Tariffs will be delayed on Canada, President Donald Trump decided about eight hours before the deadline, and hours after he announced Mexico wouldn't face tariffs for the next month. He also granted Canada 30 days to convince him to keep duty-free trade flowing.
The U.S. will delay its recently announced tariffs on Canada for “at least 30 days,” after President Donald Trump and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau reached a deal, said Trudeau in a tweet Feb. 3.
President Donald Trump posted on social media that he is holding off on imposing tariffs on Mexico for a month. "I just spoke with President Claudia Sheinbaum of Mexico. It was a very friendly conversation wherein she agreed to immediately supply 10,000 Mexican Soldiers on the Border separating Mexico and the United States," he wrote. "These soldiers will be specifically designated to stop the flow of fentanyl, and illegal migrants into our Country. We further agreed to immediately pause the anticipated tariffs for a one month period during which we will have negotiations headed by Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Secretary of Treasury Scott Bessent, and Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick, and high-level Representatives of Mexico."
The White House OMB rescinded its stayed memo that called for a freeze on most federal grants and loans, bowing to mounting criticism of the plan’s breadth even after it partially walked it back Tuesday (see 2501280051). The now-rescinded freeze would have paused NTIA’s disbursal of $42.5 billion from the BEAD program and other Commerce Department initiatives, commerce secretary nominee Howard Lutnick acknowledged during his Senate Commerce Committee confirmation hearing Wednesday.
The U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia granted an administrative stay late Tuesday afternoon that temporarily blocked a White House OMB memo, which called for a freeze on most federal grants and loans, from going into effect. The Trump administration memo already faced an array of legal challenges, including a planned lawsuit from a coalition of Democratic attorneys general from New York, California, Illinois, Massachusetts, New Jersey and Rhode Island. Broadband officials and industry advocates raised questions about the memo's constitutionality and the future of certain FCC programs, such as Lifeline. Others warned the freeze could have serious implications for NTIA's BEAD program.
The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Tuesday granted a motion for injunctive relief on a California law regulating addictive social media feeds for minors.
The White House likely won't try clawing back BEAD money, wrote Jade Piros de Carvalho, Bonfire Infrastructure Group vice president-broadband advocacy and partnerships, on Friday. States and territories entered into signed agreements with NTIA when their initial proposals were approved. The agreements define the terms and conditions of federal grants, and they permit states to draw down funds, including immediate access to 2% of the money for administrative purposes, she said. While the Donald Trump administration in theory could seek to take back BEAD money, "breaching signed contracts with states probably won’t go over well with governors." She said that while there had been concerns that Trump's American Energy executive order would pause disbursement of BEAD funds, the administration made clear BEAD was not part of that executive order.
Senate Commerce Committee ranking member Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., hopes President Donald Trump and lawmakers can resolve the TikTok divestiture uncertainty amid the White House’s 75-day pause in enforcement of the Protecting Americans From Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act’s requirement that ByteDance sell the platform (see 2501210070). “We’ve given every tool possible” to combat Chinese government influence over the app, including the divest-or-ban statute, Cantwell said on the Senate floor. “Now it’s time to get this into the hands of U.S. innovators and move forward.” She doesn’t “know that a joint venture with the Chinese is going to rectify” those concerns. “They can’t continue to own and influence this process,” Cantwell said. “But U.S. innovation and U.S. ownership can drive us forward, can drive a better experience for our young people” who use TikTok. She hailed “agentic AI” as helping consumers “control the algorithms that billionaires or foreign governments have been using to control us.” The technology will help people “take in massive amounts of information from the internet ... and then apply filters ... so that we only get the information that we want to see and not what somebody else wants to do with our information.”
The Chips and Science Act of 2022, which has successfully funded the launch of U.S. facilities where chips are made, and it's unlikely President Donald Trump will reverse its work, experts said Wednesday during a Broadband Breakfast webinar. Trump was sharply critical of the act as a presidential candidate, saying that subsidies were a bad idea (see 2412090046).
President Donald Trump directed DOJ Jan. 20 to hold off for 75 days on enforcing a law that called for China’s ByteDance to divest TikTok by Jan. 19 or face a ban of the popular social media application in the U.S.