President Trump’s tariffs have caused U.S. markets to plummet. How to prepare for a potential recession, and how the tariffs might have an outsized impact on a small African nation.Plus, Semafor’s Elana Schor joins to discuss major news from Washington this week including Sen. Cory Booker’s record-length speech, and a push for proxy voting in the House. Today’s episode was hosted by Shumita Basu.
Chapter 1: How have Trump's tariffs affected U.S. markets?
This is Apple News Today. We begin with the immediate fallout from Trump's sweeping tariffs enacted on Wednesday. Markets slid with U.S. stocks seeing their steepest decline in market value since March of 2020. JPMorgan economists said yesterday they believe there's a 60 percent chance of a global recession.
President Trump defended the tariffs while standing outside Air Force One yesterday, saying they put America in the driver's seat.
The markets are going to boom. The stock is going to boom. The country is going to boom. And the rest of the world wants to see, is there any way they can make a deal?
But lots of economists, from more liberal ones to more conservative ones, are waving red flags, saying the math just doesn't add up. Here's some reaction from CNBC's Jim Cramer on CNN yesterday.
The president said, listen, it's going to be reciprocal. So you do it. We do it. And that was going to be so good. And I really believed in it. And I feel like a sucker tonight because I am not a free trader and I do not believe in free trade. And I was just as tough, if not tougher than his people. But they screwed it up and they really made they did it a totally ill-advised way.
And I was very let down as someone who really, truly believes the free trade is awful for the American working person. This is what they came up with. Jeez, come on. Have some gumption. Have some math.
Global reaction to the tariffs has been mixed. China quickly retaliated, hitting all U.S. imports with a 34 percent tariff. But The Wall Street Journal reports that other countries for the moment aren't jumping to retaliatory measures. The prime minister of Australia, for example, said his country wouldn't join a, quote, race to the bottom by retaliating.
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Chapter 2: What is the global reaction to U.S. tariffs?
Likewise, Japan and India, which both face tariffs upwards of 20 percent, have so far indicated no plans to invoke their own tariffs back at us. Today, American leaders and economists are watching for two key moments, a jobs report out this morning and later a speech on the economic outlook by Fed Chair Jerome Powell, particularly after the worst day for the markets in five years.
On Fox News earlier this week, Vice President J.D. Vance was asked how Americans who are sitting at home worried about their bank accounts should prepare.
What I'd ask folks to appreciate here is that we are not going to fix things overnight.
He went on to blame Joe Biden for our economic woes.
We know people are struggling. We're fighting as quickly as we can to fix what was left to us, but it's not going to happen immediately.
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Chapter 3: How might tariffs impact smaller nations like Lesotho?
Meanwhile, there are broad consequences for some of the world's smallest and poorest nations. Reuters reports on the impact to Lesotho, a small African nation that Trump ridiculed as a country nobody has ever heard of last month in his joint address to Congress. The administration placed a whopping 50% reciprocal tariff on the country, the highest on the list.
Exports to the U.S., primarily diamonds and textiles, make up more than 10% of Lesotho's GDP — An economist told Reuters that the tariffs will effectively kill the textile industry in the country. Due to the formula the administration used to calculate percentages, some of the poorest nations are facing the highest tariffs.
Reuters also explains how some largely uninhabited territories and islands are facing tariffs, with some joking about penguins having to pay the cost. Now, if you are feeling nervous about the possibility of a recession, you're not alone. But it's not too soon or too late to start preparing your finances so you're in the best possible position.
USA Today's personal finance reporter recommends you first focus on paying off any credit card debt or high interest debt as soon as possible. As needed, try transferring that debt to another loan that has a lower interest rate. And if you're debt free, try to make sure you have enough money in savings to cover at least three months of living expenses.
One way to grow that reserve of money more quickly, USA Today says, try putting it in a high yield savings account. Let's spend the rest of today's show talking about some other news out of Washington. It's been a pretty remarkable week for lawmakers on Capitol Hill, from two women representatives who effectively shut down the House to a marathon speech on the Senate floor.
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Chapter 4: How can you prepare financially for a potential recession?
To help us take a step back and take stock, I called up Alana Shore, senior Washington editor at Semaphore. And I started by asking her about a push led by Representative Brittany Patterson, a Democrat from Colorado, and Representative Anna Paulina Luna, a Republican from Florida.
Both are moms, and both came together to demand a change in the rules to allow new parents to vote by proxy in Congress, something President Trump came out in support of yesterday.
It's a very, very personal issue right now for several members of Congress because they're new and recent parents, particularly Congresswoman Anna Paulina Luna and Congresswoman Brittany Pedersen, the leaders of this revolt on the floor. They said, hey, we think there should be an exception for new parents and not just mothers, fathers as well.
You know, Brittany Pedersen, for instance, has just had a baby.
For all of the parents here, we know that when we have newborns, It's when they're the most vulnerable in their life. It's when they need 24-7 care.
And leadership said no. We want to draw a hard line against proxy voting. So Luna, the Republican, big MAGA voice from Florida, decides I'm going to start a discharge petition. Any member, if they feel like the party in charge isn't calling up a bill they care about, if they get the signatures of, in this case, 218, a majority of the House... It gets a vote on the floor, simple as that.
In this case, Luna, a Republican, got this discharge petition where it needed to be, and leadership decided, okay, instead of giving you this vote, we're going to write into a procedural motion on other things, language shutting you down. And that was when Luna got allies on the Republican side to stand with every Democrat and defeat that procedural motion.
Instead of negotiating with her, House Speaker Mike Johnson sent everyone home. And the reason for that is conservatives who oppose Luna, let's call them the House Freedom Caucus, even though it's more than that group, have basically said, we, if you give in to her, are going to also oppose you bringing legislation to the floor. So it's
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Chapter 5: What is the push for proxy voting in the House?
It's one of those classic situations Mike Johnson has had since becoming speaker where he's caught between two factions. Given the size of his majority, he has no choice but to try to play hardball with one of them. If he gave in to Luna, he'd lose on the other end. And one subplot to this, Luna herself left the House Freedom Caucus this week in protest of its treatment of her.
She was a member up until a few days ago. You know, Johnson has to decide if he wants to change course or keep basically choosing war with Luna. And until he does, it's going to be very hard to see him moving any legislation that's not quote unquote subject to a rule.
Incredible. And we should say that this whole saga effectively meant that the House was out of business for two days this week. Meanwhile, on the other side of the Capitol, there was another moment that's gotten a lot of attention. Democratic Senator Cory Booker broke the record for the longest speech ever given on the Senate floor. It clocked in at 25 hours and five minutes.
Here's just a little bit of it where he spoke about being inspired by the late Representative John Lewis.
He would not normalize a moment like this. He would not just go along with business as usual. He wouldn't know how to solve it. But there's one thing that he would do that I hope we all can do that I think I did a little bit of tonight. He said for us to go out and cause some good trouble, necessary trouble, to redeem the soul of our nation.
So, Alana, what's been the reaction among Democrats to Booker's marathon speech? Democrats are thrilled.
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Chapter 6: Who are the lawmakers leading the charge for proxy voting?
I mean, look, did this do anything in terms of getting more votes to stop the Trump administration, which is their goal? No. But Cory Booker's job is head of communications for Senate Democratic leadership. Simply put, he is asked by his fellow Democrats to grab as much attention as possible. And boy, did he do it with this tactic.
It's not lost on a lot of Democrats that Booker successfully broke a record held by Strom Thurmond, the man who famously filibustered the Civil Rights Act and is widely viewed as a racist by his modern peers. So it was sort of a symbolic and very important moment for a lot of Democrats to see a powerful black Democrat break that record.
And not to mention, I mean, the way that he did it, he literally did not step away. Right. He didn't sit the entire time. He could not use the bathroom during that entire time. And just to say he wasn't, you know, up there reading Green Eggs and Ham, as we have seen some representatives do. Right. Yeah. He spoke on the issues pretty consistently for that whole 25 hour period.
Does it represent a change for how Democrats might be thinking about confronting this administration?
It's more of what people call a vibe shift than a substance shift. What Democrats were looking for was the sound and image of a fighter, right? I mean, in practice, they're going to do things the same way they've always done it, which is namely pick their spots. Mm-hmm.
Okay. Alana, we can't end without quickly touching on this week's special elections, where Republicans appear to underperform. As the week closes out, how are you reflecting on what these races might tell us about what's to come?
You know, I think it's important that we look at those special elections and what they mean and don't mean. On Tuesday, the Wisconsin Supreme Court race went for Democrats after Elon Musk. And Frankly, Trump's entire firmament poured a lot of attention into backing the Republican candidate.
At the same time, two seats in Florida that tilted pretty red historically over the years went to Republicans, but by far smaller margins than they have historically in the past. Now, here's the difference. These are what we call special election electorates.
Like, the group of voters coming out to these very peculiar races are different than the group of voters that come out in presidential elections. I saw one stat that really stunned me that said, you know, if the same electorate came out in November 2024 as did in these races, Harris would have won easily.
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