Day 1: Trump pardons rioters, pulls out of WHO, Paris pact

US President Donald Trump moved swiftly to impose his will on the US government as he assumed office for a second term, ordering pardon for supporters involved in the January 6 violence, crackdown on immigration and pullout from the Paris climate treaty as well as the World Health Organisation (WHO).

Editorial: Trump unfettered 

Trump, however, did not take immediate action to raise tariffs, a key campaign promise, but said he could impose 25 per cent duties on Canada and Mexico on February 1.

Threatens 100% tariffs on BRICS

Washington: President Donald Trump has again warned that he will impose 100% tariffs against BRICS countries if they take steps to replace the US dollar. “If they want to do that… we’re going to put at least a 100% tariff on the business they do with the US,” said the President.

Rubio’s first bilateral with EAM

New Delhi: US Secretary of State Marco Rubio will hold his first bilateral meeting with External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar soon after the first Quad ministerial in Washington. Foreign ministers of the four Quad nations — India, Australia, Japan & US — will meet early on Wednesday.

Trump followed through with his promise made during his 2024 campaign by signing executive orders to pardon nearly 1,500 people who stormed the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, in a sweeping gesture of support to the people who assaulted police as they tried to prevent lawmakers from certifying his 2020 election defeat.

“We hope they come out tonight, frankly,” US President Trump said in his inaugural address. The supporters began leaving prison on Tuesday following the order.

Nearly 140 police officers were assaulted during the attack. Four persons, including a Trump supporter who was shot by the police, had died during the chaos.

The President once again withdrew the US from the Paris climate deal, removing the world’s biggest historic emitter from global efforts to fight climate change for the second time in a decade. The move places the US alongside Iran, Libya and Yemen as the only countries in the world outside the 2015 pact, in which governments agreed to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial levels to avoid the worst impacts of climate change.

“It is the policy of my administration to put the interests of the US and the American people first,” the order said.

He also signed an executive order beginning the process of withdrawing the US from the WHO, the second time in less than five years.

The health organisation came under intense criticism from Trump in 2020 for its response to the Covid-19 pandemic, which grew into a worldwide health crisis during the final year of his first term.

“That’s a big one,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office of the White House when an aide presented to him an executive order on this to be signed by him.

“We paid $500 million to World Health when I was here, and I terminated it. China, with 1.4 billion people, has 350 dependents... Nobody knows what we have because so many people came in illegally. But let’s say we have 325 (million people). They (China) had 1.4 billion people. They were paying $39 million. We were paying $500 million. It seemed a little unfair to me,” he said.

The order said Trump was sending a presidential letter to the United Nations secretary-general to formally notify him of the US plan to withdraw. The global health body stands to lose hundreds of millions of dollars in funding following Trump’s order.

Reacting to Trump’s move, the WHO in a statement said it “regrets the announcement” and hoped the “US will reconsider” the decision.

This is Trump’s second attempt at withdrawing the US from the WHO. In July 2020, Trump had sent a letter to WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus notifying him of the US intention to withdraw within a year. Trump accused the WHO at the time of helping China mislead the world about the spread of Covid-19. But Trump was defeated in that year’s election, and when President Joe Biden took office in January 2021, he reversed Trump’s decision. This time, Trump will still be in office when the withdrawal goes into effect.

In a move to curb immigration, the President signed an order declaring a national emergency at the US-Mexico border, which would unlock funding and allow him to dispatch troops there. He signed another order ending a policy that confers citizenship to those born in the US.

Shortly after the inauguration, US border authorities shut down a programme that allowed hundreds of thousands of migrants to enter the country legally by scheduling an appointment through a smartphone. Existing appointments were cancelled.

Immigrant and civil rights groups later filed the first lawsuits challenging the executive orders, including one that seeks to roll back birthright citizenship in the US. The lawsuits were filed in federal court in Massachusetts and New Hampshire late on Monday ahead of expected legal challenges by several Democratic attorneys general in states including California and Connecticut.