Trump News

Two prominent CNN commentators led a lively debate Wednesday night over President Donald Trump’s sweeping set of tariffs – which quickly went south as "The View’s" Ana Navarro refused to back down from Republican strategist Shermichael Singleton.

Singleton, who expressed support for Trump’s steep new tariffs targeting China and the European Union, found himself the lone voice on CNN’s “NewsNight” defending the policy – and slamming free trade.

by Daniel AVIS

President Donald Trump's tariff announcement on Wednesday was widely panned by US business lobbying groups, who voiced concern about the impact of the sweeping new duties on their operations.

The Wall Street Journal's conservative editorial board hit President Donald Trump on Wednesday over the steep tariffs he enacted across the globe, warning the MAGA leader that "remaking the world economy has large consequences, and they may not all add up to what Mr. Trump advertises as a new 'golden age.'"

Trump enacted sweeping tariffs, announced during a speech in the White House Rose Garden, declaring April 2 "Liberation Day" as he touted a baseline 10% tariff on imports from all countries, effective Saturday. Trump also said even steeper reciprocal tariffs will be levied on some nations his administration deems harmful to U.S. interests — with rates of up to 50%.

Analysts at JPMorgan Chase warned that the impact of President Donald Trump’s new set of tariffs could take the economy “perilously close to slipping into recession.”

The gloomy economic forecast was released hours after Trump rocked the global financial markets with his announcement of sweeping tariffs in a Rose Garden ceremony on Wednesday – which he dubbed “liberation day.”

Tuesday night’s election results in Florida and Wisconsin have Republicans on Capitol Hill growing increasingly nervous that the “shock and awe” ushered in by President Donald Trump’s second-term administration will hand the GOP a midterm shellacking.

That’s according to a new report in Politico, which detailed the internal struggle among Republicans over concerns the party should shift focus to economic issues with next year’s midterms looming.

A key figure in the Trump administration is urging other countries to hit the pause button on hitting the United States with tariffs, CNN reported — even though President Donald Trump just went nuclear with tariffs on virtually the entire rest of the world.

The tariffs, which are part of an intended global economic realignment Trump calls "Liberation Day," range from 10 to 49 percent. Trump claims they are reciprocal tariffs that tax other nations' goods at half the rates they tax American goods, although experts have noted many of Trump's claimed foreign tariffs on the U.S. don't appear to be correct.

by Beiyi SEOW

A fresh "baseline tariff" of 10 percent will apply to economies around the world, with steeper rates tailored to those that Washington deemed as bad actors.

by Nina ISENI / Théo MARIE-COURTOIS

The US president laid out the new measures after Wall Street stock markets had closed. But his announcement still rippled through the markets that were open at the time, sending stock futures and bond yields lower, while gold surged to a new record high.

Less than two weeks ago there was SignalGate, the Trump administration’s national security scandal that potentially endangered the lives of U.S. service members, and risked exposing military plans, by using an insecure channel to discuss, map out, and announce progress of an attack in Yemen. Then there was the Trump administration’s passwords scandal, where passwords, email addresses, and phone numbers of top Trump national security officials were easily found online. And just yesterday, GmailGate, the Trump administration’s use of the even less-secure commercial email app, to conduct government business.

All three crises involved President Donald Trump’s national security team, including White House national security adviser Mike Waltz, who admitted to setting up the insecure Signal chat.

Nobel Prize-winning economist turned political commentator Paul Krugman was completely aghast at President Donald Trump's new round of so-called "Liberation Day" tariffs, which impose new import taxes ranging from 10 to 49 percent on essentially every country's imports — and even a handful of random, remote islands with tiny populations and negligible trade with the United States.

"Based on what he said, he’s gone full-on crazy," wrote Krugman, a frequent critic of the president. "It’s not just that he appears to be imposing much higher tariffs than almost anyone expected. He’s also making false claims about our trading partners — not sure in this case whether they’re lies, because he may be truly ignorant — that will both enrage them and make it very hard to back down. Basically, he’s claiming that the rest of the world is placing very high tariffs on U.S. products, and that he’s imposing 'reciprocal' tariffs that are only half what they impose on us."

When President Donald Trump announced his "Liberation Day" imposition of "reciprocal tariffs" of 10 to 49 percent on essentially every foreign import in the world, market futures reacted by going into freefall. But Trump also triggered widespread mockery over his extensive list of countries and regions subject to the new tariffs — which included a bunch of obscure, small and remote islands with negligible trade with the United States, and in at least one case, a set of islands with no population at all.

"Taking on America's real enemies — a bunch of islands you've never heard of," wrote Brendan Duke of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities on X.

MSNBC host Nicolle Wallace and Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) had a broad conversation about the special elections on Tuesday, and the firehose of news is drowning out its importance.

"I think it has really been a significant 24 hours," said Whitehouse. He began mentioning the 25-hour filibuster by Sen. Corey Booker (D-NJ), and the win in the Wisconsin state Supreme Court seat was great, but the turnout was more important, he said.