By CHRISTOPHER RUGABER, AP Economics Writer

WASHINGTON (AP) — U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said Thursday in a television interview that President Donald Trump will “likely” suspend the 25% tariffs on Canada and Mexico for most products and services for a month, broadening an exemption that was granted on Wednesday only to autos.

Related Articles

The House censures Democratic Rep. Al Green for disrupting Trump’s joint address to Congress

Trudeau expects a trade war between Canada and the US for the ‘foreseeable future’

Elon Musk comes to Capitol Hill to meet with Republicans who discuss turning DOGE cuts into law

How Trump justifies his tariffs — from budget balancing to protecting ‘the soul’ of America

Trump reaches 36.6 million television viewers for first address to Congress in second term

In an interview on CNBC, Lutnick said the one-month delay in the import taxes “will likely cover all USMCA-compliant goods and services,” referring to the trade agreement Trump negotiated in his last term that replaced NAFTA. Lutnick estimated that more than half of what the U.S. imports from those two countries would be eligible for the exemption.

For companies with products that comply with the trade agreement, “you will get a reprieve from the tariffs now,” he said.

Lutnick added that Trump is expected to speak with Mexico’s president Claudia Sheinbaum later Thursday and could make an announcement afterwards.

Variance requests proposed by the Ryan Cos. for a series of one-story buildings planned along St. Paul’s Ford Parkway in Highland Park edged closer on Wednesday to approval by default.

In January, the Board of Zoning Appeals denied the developer’s requests for variances for smaller building heights and floor area ratios than what’s required under city zoning. Under existing regulations, the four buildings at the edge of the Highland Bridge development would otherwise have to be at least four stories tall. The Ryan Cos. then appealed the negative zoning decision, and the city council deadlocked 3-3 on Feb. 19 on a motion to grant their appeal. That motion was made by Council Member Saura Jost, who represents the neighborhood.

During the Feb. 26 council meeting, Council President Rebecca Noecker noted that despite the tie vote, no member had followed it up with an explicit motion to deny the company’s appeal of the BZA decision. After conferring with the city attorney’s office, she asked for the vote to be reconsidered and then revisited the following week.

“I think this has been a little bit of a confusing process for those watching at home,” said Noecker on Wednesday.

Council members Anika Bowie and HwaJeong Kim did not attend Wednesday’s meeting, and Mitra Jalali recently stepped down as a voting member. Her interim replacement will be seated March 26.

With three of the seven council members absent, Jost said it was clear neither side had the four votes needed to change the outcome and officially deny or approve the appeal.

“We do not have the votes to take such action,” said Jost, who withdrew her motions to grant the two appeals for 2200 Ford Parkway and 0 Cretin Ave. South.

Under state law, a decision is required on zoning-related requests within 60 days of submission to the city, or it results in automatic approval. That deadline, said Jost, falls on March 17.

After the meeting, Noecker said the matter is unlikely to resurface next Wednesday.

“There’s no plan for it to come back since the votes aren’t changing,” she said.

Related Articles

St. Paul City Council to revisit Highland Bridge variance requests for four single-story buildings

St. Paul City Council deadlocks around Ryan Cos. plan to add one-story buildings along Ford Parkway

Ryan Cos. appeals denial of Highland Bridge one-story storefronts

Ryan Cos. to appeal negative zoning decision at St. Paul’s Highland Bridge

St. Paul Board of Zoning Appeals blocks Highland Bridge ‘strip mall’ proposal 4-2

By MICHAEL CASEY, Associated Press

BOSTON (AP) — A second federal judge on Thursday extended a block barring the Trump administration from freezing grants and loans potentially totaling trillions of dollars.

U.S. District Court Judge John McConnell in Rhode Island granted the preliminary injunction in the lawsuit filed by nearly two dozen Democratic states after a Trump administration plan for a sweeping pause on federal spending stirred up a wave of confusion and anxiety across the United States.

In his ruling, McConnell said the executive branch was trying to put itself above Congress and by doing so “undermines the distinct constitutional roles of each branch of our government.”

“The Executive has not pointed to any constitutional or statutory authority that would allow them to impose this type of categorical freeze,” McConnel wrote. “The Court is not limiting the Executive’s discretion or micromanaging the administration of federal funds. Rather, consistent with the Constitution, statutes, and caselaw, the Court is simply holding that the Executive’s discretion to impose its own policy preferences on appropriated funds can be exercised only if it is authorized by the congressionally approved appropriations statutes.”

The states say a litany of programs are still waiting for federal funds or some clarity on whether the money is going to be delivered. McConnell also said the state’s had demonstrated standing in this case.

“The States have introduced dozens of uncontested declarations illustrating the effects of the indiscriminate and unpredictable freezing of federal funds, which implicate nearly all aspects of the States’ governmental operations and inhibit their ability to administer vital services to their residents,” he wrote. “These declarations reflect at least one particularized, concrete, and imminent harm that flows from the federal funding pause — a significant, indefinite loss of obligated federal funding.”

Among the funding impacted is billions of dollars that would fund rooftop solar power in low-income neighborhoods, subsidizes low- and moderate-income households’ purchase and installation of electric heat pump water heaters and grants to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and other harmful pollutants.

The White House previously said the temporary funding halt would ensure that the payments complied with President Donald Trump’s agenda, which includes increasing fossil fuel production, removing protections for transgender people and ending diversity, equity and inclusion efforts.

The Republican administration has since rescinded a memo outlining the funding freeze. Still, many state government, universities and nonprofits have argued federal agencies continue to block funding for a range of programs.

U.S. District Judge Loren AliKhan in Washington has also extended an order blocking the funding freeze. AliKhan granted a preliminary injunction requested by groups representing thousands of nonprofits and small businesses.

By LAURAN NEERGAARD and KASTURI PANANJADY, Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — Rural cancer patients may miss out on cutting-edge treatments in Utah. Therapies for intellectual disorders could stall in Maryland. Red states and blue states alike are poised to lose jobs in research labs and the local businesses serving them.

Ripple effects of the Trump administration’s crackdown on U.S. biomedical research promise to reach every corner of America. It’s not just about scientists losing their jobs or damaging the local economy their work indirectly supports — scientists around the country say it’s about patient health.

“Discoveries are going to be delayed, if they ever happen,” said Dr. Kimryn Rathmell, former director of the National Cancer Institute.

It’s hard for patients to comprehend how they could lose an undiscovered cure.

Yet “all the people out there who have, you know, sick parents, sick children, this is going to impact,” said neuroscientist Richard Huganir of Johns Hopkins University.

The administration’s unprecedented moves are upending the research engine that has made the U.S. “the envy of the world in terms of scientific innovation,” said Georgetown University health policy expert Lawrence Gostin.

Among the biggest blows, if it survives a court challenge: Massive cuts in funding from the National Institutes of Health that would cost jobs in every state, according to an analysis by The Associated Press with assistance from the nonprofit United for Medical Research.

That’s on top of mass firings of government workers, NIH delays in issuing grants and uncertainty about how many already funded studies are being canceled under the president’s anti-diversity executive orders.

Earlier this week, lawmakers pressured Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, the nominee to become NIH director, about the turmoil. Bhattacharya said if confirmed, he’d look into it to ensure scientists employed by and funded by the agency “have resources to do the lifesaving work they do.”

Funding cuts may leave rural patients more vulnerable

Patients who live in rural counties are 10% more likely to die of their cancer than those living in metropolitan areas, said Neli Ulrich of the University of Utah’s Huntsman Cancer Institute.

A third of patients travel more than 150 miles for care at the Salt Lake City cancer center. But for patients even further away — in Idaho, Montana, Nevada and Wyoming — because it’s also the regional hub for NIH-funded studies of new treatments.

So Ulrich’s center helps train local doctors to do at least some of the blood tests and other steps of clinical trials that let faraway patients participate without traveling — a program threatened if her university loses tens of millions in NIH cuts.

The issue: Most of the NIH’s budget — more than $35 billion a year — goes to universities, hospitals and other research groups. The grants are divided into “direct costs” — covering researchers’ salaries and a project’s supplies — and “indirect costs,” to reimburse other expenses supporting the work such as electricity, maintenance and janitorial staff, and safety and ethics oversight.

NIH directly negotiates with research groups, a process that grants managers say requires receipts and audits, to set rates for those indirect expenses that can reach 50% or more. But the Trump administration now plans to cap those rates at 15%. The administration estimates it would save the government $4 billion a year but scientists say it really means they’ll have to stop some lifesaving work.

They are “real expenses, that’s the critical point – they are not fluff,” said Ulrich. Using separate cancer center funds to cover those costs would threaten other “activities that are really important to us in serving our communities across the mountain West.”

A federal judge has blocked the move but until the court fight is done researchers aren’t sure what they can continue to afford.

‘Indirect’ costs directly support local jobs

NIH grants divided between researchers in every state in 2023 supported more than 412,000 jobs and $92 billion in new economic activity, according to a yearly report from United for Medical Research that often is cited as Congress sets the agency’s budget.

The AP tallied how much money would have been lost in each state under a 15% cap on those grants’ indirect costs. Those lost dollars alone would have cost at least 58,000 jobs, concluded an analysis assisted by Inforum, a nonpartisan economic consulting firm that conducts UMR’s economic impact reports.

Consider Hopkins, which runs about 600 NIH-funded clinical trials plus other laboratory research and is Baltimore’s largest private employer. “If we can’t do science and we can’t support the science, we can’t support the surrounding community either,” Huganir said.

Research cuts could leave new treatments on the brink

Huganir studies how the brain stores memory as people learn when he discovered a gene that, when mutated, causes certain intellectual disabilities.

After years studying the SynGap1 gene, “we have what we think is a really great therapeutic” almost ready to be tested in severely affected children. Huganir has applied for two new NIH grants key for moving toward those trials.

“The problem is for the kids, there’s a window of time to treat them,” he said. “We’re running out of time.”

NIH reviews of new grant applications have been delayed despite court rulings to end a government spending freeze, and it’s unclear how quickly they can get back on track.

“Everyone I know is basically freaking out because we suddenly don’t know how much longer we’ll be able to keep our labs open,” said neuroscientist Rebecca Shansky at Boston’s Northeastern University, who’s awaiting word on grants for her study of how the brain processes pain and trauma.

Even scientists with existing funding are left wondering if their projects — from transgender health to learning why white breast cancer patients in Oklahoma fare worse than Black patients in Massachusetts — will be caught in Trump’s anti-diversity crackdown. Some already have, even though studying different populations is fundamental to medicine.

“Those studies are very much threatened right now. People don’t know what the rules are,” said well-known Hopkins specialist Dr. Otis Brawley. “We’re actually going to kill people is what it amounts to, because we’re not studying how to get appropriate care to all people.”

AP journalists Shelby Lum and Adithi Ramakrishnan contributed to this report.

The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Science and Educational Media Group and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.