Washington, D.C.5:13 p.m. April 3
Brussels11:13 p.m. April 3
Beijing5:13 a.m. April 4
Here’s the latest.
Wall Street fell sharply on Thursday and was on track to have its worst day since 2022, after global markets slumped in response to President Trump’s major round of tariffs on U.S. imports.
By 2:30 p.m. Eastern time, the S&P 500 had tumbled 4.3 percent, a huge daily drop for the index, echoing sharp declines in Asia and Europe as investors reacted to the tariffs. The tech-heavy Nasdaq was down more than 5 percent. But the effects of the tariffs won’t be limited to the financial markets, experts said.
Economists predicted that tariffs will raise prices for consumers and businesses, which will lead employers to pull back on hiring and, if the tariffs remain in place long enough, lay off workers. Economists will get their latest glimpse of the job situation on Friday, when the Bureau of Labor Statistics will release March figures on hiring and unemployment.
Officials from the world’s biggest economies reacted swiftly to the new levies, as trade tensions with the United States escalated. China vowed to take countermeasures to “safeguard its own rights and interests.” Its state media described the tariffs as “self-defeating bullying.”
Mr. Trump had said for weeks that he would impose “reciprocal tariffs” on allies and adversaries, but the levies he unveiled on Wednesday were far higher than experts had expected. Economists said that they are likely to drive up prices for American consumers and manufacturers.
They applied to rivals and allies alike: The United States will subject Chinese goods to a new tariff of 34 percent, on top of earlier tariffs imposed by Mr. Trump. The European Union’s tariff was set at 20 percent, Japan’s at 24 percent and India’s at 26 percent. But there was also a new tariff for the Heard Island and McDonald Islands, Australian territories near Antarctica that are home to many penguins but no people.
The duties posed a particular threat to attempts to revive the largest economy in Europe, Germany’s, which has been stagnant.
In Brussels, Ursula von der Leyen, the European Commission president, said that the bloc would be united in its response. “If you take on one of us, you take on all of us,” she said. President Emmanuel Macron of France called on European companies to suspend all investments in the United States “until things have been clarified” over the tariffs.
The response from Japan, the largest overseas investor in the United States, was more restrained. Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba called the tariffs “extremely regrettable.” But he refrained from talk of retaliation.
Britain also did not suggest it would immediately retaliate to its new 10 percent tariff. Instead, Prime Minister Keir Starmer said negotiations toward a trade deal with the United States would continue.
Business groups, trade experts, economists, Democratic lawmakers and even a few Republicans swiftly denounced the tariffs, while some industries scrambled to understand how they would be affected.
Here’s what else to know:
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Consumer brands: Shares in many major consumer brands plunged on Thursday, highlighting their reliance on countries that produce lots of shoes and clothing, such as Vietnam, Indonesia and Cambodia.
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Auto tariffs: New tariffs on all automobiles made outside the United States took effect at midnight.
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Apple tumbles: Apple led a sell-off of tech stocks, falling about 9 percent. Its drop was one of its steepest intraday declines since early 2019, when the company plunged 10 percent after it warned that iPhone sales in China would fall short of expectations at the time.
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Loophole closed: Mr. Trump also closed a loophole called the de minimis rule, which has been used by many e-commerce companies to send low-cost goods directly to consumers in the United States from China without having to pay tariffs.
Tony Romm
Economic policy reporter
Even as his tariffs roiled markets and rattled governments globally, President Trump on Thursday sounded a positive note that his policies are “going very well,” likening them to a successful medical operation. Speaking to reporters as he departed the White House, the president said: “The markets are going to boom,” and “the country is going to boom.” He added refrain that other countries “have taken advantage of us for many, many years.”
Canada’s prime minister says the country will introduce retaliatory tariffs on U.S.
Prime Minister Mark Carney said that Canada had introduced a 25 percent tariff on cars and trucks made in the United States in retaliation for the tariffs that went into effect Thursday morning on Canadian vehicles.
Hours before the tariffs imposed by President Trump took effect, the automaker Stellantis told the union representing about 3,600 workers at its minivan and muscle car factory in Windsor, Ontario, that the plant would close on Monday for two weeks so it could assess the effects of the tariffs.
Mr. Carney estimated that Canada would collect about $5.7 billion from the retaliatory tariffs he said it was imposing — on top of the $42 billion or so he said Canada would generate from the tariffs it imposed on March 4. That money, Mr. Carney said, would go toward helping workers and businesses affected by the U.S. tariffs.
“We take these measures reluctantly,” Mr. Carney told reporters. “And we take them in ways that’s intended and will cause maximum impact in the United States and minimum impact here in Canada.” He added, “We can do better than the United States. Exactly where that comes out depends on how much damage they do to their economy.”
Canada’s tariffs, Mr. Carney said, would exclude auto parts, and the country would still allow companies that make cars in Canada to import vehicles built in the United States without incurring the tariff.
Mr. Trump has also imposed 25 percent tariffs on Canadian steel and aluminum.
Autos and auto parts are Canada’s largest export by value aside from oil and gas. Canada is the largest importer of cars and trucks made in the United States, and auto factories in Canada send upward of 90 percent of their production to the United States. Over all, trade in autos between the two countries tends to be balanced, though in some years the United States has a slight surplus.
Few industries in Canada are as entwined as the auto sector is with the United States. The integration began in 1965, when the countries entered into an auto trade agreement.
Because of that, James Stewart, the president of the Unifor union local that represents the Stellantis workers in Windsor, said that the two-week shutdown would likely lead to layoffs at U.S. factories that supply the Canadian assembly line with parts. He estimated that American parts made up at least half the value of the Windsor-built minivans.
The production pause, Mr. Stewart said, is going to cause problems in the United States.
“We’re not a jurisdiction that has taken any jobs from the U.S.,” Mr. Stewart said. “We have lost jobs to low-paying jurisdictions just like they have.”
Mr. Carney, a former central banker of England and Canada, said that tariffs announced by Mr. Trump on Wednesday “will rupture the global economy and adversely affect global economic growth.”
Mr. Carney said he would try to assemble a “coalition of like-minded countries” looking for an alternative to the United States.
“If the United States no longer wants to lead, Canada will,” he said.
Mr. Carney later added: “The 80-year period when the United States embraced the mantle of global economic leadership, when it forged alliances rooted in trust and mutual respect and championed the free and open exchange of goods and services, is over. While this is a tragedy, it is also the new reality.”
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Former Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers says he would have quit over Trump’s tariffs plan.
Lawrence Summers, who served as Treasury secretary under President Bill Clinton, said he would have “resigned in protest” had he been part of an administration that implemented the sort of “dangerous and damaging” tariffs plan announced by President Trump.
In a string of posts on X on Thursday afternoon, Mr. Summers compared President Trump’s tariff policy to “what creationism is to biology, astrology is to astronomy, or RFK thought is to vaccine science.”
“If any administration of which I was a part had launched an economic policy so totally ungrounded in serious analysis or so dangerous and damaging, I would have resigned in protest,” Mr. Summers wrote.
Mr. Summers, an economist who also served as director of the National Economic Council in the Obama administration, also suggested that Trump administration officials, including Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and leaders of the National Economic Council and the Council of Economic Advisers, should be “studying examples like Cyrus Vance and Elliott Richardson” — two officials who resigned over actions taken by the presidents who had appointed them.
“Both served their country splendidly and enhanced their reputation by disassociating from approaches they saw as dangerously misguided,” he posted.
Trump’s tariffs could upend the transition to cleaner energy.
First came President Trump’s freezing of federal support for many renewable energy projects, coupled with cries of “drill, baby, drill.”
Then came the tariffs.
The president’s trade war is expected to drive up the costs of nearly every component of clean-energy production in the United States, from the steel blades of wind turbines to the batteries inside electric vehicles.
Many of those building blocks are imported from the European Union, China and Southeast Asia, where some of the highest tariff rates were assigned.
How that affects the energy mix inside the United States is complicated, experts say. After all, rising costs for these and other materials won’t affect only renewable energy. Many of Mr. Trump’s trade policies, including tariffs on steel and aluminum, will also hit fossil fuels, making it more expensive to build natural-gas export terminals and drill oil wells, despite the president’s pledge to make oil and gas cheaper and more plentiful.
Yet the renewable energy industry is bracing for particularly large effects.
Vanessa Sciarra, vice president of trade and international competitiveness for the American Clean Power Association, a renewable energy trade group, said that “policy whiplash” was endangering Americans’ access to affordable and reliable energy by severing supply chains.
The tariffs are widely expected to reorder the energy landscape far beyond U.S. borders, too.
U.S. oil and gas exports have surged over the past decade, but longer-term prospects for growth abroad were already shaky, with buyers in Europe and Asia trying to reduce their reliance on fossil fuels as part of their pledges to cut emissions of planet-warning greenhouse gases. The possibility that China or the European Union could impose retaliatory tariffs on American fossil fuels might put a further dent in those exports, analysts said.
Globally, a huge shift toward using renewable energy in electricity production is already underway, largely thanks to China’s growing ability to produce cheap, high-quality solar panels, wind turbines and lithium-ion batteries on an enormous scale. The United States imports many of its solar-panel components from Chinese companies operating in Southeast Asian countries. And the majority of lithium-ion batteries that the United States imports for use in power grids and electric vehicles come from China itself.
Some analysts pointed to India as a relative beneficiary of the shifting landscape. India is currently ramping up its own domestic solar and battery manufacturing, and was hit with lower tariff rates than China or some countries in Southeast Asia that are major clean-tech producers, said Antoine Vagneur-Jones, head of trade and supply chains at BloombergNEF.
China is also likely to redirect more of its exports toward emerging markets like Pakistan or Brazil. The share of Chinese exports of wind turbines, solar panels and electric vehicles that go to low- or middle-income countries, as opposed to the United States or Europe, has grown sharply the past three years.
In 2022, for instance, China sent roughly 65 percent of its wind turbine exports to high-income countries, according to BloombergNEF. By 2024, however, it was sending more than 60 percent to low- and middle-income countries. Beijing has laid out plans to build factories that assemble solar panels in Nigeria and electric vehicles in Indonesia.
“Unless they want to burn money, I don’t see why any Chinese clean-tech companies would further invest in the American market,” said Li Shuo, the director of China Climate Hub at the Asia Society Policy Institute. “I wonder if this moment marks the effective conclusion of the Biden energy transition strategy, which was the attempt to create a domestic green energy industry that could compete with China’s.”
In recent years, many solar, wind and battery manufacturers had sought to open new factories in the United States, spurred by generous tax credits and incentives from the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act. The United States now has the capacity to make 50 gigawatts’ worth of solar modules, enough to satisfy U.S. demand, although it still imports many of the underlying components such as cells and wafers.
This year, wind, solar and batteries are projected to make up 93 percent of new electric capacity added to American grids. In many places, building new wind turbines or installing solar panels are often the cheapest ways to generate additional electrons.
In theory, tariffs could spur more domestic clean energy manufacturing in the United States. But further uncertainty over whether Republicans in Congress might repeal some or all of the Inflation Reduction Act, and pare back incentives for electric vehicles or domestic manufacturing, has already caused companies to pause new investments or cancel planned factories.
Because the tariffs are so broad-based, moving renewable energy production to the United States seemed unlikely even in the long term, said Coco Zhang, vice president of sustainability investing at the financial services firm ING, particularly with the Trump administration’s freezing of federal investments in renewable energy. Manufacturers would need to make risky investments in relocating their entire supply chains — steel-making, mineral processing, assembly lines — to make it cost-effective.
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Fed expectations diverge sharply as Trump’s trade war upends forecasts.
President Trump’s global trade war has led to sharply divergent expectations across Wall Street about what the Federal Reserve will do with interest rates this year, as it confronts higher inflation and slower growth.
Two distinct camps have emerged. Some see the Fed holding off on rate cuts for the whole year, while others see them moving more aggressively — and potentially earlier — than initially expected.
For now, the Fed is on hold, having paused interest rate cuts in January after lowering borrowing costs by a percentage point last year. Its main policy rate stands at 4.25 percent to 4.5 percent.
Speaking on Thursday, Philip Jefferson, the vice chair at the central bank, said the Fed is not in a “hurry” to lower interest rates again and was “well positioned to deal with the risks and uncertainties that we face.”
That echoed remarks from Lisa Cook, a Fed governor, who said on Thursday that the Fed can “afford to be patient but attentive” to the risks confronting the economy. She forecasts slower economic growth, higher unemployment and stalled progress on getting inflation down because of tariffs and other policy changes.
The split in opinion across Wall Street stems from different perspectives on how bad the inflation problem will be and how significantly tariffs will dent growth.
The price shock from tariffs is likely to arrive quickly, as businesses immediately face higher costs, which they are expected to try to pass along to their customers. But odds of a recession have also risen, with business activity potentially poised to drop as demand craters under the weight of much higher prices.
Financial markets have broadly adopted the stance that the hit to growth from tariffs will be significant enough to prompt the Fed to lower interest rates significantly this year. Federal funds futures markets show traders pulling forward the timing of the next cut to June and penciling in much higher odds that officials will add in a fourth quarter-point interest rate cut this year. Before Trump’s announcement, the expectation was for three quarter-point cuts.
Yields on U.S. government bonds have fallen sharply. At one point on Thursday, the 10-year Treasury dipped to 4 percent, its lowest level since October. The more policy-sensitive two-year yield now hovers at 3.7 percent.
On the other end of the spectrum, some economists now think the Fed will forgo interest rate cuts entirely, as it struggles to look past the inflation surge expected from tariffs.
Economists at Morgan Stanley on Thursday removed a cut they had projected in June and now expect the Fed to move to the sidelines. Economists at research firm LHMeyer also see the central bank on an extended hold, having previously thought they would begin to cut again on a quarterly basis in September.
Jonathan Pingle, chief U.S. economist at UBS, is more worried about the damage to growth from tariffs but warned that the magnitude of the inflation problem that may emerge from tariffs suggests the bar is higher for the Fed to respond to a weakening economy.
“In order to respond to the labor market, they’re really going to have to wait until they see a certain amount of acute weakness to respond in force, and at that point, the economy is already suffering,” he said.
“It’s a really tough position for the Fed to be in.”
Trump closes an e-commerce loophole, raising costs for U.S. shoppers.
President Trump on Wednesday ordered the closure of a loophole that allows retailers to directly send clothes and other goods from China to American shoppers without paying tariffs.
The loophole, known as the de minimis exemption, currently applies to goods worth less than $800. Such goods are allowed to enter the United States tariff free. Mr. Trump’s order, which takes effect on May 2, removes the exemption from packages from China, the largest source of de minimis shipments. Items bought and shipped this way also require far less customs paperwork.
By ending the exemption, Customs and Border Protection will now collect tariff revenue on shipments worth less than $800. Mr. Trump also said his order would help prevent drug smuggling. He and others have claimed that fentanyl and its precursor ingredients are sometimes shipped to the United States as de minimis shipments.
Shippers in China “hide illicit substances and conceal the true contents of shipments sent to the United States through deceptive shipping practices,” Mr. Trump’s order said.
Lawmakers from both parties have called for reform to the de minimis provision.
Representative Linda Sánchez, a Democrat of California who has introduced legislation to end the exemption, said Mr. Trump’s order did not go far enough and needed to apply to all trade. “Otherwise, we’ll be playing a game of Whac-a-Mole, as bad actors and fentanyl smugglers simply relocate their operations to other countries to continue exploiting the loophole,” she said in a statement.
“For too long, this customs loophole has let foreign exporters flood our market with cheap goods and helped drug traffickers move fentanyl past our borders — resulting in factory closures, job losses and deaths,” Representative Rosa DeLauro, a Democrat of Connecticut, said in a statement on Thursday.
The National Council of Textile Organizations, a trade group that represents U.S. manufacturers, welcomed Mr. Trump’s move. The group said in a statement that it is pushing for an end to the loophole for all imported goods, not just those sent from China and Hong Kong.
But Mr. Trump’s order will likely push up costs for American consumers, some trade experts said. Research has found that eliminating the provision entirely would cost Americans between $11 billion and $13 billion, and those higher costs would disproportionately hurt lower-income and minority households.
“This is going to be pretty unpopular with a lot of Americans, “said Clark Packard, a research fellow at the Cato Institute, a research organization that generally favors free trade.
Mr. Packard questioned whether closing the loophole would help drug detection efforts, saying that customs officials already screen packages entering the country, including de minimis shipments.
“By flooding the customs process with more paperwork, it probably detracts from C.B.P.’s ability to try to ferret out illegal drugs traffic across borders,” Mr. Packard said.
Asked whether it was ready to process and check more packages, Hilton Beckham, assistant commissioner at the Customs and Border Protection said: “Our automated systems are fully updated to capture, assess and administer all new duties, and clear guidance will be provided to support uniform enforcement across the nation.”
Shein, the fast-fashion retailer that sends most of its products directly from China under the provision, has in recent years become very popular. The company relies on factories in China that can manufacture a wide range of items in small quantities, said Sheng Lu, an apparel business professor at the University of Delaware. “There’s no realistic alternative to make their products,” he said.
Shein and Temu, which also relies on Chinese vendors, have diversified by working with more American sellers and opening warehouses in the United States, which could limit the impact of Mr. Trump’s orders on them. The companies did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
“This is not going to kill them off by any means,” said Aaron Rubin, the chief executive of ShipHero, a warehouse management software firm. “This will just change the business model.”
Shares of PDD Holdings, which owns Temu, tumbled about 5 percent on Thursday.
But small and medium U.S. retailers that rely on the de minimis provision for Chinese goods are poised to be hit even harder, said Professor Lu. Having to cover the extra costs, he said, could threaten the survival of smaller businesses, if customers are unwilling to pay higher prices or deal with delivery delays.
Mr. Trump had ordered the end of the exemption in February, but reinstated it within a few days. Logistics experts said the short closure caused a pileup of packages at the borders — logjams that they said could happen again when the president’s new order goes into effect.
Mr. Trump said he had been notified that systems were in place to collect tariffs on de minimis packages. He said he had asked the commerce secretary, Howard Lutnick, to report on the order’s impact in 90 days.
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Trump’s tariffs deliver a blow to Nike’s bet on Vietnam.
Two decades ago, Nike manufactured 22 percent of its footwear in Vietnam and almost none of its apparel there. China was the company’s go-to country for manufacturing.
Then, like many other companies, Nike gradually started moving manufacturing to Vietnam. Last year, 50 percent of Nike’s footwear and 28 percent of its apparel was made in Vietnam, the largest producer in each category.
The move to Vietnam was meant to shield the company from the rising costs of manufacturing in China and the more volatile relations between the United States and China. It also came as Nike was closely examining its entire supply chain after accusations of sweatshop conditions.
“We are going to continue to work a diversified sourcing base,” Mark Parker, who was Nike’s chief executive, said in 2008 in a response to a question about rising costs in China.
But Nike’s careful manufacturing shift over the past 20 years hit a bump on Wednesday, when President Trump announced worldwide levies that included a 46 percent tariff on all goods coming from Vietnam, one of the largest imposed on any country.
Nike’s stock was down more than 12 percent in midday trading on Thursday, and the stocks of competitors like Adidas, On and Skechers also fell sharply.
The blow from tariffs comes as the company is dealing with other problems. Last year it brought back Elliott Hill, a longtime employee who had retired, as chief executive, replacing John Donahoe. It was an acknowledgment that its strategy of selling directly to consumers had not worked and that it had lost ground in important sports like running.
Nike, which is based in Beaverton, Ore., is far from the only high-profile company whose diversified production is failing to help in the face of President Trump’s tariffs. Apple has moved to reduce its reliance on China by producing more in Vietnam and India, whose goods will be subject to a 26 percent tariff. Apple’s stock was down about 9 percent on Thursday.
Mr. Trump has imposed tariffs of at least 10 percent on every country in the world, with especially steep levies on Southeast Asian countries — a major manufacturing hub for American companies. That means there is no haven for manufacturers, and the costs to bring goods into the United States will rise no matter where companies manufacture them.
Perhaps the more salient questions, then, are, what other tools do companies have, and how exposed are they to the American market?
As two of the largest consumer-goods companies in the world, Nike and Apple may have the ability to squeeze the companies that manufacture for them, ship goods more efficiently and charge their wealthier consumers higher prices, offsetting some of the pain of tariffs. And as worldwide companies, not all their goods will be exposed to increased tariffs. Less than half of them will, actually.
Last year, just 42 percent of Nike’s $51 billion in revenue was made in the United States, while 43 percent of Apple’s sales were in the Americas, which includes all countries in North and South America. For now, goods that are made in Vietnam, India and China but are sold to consumers in Europe, Asia and elsewhere — a majority of Nike’s and Apple’s goods — will not be subject to any increased tariffs.
The job market has been resilient. Trump’s trade war could be its undoing.
For three years, the U.S. economy has been buffeted by rapid inflation, high interest rates and political instability at home and abroad. Yet it has proved surprisingly resilient, supported by the sturdy pillars of robust consumer spending, a rising stock market, and healthy balance sheets for households and businesses alike.
But one by one, those pillars have begun to crack under the weight of tariffs and uncertainty. The all-out global trade war that President Trump declared on Wednesday could be enough to shatter what had arguably been the economy’s final source of support, the strong job market.
“The strength of the consumer is coming down to the jobs market,” said Sarah House, an economist at Wells Fargo. “And it’s increasingly perilous.”
The sweeping tariffs that Mr. Trump announced on Wednesday, and the duties that U.S. trading partners quickly imposed in retaliation, sent stock indexes around the world tumbling on Thursday. The effects won’t be limited to the financial markets: Economists say tariffs will raise prices for consumers and businesses, which will lead employers to pull back on hiring and, if the tariffs remain in place long enough, lay off workers.
“If the economy isn’t growing as fast, or it isn’t growing at all, you don’t need as many workers,” Ms. House said.
Economists will get their latest glimpse of the job situation on Friday, when the Bureau of Labor Statistics will release March figures on hiring and unemployment.
Even before the latest salvo on trade, the uncertainty surrounding the administration’s policies had led many businesses to delay hiring plans and put off expansions or other investments. A survey of manufacturers released by the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas on Monday showed that forecasts for capital expenditures in six months’ time dropped sharply in March. The outlook for employment also soured as businesses turned downbeat about the overall economic backdrop.
“Trump, tariffs, massive uncertainty — how can you do business planning with all of this uncertainty and the daily changes in direction made by the Trump administration?” one electronics manufacturing executive said in a survey response.
The labor market has proved remarkably resilient in recent years, defying predictions from many forecasters that the Federal Reserve’s efforts to rein in inflation would lead to rising unemployment. That has helped support the broader economy: Even as Americans’ savings have waned and their confidence has faded, most have held on to their jobs, allowing them to keep spending.
But even before Mr. Trump took office, there were hints that the labor market was more fragile than the low unemployment rate and steady pace of job growth suggested. Companies weren’t cutting jobs, but they weren’t adding many, either. Workers had grown reluctant to change employers, and those who were looking for jobs were taking longer to find them. That caution has only intensified during the chaotic early months of Mr. Trump’s presidency.
“I think there is some shakiness starting to show,” said Allison Shrivastava, an economist at the job site Indeed. “You can almost think of the labor market as a rock in the ocean getting battered and getting weathered by all the other things going on in the economy.”
Any pullback in hiring is likely to show up first in industries that are directly hurt by tariffs, like retailers that sell imported goods and manufacturers that rely on imported materials to make their products. That may already be happening: A survey of chief financial officers released last week showed that a quarter of the companies are scaling back their hiring and capital spending plans for 2025 because of tariffs.
But even businesses that are seemingly far removed from the trade war could feel the effects if higher prices lead consumers to pull back their spending.
At Woodhouse Spa, a Colorado-based chain of 88 luxury wellness centers, business has grown rapidly in recent years, as a rising stock market and strong economic growth have lifted the fortunes of the affluent households that make up its customer base. So far, there is little sign of that changing, said Ben Jones, who runs Woodhouse’s parent company, Radiance Holdings.
But with stock prices falling and surveys showing that consumers are increasingly wary, Mr. Jones is watching his sales figures closely for any signs that business is taking a hit. And tariffs will further drive up already sky-high construction costs, making it harder to expand.
As a result, when Radiance’s executives made hiring plans for this year, they took a cautious approach. Positions they had hoped to add, like a site-selection specialist to help identify potential new locations, were put on hold.
“We openly discussed, ‘Do we really need these positions?’” Mr. Jones said. “In the face of this uncertainty, let’s make sure that we’re only hiring exactly what we need this year.”
Radiance isn’t planning on cutting any jobs. But that could change if revenues start to fall behind the company’s projections.
“We have a budget to hit,” Mr. Jones said. “We obviously watch revenue very closely and need to make the hard decisions if we see we’re going to start missing the budget for the year.”
Layoffs have crept up in recent months, particularly among small businesses, which have less of a cushion against higher costs. But companies have generally responded to uncertainty by pausing hiring, not cutting jobs — in part because memories of the post-pandemic labor shortages remain fresh among hiring managers.
“I think there’s still a little bit of scarring from that labor market that leaves employers really wanting to hold on to their workers,” said Amy Glaser, senior vice president at the staffing firm Adecco.
That could change if tariffs begin raising companies’ costs or hurting sales. Employers may initially resist layoffs in the hope that the trade war proves short-lived. But if tariffs remain in place, job cuts are inevitable, said Noah Yosif, chief economist for the American Staffing Association.
“When we’re going to start to see more of an acceleration in layoffs and this freeze within the labor market is if employers en masse begin to lose hope in the fact that tariffs are not going to be short-term tools designed to secure better trade deals,” he said.
High and potentially rising inflation further complicates the hiring picture for companies. When supply chains gummed up during the pandemic and costs soared, businesses were able to pass along much of those added expenses to their customers. They may be much more constrained this time around, which would force them to absorb the costs themselves.
“I’d be more worried that consumers just say ‘no’ and it comes out of corporate profits,” said Donald Rissmiller, chief economist at Strategas, a research firm. That would be followed by layoffs and cuts in capital spending and travel, he said, adding, “I’m worried about that channel.”
After Mr. Trump’s announcement on Wednesday, Mr. Rissmiller said he expected the unemployment rate to rise to 5 percent, from 4.1 percent in February. He also raised his U.S. recession odds for this year to 45 percent.
Most forecasters expect the March employment report to show a modest slowdown in hiring, punctuated by job losses among federal workers. But the data was collected in mid-March, an eternity ago given subsequent developments.
“I never thought that a month behind would be seen as ancient history, but it does seem that way now,” Ms. Shrivastava said.
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Danielle Kaye
Business reporter
The S&P 500 is still on track for its worst day since 2022. It’s now down 3.8 percent for the day, a sell-off fueled by the scale of Trump’s tariffs across America’s trading partners. The tech-heavy Nasdaq is nearly 5 percent lower for the day.
The stocks of big consumer brands like Nike are hit hard by the tariffs.
Shares in many major consumer brands plunged on Thursday, the day after President Trump announced steep tariffs on countries that produce lots of shoes and clothing, such as Vietnam, Indonesia and Cambodia.
Many sportswear brands had shifted production away from China, after Mr. Trump ramped up tariffs on the country during his first term, and toward other countries in the region. Now, those countries also face punishing tariffs on the goods they sell in the United States.
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Shares of Nike tumbled 13 percent, to their lowest level since 2017. Nearly all of Nike’s footwear and apparel are manufactured outside the United States. For example, factories in Vietnam produce about half of the Nike brand’s shoes.
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Lululemon, the Canadian brand known for its leggings, dropped 13 percent. Many of its products are manufactured in Vietnam, Cambodia, Sri Lanka and Indonesia.
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Germany’s Adidas slumped nearly 12 percent. Vietnam is its largest sourcing country, accounting for 27 percent of the firm’s volume last year.
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Puma, another German brand, fell 11 percent. Much of its manufacturing is outsourced to six countries: China, Vietnam, Cambodia, Bangladesh, Indonesia and India.
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JD Sports, a British retailer, fell nearly 8 percent.
The pain also hit the higher end of the retail market. Shares in the luxury British brand Burberry dropped 10 percent, while France’s Kering (parent of Gucci and others) lost more than 7 percent and LVMH fell more than 5 percent.
Shares in Pandora, a Danish jeweler that makes its products in Thailand, dropped 11 percent. The company said in a statement that, without mitigating actions, tariffs would cost it an extra $178 million per year. Some of the cost derives from the fact that the goods Pandora sells in Canada and Latin America are distributed via the United States, something it expects to fully address in the next year.
Ana Swanson
International trade reporter
Howard Lutnick, the commerce secretary, is making the rounds in TV interviews today. On Fox News he defended the tariffs, saying they would lead to “the greatest renaissance of manufacturing in America.” He predicted this will create “the most incredible set of jobs,” including for people with only a highschool education. “The coolest jobs, the highest-paying jobs, they’re all coming to America,” he said.
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Neal E. Boudette
Stellantis, which produces vehicles under the brands Jeep, Ram, Dodge and Chrysler, said it was temporarily halting production at a plant in Mexico and another in Canada in response to the tariffs. A factory in Windsor, Ontario, that makes the Chrysler Pacifica minivan will shut down for two weeks and one that makes Jeeps in Toluca, Mexico, will be idled on April 7 for the rest of the month.
Neal E. Boudette
In a sign of how integrated North American auto production has become, Stellantis said that the production stoppages in Canada and Mexico would force it to layoff of about 900 workers in Indiana and Michigan.
Mexico’s president says her country was given ‘preferential treatment’ in the new U.S. tariffs announcement.
During her daily morning news conference, President Claudia Sheinbaum of Mexico applauded the fact that her country’s exports were not hit with new tariffs when President Trump announced sweeping levies on imports from major trading partners across the globe on Wednesday.
Mexico, she said, “has preferential treatment.”
She noted that Mexico and Canada, two of the United States’ biggest trading partners, were spared because of the existing free trade agreement among the three countries, but she also pointed to what she called a relationship of “mutual respect” between U.S. and Mexican officials. The two governments have been working closely over the past few months on issues ranging from the economy to combating cartels and illegal immigration.
Last month, Mr. Trump abruptly suspended many of the sweeping tariffs he had imposed two days earlier, saying he would allow products that are traded under the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement, the pact he signed in his first term, to avoid stiff 25 percent tariffs.
Mexico’s economy secretary, Marcelo Ebrard, said on Thursday the new American tariffs on other countries might help Mexico because it was now cheaper to do business in his country.
He and Ms. Sheinbaum said they hoped to continue talking to the Trump administration about lessening tariffs on auto exports, steel and aluminum — which fell under separate tariff policies, some of which have already begun.
The auto export tariffs are a concern for Mexico, Ms. Sheinbaum said, because the automotive industry represents about 30 percent of Mexico’s exports to the United States.
Vietnam’s prime minister urges calm as the shock of high U.S. tariffs sinks in.
Prime Minister Phạm Minh Chính of Vietnam on Thursday urged his country to stay “calm and steadfast” to weather the shock of enormous new American tariffs on its goods.
As well as provisional deals to increase American imports, Vietnam hopes it can leverage its history with Washington to persuade the Trump administration to reduce the 47 percent tariff on Vietnamese exports that were announced on Wednesday.
U.S. policies should “take into account Vietnam’s conditions and circumstances as a developing country that continues to deal with the severe and long-lasting consequences of many years of war,” Mr. Chinh said at a meeting in Hanoi on Thursday, according to a report on the government’s news portal.
“Vietnam hopes the United States will adopt policies that are in line with the positive relationship between the two countries,” he added.
Vietnamese officials have also questioned the White House’s calculations on the levies applied to American imports by Vietnam. They are hoping that a planned visit to Washington this weekend by Vietnam’s deputy prime minister will lead the Trump administration to lower the new tariffs, which were among the highest imposed in the sweeping announcement.
President Trump claimed on Tuesday that the effective barriers to American imports, calculated using the trade imbalance between the two countries, amounted to the equivalent of a 90 percent tariff.
“Vietnamese taxes are currently much lower than the 90 percent rate calculated by the U.S.,” Vietnam’s deputy minister of finance, Nguyen Duc Chi, said in an interview. According to the ministry’s figures, the average levy applied on American imports into Vietnam is about 9.4 percent. “We believe the rate announced by the U.S. government is a maximum estimate, and the specific rate will still be subject to review,” he said of the tariffs.
The U.S. tariffs could affect Vietnam’s competitiveness. Companies seeking to decouple from China now face a different landscape, where Malaysia, the Philippines and Singapore have a significant advantage over Vietnam, Cambodia and India, all of which were hit by the American levies. South American countries, such as Brazil and Argentina, also look more attractive now.
For decades, Vietnam’s rapid economic growth has been reliant on exports. The country has turned itself into a major manufacturing hub in the global supply chain, but the tariffs announced by Mr. Trump have put the country’s growth model on shaky ground. Millions of workers at factories across Vietnam now face an uncertain future.
Truong Thi Y, 38, a migrant worker from Vietnam’s Mekong delta, works for the Taiwanese footwear maker Pouyuen, the largest employer in Ho Chi Minh City, making shoes for brands such as Nike, Adidas, and Puma. Her job is on a factory line that makes soles for shoes.
She lives from paycheck to paycheck and fears layoffs.
“I don’t know anything about tariffs or exports, but I want my companies to have enough orders so I can keep working and earning my money to support my family,” she said as she prepared to put her three children to sleep in a rented room. “The company fired many, many workers a few years ago because of the lack of orders, so I don’t want that to happen again.”
Damien Cave contributed reporting.
The War on Nature in Ukraine
The human costs of Russia’s war in Ukraine are enormous, measured in mass graves, nightly missile attacks, traumatized children and hundreds of thousands of soldiers dead or wounded.
But Ukraine’s environment is also being devastated. The war may end, but damage from artillery shells, mines, drones and missiles will endure for decades, experts say, degrading industries like farming and mining, introducing health risks and eroding natural beauty.
Fields are pocked with shell craters, their soil contaminated with the residue of explosives. Burning fuel tanks spew pollution into the air and wildfires burn unchecked in combat zones. Water from reservoirs has poured through destroyed dams, causing droughts upstream and damaging floods below.
As the war enters its fourth year, Ukrainian authorities are carefully collecting evidence of a new type of war crime known as ecocide.
As genocide is to people, ecocide is to the environment. Ukraine is mounting an extensive legal effort to seek justice for ecological harm, in Ukrainian courts and the International Criminal Court. Prosecutors are pursuing 247 cases of environmental war crimes against Russia. These are rare legal efforts. “Nobody has done it before,” said Maksym Popov, special adviser on environmental crimes in the prosecutor general’s office.
Prosecutors classify 14 of the 247 cases as ecocide under Ukraine’s criminal code because of the specifics of the damage, such as mass destruction of flora and fauna. Ukrainian officials put the total environmental cost at more than $85 billion.
The chances of prosecuting Russians in person seem small, since there is almost no prospect Russia would cooperate. But Ukraine is determined to establish accountability. “Evidence collected within criminal cases and court verdicts, even if issued in absentia, will strengthen Ukraine’s compensation claims,” said Andriy Kostin, who was a driving force behind the effort as Ukraine’s prosecutor general from 2022 to 2024.
Russia’s defense ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
To report the ecological damage caused by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, New York Times journalists visited the front line and the surrounding areas over four months, interviewing more than three dozen people including military officials, environmental experts and local administrators.
The picture is inevitably incomplete. It was not possible to visit Russian-occupied areas of Ukraine, for instance. And Ukraine is not trying to document the environmental damage its military has caused in Russia, where it has targeted oil refineries, setting off infernos that send plumes of black smoke into the sky.
Water
What was once a fish farm at the junction of the Konka River and the Kakhovka reservoir has become dry, cracked dirt.
One of the war’s most devastating blows to Ukraine’s environment occurred in June 2023 when the Kakhovka dam, holding back a reservoir almost as large as Utah’s Great Salt Lake, was blown up. The breach unleashed a deluge down the Dnipro River, sending toxic sediments and trillions of gallons of fresh water into the salty Black Sea, and wrecking coastal ecosystems during a peak reproductive period for marine organisms.
The reservoir had provided irrigation for much of southern Ukraine. Soon, farmland in the region began to dry up.
“It was beautiful,” said Serhii Buhay, 52, from his back patio in the village of Malokaterynivka, where he used to enjoy a view of the reservoir. “One day everything changed. There’s nothing left.”
Sunflower harvests produced only a 10th of what they had delivered the previous year, said Serhii Verhovskyi, 38, a farmer in the village of Pershe Travnya, about 10 miles from the reservoir. “We really need water, we need it badly. This season has brought many farmers to their knees.”
A New York Times investigation found that Russia was most likely responsible for the attack on the dam. At the time, Russia accused Ukraine of having sabotaged the dam itself, and in general the Kremlin has denied its forces commit war crimes.
From an ecological perspective, the dam has long been considered controversial. The filling of the reservoir in 1956, and subsequent transformation of arid grasslands into fertile farmland, disrupted native ecosystems, some experts contend, and many ecologists say the dam should not now be rebuilt.
Elsewhere in eastern Ukraine, it is the groundwater that is at risk from the war.
The region is dotted with coal mines, dozens of which have fallen under Russia’s control as its forces advanced across the Donbas. Occupation authorities mostly shuttered the outdated mines rather than continue to subsidize them.
Experts fear those mines were closed haphazardly, allowing groundwater to flood their tunnels and caverns and leach toxins. Such damage makes groundwater from wells undrinkable and eventually reaches rivers, polluting surface water and then soil.
The collapse of water infrastructure in the Donbas in the earlier phase of the war from 2014 to 2022 — evident in damaged pipes and water treatment plants — led people to drill backyard wells. Hundreds of these now mix water layers, spreading contaminants from the mines.
Earth
Serhii Lymanskyi, director of the Chalk Flora Nature Preserve, looking at military trenches there. He says it will take the land “more than 100 years” to fully recover.
Ukraine boasts some of the world’s most fertile soil, called “chernozem,” black earth. The black earth is “the king of soils,” says Sviatoslav Baliuk, director of the O.N. Sokolovsky Institute for Soil Science and Agrochemistry Research in Kharkiv. This soil lies under much of the battlefield.
Millions of artillery shells release explosive residue into the air and soil. It has been a problem in past wars. “Even a century after World War I, soil in France is still contaminated with heavy metals above safe levels for humans,” Naomi Rintoul-Hynes, a soil expert at Canterbury Christ Church University in England, said in an email, “particularly if crops are grown” on sites of major battles.
The risk of contamination in food crops will linger from heavy metals and other pollutants, harming Ukraine’s agriculture, one of its most important businesses.
More ecological fallout comes from the disturbance of the soil caused by powerful explosives and the digging of trenches and other fortifications. In one zone, 30,000 artillery shell craters pocked a 150-square mile area southeast of Kharkiv. Scientists use the term “bombturbation” to describe this process of mechanical damage.
About 10 percent of a Ukrainian national park, the Chalk Flora Reserve, is damaged by trenchwork dug by Ukrainian soldiers. “It will take more than 100 years” to restore it to its previous state, said Serhii Lymanskyi, director of the park.
Air
Mines laid in the forest near Dolyna in eastern Ukraine made a wildfire there inaccessible to firefighters.
At a military checkpoint in eastern Ukraine last fall, a soldier gestured toward smoke rising beside the road ahead: A wildfire was burning through a minefield. At closer range you could hear the crackling of the flames mixed with pops and bangs of exploding mines.
Some of the fiercest fighting that has swept through the Donbas has taken place amid tinder-dry pine forests. While explosives spark some fires accidentally, others are intentionally set to flush soldiers from hiding places. The presence of mines means that leaving paved roads to fight fires is out of the question, so the blazes burn uncontrolled.
Centuries of forestry mismanagement, allowing logging and replanting of tightly spaced trees, are exacerbating the blazes, said Brian Milakovsky, an American forestry expert who lived in eastern Ukraine for years before the invasion. “Without exaggeration pine forests are disappearing,” from parts of the east because of wildfires, he said.
Studies show that hundreds and possibly thousands of square miles of forest have burned since Russia’s invasion. One report estimated the damage at $18 billion.
After a hot, dry summer, Ukraine’s 2024 fire season was the worst on record, with more than 7,000 active fires recorded just on Sept. 7.
Nuclear contamination is another concern. Early in the invasion, an attack on a nuclear research center in the eastern city of Kharkiv led to what is so far the only case of ecocide filed against named Russian commanders — five colonels and generals accused of ordering the missile strikes. The facility sustained damage from more than 100 points of impact, but no radiation leaked, officials said.
In February, a drone struck a protective shield at the Chernobyl nuclear facility. Ukraine described it as a deliberate Russian attack, an accusation the Kremlin denied. No radiation leaks were detected but experts are studying the damage before undertaking repairs.
Wildlife
Skeletons from dolphins that have washed up on the Black Sea shore. Ivan Rusev, head of a nature park there, estimated that up to 50,000 dolphins may have been killed in 2022. He blamed Russian sonar.
As a cold drizzle fell one early December morning, about two dozen men donned fluorescent vests, split into two groups, and fanned out through the forest.
Despite the congenial atmosphere, their mission was serious: to cull wild boar, roe deer, foxes, and wolves, all of which have proliferated during three years of war because of tight restrictions on hunting. The population explosions helped spread diseases such as rabies.
Despite being heavily stacked in the hunters’ favor, the attempt at culling that morning was not successful. Few shots were even fired.
Viktor Chervonyi, President of the All-Ukrainian Association of Hunters and Hunting Grounds, cited statistics showing a fivefold increase in the fox population in one region.
A recent cull there showed 20 percent were rabid, the result of a breakdown in rabies control efforts.
Ukrainian news outlets have reported on both civilians and soldiers dying of rabies, though official statistics are unavailable. Rabies vaccination campaigns for wildlife have been limited by wartime hindrances such as mined forests and grounded flights.
The fate of a colony of flamingos provides another cautionary tale. After fighting disturbed their nesting grounds in the Kherson region and Crimea, they settled in 2023 in the Tuzlovsky Lagoons National Nature Park along the Black Sea coast.
“Last year was relatively successful, with about 200 chicks” born in the park, said Ivan Rusev, the head of the park’s scientific department, referring to the 2023 nesting season. He was optimistic about 2024 after spotting more than 1,500 flamingos and 400 nests.
Their new home, however, was underneath an area where low-flying Russian drones zoomed into Ukraine from the Black Sea.
“When flamingos hear these drones, they leave their nests,” Mr. Rusev said. “During this time, the yellow-legged gulls, which are very aggressive birds, come in and steal the eggs, ultimately destroying the colony. Not a single chick survived.”
It was not only flamingos that suffered. Extrapolating from his findings and data shared by colleagues in other Black Sea countries, Mr. Rusev estimated up to 50,000 dolphins may have been killed in 2022. He blamed sonar from Russian warships.
“How much does the destruction of endemic species cost?” asked Ruslan Strilets, a former environment minister. “We can’t calculate the price.”
The Future
A destroyed building in Pavlohrad, in eastern Ukraine. After the war, there will be an environmental cost to disposing of rubble from the more than 210,000 buildings that have been destroyed.
Even after the war, there will be an environmental cost to disposing of rubble from the more than 210,000 buildings that have been destroyed. Early efforts are being made at rubble recycling in several cities near Kyiv.
The programs, however, remain small-scale and have been complicated by bureaucratic hurdles and difficulties separating reusable debris from unexploded ordnance or asbestos. Asbestos was built into an estimated 70 percent of Ukraine’s public and residential buildings.
Ukraine wants environmental protections included in any peace agreement, but the Trump administration’s friendlier ties with Moscow leave Kyiv little leverage.
Iryna Vykhrystiuk, the director of Tuzlovsky Lagoons National Park, worries that an end to the war would bring a different set of economic and environmental problems. “There will be cries of, ‘We lost some areas, we have mined territories, let us plow everything up,’” she said.
“Against the backdrop of these immense losses,” she added, “we need to seek out any fragments of living nature and protect them.”
Europe Has Economic Power. Can It Use It Against Trump’s Tariffs?
Europe Has Economic Power. Can It Use It Against Trump’s Tariffs?
European leaders have said they would prefer to negotiate. If that fails, their response could go beyond anything they’ve tried before.
The European Union, taken as a whole, is America’s biggest trading partner. That makes President Trump’s fresh tariffs especially painful for the 27-nation bloc — but also gives it a uniquely large amount of economic weight to throw around in response.
In the hours after Mr. Trump’s sweeping tariff announcement on Wednesday, European leaders began to make clear that they plan to do so.
Among the options: to impose trade barriers on U.S. services firms, in particular giant technology companies like Google who do a huge amount of E.U. business. And policymakers are already finalizing lists of jacked-up tariffs that could go into effect as soon as mid-April. Member state representatives are expected to vote on them next week, a senior European official said on Thursday, speaking anonymously to brief reporters.
Officials could add to those lists in the coming weeks, in response to both auto tariffs and Mr. Trump’s freshly announced 20 percent levy on the European Union. They have not yet committed to a specific plan.
Commenting on the new U.S. tariffs early Thursday morning, Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the E.U. executive arm, said, “There seems to be no order in the disorder, no clear path to the complexity and chaos that is being created,” adding that Europeans felt “let down by our oldest ally.”
The European Union was built around free trade and cooperation, and its leaders remain adamant that tariffs are bad for everyone. Europe is still trying to push for active discussions, and the E.U. trade commissioner said on social media on Thursday that he would speak to his U.S. counterparts tomorrow.
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Israel Shifts Goal Posts in Gaza War
Israel’s leaders have articulated various goals for the expanding war in Gaza, spreading confusion over how the objectives might be achieved and on what terms the renewed campaign might end.
The primary aim is to squeeze Hamas into releasing the dozens of remaining hostages in Gaza. But other goals have emerged.
On Wednesday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel had “moved up a gear” in Gaza, capturing more territory, hitting militants and carving up the enclave. He reiterated his ultimate goals of crushing Hamas’s military capabilities and terminating its rule over Gaza, neither of which have been achieved in more than a year of war.
The defense minister, Israel Katz, said a day earlier that the military was seizing more territory to protect its forces and border towns, suggesting the possibility of a longer-term presence.
And over the weekend, Mr. Netanyahu said Israel would enable what he described as the voluntary emigration of Gazans, without clarifying where they would go.
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For years, Myanmar’s army chief, Senior General Min Aung Hlaing, has been treated like a pariah on the global stage.
Gen. Min Aung Hlaing has made few overseas trips, other than to Russia and China, since he seized power in a coup in 2021. Long the subject of Western sanctions, he has been barred from attending meetings of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, of which Myanmar is a member, because of his military’s failure to implement an agreed peace plan in the country’s civil war. An arrest warrant by the International Criminal Court last November accusing him of crimes against humanity was supposed to isolate him further.
But on Thursday, Gen. Min Aung Hlaing arrived in Bangkok for a regional summit of a group of seven countries around the Bay of Bengal that also includes India and Thailand. His visit comes less than a week after an earthquake in Myanmar on Friday killed at least 3,085 people, and even as his military has come under fierce criticism for continuing airstrikes in the ongoing civil war, in the days after the disaster.
For the general, the visit — his first to a Southeast Asian nation since April 2021 — will give his regime the international attention it has long desired. For the Thai government, which is already sheltering tens of thousands of refugees from Myanmar in camps along the border, stable relations with the military government could be aimed at trying to manage the flow of new arrivals.
But critics say the visit is the latest indication that Bangkok views human rights as irrelevant in foreign policy.
“They don’t care,” said Kasit Piromya, a former Thai foreign minister.
“It’s an insult to ASEAN — that’s what it is all about,” he said, referring to the 10-member Southeast Asian regional grouping by its acronym. “It’s the fear of the Burmese army, the greed, and because all of them are not democratic.”
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The day after President Trump antagonized world leaders across the globe with his most sweeping set of tariffs yet, he was scheduled to fly to Florida and potentially see the one leader he has called his “favorite president.”
That leader, President Javier Milei of Argentina, had flown overnight to receive an award on Thursday at a right-wing gala at Mar-a-Lago. Mr. Trump was scheduled to also be there late Thursday — Mr. Milei said Mr. Trump would receive an award, too — and Mr. Milei said he hoped the two would meet.
It was Mr. Milei’s 10th trip to the United States in 15 months as president, and nearly every time, he has met Mr. Trump or Elon Musk.
Mr. Trump has posited that he is reshuffling U.S. foreign policy strictly around what is good for the United States.
So what can be puzzling about his elevation of Argentina to the front row of America’s allies — Mr. Milei and Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni of Italy were the only world leaders onstage at Mr. Trump’s inauguration — is that the chronically distressed South American nation is not particularly important as an economic or geopolitical partner.
Instead, through Mr. Milei, Argentina has offered Mr. Trump something else he appears to crave: adoration.
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Syria accused Israel on Thursday of trying to destabilize the country after intense airstrikes on military bases and a deadly raid in southern Syria, part of a deepening incursion that is sharply raising tensions in the region.
Since the Assad regime was ousted from Syria last year in a rapid rebel offensive, Israel has carried out hundreds of airstrikes and has deployed forces into southern Syria, in what it says are necessary security operations against potentially hostile forces. Israel’s latest ground incursion, which appeared to be one of the deepest and deadliest into Syria so far, sparked further outrage among some Syrians.
Syria’s new leaders have condemned Israel’s moves, accusing Israel of violating its rights, and many Syrians fear that the incursions could herald a long-term occupation.
The Syrian foreign ministry said that “dozens of civilians and soldiers” had been wounded in airstrikes that caused the “near-total destruction” of the military airport outside the city of Hama. The Israeli military said late Wednesday that it had carried out airstrikes on “military capabilities” at bases in Syria, including one in the Hama region and another in the center of the country, as well as military infrastructure in the area of Damascus, the capital.
In the south of the country, the governor’s office in Daraa said that at least nine people had been killed in attacks during an advance by Israeli forces toward the town of Tall al-Jabiye. A local activist, Ammar Jahmany, said in a telephone interview that the Israeli forces clashed with local fighters who were defending the approaches to the town.
Israel said in a post on Telegram that its forces had conducted a nighttime raid. It said its forces had confiscated weapons and “destroyed terrorist infrastructure.” After the troops came under fire by armed militants, the military killed several of them, the post said.
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