Trump fights trade war on multiple fronts as Canada and EU retaliate
Donald Trump has launched a fresh attack on the EU during a meeting with Irish premier Micheal Martin in the Oval Office.
The US president said he did not want “to do anything to hurt Ireland” but added that the trade relationship between the countries should be focused on “fairness”.
It comes after the president imposed 25% tariffs on global steel and aluminium imports to the US – prompting Canada to announce retaliatory tariffs on US goods worth $29.8bn (£16bn) from tomorrow and the EU to impose counter tariffs on €26bn (£22bn) of US goods from 1 April.
Meanwhile, Sir Keir Starmer said he was “disappointed” to see the president impose global tariffs on steel and aluminium and promised to “keep all options on the table” in how the UK would respond.
During Mr Trump’s meeting with Mr Martin, the president raised the “massive” trade imbalance between the two countries and said Ireland was “of course” taking advantage of the US.
He said the EU was “set up in order to take advantage of the United States”.
Asked by Sky News’ Ireland correspondent Stephen Murphy if Ireland was also taking advantage, Mr Trump replied: “Of course they are.”
He added: “I have great respect for Ireland, for what they did and they should have done just what they did. But the United States shouldn’t have let that happen. We had stupid leaders, we had leaders who didn’t have a clue.
“All of a sudden Ireland has our pharmaceutical companies, this beautiful island of five million people has got the entire US pharmaceutical industry in its grasp.”
Politics latest: Starmer promises to ‘keep options on the table’
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‘They have millions of cars coming in and they don’t accept our cars’
Mr Trump said he loves Ireland, where he has a golf course – but said he wishes the US had “not been so stupid for so many years, not just with Ireland, with everybody”.
Many US pharmaceutical companies have set up their manufacturing facilities in Ireland due to its low 12.5% corporate tax rate.
Irish firms then pay a royalty fee to US parent companies so they can use formulas to make products – meaning Ireland could be the hardest hit EU member by Mr Trump’s 25% tariffs.
‘I would have imposed 200% tariffs’
Mr Trump said if he had been president when those companies started to move to Ireland, he would have imposed a 200% tariff on them so they could not sell anything into the US and they would have “stayed here”.
The president said he would like to see American pharmaceutical companies returning to the US, but expected Mr Martin to “fight on that issue”.
He also told Sky News he would “absolutely” place tariffs on cars from the EU.
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Mr Trump accused previous presidents of having “lost big segments” of the US economy and said the EU “treats us very badly”, referencing a recent ruling against Apple.
“They have not been fair. They sue our companies and win massive amounts of money. They sued Apple, won 17 billion US dollars and they use that for other reasons, I guess, to run the European Union,” he said.
“So I’m not knocking it. They’re doing what they should be doing, perhaps for the European Union, but it does create ill will – and as you know, we’re going to be doing reciprocal tariffs so whatever they charge us with, we’re charging them. Nobody can complain about that.”
‘Great honour’ to meet Irish Taoiseach
Despite his criticism of Ireland, Mr Trump said it was a “great honour” to have the taoiseach at the White House.
He said the US has “tremendous” business relationships in Ireland “and that will only get stronger”.
Reporters asked questions in the same style as the Zelenskyy meeting. Pic: Reuters
The US leader said his personal relationship with Mr Martin was “very, very strong and very, very good” as he thanked him for coming to Washington DC to celebrate St Patrick’s Day.
He added that Mr Martin did not “look nervous” about the subject of tariffs during their meeting.
Taoiseach reminds Trump of Irish investment in US
The taoiseach praised Mr Trump’s work on “peace initiatives” and said the two countries have a “very good relationship, a historic one”.
But, hinting at the tariffs imposed by Mr Trump, Mr Martin said: “It’s a two-way street. We are investing a lot more in America.”
He said he understands where Mr Trump is coming from, but added that Irish companies Ryanair and aircraft leasing firm Aercap “buy more Boeing” planes than anybody else outside the US.
Britain’s ambassador to the United States will use a keynote speech today to underline the UK-US special relationship – while also attempting to ‘Reform-proof’ his own struggling government.
Lord Mandelson, the architect of New Labour, master of political spin and now Britain’s man in Washington, will use the 2025 annual lecture at Ditchley Park to offer a positive spin on a presidency which has proudly upended norms and frayed alliances.
In the speech, parts of which have been released in advance, Mandelson will describe President Trump as a “risk taker” with an “iron-clad stomach”.
Lord Mandelson was chosen as ambassador by Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer late last year. He is a political appointee rather than a career diplomat.
And with intriguing language he will offer his take on the parallels between Trump and Starmer’s challenges and mandates.
He will say: “I credit President Trump’s political instincts in identifying the anxieties gripping not only millions of Americans, but also far more pervasive Western trends: economic stagnation for many, a sense of irreversible decline, the lost promise of meaningful work…
“These American concerns find their mirror image in British society, where Keir Starmer won an electoral mandate for national renewal which is similar to Donald Trump’s.”
Yet Mandelson delivers the speech at the end of a week when Nigel Farage was in town.
Screaming for his own form of Trump-like national renewal, the disruptive leader of the UK’s top-polling political party – Reform – was in Washington to hobnob in the Oval Office and to tell Congress that Keir Starmer is turning Blighty into North Korea.
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Farage likens UK to North Korea in Congress
Mr Farage enjoys lapping up the limelight in Washington, where he is an old-world conservative celebrity in the new MAGA White House.
His calculation is that the MAGA wave will reach the UK shores soon.
Reform‘s policy platform is a mirror of the Trump agenda in many respects, tweaked accordingly. The administration is happy to support him. There is a MAGA-Reform mutual respect.
And so it is politically savvy or unavoidably necessary for Lord Mandelson, New Labour‘s architect laying the foundations of the current UK government, to proclaim: ‘We respect Trump too.’
The truth is the government, like so many around the world, sees Donald Trump as an infuriating and unpredictable disrupter with the ability to upend norms at the stroke of a Sharpie. But they can’t articulate that publicly.
Instead, the ‘Prince of Darkness’ will cast Mr Trump as the consequence not the cause of the disruption to international systems, even if many argue that he can be both.
As a master of spin, strategy and ruthlessness, Mandelson clearly has an admiration for Trump’s political style and sheer chutzpah.
Lord Mandelson’s speech comes a week before Mr Trump’s UK state visit. Pic: AP
He will tell the Ditchley Park lecture: “The president may not follow the traditional rulebook or conventional practice, but he is a risk taker in a world where a ‘business as usual’ approach no longer works.”
At a time when the Labour government is struggling and feeling the heat from Farage and his disrupters, are these words to be read as a not-so-subtle message to Prime Minister Starmer?
Mandelson is an old-fashioned liberal. He hasn’t the stomach for ‘wokey’ politics or own goals like the arrest of Graham Linehan. Is there a frustration that the political party he built is now messing it all up?
“Indeed, he seems to have an iron-clad stomach for political risk…” he will say of Trump, decrying the tendency of previous presidents to descend “into an analysis paralysis and gradual incrementalism”.
Lord Mandelson may be Britain’s man in Washington now but, more than anyone else to hold the post, he is deeply integrated into the Downing Street machine.
He is tight with Number 10 chief of staff Morgan McSweeney and was inside Downing Street when Friday’s reshuffle took place. A total coincidence I am told.
A week before the president’s state visit to the UK, Lord Mandelson’s speech is designed to steady a special relationship put under pressure by the return of Trump.
“Do we always have identical views?” he will say. “Of course not, we never have. And we are not looking for special treatment. Our alliance exists because it serves both nations’ interests, because the core values of Britons and Americans remain aligned, as the world around us becomes more threatening.”
Lord Mandelson will say Brexit has freed the UK to pursue closer ties with the US. Pic Reuters
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And, in a shapeshifting manoeuvre that only the original spin doctor could manage, Lord Mandelson, a cheerleading remainer in the EU referendum campaign, now casts Brexit as a liberator.
“Brexit has freed us to pursue closer US ties,” he will say in his speech.
“Britain has the opportunity to use its regulatory freedom and independence from European law to deepen American investment opportunities. This is crucial as, post-Brexit, we need to leverage every advantage we can to spur UK growth and employment.”
The ambassador is expected to concede that pre-referendum warnings of the demise of Britain’s trans-Atlantic clout have not transpired, while maintaining that Brexit has hit the UK financially with a net-loss to its economy.
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They say the British ambassador is the custodian of the US-UK special relationship. This ambassador has seen what the relationship looks like under Trump.
With trademark political gymnastics, he seems now to be both admiring of the Trumpian movement but also anxious that if Britain under Labour doesn’t get its house in order, then it too will get its own Trumpian disrupter.
Former US president Joe Biden has had surgery for skin cancer, his spokesperson has said.
It’s unclear when he had the procedure, but video from late August showed him leaving church in Delaware with a large, fresh scar on his head.
The spokesperson told Sky’s US partner, NBC News, that he was recovering well.
Mr Biden had Mohs surgery, which involves removing a layer of tissue, examining it under a microscope to see if any cancer cells remain, and repeating if necessary.
The 82-year had a basal cell carcinoma, one of the two most common skin cancer types, removed from his chest in 2023.
His doctor said at the time that all the cancerous cells had been removed.
The same year, Mr Biden’s wife, Jill, had two basal cell carcinomas removed from near her eye and on her chest.
The former president also revealed this May that he had stage-four prostate cancer – with the disease having spread to his bones and having a Gleason score of nine.
Such a score means the disease is “likely to grow quickly”, according to Cancer Research UK.
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His office said the prostate cancer was discovered when Mr Biden visited a doctor for urinary symptoms and that he was considering “multiple treatment options”.
“While this represents a more aggressive form of the disease, the cancer appears to be hormone-sensitive which allows for effective management,” said a statement.
Officers detained 475 people during an immigration raid on a Hyundai factory for electric vehicles in Georgia.
The majority of those detained at the 3,000-acre site west of Savannah are from South Korea, according to Steven Schrank, special agent in charge at Homeland Security Investigations.
Mr Schrank said the raid was the “largest single-site enforcement operation” in the history of the agency and followed an investigation of several months, which involved leads from community members and former workers.
The spokesman for the South Korean foreign ministry, Lee Jaewoong, said there was a “large” number of South Koreans among those detained in the raid, but did not provide an exact number.
A ‘large’ number of those detained were from South Korea
He said the detained workers were part of a “network of subcontractors” and that the employees worked for several different companies on the Georgia site.
Mr Lee said South Korea’s foreign ministry is dispatching diplomats from its embassy in Washington and consulate in Atlanta to the site, and plans to form an on-site response team centred on the local mission.
“The business activities of our investors and the rights of our nationals must not be unjustly infringed in the process of US law enforcement,” Mr Lee added.
The Department of Homeland Security said in a statement that agents executed a search warrant “as part of an ongoing criminal investigation into allegations of unlawful employment practices and other serious federal crimes”.
The manufacturing site, which employs about 1,200 people, has been hailed as the largest economic development project in the state’s history by Governor Brian Kemp and other officials.
The Hyundai Motor Group plant in Georgia. File pic: AP Photo/Mike Stewart
Hyundai Motor Group, the biggest automaker in South Korea, started manufacturing electric vehicles at the $7.6bn (£7.4bn) site a year ago and partnered with LG Energy Solution to build an adjacent battery plant, which is set to open in 2026.
ICE spokesman Lindsay Williams confirmed the raid and said agents were focused on the construction site for the battery plant.
LG said in a statement that it was “closely monitoring the situation and gathered all relevant details”. The firm said it couldn’t immediately confirm how many of its employees or Hyundai workers had been detained.
“Our top priority is always ensuring the safety and well-being of our employees and partners. We will fully cooperate with the relevant authorities,” LG said.
Hyundai and LG’s battery joint venture, HL-GA Battery Company, said in a statement that it’s “cooperating fully with the appropriate authorities” and paused construction of the battery site to assist the investigation.
Operations at Hyundai’s electric vehicle manufacturing plant weren’t interrupted, plant spokesperson Biance Johnson said.
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The raid is the latest in a series of sweeping ICE operations as part of President Donald Trump’s mass deportation agenda, which saw immigration officers raid farms, construction sites, restaurants and auto repair shops.
The US labour force lost more than 1.2 million immigrants from January through July, which includes legal and illegal immigrants, according to the Pew Research Centre, citing preliminary census data.
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