DARLENE SUPERVILLE

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump said Monday that he ended his friendship with Jeffrey Epstein and threw the now-disgraced financier out of his private club in Florida after Epstein betrayed him more than once by hiring people who had worked for him.

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Trump did not say what the people’s jobs were or where they worked, and the White House had no immediate comment. But with the fresh comments, Trump shed a little light on the reason why he has said he had ended the relationship with Epstein, though Steven Cheung, the White House communications director, recently said on X that, “The fact is that the President kicked him out of his club for being a creep.”

Epstein killed himself, authorities say, in a New York jail cell in 2019 as he awaited trial on sex trafficking charges. Trump and his top allies stoked conspiracy theories about Epstein’s death before Trump returned to power and are now struggling to manage the fallout after the Justice Department said Epstein did in fact die by suicide and that it would not release additional documents about the case.

The president and his allies, some of whom are now in the administration, had promised to release the files.

The case has dogged Trump at home and abroad and even followed Vice President JD Vance during an appearance in his home state of Ohio on Monday. A small group of protesters assembled outside a factory in Canton that Vance toured, holding signs that spelled out “JD Protects Pedophiles” and indicating that “GOP” stands for “Guardians Of Pedophiles.”

The Republican president spoke at his golf property in Turnberry, Scotland, as he sat with British Prime Minister Keir Starmer after the leaders had met and were answering questions from U.S. and U.K. journalists. Asked to explain why the relationship had faltered, Trump said, “That’s such old history, very easy to explain, but I don’t want to waste your time by explaining it.”

He then explained, saying he stopped talking to Epstein after “he did something that was inappropriate.”

“He hired help and I said, ‘Don’t ever do that again,’” Trump said. “He stole people that worked for me. I said, ‘Don’t ever do that again.’ He did it again, and I threw him out of the place, persona non grata.”

“I threw him out and that was it. I’m glad I did, if you want to know the truth,” Trump added.

Trump recently directed Attorney General Pam Bondi to seek the public release of sealed grand jury transcripts in the case. One federal judge has denied that request; a second judge has yet to rule.

Vance on Monday visited the factory to promote Trump’s tax cut and border bill, but also addressed the Epstein matter, saying the president wants “full transparency” in the case.

“The president has been very clear. We’re not shielding anything,” Vance said in response to a reporter’s question. “The president has directed the attorney general to release all credible information and, frankly, to go and find additional credible information related to the Jeffrey Epstein case.”

“Some of that stuff takes time,” Vance said, adding that Trump has been “very clear. He wants full transparency.”

Trump had said back in 2019 that Epstein was a fixture in Palm Beach but that the two had had a falling-out a long time ago and he hadn’t spoken with Epstein for 15 years.

Trump on Monday also denied contributing to a compilation of letters and drawings to mark Epstein’s 50th birthday, first reported on by the Wall Street Journal. The newspaper said the letter believed to be from Trump included a drawing of a woman’s body.

“I don’t do drawings of women, that I can tell you,” Trump said.

Associated Press writer Julie Carr Smyth in Canton, Ohio, contributed to this report.

By JOSH BOAK and PAUL WISEMAN

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump is getting his way with the world economy.

Trading partners from the European Union to Japan to Vietnam appear to be acceding to the president’s demands to accept higher costs — in the form of high tariffs — for the privilege of selling their wares to the United States. For Trump, the agreements driven by a mix of threats and cajoling, are a fulfillment of a decades-long belief in protectionism and a massive gamble that it will pay off politically and economically with American consumers.

On Sunday, the United States and the 27-member state European Union announced that they had reached a trade framework agreement: The EU agreed to accept 15% U.S. tariffs on most its goods, easing fears of a catastrophic trans-Atlantic trade war. There were also commitments by the EU to buy $750 billion in U.S. energy products and make $600 billion in new investments through 2028, according to the White House.

“We just signed a very big trade deal, the biggest of them all,” Trump said Monday.

But there’s no guarantee that Trump’s radical overhaul of U.S. trade policy will deliver the happy ending he’s promised. The framework agreement was exceedingly spare on details. Most trade deals require months and even years of painstaking negotiation that rise and fall on granular details.

High-stakes negotiations break Trump’s way

Financial markets, at first panicked by the president’s protectionist agenda, seem to have acquiesced to a world in which U.S. import taxes — tariffs — are at the highest rates they’ve been in roughly 90 years. Several billion in new revenues from his levies on foreign goods are pouring into the U.S. Treasury and could somewhat offset the massive tax cuts he signed into law on July 4.

Outside economists say that high tariffs are still likely to raise prices for American consumers, dampen the Federal Reserve’s ability to lower interest rates and make the U.S. economy less efficient over time. Democrats say the middle class and poor will ultimately pay for the tariffs.

“It’s pretty striking that it’s seen as a sigh of relief moment,” said Daniel Hornung, a former Biden White House economic official who now holds fellowships at Housing Finance Policy Center and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. “But if the new baseline across all trading partners is 15%, that is a meaningful drag on growth that increases recession risks, while simultaneously making it harder for the Fed to cut.”

The EU agreement came just four days after Japan also agreed to 15% U.S. tariffs and to invest in the United States. Earlier, the United States reached deals that raised tariffs on imports from Vietnam, Indonesia, the Philippines and the United Kingdom considerably from where they’d been before Trump returned to the White House.

More one-sided trade deals are likely as countries try to beat a Friday deadline after which Trump will impose even higher tariffs on countries that refuse to make concessions.

Trump’s long-held theory now faces reality

The U.S. president has long claimed that America erred by not taking advantage of its clout as the world’s biggest economy and erecting a wall of tariffs, in effect making other countries ante up for access to America’s massive consumer market.

To his closest aides, Trump’s use of tariffs has validated their trust in his skills as a negotiator and their belief that the economists who warned of downturns and inflation were wrong. Stocks rose slightly on Monday morning on tariffs that once seemed unthinkably risky.

“Where are the ‘experts’ now?” Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick posted on X.

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But the story is not over. For one thing, many of the details of Trump’s trade deals remain somewhat hazy and have not been captured in writing. The U.S. and Japan, for instance, have offered differing descriptions of Japan’s agreement to invest $550 billion in the United States.

“The trade deals do seem to count as a qualified win for Trump, with other countries giving the U.S. favorable trade terms while accepting U.S. tariffs,” said Eswar Prasad, a Cornell University economist. “However, certain terms of the deals, such as other countries’ investments in the U.S., seem more promising in the abstract than they might prove in reality over time.”

Trump is also facing a court challenge from states and businesses arguing that the president overstepped his authority by declaring national emergencies to justify the tariffs on most of the world’s economies. In May, a federal court struck down those tariffs. And an appeals court, which agreed to let the government continue collecting the tariffs for now, will hear oral arguments in the case Thursday.

And he’s yet to reach an accord with China — which has deftly used the threat of retaliatory tariffs and withholding exports of rare earth minerals that are desperately needed for electric vehicles, computer chips and wind turbines to avoid caving in to Trump’s demands. The U.S. and China are talking this week in Stockholm, Sweden.

Economists remain skeptical of the impacts for US consumers

There is also skepticism that tariffs will produce the economic boom claimed by Trump.

Analysts at Morgan Stanley said “the most likely outcome is slow growth and firm inflation,” but not a recession. After all, the 15% tariffs on the EU and Japan are a slight increase from the 10% rate that Trump began charging in April during a negotiation period.

While autos made in the EU and Japan will no longer face the 25% tariffs Trump had imposed, they will still face a 15% tax that has yet to appear in prices at U.S. dealerships. The administration has said the lack of auto price increases suggests that foreign producers are absorbing the costs, but it might ultimately just reflect the buildup of auto inventories to front-run the import taxes.

“Dealers built stocks ahead of tariff implementation, damping the immediate impact on retail prices. That cushion is starting to wear thin,” Morgan Stanley said in a separate note. “Our Japan auto analyst notes that as pre-tariff inventory clears, replacement vehicles will likely carry higher price tags.”

Economist Mary Lovely of the Peterson Institute for International Economics warned of a “slow-burn efficiency loss’’ as U.S. companies scramble to adjust to Trump’s new world. For decades, American companies have mostly paid the same tariffs – and often none at all – on imported machinery and raw materials from all over the world.

Now, as a result of Trump’s trade deals, tariffs vary by country. “U.S. firms have to change their designs and get inputs from different places based on these variable tariff rates,’’ she said. “It’s an incredible administrative burden. There’s all these things that are acting as longer-term drags on economy, but their effect will show up only slowly.’’

Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Analytics, said that the United States’ effective tariff rate has risen to 17.5% from around 2.5% at the start of the year.

“I wouldn’t take a victory lap,” Zandi said. ”The economic damage caused by the higher tariffs will mount in the coming months.”

Eleven people on board a boat in the Mississippi River in Wisconsin were ejected when the boat’s engine exploded, injuring eight of them, according to the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources.

The explosion occurred Saturday in Pierce County when authorities say the boat’s operator attempted to start the engine twice and on the third try the engine exploded.

During efforts to extinguish a blaze sparked by the explosion, the boat drifted into another boat and caused fire damage before all the fires were extinguished, officials said.

The explosion remains under investigation.

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President Donald Trump is asking a federal court in Florida to force Rupert Murdoch to give a deposition for the president’s lawsuit against The Wall Street Journal within 15 days, citing the media mogul’s age and physical condition.

Trump sued the Journal, owned by Murdoch, is U.S. District Court in southern Florida on July 18 for its story reporting on the Republican president’s ties to Jeffrey Epstein, the financier and alleged child sex trafficker who died in a New York jail in 2019 before trial.

The president’s motion to the court on Monday noted Murdoch is 94 years old, is believed to have suffered several health scares in recent years and is presumed to live in New York.

“Taken together, these factors weigh heavily in determining that Murdoch would be unavailable for in-person testimony at trial,” Trump’s request to the court said.

A spokesman for Murdoch’s News Corp. did not immediately return a request for comment. Trump’s motion said that, in a telephone conversation, Murdoch’s lawyer indicated he would oppose the effort.

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