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      Stock markets rise as Trump backtracks on high China tariffs and firing Fed chair

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      Stock markets have risen around the world after Donald Trump said his tariffs on China would come down “substantially” and he had “no intention” of firing the chair of the US central bank, Jerome Powell.Weeks of tough talk on trade from White House officials have rattled investors and Trump now appears to be softening his tone. The president told reporters in Washington on Tuesday he planned to be “very nice” to China in trade talks and that tariffs could drop in both countries if they could reach a deal, adding: “It will come down substantially, but it won’t be zero.”Overnight in Asia, Japan’s Nikkei rose by nearly 2%, Hong Kong’s Hang Seng was up 2.4% and the South Korean Kospi gained 1.6%.The rally spread to Europe in early trading on Wednesday, with the UK’s FTSE 100 index up 1.6%, while the Italian FTSE MIB rose by 1.1%. Germany’s Dax gained 2.6% and France’s Cac 2.1%.Meanwhile, US stocks opened on a high Wednesday morning, with the Dow rallying over 800 points, and the Nasdaq Composite up over 3%. The rally stalled in the afternoon but all the major stock markets managed to end the day higher.On Wednesday, the US treasury secretary, Scott Bessent, also took a softer, optimistic tone on China in remarks delivered at the Institute of International Finance in Washington DC, saying that China “knows it needs to change”.“If China is serious on less dependence on export-led manufacturing growth and rebalancing toward a domestic economy … let’s rebalance together,” Bessent said. “This is an incredible opportunity.”Bessent told investors in a private meeting on Tuesday that he expects a “de-escalation” of the trade war between China and the US in the “very near future”.“‘America First’ does not mean America alone. To the contrary, it is a call for deeper collaboration and mutual respect among trade partners,” Bessent said on Wednesday.Investor confidence also grew after Trump told reporters he would not fire Powell, the chair of the US Federal Reserve, reversing the previous day’s losses triggered by the president calling the central bank boss a “major loser”.The president has criticised the Fed chair repeatedly for refusing to cut interest rates and last week hinted that he believed he could dismiss Powell before his term as the head of the central bank comes to an end in May next year.Trump wrote on his social media platform, Truth Social, last week that Powell’s termination “could not come fast enough”, after the Fed chair raised concerns about the impact of trade tariffs on the American economy.However, the suggestion from the White House that the US central bank will remain independent helped stocks to rise on Wednesday, as well as the prospect of lower tariffs on Chinese imports to the US.The US dollar, which hit a three-year low on Tuesday before recovering, rose by 0.25% against a basket of major currencies.Oil prices also rose on Wednesday, with Brent crude rising above $68 (£51) a barrel amid hopes that lower tariffs will be less damaging to the global economy. The rise was also led by new US sanctions targeting Iranian liquefied petroleum gas and the crude oil shipping magnate Seyed Asadoollah Emamjomeh.Meanwhile, gold, which is traditionally viewed by investors as a safe haven asset during volatile periods, retreated from the new high of $3,500 (£2,620) an ounce it hit on Tuesday, to trade at about $3,307. More

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      From peppercorns to plastic forks: US businesses that rely on Chinese products reel from Trump tariffs

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      Chang Chang, a Sichuan restaurant in Washington DC, was already noticing that some of its business had dropped off after tens of thousands of federal workers living in the area lost their jobs. But the recent tariff rate hikes mark an even greater blow for the restaurant.Sichuan peppercorns, which create the signature numbing spice of the regional Chinese cuisine, along with other ingredients, face an at least 145% tariff after last week’s tit-for-tat trade battle between China and the United States. The steep rate is an existential threat for restaurants across the country that rely on specialty ingredients imported from China to craft the authentic flavors of their dishes, said operators who were blindsided.“We’re really worried,” said Jen Lin-Liu, the director of events for Chang Chang. The restaurant is part of the Peter Chang restaurant group that operates a dozen Sichuan restaurants across Washington, Virginia and Maryland.The restaurant group sources meats and vegetables from local farmers, including an Amish community in the Finger Lakes region that supplies its shiitake mushrooms and organic pork. Still, it is dependent on imported items such as fermented chili peppers and soy sauce, which give the dishes their unique taste.“Some of the products that we need just do not exist in the United States,” Lin-Liu said.The cost of other items is rising as well. “There are increases in any supply you can think of, from takeout boxes to printer paper to menu printing paper,” she said, adding that if the tariff rates stick, the price of a $20 dish may rise to $35 or $40.View image in fullscreenGeorge Chen, the chef who created Eight Tables, a fine-dining restaurant in San Francisco, said that while some of the items on his menu may be replaceable with options from Taiwan, it undermines the integrity he’s put into sourcing the unique ingredients for his dishes.“Replacements disrupt complex long-term relationships,” explained Chen. “It took me years to find the special spice vendors or the organic tea farmer in China from my many years living and working there.”Eight Tables is part of a larger marketplace called China Live, which includes a dining hall, a cold-drinks bar and a shop that sells wares including chopsticks, glass tea mugs and pots.“The area most concerning is our retail platform,” said Chen. For those items, “it’s not possible to re-order at the tariff rates”.For direct importers, like the Mala Market, an online shop, the tariffs on Chinese products threaten its entire business model. Sichuan peppercorns are popular on the site, but it also sells a number of items produced in their original region using traditional methods. The owner, Taylor Holliday, calls these “heritage products”, which include soy sauce handcrafted in Zhongba, fermented soybeans aged for three years in Sichuan and sesame paste stone-ground in Shandong.“These are products which have been made in that exact area for hundreds if not thousands of years,” said Holliday. “They have such a history, there’s no way these products can be made anywhere else.”While part of Holliday’s business supplies wholesale items to restaurants around the country, the majority of its orders are from home cooks.“A lot of our customers are people who have a cultural or emotional attachment to China,” Holliday said. “It’s more than just the food, it’s a cultural attachment to these products.”EMei, a Sichuan restaurant in Philadelphia, sources not only its peppercorns from China but also items such as chopsticks and plastic cutlery for takeout orders. Similar to many Chinese restaurants, delivery is a major part of the restaurant’s business.“So far, this is the main impact for us,” said Dan Tsao, the owner of EMei, who said the tariff hikes add about $1 to $1.50 to each delivery order.The tariffs may also create a supply issue for these items.“Importers are pausing more of their orders from China. They think 125% is crazy,” Tsao said.While the restaurant sources many of its ingredients from local farmers, it still relies on some imports from other countries. It orders broccoli from Mexico, shrimp from Ecuador and rice from Thailand. Rice is especially critical; the restaurant runs through a supply of about 200 pounds each night, Tsao said. Since Donald Trump’s “liberation day” announcement earlier this month, the price per pound has already risen more than 25%.View image in fullscreenThe frenetic nature of the tariff policy shifts has left owners and suppliers cautious about which steps to take and how to plan for the future.Tsao has plans to open two more restaurants later this year and has noticed some construction estimates for renovations rising. Most of the building materials come from China, too.“I’m hesitating now,” he said. The possibility of a recession while the prices of supplies and renovations keep going up may change his calculation. “There will be all these ripple effects on the system and there’s so much economic uncertainty,” he added.Holliday said she has one container of product already on the way from China that is scheduled to clear US customs in about five weeks, but will not raise prices until she is forced to.“I’m praying that something happens by then,” she said. But if it doesn’t, she’s resigned to paying the tariffs.“There’s no other way we can run our business,” she said. More

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      Peter Navarro: the economist who has outsmarted Elon Musk and has the ear of Donald Trump

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      Elon Musk called him “dumber than a sack of bricks” but, in the raw contest for political power, Peter Navarro has outsmarted the billionaire.The tumult in global trade shows that for now it is the 75-year-old economist, not Musk, who has Donald Trump’s ear in the Oval Office.Navarro is the US president’s chief trade adviser and the intellectual driving force behind the global tariffs and trade war with China. The chaos and uncertainty have been too strong even for Musk, the great disrupter, but Navarro’s silky mien still assures the US all is well.Even after the tech tycoon publicly compared him to a sack of bricks, and added that he was “truly a moron”, Navarro retained his composure. “I’ve been called worse,” he told NBC.That is true. Navarro has been called a charlatan and a criminal who risks driving the world economy off a cliff.It is a remarkable metamorphosis for a man who a decade ago was a little-known academic nearing retirement at the University of California, Irvine, a respected, stolid institution in Orange County.Then the professor’s hawkish views on China caught the eye of Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign and vaulted him to Washington, where he played key roles in economic policy, the Covid pandemic and the attempt to overturn the 2020 election, a vortex that landed him in jail – for contempt of Congress – only for him to re-emerge, more influential than ever, in Trump’s second administration.“This is the land of reinvention, both cosmetic and ideological, and he is part of that,” said John Pitney, a political scientist and author at Claremont McKenna College.Critics worry that Navarro is trying to reinvent economic rules and the postwar global order with improvisation and bluster that could trigger recession and backlash. For Trump, Navarro is the expert who can articulate a daring and necessary pivot to protectionism.Navarro’s early life, and career, suggested a different trajectory. The son of a musician and a secretary, he grew up on the east coast and obtained a master’s degree in public administration and then a PhD in economics from Harvard. His doctoral dissertation was not on trade but on corporations’ charity motives.He taught economics at San Diego universities and did research on public utilities before landing a tenure position as professor of economics and public policy at UCI in 1989. Tanned and svelte, he had the look of a glossy politician and ran as a Democrat for elected office, including for mayor of San Diego and Congress, but lost.In 2001 he switched to writing get-rich investing books such as If It’s Raining in Brazil, Buy Starbucks: The Investor’s Guide to Profiting from News and Other Market-Moving Events.In 2006 the professor took another swerve by publishing the first of a series of books, and accompanying documentaries, that assailed China as an insatiable menace that bullies, lies and cheats, especially on trade rules through currency manipulation, illegal export subsidies, intellectual property theft and polluting sweatshops.There is no evidence of causality but Navarro’s alarm coincided with California’s proliferating number of Chinese investors and students, notably at UCI, which prompted racially tinged nicknames such as the University of Chinese Immigrants and the University of Caucasian Isolation.Other economists also accused Beijing of unfair practices but Navarro’s radical critique put him on the fringe.In 2016 Trump reportedly instructed his son-in-law Jared Kushner to do research to bolster his views on China. Kushner found Navarro’s book, Death By China, on Amazon, and Navarro ended up advising the campaign.In an interview that year with the Guardian near his Laguna Beach home, Navarro endorsed Trump’s use of the word rape to characterise Beijing’s impact on the US. “It’s an apt description of the damage and carnage that China’s trade policies have wrought on the American economic heartland. What’s happening is rapacious.” He also endorsed Trump’s proposed 45% tariffs on Chinese goods, which he said would compel Beijing to back down. “We’re already in a trade war with China. The problem is we’ve not been fighting back. Trump, through tariffs, wants to call a truce.”Trump had few credentialed academics on his team so Navarro served a useful purpose, Pitney said. “He provided a degree of scholarly cover for what Trump was saying. That’s why he was brought into the administration.”Navarro’s standing in the White House survived the disclosure that his books cited a fictitious expert, Ron Vara, that is an anagram of Navarro. He sought to shrug off the deception by calling it an “inside joke” with himself and a “Hitchcockian writing device”.In Trump’s first administration, more mainstream economic advisers prevailed and there was no trade war. Even so, Navarro expanded his remit to public health during the pandemic, which afforded more opportunity to assail China, and established personal chemistry with the president that made him a survivor amid White House personnel flux.After his chief lost the 2020 election, Navarro promoted the theory that the election was rigged and sought to delay its certification. For rebuffing a congressional committee that investigated the January 2021 attack on the Capitol he was found guilty of criminal contempt and last year served four months in prison.Now back in the White House as Trump’s senior counsellor for trade and manufacturing, Navarro’s influence has been felt in tariffs, stock market volatility and grim economic warnings despite a pause in the most severe tariffs for 90 days.Navarro has a combative streak yet he chose to project indifference over Musk’s insults. “It’s no problem,” he told CNN. A White House spokesperson shrugged off the row: “Boys will be boys.” More

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      Why do Trump voters have no regrets? Because the people they hate are getting hurt more | Arwa Mahdawi

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      The stock market is plunging, prices are rising, federal workers are getting laid off, students are being snatched off the street by immigration agents. The US is many things at the moment, but stable is not one of them. So, amid all this turmoil, how are all the Donald Trump voters feeling? Has buyer’s remorse set in? Are they starting to wonder whether voting in a convicted felon as president – a man who has declared bankruptcy six times – might not have been the wisest move?Not according to the polls. Rather, the US appears to be a nation of Édith Piafs: they regret rien. I’m not saying that disillusioned Republicans don’t exist; do enough digging and you can certainly find a few. And journalists have been doing a lot of digging. During Trump’s first term, there was a steady stream of media pieces profiling the regretful Trump voter. The genre has remained popular through the first few months of Trump 2.0. But, according to a much-discussed segment by CNN senior data reporter Harry Enten this week, polling proves that the idea of “regretful” Trump voters is “more of a media creation than anything else”.“I hear all these stories, all these articles, all the Trump voters, they regret what they did back in 2024. I’m here to tell you, uh-uh. Very few of them regret what they did back in 2024,” Enten said on Wednesday.Enten was referencing a new poll from the University of Massachusetts Amherst which found that just 2% of Trump voters agreed with the statement “I regret my [2024] vote and would vote differently if I could”. That’s almost half the number (3.5%) of Trump voters who said the same thing in February 2017. Meanwhile, 74% of Trump voters said they feel very confident that they made the right choice.Of course, polls aren’t always reliable. Indeed, I’m going to be a little cruel and refer you back to an Enten segment from five days before the election, where the data guru looked at three 2024 polling trends that pointed to a potential victory for vice-president Kamala Harris. “If Harris wins the signs were clear as day,” he declared. In short: Mark Twain had the measure of polling when he said “there are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics”.Asking people whether they regret an important choice they just made is also a loaded question. It’s akin to asking them “are you a complete idiot?” So I would treat these particular polls with a dose of caution: just because people don’t actively admit to regretting their vote, it doesn’t mean that they’re not worried about the direction the country is headed in, or that they’re thrilled about Trump’s performance as president. On the contrary, Trump’s approval rating is dropping and a lot of people are worried about inflation and higher prices. Everyone is feeling some pain right now.In a hyper-polarised country, however, what seems to really matter to many voters isn’t how much pain they’re feeling themselves, but whether the other side is suffering more. I could cite various academic papers on the politics of resentment; I could surface endless statistics on the subject. But I think the best summation of Trumpism is a quote from a woman called Crystal Minton from back in 2019, which went viral after being included in a New York Times report. Minton lived in a Florida town that had been ravaged by the double whammy of a hurricane and a Trump administration-instigated government shutdown, and was suffering. “I voted for [Trump], and he’s the one who’s doing this,” Minton complained. “I thought he was going to do good things. He’s not hurting the people he needs to be hurting.”Right now, however, Trump is hurting the sort of people many of his voters seem to be interested in seeing get hurt. He’s an avenging angel, wreaking vengeance on the elite institutions, scapegoats and bogeymen that the Republican party has spent years blaming for the state of the US. He’s cut funding to all the Ivy League universities he’s called “woke” and declared out of touch with American values. He’s gone after transgender people. And he has rounded up immigrants and protesters, just as he promised he would do.Trump isn’t just doing every vindictive thing he told his supporters he was going to do: he’s trolling his detractors via nasty memes. He’s rubbing salt in their wounds. There has been what Marcus Maloney, a sociology professor at Coventry University in the UK, called a “4Chanification of American politics”. The White House Valentine’s Day post, for example, was a poem: “Roses are red, violets are blue, come here illegally, and we’ll deport you”. Cutesy font appeared above the floating heads of Trump and his border czar, Tom Homan. And a video last month posted by the White House showed a man being deported while Semisonic’s famous lyrics played in the background: “You don’t have to go home, but you can’t stay here.” The cruelty is very much the point.While Trump may be hurting all the people he said he’d be hurting, there’s plenty of pain to go around. There has been a lot of anger from some of Trump’s backers in Wall Street over the volatility that the president’s tariff policy has injected into the stock market. Some of his billionaire backers, such as the investor Bill Ackman, have been screaming bloody murder. But for a lot of Trump’s backers, the fluctuations of the stock market have no immediate effect on their lives. The top 10% of Americans hold 93% of all stocks. This is what happens when inequality reaches record levels: you get a group of people with nothing to lose, which means they have little to regret. You get people happy to burn the whole system down.None of this is to say that Trump voters are immune to remorse. With his tariff plan, he is just getting started. The president may be good at bluster, but even his most diehard supporter are going to realise quite quickly that food prices – which Trump promised to lower on the campaign trail – are not, in fact, going down. When the price of basic goods keep rising, there’s only so long you can keep feeding people obvious lies. Perhaps the Trumpers won’t get quite so much of a dopamine rush from “owning the libs” when they can’t afford to own anything else.

      Arwa Mahdawi is a Guardian columnist More

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      Trump news at a glance: president takes aim at Harvard, threatening tax-exempt status

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      The Trump administration has taken aim at Harvard, with President Trump calling for the university’s tax-exempt status to be revoked, despite the likely illegality of that threat.The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) is reportedly planning to enact the president’s demand, a move that would cost Harvard millions of dollars each year.The move is part on an ongoing battle, and a significant escalation on Trump’s attack on Harvard and his aggressive, multi-pronged assault on higher education institutions. The White has urged Harvard to change its hiring, teaching and admissions practices to help fight antisemitism on campus.Harvard has said that it has taken steps to address the issue, and has received support from institutions such as Stanford University, and other schools united in support of academic freedom.Here are the key stories at a glance:IRS to revoke Harvard’s tax-exempt status – reportsThe IRS is reportedly planning to revoke Harvard’s tax-exempt status in what would be a probably illegal move amid Donald Trump’s concerted attack on the independence of US institutions of higher education.Read the full storyÁbrego García’s wife rejects Trump officials’ ‘violent’ depictionsThe wife of Kilmar Ábrego García, the Maryland man unlawfully deported to a mega-prison in El Salvador, has strongly criticized the Trump administration’s attempt to smear his character, saying a temporary restraining order against him was “out of caution” and that “he is a loving partner and father” who is being denied justice.Read the full storyLuigi Mangione indicted on federal murder charge over healthcare CEO killingLuigi Mangione was indicted on Thursday on a federal murder charge in the killing of UnitedHealthcare chief executive Brian Thompson outside a Manhattan hotel last year, a necessary step for prosecutors to seek the death penalty.The indictment returned by a grand jury in Manhattan federal court also charges Mangione with two counts of stalking and a firearms count.Read the full storyTrump condemns Fed chair over interest ratesDonald Trump early on Thursday condemned the Federal Reserve chair, Jerome Powell, for not lowering US interest rates, and expressed a wish for him to be gone from his role. The US president lambasted Powell as “always too late and wrong” in a post on his Truth Social platform.Read the full storySpaceX is frontrunner to build Trump’s ‘Golden Dome’Elon Musk’s SpaceX and two partners have emerged as frontrunners to win a crucial part of Donald Trump’s “Golden Dome” missile defense shield, six people familiar with the matter told Reuters.Read the full storyBooker to visit El Salvador in effort to return wrongly deported manCory Booker plans to travel to El Salvador, a source familiar with the New Jersey senator’s itinerary said, as Democrats seek to pressure the Trump administration to return a wrongly deported Maryland resident.Read the full storyMeloni says Trump to visit Rome after Washington talksGiorgia Meloni said Donald Trump had accepted her invitation for an official trip to Rome, as the pair met in Washington in an attempt by the Italian prime minister to bridge the gap between the EU and US amid trade tariff tensions.Read the full storyWhat else happened today:

      A Turkish PhD student detained after co-authoring an op-ed about Gaza has been denied bond by an immigration judge in Massachusetts.

      Trump’s fledgling media firm urged market regulators to investigate “suspicious activity” after a London-based hedge fund disclosed a vast bet against its stock.

      Two people were killed in a mass shooting at the Florida State University (FSU) campus in Tallahassee on Thursday, and six others were injured, police said. “It’s horrible that things like this take place,” the US president said.
      Catching up? Here’s what happened on 17 April 2025. More

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      Finally, the Trump regime has met its match | Robert Reich

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      It was bound to happen.Encouraged by the ease with which many big US institutions caved in to their demands, the Trump regime – that is, the small cadre of bottom-feeding fanatics around Donald Trump (JD Vance, Elon Musk, Russell Vought, Stephen Miller and RFK Jr) along with the child king himself – have overreached.They’ve dared China, Harvard and the supreme court to blink.But guess what? They’ve met their matches. None of them has blinked – and they won’t.China not only refused to back down when the Trump regime threatened it with huge tariffs, but also retaliated with huge tariffs of its own, plus a freeze on the export of rare-earth elements that the US’s high-tech and defense industries depend on.Harvard also pointedly defied the regime, issuing a clear rebuke to its attempt to interfere with academic freedom.The supreme court – in a rare unanimous decision – ordered Trump to facilitate the return of a legal US resident wrongly deported to a dangerous prison in El Salvador, without any criminal charges.But the White House was defiant. On Monday, both Trump officials and El Salvador’s president, Nayib Bukele, said they could not return Kilmar Ábrego García.“Of course, I’m not going to do it,” Bukele said when asked. Trump sat by his side with a smile on his face. The US attorney general, Pam Bondi, joined in the cruel imitation of justice: “That’s up to El Salvador if they want to return him.”What’s next?I suspect the testosterone-poisoned lackeys around King Trump are urging him to hit back even harder, escalating their confrontations with China, Harvard and the supreme court. They view these showdowns as ultimate tests of the regime’s strength.Think of it – they must be telling themselves and their boss – what prizes! If they defeat China, they have brought the world’s other economic powerhouse to its knees!If they defeat Harvard University, they have been victorious over the world’s intellectual powerhouse!skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionIf they defeat the supreme court, they have conquered the entire US government!Win these battles and no one will ever again doubt the power and resolve of the Trump regime!Hopefully, Trump is smarter than this. He knows these three institutions will not back down. They are rich and powerful enough to defy Trump’s escalating threats and demands. They cannot and will not cower.If Trump escalates his wars against them, they’ll become even stronger in the eyes of their supporters and constituents, and much of the world.The American people will see that Trump is actually a blowhard with no real power at all.So if he’s smart, Trump will try to de-escalate these three conflicts.He’s already hinted at an off-ramp with China. He will probably find some way to claim that Harvard has capitulated to his demands. He will avoid a showdown with the supreme court.But keep a watch on these three. They are Trump’s most formidable foes. If he doesn’t understand this and instead succumbs to the urges of his power-crazed lackeys, the Trump regime’s days will in effect be over before it even completes the first hundred of them.

      Robert Reich, a former US secretary of labor, is a professor of public policy emeritus at the University of California, Berkeley. He is a Guardian US columnist. His newsletter is at robertreich.substack.com More

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      Trump news at a glance: US senator blocked on El Salvador visit; Fed warns on tariffs

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      A Democratic senator who says El Salvador’s government refused to allow him to visit his constituent wrongly deported to the country has condemned an “unjust situation”. Chris Van Hollen said its vice-president told him it would not be possible for him to speak with Kilmar Ábrego García in person or on the phoneThe senator’s visit came as Democrats have seized on the deportation and the Trump administration’s refusal to take any steps to return him, in apparent defiance of the supreme court, to argue that the president is plunging the US into a constitutional crisis.A federal judge, meanwhile, threatened contempt proceedings against Trump officials for violating his injunction over the deportation of alleged Venezuelan gang members. The judge also warned that he could name an independent prosecutor if the White House stonewalled contempt proceedings.And the Federal Reserve chair warned that Donald Trump’s tariffs were likely to worsen inflation, while US stocks slid further and the value of Nvidia dropped by billions after the president imposed new restrictions on the chip giant.Here are the key stories at a glance:El Salvador denies senator’s request to meet Ábrego GarcíaMaryland Democratic senator Chris Van Hollen says the government of El Salvador has turned down his request to visit Kilmar Ábrego García, his constituent who was wrongly deported to the Central American country last month.Read the full storyJudge finds probable cause to hold Trump officials in contemptA federal judge ruled on Wednesday there was probable cause to hold Trump officials in criminal contempt for violating his temporary injunction that barred the use of the Alien Enemies Act wartime power to deport alleged Venezuelan gang members.Read the full storyFed chair says Trump tariffs could make inflation worseJerome Powell, the US Federal Reserve chair, warned that Trump’s tariffs were generating a “challenging scenario” for the central bank and were likely to worsen inflation. His comments on Wednesday came as US stock markets had already been rattled by a new trade restriction on the chip designer Nvidia.Read the full storyMore universities back Harvard as Trump doubles downNumerous Democratic politicians and top universities across the country have rallied in support of Harvard, but the Trump administration has doubled down, threatening to strip Harvard of its tax-exempt status and insisting that the university apologize.Read the full storyUK labels trade documents ‘secret’ to shield from US eyesUK officials are tightening security when handling sensitive trade documents to prevent them from falling into US hands amid Trump’s tariff war, the Guardian can reveal. In an indication of the strains on the “special relationship”, British civil servants have changed document-handling guidance, adding higher classifications to some trade negotiation documents in order to better shield them from American eyes, sources said.Read the full storyRFK Jr contradicts experts on autismThe US health secretary, Robert F Kennedy Jr, said in his first press conference that the significant and recent rise in autism diagnoses was evidence of an “epidemic” caused by an “environmental toxin”, which would be rooted out by September. However, autism advocates and health experts have repeatedly stated the rise in diagnoses is related to better recognition of the condition, changing diagnostic criteria and better access to screening.Read the full storyDoge tried to embed staffers in criminal justice non-profit, says groupStaff at Elon Musk’s so-called department of government efficiency (Doge) demanded to meet with an independent non-profit to discuss embedding a team within their organization, according to the non-profit, stating that refusal to take the meeting would mean a violation of Trump’s executive order empowering Doge.Read the full storyCalifornia launches legal challenge against Trump’s ‘illegal’ tariffsCalifornia is preparing to ask a court to block Trump’s “illegal” tariffs, accusing the president of overstepping his authority and causing “immediate and irreparable harm” to the world’s fifth-largest economy. The lawsuit, which was to be filed in federal court on Wednesday by California’s governor, Gavin Newsom, and attorney general, Rob Bonta, is the most significant challenge yet to Trump’s flurry of on-again-off-again tariffs.Read the full storyWhat else happened today:

      The Trump administration is shuttering the state department’s last remaining bastion to monitor foreign disinformation campaigns.

      The Trump administration sued Maine for allowing transgender girls to compete in school sports.

      Seth Rogen’s pointed criticism of Trump’s policies on science was edited out of the filmed coverage of an annual science awards show, it has emerged.
      Catching up? Here’s what happened on 16 April 2025. More

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      California launches legal challenge against Trump’s ‘illegal’ tariffs

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      California is preparing to ask a court to block Donald Trump’s “illegal” tariffs, accusing the president of overstepping his authority and causing “immediate and irreparable harm” to the world’s fifth-largest economy.The lawsuit, to be filed in federal court on Wednesday by California’s governor, Gavin Newsom, and attorney general, Rob Bonta, is the most significant challenge yet to Trump’s flurry of on-again-off-again tariffs.In the complaint, California officials argue that the US constitution explicitly grants Congress the power to impose tariffs and that the president’s invocation of emergency powers to unilaterally escalate a global trade war, which has rattled stock markets and raised fears of recession, is unlawful.“No state is poised to lose more than the state of California,” Newsom said, formally unveiling the lawsuit during a press conference at an almond farm in the Central valley on Wednesday. “It’s a serious and sober moment, and I’d be … lying to you if I said it can be quickly undone.”Invoking a statute known as the International Emergency Economic Powers Act of 1977 (IEEPA), Trump has issued a series of declarations imposing, reversing, delaying, restarting and modifying tariffs on US trading partners.The complaint argues that the law does not give the US president the authority to impose tariffs without the consent of Congress. It asks the court to declare Trump’s tariff orders “unlawful and void” and to order the Department of Homeland Security and Customs and Border Protection to stop enforcing them.“The president is yet again acting as if he’s above the law. He isn’t,” Bonta said at the press conference on Wednesday, noting that it was the state’s 14th lawsuit against the Trump administration in less than 14 weeks. “Bottom line: Trump doesn’t have the singular power to radically upend the country’s economic landscape. That’s not how our democracy works.”Trump has said tariffs are necessary to ensure “fair trade”, protect American workers and turn the US into an “industrial powerhouse”.In a statement responding to the lawsuit, White House spokesman Kush Desai said the administration was “committed” to the president’s trade strategy. “Instead of focusing on California’s rampant crime, homelessness and unaffordability, Gavin Newsom is spending his time trying to block President Trump’s historic efforts to finally address the national emergency of our country’s persistent goods trade deficits,” he said.Newsom said his office had informed the White House in advance that it was bringing this lawsuit, but that the governor has not spoken to the president directly about it.Earlier this month, on what he called “liberation day”, the president imposed a sweeping 10% tariff on nearly all imported goods and higher tariffs for a host of countries, most of which he later paused for 90 days.A 25% tariff on imports from Canada and Mexico, the US’s largest trading partners, remains in effect, while Trump’s actions have provoked a trade war with China, its third-largest trading partner, subject to US tariffs of 145%.California, the US’s largest importer and second-largest exporter with an economy larger than most countries, relies heavily on trade with Mexico, Canada and China, the state’s top trading partners. The complaint says the economic consequences of Trump’s tariffs on the state will be “significant”.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionCalifornia is the first US state to bring a lawsuit against the Trump administration’s tariff policies. Earlier this week, a legal advocacy group filed a similar lawsuit on behalf of US businesses that import goods from countries targeted by the levies, asking the US court of international trade to block Trump’s tariffs.Newsom said said the economic consequences of the tariffs would be reflected in a revised budget proposal he will submit next month. “Across the spectrum, the impacts are off the charts.”“Regardless of all the scientific and engineering advances, farming is still hard work, and the weather makes every year a gamble,” said Christine Gemperle, who hosted the governor and attorney at her almond farm. “The last thing we need is more uncertainty and not knowing whether we can ride this one out.”California is the nation’s top agricultural exporter, shipping nuts, tomatoes, wine and rice around the world. California’s agricultural exports totalled nearly $24bn in 2022.After Trump’s announcement of across-the-board levies, Newsom said his administration would pursue new trade deals with international partners to exempt California from retaliatory tariffs. It also launched a campaign to encourage Canadian tourism to California, which has fallen dramatically in response to the Trump administration’s policies. Newsom called the effort a “sign of the times”.“We talk about own goals. We talk about stupidity,” he said of Trump’s pursuit of a global trade war. “This needs to be updated in the next Wikipedia or the next encyclopedia as a poster child for that.” More