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Trump inks trade deal with UK, previews China trade negotiations during 16th week in office

Trump inks trade deal with UK, previews China trade negotiations during 16th week in office

President Donald Trump and his administration inked a major trade deal with the U.K. Thursday, and closed the week gearing up for trade talks with China over the weekend.  Details of the specific trade plan with the U.K. are sparse, but the deal keeps the existing 10% tariffs in place against U.K. goods while removing some import taxes on items like steel and cars.  “With this deal, the U.K. joins the United States in affirming that reciprocity and fairness is an essential and vital principle of international trade,” Trump said Thursday. “The deal includes billions of dollars of increased market access for American exports, especially in agriculture, dramatically increasing access for American beef, ethanol and virtually all of the products produced by our great farmers.”  TRUMP SIGNALS CHINA ‘VERY MUCH’ INTERESTED IN SECURING TRADE DEAL AHEAD OF SWITZERLAND NEGOTIATIONS The deal is the first historic trade negotiation signed following Liberation Day, when Trump announced widespread tariffs for multiple countries April 2 at a range of rates.  The administration later adjusted its initial proposal and announced April 9 it would immediately impose a 145% tariff on Chinese goods, while reducing reciprocal tariffs on other countries for 90 days to a baseline of 10%. China responded by raising tariffs on U.S. goods to 125%. Trump also shed some insight into trade negotiations with China, given that Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent is scheduled to kick off trade negotiations with China in Switzerland Saturday.  “Scott’s going to be going to Switzerland, meeting with China,” Trump told reporters Thursday at the White House. “And you know, they very much want to make a deal. We can all play games. Who made the first call, who didn’t make them? It doesn’t matter. Only matters what happens in that room. But I will tell you that China very much wants to make a deal. We’ll see how that works out.” Here’s what also happened this week:  Trump also doubled down on his interest in expanding the U.S. during a Tuesday visit with Canada’s prime minister, Mark Carney.  Trump regularly has said he wants Canada to become a U.S. state, and has discussed acquiring Greenland and the Panama Canal for security purposes. However, the matter of Canada isn’t open to negotiation, Carney said.  “Having met with the owners of Canada over the course of the campaign the last several months, it’s not for sale,” Carney said at the White House Tuesday. “Won’t be for sale ever, but the opportunity is in the partnership and what we can build together. We have done that in the past, and part of that, as the president just said, is with respect to our security, and my government is committed for a step change in our investment in Canadian security and our partnership.” CARNEY SAYS CANADA IS NOT FOR SALE, TRUMP REPLIES ‘NEVER SAY NEVER’ While Trump acknowledged that Canada was stepping up its investment in military security, he said, “Never say never” in response to Canada becoming another state.  “I’ve had many, many things that were not doable, and they ended up being doable,” Trump said. TRUMP PULLS HIS NOMINATION FOR DC US ATTORNEY, SAYS HE’LL REVEAL NEW PICK SOON  Trump also met with Russian-American ballet dancer, Ksenia Karelina, at the White House Monday. Karelina faced a sentence of 12 years in a Russian penal colony for treason in 2024, but the Trump administration negotiated her return to the U.S. during a U.S.-Russian prisoner swap in April.  CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP “Mr. Trump, I’m so, so grateful for you to bring me home and for (the) American government. And I never felt more blessed to be American, and I’m so, so happy to get home,” Karelina said in a video posted by Trump deputy assistant Sebastian Gorka on April 11 upon her return to the U.S. Karelina, a resident of Los Angeles who was born in Russia, was arrested in 2024 during a trip to visit family in Yekaterinburg, Russia. Russia Federal Security Service arrested her after inspecting her phone and finding a donation to a U.S.-based charity that supports Ukraine.  Fox News’ Emma Colton contributed to this report. 

House Republicans release tax plan for Trump’s ‘big, beautiful bill’

House Republicans release tax plan for Trump’s ‘big, beautiful bill’

House Republicans released a portion of President Donald Trump’s tax agenda late on Friday evening, bringing them one step closer to completing the commander-in-chief’s “big, beautiful bill.” The legislation includes an increased child tax credit (CTC), a higher threshold for estate tax liability – what Republicans have referred to as the “death tax” – and several other measures. It also lays the groundwork for making Trump’s 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) permanent. Republican leaders had warned that failing to do so would lead to a tax increase of over 20% for millions of Americans, if TCJA were allowed to expire at the end of this year. There is no information in the bill so far about state and local tax (SALT) deduction caps, which have been a significant point of contention between blue state Republicans critical to keeping the House majority, and GOP lawmakers from deeper red, lower-tax states. SCOOP: REPUBLICANS DISCUSS DEFUNDING ‘BIG ABORTION’ LIKE PLANNED PARENTHOOD IN TRUMP AGENDA BILL Another notable exclusion is a new millionaires’ tax bracket. Trump had floated the idea of a small tax increase on the ultra-wealthy, and a source familiar with his thinking told Fox News Digital earlier this week that Trump was considering allowing a pre-TCJA 2.6% tax hike on people making $2.5 million per year or more. Those measures and others are not necessarily excluded from the final bill, however.  The legislation is also expected to include new Trump tax pledges like eliminating taxes on tips, overtime wages and Social Security checks for retirees. More elements are expected to be added in the coming days via amendments. The full legislation is expected to advance through the Ways & Means Committee, the House’s tax-writing panel, on Tuesday afternoon. Release of the legislation is a major sign of progress for House GOP leaders, who had been forced to punt their initial planned deadline of having a bill on Trump’s desk by sometime between Memorial Day and the Fourth of July. But SALT deduction caps and a millionaire’s tax hike are two of the most volatile discussion points. House Republicans currently have a razor-thin three-vote margin, meaning they can afford to have little dissent and still pass anything without Democratic support. They’re hoping to do just that, with virtually no Democrats currently on board with Trump’s massive Republican policy overhaul. Republican lawmakers are working to pass their legislation via the budget-reconciliation process, which lowers the Senate’s passage threshold from 60 votes to 51, lining up the House’s own simple majority threshold. Reconciliation allows the party in power to effectively skirt the minority and pass broad pieces of legislation – provided they address taxes, spending or the national debt. Trump wants Republicans to use the maneuver to tackle his priorities on the border, immigration, taxes, defense, energy, and raising the debt ceiling. BROWN UNIVERSITY IN GOP CROSSHAIRS AFTER STUDENT’S DOGE-LIKE EMAIL KICKS OFF FRENZY Both the House and Senate passed frameworks setting the stage for the bill earlier this year. Now, the relevant committees of jurisdiction on either side must craft policy in line with that framework, before all the parts are fitted into a final bill that must again pass both houses of Congress before being signed into law by Trump. The most recent portion released by the House Ways & Means Committee would increase the current maximum CTC from $2,000 to $2,500. It would also boost the maximum deduction for qualified business income, a tax provision known as 199A, from 20% to 22%. That would largely affect small business owners whose entities are taxed under individual income tax rates. On the estate tax, which is levied on assets after person’s death, it raises the exemption level to $15 million from the current level of roughly $13.9 million. Republicans have long criticized the estate tax as a needless financial burden on grieving families, particularly hitting small family-owned businesses. Supporters of the federal estate tax point out that it affects a relatively small number of estates.  “Seven years ago, the Trump tax cuts sparked an economic boom and provided needed relief to working families. Pro-family, pro-worker tax provisions are the heart of President Trump’s economic agenda that puts working families ahead of Washington and will create jobs, grow wages and investment and help usher in a new golden age of prosperity,” House Ways & Means Chairman Jason Smith, R-Mo., said in a statement on Friday night. “Ways and Means Republicans have spent two years preparing for this moment, and we will deliver for the American people.”

Ted Cruz mocks ‘crazy town’ Dems, as Maryland senator gets defensive about advocacy for alleged MS-13 member

Ted Cruz mocks ‘crazy town’ Dems, as Maryland senator gets defensive about advocacy for alleged MS-13 member

Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, mocked “crazy town” Democrats for defending illegal immigrants like alleged MS-13 gang member and Salvadoran national Kilmar Abrego Garcia over U.S. citizens, saying that many seem to have an incurable case of Trump derangement syndrome. Cruz’s comments came after several Democratic lawmakers, including Maryland Sen. Chris Van Hollen, traveled to El Salvador to advocate for Abrego Garcia’s return to the U.S. after he was deported to his home country. The remarks also came just before Newark, N.J., Mayor Ras Baraka was arrested Friday after joining several members of Congress in storming an ICE detention facility. “It is a very bizarre political decision that the Democrats have made,” Cruz said. “They have decided that they are the party of illegal immigrants and the party of gang members.” “The vast majority of Americans,” he went on, “don’t want more gang members and violent criminals in this country, and it really is a shame the Democrats have gotten so extreme in their hatred of Donald Trump that the one thing they can stand for is more illegals and more gang members.” DEM IMMIGRATION TALKING POINTS FIZZLE AS DARK PICTURE OF ABREGO GARCIA EMERGES Bringing up Van Hollen’s and other Democrats’ trips to El Salvador on behalf of Abrego Garcia, Cruz said: “We’re seeing Democrat senators, Democrat house members flying down to El Salvador and putting all their political capital behind the position that we need more illegal immigrants in America, we need more criminals in America, and we need more MS-13 gang members in America.” “I think Trump derangement syndrome is a real mental illness,” he went on. “I think they hate Donald Trump so much that it has driven them to crazy town. . . . Why is it that Democrats care so much about supporting violent criminal illegal aliens, they care so much about supporting MS-13 gang members?” Though many Democrats claim that Abrego Garcia is an innocent man who was wrongly deported, the administration has pointed to considerable evidence that he is a member of the MS-13 gang. According to police and court records shared with Fox News Digital, Abrego Garcia was arrested in Hyattsville, Maryland, in October 2019, at which point he was identified by the Prince George’s County Police Gang Unit as an MS-13 gang member.  WHO IS THE DEMOCRATIC GUBERNATORIAL CANDIDATE ARRESTED FOR TRESPASSING AT AN ICE DETENTION CENTER? A federal immigration court in Baltimore further determined that Abrego Garcia was not eligible for release, because he had “failed to meet his burden of demonstrating that his release from custody would not pose a danger to others, as the evidence shows that he is a verified member of MS-13.” Several DHS sources have confirmed to Fox News Digital records indicating that Abrego Garcia also had been pulled over by a Tennessee highway patrol trooper while driving an SUV belonging to Jose Ramon Hernandez Reyes, another illegal alien who in 2020 confessed to human smuggling across the U.S.-Mexico border. CLICK HERE FOR MORE IMMIGRATION COVERAGE Fox News Digital has also reviewed court documents filed by Abrego Garcia’s wife, Jennifer Vasquez Sura, alleging that he had seriously beaten and verbally abused her multiple times and mentally abused her children. In April, the Supreme Court upheld a lower court’s decision ordering the Trump administration to arrange Abrego Garcia’s return.  MS-13, TREN DE ARAGUA TARGETED FOR DEATH BLOW IN NEW GOP BILL AIMED AT MIGRANT CRIME The court required the “government to ‘facilitate’ Abrego Garcia’s release from custody in El Salvador and to ensure that his case is handled as it would have been had he not been improperly sent to El Salvador.”  The Trump administration agreed to clear any administrative obstacles keeping Abrego Garcia from returning to the U.S., but Attorney General Pam Bondi has said that returning him is “up to El Salvador if they want to return him. That’s not up to us.”  After Fox News Digital asked Van Hollen whether he was aware of the domestic violence allegations against Abrego Garcia before he went to visit him in El Salvador, the senator became defensive, saying: “What I said here was these issues need to be litigated in the courts, okay?” “What Donald Trump needs to do is put up or shut up in the courts, and he’s just not done that,” he went on. “My response is, always stick to the Constitution, stick to the due process rights of people who live in America, and if we all do that, then we’ll be doing the right thing for our country.”