Trump renews tariff threats and signs barrage of orders as he takes power

Today’s agenda: Biden’s last-minute pardons; Ray Dalio on Britain’s “debt death spiral”; LNG revenues set to fall; and is Hamas back?

Good morning. Just hours ago, Donald Trump signed a raft of executive orders and renewed previous threats of tariffs after he was sworn in as the 47th US president. Here’s what you need to know.

What Trump has done so far: The returning president’s first executive orders involved unravelling many of Joe Biden’s policies. These include removing the US from the Paris climate accords and restarting licensing for liquefied natural gas terminals. He also froze new hiring and regulation by the federal government and forced its employees back to in-person work.

On immigration, Trump signed a series of orders curbing entry into the country and access to US citizenship, and declared a “national emergency” at the border with Mexico. He has also commanded the US to withdraw from the World Health Organization.

What he plans to do: Trump refrained from immediately hitting key trading partners with tariffs, but said the US could impose a 25 per cent levy on Canadian and Mexican imports from February 1. On China, he said tariffs could hinge on a deal to sell TikTok to a US company, as he signed an executive order that would keep the social media platform online in the country for 75 days. Trump also said he planned to meet his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin but that a time had not yet been scheduled.

If you missed the inauguration, here are the key moments from Trump’s speech. We have more reads and analysis below:

• How markets reacted: Trump’s renewed tariff threats trimmed an earlier sell-off in the US dollar, while the Mexican peso and Canadian dollar slid after rising earlier in the day.

• Who went: The inauguration was attended by five of the world’s 10 richest people, including Mark Zuckerberg and Jeff Bezos.

• What he didn’t do: European leaders breathed a collective sigh of relief as Trump focused his fire elsewhere during his inauguration speech.

• Regime change: Today’s events were no ordinary transfer of power, writes our US national editor Edward Luce, as Trump undoes virtually everything his predecessors stood for.

• The FT View: The second age of Trump promises to be even more consequential, and disruptive, than the first, writes our editorial board.

On Thursday, FT experts will break down Trump’s return and what it means for the world in an exclusive webinar. Don’t miss it. Meanwhile, sign up for our White House Watch newsletter for the latest on the new administration.

Here’s what else we’re keeping tabs on today:

• Economic data: The UK reports labour figures while Canada releases its consumer price index.

• Quad meeting: The Trump administration will meet foreign ministers from Japan, India and Australia in Washington.

• World Economic Forum: The annual gathering of global elites is under way in Davos. Join the FT as we bring you live updates and analysis on the ground.

• Companies: 3M and Netflix report results, while Alstom and Marshalls issue updates. See The Week Ahead newsletter for the full list.

Five more top stories

1. Joe Biden issued pre-emptive pardons to Anthony Fauci, Liz Cheney, Mark Milley and members of his own family shortly before relinquishing the US presidency to Donald Trump, who has vowed retribution against political foes. In the run-up to his departure from the White House, the outgoing president also made sweeping use of his powers of clemency.

2. The US share of global cross-border investment projects has soared to its highest level on record, underscoring the country’s stronger economic momentum than Europe or China as Trump starts his second term in the Oval Office. One economist said: “We expect that US exceptionalism to continue.”

3. Exclusive: Ray Dalio has warned that the UK could be heading for a “debt death spiral”, in which it has to borrow more money to service its rising interest costs. The founder of Bridgewater Associates said the market was struggling to absorb Britain’s borrowing needs since October’s Budget. Read the FT’s interview with the billionaire hedge fund manager.

4. Exclusive: Huawei is seeking to grab a larger share of the Chinese market for artificial intelligence chips dominated by Nvidia. Instead of challenging the US chipmaker in training, Huawei is positioning its latest Ascend AI processors as the hardware of choice for the computation used by large language models to generate responses to prompts — or so-called “inference” tasks.

5. Ørsted has announced fresh writedowns on its US business, in a blow to its efforts to move on from its problems in the country. The world’s largest offshore wind developer reported impairments totalling $1.7bn yesterday, blaming interest rates, supply-chain challenges and “market uncertainties”.

News in-depth

Benjamin Netanyahu had vowed to “destroy” Hamas in the wake of its October 7 2023 attack on Israel. Instead, after 15 months of fighting an underground guerrilla war, the militant group’s officials, fighters and policemen have in the days since the deal emerged from the rubble of the shattered enclave and seemingly ready to rule Gaza once again.

We’re also reading . . . 

• India land disputes: Today’s Big Read explores how the country’s breakneck effort to build clean energy infrastructure is triggering quarrels with farmers.

• War on drugs: Liberal reformers have been too hesitant to spell out the negative consequences for others, writes Stephen Bush.

• Climate investing: European asset managers are following their US counterparts in “pulling back” on a public show of climate action.

• UK employment: Labour needs to get comfortable talking about the expansion of industries that produce a lot of value without creating many jobs, writes Sarah O’Connor.

Chart of the day

The world’s biggest oil companies are expected to suffer a fall in liquefied natural gas revenues this year as the market volatility that drove big profits in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine ebbs.

Take a break from the news . . . 

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