First Thing: Trump to announce 25% aluminum and steel tariffs as China’s levies kick in | US news

Good morning.

Donald Trump has said he will announce new 25% tariffs on all steel and aluminum imports into the US on Monday that would affect “everybody”, including its largest trading partners, Canada and Mexico, in another major escalation of his trade policy overhaul.

Trump’s pre-announcement came as China’s retaliatory tariffs, announced last week, came into effect. The measures target $14bn-worth of products with a 15% tariff on coal and LNG, and 10% on crude oil, farm equipment and some vehicles.

The US president, speaking to reporters on Air Force One on Sunday, also said he would announce reciprocal tariffs – raising US tariff rates to match those of trading partners – on Tuesday or Wednesday, which would take effect “almost immediately”.

• How have US allies reacted? Emmanuel Macron, the president of France, said tariffs would harm European economies but also the US, given the level of economic ties. “It means if you put tariffs on a lot of sectors, it will increase the costs and create inflation in the US. Is it what your people want? I’m not so sure,” Macron said.

• How are markets reacting? Gold hit an all-time high of $2,900 per ounce, as trade war fears spark a dash for safe assets. Major US indexes – the Dow Jones, S&P 500 and Nasdaq – had modest gains in pre-market trading.

Returning Palestinians ‘shocked’ by ‘complete scale of destruction’ of northern Gaza

Displaced Palestinian families who have returned to northern Gaza since the ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hamas came into effect last month have been shocked by the “complete scale of destruction” of their homes and neighbourhoods, according to the United Nations Children’s Fund (Unicef).

Israel’s campaign of intense aerial bombing and mass demolitions levelled large swathes of Gaza and left whole neighborhoods barely habitable. Nine in 10 homes in the territory have been destroyed or damaged, UN figures show. Schools, hospitals, mosques, cemeteries, shops and offices have been hit repeatedly.

Meanwhile, President Donald Trump repeated his pledge to take control of the Gaza Strip. “We’re committed to owning it, taking it, and making sure that Hamas doesn’t move back,” he said.

• What else did Unicef say? Spokesperson Tess Ingram said children in particular have been traumatised by Israel’s war on the territory, which has left many communities without adequate healthcare, sanitation, shelter and water. About 700,000 northern Gaza residents fled to southern areas at the start of the war in October 2023, when the Israeli military issued mass evacuation orders.

Trump says he has spoken with Putin about ending Ukraine war

Donald Trump has said he held talks with the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, over a negotiated end of the three-year Russia-Ukraine war, and indicated that Russian negotiators want to meet with US counterparts.

Trump told the New York Post that he had spoken to Putin, remarking that “I better not say” just how many times.

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said he would be ready for talks in any format if he has “an understanding that America and Europe will not abandon us”, with security guarantees in place.

• What happens next diplomatically? Trump’s national security adviser, Mike Waltz, said on Sunday that senior US diplomats would be in Europe this week “talking through the details of how to end this war and that will mean getting both sides to the table”.

In other news …

• The Philadelphia Eagles dominated the Kansas City Chiefs 40-22 in last night’s Super Bowl, with Kendrick Lamar playing the halftime show.

• Rwandan-backed M23 rebels have seized more territory in the Democratic Republic of Congo, as brutal fighting worsens the humanitarian crisis and fears grow of a wider regional war.

• Macron is hosting an AI summit in Paris today, after warning Europe risks seriously lagging behind its competitors.

Stat of the day: Euclid telescope captures warping of space from galaxy 4.42bn light years away

The Euclid space telescope has captured an Einstein ring, a rare phenomenon that reveals the extreme warping of space by a galaxy’s gravity. The NGC 6505 galaxy is about 590m light-years from Earth – a stone’s throw away in cosmic terms – with an unnamed background galaxy 4.42bn light years away causing the warp.

Don’t miss this: The ‘curse’ of the Forbes 30 Under 30

Charlie Javice has joined an undesirable club struck by the “Forbes 30 Under 30 curse”, a term for those identified by the business title as up-and-comers who got caught in legal trouble. The entrepreneur has joined a list that includes the pharmaceuticals fraudster Martin Shkreli and FTX’s Sam Bankman-Fried and Caroline Ellison. What explains the Forbes “curse”?

Climate check: Most countries to miss vital climate deadline as Cop30 nears

The world must cut carbon by about half this decade, relative to 1990 levels, to have a chance of limiting temperature rises to 1.5C above preindustrial levels, the important threshold that scientists fear is already out of reach. Poorer countries want to see much faster action from the G20 group of the biggest developed and emerging economies, which are responsible for about 80% of global emissions.

Last Thing: ‘I watched the 40 lowest-rated movies on Rotten Tomatoes to find the worst’

“As the credits rolled, I wondered what I had learned from this three-month odyssey through the boring and the bad,” writes Rebecca Liu. “While good art can be transcendent and awe-inducing, bad art at its best reminds us of our humility and vulnerability and the inevitability of failure. We all feel the desire to create; we all see grand ambitions fall apart.”

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