Brian Dake

U.S. President Donald Trump suspended on Thursday tariffs of 25% he had imposed this week on most goods from Canada and Mexico. The exemptions for the two largest U.S. trading partners, expire on April 2, when Trump has threatened to impose a global regime of reciprocal tariffs on all U.S. trading partners.

In response, Canada will delay a planned second wave of retaliatory tariffs on C$125 billion ($87.4 billion) of U.S. products until April 2, Finance Minister Dominic LeBlanc said in a post on X. For Canada, the amended White House order also excludes duties on potash, a critical fertilizer for U.S. farmers, but does not fully cover energy products, on which Trump has imposed a separate levy of 10%.

A White House official said that was because not all energy products imported from Canada are covered by the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement on trade that Trump negotiated in his first term as president.

President Trump has also imposed tariffs of 20% on all imports from China as a result.

China said it would “resolutely counter” from the United States on the fentanyl issue, urging the United States to resolve the abuse of the drug itself. “No country can imagine that it can suppress China on one hand while developing good relations with China on the other hand,” Foreign Minister Wang Yi told a briefing in Beijing on Friday.

“On April 2, we’re going to move with the reciprocal tariffs, and hopefully Mexico and Canada will have done a good enough job on fentanyl that this part of the conversation will be off the table, and we’ll move just to the reciprocal tariff conversation,” Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick told CNBC.

“But if they haven’t, this will stay on.”

President Trump also said tariffs of 25% on imports of steel and aluminum would take effect as scheduled on March 12. Canada and Mexico are both top exporters of the metals to U.S. markets, with Canada in particular accounting for most aluminum imports.

On Wednesday Trump exempted automotive goods from the 25% tariffs he imposed on imports from Canada and Mexico as of Tuesday, levies that economists saw as threatening to stoke inflation and stall growth across all three economies.

The Wisconsin Department of Transportation (WisDOT) is enacting Class II restrictions for the majority of Wisconsin (highways south of US 8), including Zone 2 through Zone 5, on Thursday, March 6 at 12:01 a.m. Class II restrictions for far northern Wisconsin (Zone 1) will start on Monday, March 10 at 12:01 a.m.

Class II roads include about 1,400 miles of state highways susceptible to damage from heavy trucks during the spring thaw period as frost leaves the ground. Further information can be found online for divisible load permits and non-divisible load permits.

Seasonal posted road restrictions will go into effect statewide on Monday, March 10 at 12:01 a.m. County highways, town roads, city and village streets may also be posted or limited to legal load limits or less. Decisions to place or lift weight restrictions on those roads are up to local units of government.

The department maintains an interactive map for seasonal weight restrictions. Haulers with specific questions can contact WisDOT’s Oversize/Overweight Permits Unit at (608) 266-7320 or visit the oversize/overweight permits website. A recorded message with general information on road restrictions is available by calling (608) 266-8417.

Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick signaled a possible agreement between the Trump administration and leaders of Canada and Mexico that could see some of the tariffs imposed on both nations rolled back.

Canada and Mexico, two of the United States’ biggest trading partners, have imposed retaliatory tariffs following those imposed by President Donald Trump that went into effect Tuesday. Trump said the increases were in response to both countries not doing enough to curb the flow of illegal immigration and illicit drugs across their borders with the U.S.

“He’s really looking carefully at that trying to figure out if there is a way in there that he can come in the middle, where he can give the Canadians and Mexicans something, but they have to got do more,” he told Kudlow. “They’ve got to end fentanyl death. You can’t just say it’s OK that people can die. That is just not a thing.”

“It’s not gonna be a pause. None of that pause stuff. But I think he’s going to figure out, you do more, and I’ll meet you in the middle someway,” he added. “We’re going to probably be announcing that today. So somewhere in the middle will likely be the outcome — the president moving with the Canadians and Mexicans but not all the way,” he added.

“Both the Mexicans and the Canadians were on the phone with me all day yesterday trying to show that they’ll do better, and the president is listening because you know he’s very, very fair and very reasonable,” Lutnick said. “So I think he’s going to work something out with them.”

President Donald Trump’s tariffs against Canada and Mexico went into effect Tuesday. Starting just past midnight, imports from Canada and Mexico are now to be tariffed at 25%, with Canadian energy products subject to 10% import duties.

The 10% tariff that Trump placed on Chinese imports in February was doubled to 20%, and Beijing retaliated Tuesday with tariffs of up to 15% on a wide array of United States farm exports. It also expanded the number of U.S. companies subject to export controls and other restrictions by about two dozen.

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said his country would impose 25% tariffs on $155 billion Canadian ($107 billion U.S.) worth of American goods, starting with tariffs on $30 billion Canadian ($21 billion U.S.) worth of goods immediately and on the remaining amount on American products in three weeks.

Mexico President Claudia Sheinbaum said Tuesday that Mexico will respond to 25% tariffs imposed by the United States with its own retaliatory tariffs on U.S. goods.

The White House would like to see a drop in seizures of fentanyl inside the United States, not just on the northern and southern borders. Administration officials say that seizures of fentanyl last month in everywhere from Louisiana to New Jersey had ties to foreign cartels.

The Treasury Department is announcing today that, with respect to the Corporate Transparency Act, not only will it not enforce any penalties or fines associated with the beneficial ownership information reporting rule under the existing regulatory deadlines, but it will further not enforce any penalties or fines against U.S. citizens or domestic reporting companies or their beneficial owners after the forthcoming rule changes take effect either.

The Treasury Department will further be issuing a proposed rulemaking that will narrow the scope of the rule to foreign reporting companies only. Treasury takes this step in the interest of supporting hard-working American taxpayers and small businesses and ensuring that the rule is appropriately tailored to advance the public interest.

“This is a victory for common sense,” said U.S. Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent.  “Today’s action is part of President Trump’s bold agenda to unleash American prosperity by reining in burdensome regulations, in particular for small businesses that are the backbone of the American economy.”

Inflation slowed to its lowest level in seven months in January, according to a key measure of price changes released Friday morning, though the Federal Reserve’s favored inflation metric remains stuck above policymakers’ goal.

The Commerce Department’s personal consumption expenditure (PCE) index rose 2.5% from January 2024 to last month. And core PCE, which excludes the often volatile price swings of the often volatile price swings of food and energy, rose 2.6% year-over-year, also meeting forecasts of 2.6% core inflation.

President Trump on Wednesday signed an executive order designed to reinforce an older executive order issued during his first term that requires hospital to publish their prices online, a rule that most hospitals have yet to comply with more than five years later.

In June 2019, Trump issued an executive order directing multiple federal departments to enact rules requiring hospitals to disclose prices that reflect what patients and insurers “actually pay” for services. The rule has been in effect since the start of 2021.

Although the directive welcomed by health care access advocates, hospitals have been slow to adopt the requirements. The most recent hospital price transparency compliance report from the nonprofit PatientRightsAdvocate.org, published in November 2024, found that only 21.1 percent of hospitals that were reviewed were in full compliance. This represented a sharp decrease from the prior report, in which 34.5 percent of hospitals were in full compliance.

“Hospitals and health plans were not adequately held to account when their price transparency data was incomplete or not even posted at all,” Trump wrote in his executive order. “The Biden Administration failed to take sufficient steps to fully enforce my Administration’s requirement that would end the opaque nature of drug prices by ensuring health plans publicly post the true prices they pay for prescription drugs.”

In order to reinforce his rule, Trump’s executive order called for the secretary of the Treasury, the secretary of Labor and the secretary of Health and Human Services to “take all necessary and appropriate action to rapidly implement and enforce the healthcare price transparency regulations.”

The future of President Trump’s domestic agenda cleared a decisive test in the House on Tuesday, as Republicans overcame internal divides over spending to pass a framework for a sweeping multitrillion dollar plan to address defense, energy, immigration and tax policy.

Tuesday’s vote was a critical step forward for House Republicans, as passage allows them to unlock a complicated legislative tool known as reconciliation. It’s a process that Republicans can use to avoid a filibuster from Democrats in the Senate, but in order to use it they had to first agree on a budget blueprint.

The House plan calls for an increase in funding to secure the southern border, a boost for military spending and raising the nation’s debt limit by $4 trillion.

The plan also calls for $4.5 trillion in tax cuts over the next decade. Those cuts include renewing the 2017 Trump tax cuts, which are set to expire at the end of the year, as well as other proposals that the president campaigned on, like no taxes on tips, overtime or Social Security.

On February 19, 2025, the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) announced that most reporting companies under the Corporate Transparency Act (CTA) must now submit their Beneficial Ownership Information (BOI) reports by March 21, 2025. This déjà vu deadline follows a decision by the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas in Smith v. U.S. Department of the Treasury on February 18, 2025, which lifted the last judicial barrier to the CTA’s enforcement.

For most reporting companies, the current deadline is March 21, 2025. While the March 21, 2025 deadline is currently in effect for most reporting companies, FinCEN has indicated that it may consider modifications. Specifically, the agency has stated that it will assess whether certain reporting companies particularly those that do not pose significant national security risks may be granted additional time. If any adjustments do occur, FinCEN has indicated it will provide an update before the current deadline.

The legislative landscape also remains in flux. The U.S. House of Representatives recently passed H.R. 736, a bill that, if enacted, would extend the BOI reporting deadline for companies formed or registered before January 1, 2024, to January 1, 2026. The Senate has yet to take action on the legislation as of the date of this article.

The University of Michigan Surveys of Consumers on Friday released its consumer sentiment index which dropped from 71.7 in January to 64.7 in February. That’s the lowest reading since November 2023 and was weaker than the preliminary reading of 67.8.

Surveys of Consumers Director Joanne Hsu noted that while sentiment fell for both Democrats and Independents, it was unchanged for Republicans, which she wrote was reflective of “continued disagreements on the consequences of new economic policies.”

Hsu added that the current reading of inflation expectations is “now well above the 2.3-3.0% range seen in the two years prior to the pandemic.”

Over the next five years, households said they expect inflation to run at 3.5%, which was the highest since 1995 and an increase from 3.2% in January. Hsu noted that was the largest month-over-month increase in the metric since May 2021.

“For both short- and long-run inflation expectations, this month’s increases were widespread and seen across income and age groups. Inflation expectations rose this month for Independents and Democrats alike; they fell slightly for Republicans,” Hsu wrote.