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President Donald Trump speaks to the media as he leaves the White House for a trip to Florida on April 3, 2025.
The reviews are in: US President Donald Trump’s widespread tariff plan isn’t most loved, and especially not with the markets. Stocks have plummeted, layoffs have begun, and confusion has metastasized about the bizarre method the United States used to calculate its tariff formula.
The reaction from countries affected by the tariffs, though, was relatively muted. The European Union and China threatened to retaliate if the Trump administration didn’t withdraw these new duties, but they haven’t explicitly made any moves yet. The United Kingdom drew up a list of potential US products it could tariff but hasn’t yet taken any specific actions. Australia outright won’t retaliate.
Big bully. These major economies will take a hit, but it could be the smallest countries that suffer the most. Due to the tariff formula — which ostensibly involves dividing the US trade deficit with a country by the total amount of imports from it, and then halving this number — nations like Lesotho, Myanmar, and Nauru must deal with new duties approaching 50%. Their humble economies rely on producing for the mammoth US market, so these huge price hikes could devastate them. As if dealing with a 7.7-magnitude earthquake wasn’t enough.
Totally chill meeting. The new tariffs overshadowed a NATO summit in Brussels on Thursday, one that was supposed to focus on reaffirming the military alliance between the United States and its European allies. Despite US Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s conciliatory tone, leaders across the pond expressed dismay at the new levies, with German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock arguing that economic security was linked to “overall security.”
Whatever the complaints from Europe, Trump is unlikely to reverse course, says Eurasia Group trade and global supply chain expert Nancy Wei.
“The newly introduced tariffs under President Trump’s administration are designed to be a lasting ‘tariff wall’ around the US,” Wei said. “It is improbable that negotiations will lead to major tariff reductions or complete removal.”
While some thought Trump might reverse course in the face of market volatility, the US president didn’t seem too fazed by the chaos. He told reporters on Thursday that he thought it was “going very well” and likened the situation to a patient having surgery. “The markets are going to boom, the stock is going to boom, the country's going to boom,” he added.
Orania town sign in front of local shopping centre is pictured in whites-only town of Orania, South Africa, April 1, 2025.
14 billion: On Thursday, India’s parliament passed a controversial law on the governance of lands donated to Muslim charities. The organizations, known as waqfs (or awqāf, if you’re a stickler for the original Arabic grammar), control a million acres of territory worth more than $14 billion. The new law permits non-Muslims to join the management boards that manage these properties. Supporters say the law promotes inclusivity and transparency, but opponents say it weakens the rights of India’s Muslim minority at a time when government-backed Hindu nationalist groups are trying to seize and destroy mosques they argue are located atop earlier Hindu temples.
6: In the United States, door-knocking Jehovah’s Witnesses can be seen as a blessing or a nuisance, but in Russia, they are “extremists.” A Russian court in the city of Chelyabinsk on Thursday sentenced a Jehovah’s Witness to six years in prison for organizing group activities. Since banning the group in 2017, Russia has jailed hundreds of Jehovah’s Witnesses, a community of about 175,000 people who are viewed with suspicion because of their dissidence from the Russian Orthodox Church and their ties to the US.
75: On Thursday, Portuguese anti-corruption investigators carried out 75 separate raids in three cities, targeting the Bank of Portugal as well as private accounting firms, homes, and other public institutions. They allege a massive, eight-year corruption scheme amounting to nearly $20 million in IT service contracts.African National Congress (ANC) members of parliament react after South African lawmakers passed the budget's fiscal framework in Cape Town, South Africa, April 2, 2025.
The second largest party in South Africa’s coalition, the business-friendly Democratic Alliance, launched a legal challenge on Thursday to block a 0.5% VAT increase in the country’s new budget, raising concerns that the fragile government could collapse.
The background: The ruling African National Congress on Wednesday relied on support from smaller parties to narrowly pass a budget framework without the support of the DA, which objected to the inclusion of the VAT tax increase.
The ANC and the center-right DA, historical rivals, agreed to work together after last year’s elections, when the ANC failed to win a majority for the first time since it toppled apartheid in 1994.
Your call, DA. The lawsuit is unlikely to derail the budget, so the party must decide if it wants to stay in government despite its misgivings. Without the DA, the ANC would hold exactly half of the legislature’s 400 seats. Investors view the DA as a key source of market-friendly policy discipline.
It’s a dilemma. Experts say that if the DA bolts, it will lose the chance to shape key legislation, such as the controversial Expropriation Act, a land reform bill, but staying would mean facing political humiliation after they voted against the budget.
The Israeli Air Force launched an airstrike on Thursday, targeting a building in the Mashrou Dummar area of Damascus. Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant confirmed Israel's responsibility for the attack, which resulted in one fatality.
Aswe wrote in February, Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, has big plans for Syria. Erdogan’s government was a crucial backer of the HTS militia, an Islamist rebel group that ousted longtime Syrian strongman Bashar Assad in December, and he now wants Turkey’s military to take over some air bases on Syrian territory in exchange for Turkish training of Syria’s new army.
This, Erdogan hopes, will allow Turkey to greatly expand its regional influence, return many of the millions of Syrian refugees still living inside Turkey, and clamp down on Kurdish militants who have used Syria as a base of operations against Turkey’s military.
That’s the backdrop for awave of Israeli airstrikes on military targets inside Syria early Thursday. The Syrian government called the attacks a “deliberate attempt to destabilize Syria” and “a blatant violation of international law and Syrian sovereignty.”
Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz quickly fired back at Syria’s president: “If you allow forces hostile to Israel to enter Syria and endanger Israeli security interests, you will pay a very heavy price.” Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar warned that Erdogan is doing his “utmost to have Syria as a Turkish protectorate.”
Syria’s fledgling military is no match for its neighbors, and its new government remains at the mercy of outside players. This dangerous competition to fill the vacuum in Syria created by the ouster of Assad is just beginning.
A man leaves the U.S. headquarters of the social media company TikTok in Culver City, California, U.S. January 17, 2025.
Recap: Congress last year passed a law — upheld by the Supreme Court — ordering ByteDance, TikTok’s China-based parent company, to divest from its US operations or face a nationwide ban over national security concerns. Trump, who vowed to protect the app, told the Justice Department to postpone its enforcement until Saturday and is scrambling to find an American buyer.
Can Trump save TikTok? The app insists it’s not for sale, saying China would block a deal. If no buyer emerges — or TikTok refuses to sell — Trump could keep instructing the Justice Department to ignore the law, effectively reassuring Apple and Google that they won’t face penalties for allowing downloads and rendering the law largely ineffective. If he does not, TikTok may go dark once again.
National Security Advisor Mike Waltz looks on as he sits next to US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth in the Oval Office on March 13, 2025.
Someone needs to take Michael Waltz’s phone out of his hand. The National Security Advisor’s tech scandal continues, as documents shared with the Washington Post revealed on Tuesday that he was conducting government business on his personal Gmail account, and Politico learned on Wednesday that he created at least 20 Signal group chats to discuss various foreign policy issues. These revelations follow the Signal chat scandal from last week and the discovery of Waltz’s public Venmo account. Penny for your thoughts, Hillary Clinton?
Apples and oranges. Whereas Clinton’s communications emerged following an FOIA request from a right-wing nonprofit, it’s unclear how the former Florida congressman’s emails and information about the other Signal chats got to journalists. One GOP strategist familiar with FOIA requests argued that the way these stories were characterized — the Washington Post said it had “reviewed” the documents — reveals they were leaks.
His last Waltz? The White House isn’t happy with the former Army officer. Though US President Donald Trump spared him after the Houthi chat debacle, Waltz has faced questions about his relationship with Jeffrey Goldberg,the journalist he inadvertently added to the chat.His responses have been awkward, and his position now looks to be under threat. To make matters worse, Trump fired three members of Waltz’s team on Thursday, seemingly leaving Waltz on the brink.President Donald Trump holds a "Foreign Trade Barriers" document as he delivers remarks on tariffs in the Rose Garden at the White House on April 2, 2025.
Donald Trump’s much-anticipated “liberation day” tariff announcement on Wednesday is the biggest disruption to global trade in decades, so the political, diplomatic, and economic impacts will take time to become clear.
In a dramatic unveiling in the Rose Garden, Trump set in place tariffs of at least 10% on most US trading partners, which set off a global sell-off of stocks, a rebellion from some Republicans, and angry rebukes from shocked trading partners.
It is hard to game out what will happen next because it has been so long since a shock on this scale hit the global tradition system. “We’re literally going back 100 years for historical precedents, and I’m not sure that there is an economic precedent of a policy-driven change of this magnitude in this direction,” says Eurasia Group senior analyst Graeme Thompson.
Trump’s new policy will make it more expensive for Americans to buy products from most countries, which investors fear will lead to a dramatic global economic slowdown and drive up inflation. Trump’s stated goal for the new policy is to stop foreign countries from taking advantage of the United States and boost American manufacturing, but observers and analysts are almost universally united in skepticism around the “golden age” that he promises they will bring.
Because the results are hitting investors and will soon hit the pocketbooks of consumers, there will be growing pressure on Republicans in the House and Senate to force Trump to change course. Until now, Trump’s popularity with his electoral base has kept them in line, but this new policy may put that under strain. Four senators voted with the Democrats in a (likely only symbolic) vote against Canadian tariffs late Wednesday, an acknowledgment that Republicans could face political blowback in the midterms for these widespread duties.
The political reaction is taking place before other countries have even put in place retaliatory measures, which can be expected to damage American exports. The greatest downside is unpredictability.
“I think what is hitting investors globally at this point is that uncertainty,” says Thompson.
“If you just came in and said, very clearly, ‘This is what’s happening, end of story,’ I think a lot of companies wouldn’t be happy, but they could work with it, but that’s not the story that we’ve got right now.”
It’s hard to see anything positive in the reactions from markets in the short term, and the political and diplomatic reaction in the United States and abroad is likely to test the strength of Trump’s support.