It’s Donald Trump’s 100th day in office – and the president is disputing polling that shows his ratings have plunged. Kicking off White House events today is a briefing with press secretary Karoline Leavitt and Treasury secretary Scott Bessent – watch live in the stream below.
Tuesday 29 April 2025 14:08, UK
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Treasury secretary Scott Bessent is asked a question about Amazon’s plans to display the added cost of Donald Trump’s tariffs next to products.
Trump’s press secretary Karoline Leavitt is quick to jump in and says “I’ll take this since I just got off the phone with the president”.
Leavitt slams Amazon’s move and labels it a “hostile and political act”.
“Why didn’t Amazon do this when the Biden administration hiked inflation to the highest level in 40 years?” she asks.
But Leavitt says “it’s not a surprise” after Reuters recently wrote about Amazon partnering with a “Chinese propaganda arm”.
When pushed on whether Jeff Bezos – who was at Trump’s inauguration – is still a Trump supporter, Leavitt says she will not comment on the US president’s relationships.
“But I will tell you that this is certainly a hostile and political action by Amazon,” she adds.
Appearing alongside the White House press secretary at this press briefing is Treasury secretary Scott Bessent, and he begins to take questions now.
He is asked what Donald Trump’s objective with tariffs are after the president said he wanted to replace income tax with tariff revenue – while the administration also says it is seeking trade deals with countries around the world.
Bessent says the aim is two-fold, taking in “long-term tariff revenue” and also securing trade deals.
Next he is asked about the trade war with China and whether the US has spoken to officials in Beijing – but he refuses to say.
He predicts China will cave, saying the tariffs will prove “unsustainable” for Beijing. He adds he has seen statistics showing China could lose 10 million jobs rapidly – and “even if there is a drop in the tariffs that they could lose five million jobs”.
He adds the onus will be on China to end tariffs on the US.
We’re now hearing from White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt on Donald Trump’s 100th day back in the Oval Office.
She’s also flanked by Treasury secretary Scott Bessent, who will likely be quizzed on where we are with Trump’s tariffs.
Leavitt starts by saying “happy first 100 days” as she greets reporters.
“Today officially marks 100 days of promises made and promises kept by President Trump,” she says.
“This is truly been the most historic start to a presidency in American history. After building the greatest economy in the world in his first term as president, President Trump is in the process of doing that all over again.
“The American people trust in President Trump.”
Leavitt goes through a range of Trump’s policies he’s implemented in his first 100 days, and is full of praise for his measures on tariffs.
She describes the US president as America’s “businessman in chief” and says more than 100 countries have already come to the table looking to offer more favourable terms to America.
Fact check: While Leavitt is hailing Trump’s first 100 days, the polls tell a different story.
We told you earlier how polling from Pew Research shows Trump has a 59% disapproval rating, with the same figure reflected in polling from AP and NORC (see 10.26am post).
A YouGov poll also showed 59% rated his second term as only being fair or poor.
Meanwhile, 25% said tariffs on foreign imports are the biggest mistake he’s made in his first 100 days.
Trump’s tariffs have created uncertainty in global markets and caused the probability of a US recession over the coming year to surge to 45%, up from 25% last month. They have also wiped trillions off US stock markets.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt is holding a press briefing to mark Donald Trump’s first 100 days back in office.
She’ll be joined by Treasury secretary Scott Bessent, who will likely be asked about one of Trump’s landmark measures over the past 100 days – tariffs.
It’s scheduled to start at 1.30pm (8.30am in Washington) and you can follow along in the stream at the top of this page. We’ll also be providing live text updates.
Donald Trump has woken up on his 100th day back in the White House.
The US president has taken to Truth Social and opted for his usual block-capital style…
We’re expecting to hear from his press secretary Karoline Leavitt and Treasury secretary Scott Bessent in around 15 minutes, while Trump will be holding a rally in Michigan at 11pm UK time.
After the Democrats suffered a bruising defeat at the election, losing control of the Senate after more than three years, attention has now turned to who could take the party forward.
Recent polls show Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s numbers are soaring after drawing tens of thousands of supporters to her rallies with Bernie Sanders.
She’s breaking her own fundraising records and has stormed early polling for potential 2028 presidential candidates.
Other Democrats have (quite literally) been vocal in their protests against Trump’s administration in the past few months.
Al Green was removed from the chamber for shouting at Trump during his Congress speech, while a number of his colleagues held signs reading “lies”, “save Medicaid” and “false”.
Cory Booker even delivered the longest speech in US Senate history to protest against Trump’s administration, lasting 25 hours and four minutes.
Watch part of the record-breaking speech below:
The New Jersey senator, who entered the 2020 presidential race, said his goal was to “uplift the stories of Americans who are being harmed by the Trump administration’s reckless actions, attempts to undermine our institutions, and disregard for the rule of law”.
As Donald Trump marks 100 days back in office, The Atlantic has published an interview with the US president this morning.
The magazine exposed Signalgate after its editor Jeffrey Goldberg was added to a group chat which showed US officials discussing strike plans in Yemen.
Goldberg was invited into the Oval Office and asked Trump about the first moment he realised he could return to the White House.
“I’m a very positive thinker. I was questioning whether or not I would want to come back, but I never thought that I wouldn’t be able to,” the president said.
He described Ron DeSantis as a “hot prospect” on the Republican side, and labelled Joe Biden a “failed president”.
“I thought that maybe I wouldn’t do it, but I thought if I did do it, I’d win,” he added.
“But I never considered it a comeback. A lot of people call it a comeback. Most people, I guess, call it the greatest political comeback in history.
“I think that’s an honour, but I don’t view it as a comeback. I just sort of view it as: I just keep trudging along.”
Donald Trump’s claim that the US will acquire Greenland “one way or another” is among the most eyebrow-raising developments of the past 100 days.
But why does he want the territory? There are a few key reasons, as our international affairs editor Dominic Waghorn explains…
Donald Trump has signed more than 120 executive orders since returning to the Oval Office, with 26 coming on his first day alone.
He’s been busy, but that does mean it’s hard to keep up with them all.
Below, we take a look at some of his key orders and explain what they mean.
But first…
What is an executive order?
With an executive order, a US president can issue instructions to federal agencies in the form of a written directive – bypassing the longer, more political and permanent process of passing new laws through America’s Congress.
Executive orders are not legislation; they require no approval from Congress, and Congress cannot simply overturn them, though it could make orders more difficult to enforce by voting to remove funding, for example.
Only a sitting US president may overturn an existing executive order by issuing another executive order to that effect.
Trump is a fan of using them – in his first term, he signed 220, and it looks like he could eclipse that number this time.
Here are the big ones he’s prioritised in his first 100 days…
Border emergency
Just hours after his inauguration, Trump put pen to paper on an order declaring a “national emergency” at the US border with Mexico.
It directed the deployment of the armed forces and the national guard to the southern border, and called for the completion of the wall along it.
Trump described the situation at the border as presenting “danger and imminent threat”.
Ending birthright citizenship
“That’s a big one”, Trump said as he signed this order restricting automatic birthright citizenship, a key pillar in his approach to tackling immigration.
It directed federal agencies to refuse to recognise the citizenship of children born in the US who do not have at least one parent who is a US citizen or lawful resident.
More than 20 states and jurisdictions immediately moved to halt the order, with the US Supreme Court now set to hear arguments next month.
Sweeping tariffs
The US president said one of his favourite words is “tariff” – and he’s used executive orders to sign off his actions on imposing them.
The most significant day was 2 April, a day Trump coined as “Liberation Day”, when he announced a sweeping set of tariffs.
A baseline tariff of 10% on almost all foreign imports kicked in on 5 April, with some countries being slapped with an extra levy on top.
He’s since announced a 90-day pause on some of those extra measures, which encouraged some much-needed relief in the stock markets.
Watch: How did stock markets react to Trump’s tariffs?
But his 10% base rate is still in force – and it’s unclear what Trump will do after his 90-day pause.
And it’s worth noting that, while Trump always describes the tariffs as being targeted at other countries, it’s American consumers who will end up paying extra on goods the US imports from elsewhere in the world.
That’s quite the move from a president who promised to reduce inflation – and egg prices have gone up since his election.
Foreign aid freeze
In a major deviation from the Biden administration, Trump signed an order for a 90-day pause in foreign development assistance.
That led to a review of the US Agency for International Development, also known as USAID, in which thousands of contractors were laid off or furloughed.
The agency is the world’s largest single donor to programmes around the world, with the Trump administration’s move sparking mass protests outside the US Capitol.
Read more about the agency in our explainer below.
Transgender women in female sports
Surrounded by girls dressed in their sports kits, Trump signed an order preventing transgender women from competing in female categories of sports.
It also instructed the Department of Education to investigate high schools not complying with the order.
While Trump claims it’s all about restoring fairness in sports, LGBTQ+ and human rights groups have slammed the move as discriminatory.
Gulf of America
The US president has also been changing the world map in his first 100 days back in power… quite literally.
He signed an executive order renaming the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America to “restore names that honour American greatness”.
It also ordered North America’s tallest mountain – Denali – to be called Mount McKinley, which was previously its name.
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