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Sean “Diddy” Combs, who is serving a four-year prison sentence for prostitution-related crimes, has asked Donald Trump for a pardon, but the US president said he does not plan to grant clemency to the hip-hop star.Trump, in an interview with The New York Times published Thursday, also said he does not plan to issue pardons to several other high-profile individuals, including deposed Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro.The 56-year-old Combs was convicted last July of two counts of transporting people across state lines for prostitution. A jury acquitted the music mogul of the most serious charges — sex trafficking and racketeering.Trump told the Times during Wednesday’s interview that Combs had sent him a letter asking for a pardon but he was not inclined to grant it.Asked about pardoning Maduro, who was seized by US forces over the weekend and is facing drug trafficking charges, Trump said: “No, I don’t see that.”In November, Trump pardoned Honduran ex-president Juan Orlando Hernandez, who was serving a 45-year sentence after being convicted of drug trafficking.Trump also said he did not plan to issue pardons to disgraced crypto tycoon Sam Bankman-Fried, who is serving a 25-year prison sentence, and former Democratic senator Robert Menendez, who is serving an 11-year sentence for accepting bribes.The Times said the Republican president was also asked whether he would consider pardoning Derek Chauvin, the white Minneapolis police officer convicted of the 2020 murder of George Floyd, whose death sparked nationwide racial justice protests.”I haven’t been asked about it,” Trump said.On the day of his inauguration Trump pardoned more than 1,500 people who had been convicted or were facing charges for involvement in the January 6, 2021 attack on the US Capitol by his supporters.He has carried out a slew of other pardons since then of other loyalists.

US Vice President JD Vance warned Europe on Thursday to take Donald Trump “seriously” on Greenland as the president ramps up threats against the Danish-ruled Arctic territory.Vance accused fellow NATO member Denmark and the rest of Europe of failing to do enough to protect the strategically-located island from the designs of Russia and China.European capitals have been scrambling to come up with a coordinated response after the White House said this week that Trump wanted to buy Greenland and refused to rule out military action.”I guess my advice to European leaders and anybody else would be to take the president of the United States seriously,” Vance told a briefing at the White House when asked about Greenland.Vance urged them to respond in particular to Trump’s insistence that the United States needs the island for “missile defense,” with Moscow and Beijing increasing military activities nearby and the Arctic ice melting due to climate change. “So what we’re asking our European friends to do is to take the security of that land mass more seriously, because if they’re not, the United States is going to have to do something about it,” Vance said.”What that is, I’ll leave that to the president as we continue to engage in diplomacy with our European friends and everybody on this particular topic.”US Secretary of State Marco Rubio is due to meet officials from Denmark and Greenland next week.An emboldened Trump has long talked about acquiring Greenland but has ramped up his threats since the US military operation to topple Venezuela’s ruler Nicolas Maduro last week.- ‘Turning away’ -The threats have infuriated Denmark, a founding NATO member and long-time US ally, and set alarm bells ringing across Europe.An invasion would pit Washington against fellow NATO member Denmark and threaten to blow up the entire military alliance, which is based on a mutual self-defense clause.A flurry of diplomacy is underway as Europeans try to head off a crisis while at the same time avoiding the wrath of Trump, who is nearing the end of his first year back in power.British Prime Minister Keir Starmer “set out his position on Greenland” during a call with Trump on Wednesday and then said more could be done to protect the “high Arctic” from Russia in a second call on Thursday, Downing Street said.Vance was meeting British Deputy Prime Minister David Lammy in Washington for talks that would focus on the Ukraine war, but where Greenland could come up.European countries have stood in solidarity with Denmark, with key leaders issuing a joint statement with Copenhagen saying it was for Denmark and Greenland alone to decide its fate.French President Emmanuel Macron even warned on Thursday that the United States was “turning away” from allies in some of his strongest criticism yet of Trump’s policies.Macron said “global governance” was key at a time when “every day people wonder whether Greenland is going to be invaded.” Vance, however, has long been critical of Europe over defense issues, saying in a leaked chat with senior US officials last year that he hated “bailing out” the continent.The Trump administration’s new US national security strategy launched a brutal attack on Europe in December, describing it as facing “civilisational erasure” from migration and calling for “cultivating resistance” among right-wing parties.

Exoskeletons are shedding their bulky, sci-fi image to become lightweight, AI-powered consumer devices that manufacturers hope will become as commonplace as smartwatches, targeting everyone from hikers to seniors seeking to stay active.The metal contraptions are impossible to miss in the aisles of the CES consumer technology show in Las Vegas, with visitors eager to try out devices that, depending on the model, help to train the legs, support the knees, and strengthen the back. Some say they do all three at once.The Hardiman suit, the first exoskeleton of the modern era created by engineer Ralph Mosher for General Electric in the mid-1960s, is a far cry from these new models.It was massive in appearance, resembling the boxy “Transformers” characters from the toys and movies. By contrast, several models presented in Las Vegas weigh less than two kilograms (4.4 pounds) without batteries.Although exoskeletons gradually made their way into industry and healthcare more than 20 years ago to relieve warehouse workers or assist in patient rehabilitation, they have remained niche products until now.Today, a host of startups are looking to capitalize on equipment more adapted to everyday use, with improved battery life and more affordable prices.Several of them offer products costing around $1,000 each, equipped with sensors that use artificial intelligence to adapt the mechanical assistance to the terrain and walking pace.Some are also designed for running, such as an offering from Dnsys, which claims a maximum speed of 27 kilometers (16.8 miles) per hour — faster than the sprinting pace of the vast majority of humans.Casual walkers and experienced hikers alike are being targeted by exoskeleton manufacturers, which are almost exclusively Chinese and dream of success in the vast US market.”We’re working hard to make exoskeletons commonplace so people don’t feel that social anxiety of wearing something like this,” said Toby Knisely, communications manager at Hypershell, which says it has already sold 20,000 units.”It’ll hit a critical mass at some point, and maybe become as commonplace as smartwatches or glasses,” he said.- You do the work -After trying out an Ascentiz exoskeleton, Trevor Bills, a Canadian entrepreneur visiting CES, was quite impressed.”You hardly feel it, because it seems to be very good at keeping up with you,” he said.”It was only when I slowed down that I was fighting it a little bit.”One of the obstacles to overcome is the idea that exoskeletons reduce physical effort and diminish the health benefits of exercise.”It doesn’t do the work for you,” said Bills, his forehead glistening with sweat.”If it gets people out and about and makes them more active, that’s a good thing.”Half of Dnsys’s customers are over-50s “who enjoy walking but do so less as they get older,” says Xiangyu Li, co-founder of the company.Hypershell states on its website that users must be able to walk and balance on their own to ensure that everyone uses the device safely and not as a crutch or walking aid.When these machines become more common on the streets, “social anxiety, or the embarrassment associated with wearing an exoskeleton” will fade, said Knisely.”People don’t want to look like robots,” said Xiangyu Li.

The White House said Thursday that US law enforcement was under “organized attack” as protesters clashed with officers in Minneapolis following the fatal shooting of a woman by an immigration agent.The victim of Wednesday’s shooting, identified as 37-year-old Renee Nicole Good, was shot in the head as she apparently tried to drive away from agents approaching her car, which they said was blocking their way.Vice President JD Vance said, without providing evidence, that she was part of a “broader left-wing network” opposed to the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency, and he insisted the officer acted in “self-defense.”The day after the shooting, officers armed with pepperball guns and tear gas jostled with a large crowd of protesters beside a government facility in Fort Snelling just outside Minneapolis.A noisy crowd chanted slogans attacking ICE as officers pushed against protesters, detaining several including one who struck an agent with a cardboard sign.Footage of Wednesday’s incident shows a masked agent attempt to open the victim’s car door before another masked agent, standing near the vehicle’s front bumper, fired three times into the Honda SUV.The vehicle then hurtled out of control and smashed into stationary vehicles, as horrified onlookers hurled abuse at the federal officers.Her bloodied body is then seen slumped in the crashed vehicle. Minnesota Governor Tim Walz said she leaves behind a wife and six-year-old child, for whom a fundraiser has received more than $600,000.President Donald Trump and senior officials quickly claimed Good was trying to kill the agents, an assertion Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey dismissed.”I want to see nobody get shot. I want to see nobody screaming and trying to run over policemen either,” Trump said in an interview with The New York Times.Department of Homeland Security (DHS) chief Kristi Noem called the incident “domestic terrorism” later saying she was not opposed to deploying more officers to Minneapolis.Witness Tyrice told US media he heard “three gunshots and then I hear a car crash.””I see this lady hugging the victim,” he said.”There’s blood all in the snow in front of our house. And I could see a lady in the car…You could see the wounds and everything, like a whole bunch of blood.”Minneapolis Police Chief Brian O’Hara told CNN that Good was not the target of immigration enforcement action and that she was only suspected of blocking traffic.Vance told a briefing Thursday that Good was “part of a broader left-wing network to attack, to doxx, to assault and to make it impossible for our ICE officers to do their job.”White House spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt said Wednesday’s incident was “a result of a larger, sinister left-wing movement” and “law enforcement are under organized attack.”- Immigrant deportations -Protests grew after Minnesota’s Democratic Governor Walz called it a “patriotic duty” to demonstrate for justice.On Thursday he said Minnesota must be part of the probe into the shooting alongside federal investigators — as otherwise Noem “is judge, jury and basically executioner.”But Vance seemed to suggest the officer would be cleared by a federal probe that would exclude state-level officials.”The idea that this was not justified is absurd,” he said.Minneapolis schools were closed Thursday and Friday as a precaution against unrest.ICE officers have been at the forefront of the Trump administration’s immigrant deportation drive, with raids carried out over the objections of some local officials.Wednesday’s incident came during protests over immigration enforcement in the southern part of Minneapolis.They are part of widespread anger over the Trump administration’s high-profile crackdown on undocumented immigrants, with the Republican vowing to arrest and deport “millions.The victim’s mother, Donna Ganger, told the Minnesota Star Tribune that her daughter “was probably terrified” and “not part” of anti-ICE activity.Good was a mother and poet who studied creative writing at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Virginia, US media reported.On Thursday, religious leaders addressed hundreds of people attending a vigil at the scene of the shooting, with a growing memorial of flowers and candles erected to commemorate Good’s life.

There’s a few special words that will perk the ears of many a dog — hungry, park, and of course T-R-E-A-T.But a choice group of gifted canines appear to have remarkable capacity for learning human vocabulary, to the point that they acquire language by eavesdropping the way young toddlers do.That’s according to a new study published Thursday in the journal Science, which shows that some “gifted word learner” dogs already known capable of learning toy names through training and play can also pick up words simply by overhearing people speak to each other.Cognitive researcher Shany Dror of the Veterinary University of Vienna’s Clever Dog Lab has spent years running a “Genius Dog Challenge” that recruits canines who’ve demonstrated particular ability to learn language through social interactions.In her research she noticed that some dogs seemed to be listening in on their owners: “They would tell me stories, like we were talking about ordering a pizza, and then the dog came into the living room with the toy named pizza,” Dror told AFP.So she and a team out of Hungary’s Eotvos Lorand University set out to test whether their group of particularly intelligent dogs could create the association of a new word to a new object without being directly taught the connection.And in a new development they found the gifted dogs could learn new toy names just as well from overheard speech as they did when directly addressed, proving it by later retrieving the toys.These dogs are considered outliers: Dror said her team has been searching for some seven years for dogs who know toy names, and have found about 45.Yet she said the findings offer some clues about the “complex machinery needed for social learning, to see if it exists in an animal that does not have language.””We found that it does exist,” Dror said. “This gives us a kind of hint to the fact that before humans developed language, they first had this very complex cognitive ability to learn from others.”- Canine savants? -Clive Wynne, a canine behaviorist at Arizona State University, called the study “very nicely done,” but cautioned that the animals studied were “deeply exceptional” and that people shouldn’t expect genius qualities from their family pets.But how do these intelligent pups become so smart?”One obvious possibility is that these dogs are true canine savants,” said Wynne. “But another possibility is that it’s not their cognition that’s exceptional, it’s their motivational system — that they have motivational systems that can be activated and yet never fill up.”Wynne gave the example of the dog Chaser, who had a phenomenal vocabulary of more than a 1,000 words — and who also had a phenomenal capacity for training and play that isn’t representative of the species.Chaser was a Border Collie, a working dog breed Dror said is among the top dog types among gifted word learners.But she said they have seen a “surprising” range of breeds represented including a Shih Tzu, a Pekingese, Yorkshires along with mixed breeds including a rescue.Even though “typical” dogs aren’t likely to learn from overheard speech, Dror emphasized that dogs in general still “are really good at understanding human communicative cues.””Even if our dogs do not know the names of objects, I think we can still pay more attention to how we are conducting ourselves when we’re interacting with our dogs,” Drof said, “with the underlying thought that maybe our dogs are learning something from this.”

The US Senate took a major step Thursday toward passing a resolution to rein in President Donald Trump’s military actions in Venezuela — a rare bipartisan rebuke following alarm over the secretive capture of leader Nicolas Maduro.The Democratic-led legislation, which bars further US hostilities against Venezuela without explicit congressional authorization, got through a key procedural vote with support from five Republicans.The vote on final passage, expected next week, is now seen as little more than a formality, and would mark one of Congress’s most forceful assertions of its war-making authority in decades.The effort is seen as largely symbolic however, as the resolution faces a steep climb in the US House and almost no prospect of surviving a likely veto by Trump.The president lashed out at the five Republican rebels for their “stupidity” on his Truth Social platform and said they “should never be elected to office again.””Republicans should be ashamed of the Senators that just voted with Democrats in attempting to take away our Powers to fight and defend the United States of America,” he added.The vote followed a dramatic escalation in US action — including air and naval strikes and the nighttime seizure of Maduro in Caracas — that lawmakers from both parties said went beyond a limited law-enforcement operation and crossed unmistakably into war.”Less than courageous members of Congress fall all over themselves to avoid taking responsibility, to avoid the momentous vote of declaring war,” said Senator Rand Paul, the Kentucky Republican who broke with much of his party to co-sponsored the measure. “But make no mistake, bombing another nation’s capital and removing their leader is an act of war, plain and simple. No provision in the Constitution provides such power to the presidency.”- ‘Time will tell’ -Trump said in an interview published Thursday the United States could run Venezuela and tap into its oil reserves for years, telling The New York Times “only time will tell” how long Washington would demand direct oversight of the South American nation.Democrats are framing the resolution as a constitutional line in the sand after what they described as months of misleading briefings, including assurances from the administration as recently as November that it had no plans for strikes on Venezuelan soil.The administration has argued the Maduro operation was legally justified as part of a broader campaign against transnational drug trafficking, characterizing it as a battle with cartels designated as terrorist organizations. Republican leaders largely defended the president, touting his authority to conduct limited military actions in defense of US national security.”This is something that should have taken place, probably in a previous administration,” Senator Markwayne Mullin of Oklahoma told reporters Wednesday.”Only President Trump had the backbone to pull it off, to pull out an indicted, illegitimate president that was holding Venezuela hostage.”Since Trump returned to office, war powers resolutions on Venezuela have been rejected twice in the Senate and twice in the House.Over the last century, only one congressional resolution has successfully imposed a broad, lasting limit on unilateral presidential military action abroad: the War Powers Resolution of 1973, passed over then-president Richard Nixon’s veto.

Venezuela on Thursday announced the release of a “large number” of prisoners, some of them foreigners, in an apparent concession to the United States after its ouster of ruler Nicolas Maduro.The releases are the first since Maduro’s former deputy Delcy Rodriguez became interim leader, with the backing of President Donald Trump, who said he was content to let her govern as long as Caracas gives Washington access to its plentiful oil.The prisoner releases were announced by Rodriguez’s brother, parliament speaker Jorge Rodriguez, a key figure in “chavismo,” the anti-US socialist movement founded by Maduro’s predecessor Hugo Chavez.Rodriguez said “a significant number of Venezuelan and foreign nationals” were being immediately freed for the sake of “peaceful coexistence.”He did not say which prisoners would be released, nor how many.Venezuelan rights NGO Foro Penal says there are 806 political prisoners behind bars.The group hailed Rodriguez’s announcement as “good news” but said it was still verifying the releases.US State Department officials did not comment on whether the releases were a demand of the Trump administration.On Tuesday, the US president told Republican lawmakers that Rodriguez’s administration was closing a torture chamber “in the middle of Caracas” but gave no further details.- Trump rebuked by Senate -Thursday’s gesture by Caracas came as Trump suggested the United States could run Venezuela and tap into its oil reserves for years.Shortly after Maduro’s seizure in US airstrikes and a special forces raid that left 100 people dead, according to Caracas, Trump announced that the US would “run” the Caribbean country for a transitional period.”Only time will tell” how long Washington will demand direct oversight of the country, he told The New York Times in an interview published Thursday.When asked whether that meant three months, six months or a year, he replied: “I would say much longer.”Meanwhile, the US Senate on Thursday took a major step toward passing a resolution to rein in military actions against Venezuela.The Democratic-led legislation, expected to pass a vote next week, reflects widespread disquiet among lawmakers over Saturday’s secretive capture of Maduro, conducted without their express approval.It is expected to face resistance in the Republican-dominated House, however.- ‘Tangled mess’ -Oil has emerged as the key to US control over Venezuela, which has the world’s largest proven reserves.Trump announced a plan earlier this week for the United States to sell between 30 million and 50 million barrels of Venezuelan crude, with Caracas then using the money to buy US-made products.Delcy Rodriguez on Wednesday called the US attack to depose Maduro, who was taken to New York with his wife to face trial on drugs charges, a “stain” on relations with the United States.But she also defended the planned oil sales to Washington.On the streets of Caracas, opinions remain mixed about the plan.”I feel we’ll have more opportunities if the oil is in the hands of the United States than in the hands of the government,” said Jose Antonio Blanco, 26. Teresa Gonzalez, 52, said she didn’t know if the oil sales plan was good or bad. “It’s a tangled mess. What we do is try to survive, if we don’t work, we don’t eat,” she added.The Wall Street Journal reported that Trump, who will meet oil executives on Friday, is also considering a plan for the US to exert control over Venezuela’s state oil company PDVSA, which has access to the world’s largest proven oil reserves.Trump has warned Rodriguez she will pay “a very big price, probably bigger than Maduro” if she does not comply with his agenda.”Her power comes from Washington, not from the internal structure. If Trump decides she’s no longer useful, she’ll go like Maduro,” Venezuela’s former information minister Andres Izarra told AFP in an email.The US operation in Venezuela — and Trump’s hints that other countries could be next — sent shockwaves through the Americas, but he has since dialed down tensions with Colombia.burs-cb/rlp/iv

The UN climate chief led a chorus of criticism Thursday over President Donald Trump’s decision to withdraw the United States from a bedrock climate treaty, calling it a “colossal own goal” that will only harm his country.Trump released a presidential memorandum Wednesday ordering the withdrawal from 66 global organizations and treaties — roughly half affiliated with the United Nations — for being “contrary to the interests of the United States.”Most notable among them is the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), which underpins all major international climate agreements.UNFCCC executive secretary Simon Stiell said Trump’s decision would “only harm the US economy, jobs and living standards.””It is a colossal own goal which will leave the US less secure and less prosperous,” Stiell said in a statement.His remarks were followed by comments from UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, who said he “regrets” the US decision to withdraw from multiple international bodies, without naming any one organization.”The United Nations has a responsibility to deliver for those who depend on us, and we will continue to carry out our mandates with determination,” Guterres said, while reminding member states of their legal obligations to fund the world body’s budget.Critics warned Trump’s move will further isolate the country on the global stage. “It’s critical the United States is a participant in and is actively trying to reduce climate change — it’s the world’s largest economy, the world’s biggest historical emitter,” Jake Schmidt of the Natural Resources Defense Council told AFP, noting that the United States would be the first of 198 parties to ever leave. The treaty adopted in 1992 is a global pact by nations to cooperate to drive down planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions and adapt to the impacts of climate change.”The decision by the world’s largest economy and second-largest emitter to retreat from it is regrettable and unfortunate,” European Union climate chief Wopke Hoekstra said.Trump has thrown the full weight of his domestic policy behind fossil fuels and derides climate science as a “hoax.”- Fight looms -His administration sent no representative to November’s UN climate summit in Brazil, which is held annually under UNFCCC auspices.The US Treasury Department announced Thursday it was also pulling out of the UN’s Green Climate Fund, the world’s largest multilateral climate fund.The UNFCCC was adopted 34 years ago at the Rio Earth Summit and approved by the US Senate by a 92-0 vote during George H.W. Bush’s presidency.The US Constitution allows presidents to enter treaties “provided two thirds of Senators present concur,” but it is silent on the process for withdrawing from them — a legal ambiguity that could invite court challenges.Trump has already withdrawn from the landmark Paris climate accord since returning to office, just as he did during his first term from 2017–2021 in a move later reversed by his successor, Democratic president Joe Biden.”A future US administration could both rejoin the UNFCCC and the Paris Agreement on day one, without needing to go back to the Senate for another round of advice and consent,” Schmidt said. But this would be uncharted territory and legal scholars are not in full agreement.- ‘Gift to China’ -Jean Su, a senior attorney for the nonprofit Center for Biological Diversity, told AFP: “It’s our contention that it’s illegal for the president to unilaterally pull out of a treaty that required two thirds of the Senate vote,” she continued. “We are looking at legal options to pursue that line of argument.”California Governor Gavin Newsom, an outspoken Trump critic who is widely seen as a presidential contender, said “our brainless president is surrendering America’s leadership on the world stage and weakening our ability to compete in the economy of the future — creating a leadership vacuum that China is already exploiting.”China is the world’s biggest polluter, but it has also become the global leader in renewable energy.Trump’s memorandum also directs the US to withdraw from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the UN body responsible for assessing climate science, alongside other climate-related organizations.

Two robots the size of schoolchildren stepped into the ring at BattleBots Arena.The human-like combatants stumbled a bit as they swung and kicked at each other in the Ultimate Fighting Robot (UFB) match, curiosity mixing with cheers from spectators at the event on the edge of the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.The contenders were a departure from the usual lineup at the event, known for wheeled machines equipped with wrecking tools.UFB backers are betting humanoid robots will win fans by transforming bouts from demolition derbies to mixed martial arts matches.A human referee addressed the robotic rivals as though they were flesh-and-blood fighters.”This is the sport of the future,” said Vitaly Bulatov, who co-founded UFB with his wife, Xenia.The couple from Russia envisions fans being won over by the “human stories” of the real people piloting the robot combatants.As the robots exchanged blows, commands to kick and punch came from human pilots ringside using a combination of cameras and motion-sensing Nintendo video game controllers.Cameras captured the pilots’ movements in real time, which were then repeated, more or less accurately, by the robots.The contenders looked at times like blindfolded boxers, triggering laughter with wild misses and cheers when blows landed.- Bang-up research -“With some more advancements, it could definitely become more entertaining, as you see in movies like ‘Real Steel,'” said Esteban Perez, a 25-year-old IT worker from Denver watching from the audience.While today’s bouts are less spectacular than those depicted in the 2011 science fiction film about robot boxing starring Hugh Jackman, UFB events have sold out in San Francisco, attracting young tech professionals.”It is definitely better than MMA,” Bulatov said, referring to mixed martial arts bouts.”It’s very hard to knock him out,” he added with a nod toward the ring.Beyond the thrills, the bouts provide opportunities to collect body movement data that can be used to train robot software.”I’m excited to just see what the entertainment value is…also the characteristics of the different robots,”” said Yael Rosenblum, project manager for the Atlas humanoid robot built by Boston Dynamics, who was attending the event with colleagues.

The US trade deficit made a sharp and unexpected pullback in October, reaching its lowest level since 2009 as goods imports dropped while President Donald Trump’s tariffs took hold, government data showed Thursday.The overall trade gap plunged 39 percent to $29.4 billion in October, said the Department of Commerce, as imports dropped by 3.2 percent.The deficit was significantly smaller than a $58.4 billion median forecast from surveys of economists by Dow Jones Newswires and The Wall Street Journal.The release of the trade data was delayed by more than a month due to a lengthy government shutdown last year, depriving officials and companies of updated figures as they assess the health of the world’s biggest economy.While US exports rose by $7.8 billion in October to $302.0 billion, imports dropped by $11.0 billion to $331.4 billion.This was largely due to a tumble in goods imports. In particular, consumer goods declined $14.0 billion and within the category, pharmaceutical preparations fell sharply, the Commerce Department said.Imports of industrial supplies and materials like nonmonetary gold also dropped.- Gold, pharma -KPMG senior economist Meagan Schoenberger noted that nonmonetary gold made up a huge chunk of the export rise and a small part of the imports decline.”The run-up in gold in 2025 has clouded the trade picture and during the month of October made the trade deficit look narrower than the remainder of the product mixture implies,” she said in a note.But outside of that, “the main contributors to declining imports were pharmaceuticals, which fell $14.3 billion alone,” Schoenberger added.The sector has been very volatile since firms stocked up in early 2025, and could have been impacted by October trade policy announcements.”Other areas that showed small declines included auto parts, oil and natural gas and fruits and vegetables,” she said.Meanwhile, “imports of high-tech capital goods continued their upward march given tariff waivers for the industry and the build-out of data centers to feed AI demand,” she added.The figures underscore how, since returning to the presidency last year, Trump’s fast-changing and sweeping tariff policies have swayed trade flows.As the US leader unveiled wide-ranging tariffs on imports from various trading partners, businesses in the country rushed to stock up on inventory ahead of planned hikes in duties.This has allowed many firms to avoid passing on the full cost of tariffs to consumers, at least for now.As US households grapple with cost-of-living worries, Trump has more recently broadened the range of goods exempted from certain tariffs — covering key agriculture imports. But many of these exemptions were due to take effect in November.As of mid-November, The Budget Lab at Yale University estimated that consumers face an overall average effective tariff rate that is the highest since the 1930s.The US trade deficit was $48.1 billion in September.Although Trump’s tariffs have influenced trade flows this year, a large swath of them also face legal challenges.In particular, the Supreme Court is due to rule on the legality of tariffs imposed using the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, after hearing arguments in November.If the conservative-majority high court were to rule that the president overstepped his authority in imposing these duties, it could temporarily hit many country-specific tariffs — although not sector-specific ones.