China slapped retaliatory tariffs of 10-15% on certain American imports, including liquefied natural gas, coal and crude oil. The move came shortly after Donald Trump’s 10% tariffs on all Chinese products came into effect. China also said it would restrict exports of certain minerals used in high-tech products and launch an antitrust investigation into Google. Mr Trump is expected to speak to Xi Jinping, China’s leader, in the coming days.
Mr Trump agreed to delay tariffs of 25% on imports from Canada and Mexico by a month. The levies were due to take effect on Tuesday. Justin Trudeau, Canada’s prime minister, and Claudia Sheinbaum, Mexico’s president, pledged to bulk up border security to crack down on the smuggling of fentanyl into America.
In his first interview since becoming Syria’s president, Ahmed al-Sharaa told The Economist he would take the country in “the direction of” democracy and promised to hold presidential elections. He called America’s military presence in Syria “illegal”, welcomed negotiations with Russia about its military bases and warned Israel that its recent advance into Syria “will cause a lot of trouble in the future”.
Anthropic, an artificial-intelligence startup, unveiled a new safeguarding technique to stop users generating illegal or harmful content from its large-language models. It says its “constitutional classifiers” filtered 95% of “jailbreaking” attempts during a trial. Other tech giants, such as Microsoft and Meta, are also racing to develop methods to stop users accessing such information.
Shares in Palantir closed at a record high on Monday and rose another 23% in after-hours trading after the American data firm forecast revenue of around $3.75bn this year. The average analyst estimate was $3.5bn. The company, which supplies software that can analyse sensitive data, looks set to benefit from Mr Trump’s focus on national security.
Addressing European Union leaders in Brussels, Sir Keir Starmer said that Britain need not “choose” between closer trade ties with America or the EU. The prime minister called for a “reset” in relations with the bloc after Brexit, including greater military co-operation. Mr Trump seems eager to impose tariffs on the EU, but has been unclear about whether he will do so to Britain.
Marco Rubio, America’s secretary of state, announced that he had become acting director of USAID and that the development agency would in effect be absorbed by the State Department. He said “a lot of functions” would continue as long as they aligned with America’s foreign policy. Earlier, USAID employees were told not to report to work and hundreds lost access to their email accounts.
Figure of the day: 13, the number of people employed by America’s State Department in its “office of diversity and inclusion” last year. Read the full story.
American politics matters intensely to the rest of the world. Read The US in brief—a daily update to help you keep on top of the political stories that matter. Sign up here to receive it as a newsletter, each weekday, in your inbox.