by | Apr 7, 2025 | The Hill
The White House on Monday showed no signs of backing off its implementation of sweeping tariffs on dozens of other nations, even as its approach rattled financial markets and raised the specter of an economic slowdown.
President Trump was adamant that the aggressive tariffs, which are set to go into effect at 12:01 a.m. on Wednesday, were a necessary tool to rebalance trade and reorient the U.S. economy after years of being taken advantage of.
He also announced he would impose a new 50 percent tariff on imports from China in response to that country’s announcement last week of tariffs on the U.S.
The latest announcement would essentially put U.S. tariffs on Chinese imports at 104 percent, a dramatic escalation of a potential trade war between the world’s two largest economies.
The president also warned that he would cut off negotiations with China about tariffs moving forward if it did not back off its retaliatory tariffs.
“We’re going to have one shot at this. And no other president’s going to do this, what I’m doing. And I’ll tell you what, it’s an honor to do it, because we have been just destroyed,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office during a joint appearance with Isreal Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, whose country is also getting hit with Trump tariffs.
“We have an opportunity to change the fabric of our country,” Trump added. “We have an opportunity to reset the table on trade.”
The Dow Jones Industrial Average closed Monday with a loss of 349 points, falling 0.9 percent on the day after falling more than 1,600 points below its Friday close earlier in the day. In total, the Dow has dropped more than 4,000 points since the announcement of Trump’s reciprocal tariffs, and 9.35 percent over the last five days.
The S&P 500 index closed with a loss of 0.2 percent, while the Nasdaq squeaked out a 0.1 percent gain.
Stocks opened Monday with a steep plunge after Trump and top administration officials spent the weekend defending the president’s tariffs and downplaying the potential economic costs.
Less than an hour after the opening bell, the market shot into positive territory for the first time in days amid multiple — but erroneous — reports that Trump was considering a 90-day tariff pause.
Stocks fell again shortly after the White House
as “fake news” and media outlets behind the original reports backtracked.
But even the false report of relief appeared to snap the market out of its hysteria as stocks bounced back and forth until the closing bell.
Trump, however, said he was not considering any kind of pause while again shrugging off the market reaction.
“We’re not looking at that,” Trump said later when asked if he was looking at a pause. “We have many, many countries that are coming to negotiate deals with us. And they’re going to be fair deals. And in certain cases they’re going to be paying substantial tariffs.”
At the same time, Trump and some members of his administration sent mixed signals about whether countries could negotiate down their tariffs and how they could do so.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent announced on Monday afternoon that he would begin negotiations with his Japanese counterpart “regarding tariffs, non-tariff trade barriers, currency issues, and government subsidies.”
Shortly before Bessent’s announcement, The Financial Times published
from Trump’s senior trade adviser, Peter Navarro, in which Navarro wrote of the tariffs: “This is not a negotiation. For the U.S., it is a national emergency triggered by trade deficits caused by a rigged system.”
Sources close to the White House told The Hill that it will ultimately be up to Trump whether he wants to negotiate with other countries over tariffs. And Trump himself has signaled he is open to it and argued the tariffs give him significant leverage.
But even the president has at times been unclear about what he is seeking from other countries. He has at times called for other nations to drop their trade barriers and lower their tariff rates, while on Sunday he told reporters he would not make a deal with China
with Beijing, something that would take years to accomplish.
“They can both be true. There can be permanent tariffs and there can also be negotiations, because there are things we need beyond tariffs,” Trump said Monday.
Netanyahu said following a meeting with Trump at the White House that Israel intends to “eliminate the trade deficit with the United States” and “eliminate trade barriers.”
“I think Israel can serve as a model for many countries who ought to do the same,” Netanyahu said.
Asked if he planned to reduce the 17 percent tariff on Israel that was announced last week as a result, Trump said, “Maybe not.”
Other countries, such as Vietnam and the European Union, have indicated a willingness to negotiate as well, but it’s unclear if the Trump administration will take them up on it.
Sens. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) and Mike Lee (R-Utah) urged Trump to engage with European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen’s offer to negotiate on “zero-for-zero tariffs for industrial goods.”
“At some point, you have to take YES for an answer,” Johnson posted on X.
Trump in the Oval Office said the European Union’s offer was not sufficient.
In a further sign of GOP unease with Trump’s approach, seven Republican senators, including Sen. Chuck Grassley (Iowa) and Sen. Mitch McConnell (Ky.), have signed on to a bipartisan bill that would require Congress to approve Trump’s steep tariffs on trading partners.
The White House has said Trump would veto the bill if it reached his desk.
Economic leaders have repeatedly expressed wariness about Trump’s approach and what it may mean for the larger economy.
JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon wrote in a
on Monday morning that the administration’s tariffs “will likely increase inflation and are causing many to consider a greater probability of a recession.”
Callie Cox, chief market strategist at Ritholtz Wealth, wrote in a
published before the market closed that businesses “aren’t exactly enthusiastic about hiring new people or launching bold revenue-generating projects when their stock is in freefall.”
“This isn’t a crisis of confidence. At least not yet. The worst-case scenario now is if investors lose confidence in the U.S.’ ability to pay back its debts or support deep and transparent stock markets,” Cox wrote.
by | Apr 7, 2025 | The Hill
A mammoth 90 percent of American Christian leaders — from Catholics to Evangelicals — believe in the reality of human-induced climate change, a new study has found.
However, these same leaders are typically silent in their beliefs and fail to share that understanding with their congregants, according to the study, recently published in the
.
“Because of leadership’s silence on the matter, rank-and-file Christians think most of their leaders do not believe,” senior author Gregg Sparkman, an assistant professor at Boston College, said in a statement.
As a result, Sparkman explained, those same congregants “feel hesitant to even discuss climate change with their fellow churchgoers.”
Sparkman and first author Stylianos Syropoulos, now an assistant professor at Arizona State University, drew their conclusions based on a survey of 1,600 Christian leaders across the country.
Of these leaders, they found that nearly 90 percent said they believed in anthropogenic climate change to at least some degree.
Some 60 percent of the leaders replied that humans play a major role, while 30 percent said they felt that people have had more minor impacts, according to the survey.
Breaking the data down further, the researchers observed that more than 80 percent of Evangelical or Fundamentalist Christian leaders believe that humans have contributed to climate change.
Nonetheless, the authors also found that about half of the respondents have never discussed this issue with their congregants, and that only a quarter have mentioned it more than once or twice.
A second survey included in the study showed that U.S. Christians broadly underestimate the prevalence of their leaders who believe in climate change. Although these participants guessed that about half of their leaders were climate-change deniers, only about 10 percent truly fell into that category, per the study.
In a third set of survey results, about half of 1,000 respondents were informed that 90 percent of Christian leaders believe in manmade climate change. That newfound awareness then increased their perception that other church members believe in or are opening to discussing this fraught issue.
As such, more respondents answered that taking climate action would be consistent with church values, while voting for politicians who oppose doing so is not, according to the findings.
“We find that informing Christians that the majority of their religious leaders believe in man-made climate change leads them to realize that climate action is in line with their morals, and voting for politicians who deny climate change may be at odds with their faith,” Sparkman said.
Noting that every year, droughts, fires, floods and other extreme weather events become more common, he stressed that nine out of ten Christian leaders already believe that humans have a role to play in these phenomena.
“If this truth gets out and they break their silence, it will help Christian Americans come to faith on this dire issue,” Sparkman added.
by | Apr 7, 2025 | The Hill
President Trump said the U.S. will hold direct talks with Iran over its nuclear program, saying a meeting is set for Saturday.
He made his remarks alongside Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, in a meeting that was arranged on short notice.
“We’re having direct talks with Iran, and they’ve started. It’ll go on Saturday,” Trump said from the Oval Office.
Trump said he’s focusing on diplomacy over threatening military action. Trump, in his first term, withdrew the U.S. from the Obama-era nuclear deal with Iran that put verifiable limits on its nuclear program but that critics said did not completely eliminate the risk of its weapons program.
Iran has accelerated its weapons programs, with U.S. officials warning it has knowledge on building a bomb and enough material to fuel numerous bombs, more than it had when it was in the previous nuclear deal, called the JCPOA.
“We have a very big meeting, and we’ll see what can happen,” Trump said.
“And I think everybody agrees that doing a deal would be preferable to doing the obvious, and the obvious is not something that I want to be involved with, or frankly, that Israel wants to be involved with, if they can avoid it,” he continued.
“So we’re going to see if we can avoid it, but it’s getting to be very dangerous territory. And hopefully those talks will be successful. And I think it would be in Iran’s best interests if they are successful, we hope, we hope that’s going to happen.”
Netanyahu, who has raised the possibility of a military strike on Iran with the help of the U.S., said that diplomacy is preferable and called for a “Libya model” – referencing how the late dictator Muammar al-Qaddafi gave up his country’s nuclear weapons program in exchange for sanctions relief.
While Trump has said it is unacceptable for Iran to attain a nuclear weapon, the president has also floated renewed ties with the Islamic republic, a state sponsor of terrorism that launched two direct attacks against Israel over the past few years.
Trump has said he wants to see Iran join the Abraham Accords, the normalization agreements between Israel, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain.
by | Apr 7, 2025 | The Hill
CNBC on Monday acknowledged that it aired a banner containing unconfirmed information about President Trump’s economic plans amid widespread market uncertainty stemming from the tariffs he announced last week.
“As we were chasing the news of the market moves in real-time, we aired unconfirmed information in a banner,” a spokesperson for the network told The Hill on Monday afternoon. “Our reporters quickly made a correction on air.”
As markets opened on Monday, a major sell-off ensued on Wall Street amid intensifying concerns about the negative impact Trump’s tariffs could have on consumer goods and the broader American economy.
Amid the market upheaval, a high-profile user on the social platform X named “Walter Bloomberg,” published a message saying “TRUMP IS CONSIDERING A 90-DAY PAUSE IN TARIFFS FOR ALL COUNTRIES EXCEPT CHINA.”
That post was apparently based off an interview given by White House National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett to Fox News.
CNBC mentioned the report during its 9 a.m. and attributed the possibility of a 90-day pause to Hassett.
The network’s airing of the unverified information was
.
The White House quickly disputed the online fervor, calling it “fake news,” after a number of mainstream outlets including Reuters and CNBC made reference to the report.
Reuters, which had based its reporting off of CNBC’s banner,
saying it was retracting a story on Hassett’s comments.
Trump has urged Americans and investors to be patient with his economic agenda and promised the tariffs will help his administration invest in U.S. workers and companies.
by | Apr 7, 2025 | The Hill
A former top official at the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) said he blocked members of Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s team from directing accessing a vaccine database over concerns they would rewrite or erase the stored information.
Peter Marks, who headed the Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research before being ousted in March, told
in an interview published Monday that he agreed to allow Kennedy’s associates to read reports from the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) but refused to allow them to directly edit the information.
“Why wouldn’t we? Because frankly we don’t trust (them),” Marks told the AP, using profanity. “They’d write over it or erase the whole database.”
Marks has said that he sought to work with Kennedy and address his concerns over vaccine transparency but found that the secretary only wanted “confirmation of his misinformation and lies.”
VAERS is a voluntary, self-reported surveillance system of adverse events from vaccinations that is co-managed by both the FDA and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The system rose in prominence during the COVID-19 pandemic as the vaccines were rolled out.
An HHS spokesperson reportedly told the AP in response that it made “perfect sense” for Kennedy’s staffers to seek access into VAERS to do their own analysis.
When asked by The Hill about the accusations Marks made in his AP interview, a HHS official said his claims were false.
Since leaving his post at the FDA, which he held for nearly a decade, Marks has embarked on a media campaign lambasting Kennedy’s actions as Health secretary.
In an interview with the Wall Street Journal, Marks said Kennedy’s tenure at HHS has so far been “very scary,” saying he left because he could not work for someone unwilling to “follow the science.”
Marks also alleged in his interview with the Journal that Kennedy’s team requested data on cases of brain swelling and deaths caused by the measles, mumps and rubella vaccines — information Marks says he couldn’t turn over because it didn’t exist.
by | Apr 7, 2025 | The Hill
President Trump is holding firm in his economic plans, even as
at a loss and discontent grew over the weekend with his tariff agenda.
He
quickly Monday, calling on Americans to be patient. Later in the morning, he
on China, which had responded last week to Trump’s 34 percent tariff on imports by implementing the same on American imports.
Amid the tariff tension, Trump’s Monday agenda
with a key ally, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. He arrived at the White House early in the afternoon.
Congress also returns to work Monday. House Republican leaders are urging their members to adopt the Senate’s
, passed early Saturday, which will tee up Trump’s ambitious legislative agenda.
And Republican senators are starting to line up support for tariff deals or a check on the president’s trade authority. Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) suggested the White House take a deal after the EU said Monday it was ready to negotiate. Meanwhile,
are backing a bipartisan bill that would require congressional approval for steep tariffs on allies.
Follow along all day for updates.
by | Apr 7, 2025 | The Hill
A pair of Senate Republicans on Monday urged President Trump to accept the European Union’s offer of “zero-for-zero tariffs” on cars and industrial goods amid the administration’s growing trade wars.
“Let’s take that deal!” Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) wrote on X from his personal account.
“Much to gain,” Lee added.
Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) chimed in, writing in response, “Totally agree with @BasedMikeLee.”
“At some point, you have to take YES for an answer,” Johnson wrote.
The senators were responding to a clip of European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen,
on Monday, “We stand ready to negotiate with the United States.”
“We have offered zero-for-zero tariffs for industrial goods — as we have successfully done with many other trading partners — because Europe is always ready for a good deal, so we keep it on the table,” she added.
Von der Leyen stressed, however, that the EU is readying countermeasures in response to Trump’s new sweeping tariffs, including 20 percent on imported goods from the EU. Trump’s 10 percent baseline tariff took effect on Saturday, and the individualized tariffs
.
Trump previously announced tariffs on aluminum and steel and on foreign car imports.
“We are also prepared to respond through countermeasures and defend our interests,” von der Leyen added. “And in addition, we will also protect ourselves against indirect effects through trade diversion.”
The president and White House officials have been defending the tariff plan, which was announced last week and sparked recession fears and a stock market plummet. Officials
whether the White House is open to negotiating the tariffs.
Trump said Sunday he was elected because of the tariffs, telling reporters they will make the U.S. $1 trillion by next year.
by | Apr 7, 2025 | The Hill
Democratic strategist Doug Schoen said Monday there’s “no good answer” on who will be the next leader of the Democratic Party after former Vice President Kamala Harris’s lost in November to President Trump.
“You know, at this point, I really don’t know,” Schoen said in an interview on Fox News Channel’s “Fox & Friends,” when asked who he thinks will emerge to lead the party “in a smarter direction.”
Schoen, a former adviser to President Clinton, floated several prominent Democrats as possible future party leaders, including Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear, Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, California Gov. Gavin Newsom and Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro.
“Usually it’s the governors, and frequently — in the case of Carter and Clinton — southern governor,” Schoen added, referring to the two former presidents from southern states.
“But somebody could emerge in the way that Obama did in ’07 and ’08,” he said.
Ultimately, he said, there’s no clear path forward.
“But right now, Charlie, there’s no good answer to your question that, I think, myself or any other top Democratic strategist can answer with certainty,” he told Fox News’s Charlie Hurt in the interview.
The interview comes as Democrats seek a path forward after the 2024 election loss. No one has emerged as a definitive frontrunner for the party’s 2028 presidential nomination.
In addition, some Democrats have expressed unhappiness with their congressional leaders, arguing they are not doing enough to stand up to fight the Trump administration.
by | Apr 7, 2025 | The Hill
White House National Economic Council (NEC) Director Kevin Hassett said in a Monday interview that billionaire hedge fund investor Bill Ackman “should ease off the rhetoric” after
that President Trump’s tariffs could lead to a “self-induced, economic nuclear winter.”
In an interview Monday on Fox News Channel’s “Fox & Friends,” Hassett called the remarks by Ackman, who endorsed Trump for president last year, “completely irresponsible rhetoric.”
“I would urge everyone, especially Bill, to ease off the rhetoric a little bit,” Hassett said in the interview, in response to Ackman’s warning.
Hassett said most of the country’s GDP is not affected by Trump’s new sweeping tariffs, noting imports account for just 14 percent of the GOP, “so 86 percent of GDP is affected by the deregulation and the tax cuts and everything else.”
“Even if you think that there will be some negative effect from the trade side, that’s still a small share of GDP,” Hassett said. “And so the idea that it’s going to be a ‘nuclear winter,’ or something like that, is completely irresponsible rhetoric.”
Hassett maintained that he and others at the White House still think that “these economic responses are exaggerated by critics.”
Hassett’s interview comes after Ackman offered a stark warning about the risks of Trump’s tariffs, arguing they could cause the economy to collapse and could hurt Trump’s supporters the most, writing, “This is not what we voted for.”
Ackman argued that Trump should consider calling a “90-day time out” that would allow him to negotiate and solve “asymmetric tariff deals, and induce trillions of dollars of new investment in our country.”
If that doesn’t happen and instead the U.S. launches “economic nuclear war on every country in the world, business investment will grind to a halt, consumers will close their wallets and pocket books, and we will severely damage our reputation with the rest of the world that will take years and potentially decades to rehabilitate,” Ackman wrote.
“The President has an opportunity on Monday to call a time out and have the time to execute on fixing an unfair tariff system,” Ackman wrote. “Alternatively, we are heading for a self-induced, economic nuclear winter, and we should start hunkering down. May cooler heads prevail.”
by | Apr 7, 2025 | The Hill
President Trump said on Sunday he would “love” to send American inmates to El Salvador’s mega-prison but first needs to check if it’s legal.
Speaking with reporters on Air Force One, Trump was asked whether he plans to discuss El Salvador President Nayib Bukele’s offer to take in and house American prisoners with him.
“Well, I love that,” Trump said. “If we could take some of our 20-time wise guys that push people into subways and that hit people over the back of the head and that purposely run people over in cars — if he would take them, I would be honored to give them.”
“I don’t know what the law says on that, but I can’t imagine the law would say anything different,” he said. “If they can house these horrible criminals for a lot less money than it costs us, I’m all for it, but I would only do according to the law.”
“I think if we could get El Salvador or somebody to take them I’d be very happy with it. But I have to see what the law says,” Trump added.
Trump has faced criticism and
over the execution of his
to deport accused gang members from the U.S. and have them housed in El Salvador’s mega-prison.
The Trump administration
another group of men it claims were all members of the Tren de Aragua and MS-13 gangs. A White House official said this latest deportation was carried out under immigration authorities, not the Alien Enemies Act. The White House has been sued over its use of the Alien Enemies Act to deport migrants and has been ordered to suspend deportations under it.
