Trump live updates: Supreme Court backs president over Venezuelan deportations but insists on due process

A renowned economist who co-wrote research used by the Trump administration to justify his aggressive tariff hikes says the White House got it “very wrong”.

University of Chicago Economics Professor Brett Neiman, who was also a Biden administration Treasury official, said the Republican’s team have wildly overcalculated tariff rates placed on nearly all countries that export to the U.S.

The Big Tech boss and special adviser to the president made direct yet unsuccessful appeals to Trump to reverse his tariffs program over the past weekend, according to reporting by The Washington Post.

The exchange marks the highest profile disagreement between the president and the Tesla boss, who understands the complexities of a global supply chain from personal experience and will therefore well understand the likely impact of Trump’s actions on his own businesses.

Musk has been slyly making his unhappiness at the policy clear on his social media platform X, notably posting a clip of free market economist Milton Friedman championing globalisation over protectionism on Monday.

Here’s more from Rachel Clun.

The U.S. Supreme Court moved yesterday to allow the president to continue summarily deporting alleged Venezuelan gang members under a centuries-old wartime law after the administration had already deported dozens of immigrants to a notorious El Salvador prison.

A divided court on Monday night agreed to lift a judge’s order that temporarily blocked the president’s use of the Alien Enemies Act to swiftly deport people from the U.S. while a legal challenge plays out.

But the justices said the immigrants are “entitled to notice and an opportunity to challenge their removal” in front of a judge.

“The only question is which court will resolve that challenge,” they wrote.

Those challenges must take place in Texas, not in Washington, D.C., according to the unsigned order.

Conservative Justice Amy Coney Barrett joined the court’s liberal justices Elena Kagan, Ketanji Brown Jackson and Sonia Sotomayor in dissent.

This was Trump’s reaction on Truth Social last night:

The 5-4 decision – with the court’s women dissenting – follows a federal appeals court’s rejection of the president’s attempt to throw out a ruling from District Judge James Boasberg.

The judge is also weighing whether to hold government officials in contempt for allegedly defying his court orders to return deportation flights to the United States before dozens of Venezuelan immigrants landed in a Salvadoran prison facing the prospect of indefinite detention.

Also in the Oval Office yesterday, the president said the U.S. is “looking at another ceasefire” after Israel shattered a two-month truce with Hamas by launching some of its deadliest strikes last month.

Speaking alongside Benjamin Netanyahu, Trump also said he didn’t “understand why Israel ever gave up” control of Gaza, which the American property tycoon inevitably described as “an incredible piece of important real estate”.

Repeating his extraordinary claim that the United States should take ownership of Gaza and that Palestinians could be “moved around to other countries”, Trump claimed the war-torn Gaza Strip could then be renamed the “Freedom Zone”.

Andy Gregory has this report.

Representatives for the United States and the Islamic Republic of Iran will conduct extended diplomatic talks on Saturday, restarting a dialogue over the Iranian nuclear weapons program between the two nations.

Trump claimed that “direct talks” would occur Saturday between Washington and Tehran during his sitdown with Netanyahu yesterday following bilateral discussions between the two leaders.

“We’re having direct talks with Iran… it’ll go on Saturday,” he said.

“We have a very big meeting, and we’ll see what can happen. And I think everybody agrees that doing a deal would be preferable to doing the obvious. And the obvious is not something that I want to be involved with, or, frankly, that Israel wants to be involved with if they can avoid it.

“So we’re going to see if we can avoid it, but it’s getting to be very dangerous territory. And hopefully those talks will be successful.”

He added that it was in Tehran’s “best interest” for the talks to be “successful.”

Here’s a full report from Andrew Feinberg and John Bowden.

London’s FTSE 100 rose in the first few minutes of trading this morning, as a sense of optimism returned to the financial markets after several days of heavy losses in response to Trump’s tariff aggressions.

The index, which tracks the UK’s top 100 listed companies, was up more than 1 per cent shortly after markets opened today.

All other indexes on the London Stock Exchange were also in the green.

It follows a more positive session for Asian markets, with some indexes making gains after suffering from steep falls in previous days.

Japan’s Nikkei 225 saw strong gains of 6.41 percent during opening trading while the Topix gained 6.81 percent.

In South Korea, the Kospi rose 1.7 percent and the small-cap Kosdaq climbed 2.35 percent.

China’s Shanghai Composite limped up to 0.8 percent.

Hong Kong’s Hang Seng Index jumped 3 percent, recovering some of the massive losses it suffered yesterday when it plunged 13.2 percent.

All of which is all the more surprising given that China responded angrily to Trump’s latest threat to hike tariffs on its goods to 50 percent yesterday by warning it would “fight to the end” with countermeasures of its own.

Donald Trump looks set to stand by the sweeping tariffs he has imposed on some of the United States’ biggest trading partners, despite a global backlash that has left the world’s stock markets jittery.

While the trade measures caused a wild day of ups and downs on Monday, the president dug in his heels and insisted his administration was “not looking at” pausing the tariffs during an Oval Office meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and insisted instead that they would make America “rich.”

We’ll be concentrating on all things Trump on this blog but you can follow dedicated coverage of the markets’ response to the tariffs with Tara Cobham below.

Swiss chocolate makers face a bittersweet Easter season, grappling with soaring cacao prices and new US import tariffs.

The Trump administration’s recently announced tariffs have sent shockwaves through Swiss industries, from chocolate to watches, though many are adopting a wait-and-see approach.

At Geneva’s Festichoc chocolate festival, the new tariffs were a topic of discussion, but the overall mood remained positive.

Julie Jammes, marketing manager for Canonica, a Geneva chocolatier with three San Francisco stores, said, “We’re waiting a little longer, but it’s clearly a shock for us.”

Canonica has yet to decide on a course of action.

The Swiss government is also taking a cautious approach, despite the 31 per cent tariffs imposed on Swiss goods – significantly higher than the 20 per cent levied on EU exports.

While many conservative media figures are insisting that the stock market’s dive in reaction to Donald Trump’s tariff policies is actually a positive.

Ben Shapiro, a podcaster long known for his strict adherence to conservative politics, is not one of them.

On Friday, during an episode of his podcast, Shapiro said Trump’s tariffs are “probably unconstitutional” and called them “pretty crazy.”