Trump ‘scraps infrastructure council plan’

President Trump is scrapping plans for a business panel on infrastructure, according to US media reports.

A White House official said the infrastructure panel, which was still being formed, would not go ahead.

The decision comes after two other White House business councils were dissolved on Wednesday amid an exodus of chief executives.

Business leaders quit over Mr Trump’s handling of violent clashes in Virginia involving white supremacists.

Bloomberg, CNBC and political newspaper The Hill reported that the president’s planned Advisory Council on Infrastructure “would not move forward”.

Mr Trump’s reaction to last weekend’s clashes at a far-right rally – which left one woman dead and nearly 20 people wounded – has sparked outrage and generated global headlines.

On Monday, Mr Trump belatedly condemned the white supremacist and neo-Nazi groups that rallied in a small Virginia town on Sunday.

But in a rancorous news conference on Tuesday he backtracked and again blamed left-wing counter-protesters for the violence too.

That prompted business leaders to quit his manufacturing and policy councils, and drew criticism from the bosses of other large US firms including Apple and JP Morgan.

Mr Trump signed an executive order last month establishing the Advisory Council on Infrastructure.

At the start of the year he said he was planning the council and named two well known New York property developers to lead the group.

Representatives for Steve Roth of Vornado Realty Trust and Richard LeFrak of LeFrak, whom Mr Trump named last winter, could not be reached immediately.