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Trump 2nd term live updates: Trump defends tariffs, declines to comment on Ukraine aid

Trump said tariffs will be the "greatest thing we've ever done as a country."

Last Updated: March 9, 2025, 8:31 PM EDT

President Donald Trump is defending his decision to pause some tariffs to Canada and Mexico for another month -- a notable reversal after imposing historic levies on the key U.S. trading partners earlier this week, causing markets to tumble.

On Friday, Trump signed more executive orders at the White House before he convened a first-ever cryptocurrency summit with industry leaders.

Mar 07, 2025, 8:18 AM EST

Trump says tariff reversal was 'fair thing to do'

Trump defended his decision to reverse the tariffs he put in place just days ago in a new clip of his interview with Fox Business, saying he thought it was "a fair thing to do" for Canada, Mexico and U.S. carmakers.

“I wanted to help Mexico and Canada to a certain extent. We are a big, big country and they do a lot of their business with us whereas in our case is much less significant we do very little with Canada by comparison. I wanted to help the American carmakers until April 2. April 2 becomes reciprocal what they charge us we charge them,” Trump said.

"I thought it would be a fair thing to do, and so I gave them a little bit of a break for this short period of time," he said.

President Donald Trump speaks in the Oval Office at the White House in Washington, Mar. 6, 2025.
Evelyn Hockstein/Reuters

-ABC News' Molly Nagle

Mar 06, 2025, 8:19 PM EST

Trump signs executive order establishing strategic bitcoin reserve

President Trump signed an executive order to establish a strategic bitcoin reserve on Thursday evening, according to social media posts from White House officials.

"The Reserve will be capitalized with Bitcoin owned by the federal government that was forfeited as part of criminal or civil asset forfeiture proceedings. This means it will not cost taxpayers a dime," White House AI and Crypto Czar David Sacks said in a post announcing that the order was signed.

Trump previously announced intentions to create the reserve. The order also comes as the White House is set to host the first-ever Crypto Summit Friday.

"The U.S. will not sell any bitcoin deposited into the Reserve. It will be kept as a store of value. The Reserve is like a digital Fort Knox for the cryptocurrency often called “digital gold.” Premature sales of bitcoin have already cost U.S. taxpayers over $17 billion in lost value. Now the federal government will have a strategy to maximize the value of its holdings," Sacks added.

Mar 06, 2025, 6:28 PM EST

Trump moves to make it pricier to sue him

With the Trump administration battling more than a hundred lawsuits in court, the president issued a memorandum directing his agency heads to push back against the litigation by trying to make it costlier to sue the administration.

President Donald Trump speaks in the Oval Office at the White House in Washington, Mar. 6, 2025.
Evelyn Hockstein/Reuters

President Donald Trump instructed the heads of the federal agencies to request that the parties suing the administration issue a sum of money equivalent to the cost the government would incur fighting the case and damages from whatever relief the court orders.

The policy comes as a response to what Trump called a "anti-democratic" series of lawsuits that resulted in judges "inserting themselves into the executive policy making process and therefore undermining the democratic process."

While individual judges will determine if the plaintiffs suing the Trump organization need to post a security, the move could make it costlier to bring cases challenging Trump's executive actions.

"Federal courts should hold litigants accountable for their misrepresentations and ill-granted injunctions," the memo said.

-ABC News' Katherine Faulders and Peter Charalambous

Mar 06, 2025, 5:54 PM EST

Trump targets law firm that represented Clinton's 2016 campaign

President Donald Trump signed an executive order on Thursday to strip security clearances from attorneys working at a law firm that previously represented Hillary Clinton's 2016 campaign -- and was later linked to opposition research that included many salacious and now-discredited allegations about Trump's ties to Russia.

In this Sept. 16, 2021, file photo, signage for Perkins Coie LLP International Law Firm is shown outside their offices in New York.
Erik Pendzich/Shutterstock, FILE

The executive order mandates that lawyers working for Perkins Coie have their security clearances stripped and aims to terminate any government contracts that might exist with the firm or other entities that it represents.

It is not clear how many attorneys at the firm have active security clearances or whether it has any ongoing contracts with the government.

A spokesperson for Perkins Coie did not respond to a request for comment.

-ABC News' Alexander Mallin

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