Trump stay updates: China refuses to budge as deadline looms for 104% tariffs risk

The U.S. stock markets have opened much more strongly this morning, apparently in response to growing optimism about the prospects of America’s allies coming forward to express their willingness to sign new trade deals and sidestep the economic chaos Trump’s tariff war promises to yield.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average soared 1,419 points or 3.7 percent while the S&P 500 rose 3.8% and the Nasdaq 4.3 percent.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent’s claim that 70 countries have already approached the administration about doing import deals appears to have reassured investors, with his comments backed up just now by Trump saying that South Korea is ready to talk.

Beijing has shown no sign of giving in to Trump’s threat to add a further 50 percent tariff on its exports, taking the total to 104 percent, as the deadline the U.S. president set on Monday approaches.

Trump demanded that China drop its retaliatory countermeasures but the Chinese Commerce Ministry said it preferred to “fight to the end”, saying it “firmly opposes” the president’s trade war and that it considers its response calling its previous countermeasures “entirely justified.”

Here’s the original post:

In his latest post on the South Korea deal, he insisted: “China also wants to make a deal, badly, but they don’t know how to get it started. We are waiting for their call. It will happen!”

The president’s first Truth Social post of the day sees him claim that Seoul is following Tokyo in reaching out to agree a new trade deal, rather than risk getting its exports tangled up in his tariff regime.

A mother and three children who were “snatched” from their home by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents and detained for 11 days were released Monday following an outpouring of community anger, including a protest outside the house of Trump’s tough guy border czar.

The unnamed family was taken from their home on March 27 in the village of Sackets Harbor in upstate New York, where the acting head of ICE, Tom Homan, also lives.

Richard Hall reports.

Here’s Greg Evans with the latest from The Daily Show legend.

The president said yesterday that he was not considering pausing his tariff program but failed to explain the contradictions inherent in the policy, Richard Hall writes.

As confidence drains from the world economy, the stock market contagion sparked by Donald Trump’s tariffs could yet spread to the banks, with a trade recession joined by a credit crunch.

If he presses on, the dangers are unthinkable.

The FBI director and his deputy, ex-Secret Service agent turned right-wing podcaster Dan Bongino, were previously critical of the bureau and its decision to arrest those involved in the 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol.

But now it has emerged that Patel has tapped Steven J Jensen – the man who spearheaded the nationwide investigation into the fatal riot – to be his Washington field office assistant director.

Here’s Madeline Sherratt on the anger that has inspired among the pardoned rioters.

The Trump administration’s DOGE-led initiatives have caused chaos for both citizens attempting to interact with the agencies of state and the people trying to run them, despite Elon Musk touting the effort as Silicon Valley-style “tech support” for the federal government.

Part of the difficulty has come as thousands of government employees, including ones hired for entirely remote roles, have been ordered back to work at actual government offices.

The influx of personnel has strained government tech systems, employees of the Department of Agriculture and the Internal Revenue Service have said.

“We are getting hammered with RTO tickets,” one employee said, using an acronym for return to office.

“We do not have the IT infrastructure to support this massive RTO mandate.”

Workers have “no soap, toilet paper, or paper towels anywhere in the building. Their water machine is broken. Many cannot get on local area networks, and the Wi-Fi keeps going down,” an IRS employee added in an interview with Wired magazine.

Josh Marcus has more.

Democrats in the House of Representatives have launched a new investigation into Elon Musk’s potential conflicts of interest at Nasa.

In a letter sent to the space agency on Monday, Maxwell Frost of Florida and Gerry Connolly of Virginia, who both serve on the House Oversight Committee, demanded documents on all its dealings with Musk’s companies and what officials are doing to prevent conflicts.

It described Musk’s influence over the government and his effective leadership of DOGE as “a textbook example of corruption at taxpayers’ expense” by the world’s richest person.

It also noted that Musk’s rocket company SpaceX has already been awarded federal contracts worth more than $525 since Trump returned to power, on top of the nearly $21 billion his companies have landed since 2008.

Io Dodds reports.