China announced retaliatory levies targeting U.S. farmers in response to tariffs instituted by President Donald Trump, and Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced USAID has stopped funding 83% of its contracts.

China strikes back at Trump tariffs with 15% levies targeting U.S. farmers

China has retaliated against President Donald Trump's tariffs with an additional 15% tax on key American farm products, including chicken, pork, soybeans and beef.

The escalating trade tensions punished U.S. markets Monday as investors fearful of the damage from Trump's trade wars put their money elsewhere.

The Chinese tariffs, announced last week, were a response to Trump's decision to double the levy on Chinese imports to 20% on March 4. China's Commerce Ministry had earlier said that goods already in transit would be exempt from the retaliatory tariffs until April 12.

Imposing tariffs on imports is a key part of Trump's agenda. He believes the import taxes can raise money for the Treasury, protect American industries and pressure foreign countries to do what he wants in a range of issues, including immigration and drug trafficking.

On Wednesday, Trump is set to remove exceptions on 25% steel tariffs he imposed in 2018 — effectively raising the taxes — and raise his levy on aluminum from 10% to 25%.

In a series of announcements last week, Trump slapped tariffs on Canadian and Mexican imports, then delayed many of them for 30 days. Next month, he could issue "reciprocal tariffs'' — meant to raise U.S. tariffs to match higher tariffs imposed by foreign countries — on a wide range of imports from around the world.

Economists warn that tariffs raise prices for consumers and make the U.S. economy less efficient as protected American companies have less incentive to innovate.

There's also the threat of retaliation, and farmers, who are among Trump's most loyal supporters and also have vigilant defenders in Congress, make a tempting target.

China also hit American farm products during the president's first-term trade wars. U.S. farm sales to China plummeted, then recovered after the two countries reached a truce in January 2020 and Beijing promised to buy more from U.S. farmers. American farm exports to China peaked at $38 billion in 2022, then fell to $29 billion in 2023 and $25 billion last year. In January, they were down 56% from a year earlier, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

During his first term, Trump spent tens of billions of dollars in taxpayer money to compensate farmers for lost exports.

Rubio says USAID purge complete, with 83% of agency's programs gone

Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Monday the Trump administration has finished its six-week purge of programs of the six-decade-old U.S. Agency for International Development, with 83% of the programs being axed.

Rubio said he will move the 18% of aid and development programs that survived to the State Department.

Rubio made the announcement in a post on X. It marked one of his relatively few public comments on what has been a historic shift away from U.S. foreign aid and development, executed by President Donald Trump's political appointees at State and Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency teams.

Rubio in the post thanked DOGE and “our hardworking staff who worked very long hours to achieve this overdue and historic reform” in foreign aid.

Trump on Jan. 20 issued an executive order directing a freeze of foreign assistance funding and a review of all of the tens of billions of dollars of U.S. aid and development work abroad. Trump charged that much of foreign assistance was wasteful and advanced a liberal agenda.

Rubio's social media post Monday said that review was now "officially ending," with some 5,200 of USAID's 6,200 programs eliminated.

Those programs "spent tens of billions of dollars in ways that did not serve, (and in some cases even harmed), the core national interests of the United States," Rubio wrote.

"In consultation with Congress, we intend for the remaining 18% of programs we are keeping ... to be administered more effectively under the State Department," he said.

Democratic lawmakers and others call the shutdown of congressionally funded programs illegal, saying such a move requires Congress' approval.

Supreme Court will take up state bans on conversion therapy for LGBTQ+ children

The Supreme Court agreed Monday in a case from Colorado to decide whether state and local governments can enforce laws banning conversion therapy for LGBTQ+ children.

The conservative-led court is taking up the case amid actions by President Donald Trump targeting transgender people, including a ban on military service and an end to federal funding for gender-affirming care for transgender minors.

The justices also have heard arguments in a Tennessee case over whether state bans on treating transgender minors violate the Constitution. But they have yet to issue a decision.

Colorado is among roughly half the states that prohibit the practice of trying to change a person's sexual orientation or gender identity through counseling.

The issue is whether the law violates the speech rights of counselors. Defenders of such laws argue that they regulate the conduct of professionals who are licensed by the state.

The 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver upheld the state law. The 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta has struck down local bans in Florida.

In 2023, the court had turned away a similar challenge, despite a split among federal appeals courts that had weighed state bans and come to differing decisions.

At the time, three justices, Samuel Alito, Brett Kavanaugh and Clarence Thomas, said they would have taken on the issue. It takes four justices to grant review. The nine-member court does not typically reveal how justices vote at this stage of a case so it's unclear who might have provided the fourth vote.

The case will be argued in the court's new term, which begins in October. The appeal on behalf of Kaley Chiles, a counselor in Colorado Springs, was filed by Alliance Defending Freedom, the conservative legal organization that has appeared frequently at the court in recent years in cases involving high-profile social issues.