Things Musk (and Trump) Did... Day 72 | Blog#42
On Liberation day, the rats started to scurry away
Yesterday’s post
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Yesterday’s news worth repeating
Trump’s ‘Liberation Day’ tariffs: Here’s how much countries are getting hit
“The tariffs will be not a full reciprocal. I could have done that, I guess. But it would have been tough for a lot of countries,” Trump said.
Trump held up a poster board laying out the tariff percentage each of those countries would face.
Here’s what Trump says each of these countries will pay in tariffs, from highest to lowest.
The tariffs are set to go into place at midnight.
Lesotho: 50 percent
Saint Pierre and Miquelon: 50 percent
Cambodia: 49 percent
Laos: 48 percent
Madagascar: 47 percent
Vietnam: 46 percent tariff
Myanmar: 44 percent
Sri Lanka: 44 percent
Falkland Islands: 41 percent
Syria: 41 percent
Mauritius: 40 percent
Iraq: 39 percent
Guyana: 38 percent
Read the rest of the list at The Hill
Trump unleashes 10% global tariffs, with higher reciprocal rates
President Trump announced a baseline 10% tariff on U.S. imports, with steeper reciprocal levies on goods from a slew of other nations, including Europe, Japan and China.
Why it matters: Trump's announcement ends the free-trade era that has defined global commerce for decades — a move that risks higher consumer prices and economic damage.
What they're saying: "This is one of the most important days in my opinion, in American history," Trump said in remarks delivered at a "Liberation Day" event in the Rose Garden.
"We will supercharge our domestic industrial base, we will pry open foreign markets and break down foreign trade barriers," Trump added.
Stocks, which rose a bit as Trump started speaking, reversed sharply and fell as he unveiled the reciprocal rates.
By the numbers: The reciprocal tariffs hit dozens of nations, including some of the country's largest trading partners.
Imports from the European Union, Japan and South Korea will be subject to tariffs of 20% or higher.
Imports from Vietnam are subject to a tariff rate of 46%, while Taiwanese imports will face 32% tariffs.
Details: The reciprocal tariffs have been tailored based on how unfairly the administration says the countries treat U.S. exporters.
The rates, calculated by Trump's top economists at the Council of Economic Advisors, are meant to hit back at the tariff and non-tariff trade barriers.
Trump said the published rates are half as high as the originally calculated levies.
What to watch: It is President Trump's gamble to revive domestic manufacturing, raise revenues to offset tax cut costs and push other nations to adhere to non-trade related demands.
Continue reading at Axios
HHS fires entire staff of program that helps low-income people afford heat and air conditioning
The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has fired all of the workers in its program that seeks to help low-income Americans pay their energy bills.
Everyone who had been working on the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP) was let go on Tuesday, according to now-former employee Andrew Germain.
“Every single federal staff member that worked on LIHEAP was let go, so there are no federal staff members left to work on the program,” Germain told The Hill.
He said that prior to both probationary cuts and the latest round of firings, there had been about 15 people working on LIHEAP.
The program doles out funds to states, which in turn use the money to help people pay to heat and cool their homes and prevent utilities from shutting off the air or heat.
According to Germain, all of the staff who worked on Social Services Block Grants, which help states and territories pay for social services that protect people, including children, from neglect and abuse, were also let go.
Continue reading at The Hill
Today’s news
Democratic News Corner
Former aide skewers California House Dem in primary launch
Jake Rakov is running against his ex-boss, Rep. Brad Sherman, a 15-term incumbent representing Los Angeles’ fire-ravaged Pacific Palisades.
Another House Democrat is getting an age-driven primary challenge.
Jake Rakov, a former staffer to Rep. Brad Sherman (D-Calif.), is launching a bid Wednesday to oust his one-time boss. Rakov, 37, is part of a string of Democrats waging intra-party battles against a long-time House incumbents by calling for a generational change in leadership.
Standing in front of a Los Angeles structure decimated by wildfire, Rakov used a 2.5-minute long launch video to blast Sherman, 70, as out of touch with his constituents and unwilling to mount a meaningful resistance against President Donald Trump’s “MAGA hellscape.”
“He and people like him, who have stayed on for so long, who don’t even check into the district anymore,” Rakov said in an interview with POLITICO, “are why we have Trump twice, and why our party is so bad at fighting back against him now.”
Continue reading at Politico
Klain: Biden’s senior team isolated him ahead of disastrous June debate
The former White House chief of staff criticized Biden’s aides for leaving him ill-prepared.
Joe Biden’s former chief of staff is disputing the portrayal of his remarks about the former president’s preparedness for last year’s disastrous campaign debate with Donald Trump, telling POLITICO that he blames the president’s senior aides — not Biden himself — for the debacle that eventually forced him from the race.
“I think the framing is wrong,” Ron Klain said over text after The Guardian described him as painting a “devastating picture” of Biden’s mental and physical state in an interview for a forthcoming book. “My point wasn’t that the president lacked mental acuity … He was out of it because he had been [sidelined], not because he lacked capacity.”
Klain, Biden’s chief of staff for two years who later helped run preparations for the June debate, criticized Biden’s team at the White House for failing to keep the president focused on addressing Americans’ eroding support for his domestic agenda and the economy overall. As a result, Biden struggled on the debate stage to offer a vision for tackling inflation and lay out a second-term agenda.
“He had been isolated from domestic politics by a WH team unplugged from hill Dems,” Klain said via text, allowing Biden – who at the time was managing U.S. involvement in two foreign wars – to become “solely focused on foreign affairs.”
Klain did not specify which of Biden’s close aides he held responsible for those failings.
A spokesperson for Biden declined to comment.
Continue reading at Politico
Eric Adams ditches Democratic primary, will run for reelection as independent
The mayor has been at odds with his party and wants time to recover from now-dismissed federal charges.
NEW YORK — Mayor Eric Adams is opting out of New York City’s Democratic primary and running for reelection as an independent — embarking on narrow path as he further isolates himself from the city’s dominant political party.
The mayor confirmed his plans exclusively to POLITICO. In an interview Monday, Adams said he would “mount a real independent campaign” that relies on “a solid base of people” outside Manhattan, with an emphasis on ethnic minorities who boosted him to victory four years ago. He lamented how the bribery charges federal prosecutors hit him with in September — which a judge dismissed Wednesday — “handcuffed” him, and he promised to be “uninhibited” on the campaign trail.
“I have been this racehorse that has been held back,” he added. “This is so unnatural for me.”
Continue reading at Politico
Pappas launches bid for Shaheen’s Senate seat in New Hampshire
It’s one of three open seats Democrats are working to defend amid a wave of retirements.
Democratic Rep. Chris Pappas has launched his campaign for retiring Democratic Sen. Jeanne Shaheen’s seat in New Hampshire as the party looks to defend her seat in the blue-leaning state.
Pappas, in a two-minute launch video, said he would fight to “get our country back on track” while “working for everyone.” He also took shots at Republicans’ proposal to cut Medicaid funding and at billionaire presidential adviser Elon Musk.
Pappas, 44, is in his fourth term. He entered the race Thursday morning after a 10-county listening tour. He has a formal launch event slated for this evening in Manchester.
Democrats are dealing with an increasingly difficult map to defend after a wave of retirements that also include Michigan Sen. Gary Peters and Minnesota Sen. Tina Smith.
Continue reading at Politico
Democratic group focused on down-ballot races hauls in $600K in first quarter
In a Thursday press release, the Democratic Association of Secretaries of State (DASS) said that the first quarter gains, beyond double the group’s first quarter funds raised in 2023, shows “substantial growth in grassroots support and donor engagement.”
“Americans see Donald Trump and the GOP’s assault on democracy for what it is – and they’re ready to stop it,” Andrew Godinich, DASS’s executive director, said in the release.
“From big wins in Wisconsin to surging donor enthusiasm in 2025, the message is clear: democracy wins,” Godinich added. “With historic support from voters nationwide, DASS is ready to break records this cycle.”
Continue reading at The Hill
Spanberger confirmed as Democratic nominee for Virginia governor’s race
Former Rep. Abigail Spanberger (D-Va.) was confirmed Thursday as the presumptive Democratic nominee in the 2025 gubernatorial race in Virginia.
She is the lone Democrat running to be governor, according to the Democratic Party of Virginia (DPVA), which released a full list of candidates running in the 2025 primary races Thursday evening, once the 5 p.m. EDT filing deadline had passed.
Virginia’s primary elections will take place June 17, 2025, and the general election will be held Nov. 4, 2025.
The DPVA confirmed Spanberger’s name “will appear on the general election ballot.”
Continue reading at The Hill
National Security
Turmoil churns below the surface as Rubio meets NATO allies
Trump’s envoy Marco Rubio faces European NATO allies amid tension over Greenland, Ukraine and the future of the alliance.
BRUSSELS — When United States Secretary of State Marco Rubio joins European allies in Brussels on Thursday, both sides will do their best to smile for the cameras and promise that all is well in NATO.
On the surface all seems normal: The agenda calls for a discussion on defense budgets (long a cause of American gripes) and aid for Ukraine.
Behind the scenes, though, a storm is brewing.
Rubio, originally seen as a traditional transatlanticist, now represents a president who has broken with decades of U.S. foreign policy. Rubio “will have messages for us Europeans, and we Europeans will have messages for him,” said a senior NATO diplomat.
U.S. President Donald Trump has lit a fire under the 75-year-old transatlantic alliance.
His threats to annex Greenland, possibly by force, have torched relations between Washington and Copenhagen. Undermining Canadian independence has turned an ally into a hostile neighbor. His warnings that the U.S. may not defend NATO allies who don't spend enough on their militaries undermines the alliance's common defense pact.
Vice President JD Vance's dismissal of Moscow as a threat to Europe is alarming countries on Russia's doorstep. Trump's ending arms flows and intelligence support to Ukraine as a way of pressuring Kyiv into peace talks, and then attacking President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in the White House, has dismayed allies.
And reports suggesting the U.S. wants to start moving weapons systems from Europe to the Indo-Pacific region — possibly even giving up military command of NATO in Europe — have allies scrambling for answers.
Continue reading at Politico Europe
Scoop: Multiple firings on Trump's National Security Council after Loomer visit
Several members of President Trump's embattled National Security Council have been fired, a U.S. official and a second source familiar told Axios on Thursday.
Why it matters: The firings come a day after conspiracy theorist Laura Loomer visited the Oval Office and pressed Trump to fire specific NSC staffers. Axios has not confirmed whether the firings were directly linked to that incident, but the source familiar said they were "being labeled as an anti-neocon move."
Behind the scenes: The U.S. official said Loomer was furious that "neocons" had "slipped through" the vetting process for administration jobs, referring to hawkish foreign policy views commonly associated with the Bush administration.
"She went to the White House yesterday and presented them with her research and evidence," the official said. The NYT first reported on Loomer's visit. The official suspected that the firings were linked to Loomer's visit but was not certain.
Continue reading at Axios
National Security Daily
Inside the NSC turf war
The tensions have been simmering in the White House for months between the Reaganite, “peace-through-strength” flank of the GOP and so-called restrainers who are more skeptical of existing U.S. alliance systems and military engagements.
It came to a head Thursday when several NSC officials were fired, a day after far-right activist LAURA LOOMER reportedly met with Trump at the White House to allege that some NSC staffers weren’t loyal to his agenda.
But even before that, national security adviser MIKE WALTZ, who many see as the embodiment of the new generation of avowedly pro-Trump Reaganites, had been grappling with battles over his personnel and staffing decisions with “restrainers” elsewhere in the White House, seven people familiar with the matter tell NatSec Daily.
The infighting between these two wings is making it difficult for the Trump administration to staff important NSC positions, which in turn undermines the administration’s ability to craft its national security policy
In multiple instances, Waltz has picked people for senior director positions at the NSC, only to have those picks blocked by the White House Presidential Personnel Office, or PPO, led by SERGIO GOR, a former staffer of Sen. RAND PAUL (R-Ky.). As head of the PPO, Gor wields immense behind-the-scenes influence on vetting and approving roughly 4,000 appointees that could staff the Trump administration.
Three of Waltz’s picks for senior director for African affairs were rejected in a row, according to two of the people familiar with the matter, leaving a key NSC post unfilled for Trump’s crucial first months in office. Other early Waltz picks, including for senior NSC jobs overseeing strategic planning and nuclear weapons policies, were also blocked, these people said.
“From the get-go, there’s ideological fissures inside of the White House built in,” said one of the people familiar with the internal White House dynamics. “Sergio Gor is a Rand Paul guy. Mike Waltz is the opposite.”
Continue reading the National Security Daily newsletter
Trump’s tariffs threaten US weapons production
The program could make it more difficult for America to produce weapons — and keep allies.
President Donald Trump’s tariffs aren’t just an economic disruption. They’re a security one.
His program, if implemented as planned, could muddle global supply chains the Pentagon has spent decades creating, make American weapons more expensive, and complicate international efforts to counter China — such as joint ventures to build submarines with the United Kingdom and Australia.
America’s go-it-alone approach, coupled with these wider threats, may lead skeptical partners to look elsewhere for collaboration, according to a dozen diplomats, lawmakers, officials and defense industry analysts. And it will chip away at an industry that equips much of the world — shredding trust and predictability from a global defense relationship that has long benefited Washington and its allies.
“We have requirements and we’re going to do what makes sense for us,” said a diplomat from a NATO country, who like others, was granted anonymity to discuss a sensitive political issue. “We’re really looking at what we need to develop at home.”
Trump bills his tariff plan as a transformative move to equalize trade and return lost revenue to the country. But it runs the risk of destroying his other promises to turn the U.S. into an industrial powerhouse and minimize China’s power.
The White House, in its executive order announcing the tariffs, said the U.S. needs to manufacture parts “without undue reliance on imports for key inputs.”
Continue reading at Politico
National Security Agency and Cyber Command chief Gen. Timothy Haugh ousted
The director of the NSA, the powerful wiretapping and cyber espionage service, was fired Thursday, according to U.S. officials.
The director of the powerful wiretapping and cyber espionage service, the National Security Agency, was fired Thursday, according to two current and one former U.S. officials.
Gen. Timothy Haugh, who also heads U.S. Cyber Command, was let go along with his civilian deputy at the NSA, Wendy Noble, according to the officials.
Noble was reassigned to a job within the Pentagon’s Office of the Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence. The NSA is part of the department.
Haugh, who assumed his dual position just over a year ago, was traveling on Thursday and could not be reached for comment. Sean Parnell, a spokesman for Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, did not respond to a request for comment.
The current and former officials said they did not know the reason for Haugh’s dismissal or Noble’s reassignment.
Continue reading at the Washington Post
Economics
Clothing prices could surge if these tariffs stick
Chart: Origins of clothing and shoes sold in the U.S., 2024
The clothes you buy stand to get a lot more expensive after President Trump announced new sky-high tariffs on imports from around the world, including from China, Vietnam and Bangladesh.
Why it matters: The U.S. imports nearly all of its clothing and shoes, with more than half from those three countries alone.
If these tariffs take effect as planned, the price of apparel would soar.
Increases will be especially painful for low- and middle-class Americans, who are already set to take a disproportionate hit from these duties.
Investors are feeling it, too, with shares of apparel companies like Nike and retailers like Walmart plunging on the news.
Zoom out: A big part of the reasoning behind the tariffs is to bring manufacturing jobs back to the U.S. If it becomes prohibitively expensive to import things, companies will decide to make them here, the thinking goes.
Continue reading at Axios
Note from Rima: I wrote an opinion piece on this very topic last night
Trump takes the ultimate risk with the global economy
President Trump's "Liberation Day" tariff plan is one of the biggest, most abrupt economic gambles in presidential history.
He acted against the advice of most business leaders, many economists and even some Republican officials.
Why it matters: The reciprocal tariffs, which go into effect in one week, target vital trading partners with massive levies — the kind that could raise consumer prices, interrupt business activity and upend global trade.
The big picture: With a single stroke of his pen, Trump seeks to re-order the global economy in a way that he believes will create a golden age for U.S. industry.
A senior White House official called President Trump's announcement of new tariffs yesterday the "most ambitious economic realignment the American people have ever seen." It's hard to disagree.
In less than 100 days, Trump has made an historic attempt to choke off the flow of foreign goods — or at least make it much pricier for Americans to consume them.
But there's a reason all those people have recommended a more restrained approach. Prices on imported goods are likely to surge, a recession is possible, and far-reaching ripples in international economics and diplomacy are a certainty.
Trump, in disregarding those recommendations, touched the hot stove, knowing he risks getting burned.
State of play: It's hard to overstate the scale of the change to U.S. trade policy that has occurred in these still-early days of Trump's term — which dwarfs what occurred over the four years of his previous time in the White House.
Continue reading at Axios
Note from Rima: I wrote about this very topic back in 2016
Finding Sobriety in 2016: Sanders, Clinton & Trump's "Grab, grab, grab..." Edition | Blog#42
Finding Sobriety in 2016: Sanders, Clinton & Trump: "We’re going to grab and grab..." Edition
and
It's GroundHogDay When A Winner Proudly Says: "We Won The Uneducated & The Hispanics | Blog#42
Trump won the Nevada caucus. If you follow me, you know I was expecting that.
What’s changed since then is no guardrails to stop Trump and 100% sycophants inside Trump’s administration
Stock markets sink globally on Trump's tariff plan
Chart: U.S. reciprocal tariff rates
Stocks fell around the world Thursday morning, as President Trump's sweeping tariff plan kicked off a trade war with broad consequences for the global economy.
Why it matters: The stock market is not the economy, but the reaction is an early, visceral demonstration of the fear the public has over rising prices, slowing growth and the possibility of a recession.
By the numbers: Major indices fell sharply.
Japan's Nikkei closed 2.8% lower and the pan-European Stoxx 600 index was down 1.5% in early trading.
In the U.S., S&P 500 futures dropped about 3%, while the tech-heavy Nasdaq looked to be down about 3.5%.
Zoom in: Apparel and retail companies led the decline.
Names like Lululemon, Dollar Tree, Deckers Outdoor and Nike were all down around 9%-10% in early pre-market trading.
The Magnificent 7 stocks that led markets higher the last two years were broadly lower as well, with Apple down 7%.
Continue reading at Axios
EU, China and Canada warn U.S. of countermeasures, as trade war heats up
Officials in the European Union, China and North American neighbor Canada say they're preparing countermeasures in response to President Trump's announcement of sweeping tariffs on U.S. imports.
Why it matters: A global trade war is heating up following Trump's announcement of a baseline 10% tariff on U.S. imports, with higher levies hitting China, the EU and elsewhere, which threatens to trigger stagflation with profound consequences for global economies, per Axios' Ben Berkowitz.
Driving the news: European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen announced plans Thursday for new measures in response to Trump's tariffs announcement a day earlier of an additional 20% tariffs imposed on EU imports. He hailed Wednesday as "Liberation Day" for the U.S.
The new tariffs are due to start next Wednesday, while a 25% auto levy on imports took effect Thursday.
Representatives for the Trump administration did not immediately respond to Axios' requests for comment in the evening.
What they're saying: "We are already finalizing a first package of countermeasures in response to tariffs on steel," von der Leyen said during a visit to Samarkand, Uzbekistan.
Continue reading at Axios
A third global recession in 20 years looms
A truly enormous shock is needed to tip the entire global economy into recession. Since World War II, there have been two of these events: the financial crisis of 2008-09, and the coronavirus pandemic of 2020.
Why it matters: President Trump's "Liberation Day" tariffs, if they stay in place and especially if they face retaliation from targeted nations, could be the third such economic earthquake in 17 years.
Follow the money: The U.S. imported $3.3 trillion of goods in 2024. That's more than $25,000 per household.
If the new tariffs work out to an average of 29%, per Evercore, then U.S. importers would have to pay about $1 trillion in tariffs per year, or $7,300 per household.
Realistically, that would never happen. Many goods will just not get imported any more, creating shortages and large price hikes.
But if U.S. imports plunge, that would remove a key driver of the global economy, especially for export-dependent countries like Germany and China.
Zoom in: The total 54% tariff on imports from China is particularly punitive.
Continue reading at Axios
Trump announces tariffs on uninhabited islands
President Trump's sweeping tariffs announced Wednesday extend to countries and territories across the world — including the uninhabited Heard Island and McDonald Islands in the sub-Antarctic Indian Ocean.
The big picture: The remote UNESCO World Heritage-listed Australian territory, which features a mostly barren landscape, was included in the list of baseline 10% taxes on U.S. imports, along with mainland Australia.
The Heard Island and McDonald Islands were included because they are Australian territory, according to a White House official.
Zoom in: This region that features the only volcanically active sub-Antarctic islands is "teeming" with colonies of seals, penguins and other birds, per an Australian Antarctic Program post.
Humans need a permit to visit the Heard and McDonald islands, which are more than 2,000 miles southwest of Perth, Western Australia. It takes two weeks to sail from the Australian mainland.
People and cargo may also land onshore "by helicopters, inflatable rubber boats (IRBs) or amphibious vehicles supported from a larger vessel," according to the Australian Antarctic Program.
Continue reading at Axios
Trump imposes 10 percent universal tariff, higher for top trade partners
“Chronic trade deficits ... are a national emergency,” Trump declared in the Rose Garden.
“For years, hard working American citizens were forced to sit on the sidelines as other nations got rich and powerful, much of it at our expense,” Trump said. “But now it’s our turn to prosper, and in so doing, use trillions and trillions of dollars to reduce our taxes and pay down our national debt, and it’ll all happen very quickly.”
The announcement, on what the White House has dubbed “Liberation Day,” ends weeks of tariff uncertainty that have roiled financial markets, alarmed consumers and sent foreign diplomats scurrying to Washington to try and negotiate reprieves.
The new duties include a 34 percent tariff on China, 26 percent on India, 25 percent on South Korea, 24 percent on Japan and 20 percent on the 27-nation European Union, whose largest members are Germany and France.
The administration also slapped a 46 percent tariff on Vietnam and a 49 percent tariff on Cambodia — a blow to China, which has shipped goods through those and other countries to effectively skirt previous rounds of U.S. tariffs imposed over the past seven years.
That comes on top of a second executive order Trump signed Wednesday eliminating the “de minimis loophole” for small-dollar packages worth under $800 from China and Taiwan, starting on May 2. The loophole has been used by Chinese companies like SHEIN and Temu to deliver billions in goods to the U.S.
Continue reading at Politico
EU ‘prepared’ to retaliate against Trump’s 20 percent tariffs
“We are now preparing for further countermeasures,” says European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen.
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen on Thursday slammed U.S. President Donald Trump’s imposition of a 20 percent tariff on EU goods and vowed to retaliate, saying the bloc was "prepared to respond."
Trump dumped the European Union on Wednesday into a group of 60 countries subject to higher “reciprocal” tariffs, along with China, India, Japan and Korea, while subjecting the rest of the world to 10 percent tariffs. It’s the biggest lurch into protectionism by America since the Great Depression of the 1930s.
Von der Leyen said Trump’s tariffs would have dire consequences for consumers and businesses that have prospered through trade with the United States since World War Two. The European Union, the world’s largest single market, must also defend itself against profound disruptions to global commerce that would result from Trump’s isolation of the United States.
“There seems to be no order in the disorder. No clear path through the complexity and chaos that is being created, as all U.S. trading partners will be hit,” she said in a televised statement.
The EU chief executive said the bloc would ready countermeasures against Trump’s latest tariff broadside, in addition to a €26 billion package responding to tariffs he has already imposed on steel and aluminum. At the same time, she vowed, Brussels will work to protect the industries most exposed.
“We are already finalizing the first package of countermeasures in response to tariffs on steel, and we are now preparing for further countermeasures to protect our interests and our businesses if negotiations fail,” von der Leyen said from Samarkand, Uzbekistan, where she was attending a summit.
Continue reading at Politico Europe
Spain unveils €14B aid plan to counteract Trump tariffs
The country’s economy stands to suffer losses of up to €4.3 billion as a result of the levies this year.
Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez announced his government will launch a €14.1 billion aid package to reduce the domestic impact of United States President Donald Trump’s 20 percent tariff on all imports from the European Union.
As part of the package, Sánchez said that public loans worth €6 billion would be made available for companies affected by the levies, with an additional €400 million allocated to reinforce the automotive industry.
The funds will also be used to modernize the industrial sector, and for a new campaign that aims to promote Spanish products with the slogan “Our values are not for sale. But our products are.”
According to projections from the Spanish Chamber of Commerce, Europe’s fastest-growing economy stands to suffer losses of up to €4.3 billion as a result of Trump’s tariffs this year.
The agri-food sector is expected to be the worst hit: Exports of domestic olive oil, which currently bring in around €1 billion from U.S. consumers, could decline sharply, and the country’s wine sector could be devastated if Trump carries out his threat to respond to retaliatory EU tariffs on bourbon with a 200 percent levy on wines and spirits.
While Spain’s automotive sector barely exports any cars to the U.S., it is set to be indirectly impacted by the 25 percent tariffs announced by Washington last week because the country remains a leading manufacturer of mechanical components. Spain exported machinery and electrical equipment worth more than €4 billion to the U.S. in 2024.
Continue reading at Politico Europe
Europe must pile pressure on Trump over tariffs, Germany’s Habeck urges
Berlin’s economy minister talks of a pivot point in global trade — and an opportunity for the continent to forge new alliances.
BERLIN — Germany’s outgoing Economy Minister Robert Habeck launched a blistering attack Thursday on U.S. President Donald Trump’s new global tariff regime — and is calling on Europe and like-minded partners to form new trade alliances in response.
“The logical consequence is: then he needs to feel the pressure,” Habeck said in Berlin, adding that Trump “only folds when he’s under pressure.” He called the new tariffs — a blanket 10 percent levy on all U.S. imports and much steeper rates for dozens of countries — “the most disruptive tariff hike in 90 years.”
“This was a day of arbitrariness,” Habeck said. “And that will prove true in many ways — the consequences could be dramatic.”
The EU, which now faces a 20 percent tariff under Trump’s policy, is preparing detailed countermeasures. Holding up a classified draft list of targeted American goods, Habeck said the bloc was “not just putting tariffs on almonds” but developing a broad, strategic response “product by product.”
Yet Habeck’s message extended far beyond retaliation. He framed the moment as a pivot point in global trade — and an opportunity for Europe to forge new alliances. “An alliance with Canada and Mexico is the order of the day,” he said, pointing to informal talks with both countries during this week’s Hannover Messe, one of the world’s largest trade fairs for industrial technology. “When you speak with them, you realize they think just like us.”
Continue reading at Politico Europe
‘Liberation Day’ comes for California almonds
President Donald Trump’s trade wars are grinding up California’s most iconic nut.
SACRAMENTO, California — President Donald Trump’s trade wars are putting California farmers and ranchers, happy with his promises to deliver more water, back into financial — and political — limbo.
Trump announced a universal tariff of 10 percent on imported goods today, with higher rates for some of the United States’ top trade partners, including 20 percent on European Union goods.
Looming retaliatory tariffs could hit California farmers hard, with a cost ranging from hundreds of millions of dollars to the billions, according to one University of California, Davis study — potentially surpassing the cost of California’s last big drought in 2021.
California’s agricultural industry, the largest in the nation, has lobbied Congress and the White House to avoid harm from tariffs, just like other business groups. But it’s treading carefully to not appear ungrateful for the White House’s promises on water.
“There’s some anxiety around presentation,” said Western Growers Association Chair Stuart Woolf, who grows almonds, agave and other crops in the San Joaquin Valley. “It’s a unique thing. How do you thread this needle and not sound like a whiner?”
Continue reading at Politico California
DOGE drove layoff announcements to their third-highest-ever level in March
CNN —
More than 275,000 layoffs were announced last month, reaching a level not seen since the pandemic, according to a new report published Thursday.
The biggest culprit was one particular employer: The federal government.
The federal government announced plans to axe 216,215 jobs, accounting for nearly 80% of the 275,240 layoffs announcements made by US employers in March, according to Challenger Gray & Christmas’ latest report. It’s the third-highest monthly total behind April 2020 (671,129) and May 2020 (397,016).
The Department of Government Efficiency has run roughshod on the federal government, slashing funding, scrapping contracts and laying off droves of federal workers.
“Job cut announcements were dominated last month by [DOGE] plans to eliminate positions in the federal government,” Andrew Challenger, senior vice president for the global outplacement and coaching firm. “It would have otherwise been a fairly quiet month for layoffs.”
Of the remaining 59,025 cuts announced outside of the federal government, the biggest share was in technology and retail, according to the report.
The March announcements mark a stark 60% jump from February, which saw a spike of its own, and they’re up 205% from the 90,309 cuts announced in March 2024.
The DOGE-driven job cuts aren’t expected to hit the labor market data and the economy in one fell swoop. While some federal employees have been laid off immediately, others are serving out a paid notice period where they essentially quit but won’t be unemployed weeks or even months from now.
Continue reading at CNN.com
3. America is now wealthier than it has ever been
Chart: Real U.S. household net worth per Capita
Trump presented his sweeping tariffs yesterday as a way to "make America wealthy again," a slogan that implies the nation used to be much wealthier than it is today.
Why it matters: U.S. households are sitting on astonishing levels of wealth, some $169 trillion in total, per recent data from the Federal Reserve.
That works out to an average of $500,000 per person.
Flashback: Trump Tower, on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan, opened in a blaze of publicity in 1983. For all the glitz and glamor, however, the U.S. back then was much, much poorer than it is today.
Continue reading at Axios
Trump’s Tariffs Could Reshape the US Tech Industry
Apple, Amazon, and other tech companies reliant on global supply chains stand to lose the most from Trump's trade policies, but some software firms expect more demand for their services.
Sweeping tariffs unveiled by US President Donald Trump on Wednesday will have ripple effects across the tech industry, according to experts who study global trade. The measures, which include a minimum 10 percent tariff on all countries and steep new import duties on key US trading allies like Europe, China, Vietnam, India and South Korea, sent stocks nosediving in after-hours trading.
Meta and Nvidia stock prices each fell by around 5 percent, CNBC reported, while Apple and Amazon fell around 6 percent. The iPhone maker earns roughly half its revenue by selling phones that are manufactured in China and India, while some of its other products are manufactured in Vietnam. Amazon’s online shopping marketplace is similarly heavily dependent on goods sold by third-party merchants in China.
These market dips may be just the beginning. Many economists warn that the White House has set in motion one of the largest shifts in global trade in decades, and among the results could be higher prices for US consumers and more inflation. Earlier this week, Goldman Sachs raised the probability of a US recession in the next 12 months to 35 percent, up from 20 percent.
Continue reading at Wired
Trump and DOGE Defund Program That Boosted American Manufacturing for Decades
President Donald Trump says taxing imports will strengthen domestic manufacturing. Hours before announcing new tariffs, his administration cut support for centers that help US firms do just that.
At the height of the US trade war with Japan in the 1980s, Congress established a nationwide network of organizations to advise small American manufacturers on how to survive and grow in what was then a particularly difficult environment. Decades later, there is now at least one Manufacturing Extension Partnership (MEP) center in all 50 states, and they continue to provide taxpayer-subsidized consulting to thousands of businesses, including makers of ovens, printers, tortillas, and dog food.
But on Tuesday, shortly before the president announced sweeping tariffs on global imports, Trump administration officials informed members of Congress that it was withholding funding for some MEP centers because their work no longer aligns with government priorities.
The Department of Commerce’s National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), which administers the program to help manufacturers, emailed lawmakers to say that it would not be paying out nearly $12.9 million that had been due overall this week to MEP centers in 10 states, according to Democratic staff of the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology who spoke on on the condition of anonymity.
Continue reading at Wired
Treasury secretary: ‘My advice to every country right now is do not retaliate’
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent encouraged countries around the world to refrain from retaliating against the U.S. in light of President Trump’s reset of tariff policy, arguing the administration is preparing the U.S. for “long-term” economic growth.
“My advice to every country right now is, do not retaliate, sit back, take it in, let’s see how it goes, because, if you retaliate, there will be escalation. If you don’t retaliate, this is the high water-mark,” Bessent said during his Wednesday evening interview with Fox News’s Bret Baier.
Continue reading at The Hill
Ontario premier ‘cautiously optimistic’ amid Trump tariffs
Canada, Mexico left off Trump's latest tariff plan
Provincial leader sounds conciliatory note
Doug Ford says US, Canada can come to terms
Ontario Premier Doug Ford sounded a conciliatory note Wednesday after President Trump announced a new slate of tariffs on foreign trade partners — minus Canada and Mexico.
“Make no mistake about it, Canadians love Americans. They love the U.S., and I do, too,” Ford told NewsNation’s “The Hill” on Wednesday, saying he is “cautiously optimistic” about trade between the two countries.
Ford, leader of Canada’s most populous province, previously received wide attention for pushing back against Trump’s threats to impose tariffs on Canada. At one point, he threatened to tariff or even turn off electricity supplied to three U.S. states. He later relented.
Wednesday was different. Trump unveiled a plan to charge reciprocal and baseline tariffs against several U.S. trading partners, but Canada and Mexico were notably absent. Those two countries are still subject to a 25 percent tariff, with goods covered under the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement exempted.
Ford said he has been in discussions with Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick and said the two nations can negotiate terms of a trade deal benefiting everyone.
Continue reading at The Hill
Fact check: Trump’s false claims about tariffs and trade
By Daniel Dale, CNN
CNN —
President Donald Trump made a series of false claims about tariffs and trade – most of which he has made before – in the Wednesday speech in which he announced a sweeping set of global tariffs.
Here is a fact check of some of Trump’s remarks.
Canada’s dairy tariffs
Trump correctly noted that Canada has tariffs exceeding 250% on some US dairy products. However, he falsely claimed that merely “the first little carton of milk” exported to Canada faces a “very low price,” but “then it gets up to 275, 300%.”
In reality, Canada has guaranteed that tens of thousands of metric tons of imported US milk per year, not merely a single carton, will face zero tariffs at all; Canada conceded a certain guaranteed level of tariff-free US access to its dairy market as part of the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) that Trump’s own first administration negotiated.
Trump also didn’t mention something the US dairy industry acknowledges: The US is not hitting its zero-tariff maximum level of exports to Canada in any category of dairy product, so the Canadian tariffs aren’t being applied; with regard to milk in particular, the US isn’t even at half of the tariff-free quota. (There is a vigorous US-Canada debate about why the US is so far from the maximum, with each country blaming the other. Regardless of who’s right, the tariffs aren’t hitting US milk.)
Trump has persistently omitted key facts about Canada’s dairy tariffs. You can read more here from a previous CNN fact check.
US trade deficit with Canada
Trump, claiming “we subsidize a lot of countries,” falsely said “it’s close to $200 billion a year” with Canada. Trump has repeatedly used this $200 billion figure to describe the US trade deficit with Canada in particular, which is actually far lower than $200 billion; official US statistics show the 2024 deficit with Canada in goods and services trade was $35.7 billion and $70.6 billion in goods trade alone.
Trump didn’t mention the trade deficit in particular this time, but even if he was intending to use the word “subsidize” more broadly, there is no basis for the claim.
Who pays tariffs
Trump repeated his frequent false claim that, because of the tariffs he imposed on China during his first term, the US “took in hundreds of billions of dollars” that “they paid.” In fact, US importers, not foreign exporters like China, make the tariff payments, and study after study has found that Americans bore the overwhelming majority of the cost of Trump’s first-term tariffs on China; it’s easy to find specific examples of companies that passed along the cost of the tariffs to US consumers.
Continue reading at CNN.com
Markets plunge in reaction to Trump ‘Liberation Day’ tariffs
Stocks plunged Thursday morning as U.S. trading opened for the first time after President Trump’s announcement of heavy tariffs on nearly every nation exporting products to the United States.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average opened with a loss of more than 1,200 points, falling 2.8 percent on the day. The S&P 500 index opened with a loss of 3.3 percent, and the Nasdaq composite opened with a loss of 4.4 percent.
Trump announced Wednesday he would impose a 10 percent tariff on all imports, which higher rates for key trading partners in response to what the White House considers unfair trade practices. Tariff rates ranged from 20 percent for European Union products to a total tariff of 54 percent on Chinese goods.
“Today’s announcement on reciprocal tariffs was more severe than we had anticipated,” wrote analysts at Nomura in a Wednesday research note.
Continue reading at The Hill
Stocks tumble and dollar weakens as recession fears grip Wall Street
The Dow Jones Industrial Average plunged 1,070 points, or 2.5%, to 41,156, shortly after trade opened Thursday as spooked investors tried to assess the impact of the latest round of Trump administration tariffs.
President Trump on Wednesday announced a 10% baseline tariff on all U.S. trading partners and higher levies on dozens of countries that charge higher taxes on American exports. Mr. Trump has said the goal is to make global commerce more fair, spur companies to expand in the U.S. and generate federal revenue.
But experts warn that sharply ramping up tariffs on imports, coupled with any retaliatory measures from other nations, could drive up inflation, dampen spending by consumers and businesses and hurt economic growth.
Continue reading at CBS News
Layoffs spiked by 205% last month to third-highest ever recorded, fueled by DOGE mass firings
Layoffs across the U.S. surged 205% in March when compared with a year earlier, with last month's 275,240 job cuts fueled by widespread firings engineered by billionaire Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, according to outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas.
March's layoffs represent the third-highest monthly total ever recorded, Challenger said. The two previous highest monthly totals were recorded in April 2020 and May 2020, when more than 671,000 and 397,000 job cuts, respectively, were recorded, due to the pandemic shuttering the U.S. economy, according to its data.
Last month's cuts were led by losses in federal jobs, largely directed by DOGE, with more than 216,000 government employees fired from their jobs in March, Challenger said. While Musk has said he is rooting out waste and abuse, the steep job cuts to agencies such as the Social Security Administration and the IRS are causing delays in customer services for taxpayers, while also some other agencies are being entirely shuttered.
"Job cut announcements were dominated last month by Department of Government Efficiency [DOGE] plans to eliminate positions in the federal government. It would have otherwise been a fairly quiet month for layoffs," Andrew Challenger, senior vice president and workplace expert for Challenger, Gray & Christmas, said in a statement.
Continue reading at CBS News
State Rainy Day Fund Growth Slowed in Fiscal 2024
After years of rapid expansion, growth in state rainy day funds slowed in fiscal year 2024. Although the median rainy day fund balance increased by 7% in fiscal 2024, that still marked a steep drop from the 31% rise recorded the previous year, according to state data reported to the National Association of State Budget Officers (NASBO). This slowdown represents a return to growth rates that are more in line with prepandemic trends and reflects the end of the revenue wave that fueled record increases from fiscal 2021 to 2023.
Despite this moderation in the reserves growth rate, the capacity of rainy day funds—that is, the number of days they could cover state operations—increased in 22 states and nationwide, extending a decade-long trend that accelerated during the pandemic. Collectively, states could now operate on their reserves alone for a median of 49.1 days, up from 46.2 days in fiscal 2023. However, this growth comes as states are depleting their leftover budget dollars, known as ending balances, at the fastest rate since 2017. As a result, states’ overall fiscal cushion is declining, leaving states with fewer resources to address widespread current and projected budget imbalances in the years ahead.
Continue reading at Pew Research Foundation
Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick on CNN
Tech group CEO: Trump tariffs will ‘drive inflation,’ ‘kill jobs’
The head of the Consumer Technology Association (CTA) warned that President Trump’s sweeping tariffs will “drive inflation” and “kill jobs,” risking a recession in the U.S.
Trump announced his most wide-ranging slate of tariffs yet on Wednesday afternoon, imposing a 10 percent baseline tax on imports from nearly all foreign countries, along with tariffs of up to 50 percent on dozens of nations.
“These tariffs will raise consumer prices and will force our trade partners to retaliate,” CTA CEO and Vice Chair Gary Shapiro said in a statement. “Americans will become poorer because of these tariffs.”
“This will not be a golden age — but a return to the global economic catastrophe of the Smoot-Hawley tariffs of the 1930s that will disproportionately hurt low income and hardworking Americans,” he continued.
“Make no mistake: American consumers, families, and workers will feel real pain, and elected policymakers in Washington will be held accountable by voters,” Shapiro added.
Continue reading at The Hill
Senate panel advances Trump’s picks for Wall Street and banking regulators
The committee approved Paul Atkins’ nomination to be SEC chair on a party-line vote.
The Senate Banking Committee on Thursday approved President Donald Trump’s pick for a new top Wall Street regulator and other key financial nominees who will help carry out his administration’s deregulatory agenda.
On a 13-11 vote, along party lines, the panel advanced the nomination of Paul Atkins to be chair of the Securities and Exchange Commission. Atkins is a former SEC commissioner who has worked as a consultant to many of the biggest financial firms over the last 16 years. He has indicated he would take a lighter-touch regulatory approach to cryptocurrency markets, enforcement, and the rules around how companies raise money in the U.S.
The committee similarly voted along party lines to approve the nomination of Jonathan Gould as the comptroller of the currency, a top regulator of national banks. Gould, currently a partner at the law firm Jones Day, was the agency’s chief counsel during the first Trump administration.
Republicans have cheered Trump’s picks as they seek to turn the page on Biden-era regulators that were loathed by many in the financial industry.
Continue reading at Politico
Musk will stay on as an adviser post-DOGE, Vance says
Elon Musk will remain a "friend and an adviser" to the White House after his time directing DOGE's reordering of the federal government is through, Vice President JD Vance said in a Thursday interview.
The big picture: Musk is a "special government employee" who can only work 130 days per year, but Vance told "FOX & Friends" that "the work of Elon is not even close to done."
Driving the news: Vance said reports the richest man in the world would leave the administration imminently are "fake news."
He continued, "DOGE has got a lot of work to do. And yeah, that work is going to continue after Elon leaves, but fundamentally, Elon is going to remain a friend and an adviser of both me and the president."
While Vance said Musk signed up for about "six months" of work, he said their sweeping plans for the bureaucracy are not going to "happen all in six months."
Zoom out: Musk has become the face of the administration's massive bureaucracy, which has laid off tens of thousands of civil servants and seen federal grants slashed.
Continue reading at Axios
Trump will ask Congress to rubber-stamp his funding cuts, a top OMB official says
Republicans have been agitating for a so-called rescission package.
During his first of two confirmation hearings Thursday to serve as deputy director for management at the White House Office of Management and Budget, Eric Ueland told senators that President Donald Trump and White House budget director Russ Vought have been “very clear to us at OMB” that the Trump administration “will be sending a rescission package — at least one — to Congress.”
That assurance comes a week after Senate Republicans met with White House officials and said they are increasingly confident about Trump’s intent to send a so-called rescission package of spending cuts.
“We do expect success,” Ueland, who is currently serving as acting chief of staff while he awaits confirmation, told lawmakers on the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee.
Trump was not successful the last time he sent Congress a rescission package during his first administration. After the Senate narrowly rejected the president’s request in 2018 for $15 billion in cutbacks, Senate GOP leaders want to make sure any new rescission package can get enough Republican votes in both the House and Senate.
Continue reading at Politico
Top Republican leads bill to reassert Congress’ tariff power amid Trump trade war
Sen. Chuck Grassley is introducing new legislation after the president’s “Liberation Day” tariff announcement.
Sen. Chuck Grassley, a senior Republican lawmaker from the farm-heavy state of Iowa, is spearheading new legislation that would reassert Congress’ authority over tariffs amid President Donald Trump’s trade war escalation.
The measure, jointly introduced Thursday with Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.), would limit the president’s power to impose tariffs. It would require the president to notify Congress within 48 hours of such an imposition and for Congress to explicitly approve any new tariffs within 60 days. The bill also would allow Congress to end any tariff at any time.
It’s highly unlikely this proposal will ever become law. Still, support from Grassley — who chairs the Judiciary Committee, sits on the Finance Committee and is third in line for the presidency as the Senate’s president pro tempore — sends a strong signal about the GOP’s growing unease with Trump’s actions and the party’s willingness to say something about it.
The president moved the previous day to slap tariffs spanning between 10 percent and 50 percent on countries across the globe, following through on his promise to impose reciprocal tariffs on foreign trade partners and upending the global economic order in the process.
Continue reading at Politico
It's the end of the world's economic order as we know it
The world economic order is shifting beneath our feet, as historic allies look to America-proof their economies. President Trump's latest tariff announcement will accelerate the shift.
Why it matters: Global leaders and corporate executives alike are trying to figure out how to rejigger their economies to be less reliant on the U.S. in the longer run, even as they contemplate near-term retaliatory measures in hopes of lessening the tariff pain.
Any economic delinking won't happen overnight. But the sense in Canada, Europe, and beyond is that their relationship with the U.S. has irreparably changed for the worse.
What they're saying: "Investors will be shocked how much things are going to move away from the US in standards, networks, and infrastructure — as well as services — in coming years," said Adam Posen, the president of the Peterson Institute for International Economics and a former Bank of England official.
"The breach of trust and evident short-sighted self-dealing by the Trump Administration with regard to NATO and to trade reinforce each other," Posen, who just returned from a trip to Ottawa and has been speaking with European officials, added.
"They make it more likely that Europe and the US will increasingly diverge in coming years economically as well as in security."
Driving the news: Top European Union official Ursula von der Leyen said the bloc was in the process of finalizing retaliatory measures for steel and aluminum tariffs.
Continue reading at Axios
These American companies are in big trouble from Trump tariffs
President Trump's imposition of global tariffs is immediately pounding a slew of American businesses that depend on cheap international labor.
Why it matters: The tariffs were more severe than investors were anticipating — and stocks are consequently getting crushed.
Between the lines: The list of losers is long, including:
Nike: The apparel maker produces 28% of its Nike brand goods in Vietnam, 16% in China and 15% in Cambodia, according to an SEC filing.
All three countries are getting hit hard by Trump's new tariffs.
Nike's stock was down 13% in early trading Thursday.
Other apparel companies: The Gap (-23%), Abercrombie & Fitch (-17%), Macy's (-16%), Lululemon (-13%) and Boot Barn (-20%) experienced steep stock declines in early trading.
Investors fear that Trump's tariffs will lead to significant price hikes for clothes.
Apple: The tech giant relies heavily on contract manufacturing from the likes of iPhone maker Foxconn in Asia, with "substantially all" of its production in China, India, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and Vietnam, according to an SEC filing.
It warned in November that tariffs could "increase the cost of the Company's products and the components and raw materials that go into them, and can require the Company to take various actions, including changing suppliers, restructuring business relationships and operations, and ceasing to offer and distribute affected products, services and third-party applications to its customers."
Continue reading at Axios
Trump's surprisingly simple tariff math
Chart: U.S. weighted average tariff rate
One of the surprises out of Wednesday's big tariffs announcement was that the Trump administration used a surprisingly simplistic approach to calculating these much-hyped reciprocal tariffs.
Why it matters: This was not a finely tuned set of import taxes calibrated to exert pressure on trading partners to adjust specific policies with which the U.S. has grievances.
Rather, it was some simple arithmetic, based on overall trade data, that became the justification for the most sweeping U.S. duties in generations — a trade-weighted 22.5% tariff, per the Yale Budget Lab, up from around 2.4% last year.
It implies fewer off-ramps for countries that seek tariff relief, and thus less potential for de-escalation. If tariffs are applied without regard to the details of each country's economic policies and circumstances, what is there to negotiate?
State of play: Wednesday, some social media sleuths figured out, and the administration confirmed, that there was a simple formula behind the reason, say, Vietnam was slapped with a 46% tariff while Norway faces 15%.
The formula is to divide the U.S. trade deficit with each country by that country's exports to the U.S. The final reciprocal tariff was then divided by 2, with a minimum of 10% (which applies even to those countries with which the U.S. has a trade surplus).
"While individually computing the trade deficit effects of tens of thousands of tariff, regulatory, tax and other policies in each country is complex, if not impossible, their combined effects can be proxied by computing the tariff level consistent with driving bilateral trade deficits to zero," per the U.S. Trade Representative's explainer.
Between the lines: This logic implies that any country with which the United States experiences a trade deficit, regardless of the reason, is in some way a bad actor and requires tariffs as payback.
Continue reading at Axios
Here are the stocks rising and falling the most after Trump’s tariffs
Some companies are winning big off the tariff news while others took serious hits.
Winners: Consumer staples, discounts, health care and tobacco
Winners tended to be concentrated in consumer staples.
Potato processor Lamb Weston Holdings gained more than 10 percent in its stock value, as of 3 p.m. EDT.
Stock for discount retailer Dollar General was up almost 5 percent.
Grocery store chain Kroger was up more than 4.5 percent.
Elevance Health, Centene Corp. and Molina Healthcare — three insurance companies — also posted solid gains, with stock rising at least 5 percent as of 3:30 p.m.
Losers: Clothing, tech, leisure and luxury goods
Electronics companies were among the biggest losers. The losses occurred throughout the electronics production pipeline, with chipmakers, computer makers and electronics retailers all facing losses.
Continue reading at The Hill
Trump: Tariff rollout ‘going very well,’ says markets will ‘boom’ amid slump
President Trump on Thursday insisted that the rollout of his new reciprocal tariffs is “going really well” despite markets taking a plunge and foreign leaders rattled by the prospect of a global recession.
Trump, however, insisted the markets will bounce back and reiterated that the pain would be short-term despite the wave of uncertainty muddying future prospects.
“I think it’s going very well,” Trump told reporters while leaving the White House to attend LIV Golf events in Miami. “It was an operation, like when a patient gets operated on, and it’s a big thing. I said this would exactly be the way it is. We have six or seven trillion dollars coming into our country.”
“The markets are going to boom, the stock is going to boom, the country is going to boom. And the rest of the world wants to see if there’s any way they can make a deal,” Trump said, not elaborating on if he would be open to negotiations with trading partners to lower tariffs.
White House officials told reporters before the announcement on Wednesday, “This is not a negotiation, it’s a national emergency.”
Continue reading at The Hill
Coffee, shrimp, other food prices could soar with Trump tariffs
The big picture: The groceries and food hit hardest, if these tariffs take effect, are the things mostly not grown or harvested in the U.S.
For example: Coffee, chocolate, vanilla, bananas, fruits and vegetables from South America (the berries you buy in winter), a lot of shrimp.
By the numbers: Implementing the new reciprocal and baseline tariffs, on top of the other taxes on imports already imposed by the White House, would increase fresh produce prices by 4% and food prices overall by 2.8%, per the Yale Budget Lab's model.
But prices for certain products will rise further.
Zoom in: Outside of some marginal production in Hawaii and Puerto Rico, the U.S. doesn't grow coffee beans, instead importing 99% of its coffee, per the National Coffee Association.
And most of us drink it. 63% of adults in the U.S. drink coffee each day. Only 10% of Americans are eating eggs daily — recall the commotion when those prices went up.
There's also shrimp: You might have noticed shrimp at the grocery store is relatively affordable — that's partly because duties on imported shrimp are at zero.
Continue reading at Axios
How to read the White House's tariff formula
Chart: The Trump administration’s tariff calculation, annotated
The official formula for calculating the "reciprocal" tariffs on countries, as published by the U.S. Trade Representative, is much less complicated than it looks at first glance.
Why it matters: The word "reciprocal" notwithstanding, there's nothing in the formula that represents tariffs or any other trade barriers imposed on U.S. exports.
That's despite the White House insisting that "we literally calculated tariff and non tariff barriers."
The big picture: Once you fight your way through the thicket of Greek letters, the formula is really very simple.
The amount any country's tariff will rise is equal to our trade deficit with that country, divided by our total imports from that country — with a global floor of 10%.
How it works: You can ignore every i in the formula, that's just a mathy way of saying "for any given country."
On the left hand side of the equation is ∆τ, which is the USTR's way of saying "this is how much we should raise tariffs."
Continue reading at Axios
Trump tariffs send stocks spiraling to worst day in 5 years
Stocks plunged Thursday, as President Trump's sweeping tariff plan kicked off a trade war with broad consequences for the global economy.
Why it matters: The stock market is not the economy, but the reaction is an early, visceral demonstration of the fear the public has over rising prices, slowing growth and the possibility of a recession.
The latest: U.S. indices had their worst day in about 5 years.
The S&P 500 ended down 4.8%, its biggest one-day drop since June 2020.
The tech-heavy Nasdaq was off 6%, its worst decline since March 2020.
The Russell 2000 ended 6.6% lower, its worst day since March 2020. That index, which is considered the benchmark for small-cap stocks, entered into a "bear market," down more than 20% from its late-November highs.
Those losses followed international weakness, with Japan's Nikkei closing 2.8% lower and the pan-European Stoxx 600 index off 2.6%.
Zoom in: Apparel retail and tech companies led the decline.
Continue reading at Axios
Will Big Tech actually benefit from Trump’s trade war?
Trump’s global trade war could offer some upside to Silicon Valley, as trade partners with tough tech laws look for tariff relief.
With Wall Street in a panic and allies the world over peeved, the global fallout from President Donald Trump’s sweeping trade war continues to build. But the world’s richest companies could see some upside — depending on how Trump negotiates.
From the sale of TikTok, to digital services taxes, to Europe’s pesky antitrust action against Silicon Valley behemoths, tech issues have suddenly become a potential bargaining chip in Trump’s tariff fight. And Silicon Valley executives, newly cozy with the president, are hoping his administration will defend them against foreign regulations and taxes.
So as countries negotiate to ease tariffs, they’re faced with a question: What exactly does Trump want? And should they scale back their own laws to make him happy?
This all depends on whether Trump has a coherent plan, Michael Froman, president of the Council on Foreign Relations, told the POLITICO Tech podcast.
“Leverage is only good if you take it out for a drive,” he said.
“You’ve got to be able to lay out for the other countries, for the other markets what it is you want them to change, or do, in order to reduce the tariffs, get rid of the tariffs,” said Froman, who served as the U.S. trade representative under President Barack Obama. “And so far, the administration has not laid that out in any great detail.”
Continue reading at Politico
World begins to respond to Trump tariffs, risking escalation
Top U.S. trading partners on Thursday pledged retaliation against Trump’s newest tariffs.
The White House has warned other countries not to hit back at President Donald Trump’s dramatic new tariffs. But many of the United States’ biggest trading partners aren’t listening.
World leaders were still processing Trump’s complex new tariff regime Thursday and few were prepared to unveil specific trade retaliation. But a number of them promised it was coming, raising the specter of an escalating tit-for-tat trade war that could devastate the global economy.
“We are already finalizing the first package of countermeasures in response to tariffs on steel, and we are now preparing for further countermeasures to protect our interests and our businesses if negotiations fail,” European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen told reporters early Thursday morning in Samarkand, Uzbekistan, where she was attending a summit.
The E.U. was among the dozens of countries that will face a higher “reciprocal” tariff starting on April 9, beyond the 10 percent flat tariff the White House said will apply to all imports entering the U.S. starting April 5. Trump is adding a 20 percent tariff to all EU imports, the White House revealed Wednesday. The rates were even higher for Asian trading partners: 34 percent on China, 26 percent on India, 25 percent on South Korea and 24 percent on Japan.
Continue reading at Politico
Small business stocks buckle under Trump tariffs
The levies are hitting at a critical point, when headcounts at the smallest firms are already cratering, revenue is falling an confidence is waning.
Corporate America is panicking over President Donald Trump’s “Liberation Day” tariffs. But while much of the attention has focused on major firms, small businesses are poised to bear the brunt of the pain.
Even before Trump’s announcement, the mere threat of massive new trade levies had sent a chill through the ranks of small business owners who are responsible for nearly half of all U.S. private sector jobs, more than 40 percent of the economy’s annual output, and a third of American exports.
The Russell 2000. which tracks shares of smaller businesses, on Thursday became the first major U.S. index to crater into bear market territory — meaning it has plunged more than 20 percent since peaking shortly after Trump’s election — as investors braced for surging import costs on Main Street. Those losses have outpaced declines by larger firms included in the S&P 500 and Dow Jones Industrial Average.
Leaders of smaller firms are likely to be Republican, meaning Trump arguably has more to lose with them politically than with many other executives opposed to his tariffs. But even larger companies have had little success in convincing policymakers to help relieve the pressure.
“We’ve seen a parade of major corporations go to the White House urging restraint. It has had no effect,” said Gary Locke, who served as Commerce secretary and ambassador to China during the Obama administration. “If these titans of industry don’t have much influence, how could representatives of small businesses, mom-and-pops?”
Continue reading at Politico
‘I hope he’s right’: Markets tumble on tariffs — but Trump isn’t flinching
Americans watched in horror as their 401(k)s plunged Thursday morning after the markets opened.
Americans watched in horror as their 401(k)s plunged Thursday morning after the markets opened, with the Dow dropping 1,300 points and the S&P 500 losing 3.7 percent as of noon. Stellantis announced it is laying off 900 U.S. workers at five domestic facilities as it pauses manufacturing at two plants in Canada and Mexico. And defense and energy industry officials voiced private fears that the tariffs would take too long to jump-start domestic manufacturing of core components needed for their operations currently produced abroad.
While Republicans have spent the last two months acquiescing to the president on a long list of issues, Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) fired the GOP’s first serious shot across the bow at the administration on tariffs. Grassley and Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-Wa.) introduced legislation Thursday morning to “reaffirm Congress’ key role in setting and approving U.S. trade policy.”
And many Republicans were left offering lukewarm defenses of Trump’s new tariffs.
“I hope he is right. I hope the naysayers are wrong,” said Sen. Ron Johnson, (R-Wisc.). “I don’t know.”
Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), one of the Senate’s most vocal opponents of tariffs, called the stock market drops “a huge loss.”
“That’s not just me saying tariffs don’t work. That’s millions and millions of people buying and selling stocks that are very, very concerned that tariffs are going to cause the economy to go in the wrong direction,” Paul said.
Continue reading at Politico
Why the dollar is doing what it's not supposed to do
Economics 101 dictates that higher tariffs strengthen the value of a country's currency, but Trump's tariff announcement sent the value of the U.S. dollar plunging.
Why it matters: It's a sign that investors are worried about a recession, particularly in the U.S. — on top of concern that U.S. policies are making America a longer-term risky bet.
By the numbers: An index that tracks the value of the dollar against six major currencies was at 102.1 on Thursday, from around 104 before reciprocal tariffs were unveiled. (A lower number means a weaker dollar).
Catch up quick: The dollar strengthened after the election. Investors were optimistic about deregulation and tax cuts and anticipated economic growth. Since inauguration day it's fallen back.
The intrigue: Up until right before Trump's announcement, investors had expected the dollar to rise on tariff news, WSJ points out.
They had reason. The idea that tariffs make the dollar more valuable "has been part of economic theory for 100 years," Joseph Gagnon, a senior fellow who specializes in exchange rates and monetary policy at the Peterson Institute, tells Axios.
Continue reading at Axios
Senate votes to move on Trump's "one, big beautiful bill"
The Senate overcame a procedural hurdle Thursday on the newest budget resolution, which would raise the debt ceiling, extend the Trump tax cuts and slash spending.
Why it matters: The 52-48 procedural vote signals Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) has the support needed to pass the resolution by the weekend — moving one step closer to accomplishing President Trump's "one, big beautiful bill."
The budget reconciliation process allows the Senate to bypass the filibuster for budget-related measures.
Zoom in: Democratic senators unanimously voted against the resolution.
They were joined by Rand Paul of Kentucky.
The intrigue: The vote was delayed some on Thursday over lingering concerns from several GOP senators over the use of the current policy baseline accounting maneuver, potential Medicaid cuts and other issues
Continue reading at Axios
Health and Science News
RFK Jr. says 20% of health agency layoffs could be mistakes
Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. suggested Thursday that around 20% of the job cuts by the Trump administration's Department of Government Efficiency will be wrong and need to be corrected.
Around 10,000 employees were laid offfrom the Department of Health and Human Services on Tuesday, as part of a restructuring architected by Kennedyand Elon Musk's DOGE task force. But Kennedy acknowledged they didn't get everything right the first time.
"Personnel that should not have been cut, were cut. We're reinstating them. And that was always the plan. Part of the DOGE, we talked about this from the beginning, is we're going to do 80% cuts, but 20% of those are going to have to be reinstated, because we'll make mistakes," Kennedy said, speaking to reporters at a stop in Virginia.
Kennedy said that the elimination of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's entire Lead Poisoning Prevention and Surveillance Branch was among the mistakes.
Continue reading at CBS News
Which jobs were cut at CDC? Here’s a list.
The Trump administration wants the agency to focus on infectious disease. Other areas of public health were hit hardest.
The cuts are part of a large-scale restructuring at the Department of Health and Human Services — with the goal of eliminating 10,000 employees, 2,400 from CDC. A spokesperson for HHS did not respond to a request asking whether changes to the staff reductions had been made since they were shared with staff Tuesday. ABC News reported that HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. plans to reinstate some workers who were mistakenly fired.
Here are the cuts:
— National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion was reduced by about a third, losing the Office on Smoking and Health, Oral Health, Population Health, and some of the Reproductive Health divisions.
— The Office of Health Equity was eliminated. The parts of its work that are written into law will go to the Office of Minority Health and the Office of Women’s Health.
— Discretionary programs were cut from the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, leaving behind only the mandatory World Trade Center health program and the Radiation Dose Reconstruction Program. The Trump administration plans to fold NIOSH into a new HHS agency called the Administration for a Healthy America.
— The cuts dissolve the Birth Defects Center, but retain some of its work, including the Surveillance for Emerging Threats to Mothers and Babies Network. Some birth defects surveillance will continue, as well as autism surveillance.
Continue reading at Politico
Staff working on childhood lead exposure and cancer clusters fired from CDC
Staff members who fought childhood lead exposure and those who worked on cancer clusters were among those fired from the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), a now former employee told The Hill.
The entire permanent staff of the Division of Environmental Health Science and Practice was cut, according to one person who was among the approximately 200 fired from the division.
This division works on issues such as asthma and air pollution, climate change and health, childhood lead poisoning and cancer clusters.
The former employee noted that these divisions do crucial work to protect public health, pointing out, for example, that it helped discover lead contamination in applesauce pouches that were popular with kids.
The person also noted that the division had staffers who would be able to help respond in case there was a nuclear event such as an attack or nuclear plant meltdown.
“Within this division, we house all the experts who do things like chemical, radiological or nuclear response activities. So for example, if there were a nuclear detonation within the United States, or a dirty bomb, our division would be the one who would lead that response,” they said. “Those people were targeted as well. There are no survivors.”
The person said the division may still have contractors but that there’s no staff for them to work with.
Continue reading at The Hill
Chimp relatives use humanlike grammar, study finds
Humans are not the only species to combine concepts to build more complex meaning, a new study found.
Bonobo chimpanzees combine calls in a manner similar to how humans structure words to make phrases and sentences, according to findings published on Thursday in the journal Science.
The pygmy chimpanzees “seem to combine calls to convey meaning that cannot be conveyed through single calls alone,” the researchers wrote.
Because the genetic lines of humans and bonobos diverged more than 7 million years ago, the research suggests the roots of complex language go far deeper than had been previously believed.
It follows other surprising findings of humanlike behavior in apes and monkeys, like the previous findings that uncovered the building blocks of human language in chimpanzee calls; strong similarities between basic jokes in humans and other primates; and monkeys using simple stone tools.
Thursday’s findings also suggest that the ability to combine sounds in “complex ways is not as unique to humans as we once thought,” Mélissa Berthet, an evolutionary anthropologist at the University of Zurich, said in a statement.
To arrive at this finding, Berthet and other researchers first built a comprehensive ‘dictionary’ of bonobo calls.
Continue reading at The Hill
Senate confirms Dr. Oz to lead Medicare and Medicaid
Dr. Mehmet Oz, the heart surgeon turned daytime television star, has a new job – overseeing the nation’s largest health insurance programs.
The chamber voted Thursday 53 to 45 along party lines to confirm Oz to lead the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. Oz, who has touted controversial therapies and pushed unproven theories about Covid-19 cures including hydroxychloroquine, will make and implement major decisions impacting the insurance coverage of more than 160 million people.
Continue reading at Politico
Kennedy shutters several FOIA offices at HHS
The department plans to consolidate all agency FOIA offices into one.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention was among the agencies that had its FOIA office eliminated late Monday night, according to a synopsis of the cuts shared at a CDC staff meeting Tuesday and seen by POLITICO.
Each agency, such as the CDC and FDA, had its own individual FOIA offices, which received thousands of requests per year. Now, in accordance with Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s reconstruction of the department, HHS will consolidate its FOIA requests into one HHS-wide office, according to a senior HHS official who was granted anonymity to discuss ongoing deliberations. Next steps are still in flux.
It’s one of the Trump administration’s latest, most brazen attempts to stifle the institutions across the government that are tasked with holding the most powerful accountable. In the past 73 days, President Donald Trump and his billionaire senior adviser, Elon Musk, have taken several steps to dismantle some of the government’s strongest guardrails. A week after his inauguration, he fired multiple independent federal watchdogs, most notably, inspectors general at the majority of agencies, including the departments of State and Defense.
Continue reading at Politico
HHS staff to brief House committee following massive agency layoffs
House Democrats on the Energy and Commerce committee are demanding a hearing with Health and Human Services Secretary (HHS) Robert F Kennedy Jr. about the massive layoffs happening at his agency.
But so far, GOP leadership has committed to a staff-level briefing only, according to a spokesperson for Energy and Commerce Chair Brett Guthrie (R-Ky.).
Health subcommittee ranking member Diana DeGette (D-Colo.) in a statement Thursday said a staff briefing isn’t enough.
“A briefing is the bare minimum that Secretary Kennedy can offer, but instead, he would reportedly send staff rather than do it himself. While a staff briefing is better than nothing, it has not been scheduled, and there is no assurance that it will be bipartisan,” DeGette said.
Guthrie’s spokesperson said the briefing will be bipartisan.
The move from Democrats followed an invitation to Kennedy from Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee Chair Bill Cassidy (R-La.) and ranking member Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.).
Continue reading at The Hill
Over 350K Health Workers Face Deportation Risk
— Survey study quantifies the role of immigrants, both documented and undocumented, in healthcare
Key Takeaways
In the U.S., over 350,000 undocumented immigrants and nearly 700,000 documented immigrants work in healthcare, researchers estimated.
Noncitizen immigrants, both documented and undocumented, made up some 4% of personnel in hospitals and outpatient settings.
Worker shortages due to deportations could reverberate through emergency departments and hospitals, the study authors suggested.
More than 350,000 noncitizen healthcare workers in the U.S. may be at risk of deportation as part of the Trump administration's immigration crackdown, researchers estimated.
Based on the Current Population Survey (CPS) from March 2024, there were over 20 million individuals making up the workforce across formal and informal healthcare settings nationwide, of whom an estimated 16.7 million were U.S.-born citizens, 2.3 million naturalized citizens, nearly 700,000 documented noncitizens, and over 366,500 undocumented immigrants.
"More than 1 million noncitizen immigrants (one-third of them undocumented) work in healthcare in the U.S. Their ranks include skilled personnel who would be difficult to replace, especially if legal immigration is further restricted," according to a group led by Lenore Azaroff, MD, ScD, of Edward M. Kennedy Community Health Center in Worcester, Massachusetts, writing in JAMA.
Azaroff and colleagues reported that noncitizen immigrants, both documented and undocumented, made up some 4% of personnel in hospitals and outpatient settings, 7% of nursing home workers, and at least 10% of personnel in home care agencies and nonformal settings in their study. In particular, the bulk of the undocumented healthcare workforce were working as nursing aides and assistants at the time of the survey.
If these healthcare workers without U.S. citizenship are deported, the consequences would be felt by America as a whole, they suggested. "Deportations could especially compromise long-term care, where immigrants play a large role. The resulting shortages could reverberate through emergency departments and hospitals, leading to the inability to discharge patients and tying up nurses and other staff."
Continue reading at MedPageToday
2025 Atlantic hurricane season will be above average, researchers predict
Researchers are predicting an above-average Atlantic hurricane season in 2025, likely producing stronger and more frequent storms than a typical year but at the same time with less intensity expected than last season. The annual prediction is closely watched in Florida and other coastal states at risk when hurricane season officially starts June 1.
Experts at Colorado State University's Tropical Cyclones, Radar, Atmospheric Modeling and Software team estimate that nine hurricanes will occur over the course of the upcoming season, with 17 named storms overall.
Four of the hurricanes are predicted to be major — meaning a Category 3, 4 or 5on the Saffir-Simpson scale. Category 3 hurricanes are those with sustained winds that reach 111 to 129 miles per hour, enough to cause devastating damage. Category 4 hurricanes have sustained winds of 130 to 156 mph, and the most catastrophic Category 5 storms reach 157 mph or higher.
Hurricane activity this year is expected to be roughly 125% higher than the 1991-2020 season average, according to the report. One of its authors, Levi Silvers, told CBS News that jump is significant, albeit slightly lower than the 2024 activity prediction, which was 130% higher than the 19-year average.
Continue reading at CBS News
FTC halts case against CVS Caremark, OptumRx
The Trump administration has paused the Federal Trade Commission's lawsuit against major pharmacy benefit managers after two Democratic commissioners were fired earlier this month.
Why it matters: The lawsuit, originally filed last year under the Biden administration, was considered a major challenge to the PBM industry after the agency accused the drug middlemen of inflating the price of insulin and driving up costs to diabetes patients.
Driving the news: The FTC issued the stay in the case against CVS Caremark, OptumRx and Express Scripts in response to a motion "citing the fact that there are currently no sitting Commissioners able to participate in this matter."
Both Republican commissioners Andrew Ferguson, the FTC chairman, and Commissioner Melissa Holyoak, were recused. They did not say why.
Its two Democratic commissioners, Alvaro Bedoya and Rebecca Slaughter, were fired earlier this month in a move they called illegal.
Continue reading at Axios
RFK Jr.'s bid to clean up food draws on state bans
Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is trying to leverage states' growing interest in banning certain food dyes and additives to speed up his efforts to reshape America's diet.
The big picture: West Virginia is providing an early proving ground, after passing a new law to ban nine synthetic dyes and additives from food sold in the state and planning to request a federal waiver to prohibit soda in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program.
Since California passed a first-in-the-nation food dye law last year, at least two dozen other states have taken up legislation addressing chemicals allowed for use in food.
But while there's bipartisan sentiment for policing or even eliminating some substances, the new bans could trigger fights with powerful food and beverage interests.
Driving the news: Kennedy appeared with West Virginia Gov. Patrick Morrisey (R) in the state last week to tout the way it was "leading the nation in passing a bill to clean up our food supply and submitting a waiver to remove soda from SNAP."
"I urge every governor to follow West Virginia's lead," Kennedy said. "If there's one thing we can agree on, it should be eliminating taxpayer-funded soda subsidies for lower income kids."
Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins, whose department oversees SNAP, said Morrisey was "willing to cut through the D.C. noise to help families move toward healthier behaviors and healthier outcomes."
Meanwhile, some conservative influencers on social media have criticized efforts to restrict soda from SNAP as government overreach and a violation of personal choice, per the Daily Wire.
Between the lines: Studies for decades have suggested a link between artificial colors and flavors and hyperactivity in children.
Continue reading at Axios
Drug industry worries about FDA delays
Pharmaceutical companies are growing increasingly concerned widespread cuts at the Food and Drug Administration could set the agency back as crucial review deadlines loom.
Why it matters: Health industries pay billions developing and shepherding drugs through the regulatory process, including user fees that help ensure there are enough staff to evaluate products on a predictable timeline.
There are dozens of expected approval dates scheduled for drugs and biologics in the next three months. They include a monoclonal antibody for RSV from Merck, as well as expanded uses for a GlaxoSmithKline drug for COPD and a Gilead drug for HIV prevention.
As yet, there have been no delays to drug approvals, but industry watchers worry that may not last in light of the agency job cuts. On Wednesday, CBS News reported the FDA is planning fewer food and drug inspections as a result of reductions in the FDA's Office of Inspections and Investigations.
Potential delays would not only be costly to drug makers, particularly smaller manufacturers, but can drive up prices for patients waiting for innovative treatments, experts say.
HHS did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Continue reading at Axios
Drug and device makers confront Trump tariffs
A day after deep Food and Drug Administration cuts rocked their world, drug and med tech companies faced another potentially big hit when President Trump announced a baseline 10% tariff on U.S. imports.
Why it matters: The life sciences are heavily reliant on foreign countries for raw materials and manufacturing, most of it duty-free. Experts said a radical shift away from free-trade policies could bring higher drug prices, supply chain disruptions and weaker margins for big industry players.
Yes, but: Pharmaceuticals were notably exempt from steeper reciprocal duties on goods from Europe, Japan and China that Trump announced, according to a White House fact sheet.
The big picture: Trump is wagering he can revive domestic manufacturing, raise revenues to offset tax cuts and push other nations to adhere to nontrade-related demands.
He's already won big manufacturing commitments in the health space from Johnson & Johnson and Eli Lilly.
But the actions announced Tuesday could dramatically raise industry costs and force drug and med tech companies to rethink their supply chains, find alternative strategies for sourcing raw materials and look for ways to increase cash flow.
Some companies like AbbVie, Bristol Myers Squibb and Eli Lilly are better positioned, because they have more U.S. manufacturing plants and pharmaceutical ingredient sites, TD Cowen analysts wrote in a note Wednesday.
Continue reading at Axios
POLITICO Pulse
A pulse check on the state of health policy
SUMMIT RECAP — President Donald Trump’s allies and adversaries are deeply divided over how to improve the U.S. health care system, Kelly reports with POLITICO’s Carmen Paun.
Speaking at POLITICO’s Health Care Summit on Wednesday, partisans sparred after the Trump administration’s massive restructuring of the nation’s health agencies and firings of thousands of federal employees. While Trump loyalists painted a picture of a health care system mired in fraud, waste and abuse — and in need of dismantling — Democrats warned that the Trump administration’s gutting of health agencies would decimate access to care for patients and move the federal government away from science-backed health care solutions.
Calley Means, founder of a company focused on healthy living, was perhaps the most polarizing speaker: The top adviser to HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. defended the Trump administration’s deep cuts and attacked the medical establishment, which he said is controlled by industry lobbyists in a conspiracy to keep Americans sick.
“Fundamentally, what Bobby has done is taken over a department that has utterly failed,” Means said.
Some in the audience of Washington health policy wonks gasped and booed, prompting a rebuke from Means.
“I would truly ask for… a little bit of humility about what the voters were trying to say by putting Bobby Kennedy Jr. in this position of power,” he said.
Rep. Jake Auchincloss spoke soon after and blasted Means for negating the accomplishments that science and government have achieved in improving health care over the decades.
“I think what we just heard explains and crystallizes the arrogance of these bros that have descended on Washington, D.C.,” the Massachusetts Democrat said. Back in the Bay State, the Harvard graduate’s alma mater seeks to stave off $9 billion in cuts in federal funding — which Trump threatens to pull over alleged antisemitism on campus.
More sparks: Summit speakers also sparred over the massive cuts to Medicaid that Republicans in Congress are proposing. Republican speakers argued that the cuts, as well as billions in slashed agency and university research funding, would be relatively painless because the GOP was solely targeting waste.
Continue reading at Politico Pulse
Anti-DEI-Whitewashing Movement
Black colleges ponder their future as Trump makes cuts to education dollars
Education advocates say states must step up support after decades of underfunding HBCUs.
The nation’s historically Black colleges and universities, known as HBCUs, are wondering how to survive in an uncertain and contentious educational climate as the Trump administration downsizes the scope and purpose of the U.S. Department of Education — while cutting away at federal funding for higher education.
In January, President Donald Trump signed an executive order pausing federal grants and loans, alarming HBCUs, where most students rely on Pell Grants or federal aid. The order was later rescinded, but ongoing cuts leave key support systems in political limbo, said Denise Smith, deputy director of higher education policy and a senior fellow at The Century Foundation, a left-leaning think tank.
Leaders worry about Trump’s rollback of the Justice40 Initiative, a climate change program that relied on HBCUs to tackle environmental justice issues, she said. And there’s uncertainty around programs such as federal work-study and TRIO, which provides college access services to disadvantaged students.
“People are being mum because we’re starting to see a chilling effect,” Smith said. “There’s real fear that resources could be lost at any moment — even the ones schools already know they need to survive.”
Most students at HBCUs rely on Pell Grants or other federal aid, and a fifth of Black college graduates matriculate from HBCUs. Other minority-serving institutions, known as MSIs, that focus on Hispanic and American Indian populations also heavily depend on federal aid.
“It’s still unclear what these cuts will mean for HBCUs and MSIs, even though they’re supposedly protected,” Smith said.
Continue reading at Stateline Daily
A Pew Charitable Trust affiliated publication
General News
The GOP's big voter problem
The verdict is in: President Donald Trump's voters are lively when he's running for the White House. They're downright lethargic when he's not.
Why it matters: This is not just the assessment of Democrats. It's coming straight from the vice president and leaders of the MAGA movement. And it can have massive implications for the results of key gubernatorial races this year and for next year's midterms.
Catch up quick: Brad Schimel, the conservative candidate in Wisconsin's Supreme Court race, lost by 10 points in a 50-50 state. Trump endorsed Brad Schimel, and Elon Musk bankrolled millions of dollars in ads and events, swooping into Wisconsin the weekend before Election Day to juice turnout.
While Republicans won two House special elections in Florida by about 15 points, those were drops from over 30-point margins in the same districts just last November.
Zoom out: Low-propensity, working-class voters helped fuel Trump's 2024 win.
But MAGA luminaries are fretting that those same voters only turn out when Trump's name is on the ballot, making the GOP base less intimidating in off-year races and putting narrow congressional majorities at risk.
Continue reading at Axios
Trump forces GOP to swallow protectionist tariffs
Senate Republicans doubted President Trump would follow through on tariffs. Now they're having to swallow them whole.
Why it matters: Trump has yoked his party, the economy and himself to a protectionist trade policy.
Skeptical Republicans are willing to give Trump some time to prove that across-the-board tariffs can lead to an American manufacturing renaissance — but not too much time.
Senate GOP leader John Thune, from export-heavy South Dakota, said: "I do appreciate the president's focus on making sure that we're getting better deals and giving businesses an incentive to do business here."
Zoom in: GOP senators bargained with him on tariffs, but Wednesday was about acceptance.
Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.): "In the long run, I think it will work. But as I've also said, in the long run, we're all dead. The short run matters too."
Sen. John Hoeven (R-N.D.): "Hopefully the short-term disruption is truly short term, like less than a year, and the long-term benefits are real and lasting."
Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.): "I think it's kind of a high-risk bet he's making on the economy. I think the stock market thing is somewhat high risk. He may be right."
Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.): "I'll probably start getting calls from constituents tomorrow. I've already gotten some outbound communications tonight," he told Axios on Wednesday night.
Between the lines: During the campaign last summer, Republicans argued Trump wasn't all that serious about across-the-board tariffs.
Continue reading at Axios
Swing-seat fears hit House GOP ahead of 2026
Top GOP operatives are alarmed that House Republicans ditching their seats to pursue higher office could cost Mike Johnson (R-La.) the speaker's gavel.
Why it matters: The GOP's eleventh-hour freakout over special elections —followed by Democrats cutting the margins in half from November in Florida's 1st and 6th congressional districts — is spreading into a broader fear about swing seats next year.
"A House member in a competitive district who is considering jumping ship would seemingly have priorities misaligned with the president," said Bill Stepien, who was Trump's 2020 campaign manager.
"Any time popular members of Congress from swing areas seek statewide office it creates challenges — usually expanding the map for the opposition party," said Robert Blizzard, a Republican pollster.
Zoom in: Republicans are most concerned about three House members eyeing statewide office:
Rep. Mike Lawler (R-N.Y.) is considering running for New York governor. Trump lost Lawler's district by a percentage point in November, while Lawler won by six points.
Rep. John James (R-Mich.) is weighing a run for Michigan governor. Trump won James' district by a percentage point in 2020 and six points in 2024. James won his race by six points.
Continue reading at Axios
‘This Could Get Much Uglier’: The Fatal Flaw In Trump’s Trade War
Trump’s radical tariff program is aimed at restoring U.S. manufacturing greatness. He’s getting in his own way.
President Donald Trump’s sweeping tariff regime will completely transform America’s economic relationship with the rest of the world, all in the name of revitalizing domestic manufacturing.
And yet, many businesses won’t be rushing to shift their supply chains to U.S. shores.
For all the detail in Trump’s Wednesday announcement, his endgame is still shrouded in confusion. That’s lethal for long-term investment, making confident planning all but impossible.
“If you want stuff being put in the ground, you have to tell people the price, and the price needs to be fully inclusive of the tariff risk,” one former administration official in Trump’s first term, granted anonymity to speak freely, told me.
It’s not that tariffs can’t work as an action-forcing tool for companies to move production to the U.S. This is a wealthy country with one of the largest consumer markets in the world, and the president probably isn’t wrong that a lot of our trading partners would capitulate to keep serving it.
But I’ve asked multiple corporate executives in recent weeks whether companies are likely to start investing in manufacturing in the United States in response to Trump’s policies, and the message has basically been: That’s an unanswerable question right now. Because making those decisions requires understanding the relative costs of doing it versus not doing it, and Trump is far too unpredictable to allow for that kind of calculation.
If the markets bloodbath gets much worse, will Trump back off? How much will tariffs change over the next three-plus years? And tariff policy could change drastically under a new president in 2028. Might companies just wait it out rather than making a long-term commitment of resources and hoping for the best?
Can anyone answer these questions with real authority?
Continue reading at Politico
Europe slams ‘illegal’ Trump tariffs, vows unified response
Citizens of the EU “feel let down by our oldest ally,” European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen says, warning that the bloc is “prepared to respond.”
Europeans “feel let down by our oldest ally,” European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said early on Thursday in a video statement. She called Trump’s move “a major blow” that will lead to higher bills and rising inflation across the globe, and said the EU is “prepared to respond.”
Trump’s “Liberation Day” announcement saw the U.S. impose a minimum 10 percent tariff on all countries, while the EU was hit with a 20 percent levy. The move drew a swift rebuke and a promise to respond in kind from EU capitals and Brussels, who have long been bracing for Trump’s economic smackdown.
Von der Leyen said the Commission is already finalizing its countermeasures in response to Trump’s earlier announcement of steel tariffs and preparing more to hit back against the newest set of levies. But, she said, “It is not too late to address concerns through negotiations.”
Continue reading at Politico Europe
Playbook: (Trade) war on the world
Good Thursday morning. This is Jack Blanchard, certainly feeling liberated from getting any sleep this week. But keep the news coming! And do hit me up with your thoughts.
This morning’s most important number: Alex Ovechkin is now on 892 … with three to go for Wayne Gretzky’s all-time NHL goals record.
In today’s Playbook:
— Liberation Day is over … and now comes the market chaos.
— How the math was done: Trading partners bemused by Trump’s bizarre tariff charts.
— Worried GOP senators keep their heads down and press ahead with budget plan.
[…]
FIRST IN PLAYBOOK II: House Speaker Mike Johnson is endorsing Rep. Byron Donalds (R-Fla.) in his campaign for Florida governor, POLITICO’s Dasha Burns scoops. “Byron Donalds is a principled conservative leader who Floridians can trust as their next governor,” Johnson said in a statement shared exclusively with Playbook. “In Congress, Byron has been tenacious in standing up for Florida and President Trump’s America First agenda. I have no doubt he will bring that same fighting spirit with him as governor.”
The juice: Donalds has already bagged the coveted Donald Trump endorsement, but still faces a major roadblock on his path to governing America’s third-largest state: term-limited Gov. Ron DeSantis, who has criticized Donalds while talking up the possibility that his own wife, Casey DeSantis, may run to succeed him instead. Florida politics really is the best.
GOING FULL McKINLEY: The global economy is in flux this morning as Donald Trump’s surreal, chart-waving TV performance in the White House Rose Garden ushers in a new era of 19th century-style protectionism. With Trump’s allies fanning out across the media to sell his tariffs to a skeptical public, global investors are braced for carnage when the U.S. markets open at 9:30 a.m. Economists are issuing dire warnings about the impact on prices, trade and growth if the tariffs remain in place. And America’s allies and foes around the world are digesting what just happened — and carefully weighing their response.
First, the markets: Stock markets in Asia tumbled dramatically when they opened overnight following Trump’s attack on the regional economy, with emerging Asian economies seemingly being targeted to break their roles in U.S. supply chains. Those falling share prices are likely to be replicated when the U.S. stock markets open later this morning. The tariffs levied by Trump were “far above the levels that we and the market expected,” Andrew Hollenhorst, the U.S. chief economist at Citi Research, wrote in a research note Tuesday evening. No wonder last night’s Rose Garden event kicked off just after the markets had closed.
But Trump is untroubled: The president has already dismissed the doom-mongering he knew was coming from “globalists” who believe in free trade. For Trump, this is simply the enactment of a long and deeply-held belief about how America’s economy should operate, and another “promises made, promises kept” moment from a president who — very clearly now — must be taken at his word. He told us what he was going to do. And once again, he did it.
Continue reading at Politico Playbook newsletter
Trump crackdown casts chill over international student programs
Colleges are increasingly worried about President Trump scaring away their international students.
More than a million foreign-born scholars attend U.S. universities every year, bringing billions of dollars to the economy and a pipeline of high-value workers.
But Trump’s crackdown on student demonstrators, coming alongside his attacks on higher education more broadly, could have them looking elsewhere.
“The Trump administration is purportedly trying to improve the economic and business climate for U.S.-based companies, and to grow American jobs and salaries. But the apprehension now felt by countless prospective international students and their families are undermining those very important goals,” said Eddie West, assistant vice president of international affairs at California State University, Fresno.
In the 2023-2024 academic year, there were approximately 1.1 million foreign students who contributed $43.8 billion to the U.S. economy, according to data collected by the Association for International Educators, or NAFSA, and JB International. Those numbers represent both a record and the third straight year of growth after the COVID-19 pandemic.
NAFSA found that for every three international students, one U.S. job is created or supported.
Continue reading at The Hill
United receives FAA certification on Starlink-equipped aircraft
The FAA gave United approval for Starlink-equipped aircraft
The first Starlink equipped commercial flight is set for May
Starlink is a satellite broadband internet service
United Airlines announced Monday that the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) approved its first Starlink-equipped aircraft type allowing passengers to have access to high-speed Wi-Fi.
The first commercial flight will be on the United Express Embraer 175 scheduled for May.
The Chicago-based airline plans to install Starlink into over 300 planes by the end of the year after inking a deal in September.
“We know customers are going to love this experience, and we think it will give them yet another reason to choose United,” Grant Milstead, United’s vice president of Digital Technology, said in a press release.
“We’re working closely with Starlink and the FAA to finish installs on our regional fleet this year and bring the best inflight experience in the sky to more and more people,” he added.
Continue reading at The Hill
US bans government personnel in China from romantic or sexual relations with Chinese citizens
WASHINGTON (AP) — The U.S. government has banned American government personnel in China, as well as family members and contractors with security clearances, from any romantic or sexual relationships with Chinese citizens, The Associated Press has learned.
Four people with direct knowledge of the matter told the AP about the policy, which was put into effect by departing U.S. Ambassador Nicholas Burns in January shortly before he left China. The people would speak only on condition of anonymity to discuss details of a confidential new directive.
Though some U.S. agencies already had strict rules on such relationships, a blanket “non-fraternization” policy, as it is known, has been unheard of publicly since the Cold War. It’s not uncommon for American diplomats in other countries to date locals and even marry them.
A more limited version of the policy was enacted last summer prohibiting U.S. personnel from “romantic and sexual relations” with Chinese citizens working as guards and other support staff at the U.S. Embassy and five consulates in China. But Burns, the departing ambassador, broadened it to a blanket ban on such relations with any Chinese citizen in China in January, days before President Donald Trump took office. The AP was unable to determine exactly how the policy defined the phrase “romantic or sexual relationship.”
Continue reading at the AP
Justice Department declined to prosecute Texas AG Paxton in final weeks of Biden’s term: AP sources
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Justice Department quietly decided in the final weeks of the Biden administration not to prosecute Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, effectively ending the corruption investigation that cast a long shadow over the political career of a close ally of President Donald Trump, The Associated Press has learned.
The decision not to bring charges — which has never been publicly reported — resolved the high-stakes federal probe before Trump’s new Justice Department leadership could even take action on an investigation sparked by allegations from Paxton’s inner circle that the Texas Republican abused his office to aid a political donor.
The move came almost two years after the Justice Department’s public integrity section in Washington took over the investigation, removing the case from the hands of federal investigators in Texas who had believed there was sufficient evidence for an indictment.
Two people familiar with the matter, who spoke to The Associated Press on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations, confirmed the department’s decision to decline to prosecute. Though the date of the decision was not immediately clear, it was made in the final weeks of the President Joe Biden’s presidency, one of the people said.
Continue reading at the AP
What to know about Saturday's nationwide "Hands Off!" anti-Trump protests
Chart: Places with a Hands Off! rally or visibility event planned for April 5
A nationwide anti-President Trump movement on Saturday, "Hands Off!," is expected to be the largest single-day protest since he entered office.
Why it matters: The Trump administration's wide-reaching and ground-shaking policies have mobilized a varied cross section of Americans affected by political, economic, social and legal changes.
"This is not just corruption," the Hands Off! website said. "This is not just mismanagement. This is a hostile takeover."
By the numbers: More than 1,100 rallies, visibility events and meetings were scheduled in all 50 states as of Wednesday afternoon.
Organizers said they had nearly 250,000 RSVPs as of March 29.
State of play: Protesters are rallying against several Trump administration policies, including its handling of Social Security benefits, layoffs across the federal workforce, attacks on consumer protections and anti-immigrant policies and attacks on transgender people.
The protests are also against Elon Musk's involvement in the federal government via DOGE — after he's already faced a wave of demonstrations at Tesla dealerships worldwide via the #TeslaTakedown movement.
The Hands Off! demonstrations will occur at state capitals, federal buildings, congressional offices and city centers.
Continue reading at Axios
Rubio reassures allies on US commitment to NATO
America “is as active in NATO as ever, and some of this hysteria and hyperbole that I see … is unwarranted,” says Donald Trump’s top diplomat.
BRUSSELS — U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio reaffirmed America’s commitment to the NATO alliance Thursday, but underlined that his country wanted to hear a “realistic pathway” for allies to boost defense spending.
“The United States is in NATO,” Rubio said standing next to NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte. “[It] is as active in NATO as ever, and some of this hysteria and hyperbole that I see … is unwarranted.”
Rubio is in Brussels for a meeting of NATO foreign ministers, the final ministerial gathering before member country leaders meet in The Hague in June.
U.S. President Donald Trump has demanded that defense spending rise to 5 percent of GDP from the current target of at least 2 percent; Rubio said Washington is not expecting to hit that in “one or two years,” but there needs to be a clear pathway to that goal.
However, Trump's comments about not defending NATO countries not spending enough on defense and his threats to invade Greenland have raised doubts about U.S. commitment to NATO and Europe's defense.
Despite that, Rubio made clear that Trump was not against NATO, but he was “against a NATO that does not have the capabilities” to fulfill the obligations of the treaty.
Continue reading at Politico Europe
Polling- Surveys
Most Americans Say They Are Tuned In to News About the Trump Administration
Far fewer are hearing about the administration’s relationship with the media than was the case early in Trump’s first term
The second Trump administration has started with a rapid succession of executive orders and policy changes, including tariffs, cuts to government agencies and more. Americans are paying attention, but Democrats and Republicans give different reasons for why they are tuning in, according to a new Pew Research Center survey conducted in late February and early March.
As the president and his allies move to reshape the federal government and U.S. foreign policy, about seven-in-ten U.S. adults say they have been following news about the actions and initiatives of the Trump administration very (31%) or fairly (40%) closely.
That’s about the same share who said they were following news about the presidential election last September (69%), and slightly higher than the percentage who said they were following news about the actions and initiatives of the new Biden administration in 2021 (66%). There is also a gap between now and the early days of the Biden presidency when it comes to the share who are following administration news very closely (31% vs. 22%).
Both partisan coalitions are paying attention to the actions and initiatives of the administration at similar rates. This is different from the first months of the Biden administration in 2021, when Republicans and Republican-leaning independents were less likely than Democrats and Democratic leaners to say they were following the Biden administration’s actions very or fairly closely (60% of Republicans vs. 75% of Democrats).
Now, 74% of Republicans and 71% of Democrats say they are following the Trump administration’s actions at least fairly closely.
Continue reading at Pew Research Foundation
70 percent oppose impeaching judges over Trump rulings: Poll
In the Marquette University Law School poll, 70 percent of respondents said they do not back federal judges’ impeachment over anti-Trump rulings on spending cuts and agency closures, while 30 percent they did support the judges’ impeachment.
Last week, two GOP lawmakers filed articles of impeachment aimed at two federal judges that issued rulings which essentially halted Trump from going forward with parts of his agenda.
Rep. Andrew Clyde (R-Ga.) said that he had he introduced articles of impeachment targeting U.S. District Chief Judge John McConnell, who in March issued an injunction preventing a Trump administration federal spending freeze.
Another Republican lawmaker, Rep. Andy Ogles (Tenn.) announced last week that he had filed an impeachment article targeting U.S. District Judge Theodore Chuang. Chuang in March stopped tech billionaire Elon Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) from going ahead on further dismantling the United States Agency for International Development (USAID).
A third Republican, Rep. Brandon Gill (R-Texas), introduced a resolution to impeach Judge James Boasberg, who issued a ruling that barred the Trump administration from using the Alien Enemies Act to deport Venezuelan migrants.
Impeachment of judges, however, is widely seen as a futile endeavor on Capitol Hill. Skepticism from a number of Republicans could make it hard to get through the House, and a conviction in the Senate would require support from at least 14 Democrats.
Continue reading at The Hill
Trump approval slips to lowest point in second term: Survey
The new Reuters/Ipsos poll found that the president’s approval rating was 43 percent, representing a 2-point drop since the late March iteration of the survey. After Trump took office on Jan. 20, his approval rating stood at 47 percent.
In the latest poll, 37 percent of respondents approved of Trump’s handling of the economy and 30 percent approved of his approach to addressing the high cost of living in the country.
A majority of Americans, 52 percent, said that hiking tariffs on cars and auto parts will be detrimental to the people they are close with. A similar share of respondents said increasing tariffs across the board, as Trump announced he was doing on Wednesday, would make things worse, not better. Approximately a third of Republican and Republican-leaning voters said that tariffs would harm the economy, according to the poll.
Continue reading at The Hill
Most Americans oppose deporting migrants to El Salvador without due process: Survey
Six in 10 respondents in a YouGov survey released Wednesday said they did not support “deporting immigrants without criminal convictions to El Salvador to be imprisoned, without letting them challenge the deportation in court.” That included 46 percent who “strongly” opposed such deportations.
Meanwhile, 26 percent of respondents said they were in favor of such deportations, and another 13 percent were unsure.
The Trump administration has recently used the Alien Enemies Act and immigration authorities to send hundreds of migrants it has alleged are gang members to a Salvadoran prison.
But critics have called for outside oversight, with civil liberty advocates warning the administration is rushing to deport individuals without offering full evidence to support allegations of gang affiliation.
Continue reading at The Hill
ICE to release Venezuelan man seeking to give his brother kidney transplant
CHICAGO (WGN) – A man trying to give his brother a life-saving kidney transplant is set to be released after spending the last month in the custody of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
Attorneys received a call on Wednesday morning informing them that 43-year-old Jose Gregorio Gonzalez would be released from custody after spending the last month at the Clay County Detention Center in Brazil, Ind., just west of Indianapolis.
Gonzalez had been detained by ICE after he accompanied his brother, Jose Alfredo Gonzalez, to a kidney dialysis appointment.
Gonzalez had served as his brother’s caregiver since coming to the U.S. from Venezuela one year ago and was being monitored by immigration officials after being released on humanitarian parole.
Continue reading at The Hill
Trump ordered to pay legal fees in ‘Steele dossier’ lawsuit
A judge in the United Kingdom has ordered President Trump to pay more than $820,000 in legal fees to the company representing former British spy Christopher Steele after he unsuccessfully sued over a dossier.
In 2022, Trump filed a claim against Orbis Business Intelligence, a firm founded by Steele, a former MI6 agent who published a 35-page dossier that featured claims about Trump ahead of the 2016 election.
Trump argued the company violated British data protection laws and that he suffered a personal and reputational damage because of the claims.
However, in 2024, London judge Karen Steyn in London tossed out the case because “there are no compelling reasons” to allow the case to go to trial.
Continue reading at The Hill
Senate Democrats: Trump Myanmar earthquake response ‘lagging’
“We write with urgent concerns about the lagging U.S. response to the devastating earthquake that struck Burma and neighboring Thailand on March 28, 2025,” the senators wrote in their letter, using an alternative name for Myanmar.
“We ask that you make clear that U.S. sanctions will not impede providing critical relief in the wake of this natural disaster, and we urge you to organize a stronger emergency assistance effort as the death toll climbs and millions of displaced people endure both aftershocks from the earthquake and ongoing Burmese military airstrikes,” the senators added.
The letter, addressed to Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, is signed by Democratic Sens. Elizabeth Warren (Mass.), Chris Coons (Del.), Tim Kaine (Va.), Tammy Duckworth (Ill.), Chris Van Hollen (Md.) and Jeff Merkley (Ore.).
The earthquake in Myanmar occurred Friday, with the country’s government saying the death toll reached 3,145 on Thursday, according to The Associated Press. Thousands of buildings were toppled by the 7.7 magnitude earthquake that also resulted in damage to roads, the AP reported.
Continue reading at The Hill
Ford offering employee pricing to all shoppers in wake of Trump tariffs
Automotive giant Ford announced it will be offering employee pricing to all of its shoppers in the wake of President Trump’s new sweeping tariff package.
Ford is kicking off its “From America, For America” campaign Thursday. The effort, which Ford calls the “handshake deal with every American,” will be advertised on social media, in TV ads and in newspapers.
“We understand that these are uncertain times for many Americans. Whether it’s navigating the complexities of a changing economy or simply needing a reliable vehicle for your family, we want to help,” said Rob Kaffl, Ford’s director for U.S. sales and dealer relations.
The Dearborn, Mich.-based automobile manufacturer is proposing its employee-pricing plan to customers for a variety of hybrid, plug-in hybrid, and diesel Ford 2024 and 2025 models. It will last through June 2.
The company’s Raptors, specialty Mustang and Bronco vehicles, 2025 Expedition and Navigator SUVs will be excluded from the promotion, according to Ford.
For those looking to purchase an electric vehicle, the offer will be active until June 30, with a complimentary home charger included.
Continue reading at The Hill
Pentagon watchdog investigating Hegseth’s use of Signal
The Defense Department’s internal watchdog is investigating Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s use of the messaging app Signal to discuss highly sensitive military information, according to a newly released memo.
The probe will look at whether Hegseth complied with all DOD policies when he used a group chat to discuss details of a strike against Houthi militants in Yemen last month. In addition to other Trump administration officials, the group accidentally included a prominent journalist.
Continue reading at The Hill
What to know about Laura Loomer, Trump's conspiracy theorist ally
Far-right activist Laura Loomer was at President Trump's side as he campaigned and is now visiting the Oval Office. Trump previously claimed he's unaware of the conspiracy theories Loomer promoted.
Why it matters: National Security Council staffers were fired on Thursday, a day after Loomer visited the Oval Office and pressed Trump to remove specific members.
Some Republicans have sounded alarms over Loomer's presence in Trump's inner circle, concerned it's a sign he's moving deeper into a world of conspiracies and racism, Axios' Sophia Cai and Alex Thompson reported last year.
Relationship with Trump
The latest: Loomer was furious that "neocons" had "slipped through" the vetting process for Trump administration jobs, Axios' Barak Ravid and Dave Lawler reported on Thursday.
At the White House on Wednesday, she presented "research and evidence," per a U.S. official. The firings occurred on Thursday.
Axios has not confirmed if the firings were directly linked to that incident.
Loomer did not immediately respond to Axios' request for comment.
Zoom out: Loomer, who previously said she doesn't work for Trump, is a frequent guest of Mar-a-Lago and was backstage at September's presidential debate.
Continue reading at Axios
15 Senate Dems vote to cancel billions in Israeli military aid
Fifteen Senate Democrats backed a pair of resolutions from Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) to withhold billions of dollars in offensive weapons sales and other military aid to Israel.
Why it matters: The votes split the party, revealing continued internal divisions over Democrats' views on the war in Gaza and support for the Israeli government. The measures failed 15-82 and 15-83.
Sanders wants to cancel the Trump administration's proposed sales of $8.8 billion in bombs and other munitions to Israel.
In addition to Sanders, Democratic Sens. Richard Durbin (Ill.), Martin Heinrich (N.M.), Mazie Hirono (Hawaii), Ben Ray Luján (N.M.), Tim Kaine (Va.), and Andy Kim (N.J.) voted in favor.
So did Ed Markey (Mass.), Jeff Merkley (Ore.), Chris Murphy (Conn.), Brian Schatz (Hawaii), Tina Smith (Minn.), Chris Van Hollen (Md.), Elizabeth Warren (Mass.) and Peter Welch (Vt.).
No Republicans supported the measures.
Continue reading at Axios
Danish prime minister to the US: ‘You cannot annex another country’
“What are we to believe in about the country that we have admired for so many years?” Mette Frederiksen said Thursday on Trump’s Greenland threat.
The prime minister of Denmark questioned the future of her country’s relationship with the U.S. on Thursday, as President Donald Trump teases drastic measures to take over Greenland.
Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen expressed hope that the two NATO member countries’ decadeslong partnership would continue long into the future. But she said the stability of the alliance has been deeply shaken.
“When you demand to take over a part of the Kingdom of Denmark’s territory, when we are met by pressure and by threats from our closest ally, what are we to believe in about the country that we have admired for so many years?” Frederiksen said Thursday at a press conference in Greenland, alongside Jens-Frederik Nielsen, the semi-autonomous island’s prime minister.
Since his first term, Trump has repeatedly mused about acquiring the territory, home to 56,000 residents but prized by the president for its mineral reserves and strategic position in the Arctic.
Continue reading at Politico
Black L.A. social spaces flourished after George Floyd. 5 years later, will they survive?
Some Black businesses in L.A. that benefited from a wave of racial reckoning in 2020 are struggling today.
Black Image Center in Mid-City is the latest of several Black small businesses to close in Greater Los Angeles.
Black businesses are often viewed as being more than just businesses. They are considered to be extensions of the community.
Tucked away on a quiet part of La Cienega Avenue in the Culver City Arts District, Black Image Center feels reminiscent of a collegiate Black student center. On a recent Tuesday, five people were gathered for the center’s daily community co-working series.
Laughter and casual conversation swam above the sound of the clicks of their laptops. But instead of a 100-page reading or a mind-boggling problem set, they were working on creative pursuits — editing a photography-forward zine, working on the treatment for a music video project, polishing a fashion journalism article — and consulting one another on them.
“I’ve seen the daily magic that goes down at a place like this,” said Julian Samuels, a longtime volunteer at Black Image Center, who called its offerings “really rare in L.A.”
Black Image Center, an organization dedicated to providing photography resources to Black Angelenos, was born from a group of six photographers and creatives who connected over Instagram in 2020.
After securing nonprofit status, Black Image Center opened in a physical location in Mid-City in May 2022. In addition to a free 35-millimeter film refrigerator, visitors can use both a normal and large-format printer free of charge. The open-format space boasts a cozy book nook with scores of Black photography books. The space regularly hosts sold-out photography workshops, in addition to having hosted more than 50 artists-in-residence, according to co-founder Maya Mansour.
So members of the Black creative community were shocked and disappointed when Black Image Center recently announced on Instagram its imminent physical closure.
Continue reading at the Los Angeles Times
Inside Congress
What Trump’s team is telling Republicans about tariffs
We’re bringing you an afternoon Inside Congress update because we just got our hands on what the White House is telling rattled Capitol Hill Republicans about President Donald Trump‘s latest wave of tariffs.
Long story short: They want GOP lawmakers to focus on the long-term impact of the sweeping global duties without providing much guidance on how to address the free-fall in the financial markets Thursday.
A list of talking points sent to Hill Republicans Thursday and obtained by POLITICO includes a raft of arguments that Trump is “revolutionizing global trade” and that his trade actions “will usher in a reshoring renaissance.”
The document is also deeply critical of the free trade policies that many Republicans have supported for decades, and suggests they say publicly that they were a failure: “Foreign trade and economic practices have created a national emergency, and President Trump’s order imposes responsive tariffs to strengthen the international economic position of the United States and protect American workers,” the document reads, adding that those policies have led to the “selling out of the middle class and “the decline of small towns across America.”
Some of the talking points are contradictory. The document argues the tariffs “will usher in a reshoring renaissance, expanding our manufacturing base and creating new high-paying jobs” while also claiming Trump is “laser-focused on increasing foreign market access for U.S. stakeholders to restore and grow American exports” — suggesting tariffs will eventually be lowered in some cases to maintain market access.
THIS, TOO, JUST IN:
Trump just backed Florida Rep. Anna Paulina Luna‘s House proxy-voting proposal for new parents, according to a White House pool report, saying, “I don’t know why it’s controversial.” But Trump added a key caveat: “I’m going to let the speaker make the decision” — and Speaker Mike Johnson is very much not a fan, as we reported this morning.
WHAT’S STILL COMING TODAY:
The Senate is expected to vote any moment to start debating the budget resolution that will pave the way for their “big, beautiful” domestic policy bill. The vote, if successful, will set up a “vote-a-rama” starting Friday night.
Continue reading at Politico Inside Congress newsletter
DHS said in 2016 it was not moving to deport a convicted Army vet. He’s spent most of Trump’s new term in ICE custody
CNN) — After his two deployments to Iraq and despite falling into legal trouble, Marlon Parris learned the US government was not pursuing deportation proceedings against him.
The letter had been a welcome assurance some six months before President Donald Trump’s 2016 election that the Department of Homeland Security and its Immigration and Customs Enforcement bureau didn’t intend to send the US Army veteran back to his native Trinidad and Tobago, even after he pleaded guilty and served prison time for felony conspiracy to distribute cocaine as part of a sophisticated, big-money cocaine ring.
Since Parris had come to the US as a child in 1997, he had been a lawful permanent resident. As a soldier, he sought full citizenship, a benefit military recruiters often tout to entice foreigners. But his deployments, his wife told CNN, prevented him from seeing the process through, another common obstacle noncitizen service members face.
Continue reading at CNN.com
Boasberg floats contempt hearings on deportation flights, suspects ‘bad faith’ actions from Trump admin
U.S. District Court Judge James Boasberg hinted at possible contempt proceedings as he grilled a government lawyer Thursday about whether the Trump administration violated his court order by failing to turn around planes carrying migrants to a Salvadoran prison.
Boasberg made no decisions following a court hearing even as he otherwise pushed the administration to detail its timeline and decisionmaking as it loaded more than 200 migrants onto a plane amid a court battle to block the deportations.
He pushed back when a Justice Department attorney said the administration followed the law and his orders.
“It seems to me there’s a fair likelihood that that is not correct, in fact that the government acted in bad faith throughout that day. If you really believed everything you did that day was legal and could survive a court challenge, I can’t believe you ever would have operated the way you did,” Boasberg said.
He dove into the timeline of the Trump administration’s actions, from signing an order igniting the Alien Enemies Act on Friday, March 14, but not publicizing it until the next day to preparations for flights even as Boasberg scheduled a hearing.
Continue reading at The Hill
Federal judge temporarily pauses RFK Jr. effort to rescind billions of public health funds
Judge Mary McElroy of the federal district court in Rhode Island granted a 14-day restraining order to a group of 23 states and the District of Columbia that filed a lawsuit against the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) earlier this week.
“The likelihood of success on the merits is extremely strong,” McElroy said at the conclusion of the brief hearing, noting that “the record is voluminous … with allegations of irreparable harm” if the funding were to cease.
The states asked for a preliminary injunction and temporary restraining order to stop the cuts from taking effect. The officials claimed the administration acted unlawfully, without any analysis of benefits of the health funding or the dire consequences of termination.
The HHS said the funds, totaling $11.4 billion, were primarily used for COVID-19 response including testing, vaccination and hiring community health workers. Since the pandemic has ended, the HHS said the funds would be rescinded.
Continue reading at The Hill
Trump’s second-term honeymoon might be over
Tariff outcry, Wisconsin results and Senate GOP concerns add up for White House.
President Donald Trump’s second-term honeymoon appears to be coming to an end as he faces a worldwide rebuke to his tariffs and the first significant signs of Republican frustration after a sequence of blunders and setbacks for his administration.
Thursday’s tariff-inspired stock market drop comes shortly after a high-profile electoral loss in Wisconsin by a candidate firmly embraced by top Trump aide Elon Musk, the bubbling of opposition to Trump’s economic policy by Senate Republicans and a Signal controversy that upended the notion that his second term was more professional and less prone to leaks.
Trump’s emboldened approach to his second term has made clear he may not yank the reins on his maximalist policies at the first signs of stress. But while he and top aides are suddenly calling for patience and an acceptance of some economic pain in the near term, this is the same politician who, running against former President Joe Biden on the campaign trail just last year, labeled high inflation as a presidency “killer.”
“He ran to lower prices and be a good steward of the economy. After less than three months, people are talking about a recession. People are anxious and many are angry,” said former Rep. Charlie Dent (R-Pa.). “Raising the price of a car by $2,000 or $10,000 — that’s a lot of money to most people and they’re being awfully cavalier about that.”
The culmination of blunders has led to Trump’s lowest approval rating since his return to office - 43 percent in a new Reuters/Ipsos poll conducted this week. The poll showed Trump’s approval down two points from a March 21-23 survey and four points below his rating just after taking office in January.
Continue reading at Politico
White House pushes lawmakers to embrace Trump tariffs as markets tank
Talking points sent to Capitol Hill tout how Trump is “revolutionizing global trade.”
White House officials are advising GOP lawmakers on Capitol Hill to focus on the long-term impact of President Donald Trump’s sweeping new global tariffs — without providing much guidance on how to address the free fall in the financial markets Thursday.
A list of White House talking points sent to Hill Republicans Thursday and obtained by POLITICO includes a raft of arguments that Trump is “revolutionizing global trade” and that his trade actions “will usher in a reshoring renaissance.”
The document is also deeply critical of the free trade policies that many Republicans have supported for decades, and suggests they argue that they were a failure.
“Foreign trade and economic practices have created a national emergency, and President Trump’s order imposes responsive tariffs to strengthen the international economic position of the United States and protect American workers,” the document reads, adding that they have led to the “selling out of the middle class and “the decline of small towns across America.”
Some of the talking points are contradictory. The document argues the tariffs “will usher in a reshoring renaissance, expanding our manufacturing base and creating new high-paying jobs” while also claiming Trump is “laser-focused on increasing foreign market access for U.S. stakeholders to restore and grow American exports” — suggesting tariffs will eventually be lowered in some cases to maintain that market access.
Continue reading at Politico
Senate Republicans want Trump to lean on House deficit hawks on budget
Some Senate GOP lawmakers expect the president to start arm-twisting fiscal conservatives in the House to get on board with a tax plan.
Some Senate Republicans have a message for deficit hawks in the House: You’ll have to answer to President Donald Trump about why you won’t support a full extension of his tax cuts.
“At the end of the day, President Trump’s going to have to be involved, particularly in the House” said Finance Committee member Thom Tillis (R-N.C.), when asked about recent complaints by some House Republicans about the Senate’s tax plan. “If we’re getting hung up on the priorities of one or two House members, we need to get President Trump to get them to recognize what’s at stake if we fail.”
Any-arm twisting by Trump on hold-outs in the House would have to begin soon if GOP leaders want to unlock the first step for their party-line border, energy and tax bill next week. Senate Republicans hope to adopt their budget blueprint by Saturday morning, and then it would be up to the House to adopt the same blueprint.
Deficit hawks in the House pose the greatest challenge to that timeline. Shortly after the Senate released its budget on Wednesday, prominent members, including Budget Chair Jodey Arrington (R-Texas), complained that Senate Republicans’ tax plan would be fiscally irresponsible and erase months of painstaking negotiation in the House,
Specifically, the Senate plan allows for around $5.3 trillion in tax cuts. That includes $3.8 trillion in expiring provisions, which would be zeroed out under the Senate’s unorthodox accounting procedure.
Continue reading at Politico
Republicans play powerless as Trump tariff fears sweep across the globe
While GOP lawmakers could stop the presidential levies, they made clear they would not do so anytime soon.
Faced with President Donald Trump’s sweeping new tariffs, Wall Street traders voted with their dollars Thursday, selling off trillions in stock market value amid growing fears of inflation and recession.
Meanwhile, Republicans on Capitol Hill — who could use their own votes to stop the new tariffs cold — made clear they had no intention of acting anytime soon.
“I think most members on our side are very willing to give the president time,” Arkansas Sen. John Boozman said, summing up the view of many GOP lawmakers who might have qualms about Trump’s massive new levies but showed little interest — at least for now and the near future — in doing anything concrete to restrain him.
On the one hand, it was the latest example of how timid Republican lawmakers have grown in checking or challenging Trump, who has remade the GOP in his own image over the course of a decade. On the other, some hints of possible future pushback emerged — four GOP senators voted with Democrats Wednesday to overturn an earlier, smaller tranche of tariffs, and a veteran Republican senator proposed curtailing presidential powers to levy tariffs.
But in interview after interview Thursday, as the markets sunk deeper and deeper, senators made clear they would not be sticking their necks out on the issue.
“I think Congress has willingly given up its constitutional authority to the executive, and I wouldn’t be opposed to starting to claw some of that thing back, but that’s not where we are right now,” said Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin.
Continue reading at Politico
Dems tout new official estimate showing GOP tax cuts could be costlier than anticipated
The numbers from the Joint Committee on Taxation add to Democrats’ talking points and could give GOP deficit hawks more heartburn.
Democrats are wielding new official projections showing the price tag for extending Republicans’ expiring tax cuts could reach a bigger-than-expected $4.6 trillion.
And if Republicans decide not to pay for any of that, it would mean an additional $871 billion in interest payments, bringing the all-in cost to $5.5 trillion.
That’s up from a previous estimate of $4 trillion, or $4.6 trillion if debt service is included.
The numbers, which come as Republicans try to agree on a fiscal plan that will allow them to tee up sweeping tax legislation, come with some caveats.
The projections, requested by Democrats, cover an 11-year period running through 2035, while the previous estimate was over a decade, which makes the costs higher. And Democrats asked the nonpartisan Joint Committee on Taxation to make various assumptions about how Republicans would structure some business tax breaks.
At the same time, the estimate omits the “Opportunity Zone” program, which Republicans aim to extend.
GOP lawmakers are likely to attack the new estimates. They have repeatedly said Congress’ budget analysts are off-base in many instances.
Continue reading at Politico
Trump sued over China tariffs
President Trump was sued Thursday over the 20 percent tariffs he imposed on Chinese goods in the weeks leading up to Wednesday’s broader announcement.
It marks the first known legal challenge against Trump’s tariffs, which have fulfilled a campaign promise and rattled financial markets.
The lawsuit contests Trump’s use of the International Emergency Economic Powers Act of 1977 (IEEPA), arguing the law authorizes asset freezes and similar economic sanctions, but not tariffs.
“Congress passed the IEEPA to counter external emergencies, not to grant presidents a blank check to write domestic economic policy,” the lawsuit states.
The suit was brought by the New Civil Liberties Alliance (NCLA), a conservative legal advocacy group, on behalf of Simplified, a Florida-based small business that sells planners and purchases products from China.
Filed in federal court in Pensacola, Fla., the suit asks a judge to declare Trump’s Chinese tariffs unlawful and block their implementation.
Continue reading at The Hill
Fox News analyst hits Vance over deportation comments: ‘Politics is overwhelming the law here’
McCarthy pushed back on Vice President Vance’s recent comments suggesting criticism of administration’s deportation strategy “is such a weird, mistaken placement of priorities,” and that, “We do not ask permission from far-left Democrats before we deport illegal immigrants. We do the American people’s business.”
“Well, I just think the politics is overwhelming the law here,” McCarthy said on Fox News, when asked to respond to Vance’s comments, which he made in an earlier interview on “Fox and Friends.”
“No one is saying they can’t deport these people,” McCarthy continued. “Nobody is saying that. But in the United States, we have due process of law.”
McCarthy, a former federal prosecutor, said most, if not all, of the alleged foreign terrorists he prosecuted received life sentences—but only after appearing before a judge.
“I couldn’t say to the agent, ‘Go arrest them, and instead of bringing them to court, put them on a plane and take them to a third country,” McCarthy said, in a nod to the government flying alleged Venezuelan gang members to El Salvador for detainment.
“We have laws about… the process that you have to go through in order to obtain that outcome,” McCarthy added.
Continue reading at The Hill
South Korea’s impeached president is removed from office, four months after declaring martial law
Seoul, South Korea (CNN) — South Korea’s highest court has removed embattled President Yoon Suk Yeol from office, ending months of uncertainty and legal wrangling after he briefly declared martial law in December and plunged the nation into political turmoil.
The court’s decision on Friday marks Yoon’s formal dismissal from the presidency after parliament voted to impeach him in December, relieving many lawmakers who feared he could try imposing martial law again if he was reinstated.
In a separate trial, Yoon was arrested in January on charges of leading an insurrection, then released in March after a court canceled his arrest warrant – though it did not drop his charges.
Continue reading at CNN.com
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My Opinion Pieces:
That work wardrobe you need? Fuhget it for the next four years | Blog#42
If you’re a white collar worker, one of the costs of working is having to maintain a work-appropriate wardrobe, and pencilling in time at your favorite department store at your local upscale mall. No matter what kind of work you do, if you have children, you pencil in a trip to the local mall to buy children’s clothing, with time at their favorite restaurant for a burger and dessert.