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    Global markets in turmoil as Trump tariffs wipe $2.5tn off Wall Street

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    Global financial markets have been plunged into turmoil as Donald Trump’s escalating trade war knocked trillions of dollars off the value of the world’s biggest companies and heightened fears of a US recession.As world leaders reacted to the US president’s “liberation day” tariff policies demolishing the international trading order, about $2.5tn (£1.9tn) was wiped off Wall Street and share prices in other financial centres across the globe.Experts said Trump’s sweeping border taxes of between 10% and 50% on the US’s traditional allies and enemies alike had dramatically added to the risk of a steep global downturn and a recession in the world’s biggest economy.World leaders from Brussels to Beijing rounded on Trump. China condemned “unilateral bullying” practices and the EU said it was drawing up countermeasures.While Trump timed his Wednesday evening Rose Garden address to avoid live tickers of crashing stock markets, that fate arrived when Asian exchanges opened hours later.Drawing comparisons with the market crashes at the height of the coronavirus pandemic and the 2008 financial collapse, the sell-off swept the globe, sending exchanges plunging in Asia and Europe. The UK’s FTSE 100 index of blue-chip companies closed the day down 133 points, or 1.5%, to 8,474 after suffering its worst day since August.All three main US stock markets were down at the end of trading in their worst day since June 2020, during the Covid pandemic. The tech-heavy Nasdaq fell 5.97%, while the S&P 500 and the Dow dropped 4.8% and 3.9%, respectively. Apple and Nvidia, two of the US’s largest companies by market value, lost a combined $470bn in value by midday.Libby Cantrill, the head of US public policy at Pimco, one of the world’s largest bond fund managers, said investors were growing increasingly concerned as Trump appeared to be unwilling to soften his stance in the face of market turmoil, although hope remained that he would ultimately strike deals with US trading partners.“There is likely a limit to how much pain he and his administration are willing to endure in order to rebalance the economy, but when that is or what that looks like remains to be seen,” she said.“For now, we should assume that his pain tolerance is pretty high and that tariffs stick around for a while.”The US dollar hit a six-month low, falling 2.2% on Thursday morning, amid a growing loss of confidence in a currency previously considered the safest in the world for most of the past century.Warning clients to beware a “dollar confidence crisis”, George Saravelos, the head of foreign exchange research at Deutsche Bank, said: “The safe-haven properties of the dollar are being eroded.”The heaviest falls in share prices on Thursday were reserved for US companies with complex international supply chains stretching into the countries that Trump is targeting with billions of dollars in fresh border taxes.Apple, which makes most of its iPhones, tablets and other devices for the US market in China, was down 9.5% at close of trading, and there were steep declines for other large multinationals including Microsoft, Nvidia, Dell and HP.Commodities fell sharply, including a 7% plunge in oil prices, reflecting growing concerns over the global economic outlook.Speaking to reporters on Thursday, Trump said: “I think it’s going very well. It was an operation like when a patient gets operated on and it’s a big thing. I said this would be exactly the way it is … We’ve never seen anything like it. The markets are going to boom. The stock is going to boom. The country is going to boom.”Trump later said: “Every country is calling us. That’s the beauty of what we do. If we would have asked these countries to do us a favour they would have said no. Now they will do anything for us.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionOver the last nearly 24 hours, Trump has faced widespread backlash from US lawmakers and global leaders over his tariffs plan, with the senior Republican senator Mitch McConnell calling it “bad policy” while Canada – a traditional American ally – called the tariffs “unjustified” and “unwanted”.Tariffs will fall heavily on some of the world’s poorest countries, with nations in south-east Asia, including Myanmar, among the most affected.Cambodia, where about one in five of the population live below the poverty line, was the worst-hit country in the region with a tariff rate of 49%. Vietnam faces 46% tariffs and Myanmar, reeling from a devastating earthquake and years of civil war after a 2021 military coup, was hit with 44%.Analysts warned that garment and sports shoe makers, which rely heavily on production in south-east Asia, face rising costs, which will push up prices for consumers around the globe. The share prices of Nike, Adidas and Puma all fell steeply.Analysts said Trump’s measures would raise the average tariff, or border tax, charged by the US to the highest level since 1933, in a development that threatened to sink the US into recession while increasing living costs for consumers.Trump’s plans involve imposing a 10% tariff on all US trading partners from just after midnight on 5 April, before additional higher tariffs of up to 50% are imposed on countries including China, Vietnam and the EU.The non-partisan Tax Foundation thinktank said it estimated the plan would represent a “$1.8tn tax hike” for US consumers, which would cause imports to fall by more than a quarter, or $900bn, in 2025.While the measures will hit the US hard, researchers at the consultancy Oxford Economics said they could sink global economic growth to the lowest annual rate since the 2008 financial crisis, barring the height of the Covid pandemic.Countries scrambled to assess the fallout and whether to retaliate. The UK, which was hit with the lowest level of 10% tariffs, suggested it may retaliate even as it tries to strike a deal with Washington.It published a 417-page list of US products on which it could impose tariffs, including meat, fish and dairy products, whiskey and rum, clothing, motorcycles and musical instruments.The business secretary, Jonathan Reynolds, told MPs that ministers were still pursuing an economic deal with the US as the priority but “we do reserve the right to take any action we deem necessary if a deal is not secured”.The French president, Emmanuel Macron, said Trump’s decision to impose tariffs of 20% on EU goods was “brutal and unfounded”, while Germany’s outgoing chancellor, Olaf Scholz, called it “fundamentally wrong”.Spain’s prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, said the “protectionist” tariffs ran “contrary to the interests of millions of citizens on this side of the Atlantic and in the US”.The EU is thought to be preparing retaliatory tariffs on US consumer and industrial goods – likely to include emblematic products such as orange juice, blue jeans and Harley-Davidson motorbikes – to be announced in mid-April, in response to steel and aluminium tariffs previously announced by Trump. 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      Trump tariffs live: US markets see worst day in five years as president claims ‘stock is going to boom’

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      The New York stock exchange has closed on its worst day of trading since June 2020 – during the early months of the Covid-19 pandemic.The main indices saw their worst one-day falls in five years as Donald Trump claimed that “the markets are going to boom” in response to his sweeping tariffs.The S&P 500 index is down 4.9% at the close, which Reuters flags is the biggest one-day drop since June 2020.The Dow has also posted its biggest one-day drop since June 2020, down 4%.Meanwhile, the Nasdaq tumbled 5.9%, its worst single-day performance since March 2020.The scale of the sell-off, wiping trillions of dollars off the value of US companies, highlights just how alarmed investors are by the tariffs, and the fears they could lead to a recession.Speaking to reporters earlier on Thursday, Trump denied market turmoil presented a problem. The president said:
      I think it’s going very well. It was an operation like when a patient gets operated on and it’s a big thing. I said this would be exactly the way it is … We’ve never seen anything like it. The markets are going to boom. The stock is going to boom. The country is going to boom.
      Donald Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One today that tariffs on imported semiconductor chips and pharmaceuticals will be coming “soon”.He added that the “reciprocal” tariffs he announced yesterday have put the US “in the drivers seat.”“Every country is calling us. That’s the beauty of what we do,” he said. “If we would have asked these countries to do us a favor. They would have said no. Now they will do anything for us.”The Senate has confirmed Mehmet Oz – a former heart surgeon and TV personality – as the administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.Oz will take the lead at the agency, which provides health care coverage to more than 160 million Americans – but which is facing significant changes as Congress debates cuts to the Medicaid coverage.For more, read on below:Volkswagen will add an import fee to its cars sold in the United States, the German automaker told its dealers today according to the Wall Street Journal.The news comes the same day Donald Trump’s 25% tariff on foreign automobiles went into effect. Volkswagen said it will announce the exact fee by mid-April.In a statement to the Wall Street Journal, the manufacturer said it wanted to be “very transparent about navigating through this time of uncertainty.”While countries around the world grapple with the meaning of the United States’s new “reciprocal” tariffs, two countries that were exempt from those particular duties – Mexico and Canada – are still preparing for the fallout of other trade decisions.Mexican president Claudia Sheinbaum announced plans to counter Trump’s tariffs earlier today, with a focus on increasing domestic production of items it has historically imported from the US, including natural gas.Although Mexico was not named in Trump’s “reciprocal” tariffs announcement, the country is still subject to a 25% tariff on automobiles, steel and aluminum.“Yesterday, something very important happened: the recognition of the free trade agreement between Mexico, Canada and the United States, which is fundamental at this moment,” she said during a speech in Mexico City.Meanwhile, in Canada, prime minister Mark Carney announced that Canada had introduced a 25% tariff on automobiles made in the United States.“We take these measures reluctantly,” he said. “And we take them in ways that’s intended and will cause maximum impact in the United States and minimum impact here in Canada.”Newly appointed as the Canadian prime minister, Carney added that he hoped to bring together a “coalition of like-minded countries” in search of an alternative to the US: “If the United States no longer wants to lead, Canada will.”Mike Pence will receive the John F Kennedy Profile in Courage Award in May for his refusal to go along with the 6 January attack on the US Capitol.The JFK Library Foundation shared the announcement today, saying the award will recognize Donald Trump’s former vice-president “for putting his life and career on the line to ensure the constitutional transfer of presidential power on Jan. 6, 2021.”After Joe Biden won the 2020 election, Trump put pressure on Pence to reject the results. When a mob of the president’s supporters stormed the Capitol in an attempt to overturn the results of the election, some chanted that they wanted to “hang Mike Pence.” Secret Service agents removed the vice-president from the Capitol, but Pence returned later to continue certifying the election results after the building was secured.The New York stock exchange has closed on its worst day of trading since June 2020 – during the early months of the Covid-19 pandemic.The main indices saw their worst one-day falls in five years as Donald Trump claimed that “the markets are going to boom” in response to his sweeping tariffs.The S&P 500 index is down 4.9% at the close, which Reuters flags is the biggest one-day drop since June 2020.The Dow has also posted its biggest one-day drop since June 2020, down 4%.Meanwhile, the Nasdaq tumbled 5.9%, its worst single-day performance since March 2020.The scale of the sell-off, wiping trillions of dollars off the value of US companies, highlights just how alarmed investors are by the tariffs, and the fears they could lead to a recession.Speaking to reporters earlier on Thursday, Trump denied market turmoil presented a problem. The president said:
      I think it’s going very well. It was an operation like when a patient gets operated on and it’s a big thing. I said this would be exactly the way it is … We’ve never seen anything like it. The markets are going to boom. The stock is going to boom. The country is going to boom.
      As news of Donald Trump’s “reciprocal” tariffs settles in today, the president’s allies on the far-right are reacting to news that their countries will face higher duties.In Italy, premier Giorgia Meloni told state television that she believes Trump’s decision to impose 20% tariffs on exports from Europe was “wrong”, but “it is not the catastrophe that some are making it out to be”.She added that the government will meet next week to discuss its response: “We need to open an honest discussion on the matter with the Americans, with the goal – at least from my point of view – of removing tariffs, not multiplying them”.Meanwhile, Argentinian president Javier Milei – who gifted tech billionaire Elon Musk a chainsaw at the Conservative Political Action Conference in February – said he hoped to meet Trump this evening at the “American Patriots Gala”. In response to the tariffs, Milei posted a link to the Queen song Friends will be Friends on social media.California’s Democratic representative Eric Swalwell has joined in a handful of lawmakers in criticizing Donald Trump’s latest tariffs, writing on X:
      “Trump’s tariffs are a slap in the face to hardworking Americans, jacking up prices, straining small businesses, and risking jobs. This isn’t America first; it’s families last.”
      Donald Trump is continuing to face criticism from US lawmakers after his tariffs reveal on Wednesday included tariffs on barren islands near Antartica that are populated by penguins.Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer called the tariffs “one of the dumbest decisions [Trump] has ever made as president”, adding: “And that’s saying something.”Schumer went on to say that “Donald Trump slapped tariffs on penguins and not on Putin,” in apparent reference to Trump’s 10% tariffs placed on the uninhabited Heard and McDonald Islands.Similarly, Adam Schiff, Democratic senator of California, released a video address on X of featuring a baby penguin he called “George.”
      The Trump administration just put a tariff on this guy. That’s right, this guy. This is George. George lived on an uninhabited island called Heard Island … and Trump just put a 10% tariff on this island which begs of course the question, ‘What did George ever do to Donald Trump and his buddies?’
      This is how nonsensical these tariffs are. This is how absurd and capricious and uncoordinated these tariffs are. And while it might seem absurd and funny that they put a tariff on penguins, it shows just the reckless nature of what they are doing. They are crashing the economy and it could just not be more self-destructive. We are alienating our friends and allies and even going after poor George.
      Speaking to reporters on Thursday amid tumbling US stock markets and $2tn wiped off Wall Street after his tariffs reveal on Wednesday, Trump said:
      I think it’s going very well. It was an operation like when a patient gets operated on and it’s a big thing. I said this would be exactly the way it is … We’ve never seen anything like it. The markets are going to boom. The stock is going to boom. The country is going to boom.
      He went on to add:
      The rest of the world wants to see is there is any way they can make a deal. They’ve taken advantage of us for many years … I think it’s going to be unbelievable …
      Over the last nearly 24 hours, Trump has faced widespread backlash from US lawmakers and global leaders over his tariffs plan, with senior Republican senator Mitch McConnell calling it “bad policy” while Canada – a traditional American ally – called the tariffs “unjustified” and “unwanted”.Here is the latest chart of the S&P500 as of 2pm ET on Thursday: Mitch McConnell, the Kentucky Republican senator and former Senate majority leader, has criticized Donald Trump’s latest tariffs, saying that they are “bad policy and trade wars with our partners hurt working people most”.In a statement on Thursday afternoon, McConnell went on to say:
      They are a tax on everyday working Americans. Preserving the long-term prosperity of American industry and workers requires working with our allies, not against them.
      With so much at stake globally, the last thing we need is to pick fights with the very friends with whom we should be working with to protect against China’s predatory and unfair trade practices. That includes what we do on trade. More

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      Trump fires six national security staffers after far-right activist Laura Loomer urged him to in meeting

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      Donald Trump fired six national security council staffers after an unusual meeting in the Oval Office where the far-right activist Laura Loomer presented opposition research against a number of staffers that she said showed they were disloyal to the US president, according to two people familiar with the matter.The firings included three staffers who had been brought on by national security adviser Mike Waltz – an extraordinary situation where Loomer appeared to have more sway over NSC personnel than the official in charge of running the agency. It also undercut Waltz’s position to have his allies axed from under him.Loomer brought a booklet of papers laying out the perceived disloyalty of about a dozen staffers, including Waltz’s principal deputy Alex Wong, to the meeting that was also attended by Vice-President JD Vance, Chief of Staff Susie Wiles, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick and Waltz himself.The fired officials included Brian Walsh, the senior director for intelligence who previously worked for now Secretary of State Marco Rubio on the Senate intelligence committee; and Thomas Boodry, the senior director for legislative affairs who previously served as Waltz’s legislative director in Congress, the people said.While the firings appeared arbitrary, one of the people said that the White House looked through Loomer’s opposition research and verified parts of it. Ultimately, it found that one NSC official had recently criticized Trump on social media and others had donated or supported a Democratic political candidate.The firings did not include Wong, who has been one of Loomer’s top targets. Loomer has vilified Wong over the work of his wife, Candice, at the justice department that involved prosecuting January 6 Capitol rioters. Loomer has also publicly suggested that Wong has sympathies to the Chinese communist party.Loomer did not immediately respond to questions sent by text about the alleged sins of the NSC officials she targeted. Brian Hughes, a spokesperson for the NSC, did not respond to a request for comment.But in the days since Waltz inadvertently added a journalist from the Atlantic to a Signal group chat, where Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth shared updates about a US military strike against the Houthis in Yemen, Loomer suggested Wong and other career NSC officials were trying to sabotage Trump by causing a scandal.She baselessly claimed Wong deliberately added the Atlantic’s editor-in-chief, Jeffrey Goldberg, to the sensitive chat “as part of a foreign opp to embarrass the Trump administration on behalf of China”. (The White House’s final internal conclusion, the Guardian has reported, was that Waltz added Goldberg by mistake himself.)Loomer has been part of a group of Trump allies to disparage Waltz and his team, calling them “neocons” – short for neo conservatives – as a pejorative term to castigate them for being too hawkish and eager to project US military power abroad, at odds with Trump’s “America First” foreign policy.The online vilification of Waltz and his team took a turn on Wednesday when Loomer appeared at the White House for the meeting. It was not immediately certain how Loomer was cleared to access the White House complex given she lacks a “hard pass” even as a reporter, a sore issue she has complained about in recent weeks.Loomer sat directly across from Trump in the Oval Office as she made her pitch to him directly to remove the people she was targeting. The New York Times reported that Republican congressman Scott Perry, who had his own concerns about staffers in the administration, was also trying to meet with Trump at the same time.The effect on Waltz was not clear. He left the White House with Trump on Marine One on Thursday, which signaled support from the president, who last week declined to fire Waltz over the Signal chat episode. Waltz has also recently shown more deference to Wiles, the chief of staff, in an effort to win her support, the people said.But Waltz’s political enemies point out that Waltz survived the Signal chat episode principally because Trump was unwilling to give the news media a victory, and not because of his confidence in Waltz. His main ally is also perceived to be Senator Lindsey Graham, as opposed to a network of allies inside Trump’s inner circle. More

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      Mehmet Oz confirmed by US Senate to lead Medicare and Medicaid

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      Former heart surgeon and TV pitchman Dr Mehmet Oz was confirmed on Thursday to lead the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS).Oz became the agency’s administrator in a party-line 53-45 vote.The 64-year-old will manage health insurance programs for roughly half the country, with oversight of Medicare, Medicaid and Affordable Care Act coverage. He steps into the new role as Congress is debating cuts to the Medicaid program, which provides coverage to millions of poor and disabled Americans.Oz has not said yet whether he would oppose such cuts to the government-funded program, instead offering a vision of promoting healthier lifestyles, integrating artificial intelligence and telehealth into the system, and rethinking rural healthcare delivery.During a hearing last month, he told senators that he did favor work requirements for Medicaid recipients, but that paperwork shouldn’t be used to reaffirm that they are working or to block people from staying enrolled.Oz, who worked for years as a respected heart surgeon at Columbia University, also noted that doctors dislike Medicaid for its relatively low payments and some don’t want to take those patients.He said that when Medicaid eligibility was expanded without improving resources for doctors, that made care options even thinner for the program’s core patients, which include children, pregnant people and people with disabilities.“We have to make some important decisions to improve the quality of care,” he said.Oz has formed a close relationship with his new boss, Robert F Kennedy Jr. He’s hosted the health secretary and his inner circle regularly at his home in Florida. He’s leaned into Kennedy’s campaign to “make America healthy again” (Maha), an effort to redesign the nation’s food supply, reject vaccine mandates and cast doubt on some long-established scientific research.The former TV show host talks often about the importance of a healthy diet, aligning closely with Kennedy’s views.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionWhile Oz has faced some criticism for promoting unproven vitamin supplements and holistic treatments – staples of the “Maha movement” – he’s regularly encouraged Americans to get vaccinated.Oz will take over the CMS days after the agency was spared from the type of deep cuts that Kennedy ordered at other public health agencies. Thousands of staffers at the Food and Drug Administration, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the National Institutes for Health are out of a job after mass layoffs that started on Tuesday.The CMS is expected to lose about 300 staffers, including those who worked on minority health and to shrink the cost of healthcare delivery. More

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      Senators unveil bill to claw back power over tariffs amid Trump trade wars

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      Senior senators introduced new bipartisan legislation on Thursday seeking to claw back some of Congress’s power over tariffs after Donald Trump unveiled sweeping new import taxes and rattled the global economy with sweeping new import taxes.The Trade Review Act of 2025, co-sponsored by Senator Chuck Grassley, a top Republican lawmaker from Iowa, a state heavily reliant on farm exports, and Senator Maria Cantwell, a Democrat from Washington, whose state shares a border with Canada, would require the president to notify Congress of new tariffs, and provide a justification for the action and an analysis on the potential impact on US businesses and consumers.For the tariff to remain in effect, Congress would need to approve a joint resolution within 60 days. If Congress failed to give its consent within that timeframe, all new tariffs on imports would expire. The legislation would also allow Congress to terminate tariffs at any time through a resolution of disapproval.Grassley was not among the four Republican senators who voted to approve a Democratic-led resolution that would nullify the national emergency Trump used to justify 25% tariffs on Canadian imports, which passed shortly after the president’s so-called “liberation day” tariff announcement on Wednesday.Yet support from Grassley, third in line to the presidency as the president pro tempore of the Senate, is a sign of the deep unease many Republicans have with the president’s efforts to remake global trade.“For too long, Congress has delegated its clear authority to regulate interstate and foreign commerce to the executive branch,” Grassley said in a statement, adding that the proposed measure was a way to “reassert Congress’ constitutional role and ensure Congress has a voice in trade policy”.The legislation is modeled after the War Powers Act, passed in 1973, that seeks to limit the president’s ability to engage US troops into “hostilities” without Congressional approval.“Trade wars can be as devastating, which is why the Founding Fathers gave Congress the clear constitutional authority over war and trade,” Cantwell said in a statement.“Arbitrary tariffs, particularly on our allies, damage US export opportunities and raise prices for American consumers and businesses. “As representatives of the American people, Congress has a duty to stop actions that will cause them harm.”In a Rose Garden ceremony on Wednesday, Trump announced that the US would impose a major round of new tariffs on many of its largest trade partners and ones uninhabited by humans. The tariffs unleashed chaos across world financial markets, as economists warned that the levies would raise prices for consumers and businesses.Several countries threatened counter-measures as they digested Trump’s trade war escalation. More

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      US stock markets see worst day since Covid pandemic after investors shaken by Trump tariffs

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      US stock markets tumbled on Thursday as investors parsed the sweeping change in global trading following Donald Trump’s announcement of a barrage of tariffs on the country’s trading partners.All three major US stock markets closed down in their worst day since June 2020, during the Covid pandemic. The tech-heavy Nasdaq fell 6%, while the S&P 500 and the Dow dropped 4.8% and 3.9%, respectively. Apple and Nvidia, two of the US’s largest companies by market value, had lost a combined $470bn in value by midday.Meanwhile, the US dollar hit a six-month low, going down at least 2.2% on Thursday morning compared with other major currencies and oil prices sank on fears of a global slowdown.Though the US stock market has been used to tumultuous mornings over the last few weeks, US stock futures – an indication of the market’s likely direction – had plummeted after the announcement. Hours later, Japan’s Nikkei index slumped to an eight-month low and was followed by falls in stock markets in London and across Europe.The White House drafted up a list of countries, including some of its largest trade partners and ones uninhabited by humans, that will be receiving reciprocal tariffs. Many economies will see new tariffs above 20%, including the EU, China, Japan and Taiwan.The 10% baseline tariff will go into effect on 5 April, while the reciprocal tariffs will begin on 9 April, according to the White House.“The markets are going to boom,” Trump told reporters at the White House as he left for Florida for the weekend. “I think it’s going very well.”Economists have for months warned that high tariffs are a major risk to the US economy, pushing prices up for consumers on everything from cars to wine along with destabilizing the US’s role in the global economy.But that didn’t stop Trump from taking a celebratory tone at the event he dubbed “liberation day”. Trump tried to paint the tariffs as the start of “the golden age of America”.“We are going to start being smart and we’re going to start being very wealthy again,” Trump said.On Thursday Howard Lutnick, the commerce secretary, defended the move. “The president is not going to back off what he announced yesterday. He is not going to back off,” he told CNN.Multiple major American business groups have spoken out against the tariffs, including the Business Roundtable, a consortium of leaders of major US companies including JP Morgan, Apple and IBM, which called on the White House to “swiftly reach agreements” and remove the tariffs.“Universal tariffs ranging from 10-50% run the risk of causing major harm to American manufacturers, workers, families and exporters,” the Business Roundtable said in a statement. “Damage to the US economy will increase the longer the tariffs are in place and may be exacerbated by retaliatory measures.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionIn a statement, the National Retail Federation, a lobbying group for the retail industry, said that the new tariffs negatively affect the business environment for retailers.“More tariffs equal more anxiety and uncertainty for American businesses and consumers. While leaders in Washington may not care about higher prices, hardworking American families do,” the group said.Contrary to what Trump has said about the jobs the tariffs will create, the National Association of Manufacturers said that tariffs actually “threaten investment, jobs, supply chains and, in turn, America’s ability to outcompete other nations and lead as the preeminent manufacturing superpower”.The tariffs also appear unpopular among voters. A poll released on Wednesday ahead of Trump’s announcement found that just 28% of Americans believe tariffs help the economy, while 58% believe the impacts will be damaging.But in his speech yesterday, Trump appeared ready to be defiant against any criticism.“In the coming days, there will be complaints from the globalists and the outsources and special interests and the fake news,” he said. “This will be an entirely different country in a short period of time. It’ll be something the whole world will be talking about.” More

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      ‘Did you stand up?’: read part of Cory Booker’s blockbuster 25-hour speech | Cory Booker

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      Editor’s note: the following is an excerpt from Cory Booker’s 25-hour marathon speech on the US Senate floorTonight, I rise with the intention of getting in some good trouble. I rise with the intention of disrupting the normal business of the United States Senate for as long as I am physically able.I rise tonight because I believe, sincerely, that our country is in crisis.And I believe that not in a partisan sense, because so many of the people that have been reaching out to my office – in pain, in fear, having their lives upended – so many of them identify themselves as Republicans.Indeed, conversations from in this body, to in this building, to across my state – and recently in travel across the country – Republicans as well as Democrats are talking to me about what they feel as a sense of dread about a growing crisis, or what they point to about what is going wrong.The bedrock commitments in our country – that both sides rely on, that people from all backgrounds rely on – those bedrock commitments are being broken.Unnecessary hardships are being borne by Americans of all backgrounds. And institutions which are special in America, which are precious, which are unique in our country, are being recklessly – and I would say even unconstitutionally – affected, attacked, even shattered.In just 71 days, the president of the United States has inflicted so much harm on Americans’ safety, financial stability, the core foundations of our democracy, and even our aspirations as a people. From our highest offices: a sense of common decency. These are not normal times in America, and they should not be treated as such.John Lewis – so many heroes before us – would say that this is the time to stand up, to speak up. This is the time to get in some good trouble, to get into necessary trouble. I can’t allow this body to continue without doing something different – speaking out. The threats to the American people and American democracy are grave and urgent. And we all must do more. We all must do more against them.But those 10 words: “If it is to be, it is up to me.” All of us have to think of those 10 words – 10 two-letter words: “If it is to be, it is up to me.” Because I believe generations from now will look back at this moment and have a single question: “Where were you? Where were you when our country was in crisis and when American people were asking for help? Help me. Help me.” Did we speak up?When 73 million American seniors, who rely on social security, were to have that promise mocked, attacked, and then to have the services undermined – to be told that there will be no one there to answer if you call for help – when our seniors became afraid and worried and panicked because of the menacing words of their president, of the most wealthy person in the world, of cabinet secretaries … Did we speak up?When the American economy, in 71 days – 71 days – has been upended, when prices at the grocery store were skyrocketing, and the stock market was plunging, when pension funds, 401(k)s, were going down, when Americans were hurting and looking up, where the resounding answer to this question was: “No.”Are you better off economically than you were 71 days ago? Where were you? Did you speak up?At a time when the president of the United States was launching trade wars against our closest allies, when he was firing regulators who investigate America’s biggest banks and biggest corporations – and stop them from taking advantage of the little guy, or the little gal, or my grandmother, or your grandfather – dismantling the agency that protects consumers from fraud, the only one whose sole purpose is to look out for them … Did you speak up?When the president of the United States, in a way that is so crass and craven, peddled his own meme coin and made millions upon millions upon millions of dollars for his own bank account – at a time so many are struggling economically – did you speak up?Did you speak up when the president of the United States did what amounts to a conman’s house – the White House – when the president tried to take healthcare away? Where were you? Did you speak up?Threatening a program called Medicaid, which helps people with disabilities, helps expectant mothers, helps millions upon millions of Americans – and why? Why? As part of a larger plan to pay for tax cuts for the wealthiest among us, who’ve done the best over the last 20 years.For billionaires who seem so close to the president that they sat right on the dais at his inauguration and sit in his cabinet meetings at the White House.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionDid you speak up when he gutted public education, slashed funds for pediatric cancer research, fired thousands of veterans who risked their lives for their country? When he abandoned our allies and our international commitments?At a time when floods, fires, hurricanes and droughts are devastating communities across this country – when countries all around the world are banding together to do something – and he turned his back?Did you speak up when outbreaks of dangerous infectious diseases are still a global threat, yet we have stopped engaging in the efforts necessary to meet those threats?Where were you when the American press was being censored? When international students were being disappeared from American streets without due process? When American universities were being intimidated into silence, challenging that fundamental idea of freedom of thought, freedom of expression?When the law firms that represent clients that may not be favored were attacked, and attacked, and attacked – where were you? Did you speak up when they came for those firms?Or what about when the people who attacked the police officers – defended this building, an American democracy – on January 6, who just outside those doors put their lives on the line for us, and many of them would later die … Where were you when the president pardoned them, celebrated them, and even talked of giving them money – people who savagely beat American police officers?Did you speak up when Americans from across the country were all speaking up – more and more voices in this country speaking up – saying: “This is not right. This is un-American. This is not who we are. This is not America.” Did you speak up?And so I rise tonight because I believe to be about what is normal right now, when so much abnormal is happening, is unacceptable.I rise tonight because silence at this moment of national crisis would be a betrayal of some of the greatest heroes of our nation. Because at stake in this moment is nothing less than everything that we brag about, that we talk about, that makes us special.At stake right now are some of our most basic American principles – principles that so many Americans understand are worth fighting for, worth standing for, worth speaking up for.

      Cory Booker is a US senator from New Jersey More

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      Democrats’ deference to Biden was a disaster. They still haven’t learned their lesson | Norman Solomon

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      Joe Biden’s insistence on running for re-election was certainly disastrous. It kept credible contenders out of the Democratic presidential primaries and prevented the selection of a nominee who had gained momentum in the winnowing process. Even after his stunningly feeble debate performance on 27 June last year, Biden took several weeks before finally opting out of the race. That left Kamala Harris a mere 107 days between the launch of her campaign and election day.Ample evidence shows that the Biden team was riddled with obstinate denial and misrepresentation aimed at the public. But tales of tragic egomania in high places can take us only so far. What’s essential is to scrutinize how – and why – the Democratic party, its leaders and its prominent supporters enabled Biden and his inner circle to get away with such momentous stonewalling for so long.Democrats in Congress, with few exceptions, refused to jump off the Biden 2024 bandwagon until the debate disaster. Similar enabling also came from state party chairs and Democratic governors. Likewise, a wide range of party-allied organizations toed the Biden party line. Meanwhile, many activists took on the role of spectators, if not cheerleaders for another Biden campaign, in an unfolding tragedy of vast proportions.A common denominator was fear. Fear of being accused of disloyalty to the Democratic president. Fear of being ostracized by fellow Democrats or denounced by anti-Trump commentators. Fear of being accused of weakening the party by pointing out Biden’s evident frailty. Fear of damaging personal ambitions or future access to halls of power. And on and on.The silence and compliance helped Biden to coast toward renomination. Yet by midway through his term, polling numbers and increasingly shaky public behavior were clear signals that he would be a weak candidate. Support from working-class voters, the young, and people of color drastically eroded.Notably, leading progressives in Congress assisted Biden in fending off a serious primary challenge. Representative Pramila Jayapal, then chair of the congressional Progressive caucus, made a very early endorsement. “I never thought I would say this, but I believe he should run for another term and finish this agenda we laid out,” she said in November 2022. Senator Bernie Sanders endorsed Biden in April 2023. Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez endorsed him three months later.Polls routinely showed that most Democratic voters did not want Biden to run again. But party leaders were on autopilot, choosing discretion over valor, benefitting their relations with the White House but undermining the party’s prospects of retaining it – as is now painfully and undeniably clear.A few weeks ago, speaking at a Harvard Kennedy School forum, Jayapal said: “I do think had the president just served one term, he would have gone out a hero, he would have passed the torch, he would have been celebrated for his accomplishments, we would have had a really strong Democratic primary with a lot of good candidates, and then we would have had the full election season to fight it out and to actually get somebody who could win.”Now, an open question is whether crucial lessons have been learned and will be heeded. At stake is the capacity of the Democratic party to defeat Trumpist forces in the midterm elections next year and in 2028.The outlook is not good. A grim reality is that the Democratic party and its loyalists have developed an enduring corrosive culture – which had everything to do with the insistence on continuing to fuel the faulty Biden 2024 locomotive as it dragged the party toward a calamitous defeat.I am not writing from a vantage point of hindsight alone. In November 2022, days after the midterm elections, my colleagues and I at the progressive non-profit RootsAction launched the Don’t Run Joe campaign (renamed Step Aside Joe when Biden announced his candidacy the following spring). During the next 20 months, not one other sizable national organization was willing to push for Biden to forego a re-election bid.We began in New Hampshire, the longtime first-in-the-country presidential primary state. (Biden had finished fifth with only 8.4% of the vote in the 2020 Democratic primary there. For 2024, he demoted New Hampshire to make South Carolina first.) On 9 November 2022, our kickoff digital ads reached Democrats across New Hampshire. Within days, upwards of 2,000 Democratic voters in the state had signed a Don’t Run Joe petition, conveying this message: “We cannot risk losing in 2024. We shouldn’t gamble on Joe Biden’s low approval rating.”That was the gist of our messaging that continued for more than a year and a half via online advertising, email blasts, social media, news releases, media interviews, mass texting to Democratic voters, leafleting at state party conventions and TV ads in several key states and Washington DC. A mobile Don’t Run Joe billboard circled the Capitol and White House as well as the site of a Democratic National Committee meeting.Don’t Run Joe placed full-page print advertisements in the Hill, aimed at congressional Democrats. One ad included a picture of men in suits with their heads in the sand. Presented as An Open Letter to Democrats in the House and Senate, the ad declared that “evasion is no solution” and concluded: “Conformity and fear of a White House rebuke have never served Democrats or the nation well. It is time to stop muffling genuine concerns and start being honest about the pivotal downsides of a prospective Biden ’24 candidacy. The future of the Democratic Party – and the country – is at stake.”Today, conformity and fear are still contagions afflicting the Democratic party, now impairing its capacity to roll back Donald Trump’s autocratic rule and effectively fight for a progressive agenda. The rebellion against Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer, while encouraging, has not shaken the party’s underlying power structure. And habitual deference to uninspiring party leadership does not bode well.The day after the president’s recent demagogic speech to Congress, the new Democratic National Committee chair, Ken Martin, and the House minority leader, Hakeem Jeffries, were the featured speakers for “a virtual National Update and Call to Action”. The next morning, I received a text from a progressive Democratic party activist, who summarized the event as “sad and weak,” adding: “Jeffries and Martin’s delivery was anemic, content essentially pablum.” The activist signed off with the words “Really frightened”.I asked if it would be OK to use the activist’s name while quoting from the text in an article. The reply was both understandable and symptomatic of how fear prevents the kind of open debate that the Democratic party desperately needs: “No, I am working inside the party … ”

      Norman Solomon is the director of RootsAction and executive director of the Institute for Public Accuracy. His latest book is War Made Invisible: How America Hides the Human Toll of Its Military Machine More

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      Dear Disney: don’t cave to Trump. We need you to shape dreams for kids everywhere | Jeff Yang

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      I remember the moment I truly recognized the power Disney has to move young hearts and minds.It was when I attended a sneak preview of Disney’s adaptation of the Chinese legend of Mulan, about a young woman who disguises herself as a man and takes up her wounded father’s sword to defend her nation.I enjoyed the movie, with its combination of swashbuckling, slapstick and show tunes. But as I filed out of the theater, what I saw hit me like a fire-dragon rocket: two blond, apple-cheeked siblings, probably under the age of eight, leaping and sparring and loudly arguing over the right to pretend to be the movie’s main character, Mulan. A boy and a girl, neither of them Asian, both so enthralled by the film’s Chinese protagonist that they each aspired to be her.It reminded me that Disney doesn’t just tell stories; it shapes dreams, creating heroes iconic enough to inspire young kids to imagine and be more, and providing empowering figures that enable people from different backgrounds to see themselves – and one another.It’s still staggering for me to think that Mulan, a story from China with a gender-blurred title role, was greenlit, made and released in 1998 and is now broadly accepted alongside Bambi as a timeless animated classic – especially now that Maga has announced it’s coming after the House of Mouse, with the apparent objective to make sure that nothing like it is ever made again.On 27 March, the Trump-appointed Federal Communications Commission (FCC) chair, Brendan Carr – a dead ringer for Who Framed Roger Rabbit’s mirthless toon-terrorizer Judge Doom – sent a letter to Disney’s CEO, Bob Iger, informing him that he had directed the agency’s enforcement bureau to begin an investigation into Disney’s diversity, equity and inclusion policies.Carr stated that he wanted to ensure that Disney had not been “promoting invidious forms of DEI discrimination”, calling out as examples the company’s employee affinity groups, its “Reimagine Tomorrow” multicultural showcase and especially the company’s “inclusion standards”, a set of goals that aim to increase the number of characters from underrepresented groups to half of the regular and recurring roles on its TV network, ABC.It’s hard to explain why any of these are “discriminatory” or “invidious”; voluntary employee-led clubs – which have no restrictions or requirements for membership – are discriminatory? A website featuring remixes of Disney songs sung by artists of color and explanations of how to sign “Mickey Mouse” in ASL is invidious? Even the “inclusion standards” are just broadly aspirational objectives, which could be met in any number of ways: Disney’s definition of “underrepresented groups” includes women, people of color, LGBTQ+ people, disabled persons and military veterans.But the mere threat of the investigation has triggered Disney to begin a cautious reframing of some of these initiatives. The Reimagine Tomorrow site is gone, and now points to a generic inclusion page headed by the message: “At Disney, we want everyone to belong and thrive.” The company’s business employee resource groups have been redubbed “belonging” employee resource groups.Carr’s letter makes it clear that mere semantic shifts won’t be enough, demanding that Disney’s policies be “changed in a fundamental manner”. And while Carr cites “equal opportunity rules” and the need to ensure “fair and equal treatment under the law”, it’s obvious that he won’t be satisfied until Disney changes the one thing that the FCC is restricted from regulating by the US constitution: its content.View image in fullscreenOf course, the first amendment prevents the government from infringing on freedom of expression, except in very narrowly delimited ways. Where the FCC is concerned, the only way it can impose its will on a creative company’s storytelling choices is if they are obscene, indecent or profane or contain dangerous disinformation. So the agency can’t just demand that Disney stop making shows about Asian princesses or Black superheroes or Latina anthropomorphic automobiles.Yet that’s just what Carr is doing – using the back door of equal employment opportunity to claim that by casting people who aren’t straight or white or male in its movies and TV programs, Disney is unfairly withholding employment from straight white males. And unless Disney is ready to announce Timothée Chalamet as the new Black Panther, which, thank God, it isn’t, targeting the studio’s ability to hire diverse talent is a deliberate attempt to force it away from making diverse stories.That would spell business disaster for Disney.Yes, the studio has had its share of flops, which the Maga mob has blamed on multicultural casting – including, most recently, its unfairly pilloried live-action remake of the 1937 animated masterpiece Snow White, starring Rachel Zegler, whose mother is Colombian. The film, made on a $240m budget, has so far earned just $142m at the box office, its prospects poisoned by controversy over Zegler’s advocacy on behalf of Palestine and racist backlash over her Latina heritage from online creeps.But similar attacks were also levied against Disney’s The Little Mermaid remake, starring the African American actor Halle Bailey as Ariel, and that film was a box-office success and global streaming blockbuster. It also made the storyline relevant in new ways to young women – which makes sense, given that Disney’s goal with its remakes isn’t simply to photocopy the past, but to extend and refresh it, reaching untapped audiences of the present and emerging markets of the future.If that means they sometimes swing and miss in the short term, in the long run it all evens out, because Disney doesn’t actually plan their business by quarter or year – they blueprint it by age bracket. Their franchises are designed to be evergreen and intentionally aligned to “graduate” kids up a ladder of content: girls go from Muppets to Disney Fairies to Disney princesses to Disney’s Descendants. Boys go from Cars to Pirates to Star Wars to Marvel superheroes. The ultimate goal is to ensure that there’s something for every stage of growing up until young adulthood arrives and their fans become parents themselves, allowing Disney to earn money across the consumer life cycle, generation after generation.And every generation of Americans is more diverse. Baby boomers were 29% people of color. Gen X, 41%. Millennials, 46%, gen Z, 50%. The youngest rising cohort – those born after 2012, and currently squarely in Disney’s prime target demo – is officially the first to be “majority minority”, with kids of color making up a full 52% of gen Alpha.Whatever Trump’s mandate may be, Disney’s demographic mandate should be stronger. The company defiantly and successfully resisted attempts by Ron DeSantis to strong-arm it into ending its diversity practices in Florida. While Trump’s flying assault is coming from a higher top rope, the Mouse should still be mighty enough to fend it off and roar back.Disney’s incentive will be what it always has been: making money. But for diverse communities, the positive manifestation of Disney’s profit motive has been that kids growing up today know what it feels like to be mirrored in the media they consume, with all of the psychological and emotional benefits that confers.I’ve seen this first-hand, as someone who grew up in an era nearly devoid of Asian representation in Hollywood, and who went through the bizarre experience of having my elder son, Hudson Yang, star in the first hit TV series focused on an Asian American family. To this day, Hudson still receives surprise hugs from people who grew up tuning into Fresh Off the Boat once a week, and wide-eyed stares from kids who have discovered it years later through TikTok clips and streaming reruns.The network that aired the show for six seasons, beginning in 2014? Disney’s ABC, a decade before inclusion standards existed and before Maga was around to protest them. And that gives me optimism that Disney will keep doing what it has done so well for generations, regardless: give children from a wide array of backgrounds an answer – “now and here” – to the question in Mulan’s signature ballad: “When will my reflection show who I am inside?” More