Doubled Tariff on Canadian Metals Abruptly Called Off (2025)

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Trump seesaws on trade, walking back plans to double metal tariffs on Canada.

In a post on his social media platform Tuesday morning, Mr. Trump wrote that Canadian steel and aluminum would face a 50 percent tariff, double what he plans to charge on metals from other countries beginning Wednesday. He said the levies were in response to an additional charge that Ontario had placed on electricity coming into the United States, which was in turn a response to tariffs Mr. Trump imposed on Canada last week.

By Tuesday afternoon, leaders had begun to relent. The premier of Ontario, Canada’s most populous province, said he would suspend the electricity surcharge, and Mr. Trump said at the White House he would “probably” reduce the tariff on Canadian metals.

Kush Desai, a White House spokesman, said Tuesday afternoon that Mr. Trump’s threats had succeeded in getting Canada to back down. “President Trump has once again used the leverage of the American economy, which is the best and biggest in the world, to deliver a win for the American people,” he said.

As a result, he said that Canada would face the same 25 percent tariff on metals as all of America’s trading partners will when they go into effect at midnight.

Still, that levy could reignite trade tensions. The Canadian government has vowed to retaliate against the 25 percent tariffs that Mr. Trump will introduce on global steel and aluminum on Wednesday.

“The Government of Canada has been clear on this issue since the beginning — should the United States move forward tomorrow with the imposition of tariffs on Canadian products, including steel and aluminum, we will be ready to respond firmly and proportionately,” said Gabriel Brunet, spokesman for Dominic LeBlanc, the finance minister who is leading Canada’s trade response.

Mr. Trump’s new confrontation with Canada tariffs sent jittery markets tumbling, with major indexes closing down for the day. In addition to doubling the metal tariffs, the president threatened more levies if Canada didn’t drop various tariffs it imposes on U.S. dairy and agricultural products.

“If other egregious, long time Tariffs are not likewise dropped by Canada, I will substantially increase, on April 2nd, the Tariffs on Cars coming into the U.S. which will, essentially, permanently shut down the automobile manufacturing business in Canada,” he threatened.

Mr. Trump went on to say that “the only thing that makes sense” is for Canada to become the 51st U.S. state. The idea of joining the United States has been angrily rejected across Canada.

The president reiterated those comments Tuesday afternoon, saying that Canada would no longer have a tariff problem if it became part of the United States.

“When you take away that artificial line that looks like it was done with a ruler,” he said, referring to the border, “and that’s what it was, some guy sat there years ago and they said, well, when you take away that, and you look at that beautiful formation of Canada and the United States, there is no place anywhere in the world that looks like that.”

Doug Ford, Ontario’s premier, said in a news conference in Toronto Tuesday afternoon that he would suspend the 25 percent surcharge on electricity exports to Michigan, Minnesota and New York that went into effect on Monday.

“The temperature needs to come down,” Mr. Ford said.

In a statement jointly issued with Howard Lutnick, the U.S. secretary of commerce, Mr. Ford said that the sides would meet in Washington on March 13, and discuss a “renewed U.S.M.C.A.,” referring to the trade agreement between Canada, Mexico and the United States, ahead of more tariffs to come on April 2.

Mr. Trump’s earlier comments significantly escalated a confrontation with one of America’s largest trading partners, and called into question his intentions.

Canadian officials first thought Mr. Trump’s idea of absorbing Canada into the United State was a joke, but they have more recently begun to take the president’s threats seriously.

Last week, outgoing Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of Canada called Mr. Trump’s ostensible reason for imposing tariffs on Canada — to stop the flow of fentanyl into the United States — “completely bogus.”

Mr. Trudeau suggested that what Mr. Trump wanted to see was a collapse of the Canadian economy “because that’ll make it easier to annex us.”

“That’s never going to happen,” he said.

Mr. Trump spent much of his social media post on Tuesday essentially cajoling Canada to become part of America, writing that it would make tariffs “totally disappear,” lower Canadian taxes and make the country more secure militarily.

In calls between Mr. Trump and Mr. Trudeau in early February, the American president told the Canadian prime minister that he did not believe that the treaty that demarcates the border between Canada and the United States was valid, according to people with knowledge of the conversations.

When questioned in a news conference in January about whether he planned to use military force to annex Canada, Mr. Trump replied that he would use “economic force.”

Last week, Mr. Trump hit Canada and Mexico with sweeping 25 percent tariffs on all imports, before walking some — but not all — of those levies back a few days later.

Mark Carney, who will succeed Mr. Trudeau as prime minister of Canada within the next few days, called the latest tariff threat “an attack on Canadian workers, families, and businesses” in a social media post.

He added: “My government will ensure our response has maximum impact in the US and minimal impact here in Canada. My government will keep our tariffs on until the Americans show us respect and make credible, reliable commitments to free and fair trade.”

Mr. Trump, in his post, also targeted the Canadian dairy industry, saying that the country “must immediately drop their Anti-American Farmer Tariff of 250% to 390% on various U.S. dairy products, which has long been considered outrageous.”

The Canadian dairy industry has become a frequent target of Mr. Trump’s in recent weeks, although his description of those barriers is misleading. Canada allows a certain amount of U.S. dairy products to come in to the country tariff-free, as long as they don’t exceed certain import quotas, which increase every year. After imports hit a certain level, they are hit with high tariffs, for example 298.5 percent for butter. The system is known as a “tariff-rate quota.”

For a variety of reasons, American dairy exporters, who shipped about $1.1 billion of their products to Canada last year, have never exceeded those quotas, so those tariffs have never been activated. The United States also has tariff-rate quotas for some dairy imports, and other goods, though its tariffs tend to be much lower.

Mr. Trump also said Tuesday that he would declare “a national emergency on electricity within the threatened area” that would “allow the U.S. to quickly do what has to be done to alleviate this abusive threat from Canada.”

“They will pay a financial price for this so big that it will be read about in History Books for many years to come!" he said in a subsequent social media post.

Ryan Young, a senior economist at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, said that putting tariffs on foreign countries’ goods would almost always incite them to retaliate, increasing costs for consumers and worsening concerns about a recession. “Sometimes the only way to win is not to play,” he said. “This is true of nuclear war, and it is true of tariffs.”

Mr. Trump’s head-spinning tariff threats and quick reversals against America’s largest trading partners have caused anxiety for investors and businesses. The president imposed a 25 percent tariff on imports from Mexico and nearly all imports from Canada last Tuesday.

But Mr. Trump partly lifted the measure after stock markets sank and various industries pushed back. By Thursday, the president suspended those tariffs indefinitely for all products that comply with the North American free trade deal, U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement, or U.S.M.C.A. — about half of all imports from Mexico and nearly 40 percent of those from Canada.

The president has repeatedly promised that more tariffs are on the way. He has said that he would impose tariffs on foreign cars as well as “reciprocal” tariffs on foreign nations on April 2.

Eswar Prasad, a professor of trade policy at Cornell University and a former official at the International Monetary Fund, said that the threats against Canada would have important repercussions not just for the North American economies “but for the stability of the world order.”

“Trump’s aggressive tariff actions against a country long seen as a close U.S. economic and geopolitical ally puts the entire world on notice that strong historical relationships are no guarantee of future cordiality,” he said.

Matina Stevis-Gridneff and Danielle Kaye contributed reporting.

Elon Musk seeks to put $100 million directly into the Trump political operation.

Over the weekend, Mr. Musk traveled to and from Florida aboard Air Force One with Mr. Trump, and posted on his social media website, X, that he had dinner with Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Saturday night after some tense interactions earlier in the week.

And on Tuesday, as Mr. Musk’s electric car company, Tesla, faced some violent protests around the globe, Mr. Trump made a display of having five Teslas brought to the White House grounds in a demonstration for the news media, and checked out the cars with Mr. Musk by his side. It was an extraordinary promotion of a company by the most powerful person in the federal government.

“I think he’s been treated very unfairly by a very small group of people,” Mr. Trump told reporters, referring to Mr. Musk. “And I just want people to know that he can’t be penalized for being a patriot.”

Mr. Musk and White House officials didn’t return a request for comment.

Associates of both Mr. Musk and Mr. Trump have talked in recent days about Mr. Musk’s planned donation to a Trump-controlled entity. Mr. Musk has signaled he wants to make the donations not to his own super PAC, which is called America PAC and has spent heavily on Mr. Trump in the past, but to an outside entity affiliated with the president.

The groups that are leading Mr. Trump’s outside activities include Make America Great Again Inc., a super PAC, and Securing American Greatness, a political nonprofit. It is not clear if the money would go to those groups or to a new entity the Trump team could create.

Both MAGA Inc. and Securing American Greatness were founded by close allies of Mr. Trump, and have a diverse set of major donors aligned with the president.

Mr. Musk is still committed to his own super PAC, which has now spent $6 million to support a conservative candidate in the Wisconsin Supreme Court election next month. He spent close to $300 million on the presidential race last cycle, almost all through America PAC, which he founded last year.

But Mr. Musk is now showing a willingness to also fund some groups he doesn’t directly control. And his past giving indicates he’s willing to exceed amounts that other donors might consider excessive.

At the moment, Mr. Musk may see some political upside in showing that he is a team player of sorts.

Mr. Musk has been viewed by some Trump officials, including by members of Mr. Trump’s cabinet, as pursuing his own agenda without properly consulting the rest of the Trump administration. Mr. Musk pointedly backing some of Mr. Trump’s longer-standing, loyal groups, rather than solely his own, could help soothe those tensions.

The precise split of Mr. Musk’s money, or if he has followed through with his plans, is not known and may never be. The political nonprofit group is not required to disclose its donors.

Mr. Trump is not eligible for re-election, yet his outside groups are continuing to rake in seven-figure contributions from major donors, presumably to reward friendly lawmakers and pressure those who oppose his agenda.

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Despite the ruling, the judge found that the case still presents pressing constitutional questions, particularly over the separation of powers, as it was not clear that President Trump had the legal authority to replace Brehm with Marocco on an acting basis. As the lawsuit continues, the judge ordered Ethan Shaotran, Jacob Altik and Nate Cavanaugh — three members of Musk’s staff — to appear under oath to testify about their roles auditing the foundation.

A Republican referred to a transgender member as a man, cutting short a House hearing.

Ms. McBride, who entered Congress knowing she would present a unique target for Republicans who have politicized and attacked transgender people, has generally chosen to let such moments slide. On Tuesday, she briefly registered her displeasure by returning Mr. Self’s slight, responding, “Thank you, Madam Chair,” before proceeding with her remarks.

But Representative William Keating of Massachusetts, the ranking Democrat on the subcommittee, was not willing to move on. He interrupted to request that Mr. Self repeat his introduction, which he did, again referring to the Delaware Democrat as “Mr. McBride.”

“Mr. Chairman, you are out of order,” Mr. Keating fired back. “Mr. Chairman, have you no decency? I mean, I’ve come to know you a little bit. But this is not decent.”

Mr. Self said it was time to continue the hearing. But Mr. Keating refused to let go.

“You will not continue it with me unless you introduce a duly elected representative the right way,” he said.

With that, Mr. Self adjourned the session.

On social media, Mr. Self later explained himself, writing that, “It is the policy of the United States to recognize two sexes, male and female.” One of President Trump’s early moves of his second term was to sign an executive order that the federal government would only recognize two sexes and that they were not changeable.

House Republicans moved last year to bar transgender women from Capitol Hill women’s restrooms. And during his testy exchange with Mr. Keating, Mr. Self suggested that his refusal to refer to Ms. McBride as a woman was in line with a “standard” that had been set on the House floor.

“What is that standard, Mr. Chairman?” Mr. Keating fired back.

Mr. Self did not elaborate. But House Republicans appear to have established a practice of not referring to Ms. McBride as a woman in official proceedings. In February, when Ms. McBride rose to deliver her maiden floor speech, Representative Mary Miller, Republican of Illinois, referred to her as the “gentleman from Delaware.” Ms. McBride said nothing.

On other occasions, Republicans presiding on the floor and in hearings have tried to steer clear of the issue, recognizing her as “the member from Delaware,” even though the custom is to refer to lawmakers as “gentleman” or “gentlewoman.” In those instances, Ms. McBride has simply proceeded with her remarks.

That approach is in keeping with how she conducted herself on her campaign and in her first months in Congress: She prefers to talk about economic issues and rarely discusses or calls attention to her identity. And she generally gives her G.O.P. colleagues the benefit of the doubt when it comes to dealing with her.

“Honestly, every Republican I’ve interacted with has been warm and welcoming, save for a couple,” Ms. McBride said in an interview in January.

But some who have attacked her have only doubled down. After the contentious moment at the hearing on Tuesday, Ms. Miller threw herself back into the fight with a post on social media.

“Tim ‘Sarah’ McBride is a biological man and always will be,” she wrote, using the Democrat's birth name along with a photograph of Ms. McBride from before she transitioned. Transgender people and their allies consider it offensive to refer to them by their legal name at birth, known as their deadname, without permission.

Ms. McBride made no public comment about being misgendered during the hearing, but hours after the incident and Ms. Miller’s post, she addressed the issue obliquely in her own statement on social media.

“No matter how I’m treated by some colleagues, nothing diminishes my awe and gratitude at getting to represent Delaware in Congress,” she wrote, adding, “I simply want to serve and to try to make this world a better place.”

Lawyers representing the church also filed a legal notice saying that the Trump administration would release some funds for the contract, but only for costs incurred by Jan. 19, prior to Trump’s inauguration.

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Trump, an E.V. naysayer, gives Tesla a 30-minute exhibition at the White House.

With Tesla facing a backlash over Mr. Musk’s role in the Trump administration, the president said he wanted to buy one of the company’s electric vehicles. But Mr. Trump, always a salesman, did not just want to purchase a car. He wanted to hawk it and help out his friend, who also happens to be Tesla’s chief executive.

The 30-minute confab was part news conference, part car commercial as Mr. Trump oscillated between answering questions — about the stock market, Canadian tariffs and the war in Ukraine — and trying out five different Tesla cars.

“The one I like is that one,” Mr. Trump said, pointing at a bright red Model S, which costs roughly $80,000. “And I want that same color.” (Mr. Musk, who was standing beside the president, seemingly tried to sell him on a Cybertruck, saying: “This is bulletproof.”)

It was an extraordinary scene of a president using the backdrop of the White House to boost sales for a friend and top donor. And it came as Mr. Musk has signaled to Trump advisers in recent days that he wants to put $100 million into groups controlled by the Trump political operation, according to people with knowledge of the matter.

The event was made all the more surreal because Mr. Trump has for years bashed electric vehicles. On Christmas Day in 2023, he posted on social media that electric cars should “ROT IN HELL.”

He has said the cars cost too much and cannot drive far enough without needing to be charged. But the second point should not be a problem now for Mr. Trump, who said on Tuesday that the Secret Service would not allow him to drive the car.

“I haven’t driven a car in a long time, and I love to drive cars,” he told reporters. “But I’m going to have it at the White House, and I’m going to let my staff use it.”

Mr. Trump said he would pay with a check and that he did not want a discount.

Most presidents avoid promoting or endorsing products because executive branch employees are prohibited from doing so on behalf of friends and relatives. In Mr. Trump’s first term, one of his advisers, Kellyanne Conway, was reprimanded for violating those rules when she urged people to buy Ivanka Trump’s fashion products.

But those rules do not apply to the president. Shares of Tesla rose slightly on Tuesday, though they remain down overall since December.

“President Trump made the personal decision to buy a Tesla, at a market rate,” Harrison Fields, a White House spokesman, said in a statement.

Mr. Trump said he simply wanted to help Mr. Musk, who’s leading his campaign to slash the federal work force.

“I think he’s been treated very unfairly by a very small group of people,” Mr. Trump said. “And I just want people to know that he can’t be penalized for being a patriot.”

Theodore Schleifer and Maggie Haberman contributed reporting.

The Senate has confirmed Gail Slater as the Justice Department’s antitrust lead.

At her confirmation hearing, she expressed concern about the dominance of some online platforms, adding it is possible that someone “can be disappeared from the internet quite easily.”

Her confirmation comes as Wall Street and Silicon Valley watch to see if the Trump administration continues the aggressive scrutiny of corporate America pursued under former President Joseph R. Biden Jr.

Ms. Slater inherits two Justice Department antitrust lawsuits against Google. The first, which was filed in 2020 under the first Trump administration, is a landmark case in which a judge ruled last year that Google was a monopolist in search. A judge is still considering the second case, in which the government has claimed Google’s control of ad technology is anticompetitive.

On Friday, the Justice Department continued its aggressive approach to the Google search case, reiterating its Biden-era demand that the court force the company to sell its popular Chrome browser. The judge in that case is scheduled in April to hear arguments from both sides on how to fix the problem.

The Justice Department also filed a lawsuit last year against Apple over claims that its tightly knit system of devices and software makes it challenging for consumers to leave.

Ms. Slater is a longtime Washington lawyer who previously worked for the Internet Association, a shuttered group that represented big tech companies like Google and Meta, as well as Roku and Fox Corp. She also worked as an adviser to Vice President JD Vance when he was serving in the Senate, and served in the National Economic Council during Mr. Trump’s first term.

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Republicans call on Olympic Committee to bar transgender women from women’s sports.

“President Trump affirmed the position of the American people and those around the world, that we must preserve fairness, safety, and equal opportunity for female athletes,” the Republicans wrote in a letter to Thomas Bach, the outgoing president of the International Olympic Committee. “In preparation for the 2028 Summer Olympics, commitment from the I.O.C. to protect women’s sports is paramount.”

The letter was signed by more than two dozen Republicans across both chambers, an effort led by Senator James Risch of Idaho, the chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, and Representative Burgess Owens of Utah. It urged Mr. Bach to modify the body’s rules to “reaffirm the I.O.C.’s commitment to upholding the integrity of women’s Olympic competitions and ensure that only biological women and girls are allowed to compete in female sports categories.”

The letter signals a continuation of Republican efforts to shape policy around transgender participation in sports, a debate that has animated cultural and political discourse in recent years.

The letter, reported earlier by Fox, was sent days before officials were set to meet to elect a new president of the committee and discuss preparations for the 2028 Summer Games in Los Angeles. It came weeks after the House passed a Republican-written bill aiming to place a federal ban on transgender girls participating on girls’ sports teams at K-12 schools.

During the 2024 Paris Olympics, transgender women who had gone through puberty as males were effectively barred from swimming, cycling and track and field events.

When Mr. Trump’s order was signed in February, he directed Kristi Noem, the homeland security secretary, to target athletes who he said were “attempting to fraudulently enter the United States while identifying themselves as women athletes” by denying their travel visas for the Olympics.

One Republican opposed the bill, Representative Thomas Massie of Kentucky (below). One Democrat, Representative Jared Golden of Maine, voted for it.

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The Education Department is firing 1,300 workers, gutting its staff.

The cuts could portend an additional move by Mr. Trump to essentially dismantle the department, as he has said he wants to do, even though it cannot be closed without the approval of Congress.

Linda McMahon, the education secretary, described the layoffs as part of an effort to deliver services more efficiently and said the changes would not affect student loans, Pell Grants, funding for special needs students or competitive grant making.

“Today’s reduction in force reflects the Department of Education’s commitment to efficiency, accountability and ensuring that resources are directed where they matter most: to students, parents and teachers,” Ms. McMahon said in a statement.

Senator Bill Cassidy, Republican of Louisiana and the chairman of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, wrote on social media that he had spoken with Ms. McMahon and received assurance that cuts would not affect the department’s “ability to carry out its statutory obligations.”

Sheria Smith, the president of American Federation of Government Employees Local 252, which represents more than 2,800 workers at the Education Department, said the Trump administration had “no respect for the thousands of workers who have dedicated their careers to serve their fellow Americans” and vowed to fight the cuts.

The department’s Office of Civil Rights had particularly steep cuts, with regional centers shuttered or reduced to a skeleton crew, including those in New York, San Francisco and Boston. The office, already understaffed, regularly struggled to work through lengthy civil rights investigations. It had accumulated a heavy backlog of cases under the Biden administration after protests roiled campuses across the country last year.

“We will not stand idly by while this regime pulls the wool over the eyes of the American people,” Ms. Smith said.

Becky Pringle, the president of the National Education Association, the nation’s largest teachers union, said the changes would drain job training programs and increase costs of higher education.

“The real victims will be our most vulnerable students,” Ms. Pringle said.

Mr. Trump has repeatedly said he wants to close the Education Department and instead rely on states and local school districts to fully oversee America’s education system. The president adopted the stringent position during the 2024 campaign to align himself with the parents’ rights movement that grew out of the backlash to school shutdowns and other restrictions during the coronavirus pandemic.

That movement gained steam by organizing around opposition to left-leaning ideas in the curriculum, especially on L.G.B.T.Q. issues and race. Activists contended that those priorities undermined parental rights and values.

In an interview last week on Fox News, Ms. McMahon said Mr. Trump intended to sign an executive order aimed at closing her department, but she declined to give details on the timing.

An executive order to dismantle the department would challenge the authority of Congress, which created the department by statute and legally must sign off on any move to close it. In a closely divided Senate, it is unlikely the administration could find enough support to do so, particularly as public opinion polls during the past two months have consistently shown roughly two-thirds of Americans oppose closing the department.

But Mr. Trump may be forging ahead anyway. He has talked about moving some of the agency’s work with student loans to the Treasury Department. Education Department officials visited the Treasury Department on Monday to prepare for the shift, said one person familiar with the planning.

In her confirmation hearing last month, Ms. McMahon discussed moving civil rights enforcement to the Justice Department and services for disabled students to the Health and Human Services Department.

Project 2025, a conservative blueprint for the second Trump term, also laid out a detailed plan for eliminating the department. The proposal envisioned moving much of agency’s work to other arms of the federal government. Student aid, for example, would be handled by the Treasury Department; vocational education by the Labor Department; and disability education by the Department of Health and Human Services.

Rumors about potential layoffs began circulating around the Education Department after workers received an email around 2 p.m. announcing that the agency’s offices in the Washington area would be closed on Wednesday and reopen on Thursday. The email did not provide a reason for the closure, but the administration gave similarly cryptic notices about temporarily closing offices before severe cuts last month at the U.S. Agency for International Development and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

Department officials later told reporters that the building closure was related to the layoffs, and was done out of an abundance of caution to protect the safety of workers keeping their jobs.

Workers who lost their jobs were informed in emails sent after 6 p.m. on Tuesday, after they had left for the day. They will remain on the payroll for 90 days, receiving full pay and benefits, and be given one week of pay for each of their first 10 years of service and two weeks’ pay for every year of service beyond 10 years.

They will also be given time in the coming weeks to return to the department and collect their belongings, agency officials said.

About 75 former agency workers had gathered outside the department’s headquarters in Washington on Tuesday morning to rally opposition to the cuts pushed by the administration.

At the end of the rally, Dorie Turner Nolt, one of the organizers, urged the crowd members to face the building and cheer their former colleagues inside who, she said, were doing their best to uphold democracy. Several workers inside the building pressed up against the windows, waving their hands and flashing a thumbs-up amid the ovation.

Later that evening, a woman left the building carrying a stack of government laptops to a group of colleagues waiting at the curb so they could check their emails to see if they were let go. The woman, who declined to give her name out of fear of retribution, said she had worked for years at the agency overseeing payments from the department.

Mr. Trump has radically upended federal agencies at the start of his second term by relying on a team overseen by Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, to shrink and disrupt the federal government. Mr. Musk’s team has taken aim at more than 20 agencies while gaining access to sensitive government data systems.

Ms. McMahon told Fox last week that she had held regular meetings with Mr. Musk’s team. “I’ve been very appreciative of the things they’ve shown us, some of the waste, and we’re reacting to that,” she said.

Brent McDonald, Zach Montague and Erica L. Green contributed reporting.

A law firm targeted by Trump in an executive order is suing.

There had been deep concerns in the legal community that firms would want to avoid representing Perkins Coie, fearing retribution from Mr. Trump.

Mr. Trump’s executive order, signed last Thursday, barred Perkins Coie’s lawyers from entering federal buildings and discouraged federal officials from interacting with the firm’s lawyers. Cutting off such communication would make it all but impossible for the firm to advocate for its clients.

In the suit filed on Tuesday, Perkins Coie argues the executive order is illegal because the president does not have the power he claims to have and the order violates the Constitution’s separation of powers as well as the First and Fifth Amendments.

Perkins Coie said that the implications for the executive order Mr. Trump signed had significance beyond one law firm, as it was “an affront to the Constitution and our adversarial system of justice.”

“Its plain purpose is to bully those who advocate points of view that the president perceives as adverse to the views of his administration, whether those views are presented on behalf of paying or pro bono clients,” the suit said.

The suit added: “Perkins Coie cannot allow its clients to be bullied.”

The firm stressed that political law accounted for a tiny fraction of its business, which focuses on representing major corporate clients that interact with the federal government on several fronts. The order has already hurt that business, resulting in “significant” lost revenue and harm to clients, it claimed in the complaint.

Since Mr. Trump signed the order, “government employees have already twice indicated that Perkins Coie attorneys should not, or could not, attend scheduled meetings,” lawyers wrote, adding that “several clients have already terminated, or have communicated that they are considering terminating, their legal engagements with Perkins Coie.”

The case was assigned to Judge Beryl Howell of the Federal District Court for the District of Columbia, who has handled some of the most contentious litigation involving Mr. Trump going back to his first term in office. She oversaw the grand jury investigation in a special counsel inquiry of his 2016 campaign’s ties with Russia as well as a grand jury investigation into the two cases brought against him by the special counsel Jack Smith. In both of those matters, Judge Howell granted prosecutors leeway in building their cases against Mr. Trump.

More recently, Judge Howell issued an order ruling that Mr. Trump did not have the authority to fire members of the National Labor Relations Board at will. In it, she attacked his view of himself as a monarch.

“A president who touts an image of himself as a ‘king’ or a ‘dictator,’ perhaps as his vision of effective leadership, fundamentally misapprehends the role,” she wrote.

Judge Howell set a hearing for Wednesday afternoon to consider Perkins Coie’s request for an order temporarily restraining Mr. Trump’s executive order.

Alan Feuer and Kenneth P. Vogel contributed reporting.

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Kush Desai, a White House spokesman, said that a 25 percent tariff on steel and aluminum from Canada and all other U.S. trading partners would still go into effect at midnight.

This is the latest move by a federal judge to require members of Musk’s team to testify in court fights over their activities. Last month, a judge ruled that officials would have to testify in a court case involving access to vast troves of sensitive records at federal agencies.

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Trump lavished praise on Tesla and said he was purchasing one of the company’s electric cars. In the past, Trump had repeatedly bashed electric vehicles. On Christmas Day in 2023, for example, Trump posted on social media that electric cars should “ROT IN HELL.”

Republicans have quietly ceded the power to cancel Trump’s tariffs, avoiding a tough vote.

In this case, Republican leaders did so using a particularly unusual contortion: They essentially declared the rest of the year one long day, nullifying a law that allows the House and Senate to jointly put an end to a disaster declared by the president.

House Democrats had planned to force a vote on resolutions to end the tariffs on Mexico and Canada, a move allowed under the National Emergencies Act, which provides a mechanism for Congress to terminate an emergency like the one Mr. Trump declared when he imposed the tariffs on Feb. 1.

That would have forced Republicans — many of whom are opposed to tariffs as a matter of principle — to go on the record on the issue at a time when Mr. Trump’s commitment to tariffs has spooked the financial markets and spiked concerns of reigniting inflation.

But Republican leaders on Tuesday slipped language into a procedural measure that would prevent any resolution to end the tariffs on Mexico, Canada and China from receiving a vote this year. It passed on party lines as part of a resolution that cleared the way for a vote later Tuesday on a government spending bill needed to prevent a shutdown at the end of the week.

The national emergency law lays out a fast-track process for Congress to consider a resolution ending a presidential emergency, requiring committee consideration within 15 calendar days after one is introduced and a floor vote within three days after that. But the language House Republicans inserted in their measure on Tuesday declared that, “Each day for the remainder of the 119th Congress shall not constitute a calendar day” for the purposes of the emergency that Mr. Trump declared on Feb. 1.

Democrats jeered the maneuver.

“The speaker is petrified that members of this House will actually have to take a vote on lowering costs on the American people,” said Representative Greg Meeks, Democrat of New York, who introduced the privileged resolution. “If Congress can’t act to lower prices, protect retirement savings and hold the president accountable, what are we even doing here?”

Democrats in the Senate could still try to force a vote to end the tariffs, putting Republicans in that chamber in a tough spot. But in order to terminate the levies, a resolution would have to pass both chambers and be signed by Mr. Trump.

Ana Swanson contributed reporting.

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In a statement, Lutnick said the meeting would happen on Thursday and include discussions on a “renewed” trade agreement “ahead of the April 2 reciprocal tariff deadline.”

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In a joint statement, the United States and Ukraine acknowledged that the terms of any cease-fire would be subject to Russia’s approval. They also agreed to conclude “as soon as possible” a deal to develop Ukraine’s critical mineral resources — an agreement that was put on hold after an Oval Office dust-up between President Trump and Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky.

Some Canadian visitors to the U.S. may have to start registering with the government amid an escalating fight between the countries.

On the first day of his current term, President Trump signaled that practice would change, with an executive order requiring all previously unregistered foreign nationals comply with the law. The order also warned that failure to comply would be “treated as a civil and criminal enforcement priority.”

The Canadian officials said the notice had been received by the Canadian authorities. The notice was reported earlier by ABC News.

Representatives of the Homeland Security Department and U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

A subsequent publication from U.S.C.I.S. stated that the Department of Homeland Security would explain how foreign nationals who had not already fulfilled the registration requirement would be able to go about doing so.

The notification is the Trump administration’s latest move in an escalating confrontation with Canada that has been punctuated with successive tariffs and Mr. Trump’s renewed comments about annexing the United States’ neighbor to the north and making it the 51st state.

Earlier this month, the Trump administration imposed a 25 percent tariff on most Canadian imports and then paused it for some goods. On Tuesday, Mr. Trump announced that tariffs on Canadian steel and aluminum would double, after the Canadian province of Ontario retaliated to the initial round of tariffs with additional charges on electricity exports to the United States.

Late last month, the Trump administration announced that the executive order on the registration of foreign nationals would also apply to undocumented immigrants ages 14 and older, and that those who did not register and submit to fingerprinting risked criminal prosecution.

The Homeland Security Department stated at the time that green card holders, those already in deportation proceedings and people who entered the country with visas would be exempt from the registration requirement.

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Kennedy will hold the first meeting of the Make America Healthy Again Commission today, in private.

The group’s inaugural meeting will be at the White House complex, according to several people who will attend; it was not on Mr. Trump’s schedule, and it was not clear whether the president would attend. The agenda has not been made public.

Mr. Kennedy is perhaps best known as a vaccine skeptic; his management of the Texas measles outbreak has drawn scrutiny because he has promoted alternative treatments, including cod liver oil and vitamin A, while avoiding a full-throated endorsement of vaccination, which scientists and public health experts say is the most effective way to prevent the spread of the disease.

Two people have died of measles in recent weeks: a child in Texas and an adult in New Mexico. Both were unvaccinated. They were the first measles deaths in the United States in a decade.

Mr. Kennedy is also an ardent proponent of addressing what he calls the nation’s “chronic disease epidemic,” especially in children, and of ridding grocery stores of ultra-processed foods. On Monday, he instructed the Food and Drug Administration to explore ways to require food manufacturers to disclose more of their ingredients to federal regulators.

In some respects, those two strands of Mr. Kennedy’s advocacy are intertwined; he has repeatedly suggested, for instance, that the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine causes autism, despite extensive research showing no link.

Mr. Trump’s executive order cites in particular rising rates of autism spectrum disorder, which according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention now occurs in 1 out of 36 American children. The Department of Health and Human Services said last week that the C.D.C. would investigate a potential link between vaccines and autism.