Shownotes Transcript
Today, turn it off, then on again. Tech tariffs are the latest to face a restart. The Trump administration says it's not required to help a wrongly deported man return to the US. Meta faces an antitrust trial over its Instagram and WhatsApp deals. And Rory's rollercoaster, as McElroy makes golf history and finally wins the Masters. It's Monday, April 14th.
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It's only Monday and the tariff whirlwind continues. Automobiles like we did with aluminum, which are now fully on, we'll be doing that with semiconductors, with chips and numerous other things. And that'll take place in the very near future. U.S. President Donald Trump saying he'll be announcing the tariff rate on imported semiconductors over the next week, adding that there will be flexibility with some companies in the sector.
That's after the Trump administration said on Friday that smartphones, computers and some other electronics would be exempted from steep tariffs on imports from China. Confused? Jeff Mason covers the White House.
Well, I think many people are confused, and that's fair, because the people who work for the president have been giving some mixed messages and using different words to describe what he's doing, which doesn't always land in the market the way that perhaps the administration wants it to, or certainly not the way that some investors in the market do. My understanding is that the tariffs aren't going away.
But what was announced late Friday, early Saturday, is that there are some exemptions for multiple electronic products from China.
And those exemptions apply to the broader, over 100% tariffs that were being applied to China as part of this tit-for-tat retaliation. What the president is clarifying is that that doesn't mean that all the tariffs are gone on those products. The initial sort of baseline tariffs, which President Trump is referring to as the 20% fentanyl tariffs, will still apply.
So it seems important to him from a messaging perspective to say that there aren't actually exemptions going on, but his administration has moved away or at least reduced some of the larger amounts of tariffs against many of those products for now.
Stocks are rising on the back of a tech tariff reprieve, even as they brace for what comes next. But Chinese leader Xi Jinping isn't hanging around. He's in Vietnam today, the first stop on a three-nation trip to Southeast Asia. Carmel Crimmins is here with more.
Xi is on a high-stakes diplomatic tour of the region. Cambodia, Malaysia and Vietnam have built up strong trade and investment ties with China. Xi wants to consolidate that and position Beijing as a stable partner amidst the threat and confusion from Trump's tariffs. Data out on Monday shows how tariffs have already warped trade flows. China's exports jumped over 12% in March as factories there rushed out shipments before the latest tariffs took effect.
And there were near record shipments flowing into Southeast Asia. Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky is demanding a tough international response against Moscow after two Russian ballistic missiles killed dozens in the city of Sumy. It's the deadliest strike on Ukraine this year. US President Trump told reporters he heard the attack was a mistake, but called it "horrible."
Rory McIlroy has become only the sixth player to win golf's Grand Slam, winning all four of the sports majors. He's ended his long wait for a Masters title in a dramatic playoff victory over Justin Rose at Augusta. Two Israeli missiles have hit a major Gaza hospital, putting the emergency department out of action. Health officials had evacuated patients after a warning ahead of the strike. Israel says it was aimed at Hamas fighters exploiting the facility.
And Katy Perry and journalists Gayle King and Lauren Sanchez are set to blast off into space on a Blue Origin rocket later today. Sanchez is also the fiancé of Jeff Bezos, who owns Blue Origin. President Trump meets with El Salvador's President Nayib Bukele today at the White House.
The meeting comes as the administration is in a legal standoff with the courts over a Maryland resident illegally deported to El Salvador. U.S. officials said in court filings on Sunday that they are not obligated to help Kilmer Abrego Garcia get out of prison after he was erroneously deported there. That's despite a Supreme Court ruling directing the government to facilitate his return.
A top US immigration official has said that the order barring Abrego Garcia's removal to El Salvador was no longer valid, quote, "because of his membership in MS-13, which is now a designated foreign terrorist organization." Abrego Garcia has denied any ties to the violent MS-13 street gang.
Our reporting has shown that administration officials have repeatedly publicly identified detainees as gang leaders or even terrorists without attempting to back up those claims in court.
Reporter Ted Hessen covers immigration. We've seen some high-profile arrests that have been touted by the Justice Department where they've said that the people are gang members, but then when it comes time to bring charges against someone, they're not making the same allegations in court. That goes against how the DOJ would typically approach these cases. Prosecutors would normally avoid making allegations outside of court that they're not going to actually make in a criminal case against someone. And the reason is,
they don't want to undermine the actual criminal case. Beyond that, this is actually kind of a core precept of our legal system here in the U.S., that if the government brings some sort of charge against you, that you have a chance to contest it in court. And I think there really is a question if they're going to be sort of putting out there that people who are in the U.S. illegally or with a temporary status are
are gang members, there are questions about whether they can actually back that up in court. In particular, there was one filing in this court case where a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement official said that many of those people deported to El Salvador actually had no criminal record in the U.S. The official did say, despite that lack of record, that he still believed the people were dangerous and potentially could cause a threat, specifically because the U.S. did not have much information about them.
Meta's high-stakes antitrust trial kicks off today in Washington. The US Federal Trade Commission claims the company built an illegal social media monopoly by spending billions of dollars to acquire Instagram and WhatsApp. Meta denies trying to kill the competition. It found guilty the company could be forced to restructure or sell parts of its business. Reporter Jodie Godoy is following the case.
At the heart of this case is the way that people use social media. The FTC says that Meta has a monopoly on people using it to share with friends and family, but Meta is going to challenge the very notion that that's still the way that people use social media and challenge the idea that companies like TikTok aren't huge competitors in this market. Meta says that every 17-year-old knows that
YouTube and TikTok are huge competitors and that the FTC's vision of this market is well out of date. What sort of numbers are we looking at Meta losing if it's forced to restructure or sell parts of the company? This is an existential case for Meta. Essentially, it's seeking to have the company sell off Instagram and WhatsApp.
two huge parts of the business. So Instagram is estimated to bring in about $30 billion in ad revenue or about half of Meta's ad revenue this year alone. So if Meta were to lose Instagram, that would be a huge hit. So is there a possibility of a settlement? Meta and Mark Zuckerberg have certainly made moves to become closer to this administration, doing things like changing content moderation policies, donating to the inauguration, and
And Zuckerberg has been meeting with the White House in recent weeks. It's quite unclear, though, that any of that is going to lead to a different result. It looks like the FTC is more than ready to fight this one out in court. And one of the things to watch at this trial will be Mark Zuckerberg. He's slated to be on the stand probably early in the case. And he's going to testify about the deals. And what he says on the stand could have a big impact on the outcome.
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Our recommended read today looks at the life of Peruvian writer Mario Vargas Llosa, who's died aged 89. The Nobel Prize winner was a leading light in the 20th century Latin American literature boom and once ran to become president of his country. Find out more about his life by clicking on the link in the pod description.
And before we go, a small plea. The Swiftonomics episode of our Econ World podcast has been nominated for two Webby's. If you enjoyed the episode, we'd love it if you could go and vote. There's a link below. Don't forget to follow us on your favorite podcast player. And we'll be back tomorrow with our daily headline show.