloni said in her speech, according to her office.

"I think (tariffs) are an absolutely wrong decision on the part of the Trump administration. The economies of Western nations are strongly interconnected. Such hard-hitting protectionist policies will end up hurting Europe as much as the US," she said.

Meloni, a nationalist who leads the far-right Brothers of Italy party, was the only EU leader to be invited to Trump's inauguration in January.

She has sought to maintain positive relations with Trump despite the economic disruption his tariffs have caused.

Earlier on Tuesday, Italy's Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani highlighted the "good relations" Rome has with the Trump administration. 

"Our work could be useful in convincing the Americans to reach a positive solution," Tajani said.
 

A new Reuters/Ipsos survey has found that 73% of Americans think the price of items they buy every day will increase over the next six months in the wake of President Donald Trump's sweeping tariffs on the US' trade partners.

The president's announcement last week has sent shockwaves through global stock markets. Many experts have predicted that the move will cause prices to soar and could cause a global recession.

Of those surveyed, 57% said they were against the new tariffs. A quarter of the poll respondents are supporters of Trump's Republican Party.

Nearly 40%, however, said they supported Trump's approach, while 52% backed the White House's stance that the US had been taken advantage of by its global trading partners.

The three-day online poll, which concluded Sunday, demonstrated the partisan split among Americans. 

Half of those surveyed, including nearly all Republicans, agreed with the statement that "short-term economic pain is worth it" to make the US stronger long-term. The other half of respondents — who were nearly all Democrats — disagreed. 
 

Tariffs of 104% on Chinese imports into the United States will come into effect just after midnight (00:01 UTC, 12:01 in Beijing), White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt confirmed.

"If China reaches out to make a deal, [President Donald Trump] will be incredibly gracious, but he's going to do what's best for the American people," she said.

Earlier, the Asian superpower threatened to take "countermeasures to safeguard its own rights and interests" in response to Trump's threat of an additional 50% tariff, which would bring the total tariffs to 104%.

Leavitt said China was "making a mistake" by responding with its own steep tariffs.

She insisted that negotiating, rather than steadfastly sticking to high tariffs, wasn't an evolution amid stock market turmoil. She also mentioned that as many as 70 nations were looking to start negotiations.

Trump met with his team on Tuesday morning and "he directed them to have tailor-made trade deals with each and every country that calls up this administration to strike a deal," according to Leavitt.

"Bring us your best offers and he will listen," Leavitt said of other countries potentially negotiating tariff rates with Trump.

Indonesia has pledged to increase purchases of American products and to ease levies on goods imported from the US in a bid to reduce the trade deficit between the two countries.

At a meeting in Jakarta on Tuesday, Finance Minister Sri Mulyani Indrawati said that the government would lower import taxes on some goods, including electronics, from 2.5% to 0.5%.

Import duties on American steel and medical equipment will also be lowered, she added.

"Anything that can reduce tariffs, because of the existing tariff burden from the US which has yet to go down, we will try to carry it out," she said.

At the same event, President Prabowo Subianto said the tariffs might actually help Southeast Asia's largest economy, which Donald Trump said would face a 32% levy.

The "turmoil" caused by the tariffs underscored the need to "rely more on ourselves to build our economy with our own feet," Prabowo said.

"It is possible that President Trump helped us," he said. "He is forcing us to be lean, so we are efficient, so we are not spoiled."

Indonesia's chief economic minister Airlangga Hartarto is due to lead a delegation to Washington this month in the hopes of negotiating a deal with the Trump administration rather than retaliating to the tariffs.

France's President Emmanuel Macron has urged his US counterpart Donald Trump to reconsider his decision to impose tariffs on the US' trading partners.

"The aim is to reach a situation where President Trump reconsiders his decision," Macron said during a state visit to Egypt.

"If that means we have to go through a stage where we explain that we are ready to respond, so be it," he added.

"France and Europe never wanted chaos," the French leader said, adding that Trump's tariffs are "a bad idea and a bad response to the issue of the trade deficit."

While France was not singled out by Trump for "reciprocal" tariffs, it will be affected by the 20% tariffs imposed on the European Union.

Reacting to Trump's announcement last week, Macron said the tariffs represented a "brutal and unfounded" shock for global trade, calling for French investments in the US to be suspended until the situation is clarified.

After speaking with South Korea's acting President Han Duck-soo on Tuesday, Donald Trump said there was a "probability of a great deal for both countries."

"Their top team is on a plane heading to the US and things are looking good," he said.

The call, in which Trump said they mainly discussed shipbuilding and energy deals, came a day before a 25% tariff is due to kick in on Washington's east Asian ally.

Trade Minister Cheong In-kyo said that his country was willing to increase US imports in order to avoid the levy. 

"It is difficult to reduce exports, so shouldn't we then increase (US) imports? In that regard, we have been reviewing many different packages of measures to resolve the trade balance problem," Cheong said, before flying to Washington.

He added that the idea of importing more liquified natural gas (LNG) from the US had been discussed.

In an interview with CNN, President Han downplayed the importance of a recent trade deal with Japan and China, saying they were not banding together to oppose American policy.

The United States has slapped a 26% duty on imports from India. Experts say this is a significant setback for India's economy, which is heavily dependent on exports.

The European Union has taken US bourbon whiskey off a list of products to be hit by tariffs imposed in retaliation for new levies imposed by the US on steel and aluminum,  EU sources said on Tuesday.

The vote on the list of countermeasures put together by the European Commission is expected to be held on Wednesday.

US President Donald Trump had threatened to impose tariffs of 200% on wine, champagne and other alcoholic beverages from EU countries if the bloc were to target US whiskey.

European wine-making nations like France and Italy have been lobbying hard to have the US beverage excepted.
 

Wall Street stocks opened higher on Tuesday after days of deep losses following US President Donald Trump's announcement of new tariffs on imports to the US.

The rally on global markets came amid hopes that trade agreements will be achieved to remove some of the levies, with Trump himself describing an upbeat call with the South Korean leader and US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent saying Japan was looking for quick negotiations.

The S&P 500 was up 3.4% in early trading, while the Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 1,230 points, or 3.3%. The Nasday composite was 3.6% higher.

Observers say there are likely to be further wide fluctuations while the tariff conflict is playing out. 
 

In remarks at a debate ahead of May 3 general elections, Australia's prime minister, Anthony Albanese, has expressed optimism about his country's ability to weather the economic storm caused by Donald Trump's trade tariffs.

Albanese called the tariffs an "act of economic self-harm" that would inhibit global growth, but he said "no country is better prepared" than Australia to cope.

The US tariffs include a 10% levy on Australia.

Albanese insisted that Australia could seize opportunities for increased trade in the Asia-Pacific region.

"We'll continue to negotiate, of course, with the United States looking for a better deal for Australia because reciprocal tariffs would, of course, be zero, because we don't impose tariffs on US goods," Albanese said. 

The debate between Albanese, a center-left politician, and the right-leaning opposition leader Peter Dutton comes as Albanese's Labor Party seems to have taken a narrow lead over Dutton's conservative Liberal-National Party coalition.

At the televised town hall debate in the eastern city of Sydney, Dutton criticized Albanese's response to the tariffs, saying the "prime minister of the day should have the ability and the strength of character to be able to stand up against bullies, against those that would seek to do us harm, to keep our country safe."

The two co-leaders of Germany's far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party have come out with contradictory stances on Donald Trump's decision to impose 20% tariffs on EU imports to the US.

One half of the leading duo, Tino Chrupalla, told German daily newspaper Bild that he considered the move by the White House to be "understandable."

"But sometimes you have the restrict free trade to protect your economy," he said. "President Trump wants to force other countries to negotiate; He wants to improve the US trade balance and stimulate industry."

"That is understandable," he added.

However, his colleague, Alice Weidel, has called the tariffs "poison for free trade" and called on the EU to work to get them removed.

The AfD is ideologically close to the Trump administration on many issues.

The party, and Weidel in particular, have received strong backing from Trump adviser and tech billionaire Elon Musk.

Ursula von der Leyen, head of the European Commission, spoke with Chinese Prime Minister Li Qiang on Tuesday amid increasing trade tensions sparked by Trump's tariffs.

Von der Leyen "called for a negotiated resolution to the current situation, emphasizing the need to avoid further escalation," according to a statement from her office.

The EU chief "stressed the responsibility of Europe and China, as two of world's largest markets, to support a strong reformed trading system, free, fair and founded on a level playing field," it added.

They also discussed setting up a mechanism to keep track of possible problems with trade diversion arising between the two sides as a result of the tensions with the US.

The EU is concerned about China flooding EU markets by redirecting its cheap exports to Europe as US markets clamp up with tariffs.