Trump news updates: US president tells Canada’s Trudeau ‘not good enough’

Thank you for joining Al Jazeera for coverage of the 45th day of Donald Trump’s second term.

You can read more about how US states are being affected by Trump’s tariffs here.

We also have coverage of Ukrainians’ response to Trump’s decision to suspend US support for their country.

And follow our full coverage of the Trump administration here.

We will be closing this live page soon. Here’s a recap of today’s major events:

• Trump said he spoke with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and told him that Canada’s efforts to combat fentanyl smuggling are not “good enough”, suggesting that the trade crisis will persist.
• CIA director John Ratcliffe said the US is pausing US intelligence sharing with Ukraine.
• The Trump administration said it is giving automakers a one-month exemption from the newly imposed tariffs on Canada and Mexico.
• Panama’s President Jose Raul Mulino rejected Trump’s assertion that Washington started “reclaiming” the Panama Canal, saying that the US president is “lying”.
• Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum said her country may seek other trade partners in response to Trump’s tariffs.
• The White House confirmed that the US is holding talks with Hamas amid the fragile ceasefire in Gaza.

Mohammad Sharifullah, a suspected participant in a deadly 2021 bombing in Afghanistan, has arrived at a court in Virginia to face charges for providing material support to a designated terrorist organisation under US law.

Trump had announced Sharifullah’s arrest and extradition a day earlier, in a speech to a joint session of Congress.

Sharifullah is accused of having helped to prepare the bombing at Abbey Gate, near the airport in Kabul where US troops were withdrawing from Afghanistan — and where hundreds of civilians had gathered for evacuation.

Prosecutors said Sharifullah scouted a route by which a suicide bomber reached the area, setting off an explosive that killed 170 Afghans and 13 US service members.

Pakistan officials confirmed Sharifullah’s arrest and extradition on Wednesday.

Trump has used the chaotic US troop withdrawal as a means of criticising his predecessor, Joe Biden.

The White House has removed a published list of government properties earmarked for closure or sale.

As of Wednesday, the website said a “non-core property list” would be “coming soon”.

Earlier in the week, however, 440 federal properties were identified on the website.

Some were structures in the Washington, DC, area, including the FBI headquarters, the Robert F Kennedy Department of Justice Building, and offices for the Department of Labor.

Other buildings were located elsewhere in the country, including the Nancy Pelosi Federal Building in San Francisco.

“We are identifying buildings and facilities that are not core to government operations, or non-core properties for disposal,” the General Services Administration said upon the initial release of the list.

Speaking at a news conference on the southern US border, Vice President JD Vance has fielded questions about whether the Trump administration would consider military strikes against cartels on Mexican soil.

Trump has designated cartels as “foreign terrorist organisations” and surged troops to the border region to crack down on cross-border traffic, leading to concerns that a more direct strike could be in the works.

Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, who accompanied Vance to the border, drew an analogy between cartel actions and US wars abroad.

“We’re seeing some of the tactics that these cartels are using reflect some of the tactics that we’ve seen used by Islamist terrorists and countries that many of us have served in overseas,” Gabbard, a veteran of the US war in Iraq, said.

When Vance was pressed about whether the Trump administration would consider military action, he shifted the attention to what Mexico itself was doing to contain the cartels.

“It’s gonna destabilise the entire country of Mexico, the entire government, if they don’t take it more seriously,” Vance said. “We’re hopeful that they will, and if they don’t, then of course we’ll figure out what to do from there.”

But another question quickly came, once again asking whether there was any talk about US military forces entering Mexico.

“ No. Next question,” Vance replied.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office has released a brief statement addressing the talks between the US and Hamas.

“Israel has expressed to the United States its position regarding direct talks with Hamas,” it said without providing further details.

US Vice President JD Vance has been joined by Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth and Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard for a helicopter tour of the southern US border.

The trip was meant to highlight what Trump has framed as successes in his crackdown on undocumented immigration into the US.

Border crossings have declined in recent months, continuing a trend that began under the administration of President Joe Biden

US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) noted 61,465 “encounters” at the border in January, and US media has indicated that the number dropped even further in February, reaching a record low for the past two decades.

Trump has touted those numbers as evidence of the success of his heavy-handed policies.

A federal judge has declined to force the Trump administration to restore a $80.5m grant to New York City — at least, not right away.

The city had petitioned the court for an emergency order to restore the grant, the funds for which had been removed from a bank account available to local officials.

The $80.5m were rescinded as part of the Trump administration’s efforts to cut alleged waste in government spending. Trump has also attacked major cities like New York for failing to comply with his immigration crackdown.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) had previously awarded millions in grants to New York to offset the spending needed to shelter a recent influx of migrants and asylum seekers.

Judge Jennifer Rearden on Wednesday ruled that the city had failed to show the irreparable harm that would justify an emergency petition to restore the money right away.

But she did leave open the possibility that the city could recoup the funds, depending on how the case pans out.

Democratic Senator Elissa Slotkin’s rebuttal of Trump’s speech has garnered some criticism from the left. The senator’s praise of two former Republican presidents — George W Bush and Ronald Reagan — particularly irked some progressives.

Bush ordered the invasion of Iraq in 2003 under the false pretense that the country had weapons of mass destruction.

Reagan, meanwhile, shrunk the social safety net in the 1980s and pursued aggressive, anti-socialist policies in Central and South America.

“If parading Liz Cheney around didn’t help Democrats win, maybe praising Ronald Reagan won’t either,” Abraham Aiyash, a progressive former legislator in Slotkin’s home state of Michigan, wrote on social media.

SpaceX, the aerospace company owned by Trump adviser Elon Musk, has issued a statement denying efforts to sabotage a rival company’s existing contract with the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA).

The Washington Post reported last week that the FAA may cancel a 2023 contract with the communications company Verizon, worth an estimated $2.4bn.

Instead, the Post said the government was considering transferring the work to Musk’s satellite communications company, Starlink.

Scrutiny over the contract’s fate was heightened after Musk criticised Verizon on social media, before having to walk back some of his comments.

On Wednesday, SpaceX said Starlink was just a “partial fix to an aging system” — and that there was no plan to annul Verizon’s contract.

“Recent media reports about SpaceX and the FAA are false,” the statement said, adding: “There is no effort or intent for Starlink to ‘take over’ any existing contract.”

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt confirms that the Trump administration is in direct contact with Hamas after US news outlets reported on the talks.

Asked about the news reports, Leavitt said the US diplomats consulted with Israel about the matter.

“Dialogue and talking to people around the world to do what’s in the best interest of the American people is something that the president has proven is what he believes is good faith effort to do what’s right for the American people,” she told reporters.

Leavitt refused to provide details about the talks.

Trump has been proposing to forcibly displace Gaza’s entire population to allow for the US to take over the Palestinian territory.

Follow our updates about the situation in Gaza here.

Democratic lawmakers have been hammering home the notion that Trump’s tariffs will further drive up costs for American consumers.

“He might be a convincing conman to some but he won’t be able to lie his way out of the suffering his disastrous ideas will bring to the American people,” Congresswoman Brittany Pettersen wrote in a social media post.

“His tariffs have already begun to tank the stock market, bring global economic uncertainty, and ignite a trade war with our neighbors and allies that will ultimately leave working families footing the bill.”

Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal called the tariffs a tax on Americans.

The Trump administration has been repeatedly confronted with the fact that the flow of fentanyl from Canada represents a minuscule portion of the overall trafficking into the US.

In Wednesday’s news briefing, press secretary Karoline Leavitt once again faced questions about whether the emphasis on Canada in stopping fentanyl was misplaced.

Only about 0.2 percent of the fentanyl brought into the US comes across the Canadian border, according to US government statistics. But Trump has pointed to fentanyl as his motive for imposing tariffs on Canada.

When an NBC reporter questioned Leavitt about that motivation, saying the amount of fentanyl being brought in from Canada could fit into a “carry-on suitcase”, the press secretary accused the journalist of disrespect.

“ You’re asking me for what the president’s justification is for these tariffs. It’s not up to you. You’re not the president, Gabe,” Leavitt replied. “Frankly, I think it’s a little bit disrespectful to the families in this country who have lost loved ones at the hands of this deadly poison.”

Scottish National Party (SNP) Member of Parliament Dave Doogan has said the US under Trump “is an unreliable ally”, as he calls for strengthening ties with Europe.

Speaking from the White House, Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt has confirmed that Trump agreed to give a tariff pause for US automakers worried about being negatively affected by US tariffs imposed on foreign imports.

A number of North American carmakers rely on a supply chain that is distributed across the US, Mexico and Canada. That cross-border integration was bolstered under the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA), a free-trade deal Trump forged during his first term.

“We spoke with the big three auto dealers,” Leavitt said, referring to Ford, Stellantis and General Motors (GM).

“We are going to give a one-month exemption on any autos coming through USMCA. Reciprocal tariffs will still go into effect on April 2. But at the request of the companies associated with USMCA, the president is giving them an exemption for one month so they are not at an economic disadvantage.”

White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt has opened her latest news briefing with a recap of Donald Trump’s record-long speech to the US Congress — and with criticism for the Democrats in attendance.

“The behaviour of Democrats last night was completely disgraceful and demonstrated how severely out of touch they are with the American public. It was the most shameful moment in the history of presidential addresses in that beautiful chamber,” Leavitt said.

Democrats did protest the speech — some through heckling, others silently through signs with messages like “false” or “Musk steals”. Several lawmakers also walked out during the speech.

But heckling is not unheard of during presidential addresses, and it has become a bipartisan tradition.

In 2009, for instance, Republican Representative Joe Wilson screamed “You lie!” during then-President Barack Obama’s State of the Union address. And more recently, Democrat President Joe Biden faced Republican boos during his congressional speeches.

Still, Leavitt tried to frame Democrats’ actions on Tuesday night as singularly disrespectful.

“Democrats expose themselves as the party of insanity and hate — the party that wants to put America last,” she said.

Reporting from Moscow, Al Jazeera’s Yulia Shapovalova describes how the US decision to stop intelligence-sharing with Ukraine is being perceived in Russia.

Shapovalova noted reports that the US will only stop providing information on targets deep inside Russia.

“Some here say it’s yet another Trump tactic to scare Ukraine, the Ukrainian leadership, to make them sit down at the negotiating table and make them talk to the Russians,” she said.

“There are also voices here who say that the United States understands right now that Russia will win anyway, sooner or later, because it’s stronger, it’s got more resources, and to prolong this conflict means more death and more destruction.”