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President Donald Trump threatened an additional levy of 50% on Chinese goods unless it withdrew its retaliatory tariffs. Mr Trump said he would not delay implementing reciprocal tariffs but that “many countries” were negotiating deals with America. In a volatile day of trading the S&P 500, which briefly entered a bear market, fell by 0.2% at market close. The NASDAQ meanwhile rose by 0.1%.
Ursula von der Leyen said that the European Union could scrap tariffs on American industrial goods in return for Mr Trump doing the same. The president of the European Commission said that “Europe is always ready for a good deal”. But she also said that the EU would seek to strengthen trading ties with countries other than America.
Mr Trump said America would hold “high level”, direct nuclear talks with Iran on Saturday. The countries have not directly communicated since 2018, when Mr Trump pulled America out of a multilateral deal with Iran. Mr Trump said Iran “can’t have a nuclear weapon”, and warned the country of “great danger” if talks were unsuccessful.
John Roberts, the chief justice of America’s Supreme Court, temporarily paused an order requiring the Trump administration to bring back to America a man it mistakenly deported. The government argues that the lower-court judge, by setting a midnight deadline for the man’s return from El Salvador, overstepped her authority. An appeals court upheld the judge’s ruling earlier on Monday.
Commodity prices fell amid fears of a global recession. Brent crude, the oil-price benchmark, fell to around $64 per barrel, down from $74 on Wednesday. The price of copper fell from above $5 per pound to below $4.40 over the same period. Meanwhile Goldman Sachs, a bank, lifted its odds of a recession in America to 45%, up from 35% last week.
Israel launched air strikes on Gaza after Hamas launched one of its biggest barrages in months. Half of the ten rockets it fired towards Israel were shot down, according to Israel’s army. Israel also launched strikes on Lebanon in retaliation for rockets fired towards across the border. Meanwhile Binyamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister, met Mr Trump at the White House.
Mr Trump ordered a review of the potential purchase of US Steel by Japan’s Nippon Steel to determine whether further action “may be appropriate”. Both firms sued America’s government in January after former President Joe Biden blocked the $14bn acquisition on national-security grounds. Mr Trump recently proposed that Nippon invests in US Steel, but has similarly opposed a purchase.
Figure of the day: 55,000, the number of containers sent from China to Europe via the Caspian sea in 2024—up from around 25,000 in 2021. Read the full story.
Donald Trump has begun his second term at a blistering pace. Keep up with his executive orders, legal challenges against them and what Americans think about it all on our presidential tracker.
The fallout from Trump’s tariffs
Donald Trump’s trade war has caused global markets to nosedive and sparked fears of a global recession. Investors are panicking as “reciprocal” tariffs—which in fact seem designed not to match levies on American goods but to punish countries that sell to American consumers—are to go into force on April 9th. A baseline tax of 10% on almost all imports already went into effect over the weekend. Lawsuits have been filed to try to stop Mr Trump’s tariff blitz.
Team Trump is under pressure to explain its plans. Jamieson Greer, Mr Trump’s trade representative, will spend Tuesday and Wednesday testifying before Congress. The president has intimated that he is open to doing deals with countries affected by the levies. But it is unclear what concessions would satisfy him. Representatives may be conscious that they could put a stop to all of this. The constitution grants Congress, not the president, power over tariffs. They delegated it to him—and could take it back.
Japan and NATO get closer
“Ukraine today could be East Asia tomorrow,” warned Kishida Fumio, Japan’s then prime minister, in 2022. The fear was that Russia’s invasion could embolden China to conquer Taiwan. Breaking with a decades-long tradition of pacifism, that year Mr Kishida became the first Japanese leader to attend a NATO summit. He hosted the alliance’s then secretary-general in Tokyo in 2023. On Tuesday Mark Rutte, the current secretary-general, will arrive in Japan to visit a naval base and a defence factory. He will meet Ishiba Shigeru, Mr Kishida’s successor, on Wednesday.
Under a partnership agreement signed in 2023, Japan has been working with NATO in various fields, including cyber-security, information-sharing and maritime security. The aim is to counter a growing threat from autocratic regimes. Donald Trump’s threats to weaken America’s security commitments add urgency. Both Japan—and NATO—may hedge against that by drawing closer together.
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America’s shadow over Australia’s election
The leaders of Australia’s two largest parties meet on Tuesday for their first election debate. A general election is scheduled for May 3rd. The centre-left Labor prime minister, Anthony Albanese, will try to convince Australians that their lives are improving after the country recorded one of the sharpest drops in living standards across the OECD in the five years since 2019. His combative Liberal rival, Peter Dutton, paints a grim picture of the country. He will rage against high energy prices and promise cheaper fuel costs. But he, like Mr Albanese, offers no real plan to lift low growth and productivity.
Donald Trump’s policies hang over the election. Mr Dutton blames Mr Albanese for failing to negotiate a tariff deal. Labor points out that Mr Dutton’s complaints about “woke agendas” and promises (now scrapped) to cut public-service jobs resemble Mr Trump’s rhetoric. After sliding in polls, Labor is moving back up. Still, neither party looks popular enough to win a majority in the lower house of Parliament.
Death penalty: more executions, but fewer executioners
On Tuesday Amnesty International, a human-rights group, releases its global report on the death penalty in 2024. In 2023 executions surged by 31% to 1,153. But they occurred in just 16 countries, the fewest on record. Two countries accounted for 89% of executions: Iran executed 853 people, many of them opponents of the regime, and Saudi Arabia killed 172. China, which is thought to execute thousands secretly, was excluded from the count. Executions for drug-related crimes were 44% of the global total, even though, under international law, states may impose the death penalty only on people who intentionally commit murder. These patterns probably continued in 2024.
But more countries are abolishing capital punishment. Zimbabwe did so in December 2024. Two-thirds of United Nations members now support a global moratorium. And in September Japan overturned the conviction of Hakamada Iwao, who had spent nearly half a century on death row—longer than anyone else, anywhere.
Daily quiz
We will serve you a new question each day this week. On Friday your challenge is to give us all five answers and, as important, tell us the connecting theme. Email your responses (and include mention of your home city and country) by 1700 BST on Friday to QuizEspresso@economist.com. We’ll pick randomly from those with the right answers and crown three winners on Saturday.
Tuesday: Which singer won Grammy awards for “The Rose” and “Wind Beneath My Wings”?
Monday: Who won an Oscar for appearing in “The Hours” and Emmys for her roles as producer and actress in “Big Little Lies”?
Lives of great men all remind us greatness takes no easy way. All the heroes of tomorrow are the heretics of today.
Yip Harburg