Donald Trump has cut off all government funding to Harvard amid an escalating feud between the US president and America’s oldest university.

Mr Trump instructed federal agencies on Tuesday to cancel the final federal contracts with Harvard, which are worth an estimated $100 million, according to a letter obtained by The New York Times.

One administration official said the move represented the complete severance of the government’s longstanding business relationship with Harvard.

The letter, from the General Services Administration, was expected to be delivered to federal agencies on Tuesday morning, instructing them to respond with a list of contract cancellations by June 6.

Among the agreements set to be terminated is a $49,858 National Institutes of Health contract looking into the effects of coffee drinking.

Harvard feud

A $25,800 contract for training senior executives with the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), the agency which last week attempted to strip Harvard of its ability to enrol foreign students, will also be cancelled.

The relationship between the government and university first came to a head in April, when Mr Trump’s administration sent a list of demands to Harvard which included abolishing its diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programmes and rejecting applicants “hostile” to “American values”.

Alan Garber, the university’s president, declared he would resist what he characterised as the president’s move to “control the Harvard community” and erode its “academic independence”.