Flagship

Trump’s tariffs hammer markets

US President Donald Trump’s mass global tariffs hammered global markets amid warnings they would undermine American dominance. Stocks plummeted, wiping an estimated $2.5 trillion off the value of US equities, while oil prices suffered their biggest fall since 2022. One prominent German think tank projected that the US itself would be worst affected by the “Liberation Day” duties in the short-term, a trade expert warned that companies and countries would “move away from” American standards and leadership in the coming years, and The New York Times’ global economics correspondent argued Trump’s trade policy “risks forfeiting America’s economic primacy.” The Economist’s editor-in-chief was succinct: “Mr Trump’s ‘Liberation Day’ was more like ruination day.”

Tariffs’ Brexit parallel

US President Donald Trump’s “Liberation Day” has a recent historical parallel in Brexit, analysts said. The tariffs, which Trump sees as a declaration of American independence, echo Britain’s withdrawal from the European Union, “just on a global scale,” Eurasia Group’s Ian Bremmer said. As with the trade curbs, most economists opposed Brexit, but British voters “either didn’t believe the doomsday warnings or they didn’t care,” and prioritized “taking back control” over economic growth, the political editor of The Sun tabloid told Semafor’s Ben Smith. One leading Brexit campaigner warned in an interview with Semafor that Trump must now be “very, very clear with the rest of the world why you’ve done this and what you want the outcome to be.”

Stellantis pumps the brakes

Auto giant Stellantis said it would pause some production in Mexico and Canada following US President Donald Trump’s decision to impose 25% tariffs on imported cars. The Dodge and Jeep maker also announced it would furlough 900 US workers. Trump’s sanctions have upended the auto industry in Mexico, where almost a quarter of US-sold cars are produced. The tariffs are a particular blow to Japanese brands such as the already embattled Nissan, which relies on low-cost production in Mexico. While Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum celebrated her country being spared additional tariffs on “Liberation Day,” the car sanctions will be painful: The auto industry made up almost 5% of Mexico’s GDP in 2024.

Uninhabited islands hit by tariffs

The quixotic design of Trump’s sweeping tariffs led them to hit unexpected targets. The “reciprocal” levies were calculated by dividing the US trade deficit with individual countries by total trade, down to a minimum of 10%, which “makes little sense EVEN if you believe in protectionist mercantilist economics,” one top economist said. Strange outcomes include Australia’s Norfolk Island, population 2,188, being hit with 58% tariffs, while Antarctica’s Heard Island and McDonald Islands — uninhabited except for penguins — and Jan Mayen, a Norwegian-ruled former Arctic whaling station “possibly featuring more polar bears than people,” both face 10% duties.

US national security staff fired

US President Donald Trump fired top national security officials, as his foreign policy team faced pressure over a group chat scandal and accusations of disloyalty. The White House removed the head of the National Security Agency as well as key National Security Council officials, apparently after Laura Loomer, a rightwing activist, argued they were insufficiently aligned with Trump’s mission. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth meanwhile faces a Pentagon probe over his participation in a Signal chat involving a top journalist. The moves pile pressure on National Security Adviser Mike Waltz: Trump has declined to sack him over “Signalgate,” but hardline Republicans are distrustful of his support for Ukraine and new reports allege he used a private Gmail account for government business.

China debt rating downgraded

Fitch downgraded China’s sovereign debt rating, warning of huge debt and worsening public finances. The lowering of Beijing’s foreign currency rating was based on forecasts made before US President Donald Trump’s “Liberation Day” tariffs, but Fitch noted that China was vulnerable to a broader global slowdown as a result of increased protectionism. Though some economists are growing more optimistic about the country’s growth prospects — Nomura recently upgraded its forecast for 2025 — others are not: Rhodium Group analysts forecast Beijing will see tax revenues decline this year even if it meets its full-year growth targets, meaning “China’s fiscal resources are exhausted,” and “the era of difficult trade-offs is here.”

SKorea upholds impeachment

South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol was permanently removed from office over his attempt to impose martial law last year. South Korea’s Constitutional Court upheld Yoon’s impeachment, which came after he ordered the army to take over Parliament in December in what he called an attempt to protect the country from “anti-state forces,” only for lawmakers to block the move. A judge said Yoon had “committed a grave betrayal of the trust of the people.” Despite Yoon’s defiance ahead of the ruling, he and his party both accepted the ruling with apparent humility: The now-former president told the people that he was “very sorry and regretful that I could not live up to your expectations.”

Since the 1980s, Piers Morgan has ridden massive changes in the media industry, jumping from print to cable to, more recently, YouTube. This week on Mixed Signals, he joins Ben and (subbing in for Max) Semafor’s head of comms, Meera Pattni, to discuss how he’s building his Uncensored brand, what he likes about being a YouTuber, and if he misses anything about legacy media. They also talk about how some journalists take themselves too seriously, why having fun is important even in news media, and his views on Trump’s term so far.

SAfrica coalition frays further

South Africa’s Democratic Alliance, the second-biggest party in the coalition government, challenged the legality of a newly approved national budget, widening the rift in the alliance. The DA wants to block a hike to VAT — which it says would hit poor South Africans hardest — in the budget, which the African National Congress, the main coalition partner, passed with the support of smaller parties. Another sticking point is the management of key infrastructure, which the DA wants put on a path to privatization. Markets fear the tension between the two parties could lead to further turmoil as economic growth flatlines and youth unemployment remains elevated. “You can’t be part of a government whose budget you opposed,” an ANC spokesman told the BBC.

AGI could arrive before 2030

Artificial general intelligence could arrive far sooner than expected and will utterly transform human society, leading researchers argued. Google DeepMind released a report on AGI safety this week, noting that AI that outperforms humans could arrive before 2030, accelerated by AI’s own improvement at automating R&D. It argued that if AI’s values do not match humanity’s — or if the technology is misused — AI could have “catastrophic outcomes.” Meanwhile a former OpenAI researcher behind a prescient post in 2021 which foresaw much of AI development up to now published a major piece suggesting that superintelligence could arrive within three years, with a China-US arms race imperiling human civilization.

London theater scene booms

Nearly 5 million more people went to shows in London’s West End than New York’s Broadway in 2024, and the gap is expected to grow as international tourists boycott the US. London theaters have rebounded since the pandemic: Attendance last year was 11% higher than in 2019, partly thanks to tax incentives which encourage producers to bring shows to Britain. Industry figures say theaters offer a major boost to the economy, and that every £1 spent on tickets brings a further £1.27 in other spending. One also said that there is anecdotal evidence that Canadian theatergoers are choosing London over New York in retaliation against US President Donald Trump’s trade war and threats to annex Canada.

• The US Bureau of Labor Statistics releases March employment figures.
• A Minecraft Movie, starring Jack Black and Jennifer Coolidge, hits cinemas.
• Jamaica hosts the first-ever Grand Slam Track, a big-money professional track and field series founded by four-time Olympic champion Michael Johnson.

The estimated amount Japanese savers have stashed away as “drawer money,” equivalent to roughly 7.5% of the country’s GDP. About a fifth of the total is kept in deposit boxes at banks, a legacy of 20th-century finance still prevalent throughout Japan, where a recent bout with deflation meant cash gained value while it was kept in a safe. However, banks have begun closing some of the more than 1.5 million boxes, which yield little profit. They must tread carefully: The deposit boxes are widely used by “middle-class voters that neither politicians, nor bankers, want to alienate,” the Financial Times reported.

Can’t Be Saved by Ricch Kid. The northern Ghanaian city of Tamale has seen an explosion of a hybrid hip-hop genre with roots in traditional storytelling and instruments: It began to flourish in the 1980s but a recent wave of young artists, including Ricch Kid and Fad Lan, have taken it on, especially since the pandemic. The scene is “constantly experimenting, integrating hip-hop, Afrobeat, and electronic dance music with traditional elements,” reported Pan African Music, “while remaining true to their roots.” Listen to Can’t Be Saved on Spotify.

Sweeping global tariffs announced by President Trump this week will significantly raise the costs of renewable energy, making it harder for US Big Tech companies to meet their data center energy needs, Semafor’s Tim McDonnell writes.

Higher costs will be passed on to energy consumers at a moment when, as NextEra Energy CEO John Ketchum recently told Semafor, renewables are still the cheapest and most readily available solution to the looming US power deficit. Tariffs on critical minerals, steel, aluminum, and components for power transformers will also make energy projects of all kinds more expensive.